
Scott Nicholson
Library, Vol. 1
The Red Church
The Skull Ring
Ghost College
As I Die Lying
A boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church after a sinister preacher returns to town.
THE RED CHURCH
By Scott Nicholson
Published Haunted Computer Books
Copyright ©2002 Scott Nicholson
THE RED CHURCH
The world never ends the way you believe it will, Ronnie Day thought.
There were the tried-and-true favorites, like nuclear holocaust and doomsday asteroid collisions and killer viruses and Preacher Staymore's all-time classic, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But the end really wasn't such a huge, organized affair after all. The end was right up close and personal, different for each person, a kick in the rear and a joy-buzzer handshake from the Reaper himself.
But that was the Big End. First you had to twist your way through a thousand turning points and die a little each time. One of life's lessons, learned as the by-product of thirteen years as the son of Linda and David Day and one semester sitting in class with Melanie Ward. Tough noogies, wasn't it?
Ronnie walked quickly, staring straight ahead. Another day in the idiot factory at good old Barkersville Elementary was over. Had all evening to look forward to, and a good long walk between him and home. Nothing but his feet and the smell of damp leaves, fresh grass, and the wet mud of the riverbanks. A nice plate of spring sunshine high overhead.
And he could start slowing down in a minute, delaying his arrival into the hell that home had been lately, because soon he would be around the curve and past the thing on the hill to his right, the thing he didn't want to think about, the thing he couldn't help thinking about, because he had to walk past it twice a day.
Why couldn't he be like the other kids? Their parents picked them up in shiny new Mazdas and Nissans and took them to the mall in Barkersville and dropped them off at soccer practice and then drove them right to the front door of their houses. So all they had to do was step in and stuff their faces with microwave dinners and go to their rooms and waste their brains on TV or Nintendo all night. They didn't have to be scared.
Well, it could be worse. He had a brain, but it wasn't something worth bragging about. His "overactive imagination" got him in trouble at school, but it was also kind of nice when other kids, especially Melanie, asked him for help in English.
So he'd take having a brain any day, even if he did suffer what the school counselor called "negative thoughts." At least he had thoughts. Unlike his little dorkwad of a brother back there, who didn't have sense enough to know that this stretch of road was no place to be messing around.
"Hey, Ronnie." His brother was calling him, it sounded like from the top of the hill. The dorkwad hadn't stopped, had he?
"Come on." Ronnie didn't turn around.
"Looky here."
"Come on, or I'll bust you upside the head."
"No, really, Ronnie. I see something."
Ronnie sighed and stopped walking, then slung his book bag farther up on his shoulder. He was at least eighty feet ahead of his little brother. Tim had been doing his typical nine-year-old's dawdling, stopping occasionally to tie his sneaker strings or look in the ditch water for tadpoles or throw rocks at the river that ran below the road.
Ronnie turned---to your left, he told himself, so you don't see it---and looked back along the sweep of gravel at the hill that was almost lost among the green bulk of mountains. He could think of a hundred reasons not to walk all the way back to see what Tim wanted him to see. For one thing, Tim was at the top of the hill, which meant Ronnie would have to hike up the steep grade again. The walk home from the bus stop was nearly a mile and a half already. Why make it longer?
Plus there were at least ninety-nine other reasons---
like the red church
---not to give a flying fig what Tim was sticking his nose into now. Dad was supposed to stop by today to pick up some more stuff, and Ronnie didn't want to miss him. Maybe they'd get to talk for a minute, man-to-man. If Tim didn't hurry, Dad and Mom might have another argument first and Dad would leave like he had last week, stomping the gas pedal of his rusty Ford so the wheels threw chunks of gravel and broke a window. So that was another reason not to go back to see whatever had gotten Tim so worked up.
Tim jumped up and down, the rolled cuffs of his blue jeans sagging around his sneakers. He motioned with his thin arm, his glasses flashing in the mid-afternoon sun. "C'mon, Ronnie," he shouted.
"Dingle-dork," Ronnie muttered to himself, then started backtracking up the grade. He kept his eyes on the gravel the way he always did when he was near the church. The sun made little sparkles in the rocks, and with a little imagination, the roadbed could turn into a big galaxy with lots of stars and planets, and if he didn't look to his left he wouldn't have to see the red church.
Why should he be afraid of some dumb old church? A church was a church. It was like your heart. Once Jesus came in, He was supposed to stay there. But sometimes you did bad things that drove Him away.
Ronnie peeked at the church just to prove that he didn't care about it one way or another. There. Nothing but wood and nails.
But he'd hardly glanced at it. He'd really seen only a little piece of the church's mossy gray roof, because of all the trees that lined the road-big old oaks and a gnarled apple tree and a crooked dogwood that would have been great for climbing except if you got to the top, you'd be right at eye level with the steeple and the belfry.
Stupid trees, he thought. All happy because it's May and their leaves are waving in the wind and, if they were people, I bet they'd be wearing idiotic smiles just like the one that's probably splitting up Tim's face right now. Because, just like little bro, the trees are too doggoned dumb to be scared.
Ronnie slowed down a little. Tim had walked into the shade of the maple. Into the jungle of weeds that formed a natural fence along the road. And maybe to the edge of the graveyard.
Ronnie swallowed hard. He'd just started developing an Adam's apple, and he could feel the knot pogo in his throat. He stopped walking. He'd thought of reason number hundred and one not to go over to the churchyard. Because---and this was the best reason of all, one that made Ronnie almost giddy with relief---he was the older brother. Tim had to listen to him. If he gave in to the little mucous midget even once, he would be asking for a lifetime of "Ronnie, do this" and "Ronnie, do that." He got enough of that kind of treatment from Mom.
"Hurry up," Tim called from the weeds. Ronnie couldn't see Tim's face. That wasn't all bad. Tim had buck teeth and his blond hair stuck out like straw and his eyes were a little buggy. Good thing he was in the fourth grade instead of the eighth grade. Because in the eighth grade, you had to impress girls like Melanie Ward, who would laugh in your face one day and sit in the desk behind you the next, until you were so torn up that you didn't even care about things like whatever mess your dorkwad brother was getting into at the moment. "Get out of there, you idiot. You know you're not supposed to go into the churchyard."
The leaves rustled where Tim had disappeared into the underbrush. He'd left his book bag lying in the grass at the base of a tree. His squeaky voice came from beyond the tangle of saplings and laurel. "I found something."
"Get out of there right this minute."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"But look what I found."
Ronnie came closer. He had to admit, he was a little bit curious, even though he was starting to get mad. Not to mention scared. Because through the gaps in the trees, he could see the graveyard.
A slope of thick, evenly cut grass broken up by white and gray slabs. Tombstones. At least forty dead people, just waiting to rise up and-
Those are just stories. You don't actually believe that stuff, do you? Who cares what Whizzer Buchanan says? If he were so smart, he wouldn't be flunking three classes.
"We're going to miss Dad," Ronnie called. His voice trembled slightly. He hoped Tim hadn't noticed.
"Just a minute."
"I ain't got a minute."
"You chicken or something?"
That did it. Ronnie balled up his fists and hurried to the spot where Tim had entered the churchyard. He set his book bag beside Tim's and stepped among the crushed weeds. Furry ropes of poison sumac veined across the ground. Red-stemmed briars bent under the snowy weight of blackberry blossoms. And Ronnie would bet a Spiderman comic that snakes slithered in that high grass along the ditch.
"Where are you?" Ronnie called into the bushes.
"Over here."
He was in the graveyard, the stupid little jerk. How many times had Dad told them to stay out of the graveyard?
Not that Ronnie needed reminding. But that was Tim for you. Tell him to not to touch a hot stove eye and you could smell the sizzling flesh of his fingers before you even finished your sentence.
Ronnie stooped to about Tim's height---twerp's-eye view---and saw the graveyard through the path that Tim had stomped. Tim was kneeling beside an old marble tombstone, looking down. He picked something up and it flashed in the sun. A bottle.
Ronnie looked past his little brother to the uneven rows of markers. Some were cracked and chipped, all of them worn around the edges. Old graves. Old dead people. So long dead that they were probably too rotten to lift themselves out of the soil and walk into the red church.
No, it wasn't a church anymore, just an old building that Lester Matheson used for storing hay. Hadn't been a church for about twenty years. Like Lester had said, pausing to let a stream of brown juice arc to the ground, then wiping his lips with the scarred stump of his thumb, "It's people what makes a church. Without people, and what-and-all they believe, it ain't nothing but a fancy mouse motel."
Yeah. Fancy mouse motel. Nothing scary about that, is there?
It was just like the First Baptist Church, if you really thought about it. Except the Baptist church was bigger. And the only time the Baptist church was scary was when Preacher Staymore said Ronnie needed saving or else Jesus Christ would send him to burn in hell forever.
Ronnie scrambled through the bushes. A briar snagged his X-Files T-shirt, the one that Melanie thought was so cool. He backed up and pulled himself free, cursing as a thorn pierced his finger. A drop of crimson welled up and he started to wipe it on his shirt, then licked it away instead.
Tim put the bottle down and picked up something else. A magazine. Its pages fluttered in the breeze. Ronnie stepped clear of the brush and stood up.
So he was in the graveyard. No big deal. And if he kept his eyes straight ahead, he wouldn't even have to see the fancy mouse motel. But then he forgot all about trying not to be scared, because of what Tim had in his hands.
As Ronnie came beside him, Tim snapped the magazine closed. But not before Ronnie had gotten a good look at the pale flesh spread along the pages. Timmy's cheeks turned pink. He had found a Playboy.
"Give me that," Ronnie said.
Tim faced his brother and put the magazine behind his back. "I---I'm the one who found it."
"Yeah, and you don't even know what it is, do you?"
Tim stared at the ground. "A naked-woman book."
Ronnie started to laugh, but it choked off as he looked around the graveyard. "Where did you learn about girlie magazines?"
"Whizzer. He showed one to us behind the gym during recess."
"Probably charged you a dollar a peek."
"No, just a quarter."
"Give it here, or I'll tell Mom."
"No, you won't."
"Will, too."
"What are you going to tell her? That I found a naked-woman book and wouldn't let you see it?"
Ronnie grimaced. Score one for dingle-dork. He thought about jumping Tim and taking the magazine by force, but there was no need to hurry. Tricking him out of it would be a lot more fun. But he didn't want to stand around in the creepy graveyard and negotiate.
He looked at the other stuff scattered on the grass around the tombstone. The bottle had a square base and a black screw top. A few inches of golden-brown liquid were lying in the bottom. He knew it was liquor because of the turkey on the label. It was the kind that Aunt Donna drank. But Ronnie didn't want to think about Aunt Donna almost as much as he didn't want to think about being scared.
A green baseball cap lay upside down beside the tombstone. The sweatband was stained a dark gray, and the bill was so severely cupped that it came to a frayed point. Only one person rolled up their cap bill that way. Ronnie nudged the cap over with his foot. A John Deere cap. That cinched it.
"It's Boonie Houck's," Ronnie said. But Boonie never went anywhere without his cap. Kept it pulled down to the bushy line of his single eyebrow, his eyes gleaming under the shade of the bill like wet ball bearings. He probably even showered and slept with the cap plastered to the top of his wide head.
A crumpled potato chip bag quivered beside the cap, fluttering in the breeze. It was held in place by an unopened can of Coca-Cola. The blind eye of a flashlight peeked out from under the edge of the chip bag.
Ronnie bent down and saw a flash of silver. Money. He picked up two dimes and a dull nickel. A couple of pennies were in the grass, but he left them. He straightened up.
"I'll give you twenty-five cents for the magazine," he said.
Tim backed away with his hands still behind him. He moved into the shadow of a crude stone monument, made of two pillars holding up a crosspiece. On the crosspiece was a weathered planter. A brittle sheaf of brown tulips stabbed up from the potting soil.
Tulips. So somebody had minded the graveyard at least once since winter. Probably Lester. Lester owned the property and kept the grass trimmed, but did that mean the tobacco-chewing farmer had to pay respects to those buried here? Did the dead folks come with the property deed?
But Ronnie forgot all that, because he accidentally looked over Tim's shoulder. The red church was framed up perfectly by the stone pillars.
No, NOT accidentally. You WANTED to see it. Your eyes have been crawling right toward it the whole time you've been in the graveyard.
The church sat on a broad stack of creek stones that were bleached yellow and white by eons of running water. A few of the stones had tumbled away, revealing gaps of darkness beneath the structure. The church looked a little wobbly, as if a strong wind might send it roof-over-joist down the hill.
The creepy tree stood tall and gangly by the door. Ronnie didn't believe Whizzer's story about the tree. But if even half of it were true-
"A quarter? I can take it to school and make five bucks," Tim said.
The magazine. Ronnie didn't care about the magazine anymore. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
"You're going to take it from me, ain't you?"
"No. Dad's supposed to be coming over, that's all. I don't want to miss him."
Tim suddenly took another step backward, his eyes wide.
Ronnie pointed, trying to warn him about the monument. Tim spun and bumped into one of the pillars, shaking the crosspiece. The concrete planter tipped over, sending a shower of dry black dirt onto Tim's head. The planter rolled toward the edge of the crosspiece.
"Look out," Ronnie yelled.
Tim pushed himself away from the pillar, but the entire monument toppled as if in slow motion. The heavy crosspiece was going to squash Tim's head like a rotten watermelon.
Ronnie's limbs unlocked and he leaped for Tim. Something caught his foot and he tripped, falling on his stomach. The air rushed from his lungs with a whoosh, and the smell of cut grass crowded his nostrils. He tasted blood, and his tongue found the gash on the inside of his lip just as he rediscovered how to breathe.
A dull cracking noise echoed across the graveyard. Ronnie tilted his neck up just in time to see the planter bust open on the monument's base. Tim gave a squeak of surprise as dingy chunks of concrete rained across his chest. The pillars fell in opposite directions, the one on Tim's side catching on the ledge just above his head. The crosspiece twirled like a slow helicopter blade and came to rest on the pillar above Tim's legs.
Ronnie tried to crawl to Tim, but his shoe was still snagged. "You okay?"
Tim was crying. At least that meant he was still alive.
Ronnie kicked his foot. He looked back to his shoe---
NO NO NO
---red raw burger hand.
An arm had reached around the tombstone, a bloody arm, the knotty fingers forming a talon around his sneaker. The wet, gleaming bone of one knuckle hooked the laces.
DEADGHOSTDEADGHOST
He forgot that he'd learned how to breathe. He kicked at the hand, spun over on his rear, and tried to crab-crawl away. The hand wouldn't let go. Tears stung his eyes as he stomped his other foot against the ragged grasping thing.
"Help me," Ronnie yelled, at the same time that Tim moaned his own plea for help.
Whizzer's words careened across Ronnie's mind, joining the jumble of broken thoughts: They trap ya, then they get ya.
"Ronnie," came Tim's weak whine.
Ronnie wriggled like a speared eel, forcing his eyes along the slick wrist to the arm that was swathed in ragged flannel.
Flannel?
His skewed carousel of thoughts ground to a halt.
Why would a deadghost thing be wearing flannel?
The arm was attached to a bulk of something behind the tombstone.
The hand clutched tightly at nothing but air, then quivered and relaxed. Ronnie scrambled away as the fingers uncurled. Blood pooled in the shallow cup of the palm.
Ronnie reached Tim and began removing the chunks of concrete from his little brother's stomach. "You okay?"
Tim nodded, charcoal streaks of mud on his face where his tears had rolled through the sprinkling of potting soil. One cheek had a red scrape across it, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Ronnie kept looking back to the mangled arm and whatever was behind the tombstone. The hand was still, the sun drying the blood on the clotted palm. A shiny fly landed and drank.
Ronnie dragged Tim free of the toppled concrete. They both stood, Tim wiping the powdery grit from the front of his shirt. "Mom's going to kill me. . . ." he began, then saw the arm. "What in heck . . .?"
Ronnie stepped toward the tombstone, his heart hammering in his ears.
Over his pulse, he could hear Whizzer: They got livers for eyes.
Ronnie veered toward the edge of the graveyard, Tim close behind.
"When I say run. . ." Ronnie whispered, his throat thick.
"L-looky there," Tim said.
Dorkwad didn't have enough brains to be scared. But Ronnie looked. He couldn't help it.
The body was crowded against the tombstone, the flannel shirt shredded, showing scoured flesh. The head was pressed against the white marble, the neck arched at a crazy angle. A thread of blood trailed from the matted beard to the ground.
"Boonie," Ronnie said, his voice barely as loud as the wind in the oak leaves.
There was a path trampled in the grass, coming from the underbrush that girded the graveyard. Boonie must have crawled out of the weeds. And whatever had done that to him might still be in the stand of trees. Ronnie flicked his eyes from Boonie to the church. Had something fluttered in the belfry?
A bird, a BIRD, you idiot.
Not the thing that Whizzer said lived in the red church.
Not the thing that trapped you and then got you, not the thing that had wings and claws and livers for eyes, not the thing that had made a mess of Boonie Houck's face.
And then Ronnie was running, tearing through the undergrowth, barely aware of the briars grabbing at his face and arms, of the scrub locust that pierced his skin, of the tree branches that raked at his eyes. He heard Tim behind him---at least he hoped it was Tim, but he wasn't about to turn around and check, because now he was on the gravel road, his legs were pumping in the rhythm of fear---NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing, NOT-the-thing---and he didn't pause to breathe, even as he passed Lester Matheson, who was on his tractor in the middle of a hayfield, even as he passed the Potter farm, even when geezery Zeb Potter hollered out Ronnie's name from his shaded front porch, even as Zeb's hound cut loose with an uneven bray, even as Ronnie jumped the barbed wire that marked off the boundary of the Day property, even as the rusty tin roof of home came into view, even as he saw Dad's Ranger in the driveway, even as he tripped over the footbridge and saw the sharp, glistening rocks of the creek bed below, and as he fell he realized he'd hit another turning point, found yet another way for the world to end, but at least this end wasn't as bad as whatever had shown Boonie Houck the exit door from everywhere.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Like you'd understand? You didn't understand the first time." Linda Day balled her hands into fists. She could smell beer on David's breath.
Drunk at three o'clock, she thought. Doesn't he know that the body is sacred? If only he were more like Archer.
David closed in on her. She backed against the kitchen table. He'd never hit her in their fifteen years of marriage. But his face had never set in such a mix of hurt and anger before, either.
He waved the papers in the air, his thin lips crawling into a sneer. "A lie. All those years . . ."
God, he wasn't going to CRY, was he? Mr. Ain't-Nothing-It'll-Heal that time he flipped the tractor and had his forearm bone poking through his denim jacket?
She looked into his wet brown eyes. Who was he? What did she really know about him? Sure, they'd gone to high school together, were both in the Future Farmers of America, lost it together one fumbling Friday night in the pines above the Pickett High football field, never really dated anybody else, got married like everybody expected and---after that little California interlude---settled down on the Gregg family farm after cancer had chewed her father's lungs away.
More than half of their lives. Not nearly enough time to figure David out.
"Don't start that," she said.
"I ain't the one who started it. You said when we got married that all that foolishness was over and done with."
"I thought it was."
"Thought it was?" he mocked. His face twisted.
"I was going to tell you."
"When? After you'd sneaked another hundred lies past me?"
Linda looked away, anywhere but at his burning, red-rimmed eyes. The stick margarine on the counter was losing its sharp edges in the heat. Two black flies were playing hopscotch on the kitchen window screen. The roses that made a pattern on the yellowed wallpaper looked as if they needed watering. "It's not like that."
"Sure, it ain't." A mist of Pabst Blue Ribbon came out with his words. "When a man's wife gets love letters from another man, why, that's nothing to worry about, is it?"
"So you read them."
"Course I read them." He stepped closer, looming over her, six-three and shoulders broadened by lifting ten thousand bales of hay.
"Then maybe you noticed that the word 'love' isn't in a single one of them."
He stopped in his tracks. Linda thought about retreating to the hall entrance, but she was trying hard not to show fear. Archer said fear was for the meek, them that huddled at the feet of Christ.
David's brow lowered. "There's lots of different kinds of love."
She studied his face. Twice-broken nose. A white scar in one corner of his mouth. A strong chin, the kind you could forge steel with. Skin browned by years of working in the sun. Had she ever really loved the man who wore that face?
"There's only one kind of love," she said. "The kind we had."
"The kind you and Archer had."
"David, please listen."
He reached out. She held her breath and leaned away. But he didn't touch her, only swept the can of Maxwell House from the table behind her. It bounced off the cabinet under the sink and the lid flew off, sending a shower of brown granules onto the vinyl floor. The rich smell of the coffee drowned out David's sweet-sour breath.
His teeth were showing. Broad and blunt. Pressed together so tightly that his jaw trembled.
Linda scooted along the edge of the table to her right. There was a knife on the counter, a skin of dried cheese dulling the flash of the blade. If she had to---
But David turned away, slumped, his shoulders quivering.
David never cried, at least not in front of her. But since he'd found the letters, he was doing a lot of things he'd never done before. Like drinking heavily. Like leaving her.
"Hon---" She caught herself. "David?"
His work boots drummed the floor as he strode away. He paused at the back door and turned, looking down at the letters in his hand. Tears had shimmied down one side of his face, but his voice was quiet, resigned. "Archer McFall. Pretty funny. Who'd you put up to doing it?"
"Doing what?"
"We both know it ain't Archer, so quit lying. Is it one of your buddies from California?"
Linda shook her head. He doesn't understand. And I had hopes that he would join us. "No, it's nobody."
"Nobody? Nobody who's been writing you letters while dumb-and-happy David Day runs a hammer and eats sawdust for ten hours a day, only he don't mind because he's got a wonderful family waiting at home each night waiting to shower him with love and bullshit?"
His bulk filled the door frame, blocking her view of the barn and the pasture beyond. The room darkened as a cloud passed over the sun. "I told you, it's not the way you think," she said.
"Sure. Archer McFall just happened to walk back into your life at the exact same time that you started to get the letters. That's a mighty big coincidence."
"This isn't about Archer or the Temple. It's about us."
He flapped the letters again. "If it's about us, how come you didn't tell me about these?"
"I was going to."
"When? After hell finished freezing over?"
"When I thought you were ready to listen."
"You mean when I was ready to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. And get reeled into that mess the same as you. I thought you learned your lesson the last time."
The cloud passed, and the sun lit up the mottled spots on the window. She looked past them to the reddish square of the garden, at the little rows of green that were starting their seasonal push to the sky, then looked beyond to the wedge of mountains that kept North Carolina from slopping over into Tennessee. Two hundred acres of Gregg land, every inch of it stony and stained, every ash and birch and poplar stitched to her skin, every gallon of creek water running through her veins like blood. She was as old-family as anybody, and the old families belonged to the McFalls.
"It's only letters," she said. "That doesn't mean I'm going back in."
"Why did you ever have to fall for it in the first place?"
"That was nearly twenty years ago. I was a different person then. We were different people."
"No, you were different. I'm still the same. Just a mountain hick who thinks that if you say your prayers and live right, then nobody can break you down. But I reckon I was wrong."
"You can't still blame me for that, can you?" But his eyes answered her question by becoming hard and narrow. "Don't you know how terrible I thought it was to be trapped here in Whispering Pines forever? Stay around and squirt out seven kids with nothing to look forward to but the next growing season? To be like my mother with her fingers as knobby as pea pods from all the canning she did? What kind of life is that?"
"It's good enough for me. I didn't need to run off to California."
"I must have asked you a dozen times to come with me."
"And I asked you a dozen-and-one times to stay."
"You were just afraid you'd lose me."
He hung his head and shook it slowly. "I reckon I did," he said, barely above a whisper. "Only it took me this long to find out."
"The kids will be home soon," she said. "Ronnie's been looking forward to seeing you."
He held up the letters again. "You're not going to drag them into this mess, are you? Because, so help me, if you do---"
The threat hung in the air like an ax.
"Archer's not like that." Linda said it as if she only half-believed her own words.
"You said the group broke up."
"I . . . most of us left. I don't know. When they said he was dead, I---"
"He's dead. Now, the question is, who's trying to bring back this?" David held up one of the letters, more for effect than anything. Because Linda knew perfectly well what was on the letter.
She could see the symbol from across the room, even though it was bunched into the top right corner. It looked like one of those Egyptian symbols, only the cross was topped with two loops. Two suns. The Temple of the Two Suns.
Not that she needed to see it, because she was sure now that it had been seared into her brain, that its power had reached over years and across three thousand miles and through the thick white walls of her renewed faith in Jesus. Because, after all, there was only one true savior. And his name was Archer McFall.
If only David would open his heart. Sure, he'd been born with Baptist blood, he'd been dipped in the river below the red church so that his sins would be washed away, he'd given his ten percent, but there was so much more to faith than the rituals and scriptures and prayers. Her own heart was swelling again, budding, unfolding like a flower under a bright sun. No, under two suns. Twice the love. If only she could share that with David. But he wouldn't understand. He was as blinded by Jesus as everybody else was.
David watched her carefully, waiting for her reaction. She swallowed her smile and let her face slacken.
"The Temple," he said in a sneer. "You promised you were over it. But I guess I'm the fool."
"He's not asking for money."
David laughed, a bitter sound. He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "Probably the only thing he's not asking for, whoever it is."
"Since you read the letters, you know exactly what he wants."
"Yeah." He held up one of the letters. "'We've missed you, sister,'" he read.
"And that's all."
"'There will come great trials, but we bathe in the light of faith.'" He shuffled to the next letter. "'The stone is rolled away.'"
"Where's the love in that?" Linda was straining to show disinterest. David wasn't from one of the old families. She had been a fool to think Archer would accept him, anyway.
"Where's the love? Where's the love? Why, right there on the bottom, where it says 'Forever Yours, Archer McFall.' On every single one of them."
"Maybe he didn't die. Or maybe somebody started up the group again and is using his name. That's all it is. I don't care one way or another."
But I DO care. I've always cared, even when you thought you and your Christian friends had "cured" me. There was always a little room in my heart tucked away for nobody but Archer.
David's eyes had cleared a little as he sobered, but kept their bright ferocity. "You don't care so much that you didn't even bother to throw the letters away, huh?"
"Don't matter none to me."
"That so?" David started to crumple the letters into a ball.
Linda's mouth opened, and her arm reached out of its own accord.
David smiled, but it was a sick smile, the kind worn by a reluctant martyr. He crushed the paper into a hard wad of pulp and tossed it on the floor at her feet. "I seen him come around. Last week. Laid out of work just so I could hide up in the hills and watch the house. Just me and a six-pack. Mostly I was curious if you were sending out any letters yourself."
"You bastard."
David licked his lips. "Is ten o'clock the regular meeting time?"
Linda felt the blood drain from her face. How much did he know?
"Got himself a Mercedes. I guess this 'cult' business pays pretty good."
"It wasn't---" Linda started.
David nodded. "I know. It wasn't Archer McFall. Then why don't you tell me who it really was?"
Linda wondered how many times David had watched the house from the woods. Or if she could trust anything he said.
Trust. That was a good one.
David slowly approached her. She was like a deer frozen in the headlights of his hate. She looked down just as his boot flattened the wad of letters.
"How long?" he said, and his eyes were welling with tears again. As if the reservoir had been filling all his life and, finally full, now had to leak a little or bust.
"It's not like that." She looked again at the butcher knife on the counter, close to tears herself.
He took another menacing step. "I wondered why you been acting strange lately. And why you ain't been up to going to church."
Linda grabbed a gulp of air and scooted from the table to the kitchen counter. David was close behind her and caught her when she spun. His hands were like steel hooks in her upper arms, holding her firmly but not squeezing hard enough to bruise.
She stared at his stranger's face with its wide eyes. She'd never noticed how deep the two creases on his forehead were. The hard planes of his cheeks were patched with stubble. He looked old, as if all his thirty-seven years had dog-piled him these last few weeks.
"Tell me who it is," he said.
She shuddered with the force of his grip. Those hands had touched her so tenderly in the night, had softly stroked her belly when she was pregnant with the boys, had tucked daisies behind her ears when they fooled around in the hayfield. But now they were cruel, the caresses forgotten, the passion in them of a different kind.
She turned her face away, afraid that he'd see the fear in her eyes. The knife was beside a bowl of melted ice cream, within reach. But David grabbed her chin and twisted her eyes back to his.
Archer had warned her what the price of belief would be. Persecution. Pain. The loss of everything human. She could hear Archer's voice now, pouring from the geysers of her heart. There will come great trials. And great sacrifices. Because sacrifice is the currency of God.
But the reward was greater than the sacrifice. Belief paid back a hundredfold. Devotion now brought Archer's steadfast love unto the fourth generation. Surrendering to him meant that her offspring would reap the harvest. She had been telling herself that ever since Archer and the Temple of the Two Suns reclaimed her heart. And she reminded herself now, locked in David's grip.
He'd never hurt her before. But Archer said those who didn't understand always fell back on violence, because violence was the way of their God. That was why the world had to end. From the ashes of their heavenfire would come---
"Who is it?" he asked.
She grunted through her clenched teeth. David relaxed his grip until her mouth could move. "Ahh---Archer."
"Archer. Don't lie to me, damn it." He clamped his fingers tight again.
She fumbled with her left hand, running it along the edge of the counter. She felt the cool rim of the bowl. If only she could keep him talking. "It is. And he doesn't want me . . . that way."
"It can't be Archer."
"He's come back."
David choked on a laugh. "The second coming. They really do have you again, don't they?"
"No, I meant he's come back to Whispering Pines." Her hand went around the bowl and touched wood. Her fingers crawled along the knife's handle. Archer said sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, even if it meant descending down to their level. Even if it was a sin.
"You said he was dead."
"They said . . . I thought . . . I never saw his body."
"It's not Archer."
"It is. You know I'd never cheat on you."
He released her arm with his left hand and drew his arm back. He was going to hit her. She snatched at the butcher knife, then had it in her palm, her fingers around it, and all the old memories flooded back, all the energy and power and purity that Archer promised and delivered. She raised the knife.
David saw it and stepped away easily. The blade sliced the air a foot from his face. He lurched forward and caught her wrist on the down-stroke. The knife clattered to the floor.
They both looked at it. Silence crowded the room like death crowded a coffin.
A chicken clucked out in the barnyard. Somewhere over the hill, in the direction of the Potter farm, a hound dog let out one brassy howl. A tractor engine murmured in the far distance. The clock in the living room ticked six times, seven, eight. David reached out with the toe of his boot and kicked the knife into the corner.
He exhaled, deflating his rage. "So it's come to this."
"I didn't mean to---"
"Is that what they preach? Stabbing your own husband?"
"I . . . you scared me." The tears erupted from her eyes even as David's tears dried up, probably for good. "I thought you were going to hit me."
"Yeah." He was calm again, walking dead, a man who wouldn't harm a fly. "I guess you never could trust me, could you? Not the way you could trust them."
"I didn't lie to you."
"Which time?"
Archer was right. Pain was a steep price. Faith required sacrifice. "When we got married, and I said I was through. I believed it then."
"And I believed it, too. Guess you're not the only fool in the family."
"Please, David. Don't make this any worse than it has to be."
"Fine." He spread his arms in surrender. "I guess it don't matter none who it is. I just don't see why you had to make up this stuff about the cult."
"It's not a cult."
"And Archer McFall just happens to walk back into your life twenty years after he died. You really must be crazy, or else you think I am."
Archer always said he would return. How could she ever have doubted him?
Easy. You had your world taken away from you, and you came back to this safe, normal, God-fearing life and slipped into it like a second skin. You hid away your heart like it was separate from loving and mothering and living. But this normal life was all a lie, wasn't it? Maybe David was right, even if he was right about the wrong thing.
"I reckon I'll get the kids, then," he said, and a chill sank into her, deep-freezing her bones.
"No." She went to him.
"Any judge in the land would give me custody. Don't worry. I won't make no claim on the farm. That's rightly yours as a Gregg, if for no other reason."
"Not the kids," she wailed. She pounded her fists on his chest. He didn't try to stop her.
The blows softened and she collapsed, grabbing his shirt for support. He kept her from falling. She felt nothing in his embrace.
"How are we going to tell the boys about us?" She sniffled.
"They already know. They ain't dumb."
"I thought . . . I don't know what I thought." But Linda knew exactly what she thought. She thought the children were hers, to love and protect and introduce to the joys of worship in the Temple of the Two Suns. To deliver unto Archer, so the generations would be spared.
"Now quit your crying. They'll be here any minute."
Damn him for trying to be strong. Acting like she didn't matter. Her eyes went to the knife in the corner.
"Don't do it, Linda. I'd hate for that to come up at the custody hearing."
Jesus-loving bastard. But she wouldn't lose hope. Archer would know what to do. Archer would---
"Did you hear that?" David asked, releasing her.
"Hear what?" She rubbed her arms, trying to wipe away the memory of his rough touch.
David went to the door. Linda thought about the knife. No, if she used the knife, they'd take the kids away for sure. She heard something that sounded like a calf caught in a crabapple thicket and bawling its heart out.
"It's Ronnie," David said, then leaped off the porch and ran toward the creek that divided a stretch of pasture from the front yard.
Ronnie raced across the pasture, moaning and wailing, waving his arms. Tim was farther back, running down the road, and even from that distance Linda saw that her youngest boy had lost his glasses.
Ronnie reached the little wooden footbridge that spanned the creek, a bridge that was nothing more than some pallet planks laid across two locust poles. His foot caught in a gap in the planks and his scream went an octave higher as he plummeted into the rocky creek bed. Her own shout caught in her throat.
David reached the creek and jumped down to where Ronnie lay. Linda scrambled down the bank after him. Ronnie was facedown, his legs in the shallow water. His head rested on a large flat stone. A trail of blood ran down the surface of the rock and dribbled into the creek, where it was quickly swept away.
"Don't move him," Linda shouted.
David gave her a look, then knelt beside Ronnie. The boy moaned and lifted his head. Blood oozed from his nose. His lip was swollen.
He moaned again.
"What?" David said.
This time Linda was close enough to hear what he was saying.
Ronnie's lips parted again. "Uhr---red church."
His eyes were looking past both of them, seeing nothing, seeing too much.
Sheriff Frank Littlefield looked up the hill at the church and the monstrous dogwood that hovered beside it like a guardian. He'd always hated that tree, ever since he was a boy. It hadn't changed much since the last time he'd set foot in the graveyard. But he had, the world had, and Boonie most definitely had.
The young get old and the dead get deader, he thought as he studied the shadowed belfry for movement.
"What do you figure done it?" asked Dr. Perry Hoyle, the Pickett County medical examiner.
Littlefield didn't turn to face the man immediately. Instead, he squinted past the church steeple to the sun setting behind the crippled cross. The cross threw a long jagged shadow over the cemetery green. Somebody was cutting hay. Littlefield could smell the crush of grass in the wind. He scratched at his buzz cut. "You're the ME."
"Wild animal, that's my guess. Mountain lion, maybe. Or a black bear."
"Sure it wasn't somebody with a knife or an ax?"
"Not real likely. Wounds are too jagged, for one thing."
Littlefield exhaled in relief. "So I guess we can't call it a murder."
"Probably not."
One of the deputies was vomiting in the weeds at the edge of the cemetery.
"Don't get that mixed in with the evidence," Littlefield hollered at him. He turned back to Hoyle. "Black bear wouldn't attack a man unless her cubs were threatened. And it'd have to be a mighty big mountain lion."
"They get up to two hundred pounds."
"But they're extinct up here."
"One of them college professors down at Westridge believes mountain lions are making their way back to these parts."
Littlefield resumed rubbing his scalp. He'd just had it trimmed at Ray's, a good clipper job that let the wind and sun get right to the scalp. The department thought he wore the short style to give himself a ramrod appearance, but the truth was, he kind of liked the shape of his skull. And his hat fit better when he went to the Borderline Tavern to kick up his heels to some Friday-night country music. Boonie used to dance at the Borderline, too. Back when he still had feet.
The two men stood quietly and looked at the church for a moment. "Never been many happy times here," Hoyle said.
Littlefield didn't rise to the bait. He was annoyed that Hoyle would fish those waters. Some things were for nothing but forgetting. He hardened his face against the past as easily as if he'd slipped on a plastic superhero mask.
"Who found the body?" Hoyle hurriedly asked.
"Couple of kids who live down the road. They were walking home from school this afternoon."
"Must have bothered them something awful."
"Hell, it's bothering me, and you know I've seen a few ripe ones."
"What did they tell you?"
"The older one, he's about thirteen, fell running home and busted his face up. He'll be all right, but for some reason it got to him worse than it did the little one. Kept mumbling 'the red church' over and over again."
"How old's the little one?"
"Nine. Said he saw some stuff laying in the graveyard and went through the bushes to have a look. He said he saw a cap and a flashlight and a bottle of liquor, but he didn't touch any of it. Ronnie, the thirteen-year-old, came back to see what was taking so long, and that's when the victim must have dragged himself out from the bushes and grabbed ahold of Ronnie."
Littlefield didn't like calling Boonie Houck a victim. Boonie was a good fellow. A little bit creepy and plenty lazy, but he was in church of a Sunday morning and was known to vote Republican. Nobody deserved to die this way.
Hoyle looked like he could use a cup of coffee, maybe with a few drops of brandy in it. "He lived a lot longer than he should have with those kinds of wounds. My guess is he was attacked sometime in the early morning, between midnight and sunup."
Littlefield's stomach rolled a little. How did Boonie feel lying in the weeds, wondering about the wound between his legs, knowing that whatever had ripped him up was somewhere out there in the dark? "You going to send him to the state ME's office?"
"Reckon I ought to. They can do a better job of guessing than I can." Hoyle pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his bald head. "The press is going to want to know something."
"Wonderful."
"Plus, if it is a wild animal, might be some rabies going around. That could make an animal go nuts and do something like this."
"We haven't had that up here in a long time, either."
"Times change."
The sheriff nodded. You used to have hair, and I used to be worth a damn. Boonie used to be alive, and the red church used to be white.
"Let me know when you're ready to drive him down," Littlefield said. "We'll get the pieces together."
He didn't envy Hoyle. The drive to Chapel Hill took about four hours. Boonie would be kicking up a mean stench by the time the trip was over. But Littlefield decided he ought to save his pity. Unlike Boonie, at least Hoyle would be coming back.
Littlefield patted the medical examiner on the shoulder and went to examine the articles lying on the grass in clear plastic bags. He bent over the bag that held a porn magazine. He fought an odd urge to flip through the pages.
A camera flash went off. "Could you please move to one side, Sheriff?"
He looked up. Detective Sgt. Sheila Storie waved her arm. She was taking photos of the crime scene.
No, not a CRIME scene, Littlefield had to remind himself. An accident. A tragic, violent, unexplained ACCIDENT.
The kind of thing that happened too often in Whispering Pines. But Littlefield was relieved that a psycho with a set of Ginsu knives wasn't on the loose in his jurisdiction. They'd had one of those down the mountain in Shady Valley a few years back, and the case was never solved. Damned inept city cops.
He already knew he was going to put Storie in charge of the investigation. When they arrived and found the mess, she hadn't even blinked, just got out her clipboard and tape measure and went to work. She was too young to be so unmoved by death, in Littlefield's opinion. But maybe she was a little bit like him. Maybe it was the kind of thing that made them cops.
Got to keep yourself outside of it all. Don't let them get to you. No matter what they do, no matter what the world takes from you.
"What do you make of it?" he asked Storie.
Her eyes were blue enough to hide everything, as unrevealing as her camera lens. "Extensive trauma. Death probably due to exsanguination."
Storie's educated flatland accent always surprised him, even though he should have been used to it by now. Most people took her for a local until they heard her speak. "That's what Hoyle says. Only he calls it 'bled to death.'"
"Unless shock got him first. Same to the subject either way. I haven't seen this much blood since those driver's ed films they showed in high school." She took two steps to her right and snapped another picture, then let the camera hang by its strap over her chest.
"Must have taken a while. You looked over in the bushes where he crawled after the attack?"
"Yes, sir. He left a few scraps."
Littlefield swallowed a knot of nausea.
"Footprints go from this grave marker here, where the boys said they found the stuff. They're deep, see?" She pointed to the pressed grass. The smaller prints of the boys were visible as well. But Boonie's were clearly marked by the thick treads of his boots.
"That means he was running, right?"
"He must have seen or heard whatever it was and gotten scared. He was probably attacked just before he started running."
"Why do you say that?"
"Blood here is coagulated almost to powder. The blood over there- "-she waved to the slick trail of slime where Boonie had crawled out of the bushes- "-isn't as oxidized."
Littlefield nodded and passed his hand over his scalp. The breeze shifted and he could smell Boonie now. A person never got used to the odor of death. The detective didn't even wrinkle her nose.
"Hoyle thinks it's a mountain lion," Littlefield said.
She shook her head. Her brown hair was a couple of inches past regulation and swished over her shoulders. "Wild animals typically go for the throat if they're treating something as prey. There are a few wounds around the eyes, but those are no more devastating than the other injuries. And it doesn't look like the subject had an animal cornered so that it would be forced to defend itself."
Littlefield was constantly amazed by the level of instruction that new officers received. A college degree in Criminal Justice, for starters. Then state training, not to mention extra seminars along the way. Littlefield had long since quit going to those things, at least the ones that didn't help him politically.
Or maybe Storie was a little too educated for her own good. Frank knew that as a female in a rural department, she had to be twice as smart and icy and sarcastic as everybody else. She couldn't go out for after-shift beers.
Pay attention, damn it. In case you're going senile and need a reminder, one of your constituents is gathering flies long before his natural time.
"So you don't necessarily hold to the wild animal attack theory?" he asked.
"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if it was an animal, its behavior was unnatural." She looked across the stretch of tombstones to where the cemetery ended near the forest. Her brow furrowed.
"What is it?" Littlefield asked.
"The thing that bothers me the most."
If STORIE'S bothered . . . A small chill wended its way up Littlefield's spinal column and settled in the base of his neck.
"No animal tracks," she said.
The sheriff's jaw tightened. So that was what had been bothering him ever since he'd first walked the scene. An animal's claws would have ripped chunks out of the ground, especially if it were attacking.
"Damn," he whispered.
"No tracks means no easy answers." She almost sounded pleased. "There are no other human footprints, either."
Storie had cracked a big case last year, when an ex-cop had hauled a body up to the mountains for disposal. Perp was a big goofy guy who went around bragging about how he'd never get caught. Well, Storie set her nose on his trail and nailed him so hard that his lawyers had to recite scripture in the courtroom to save him from a lethal injection. The conviction got statewide coverage, and Storie's picture was in both the local papers.
This looked like it might be another of those high-profile mysteries that, if she solved it, would make her a legitimate candidate for sheriff. If she ever ran against him, she'd have him beat all to hell on looks. Her accent would hurt her some, though.
"Tell me, Sergeant. What do you think did it?" he asked.
"I can honestly say I have no idea, sir." She folded her arms over the camera.
"Any chance that somebody did it with a sharp weapon, without leaving footprints that we could see?"
"The pattern of the wounds seems random at first glance. But what bugs me is the ritualistic nature of the injured areas."
Areas? Littlefield wanted to remind Storie that those body parts were once near and dear to Boonie Houck. But he only nodded at her to continue.
"Look at the major wounds. First, there's the eyes."
"We haven't found them yet."
"Exactly. That's an inconvenient spot for a rampaging animal to reach. In any event, it's unlikely that a claw would take both eyes."
"Unless they were shining, and somehow attracted the animal's attention. The moon was over half full last night."
"Okay. Let's go on to the hand. Seems like an animal would have started gnawing at a softer spot."
"Maybe it did."
"That brings us to the fatal wound."
"Now, that's not been determined yet." Littlefield felt the tingle of blood rushing to his cheeks.
"I saw the rip in the front of his pants." She lifted the camera. "I took pictures, remember?"
"Guess so." His tongue felt thick.
"With the loss of that much blood, I'm amazed he survived as long as he did."
"You said the wounds were ritualistic. What's that got to do with his . . . er . . ."
"Penis, Sheriff. You can say it in the company of a woman these days."
"Of course." His face grew warmer with embarrassment. He looked across the mountains. He would love to be walking a stream right now, flicking a hand-tied fly across the silver currents, the smell of wet stone and rotted loam in his nostrils. Alone. Anywhere but here with blood and the red church and Sheila Storie. "So what does it mean?"
"It may mean nothing. Or it may mean we have a deviant personality on the loose." The flash of her eyes gave away her belief in the latter. Or maybe she was only hopeful.
"Is it because we haven't found the . . . other part, either?"
"I don't know yet."
"Think we ought to call in the state boys?" Littlefield knew Storie would bristle at turning the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation. She would want a shot first.
"That's your decision, Sheriff."
"I suppose we'll have to wait for the state medical examiner's report. Hoyle's sending him down to Chapel Hill."
"Good."
Littlefield tried to read her expression. But the sun was in her face, so her half-closed eyes didn't give away anything. He knew she thought Perry Hoyle had about as much forensic sophistication as a hog butcher. The whole department was probably a joke to her. Well, she was a flatlander, anyway. "Hoyle doesn't think the wounds were made by a weapon."
"You asked for my opinion, sir."
Littlefield looked up the hill at the church. Suddenly he felt as if someone had reached an icy hand down his throat and squeezed his heart. His brother Samuel was on the roof of the church, waving and smiling.
His dead brother Samuel.
Littlefield blinked, then saw that the illusion was only a mossy patch on the shingles.
He sighed. "I'm putting you in charge of the investigation."
Storie almost smiled. "I'll do my best, sir."
Littlefield nodded and stepped over the strings that marked off grids at the scene. He knelt by the toppled monument. "What do you make of this?"
"The boys' footprints lead over here. I'd guess vandalism. Tipping tombstones is an old favorite. Maybe they were messing around when the subject heard them and tried to crawl out of the weeds."
"Seems like they would have heard Boonie yelling." He stopped himself. Boonie wouldn't have called out, at least in nothing more articulate than a groan. Boonie's tongue had been taken, too.
Hoyle rescued him from his embarrassment. "We're ready over here, Sheriff," the ME called. Littlefield winced and started to turn.
"I'll handle it, sir," Storie said. "It's my case, remember? I might see something I missed the first two times."
She was right. Littlefield's shoulders slumped a little in relief. He hoped Storie hadn't noticed, but she didn't miss much. She had detective's eyes, even if they were easier to look at than look through. "Go ahead."
Littlefield headed across the cemetery and up the hill toward the red church. He glanced at the markers as he passed, some so worn he could barely make out the names. Some were nothing more than stumps of broken granite. Other graves were probably forgotten altogether, just the silent powder of bones under a skin of grass.
The ground was soft under his feet-good mountain soil, as black as coal dust. Almost a shame to waste it on a graveyard. But people had to be buried somewhere, and to the dead, maybe the most fertile soil in the world wasn't comfort enough. Maybe his kid brother Samuel had yet to settle into eternal rest.
The names on the markers read like a who's who history of this end of the county. Potter. Matheson. Absher. Buchanan. McFall. Gregg. More Picketts than you could shake a stick at.
And three Littlefields off by themselves.
He knelt by two familiar graves. His mother and father shared a single wide monument. He looked from the gray marble to a smaller marker, which had a bas-relief of a lamb chiseled in its center. Its letters were scarcely worn, and the fingerlike shadows of tree branches chilled the stone. Littlefield read the damning words without moving his lips.
Here Lies Samuel Riley Littlefield. 1968-1979. May God Protect and Keep Him.
His heart burned in his chest and he hurried away, his eyes frantic for a distraction. He stopped by the dogwood. The thing looked like it was dying. But it had looked that way for the last forty years, and every spring it managed to poke a few more blossoms out of the top branches. A memory stirred and crawled from the shadows before he could beat it back.
The red church. Halloween. The night he'd seen the Hung Preacher.
The night Samuel had died.
He shuddered and the memory fell away again, safely buried. The sun was warm on his face. Down the slope, Hoyle and Storie were hauling Boonie's body to the back of the overgrown station wagon that served as the county's non-emergency ambulance.
Littlefield moved away from the tree and put a foot on the bottom of four steps that led into the church foyer. The door was large and made of solid wooden planks. The cracks between the planks were barely distinguishable due to the buildup of paint layers. Over the door was a small strip of colored glass, two deep blue rectangular planes separated by an amber pane. Those had survived the onslaught of juvenile delinquents' rocks.
The sheriff climbed the rest of the steps. The top one was a wider landing, scarred from the tailgate of Lester Matheson's truck. Littlefield examined the thick hinges and the door lock. There was a lift latch in addition to the dull brass handle. Littlefield put his hand on the cool metal.
Wonder if I need a warrant to open it? Naw. Lester won't mind if I have a peek.
There was a small chance that if Boonie had been murdered, some evidence might be hidden inside. Or the door might be locked, but he didn't think Lester would bother keeping up with a key just to protect a hundred bales of hay. People didn't steal out in these parts. The thieves and B&E addicts kept to Barkersville, where the rich folks had their summer homes.
Littlefield turned the knob and the catch clicked back into the cylinder. He nudged the latch up with his other hand, and as the door creaked open and the rich dust of hay hit his nostrils, he realized he hadn't set foot inside since shortly after Samuel's funeral.
Please, God, just let it be a plain old ordinary murderer. Some drunk who got mad because Boonie took two swigs before passing the bottle instead of one. A Mexican Christmas tree worker with a grudge. I'll even take a crazy if you got one.
His palms were sweating, the way they had when he was seventeen and he'd first heard the laughter in the belfry.
The door opened onto a short, windowless foyer. A shaft of light pierced the ceiling from the belfry above.
Where the bell rope used to hang.
The bell rang in his memory, a thunderclap of angry bronze, an echo of the night Samuel died.
The plank floor creaked as Littlefield crossed the foyer. Golden motes of dust spiraled in the draft. What must it have been like a century ago? The worn wood had endured a hundred thousand crossings. Trembling and red-faced virgin brides with their best dresses dragging on the pine, solemn cousins come to pay their respects to a dear departed, women in bonnets and long swirling skirts gathering for Jubilee. Littlefield could almost see the preacher at the steps, shaking the hands of the menfolk, bowing to the women, patting the heads of the children.
The sheriff peered up through the tiny rope hole, an opening barely large enough for a child to scramble through. The hollow interior of the bell was full of black shadow. But that would tell him nothing. He returned to scanning the floor for signs of blood.
The foyer opened onto the main sanctuary. The chill crawled up his spine again. He didn't know whether it was caused by childhood legends, or the chance of finding a killer hiding among the bales of hay. For a frantic moment, he almost wished he wore a firearm.
The bales were stacked to each side, forming a crooked aisle down the center of the church sanctuary. Lester had left the altar undisturbed, probably because lifting hay over the railing was too much work. The altar itself was small, the pulpit hardly more than a rectangular crate with a slanted top. A set of six wormy chestnut beams, hand-hewn, crossed the open A-frame overhead. The interior walls were unpainted chestnut as well. In the dim light, the woodwork had a rich, deep brown cast.
The bales were packed too tightly against the walls to afford hiding places.
Unless somebody had removed a few bales and made a hollow space inside the stacks.
He'd done that in his family's barn, when he wanted to hide out on an autumn day, or when he and his brother played hide-and-seek or army. But few hours could be stolen back then. Crops, livestock, firewood, fence mending-a long list of chores was waiting at six every morning that never got finished before dark. But back then, Littlefield had slept in dreams and not bad memories.
Nothing stirred amid the hay. The church was silent, as if waiting for a congregation to again fill it with life. Littlefield walked to the dais. The chill deepened even though the air was stuffy. A small wooden cross was attached to the top of the pulpit. Like the cross on the church steeple, it was missing a section of the crosspiece.
Littlefield leaned over the waist-high railing and looked into the corners of the altar. The small vestry off to the side held nothing but bare shelves and cobwebs. He didn't know what he expected to see. Maybe he was just trying to ease his own mind, to reassure himself that old rumors and long-ago strangeness were put to rest. Boonie was dead, and that had nothing to do with the red church or Samuel or the Hung Preacher.
As he was turning to leave, he noticed a dark stain on the dais floor. It was the kind made by a spill. Maybe Lester had stored building materials in here once. At any rate, the rust-brown stain was far too old to have been made by whatever had killed Boonie.
But something about it held his attention. The shape seemed familiar. He tilted his head, as if stumped by an inkblot in a Rorschach test. When he realized where he had seen the form before, he drew in a dusty gasp of air.
The dark shape in the belfry, that long-ago Halloween.
Littlefield strode back through the church, suddenly anxious to be in the sunshine. He was going to go with the animal theory for now. If Storie wanted to play her forensic games, that was fine. But he wouldn't allow himself to believe that something masquerading as human had ripped apart good old Boonie Houck. Not in Pickett County. Not on God's ground. Not on his watch.
As he closed the door and looked across the graveyard where Storie searched the weeds for clues, the chill evaporated. Something fluttered in the belfry.
Bird or raccoon, he told himself without looking up. NOT the thing that had laughed as Samuel died.
He hurried down the slope to see if Storie had found any of Boonie's missing parts.
Bummer.
That was Ronnie's first thought when the gray blindfold of unconsciousness dissolved into light. And that was the last thought he'd had when the anesthesiologist had pressed the mask to his face. Or maybe not. He'd been so stone-black-buzzed from the injection that he couldn't be sure if he'd had any prior thoughts at all.
His face, at least what he could feel of it, was like a molasses balloon. Pain tingled and teased him through a curtain of gauze. It was a sneaky, funny pain, a bully that skulked around the edge of the playground, waiting for you to chase a stray kickball. Once you were alone, it would jump on you and beat you and kick you and rip you--
More of the druggy haze fell away. Ronnie opened his eyes and the light sliced at his pupils. His eyes were overflowing, but he couldn't feel the tears on his cheeks. His stomach turned crooked flips. Mom and Dad were blurry images beside the bed. A man with a mustache whose eyes looked like licorice drops leaned over him.
"I think we've got somebody waking up." The man's mustache twitched like a caterpillar on a hot griddle. He wore a white coat.
Doctor. Ronnie's thoughts spun, then collected. Pain plus doctor equals hospital.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue was too thick to find his teeth.
"Easy now, little partner," the doctor said. "Take it slow."
Slow was the only way Ronnie could take it. His arms and legs felt like lead pipes. He turned his head to look at his parents. Despite the numbness, he felt a warmth growing in his chest. Mom and Dad were together.
Well, they weren't holding hands, but at least they weren't yelling at each other. And all it took to make that happen was for Ronnie to . . . what had he done?
He slogged through the tunnels of his memory. He remembered the ride to the hospital, Dad holding him in the back seat, Dad's shirt against his face. The shirt should have smelled of sawdust and sweat and maybe a little gasoline, but Ronnie had smelled nothing but blood.
Then, farther back, before that, the little footbridge, falling, the rocks . . .
Ouch.
Ronnie was old enough to know that the memory of pain could never quite match up to the real thing. Which was a good thing; otherwise, everybody would be running around as crazy as old Mama Bet McFall, or Grandma Gregg down at the Haywood Assisted Care Center back before she slipped into the grave. But even Ronnie's memory of the pain was strong enough to wipe out some of the numbing effects of the drugs.
Dad stepped forward, his lower lip curled, his face made sickly green by the fluorescent strip lights. Dad never looked quite right indoors, sort of like the tiger Ronnie had seen in a pen down at the Asheboro zoo. Both of them nervous and impatient, pacing, too large for walls or bars.
"Hey, Ronnie," Dad said, unsuccessfully trying to funnel his deep voice into a whisper. "How are you feeling?"
"Muuuuhr." Even Ronnie couldn't translate the sound his vocal chords made.
Mom leaned over him, a tight smile wrinkling her face. The skin under her eyes was dark blue. She reached out and brushed hair away from his forehead with a clammy hand. "It's okay, baby."
The doctor checked Ronnie's pulse. "Coming around fine. You'll be able to take him home in an hour or so. Buzz one of the nurses if you need anything."
The doctor left the room, and the draft from the closing door swept over Ronnie like a tide of water. Being a molasses-head wasn't all bad. His thoughts weren't dropping as fast as usual, but he was thinking wider than he ever had before. If not for the pain bully waiting behind the numbness, Ronnie wouldn't mind hanging out in this half-speed dreamscape for a while.
This was almost peaceful. If he closed his eyes, the white walls fell away and the sky got big and he could float on a cloud and no one could bother him, not even dingle-dork---
Tim. What had happened to Tim?
The molasses of his face rippled as his eyes opened wide. Mom and Dad and . . . where was Tim? Because suddenly it was all coming back, the molasses creek turning a bend and flowing into sunlight and, now hot and golden, churning over a precipice in a sugary waterfall. The run home, the hand on his foot, the bleeding thing---they got livers for eyes---the toppled monument, the red church, the graveyard.
Had the bleeding thing trapped Tim?
Dad must have sensed his agitation, because a hand on his shoulder prevented him from sitting up. "Now, you heard the doctor, son. Just rest up."
Mom chewed on the skin at the end of her thumb. "You got busted up pretty good when you fell. Broke your nose. The doctor said you were lucky you didn't crack your skull."
Good old Mom. Found the bright side to everything. So he had a broken nose. He thought of some of the players on his football cards, how their noses had great big humps across the bridge or were twisted off to one side. Just what a guy like him needed. Now Melanie would never talk to him.
The molasses mask slipped a little more, and the pain bully chuckled from the shadows, knowing an opportunity was drawing near. Ronnie became aware of a lower portion of his body, where the knot of snakes nested in his stomach. He was going to throw up.
Total bummer. He groaned and his tongue worked.
"What is it, honey?" Mom said, her face now paler and her eyes wider.
"Poooook," he said. His right arm flailed like a water hose under pressure.
"Puke?" She looked at Dad. "Oh, Lord, David, he's going to throw up."
Dad looked helpless. The situation called for quick action and compassion. As a caregiver, Dad made a good pallbearer.
Mom spun and began searching under a counter beside the bed. A mirror ran along the length of the counter, and Ronnie was startled by his own reflection. His nose was purple and swollen, little clots of bloody gauze hanging out of his nostrils. His eyes were like green-brown marbles pressed into ten pounds of dough.
The image accelerated his nausea. He turned his body with effort, and now Dad helped, putting a hand in his armpit to lean him over the steel railing of the bed. The scene in the mirror was doubly disorienting from being reversed. The greasy snakes crawled up Ronnie's throat.
Mom found a plastic pan made of a yucky aqua color, but that was okay because yucky was just what the situation required. She held it under his face, and the snakes exploded from his mouth. His eyes squeezed shut in the effort of vomiting, and drops of something besides molasses beaded his forehead. His abdomen spasmed twice, three times, four, a pause, then a fifth eruption.
"Oh, my Lord," Mom exclaimed to Dad. "Call the nurse."
"He said this might happen. And look, it's stopped now."
"But it's blood."
"What did you think it would be, grits and sausage gravy? They just operated on his nose."
Ronnie looked into the pan and his guts almost lurched again. A thick gruel of blood and mucus pooled in front of his face. And what were those things floating in-
Fingers. They cut off my fingers and made me eat them.
Dad's words came as if through cotton. "What the hell are those?"
"Get a nurse." Mom waved her hands helplessly.
The draft of the door opening wafted over Ronnie again, but this time it provided no comfort. He lay back on the raised pillows.
A tired-looking nurse looked in the pan. "Oh, those are the fingers of surgical gloves. The doctor stuffs them with gauze and uses them as packing."
"How did they get in his stomach?" Mom's voice was a thin screech.
"The packing must have worked its way down the pharyngeal openings of his Eustachian tubes. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
"Nothing to worry about?" Dad's voice was loud enough to make Ronnie's head hurt. "It's not your kid in the bed, is it?"
The nurse gave a forced smile that Ronnie figured she wore while giving medicine to somebody who wasn't likely to last the week. A smile that plainly said, If there were another job in Pickett County that paid this well, he could puke rubber fingers until he choked, for all I care.
But all she said was, "I'll see if I can find the doctor."
After she was gone, Mom said, "You didn't have to raise your voice."
"Shut up."
"David, please. For Ronnie's sake?"
Ronnie wasn't bothered by the argument. The relief of passing nausea was so great that he would have slow-danced with the pain bully, he felt so wonderful. So what if more sweat had popped out along his neck and in his armpits and down the slope of his spine? The stomach snakes were gone.
The act of vomiting also cleared his head a little. That was a mixed blessing. Or mixed curse. Because not only were the good wide thoughts gone, they were being replaced by memories.
Before he'd been wheeled into surgery, the sheriff had talked to him about the things that happened at the red church. It was scary enough just to talk to a policeman, especially one with a crew cut and a face that looked like it was chiseled out of stone. But the sheriff wanted him to remember what had happened, when Ronnie really, really, really wanted to be in the business of forgetting.
Forgetting the wet, slooshing sound his shoe had made as he jerked his foot from the graveyard grip.
Forgetting the raw, bloody arm reaching around the tombstone.
Forgetting the laughter that had fluttered from the belfry of the red church.
The sheriff finally went away, and they had rolled Ronnie to the operating room. Then came the needle and the mask and the wide thoughts and the darkness.
"How are you feeling, honey?"
He looked at his mom. Her hair was wilted and stringy, a dull chestnut color. She looked about a hundred and twelve, older even than Mama Bet McFall, the crazy woman who lived up the road from the Day farm.
"Better," he whispered, and the air of his voice scraped his throat as it passed.
The door opened again and Ronnie craned his neck. The doctor was whistling an uneven tune through the scrub brush of his mustache. Ronnie would bet money that it was a Michael Bolton song. Or maybe something even lamer. Ronnie was almost glad that his nose was clogged. He would have bet double-or-nothing that the man was wearing some sissy cologne. He flopped his heavy head back on the pillows.
"I heard you had a little episode," the doctor said.
Episode? Was that the medical term for vomiting up fingers?
"I'm okay now," Ronnie said in a wheeze, mainly because the doctor was leaning over and reaching for his nose. And even though the painkiller was still dumbing him down, he was smart enough to know that being touched there would hurt like heck. Even through the molasses that encased his brain.
The doctor backed away at the last moment. "The packing looks like it's still in place where the break occurred. I don't think any harm was done."
Nope. No harm at all to YOU, was there, Mr. Mustache?
"We could always roll him back into the OR and pack some more gauze up there," the doctor said to his parents, as if Ronnie weren't even in the room.
"What do you think?" Mom turned another shade closer to invisibility.
"I believe he's okay," the doctor said, fingering his mustache. "In fact, I'd say you could go ahead and take him home. Call me next week and we'll schedule a time to take the stitches out."
Dad nodded dumbly. Mom worked at the gnawed skin of her fingers.
Ronnie was eager to go home. By the time the nurse showed up with a fake smile and a wheelchair, he was sitting up in bed, feeling dizzy but no longer nauseated. As the nurse wheeled him to the elevators, he was floating away again. The outside air tasted strange and thick.
Ronnie was surprised to see that the sun was setting. He felt as if years had passed, not hours, since he'd fallen. Pinkish gray clouds wreathed the horizon above the dark mountains.
Mom had pulled her big black Coupe De Ville by the hospital doors. Dad eased him into the backseat and they were on their way home. They had gone about two miles when Ronnie remembered Tim.
"Where's Tim?" he managed to ask. He was sleepy again, a molasses-head.
"At Donna's. They went back to the graveyard to find his glasses."
So Tim had survived the encounter at the red church. The Encounter. Sounded like a title for a cheesy monster movie. Whatever. His thoughts were getting wide again.
He wanted to be asleep by the time they drove past the red church.
He was.
"Didn't see nothing," Lester Matheson said. His face was crooked from decades of chewing his tobacco in the same cheek. He ground his teeth sideways, showing the dark mass inside his mouth, occasionally flicking it more firmly into place with his tongue.
"Last night, either?" Sheriff Littlefield turned from the man's smacking habit and looked out over the rolling meadows. A herd of cows dotted the ridge, all pointed in the same direction. Like their owner, they also chewed mindlessly, not caring what dribbled out of their mouths.
"No, ain't seen nothing up at the red church in a long time. Course, kids go up there to mess around from time to time. Always have."
Littlefield nodded. "Yeah. Ever think of posting a 'No Trespassing' sign?"
"That would only draw twice as many. I'd never keep nothing out there that I couldn't afford to get stolen."
Littlefield shifted his weight from one foot to another and a porch board groaned. The Mathesons lived in a board-and-batten house on the edge of two hundred acres of land. Even Lester's barns seemed better built than the house. It was roofed with cheap linoleum sheeting that had visible patches in the material. The windows were large single panes fixed with gray strips of wood. The air coming from the open front door was stale and cool, like that of a tomb.
The sun was disappearing into the angle where Buckhorn Mountain slid down to the base of Piney Top. The air was moist with the waiting dew. Pigs snorted from their wooden stalls beside the larger of Lester's two barns. Crickets had taken up their night noises, and the aroma of cow manure made Littlefield almost nostalgic for his own childhood farm days. "Have you ever seen Boonie hanging around the graveyard?"
Lester scratched his bulbous head that gleamed even in the fading light. His hand was knotted from a life of work, thick with blue veins and constellations of age spots. "Well, I found him in the red church one time, passed out in the straw. I just let him sleep it off. As long as he didn't smoke in there, he couldn't really hurt nothing."
"Have you noticed anything unusual around here?"
"Depends on what you mean by 'unusual.' The church has always been mighty unusual. But I don't have to tell you that, do I?"
"I'm not interested in ghost stories," Littlefield lied.
Lester emitted a gurgling laugh and leaned back in his rocker. "Fine, Sheriff. Whatever you say. And I guess Boonie just happened to get killed in one of them gang wars or something."
"Perry Hoyle thinks it was a mountain lion."
Lester laughed again, then shot a stream of black juice into the yard. "Or maybe it was Bigfoot. Used to be a lot of mountain lions in these parts, all right. Back in the thirties and forties, they were thick as flies. They'd come down out of the hills of a night and take a calf or a chicken, once in a while a dog. But they're deader than four o'clock in the morning now."
Lester was a hunter. Littlefield wasn't, these days. "When's the last time you saw one?" the sheriff asked.
"Nineteen sixty-three. I remember because everybody was just getting over the Kennedy mess. I took up yonder to Buckhorn"---he waved a gnarled hand at the darkening mountain---"because somebody said they'd seen a six-point buck. I set up a little stand at a crossing trail and waited. My stand was twenty feet up a tree, covered with canvas and cut branches. Moon come out, so I decided to stay some after dark, even though it was colder than a witch's heart.
"I heard a twig snap and got my rifle shouldered as smooth as you please. We didn't mess with scopes and such back in them days. Just pointed and shot. So I was looking down the barrel when something big stepped in the sights. Even in the bad light, I could see its gold fur. And two shiny green eyes was looking right back up the barrel at me."
Lester drained his excess juice off the side of the porch. The old man paused for dramatic effect. People still passed down stories in these parts. The front porch was Lester's stage, and they both knew his audience was duty-bound to stay.
The sheriff obliged. "You shot him," he said, even though he knew that wouldn't have made a satisfactory ending to the tale.
Lester waited another ten seconds, five seconds longer than the ritual called for. "About did. I knew what he was right off, even though his fur was about the same color as a deer's. It was the eyes, see? Deer eyes don't glow. They just sop up light like a scratch biscuit draws gravy."
"What happened next?"
"He just kind of stared back at me. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Looking at me like I was an equal, or maybe not even that. Like I was a mosquito buzzing around his head. He drew his mouth open like he was going to snarl, and his whiskers flashed in the moonlight. And I couldn't pull the trigger."
"Scared?" Littlefield asked, hoping Lester wasn't insulted. But Lester seemed to have forgotten the sheriff as he stared off at the mountain.
"In a way I was, but that's not the reason I didn't pull the trigger. There was something about him, something in the eyes, that was more than animal. You might think I'm crazy, and you probably wouldn't be too far wrong, but that cat knew what I was thinking. It knew I wouldn't pull the trigger. After maybe half a minute of us staring each other down, he slipped into the woods, his long tail twitching like he was laughing to hisself. Like I was a big ball of yarn he'd played with and gotten tired of."
The sun had slipped behind the horizon now, and Littlefield couldn't read Lester's expression in the darkness. All he could see was the crooked shape of the farmer's face.
"I was frozen, and not just from the chill, either," Lester continued. "When I finally let out a breath, it made a mist in front of my face. I was sweating like I was baling hay and racing a rainstorm. I strained my ears for any little sound, even though I knew the cat was gone."
Littlefield had been standing more or less at parade rest, a habit he had when he was on official business, even around people he knew. Now he let his shoulders droop slightly and leaned against the porch rail. As a youngster, he'd hunted at night himself. He could easily imagine Lester in the tree, muscles taut, ears picking up the slight scurry of a chipmunk or the whispering wings of a nighthawk. Like any good storyteller, Lester had put the sheriff in another place and time.
"You're probably wondering why I'm going on so about this mountain lion," Lester said. "You're asking yourself what that's got to do with Boonie Houck's death."
"That mountain lion would have died a natural death long ago."
Lester said nothing. There was a clattering inside the house, then the rusty skree of the storm door opening. Lester's wife Vivian came out on the porch. Her hair was in a bun, tied up with a scarf. She had a slight hump in her back, a counterpart to her husband's twisted face. The interior light cast her odd shadow across the yard.
"You done yapping the Sheriff's ear off?" she asked, her voice trembling and thin. She must have been a little hard of hearing, because she talked louder than necessary.
"Ain't hardly started yet," Lester said, not rising from his rocker. "Now get on back in the house before I throw a shoe at you."
"You do and I'll put vinegar in your denture glass."
Lester chuckled. "I love you, too, honey."
"You going to invite the sheriff in for pie?"
"No, thank you, ma'am," Littlefield said, bowing a little in graciousness. "I've got a few other people to talk to tonight."
"Well, don't listen too much to this old fool. He lies like a cheap rug."
"I'll take that under advisement."
The door sprang closed. The darkness sprang just as abruptly. "So you haven't seen a mountain lion since then?" the sheriff asked Lester.
"Nope."
"And you're sure you haven't seen anything strange around the red church?"
"Haven't seen nothing. Heard something, though."
"Heard something?"
"Last night, would've been about three o'clock. You don't sleep too well when you get to be my age. Always up and down for some reason. So when I heard them, I figured it was one of those in-between dreams. You know, right before you fall asleep and your real thoughts are mixing in with the nonsense?"
Littlefield nodded, then realized the old man couldn't see his face. "Yeah. What did you hear, or think you heard?"
Littlefield glanced at his watch, about to chalk up his time spent talking to Lester as a waste. The luminous dial showed that it was nearly nine o'clock.
"Bells," the old man said in a near-whisper.
"Bells?" Littlefield repeated, though he'd plainly heard the man.
"Real soft and faint, but a bell's a bell. Ain't no mistaking that sound."
"I hate to tell you this, Lester, but we both know that the red church has the only bell around here. And even if some kids were messing around there last night, there's no bell rope."
"And we both know why there ain't no bell rope. But I'm just telling you what I heard, that's all. I don't expect you to put much stock in an old man's words."
The ghost stories. Some families had passed them down until they'd acquired a mythic truth that had even more power than fact. Littlefield wasn't ready to write Death by supernatural causes on Boonie's incident report. Since Samuel had died, the sheriff had spent most of his life trying to convince himself that supernatural occurrences didn't occur.
Just the facts, ma'am, Littlefield told himself, hearing the words in Jack Webb's voice from the old Dragnet television show.
"There were no recent footprints around the church. No sign of disturbances inside the church, either," Littlefield said, piling up the evidence as if to convince himself along with Lester.
"I bet there wasn't no mountain lion paw-prints, either, was there?"
This time, Littlefield initiated the ten-second silence. "Not that we've found yet."
Lester gave his liquid laugh.
Littlefield's head filled with warm anger. "If you believe so much in the stories, why did you buy the red church in the first place?"
"Because I got it for a song. But it won't be my problem no more."
"Why not?"
"Selling it. One of the McFall boys came by the other day. You know, the one that everybody said didn't act like regular folks? The one that got beat near to a pulp behind the football bleachers one night?"
"Yeah. Archer McFall." Littlefield had been a young deputy then, on foot patrol at the football game. Archer ended up in the hospital for a week. No arrests were made, even though Littlefield had seen two or three punks rubbing their hands as if their knuckles were sore. Of course, nobody pressed the case too much. Archer was a McFall, after all, and the oddest of the bunch.
"Well, he says he went off to California and made good, working in religion and such. And now he's moving back to the area and wants to settle here."
"I'll be damned."
"Me, too. And when he offered me two hundred thousand dollars for the red church and a dozen acres of mostly scrub pine and graveyard, I had to bite my lip to keep from grinning like a possum. Supposed to go in tomorrow and sign the papers at the lawyer's office."
"Why the red church, if he's got that kind of money?" Littlefield asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew.
"That property started off in the McFall family. They're the ones who donated the land for the church in the first place. Remember Wendell McFall?"
Coincidences. Littlefield didn't like coincidences. He liked cause-and-effect. That's what solved cases. "That's a lot of money."
"Couldn't say no to it. But I had a funny feeling that he would have offered more if I had asked. But he knew I wouldn't. It was like that time with the mountain lion, like he was staring me down, like he knew what I was thinking."
"I guess if he's a successful businessman, then he's had a lot of practice at negotiating."
"Reckon so," Lester said, unconvinced. He stood with a creaking that might have been either his joints or the rocker's wooden slats. "It's time to be putting up the cows."
"And I'd best finish my rounds. I appreciate your time, Lester."
"Sure. Come on back anytime. And next time, plan on staying for a piece of pie."
"I'll do that."
As Littlefield started the Trooper, he couldn't help thinking about the part of Lester's story that had gone untold. The part about why a bell rope no longer hung in the red church, and why Archer McFall would want to buy back the old family birthright.
He shook his head and went down the driveway, gravel crackling under his wheels.
The dawn was crisp and pink, the air moistened by dew. The scent of pine and wild cherry blossoms spread across the valley along with the thin, smoky threads of the night's hearths. Water swept its way south underneath the soft fog that veiled the river. A rooster's crow cracked the stillness of the hills.
Archer McFall nestled against the damp soil, the earth cool against his nakedness. He kept his eyes closed, looking back into the dark avenues of his dreams, chasing shadows to nowhere. The dreams were splashed with red, the color of retribution. They were human dreams, strange and new and chaotic.
The rooster crowed three times before Archer remembered where he was.
Home.
The word, even though it was only thought and not spoken, left a bitter taste in his mouth. The bitterness came from the memory of old humiliations. And an older suffering, one that ran deeper than the expansive surface of sleep.
Archer coughed. Pine needles and brittle leaves pressed against his cheek. He shivered and rolled into a sitting position, opening his eyes. After so long in darkness, he was almost surprised at the brightness of the coming day. The light slashed through the gaps in the forest canopy, sharp and merciless and full of grace.
He gazed down at his bare human flesh. His skin seemed to fit well enough. These human bags of water and bone had always seemed awkwardly constructed to him. But he'd come among these people to take up their ways. Deliverance was more joyful when the victims thought it came from one of their own kind.
More thoughts came back to him, more memories flooded the gray mass of brain that filled his skull. He spat. A reddish clot of half-digested pulp clung to a stump.
As the sun warmed him and his shifting night shapes slithered the rest of the way out of existence, he planned his route back to the Mercedes. He knew the river well. It flowed below the old home grounds, below the church. He'd left his car in the woods a mile away. A Brooks Brothers suit, pinstriped and charcoal gray, was spread out in the trunk, along with leather shoes, knit socks, cologne, a Rolex wristwatch and a sky-blue tie.
The uniform of the walking dead, the Christian soldiers, the false idol-worshippers. The pretenders. And he would pretend to be one of them.
Archer stood and brushed the clinging loam from his body. A kingfisher swooped and lit on a branch nearby, then either smelled or sensed him and disappeared with a frantic snap of wings. Archer smiled and studied the gray mountain slopes.
Home.
The Promised Land.
Creeks as old as lies, dirt as dark as hopelessness. Stones as cold as the heart of a father who had only enough love for one son. Mountains thrust like angry fists up to the sky, defying the heaven that so many people believed in, including his dear deranged mother.
The worst part of this incarnation was the emotional turmoil. No wonder these creatures sinned. No wonder they sought refuge in lust and depravity and excess. They were God's mistakes. But God's biggest mistake was jealousy, the craving to build things in His image, the demand for sacrifice.
God demanded love, but had no love of His own to spare. At least not for the second-born. Not for the one destined for dust, while the first earned a high place above. The second son was fit only to rule what he could see, left to find corrupted pleasure here on Earth.
Archer began walking down the rugged incline toward the river. Brambles and branches pricked at his skin, but he soaked up the pain and buried it inside the hollowness of his rage. Sharp outcrops of granite tore at the soles of his feet, and he relished the flow of blood from his wounds.
Jesus had walked in wilderness. So would Archer.
The blood would leave tracks. Others could find his trail, if they were clever. Let them follow. He was born to lead, after all.
And even if they found him, what were they going to do? Kill him?
His laughter echoed through the trees, as deep as the glacier-cut and time-eroded valleys, the human vocal cords vibrating strangely as he threw back his head and chilled the spine of the forest.
Sheriff Littlefield leaned back in his oak swivel chair. Not a whisper of a squeak came from the well-oiled springs. Detective Sergeant Storie shifted uneasily in the chair across the desk from him, her suit jacket rumpled. The morning light on her face showed that she had slept little and poorly. Her eyes were puffy and narrowed from the headache caused by disrupted dreams. Her hair was still wet from a morning shower, and the smell of her conditioner filled the room.
Steam billowed from Littlefield's cup of black coffee. He looked through it, and the steam parted and swirled as he spoke. "I talked to the folks out in Whispering Pines."
"Any eyewitnesses?"
"Nobody saw anything." He put a little too much emphasis on the word "saw."
"What about knowing? This isn't the big city, where people don't want to get involved. The old woman in the apartment next to mine knows it when my cat breaks wind. And the rest of the neighbors are clued in before the fumes disperse."
Littlefield winced. But he let the wince slip into what he hoped looked like a frown of concern. Storie was always calling him "old school" as it was.
"Well, two people said they heard the bells ringing at the church," he said.
"So the killer celebrated by letting everybody know what he'd done?" Storie asked incredulously.
"Must have been their imaginations. There's no bell rope."
Storie leaned forward, tapping the report that lay on Littlefield's desk. The pages were wrinkled, probably from where she had worried over them in bed while trying to fall asleep. "Nobody heard the screams, either, I suppose."
"All we have is what we had yesterday. I've got Charlie and Wade searching the hills up around the church. Wade brought his dogs. If there's anything to be found, they'll turn it up."
Storie stood. "I guess I'd better get to work. Any word from Chapel Hill yet?"
"Hoyle says they should get around to the autopsy Monday. Ought to have preliminary results by Wednesday or so."
"What if it is a psycho?"
Littlefield looked past her to the glass case that lined one wall of his office. He had a collection of confiscated drug paraphernalia that would make a doper weep with envy. Colorful bongs and ornately carved pipes adorned the shelves, along with photographs of a younger Littlefield posing next to marijuana plants. In the center of the case stood a brass cup emblazoned with a badge: the 1998 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award, bestowed by the North Carolina Sheriff's Association.
There wasn't much crime in Pickett County. In Littlefield's seven years as sheriff, there had been a total of two murders. In one, the killer himself called the department, and blubberingly narrated how he had just blown his wife's head open with a .38 revolver. He was waiting on the porch when officers arrived, draining the last of his liquor, the gun cleaned and returned to its cabinet. His wife's body was in the garage, gingerly covered with a hand-woven shawl.
The other was Storie's case, the one that had established her as a legitimate detective. In Littlefield's mind, all the technical training in the world was useless until you actually snapped the cuffs on a perpetrator. And Storie had done that with style, making headlines across the region by helping prosecute the cop-turned-killer. After the trial, she gave the press a highly quotable statement: "If I had written the book, the final chapter would have been different. He would have gotten the death penalty."
So Littlefield was left with domestic disputes and civil disturbances. Some kids with a stereo blasting too loud, a drunk breaking windows, somebody rearranging the letters on Barkersville's Main Street Theater marquee to spell out crude words. Or some longhair in an army jacket would sell oregano joints behind the high school. The crime stats looked great on paper, which was part of the reason Littlefield had won his Sheriff's Association award.
But sometimes he was afraid that Pickett County was just a little too sleepy, that underneath the shimmering overlay of tight community and good-natured harmony was a layer of moral rot. After all, people were people. Maybe having a mad killer on the loose wasn't really so hard to imagine, not with what played out in other small towns across the country on the nightly news.
"Dogs should be able to track it, whether it's a mountain lion or a human."
Storie put her hands on her hips. "And?"
"And what?"
"The rest of the sentence. I get the feeling that you aren't telling me everything."
Littlefield sighed and rubbed his eyes. Storie was now wide-awake, as if she had magically cast her weariness over to him. He didn't know how to begin, but it would be unfair to withhold the information.
Information, hell. It was flat-out rubber-room stuff. But she would find out sooner or later, if she talked to any of the oldtimers in Whispering Pines.
"Well," he started, "it's about the church."
"The church?" Her eyebrows lifted into her wet bangs. "What about the church? Did you find something yesterday?"
"Nothing that you could call a clue," he lied. "Maybe you'd better sit back down."
Storie sat on the arm of the chair, clasping her hands together. Like Wade's hounds, she was excited by the fresh scent of prey. Littlefield pretended to look through a stack of papers on his desk, then cleared his throat.
"The church is haunted."
Littlefield could have sworn he heard his wristwatch ticking in the sudden silence, but that was impossible. His wristwatch was electronic. Even the police scanner, which sat on a stack of manuals in the corner, quit its squelching in response to his statement. He searched Storie's face.
Her eyes were wide, disbelieving, as if she had misheard him. But they quickly hardened back into a cool, professional gaze.
"Okay, Sheriff," she said with an irritated laugh. "That explains everything. A ghost sneaks out at night, maybe it's pissed off because its sheets got mildewed in the wash, whatever. So it finds a drunk in the graveyard with a dirty magazine and a bottle of bourbon and decides to vent its wrath. That explains why we didn't find any footprints at the scene. Case closed."
Littlefield folded his arms over his chest and let the wave of sarcasm sweep over him and die in the corners of the room.
His tight lips must have aroused Detective Storie's curiosity, because she looked as if she expected him to admit he was joking. "What?" Her mouth dropped open. "Sheesh, you're serious, aren't you?"
He said nothing. The coffeemaker on a side table gurgled. He walked slowly over to the machine and refilled his cup. "Want some?" he said, lifting the pot in Storie's direction.
She shook her head. Littlefield had been dreading this moment ever since they'd gotten the call yesterday. The thing at the church had never left. All these years of hoping, wishing, and his best attempts at praying hadn't made it go away.
"In the 1860s, the church was the only one in these parts," he began, walking to the closed door of his office. He looked at the hardware store calendar hanging there. The almanac said the moon was favorable for planting root crops.
He continued, keeping his back to the detective. "Back then it was called Potter's Mill Baptist Church, after the old grist mill that operated down by the river. Wendell McFall was the pastor. He was an 'old school' preacher"---he turned to judge her reaction and saw she was carefully controlling her expression, which didn't surprise him---"all fire and brimstone and hell to pay. But during the Civil War, they say he started stretching his interpretation of the Gospel.
"I don't know how much you know about the history of these parts, but the war pretty much made a hard life harder for the people who lived here," he said. "Pickett County men were part of the Fifty-eighth North Carolina Troops, and almost two-thirds of them were killed in action. Women were keeping up the fields and home chores at the same time. It was a bad stretch, as you can imagine. And Reverend McFall started preaching that the end of the world was nigh."
"Now, there's an original idea," Storie said. "They've been peddling that line for at least four thousand years."
Littlefield gulped his coffee, welcoming the hot sting in his throat. At least Storie hadn't walked out of the office yet. Maybe rank had its privileges after all.
"Some of the soldiers' bodies were shipped back here to be buried," Littlefield said. "Reverend McFall insisted on holding midnight vigils over the graves, because he said they would rise up and walk again otherwise. At the same time, he was preaching some nonsense about how God had two sons, and while the first one was merciful and good and holy, this second son was just the opposite."
"Too bad this guy wasn't around in the 1980s," Storie said. "He could have made a fortune selling cheesy paperbacks."
Littlefield ignored her. "So McFall starts warning the congregation that this second son would return to the earth, come to undo the good done by Jesus. Said the second son demanded love and sacrifice, like God's spoiled little brat. In those times, the preacher was pretty much the leader of the community. While those ideas might seem a little flaky now, people were more imaginative back then, carrying with them all the legends and beliefs of their Scottish and English ancestors. So when a man of the cloth told you he had a vision, then you were bound to believe it. And with their fathers and brothers and sons dying and hunger spreading, the congregation must have felt that they hadn't given enough tribute to God. Or His sons."
Littlefield had never discussed religion with Storie, or with much of anyone else, for that matter. He'd invited her to attend the First Baptist Church in Barkersville, but that was more of a rote politeness than a serious recruiting pitch. Littlefield himself usually went to services about once a month. He'd stopped reading the Bible after he finished his run through Sunday school and there was no longer anyone to force to him memorize verse. But he'd been raised Baptist, and he was going to die Baptist, even if he'd never devoted a minute to finding out what that really meant. Jesus was Lord, and that was that.
His grandmother on his mother's side used to tell the story of the red church while she snapped peas or shucked corn. He would sit at her feet, helping with the chore at his own awkward pace, listening too closely to the story to do much work. Sometimes Littlefield's mother would come in and say, "Don't fill Frankie's head with that foolishness," but Grandma would start right in again the minute Littlefield's mother left the kitchen.
Littlefield closed his eyes and tried to hear her voice in his mind. But it was no use. He fumbled for eloquent words, found none. "McFall was the one who painted the church red. Said that would bring the first son around to save them, to defeat the second son. Plus the congregation had to start meeting at midnight on Sunday instead of in the morning. By this time, according to the way the oldtimers tell it, McFall was feverish and white as a sheet. He'd stand in the pulpit, a dozen candles lighting up the old wooden interior of the church, and he'd describe his visions. He'd go into convulsions and rant about sin and violent ways and the punishment of the wicked and false idols and a blight carried unto umpteen generations. And the strange thing was, McFall never did prescribe a remedy for this punishment. No prayers, nothing. He wasn't even passing the plate."
Storie was rapt now, staring at the sheriff. He didn't know if it was because she found the legend fascinating or whether she was transfixed by her boss's making a fool of himself. "So this second son...was he supposed to be the devil or something?"
Littlefield shook his head. "McFall believed this second son had a power equal to Jesus'. And according to my grandmother, McFall had most of the congregation believing it. So the preacher was riding high, dishing out his revelations while the congregation cowered speechless in the pews. And I guess he started getting a little delusional after that."
"After that? Like he wasn't before?"
"He started taking advantage," Littlefield continued. "Said he was the instrument of the Lord, and only he could protect them from the second son. Well, he got a woman pregnant, the wife of a soldier who was off fighting at Gainesville. People started whispering then, though they were too afraid to confront the preacher. Then, one morning following a midnight service, one of the parishioners found her young child mutilated at the altar of the red church.
"Well, as crazy as the preacher had been acting, they figured he had played Abraham or something. Only God didn't tell him to stop as he raised the knife, so he chopped up the child as a sacrifice. That Sunday night in 1864, the parishioners showed up for service and hauled the preacher from the pulpit. Somebody climbed up the bell rope and cut it loose, threw it out on the ground where the others stood holding torches."
"They didn't," Storie cut in. Littlefield couldn't tell if she was still mocking him. He decided to bust on through the tale and get it over with. He could feel his neck blushing.
"You know that dogwood by the church door? They hanged him from it."
"So that was that. Except his ghost still haunts the church, right?"
"I guess the Potters and the Mathesons and the Buchanans started feeling a little guilty and decided that maybe 'an eye for an eye' was all fine and dandy, but once a sin was paid for, all was forgiven. They buried him out in the woods, covered him with rocks in a place long forgotten. But they said prayers over his grave even if he didn't deserve them. They even took care of the woman he got pregnant."
The police scanner squawked, and a female dispatcher's voice came over. "Ten-sixty-eight. Ten-sixty-eight on Old Turnpike Road."
The tension in Littlefield's office eased slightly. "Denny Eggers's cows got out again," Littlefield said.
A deputy on patrol responded to the call. "Ten-four, base. Unit Four, en route."
"Ten-four," said the dispatcher. The scanner returned to broadcasting its ambient hiss.
The sheriff looked at Storie. She stood and stretched. "Well, I'd better get out to the church and see if I missed anything yesterday," she said.
She was at the door, with her hand on the knob, when Littlefield spoke. "The woman he got pregnant brought flowers to his grave. They say that three days after the hanging, she came running out of the woods with tears in her eyes, her clothes torn by the tree branches. She said, 'Praise God, the stone's been rolled away.'"
Detective Storie didn't turn around. The sheriff continued, his words spilling over each other, as if he were experiencing an attack of nausea and wanted it to pass. "When she said that, the church bell started ringing. Only the bell had no rope. And nobody was in the church at the time."
Storie turned. "So that's why you told me all this. That'll really stand up in court." She dropped her voice into a low, professional delivery. "'Your Honor, I would like to submit as state's evidence thirty-two a tape recording of church bells ringing, made on the night of Mr. Houck's death.'"
Littlefield stared into the black pool of his cup of coffee. "Maybe all that has nothing to do with Boonie's death. I sure as hell hope not. A psycho might be able to hide out in the woods for a few weeks, but the bloodhounds would get him sooner or later. Same with a mountain lion. But I hear that one of McFall's descendants is back in town."
"So you expect me to believe in coincidence?" she said. "They didn't teach paranormal investigation at the academy. As for Reverend McFall's ghost, I'll believe it when you can prove it in court."
"I've got an eyewitness for you," he said, his voice tired now, an old man's defeated voice.
"Who?"
He glanced at the Officer of the Year award, glinting dully in the morning sun that sliced through the parted blinds. Storie approached his desk. She leaned over it in a position of superiority, like a teacher berating a daydreaming student.
"Who?" she repeated. "Who's going to testify that a ghost committed murder?"
"Me."
"You?" Storie shook her head.
Littlefield sat back, feeling twice his forty years. The good thing about the past was that you left it farther and farther behind each day. The bad thing was that you also got closer to the day when you could no longer hide from the past. A day of reckoning and judgment.
"I was seventeen," he said, his flesh cold. "It was Halloween night. Back then, and probably still to this day, getting drunk and driving over to the red church was the thing to do on Halloween. Me and a few of my high school buddies loaded into a pickup I borrowed from my dad. Well, my kid brother Samuel, he was eleven at the time, saw the beer in the bed of the pickup and said he was going to tell on me."
Littlefield rubbed his eyes. He wasn't going to let himself cry in front of a woman or another cop. He cleared his throat. "So I told him he could come along if he'd keep his stupid little mouth shut. We went out to the church-we only lived about two miles away, up near the McFalls at the foot of Buckhorn-and parked in the trees off to one side of the graveyard. We drank the beer and dared each other to go inside the church, you know how teenagers will do."
"Sure I do," Storie said. "I just never expected you to have been such a scofflaw."
Littlefield wasn't sure if her sarcasm was designed to provoke him or encourage him to continue. But he'd kept the story bottled up for too long. He'd never had anyone to confide in.
"Naturally, we were all too scared to do it. Like I said, the ghost stories were pretty well known in these parts. Which was funny as hell, because that's where most of us went to church on Sundays. During the day, with all the people there and the sun in the windows, it wasn't scary at all. But at night, with the dark shadows of the woods, your imagination had a lot of room to play.
"So then we got to picking on Samuel, calling him a chicken, as if we were any braver. And, damn me, I was as bad as any of the others. Samuel sat in the bed of that pick-up truck, his eyes wide and shiny in the moonlight and his lip quivering. What else could he do but go up to the church?"
Storie leaned against the wall. The sheriff glanced at her, but she was staring at the floor, looking uncomfortable. She was a cop. Maybe she was as emotionally inhibited as he was and hated this type of intimacy. Well, she could walk out if she wanted. Now that he had started, he was going to finish the story, even if the walls and God were his only audience.
"He went across the graveyard, wearing a cape that was part of his trick-or-treating getup. He was Batman that year, and the cape was a beach towel tied in a knot around his neck. Maybe as he walked, he tried to convince himself that he was a brave superhero."
Littlefield closed his eyes, and it was as if an October wind had carried him back to that night. He could almost smell the freshly fallen leaves, the sweetness of the late-autumn grass, the beer that had spilled in the truck bed, the smoke from the cigarettes one of the boys smoked. He continued in a monotone.
"By the time he passed those lonely tombstones, I started feeling a little guilty. I jumped out of the truck and ran across the graveyard to get him and drag him away. I hollered, and I guess he thought I was going to do something to him. He ran up the steps and lifted the latch to the church door, then went inside. The rest of the guys were hooting and moaning, making ghost noises while trying not to snicker.
"I followed Samuel inside the church and closed the door behind me. That's when I got the idea. 'Let's scare the bejesus out of them,' I said, mad at the other guys mostly because I was so much like them. The entryway was dark, but the moonlight spilled through the belfry and lit up that little square where the bell rope used to hang. The hole was about two feet by two feet, too small for most people to squeeze through. But Samuel was slender and wiggly, so I knew he could slip through there if I boosted him up."
Unit Four's voice came through on the police radio and interrupted Littlefield's story. "Come in, base. Found the cows, all right. Denny's getting them rounded up. I'll be ten-ten for a few---"
Storie crossed the room and cut off the radio, then turned back to Littlefield. Her eyes flicked to the sheriff's face, then away, as if she were as ashamed of his vulnerability as he was.
He continued. "I told him, 'Get up there and hide, and I'll run out screaming and say that the Bell Monster got you.' He must have been scared, but I'd always been his hero, and I guess he trusted me that everything would be okay, that nothing bad could happen while I was there. So I boosted him up, and he scrambled through, then I saw his pale face framed in the rope hole. 'When I wave my arms, you kick the bell,' I said. He nodded, and I ran outside, waving my arms and screaming like a crazy man.
"'It got him, it got him,' I yelled. 'The Bell Monster got him.' And all those drunken guys jumped out of the pickup and took off running down the road. I turned and pointed to the belfry, signaling Samuel to ring the bell. I saw his eyes, his white forehead, and the dark mess of his curly hair. And behind him, behind him . . ."
Littlefield took three swallows of cold black coffee. He looked at the sunlight sneaking around the window shade. He'd never told anybody this part. Except for himself. He'd relived it during a thousand sweaty, sleepless nights.
"The Bell Monster was there," he said, his whisper filling the room.
"It was really just a shadow, but it was there. It had sharp edges, and it moved toward Samuel. I screamed for real then, and I guess Samuel thought it was part of the act. Then he turned around and saw the thing, God only knows what it looked like from that close up. He scrambled over the edge of the belfry and started to slide down the roof. It was a short drop, he should have been fine. But that stupid cape got caught on a nail or something, and I heard the pop from clear across the graveyard." Littlefield's whisper dropped a notch quieter. "His neck broke."
Littlefield could still see Samuel's startled expression, his eyes and tongue bulging as his body spun beneath the eave of the church. The image had been burned into his retinas, coming to him in dreams and while awake, crisper than a high-definition television signal, more vivid than any movie.
Storie came to him and put a hand on his forearm. "I'm sorry."
The tears came now, hot and wet and stinging, but not enough to flush away the image of his dead brother's face. "We buried him there at the church. Sometimes I think that's the worst part, that we left him buried there forever. The place got what it wanted. The place got him."
Littlefield wiped his nose on his sleeve. "And here I am, blubbering like an idiot."
Storie came closer. "It's okay, Frank," she said, and for a moment he thought she was going to hug him. That would be the final humiliation. He spun so that the back of his chair was facing her.
"I saw him," he said.
"I know. It must have been awful."
"No, not Samuel. I saw him. Right when Samuel's neck broke, I saw the Hung Preacher. Just for a second. He shimmered there at the end of a rope, hanging from that goddamned dogwood tree that I've never had the nerve to chop down. He was looking at me like he knew what he'd done. And he was mighty damned pleased with himself."
Littlefield was deflated, tired. He was sorry he'd said anything. How could he expect anyone to believe what he barely believed himself? He knew what had happened that night. He'd seen it with his own eyes. But that night existed as if in a separate reality, a private hell, apart from the safe and sane world of Pickett County.
"Did any of your drinking buddies witness anything?" Storie asked.
Damn her. Of course SHE'D want hard evidence. A broken soul wasn't enough to convince her. His anger dried his eyes.
"No," he said, staring at a drug prevention poster on the wall. "Officially, it was a prank that turned into a tragedy. Freak accident. Of course, the oldtimers muttered and added Samuel's death to the legend of the red church. The rest of the world went on with the business of living."
"Except you," Storie said.
Except me. Storie did have a detective's eyes. Littlefield ran his hand over his scalp and stood. "Well, now you know your sheriff is apeshit crazy."
"The eyes can play tricks. In my psychology classes, they taught us that bad memories can trigger---"
Littlefield sliced his palm across the air to silence her. "I don't give a damn about theories. I know what I saw."
She clenched her fists and looked at him, the hurt clear on her face. She hurried out of the office, and he did nothing to stop her. She slammed the door, and Littlefield's Officer of the Year award rattled in its case.
Elizabeth McFall, known to the old families as Mama Bet, knelt in the damp forest soil.
The dead belong to the dirt. And the dirt belongs to Him that shaped it all.
The dirt would have her soon enough. She was nearly eighty, suffering from diabetes, cataracts, and high blood pressure. But at least God allowed her legs to work still, and her mind was a lot clearer than her eyesight. She looked through the treetops, at the blue sky and the invisible kingdom waiting behind it.
A hand touched her shoulder.
"You done yet, Mama Bet?"
It was Sonny Absher, the biggest small-time thief this side of Tennessee. She hoped his sins didn't jump onto her, like lice or fleas jumping to greener pastures.
The worst part of this whole business was that the Abshers were in on it. The Buchanans were bad enough, what with their moonshining and wife-beating and chicken-stealing ways. But at least the Buchanans knew how to get down on their knees and say they were sorry. The Abshers would just as soon spit at God, even if the saliva fell right back onto their oily faces.
But the Abshers couldn't be culled from the congregation. All the families had a hand in the original persecution, and they all carried a common debt in their hearts. After all these years, they were practically of the same blood anyway. And that blood would have to spill, and spill, and spill.
"I'll be done shortly," Mama Bet answered. "Gotta suffer a little, get right down here on my knees and feel a little pain."
"So this is where they buried him?"
Mama Bet bowed over the small pile of stones. "Yeah. But without a body, a grave's just a hole in the ground."
Sonny Absher snorted. She could smell the white lightning on his breath, in his clothes, strong enough to drown out his rancid sweat. "You mean you believe all that bullshit about Wendell McFall coming back from the dead?"
"You better hush yourself," Mama Bet said, shrugging his hand away from her shoulder. "God might strike you down. Look what He done to Boonie."
"God's done and struck me," Sonny said. "He got me born here. Why in hell else would I be part of this bunch?"
Sonny drew a cigarette from his stained shirt pocket, lit it, and blew a gray cloud of smoke to the sky. He retreated to a stand of laurels, where his brother Haywood and Haywood's wife and teenage daughter waited. Stepford Matheson sat on a stump, whittling on a little chunk of white ash.
Haywood had tried to aspire to a little dignity, taking up with the Baptists and selling insurance in Barkersville. His hands were folded in reverence, but he didn't fool Mama Bet. A person of true faith didn't believe in insurance. But Haywood was all show anyway. His retail-rack suit swamped his skinny frame.
You put a weasel in a forty-dollar suit, and you get a forty-dollar weasel. And Nell ain't quite got all the ingredients to be a trophy wife. I mean, a quart of makeup and a weekly trip to the hair salon ought to give better results than THAT. Why, I've seen better eyeliner jobs down at Mooney's Funeral Home.
Mama Bet turned back to the loose pile of stones that marked her great-grandfather's former resting place.
Forgive me, God, for thinking ill of others. I guess I suffer the sin of pride. I'm just a little shaky, is all. Scared. You can understand, can't You?
Sure, God could understand. God was really to blame for this whole mess, when you got right down to it. God was the one who put those fool notions in Wendell McFall's head. God was the one who put temptation in Wendell's path. God was the one who sat right up there in the clouds and didn't lift a finger while Wendell sliced up that pretty little girl.
God sat right there and laughed. And God laughed the night He slipped His seed into Mama Bet's belly. Oh, yes, God was a sneaky little devil, all right. Came to her in the dark and made her forget all about it after.
Until she missed a few of her monthlies. Her belly had started to swell and her breasts grew heavy with milk. Everyone thought she had suffered a sin of the flesh, had fallen in with one of those door-to-door Bible salesmen who had a reputation for rutting like stallions going after a pent-up mare. And so the little hens clucked, Alma Potter and Vivian Matheson and all the other no-good gossips of Whispering Pines.
She didn't tell anybody she was still a virgin. Then, now, and forever, as far as she could tell. Virgins couldn't get pregnant, could they? Only one had in the whole history of the world, the way the Bible told it.
Mama Bet delivered the baby without help, had strained and groaned and screamed for twenty hours, as her water burst and her uterine walls spasmed. God forgive her, she had even cussed that baby's Father. Borrowed every bad word in the Absher repertoire, then added a few of her own. Finally that slimy head popped through, followed by little shoulders and arms and belly and legs.
Can a body love something so much that her heart aches with the loving?
She had often wondered. Because she fell in love with that child, she pulled him onto her belly and then hugged him against her face, her tears running like whatever was leaking from her broken place down there. Her whole world, her whole reason for living, was realized in that moment after birth.
"How long you going to pray over that damned old pile of rocks?" Sonny called.
"Shut up," Haywood said.
Mama Bet slowly rose to her feet, pushing on the mossy stones for support. Haywood started forward to help her, but she waved him away.
"I get my strength from God and Archer," she said.
Oh, yes, it was strength, all right. The strength born of stubbornness and determination. God was the worst absentee father of all time. Because He never really just showed up and did his business, never made this or that happen directly, though He had his hand in every little breath that human beings took. He kept himself invisible, because He wanted nary bit of the blame when things went wrong. That was why He'd planted the seed and sneaked away in the night without even leaving an instruction manual on how to raise a messiah.
Mama Bet peeled her scarf back and let it rest around her neck. The sun was high enough to break through the canopy of forest. The leaves weren't at full size yet. Otherwise, the grave would be in the shadows all day. Mama Bet took a deep swallow of the fresh mountain air. She could taste the past winter's ice and the coming summer's oak blooms in the same breath.
Round and round these dadgummed seasons go. Seems like they get faster and faster, mixing together and not stopping to rest, like the world's in a great big hurry to get to the reckoning.
She hobbled across the damp leaves of the forest clearing until she reached the others. The congregation. Only they didn't know it yet. They knew only that they had to come, had to join in, had to open their hearts. Mama Bet was the only one who knew that the Second Son was back, and now there would be hell to pay. But she had never whispered a word of the truth, except to Archer. Darned if she couldn't keep a secret as good as God could.
"I reckon we ought to pray," she said. She held out her wrinkled hand to Stepford, who folded his pocketknife and put away his carving. He wiped the wood chips from his hand and clasped it to Mama Bet's. Noreen took her other hand, smiling. She was a pretty girl, not as moonfaced as the rest of the Abshers. Maybe she had Potter blood in her. Zeb Potter had been known to cat around a little, back before his health started failing. Maybe Nell had succumbed to old Zebulon's sinful charms.
There I go again, God. Thinking ill of others, as if I got no sins of my own to worry about. Strike me down if it be Thy will. Just please don't plant another seed in me. I don't think I could take another go-round as bad as the last one.
Well, that, plus she had no more love to spare for another child. Archer Dell McFall took up every square inch of her heart. Archer had given her more joy than she ever thought heaven could hold. Archer was the most beautiful creature under Creation. Darned if God couldn't produce a fine offspring when He set His mind to it.
The others gathered in a circle and held hands, though Sonny gave another of his little grunts of annoyance. Mama Bet shot him a wicked look. He blinked and went cow-eyed. The gathered bowed their heads.
"Dear God, give us the strength to do Your will, and to accept our part in Your work," she said, her voice taking on a tremulous quality. "We know we have sinned and come short of the glory, but we know You love us anyway. Lead our eyes from evil visions and lead our ears from the call of false prophets. Allow us to make whatever sacrifices You require, that we may not stray from the one true path. Keep us and protect us unto the fourth generation. Amen."
And may Archer do this thing right, she silently added, as the others echoed "Amen."
"Are we done now?" Sonny said, pulling out another cigarette.
"We might not ever be done," Mama Bet said.
"When the Lord Jesus gives you a mission, you follow it to the end," Haywood said.
Poor Haywood. Swallowing that New Testament tomfoolery hook, line, and sinker. Well, Archer will shine the light on him soon enough.
Stepford spat onto the trunk of a poplar. "Come on, Sonny. I'm thirsty," he said. He turned and started down the path that led to the rutted dirt road. They had parked their cars at the foot of the trail.
"Wait a second," Sonny yelled. He turned to Mama Bet. "Do we got to go to the red church tomorrow night?"
"I said so, didn't I?"
He frowned at the forest floor. "It's getting so a body ain't got time to pitch a good drunk, what with all this bowing and scraping and worshiping."
"Well, Mr. Absher, you're welcome to go straight on down to hell if you want, but this ain't about you, is it?"
He looked at the small overgrown grave.
"The stone's been rolled away," Mama Bet said. "We all got sacrifices to make."
Sonny's thin lips curled. "Well, we may have to follow the call, but we sure don't have to like it none."
He turned and hurried after Stepford, his boots kicking up a wash of leaves. Haywood came to Mama Bet's side and took her arm. "Come on, Mama Bet," he said. "Let's get you home so you can rest up."
She smiled at him, at Noreen, even at Nell. The congregation. Well, part of it, anyway. That Noreen was so pretty, there in her Easter dress the color of robin's eggs. Almost a shame that beauty such as that would have to fall by the wayside.
Because all a pretty face does is hide the ugly underneath, don't it?
"Yeah, I guess we all better rest up," she said. "There will come great trials."
The sky seemed to darken a little at her words, or maybe God took up into the trees and reached His fingers out to throw a shadow in her eyes. He liked to keep things confusing, all right. She sometimes wondered if He loved her, if He really loved any of them. Or was He just pretending so He could get the things He wanted, like love?
Haywood led her down the mountain path to her home, to the birthplace of the Second Son.
Linda watched the sun crawl down toward the ridge of Buckhorn Mountain. Just a few more hours. She was wondering how she could slip away without the boys noticing. She almost wished David had stayed. He swallowed lies more easily than the boys did.
She turned from the door and went back to the kitchen. Timmy would be hungry when he got in from his chores. She could see him through the window above the sink, chopping at the brown garden soil with his hoe. The cabbage and peas and potatoes were in the ground, and soon it would be time to plant corn and cucumbers. She didn't know how she was going to manage the farm alone. Even though the fields were leased out for growing hay, the garden took a lot of backbreaking time and sacrifice.
Sacrifice.
Archer always said that sacrifice was the currency of God.
Linda bit her lip. Tears stung her eyes, and she didn't know whether they were brought by regret or joy. The fold would prosper in the next life and unto the fourth generation, but letting go of the things in this life was hard. There were joys to be had here: her children and sometimes even David, a walk in the wet grass of a morning, standing in the barn during a rainstorm with the music of the drops on the tin roof.
No, that was mortal thinking, covetous and vain and destructive. But she was a mortal. Still. A mother of two wonderful boys. Until Archer demanded it, she wouldn't forsake them.
Linda stopped at the refrigerator. One of Ronnie's poems from school was hanging from a banana magnet. His teacher had circled a large red A on the corner of the page. "The Tree," it was called.
The tree has arms
that hug,
not as warm as Mother's.
Sometimes when I walk by,
the tree waves
and I run away.
The tree barks at me.
Ronnie was doing okay. He had slept most of the time since coming back from the hospital. His face was pale and his nose was lost in gauze and padding. Once he had vomited blood and stained the carpet in the boys' room. The place smelled like carpet-cleaning spray, but luckily it was warm enough that she could leave the windows open.
Linda pulled some hamburger from the refrigerator. They had killed their final cow the previous fall. Linda wondered if the dead cow counted as a sacrifice. Maybe for the God of cows. Let Archer worry about that kind of stuff.
Tim came in the back door.
"Go wash your hands, honey," she said over the rush of water as she rinsed some potatoes.
"They're sore." Not too much whine in his voice.
"I know. You'll get used to it."
Tim came to the sink and saw the hamburger. "It looks like that guy's face."
"Hush, honey."
"I dreamed about him last night."
"Was it scary?" She searched his face, looking for weakness. All she saw were David's eyes, the stubborn gift of genetics. She moved over and let Timmy wash his hands.
The sink turned brown-red from the dirt. "No. In my dream, the graveyard was sort of dark, but not a bad dark. A fun dark, like a carnival or something. And the dead man was all ripped up and stuff, but he was walking around the tombstones."
"You're a brave boy. That sure would have scared me." Was Archer coming to the boys? Or had it just been the usual trick of dreams?
Tim turned off the taps and wiped his hands on the dishcloth that hung from a cabinet knob. "There was another person, a boy, up at the church. Except the church wasn't a church, it was lit up like a spookhouse. This boy was up in the place with the bell, just laughing and laughing and laughing and ringing the bell. And the dead man danced around the tombstones, pieces of him falling off the whole time."
Archer. It had to be Archer. The truth has many faces, he always said. "Well, you've been through a lot. It's no wonder you had such a weird dream," Linda said, pressing out two patties and placing them in a black iron skillet on the stove. The heat made the meat sizzle, the white noise of energy transformation.
"That dream was nowhere near as scary as talking to the sheriff. Or seeing Ronnie in the hospital."
The sheriff. No wonder Tim had thought the man was going to arrest him. The sheriff had stood like an army man in the hospital lobby, asking Tim questions in his deep, patient voice. He was a threat. But he was of the old blood, and had his own debt to pay. Archer could handle him.
The burgers popped as she flipped them, sending tiny sparks of pain up her bare arms as hot grease spattered on her skin. The bell rang on the microwave. "Dinner's ready," she said.
While Tim ate at the kitchen table, Linda took some apple juice to Ronnie. She turned on the light, and he moaned. "It's okay, honey," she said. "I brought you something to drink."
He was feverish and pale against the pillow. His nose was still plumped by packing, and a stray bloody thread of gauze dangled from one nostril.
"N---not thirsty," Ronnie said.
She sat beside him on the lower bunk. As the oldest, he usually slept in the upper bunk, but she didn't want to risk his falling during the night. Archer would want him mended, healed, whole. Not like this.
Why did you have to go and break your nose? He looked so small, with his hair brushed back and the Star Wars sheets pulled up to his chin. Theo, his stuffed bear, had fallen to the side, the stiff arms providing no comfort.
For a split second, she blamed Archer for the injury. Of course, she knew that Archer had taken Boonie Houck, had made the drunkard pay for his sins at the same time Archer rejuvenated himself for holy work. Boonie's worthless life had culminated with a great act of giving. Serving as a sacrifice was Boonie's highest possible purpose in this world. He should have been whimpering in gratitude as Archer took his wicked eyes and tongue and other sinful parts.
Ronnie's accident was only a down payment, she knew. Many innocents would fall so that none of the guilty escaped. That was the Word, that was the Way. She had accepted the testament long ago.
Archer warned that some choices would be difficult. But he reminded the fold that earthly love was only another vanity, another sin. All love must be directed to the Temple of the Two Suns. And none of that love could be wasted on the First Son, Jesus.
Jesus, the plague maker. The damning one. The liar. A mask of light and peace covering a devil's scarred and pocked face. Linda shivered, recalling how deeply the Baptists had brainwashed her. And to think that she'd been making the boys go to their church.
A Jesus trick, Archer had explained. Using David to trap her. To "save" her.
She shuddered and put the apple juice to Ronnie's lips. He strained his head forward and took a swallow, then collapsed back against the pillow. "How are you feeling, sugar?"
"Hurts," he whispered.
"I know, baby. It'll be okay soon."
"I just want to sleep."
"Sure." She kissed him on the forehead, careful to avoid the purpled flesh around his eyes. "Sweet dreams."
Timmy was finished eating by the time she got back to the kitchen. She sent him to wash his face and brush his teeth, and then to bed. She turned on the radio, the local station. A Beatles song was playing, "Strawberry Fields Forever." Sinful. But she was strong. She could withstand this test of faith.
Yes, Archer, I am strong. I am worthy. The music can't touch me, because I know it for what it is.
She listened as the song segued into its second fadeout, the backward tape effects filled with secret messages. The taunts and seductive whispers of Jesus. Something about burying Paul, the cursed apostle. Dozens of people across the county, maybe hundreds, were being exposed to this depraved Christ-worship. She said a quick prayer to Archer for their souls.
Another song came on. The Culture Club, a band she used to like. Back before she met Archer. "Karma chameleon," Boy George sang. Karma chameleon. More sacrilege, more perverted celebrations of the spirit, another false Way.
The boys would be asleep now. She turned off the radio and silently crept out the door. The sky was charcoal gray in the west, where the waxing moon hung bloated and obscene. But the ground, the earth, the mountains were black as absolution. As near Archer's promised peace as one could hope, at least in this mortal world.
Crickets. The chuckle of the creek. The wind soughing through the trees, hiding the noises of nocturnal creatures.
She didn't need light in order to see.
She needed only faith.
And darkness.
Archer's darkness summoned her, a beacon so righteously black that it was blinding.
She crossed the damp meadow and slipped into the forest.
Zeb Potter cradled the shotgun across one flannel-wrapped arm. He shined the flashlight into the belly of the barn. The cows were banging against the walls of their stall, uneasy lowing coming from their throats. The air was thick with the smell of fresh manure.
Something's scared 'em bad.
Zeb had been getting ready for bed, had taken out his chewing tobacco and his teeth and was deciding whether or not he could go one more night in the same pair of long johns when the bawling of a calf filled the night. A calf could wail its lungs out if it wanted, but hardly ever cut loose without a good reason.
Most people thought cows were dumb as dirt, but they had peculiarities that none of those genius "agronomists" from NC State would ever be able to explain. A healthy cow, you hit it in that place just between and a little above the eyes with a sledgehammer, and it dropped dead on the spot, ready to turn to steak and hamburger. But a sick cow, you had to hit it five or six times before it went down. And why was that? The sick cow was living to get healthy, but the healthy cow was about as well off as it could hope to be. So the healthy cow didn't have as much to look forward to. Cows knew a thing or two about life.
So they always kicked up a fuss when they smelled something bad. Though all the big predators had died out, once in a while a pack of wild dogs came over the hills from Tennessee-ways, where people let such things go on. But on this side of the state line, people took care of their problems. They didn't wait for problems to do their damage and move on.
After the first commotion, Zeb had cussed once and slipped into his boots without bothering to find his socks. He'd stopped by the door and put on his hat and collected his twenty-gauge and his spotlight. If Betty were still alive, she would be waiting by the door in her nightgown, telling him to be careful. And he would have patted the shotgun and said, "This is all the care I need." But Betty had gone to be with the Lord, and the farm was big and lonely and the house made noises at night. And the damned hound had probably skulked away into the woods at the slightest scent of trouble.
The shotgun was heavy, and Zeb's muscles ached from tension. He flicked the light over the barn, its yellow beam bouncing around among locust posts and old wire and rotted feed sacks. Hay dust choked the air, and the crumbs from last fall's tobacco snowed between the cracks in the loft floor above. Something was moving around up there.
That ain't no damned wild Tennessee dogs.
Zeb clenched his bare gums together and moved as smoothly as his old bones would let him over to the loft stairs. A chicken was disturbed from its nest under the steps and almost got its knobby head blown off when it erupted into Zeb's face. Zeb picked up the flashlight he had dropped. The cows were noisier now, their milling more frantic.
Zeb put a trembling foot on the stairs. "Who's up yonder?" he hollered, hoping he sounded angry instead of scared. Nothing but moos answered him.
He'd heard what had happened to Boonie, and there was no way in hell that it was going to happen to him. The sheriff had even been out, asking if Zeb had seen or heard anything unusual. But the only thing Zeb had heard was those damned bells in the middle of the night, what was probably some of them high school kids finding a way to bug as many people as possible.
He thought now about going up to the house and ringing the sheriff's department. Littlefield told him to call if anything "unusual" happened. Littlefield sure liked that word. But Zeb had known Littlefield when the boy was knee-high to a scarecrow, and he didn't want the sheriff to think that he couldn't take care of his own problems. That was why Tennessee and the rest of the damned country was in such a mess. Everybody closed their eyes when the bad stuff came along.
John Wayne never even blinked.
Zeb played the spotlight into the darkness at the top of the stairs. He put a boot on the second tread, and before he could decide whether he was really going to or not, he had taken another step, then another, and he was halfway up before he even started thinking again. He laid the barrel of the shotgun over his left wrist so he could shine the light while still keeping his right hand at the trigger. If he fired the gun in that position, with it held beside his hip, the recoil would probably break his trigger finger. That was one worry that John Wayne never had.
"Might have been somebody with a knife or an ax," the sheriff had said. "Either that, or a wild animal."
Sure, it could be somebody with a blade. City folks had moved into Whispering Pines, up from Florida or down from New York, come to escape those streets that were full of maniacs with drugged-out eyes and hands that would rather slap you than lift in greeting. But guess what? The city folks had brought the bad things with them. A killer's instinct was as easily packed away in a U-Haul as a fitness machine or a golf cart was.
He'd told the sheriff in no uncertain terms that there wasn't an animal around here big enough to mutilate a man like that. Maybe off in Africa or something, but things were tamed over here. So when Littlefield said Perry Hoyle had mentioned a mountain lion, Zeb laughed out loud. The idea of a touched-in-the-head killer running around was way easier to swallow than believing a mountain lion was on the loose.
But right now, Zeb was in no mood to laugh at anything. His stomach was a wet sack of cornmeal, tied closed by the knot in his throat. He had ascended enough to poke his head into the loft, and the spotlight jittered from corner to corner, too fast for him to really see much.
Hay, stacked crooked like a child's wooden blocks.
The bright metal glint of his tools hanging on the wall by his workbench.
Night, cool beyond the chicken wire that covered the open windows.
Posts, the dull underside of the tin roofing, the hewed stakes where the tobacco hung to dry, the---
The dark thing, swooping, a sudden papery rattle breaking the strained quiet.
Zeb jerked the spotlight and his trigger hand tensed.
Bat.
Goddamned no-good mouse with wings.
Zeb exhaled, his heart pounding in his eardrums. A small warm ache filled his chest.
Easy now, Zebulon. Don't be putting yourself in no hospital.
He'd been in the hospital last year, and that was as close to prison as he ever wanted to be. Doctors sticking things inside every hole in his body, nurses seeing him naked, people in white coats telling him when to eat what pills. Couldn't have a chaw, no, sir. Have you ever had this, this, or this?
Finally, they'd cut him open and taken out his gall bladder. He suspected it was just for the hell of it, that they really couldn't find anything wrong but didn't want to admit it. But he figured the surgery would make them happy, and he'd never needed the damned gallbladder anyway. At least they didn't take anything important, and he got to go home again, even if he still felt like warmed-over liver mush about half the time.
Zeb was mad at himself for shaking. And to prove to himself that he didn't close his eyes to problems, and that, by God, he didn't have no sorry Tennessee blood in him, he walked across the loft, careful to avoid the black squares cut in the floor where he threw down hay to the cattle in the winter months.
If anybody was up here, they were trespassing, plain and simple.
And if it was a touched-in-the-head druggie escaped from the city, Zeb could handle him.
No matter the ax or knife.
A shadow of movement caught his eye, and he brought up the light to see that it was only a piece of hemp rope, swaying in the breeze that leaked in from the windows.
A metallic squeak came from behind him. Zeb spun, the flashlight beam crawling over the workbench. A short piece of stovepipe rocked back and forth. Wasn't no wind blowed that.
He crept toward the bench, the pump-action shotgun leading the way. It occurred to him that the flashlight was giving away his position. The druggie or whatnot knew exactly where Zeb was.
Nothing to do but walk brave and proud. He stood John Wayne straight and said, "Come on out where I can see you."
Only silence and the muted ruckus of the cows.
"Got a gun here."
A cricket chirped somewhere amid the hay.
Zeb played the light along the wall above the workbench. Something wasn't right.
There was the pitchfork, hanging by two rusty nails. A pulley, used for raising cows so they could be properly gutted. A cross-saw. An ax. A crop sprayer with a shoulder strap. A loop of harness. A shovel. Two hoes. An old mowing bar for the tractor. Three different thicknesses of chain.
And what else? What was missing?
The wall went dark and it took Zeb a second to realize that the light had been blocked.
Druggie.
A face filled the circle of light, a face that looked familiar but unreal. Zeb's chest was boiling, as hot as a chicken-scalding cauldron.
Not a druggie. A---
Zeb's finger tightened on the trigger, and the roar of exploding gunpowder slapped against the tin roofing, then echoed to give Zeb's ears an extra deafening blow. Pellets ripped scars in the wormy chestnut walls. And the thing that had been standing before him was blown back to hell where it belonged.
Except . . .
Sweet merciful Jesus.
The thing was still there, the face split into a sharp grin as the features around it rippled between skin and scale and fur and a shapeless, slick gray. But the eyes were the worst, those green stabbing rays that loved and hated worse than any dream or nightmare, eyes that owned, eyes that blessed and cursed, eyes that---
Zeb could hear himself whimpering as he tried to pull back the pumping stock. He'd been right: firing the gun had broken his shooting finger, but no time to worry about the pain in his heart and hand. He might have missed the first time, but the thing was closer now, only he was too weak to reload---this would never happen to John Wayne.
The spotlight had fallen in the hay, but its beam was angled upward. The bright-eyed thing filled the circle of light like the star of a demented puppet show. It raised the sledge, Zeb's cow-killing hammer, and as the eight-pound metal head began its downward stroke, aimed for that place just between and a little above the eyes, he realized that maybe those Tennessee-born bastards were right.
There was a time to close your eyes until the bad stuff went away.
Frank Littlefield topped the hill in his Trooper, blinking against the dawn as he threaded his way into the valley of Whispering Pines. He had the window rolled down because the smell of green spring was so much sweeter this far from town. The few houses were set away from the road, with stretches of pasture and tobacco fields broken by stands of hardwood forest. Below, the silver and brown of barn roofs made tiny rectangles along the plain of the river. Cows ambled near the fence lines, moving as sleepily and lazily as the river, their heads all pointed in the same direction.
A few vehicles passed, their occupants in dark suits and starched dresses, with hair respectfully combed or brushed. They were headed toward Barkersville, toward church. Sunday was supposed to be a holy day, a day of rest and fellowship, of fried chicken and televised sports. Not a day of death.
He reached the valley floor and turned onto the gravel road that he knew too well. A boy was fishing off the one-lane bridge, and Littlefield slowed to minimize the dust raised by the Trooper's passing. The sheriff checked the boy's stringer line to see if the trout were biting. The stringer was slack. Even the fish were lazy today.
He rounded a bend and the red church came into view. From this distance, the structure seemed to have a face. The windows were like flat eyes, the eaves a brooding brow, the uneven stone foundation a cruel grin of broken teeth. The church glowered, smug and hateful on its cemetery hill. Littlefield looked away to rid himself of the image of Samuel hanging from the eaves.
A strip of yellow plastic at the lower edge of the cemetery marked off the scene where Boonie Houck had died. Do Not Cross, the police line commanded. Funny how those words always came a little too late. If only the barrier had been in place a week ago. Then Boonie might be waking up with a hangover instead of sleeping on a metal gurney in the state medical examiner's meat locker.
All we have to do is mark off the whole world. Little yellow strips for everybody.
A truck was backed up to the church's door. It was Lester's farm truck, a big black Dodge two-ton. Bales of hay were stacked in the cattle bed. Lester had never worked on Sundays. The only time he missed a morning worship service was when he had to make a November run to the tobacco market in Durham.
Littlefield decided to have another talk with Lester. Storie would be waiting for him at Zeb Potter's place, but from what the detective had told him over the phone that morning, there wasn't much Littlefield could do for the old farmer. And the sheriff had a feeling that whatever was going on at the red church might have some connection to last night's murder. Because Zeb Potter most definitely had not been attacked by a mountain lion. Unless mountain lions had learned how to swing sledgehammers.
He pulled into the twin ruts that served as the church's driveway and parked by the Dodge. Lester was standing at the church door, a bale of brown-yellow hay in his gloved hands. "Howdy, Sheriff. You're getting to be a regular around these parts."
"A mite too regular," Littlefield said, getting out of the Trooper. He looked up at the dogwood, at the thin black branches that never died. He started to glance at the belfry, but caught himself and turned his attention back to Lester. "I guess the sale went through okay."
"Sure did. I ain't seen that many zeroes since my last report card, way back in the fourth grade." Lester drained the excess tobacco juice from his mouth.
Someone came out of the sanctuary. It was the Day woman, the mother of the boys who had found Boonie's body. A red kerchief held her hair out of her face, and her shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up. Bits of straw clung to the flannel.
"Hi, Sheriff," she said, tossing a bale of hay into the truck and starting back inside the church.
"Good morning, ma'am. How's your boy this morning?"
She looked confused at first, as if she didn't know who he was talking about. "Ronnie? Oh, he's fine. Just fine. They bounce back fast when they're that age."
Fast enough so that you can go out and leave them unattended? "Glad to hear it, ma'am. What about the little one?"
"Timmy's okay, too. He's at the house, keeping watch for me."
"Did he remember anything else about finding the body? Anything that might help us?"
She looked at Lester, then into the dark belly of the church. "I think it's best that he forget all about it, don't you?"
"Maybe so." Who or what was inside the church that was making her so nervous? And what was she doing here in the first place? To Littlefield, the chore seemed like something more than just a case of neighbor helping neighbor.
Lester squinted up at the sun. "Excuse us, Sheriff. We got work to do."
"Sure. One thing, though. You hear anything last night?"
Lester's eyes flicked almost imperceptibly to the belfry. Almost. "No. I slept like a hibernating log. Why?"
"I thought you might have heard something. What about you, Mrs. Day?"
The woman was leaning against the door frame, biting her lip. "Heard something? What do you mean?"
"Like maybe something from over your neighbor's way? On the Potter farm?"
She shook her head. "Why, no, Sheriff."
He eased closer to the steps that led into the red church, veering clear of the dogwood. The air coming from the church was cool, even though light slanted through the windows. Lester and Linda stepped side by side as if to block his way.
"Somebody killed Zeb Potter last night." The sheriff watched for any reaction. Lester quickened the pace of his tobacco chewing. Linda Day looked in the direction of the Potter farm.
"I guess it for sure wasn't no mountain lion this time, was it?" Lester said.
"That's what my deputies say. Zeb was killed with a sledgehammer."
"Huh. They know who done it?"
"Not yet. We're trying to lift some fingerprints." But Littlefield suspected they would find no clues. No fingerprints, no footprints, no clothing fibers. And no eyewitnesses. "I was wondering if you heard the bells ring last night?"
Littlefield had learned from long experience how to tell if a person was about to lie. And Lester fit the profile. The old farmer's nostrils flared slightly with indignation, he drew in a sharp breath, his eyes shifted left and right, and he stood a little straighter. "Like I told you, I was sleeping like the dead."
The sheriff nodded. "What about you, ma'am? Or your husband?"
She was a better liar than Lester. Maybe she had done it too often. "Well, I had the radio on most of the night, at least till I fell asleep. I wouldn't have heard nothing. David was . . . asleep."
"I see. Well, I guess I better get over to Zeb's."
He started to turn, then quickly looked up at the pair, trying to catch them off guard. "You mind if I have a quick look inside the church? You know, in case the killer stopped by. I'm kind of figuring that the same person that killed Zeb killed Boonie."
Sweat glistened underneath Lester's eyes. He pulled at the straps of his coveralls. "Well, Sheriff, I don't mind a bit, but it ain't my property no more. I don't know if I can give permission like that unless you got a search warrant."
A smooth voice boomed from inside the church. "Now, now, Lester. Our church is always open."
Lester and Linda parted, standing one on each side of the door like concrete lions at a library entrance.
A man stepped into the light. He was tall, with dark curly hair and healthy, tanned skin. He had a slight touch of gray hair at the temples. His cheeks crinkled when he smiled, but his deep brown eyes were unreadable. He wore a white cotton shirt and a gray tie, slacks, and a pair of leather shoes that cost about two weeks' worth of Littlefield's salary.
"A church should turn away no one, especially a man who seeks the truth," the man said. An aroma of cologne wafted from him, but underneath the spicy musk was a disturbing smell that Littlefield couldn't place. The man stooped and extended a hand. "Sheriff Littlefield. I'm glad we have a capable man on the job in these uncertain and dangerous times."
The sheriff climbed to the landing. The preacher's hand was as cool as a fish. "Pleased to meet you, uh . . ."
"It's been a long time. Nearly a lifetime ago."
Now his face was familiar. McFall. Except he didn't have that typical McFall slump, that devious way of moving, the almost cowering attitude that ran in the McFall family as a result of being snubbed and kicked around. "I'm Archer McFall," he said, in that used-car-salesman voice of his.
"Archer. Lester told me you were moving back here." Littlefield glanced at Lester, who had suddenly become highly interested in the flaking paint of the truck's cattle bed.
"Well, Sheriff, everybody loves these mountains," Archer said. "It gets in your blood."
"And you bought this here church?"
"Yes, sir. I'm going to open it up again. God's work has been sorely neglected in these parts. People are in desperate need of the Word and the Way. That we have a murderer in our midst is only one more sign of how far we've fallen."
Littlefield nodded. He never knew how to conduct himself in the presence of a preacher. He always felt a flash of guilt for his sins and his irregular church visitations, but usually an aura of forgiving calm emanated from someone of the cloth. With Archer, though, he felt nothing but the guilt.
"Come on inside, Sheriff. Make sure there's no killer here. We can't have a devil hiding out in the house of God."
Suddenly the sheriff didn't want to step inside. In his mind, he could hear the fluttery Halloween laugh from his childhood. The boards were clapping, clawing, the church door was a mouth, he was going to be swallowed, like Jonah into the belly of the whale. Like his brother Samuel.
He swayed dizzily and felt the preacher's strong grip on his forearm. "Are you okay, Sheriff?"
"Uh . . ." Littlefield rubbed his temples. "Not getting much sleep lately. These damned---excuse me, Reverend---these doggoned murder cases must be getting to me."
"There's peace in prayer, Sheriff. You will find your killer. All things in God's good time."
Littlefield felt his feet shuffle forward, almost against his will, and then he was inside the church. Most of the hay was gone. The handmade pews that had been stacked against one wall the day before were now lined unevenly across the floor. Brooms, pitchforks, mops, and buckets were scattered across the sanctuary. The room smelled of candle wax. They had accomplished a lot this morning.
Or had they been working all night?
Behind him, Lester and Linda resumed their work. A woman emerged from the small wing at one side of the dais. Littlefield recognized her face but didn't know her name. She gave a short nod and began dusting the lectern. Littlefield thought he might sneeze, but he rubbed his nose until the urge passed.
"Looks like you'll soon be ready for a service," Littlefield said.
"There are different kinds of service, Sheriff. I work for God, you work for the people. But we're a lot alike, in a way."
"What way?"
"We both know there's more to this church than just nails and chestnut and rippled glass."
Littlefield tried again to read the man's eyes. The irises glittered like muddy diamonds with many facets, each facet hiding a different secret. Archer surely was well versed about the legends, handed down in his family for generations. Those were the sources of his childhood beatings. That he could maintain faith in God after such suffering was a miracle in itself.
"My father used to say, 'It's people what makes a church,'" Littlefield said.
Archer smiled, showing perfect white teeth. "He was a wise man."
"Aren't you afraid of what people are going to say when you open the church again?"
"God delivered Daniel from the lion's den. He delivered Isaac from Abraham's sacrificial altar. Why should I expect any less?"
"Well, for one thing, push never came to shove for Abraham, because he never had to deliver the knife blow. And Daniel didn't have a great-great-grandfather named Wendell McFall."
The preacher let out a laugh that rolled from deep inside his diaphragm. The sound echoed in the wooden hollow of the church, the acoustics amplifying the power of Archer's voice. "Ah, the scandals and the ghost stories," he said. "There's only one ghost here and that's the Holy Ghost. As for the rest of it, I hope that the legends might draw a few curiosity seekers to our services. There are many paths to the one true Way."
"Amen to that." Littlefield walked to the dais, the fall of his boots resounding in the hollow of the church. He leaned over the railing that fronted the pulpit. The stain was still there. Littlefield's dizziness returned as he tried to attach an image to the random shape.
And he saw that it was the shape of an angel, or a Bell Monster, winged and fierce, with jagged claws and . . .
Yeah, sure. Sounds like something a murderer's lawyer would make up. It's nothing but a stain, old paint or something.
It was larger than it had been the day before, yet still retained its weathered quality, as if the stain had been embedded in the floor ages ago. And Littlefield wondered if it had been even smaller before Boonie's death. As if . . .
He didn't want to give legitimacy to his superstitious turn of mind. Telling Detective Sergeant Storie about the ghosts had been foolish enough. But now that the thought was trying to form, he held it outside himself, examined it rationally.
. . . as if the stain is made from the blood of its victims.
There. Now that he admitted it, it seemed safe and perfectly silly. A psychotic killer wasn't on the loose. Something worse was on the loose, somehow finding legs and hands and a pair of eyes and a soul.
A soul.
"See anything unusual, Sheriff?"
Archer's voice pulled him from a pool of dizziness. He met those brown eyes again, eyes that were now as dull and faded as the ancient woodwork of the church. Some famous person had said that eyes were the windows to the soul. Well, Archer's windows needed a good washing. Except then, you might be able to see inside.
"I don't believe you have anything to worry about," Littlefield said. "Now that you've cleaned up, there's no place for a killer to hide."
Except right out in the open.
Archer smiled, standing with his arms crossed. He was taller than the sheriff. "I never worry. I have God on my side, remember?"
"Yeah, but isn't that what the other side always says, too?"
Archer laughed again. "So they do, Sheriff. So they do."
Littlefield walked back through the church, Archer following. "I used to come to services here when I was young," the sheriff said. "Back when it was Potter's Mill Baptist Church."
"Oh, is that so? Being inside it must bring back a lot of memories."
Littlefield didn't respond. He paused in the foyer to look up at the square hole in the ceiling. "You going to get a new rope?"
"Sooner or later. And I hope none of the congregation gets a crazy notion to hang their preacher."
"God stopped Abraham's knife." Lester and the Day woman were standing in the doorway. They drew back as he went back into the sunshine. "Thanks for your time. Guess I'd better get on over to Zeb's."
As Littlefield was getting in the Trooper, Archer called to him from the steps: "Say, Sheriff. Why don't you come back sometime for a service?"
"When?"
"First one's tonight at midnight."
Midnight. It figured. Nothing could be ordinary about this church.
Maybe he would come to a service, Littlefield thought as he drove away. Crazy as it was, maybe he would.
The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes clicked sharp bone against Ronnie's window. Can you hear him aknocking?
Ronnie was trapped by the weight of blankets, frozen in sweat, clenched around the tight fire in his belly. Close your eyes and it will go away. Close your eyes---
His eyes were already closed. He opened them.
The sunlight coming through the window made his head hurt. He'd been asleep for so long that he couldn't remember where he was for about a minute. Plus he'd been having really weird dreams about the red church and a walking bloody thing and something to do with Mom.
"Mom?" he called, his throat dry.
His nose wasn't as sore today, but he felt as if somebody had taken a hand pump and blown his face full of air. He licked his thick lips. "Mom?"
Tim came into the room, still wearing his pajamas. And he was eating chocolate-chip cookies. Mom was going to kill the little dork if she caught him eating cookies so early in the day. But, after the scary dreams, Ronnie was actually kind of glad to see his brother, though he'd never admit it in a million years.
"Where's Mom?" Ronnie asked.
Tim shrugged. His belly button showed below the fabric of his top. "Ain't seen her this morning."
"What time is it?" Ronnie groaned as he tried to sit up, then fell back onto the pillows.
"Almost eleven."
"Eleven?" That meant that Mom was skipping church again. It was the first time she'd missed church two weeks in a row since Tim was a baby. Not that Ronnie minded, because his Sunday school teacher, Preacher Staymore, usually told him he needed to be saved, then made him wait after class while everybody else went to the main sanctuary for worship service.
Preacher Staymore would sit beside Ronnie and ask the spirit of Jesus to move into Ronnie's heart so that the child might be spared, and though Jesus loved the little children, there was only one path to salvation and that was through the blood of the Lord. And Preacher Staymore would tremble and put his palm on Ronnie's head and invoke the mercy and the power and the goodness, then ask Ronnie if he could hear the Lord aknocking. And the whole time Ronnie would be thinking about how Preacher Staymore's breath smelled like a basket of rotten fruit.
"Can you hear Him aknocking?" the preacher would say, his eyes shining and glassy. "He's awanting in. And all you got to do is say, 'Come on in, Jesus. Come right on into this sorry sinful heart of mine and clean house.' If you won't do that one little thing, then don't go crying to the Lord when the devil comes to drag you into the pits of hell."
And Ronnie would always be afraid. That message, along with the preacher's pungent breath, made him hastily agree to be saved, to let the Lord shine His everlasting light into the darkness of Ronnie's heart, to throw the door wide open and say, "Come in, come in, come in."
Getting saved always filled him with a kind of warmth, as if something really had come into his heart. But the feeling always faded, and he'd slip back into his sinning ways. Preacher Staymore said there were two kinds of sin: the kind of the flesh, and the kind of the spirit. Ronnie suspected that sins of the flesh had something to do with the naked women like those in Boonie's magazine, but his own sins were mostly those of the spirit. Still, any kind of sin made his heart beat faster, and maybe that drove the Lord away, what with all the noise and commotion in his chest.
So every few weeks, Preacher Staymore would sense that Ronnie needed another saving. Ronnie was scared enough of the hellfire not to take any chances, even though sometimes he wondered, if the Lord was merciful, why would He make people go to such a bad hot place? And if sinners went to hell, what was the point of Jesus dying for them in the first place? And if the Lord was all-powerful, why didn't He just make people so they didn't sin? And if He already knew what happened in people's hearts, why did there have to be a Judgment Day when all the sins were revealed?
But those kinds of thoughts were sins of the spirit, and led to a fresh need to be saved. Ronnie didn't want to think about that right now. He had enough troubles, like a broken nose and his parents separated and a scary red church and bad dreams.
"Have you seen Mom?" he asked Tim.
Tim bit a crescent of cookie and shook his head. "Not since last night," he said, spraying cookie crumbs onto the floor as he spoke.
"Dang."
"The police are out again."
Ronnie sat up. "Here?"
"No. They're over at Mr. Potter's."
"Mr. Potter? I guess maybe the sheriff wanted to ask him some questions."
Tim shook his head. His bowl haircut made him look like a turtle. "I don't think so. Their blue lights were flashing when they drove up. And I saw the ambulance over by the barn."
"You're fooling."
Tim's eyes widened behind his spectacles. "No, I ain't. You can go look."
Ronnie rolled himself out of bed with a groan. He leaned against the railing of the top bunk, dizzy from spending nearly two days in bed. Through the window, he could see two police cars on the Potter farm. The sheriff's vehicle was parked by the house. One of the deputies walked toward the barn, the sun glinting off his handcuffs and black shoes.
"You don't suppose . . . ?" Ronnie said.
"That whatever got Boonie Houck got Mr. Potter?" Tim sounded almost pleased at the prospect. "That would be cool. Like one of those movies Mom won't let us watch."
Ronnie remembered his dream. Maybe it was just his overactive imagination again. "Did you hear anything last night?" he asked, trying to sound like he didn't care one way or another.
"Not really. I heard some bells ringing. I don't know what time, except for it was dark."
"I hope Mom is okay." Sure, Mom would be okay. Nothing would get her.
Not even the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.
Ronnie thought of Preacher Staymore's words: Can you hear Him aknocking? He's awanting in.
No way in hell would Ronnie let that thing come in.
He shivered in the sunlight.
Sunday. A holy day, at least to the Protestants and Catholics and Mormons. Fools all. But Mama Bet comforted herself with the knowledge that they'd be burned by the light in due time.
It was almost as if God had roped off a little section of the Blue Ridge and saved it for the Potters, Abshers, McFalls, and the rest. The original families came from Scotland and England, as white as the driven snow, though their hearts were as dark and Jesus-laden as any of their ancestors' hearts. And somehow those families had managed to protect this piece of valley at the foot of Buckhorn from invaders and outsiders. Kept it pure, except for the original taint that they brought with them when they settled in the 1780s.
You can't ever shake the blood.
She sat in her front porch rocker, looking out over the mountains she loved so much. Heaven ought to be this nice. A fresh spring breeze cut through a gap, working up from the foothills to stir the jack pines and locusts and poplars. The sky was clear enough for her to see the gray face of Grandfather Mountain forty miles in the distance. Even with her cataracts, she could make out the features that looked like a brow, a nose, and a long granite beard.
Her goat bleated below the porch. She kept a few chickens, too, but they were free-ranging up in the woods. She was getting too old to track down their eggs, and plucking their feathers was too rough on her fingers. Come to think of it, she didn't know why she bothered with a goat, either. She hated the taste of goat's milk, and she didn't know how to cook the animal up even if she could bear to kill it.
"What are you thinking about, Mother?" asked Archer. He sat on the porch swing, uncomfortable, his face rigid, as if holding his earthly flesh together took all his concentration. He was a fine boy, handsome and respectably clean-shaven, with the whole world laid out before him. All a mother could want for her son.
She felt a tug in her heart, or maybe it was a spell of the murmurs. The murmurs were coming on a lot more often lately. God was priming her for a trip up to the kingdom, striking her with all the little ailments that added up to the miseries of old age. God could be downright cruel when He set his mind to it. But He allowed good stuff to happen, too. Like Archer.
"I was just remembering," she said. "When you was little, you used to go up yonder on that knoll and pick gooseberries. You'd eat them things till you turned green and got sick to your stomach. And I'd lay you down in bed, tuck you in, and give you a nice cup of peppermint tea."
"And you'd tell me stories," Archer said. His voice was different from the one he'd used on television. It was softer, more down-home, a little of his Carolina mountain accent creeping in between those California words.
"Sure did. You probably don't remember any of them silly stories."
Archer leaned forward, sniffed the air. "I remember them all."
"All of them?"
"Yeah. The Old Testament. Jack tales. Ghost stories. And the real story of Jesus. Except that one always gave me nightmares."
"I hope I done right. It wasn't easy, raising you by myself. I reckon I made some mistakes along the way, but I always acted out of love."
Archer left his porch swing and knelt before her rocker. He took her hands and looked up, his brown eyes shining with that same radiant depth they'd had when he was a baby. As he grew older, those eyes got him in trouble. They made the other kids suspicious and made adults uncomfortable. Those eyes, plus the fact that he was a McFall, pretty much brought the persecution on him. Many was the time he came home from school with a black eye or a skinned knee or his little shoulders shaking with sobs.
All she could tell him was that the lamb must walk among wolves. He seemed to accept that he would be persecuted, that the human hatred was all part of God's plan. He came up with that bit about "There will come great trials" all by himself. What willpower it must have taken to keep from lashing out, what patience and understanding Archer had possessed even from an early age. Of course, he always knew that he was the Second Son. She was up-front about that right from the moment he could speak.
"You did everything perfectly," Archer said. "God should be proud."
"Well, I ain't so sure about that. If I was so all-fired perfect, maybe I'd be out of this place by now."
"Why don't you let me buy you one of those chalets at Ski Village?"
Mama Bet looked at the scar that ran up Wellborn Mountain. The steel threads of the lift cables arced along the barren slope. The snow had melted weeks ago, leaving nothing but a mud patch. She despised those ski people. "No. People best stick to their own kind. Besides, I reckon God put us here for a reason."
And that reason just MIGHT have something to do with that little hellhole in back of the root cellar, the one I got to keep plugged with prayers. But I ain't going to worry YOU with that.
Something beeped in Archer's pocket. Mama Bet looked at him suspiciously.
He smiled. "Cellular phone. You ought to let me get you one, Mother."
"That's the devil's tool," she said, frowning. "I don't even trust words that come over wires. When it's invisible, there's no telling where the messages are coming from."
Archer pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open. He put it to his head. "Archer McFall."
He listened for a moment, then put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Excuse me, Mother. It's the foundation offices in California."
She nodded. She'd been against his exodus to California from the start. Nothing out there but heathens and hippies and all manner of strange cults. Archer had no business among that sort.
But children had to learn on their own, didn't they? All you could do was fill them up with love, and let them wander the path. You couldn't hammer faith into them. You couldn't drive goodliness and grace into them like nails. You couldn't make them believe the things God wanted them to believe. They just had to search in their own hearts, and, God willing, come up with the truth.
She watched him as he carried on a conversation, something about stock splits, portfolios, and divestitures. She didn't understand why God kept Archer meddling in such affairs. But then, there was a lot she didn't understand about God. And she had to admit, that black Mercedes looked awfully shiny and clean down there in the driveway.
She rose from her rocker and headed for the door. Archer glanced at her questioningly, but she waved him back to his phone conversation. She entered the house, walking over the same boards that the McFalls had trodden for more than two hundred years. The main room was the original cabin, thick hand-hewed logs chinked with yellowed cement. Not much had changed in the room since her great-great-great-grandparents Robert and Hepzibah McFall had first blessed these walls with love and devotion.
The old stone fireplace was black from ten thousand fires. The room was dark, the small wooden windows nailed shut. Three sides of the cabin were partially underground, built that way to cut down on the wind leaking through the cracks, though the room always stayed as cold as a Christian's heart. Water was piped from a spring up the hill, and a leak dripped steadily into the freestanding ceramic sink in the corner.
A few rooms had been added onto the south side of the cabin, and these had glass windows. The sun poured through, God's pure light, but it barely touched what had once served as kitchen, bedroom, and living room combined. When electricity first reached these parts in the 1950s, Mama Bet wouldn't allow them to hook up the original part of the house. Some things were to be kept sacred, untouched by the progress that marked the spread of the devil's influence.
Mama Bet went past the rough hemlock table where Wendell McFall had once taken his meals. She parted the gingham that curtained off the pantry. She took a candle from a counter and lit it, and looked to make sure Archer was still outside. She stepped inside among the shelves and rows of canning jars, dried beans, and sacks of cornmeal. The chill from the back of the pantry crept over her like a live thing, a giant shadow, an ice-cold invisible lover.
She pushed aside the rotted boards that lined the back of the pantry. A fungal, earthy smell filled her nostrils. She extended the candle into the root cellar, peering over the rows of potatoes and red apples into the darkness. The candle shrank from the stale, still air, its light swallowed by the dirt walls of the cellar.
"I'm getting too old for this, God," she whispered in silent prayer. God said nothing, but she knew He was up there, watching, biting His tongue to keep from laughing. She wiggled the base of the candle into the red clay until it stood without her holding it. She could see the stone that blocked the narrow tunnel, a tunnel that wound down and down and deep into the earth.
This was the one secret she had spared Archer, the one that had been passed down through eight generations of McFalls. The Appalachians were the oldest mountains in the world, had risen from the hot magma when God crushed the world together. And she knew exactly why God made the earth. He had trapped the devil inside it, wrapped billions of tons of rock and dirt and molten lava around the beast. And, oh, how the devil must have kicked and struggled to get free, shoving up mountains and causing the rifts that became the oceans.
She knew this as surely as she knew that Archer was a savior. You didn't question universal truths. You accepted them on faith. You tucked them in your heart and made the best of them. You fought for them. You made the sacrifices that kept those truths alive.
Who knew when the devil had first wormed its way finally to the surface of the world? It could have been tens of thousands of years ago, or a few hundred. All that mattered now was that the devil was loose upon the face of the earth, and Archer had to defeat it.
That had to be why Archer had returned to Whispering Pines, why God had called His son back home. The devil was still here, tied to this mouth of hell, living in those original families. The devil had hidden behind the faces of the Littlefields, worn the masks of the Houcks, slipped into the blood and meat of the Mathesons.
Archer would have to perform the cleansing. And she had to help. Even though she was as worn as these mountains, eroded by time and tides, by the forces of God's tireless punishment. Even though she was only mortal.
She crawled to the rear of the root cellar and rolled away the flat stone. In the weak light, she could see the small crippled cross that had been carved into its surface. She stuck her face near the black opening. She never understood why the path to hell was so bone-chillingly cold. It should have been blazing hot, and smelling of sulfur and brimstone and smoke instead of dirt. But God worked in mysterious ways, and the devil worked just as strangely.
She cast her prayers into the pit. She could hold back the hordes. With her faith, she could win the battle below. Let God and Archer take care of the devil up here.
Mama Bet finished her prayers, the same ones the McFalls had been saying for over two centuries. She replaced the stone, sweating with effort even though her fingers were stiff from the cold. On aching knees she backed her way to the pantry, retrieved the candle, and replaced the boards along the back wall. She wiped the dirt from her hands and cussed God for burdening her with this holy work. As if filling her up with a messiah weren't bad enough. No, He made her crawl on her belly like a serpent.
She blew out the candle and peeked through the gingham curtains. Archer was still outside. She could hear him carrying on with his business deals over the telephone, acting for all the world like an ordinary person. Well, Jesus had taken on work as a carpenter before starting up his career as a liar. Archer might as well be a rich preacher as a poor one.
She turned on the kitchen tap and stuck her hands under the frigid springwater. The dirt ran red down the drain. She put the candle away and wiped her hands on a towel. Her dress was stained at the knees, but she didn't like to change clothes in midday. That was wasteful, the kind of thing a Christian might do.
She heard voices outside. They ain't supposed to gather here, not with Archer around. The church will be ready soon enough.
She hurried onto the porch. Archer folded his phone and put it away. At the edge of the yard, in the shade of the trees, stood some members of the congregation: Stepford Matheson, Sonny Absher, Donna Gregg, and Rudy Buchanan. Rudy carried a shotgun and a Bible.
They started forward, Rudy's broad face split with a grin, Sonny and Stepford red-faced from drink. Donna Gregg hung back, tugging Sonny's sleeve. He brushed her away and scowled.
"What do y'all want?" Mama Bet called, shading her eyes so she could see them better. Archer stood beside her, looking down on them.
"We been thinking," said Rudy, apparently the leader of this shoddy crew.
"Well, there's a first time for everything."
Rudy's thick lips curled. Mama Bet could almost hear the gears churning rustily inside his head as he tried to think of a comeback. He soon gave up, and settled for raising the shotgun barrel until it pointed at the sky.
"We've been hearing a lot about the red church, and the day of reckoning, and all this foolishness about 'great trials,'" Rudy said. "Now all of a sudden you're telling us that Archer's the Second Son of God. And that somehow we're all part of it, because of what our kin did way back when." He looked at Stepford and Sonny.
Stepford swayed a little, and Rudy pressed the Bible against him until he regained his balance.
"Yeah," Stepford said. "You're telling us that this"---he pointed to Archer---"is the earthly face of God? Then God must be one hell of a practical joker, I say."
Mama Bet started to speak, but Archer raised his hand. "I don't blame you for your doubts," he said to them. "I know some of you were raised as Christians. But people use God for their own purposes, they twist His ways to benefit themselves. People build up the idols that are easy to accept. And they always destroy what they can't understand."
Sonny spat. His eyes were bloodshot and bright. "We didn't hang Wendell McFall."
"You don't think it's fair that you have to suffer for the sins of your ancestors. But blood sins require payment in blood. And sacrifice now will protect your blood unto the fourth generation."
Rudy elbowed Stepford. "Tell him."
Stepford moved reluctantly closer, until he was at the foot of the porch steps. Mama Bet's goat, which was tied to the porch rail, came over and sniffed his dirty jeans. Stepford shooed the goat away and looked up at Archer. "We decided we ain't so sure you're a messiah after all."
Rudy nodded, his courage bolstered by the shotgun. "Yeah. All we hear is fancy talk. Sure, Boonie Houck and Zeb Potter got killed. But how do we know that has anything to do with these 'great trials' we keep hearing about?"
"Getting killed sure don't take no sacrifice," Stepford said. "It ain't like they were asking to die, or anything."
Donna Gregg pressed close behind Sonny, her chest against his back.
Dirty sinners, Mama Bet thought. It's a wonder that God and Archer don't strike them down on the spot. And Sonny married, at that. Of course, his wife took down to Raleigh after she got tired of getting beat up every time he got drunk. I can hardly wait to see them adulterers get cleansed.
"This is about sacrifice," Archer said, his voice lifting now, resounding with the power of his faith. Mama Bet's heart swelled with pride.
"More big talk," Sonny said. "But we ain't seen no signs."
"Yeah," taunted Rudy. "Why don't you whip us up a miracle? Maybe break us up some loaves and fishes?"
"To hell with that," slurred Sonny. "Do something worthwhile, like changing some water into wine."
The drunken trio laughed, Donna smiling uncertainly behind them.
"True faith doesn't require proof," Archer said.
"Exactly what I'm saying," Rudy said. "I can't rightly call my faith 'true.' It's more like it's been shoved down my throat. And I don't much like the taste of it."
Mama Bet saw that Sonny and Stepford wore similar expressions of rebellion.
The devil's in them so deep they can't even separate it out from their own selves. Can't they just accept that the time for the cleansing is here, that God's back and ready to do the job right this time?
"Archer?" Mama Bet said. Her son was holding his head in his hands, his knuckles white from the pressure of squeezing. He bowed forward, wobbling unsteadily, and nearly fell against the porch rail. Mama Bet hurried to catch him.
My poor baby.
Muffled moans of anguish came from behind his hands. His legs and shoulders quivered. She touched him, and her fingers felt electrified. Suddenly the moans turned into roars and Archer threw his arms wide.
The sky darkened as if a large cloud had passed over the sun.
Donna screamed, and Sonny joined in. Rudy dropped the shotgun and clasped the Bible to his chest. Stepford fainted dead away, his legs folding up like a wet stretch of rope and his eyes rolling up to stare at the top of his skull.
Mama Bet looked on her son with love. Archer smiled, all wings and claws and livers for eyes.
Detective Storie knelt in the hayloft of the Potter barn. The sledgehammer lay on the warped boards of the floor, its handle slick with blood, the eight-pound head clotted with grue. A few strands of gray hair clung to the shredded matter that had once been encased in the delicate shell of Zebulon Potter's skull.
The sheriff's face turned ashen as he looked at the body. "Zeb was a friend of my parents," he said, looking out the window as though the mountain slopes were a movie screen and the past were being projected onto them. "I used to help him bale hay during the summer. He even gave me a hound puppy a long time ago. So long ago that Samuel was still alive."
Storie didn't like the vacant look in the sheriff's eyes. She'd seen that look once. During a criminal transport, in her first week on the Charlotte Metro force, she had met evil, if such a thing could possibly be embodied. She'd been green then, a rookie who thought that police officers could actually make a difference simply by caring.
The middle-aged suspect in the back of the car had allegedly raped an eight-year-old girl. He bragged about it as they drove to the Mecklenburg County jail, his unshaven face broken into a satisfied grin, his eyes afire with some secret madness. Storie was riding shotgun, fuming and helpless. Innocent until proven guilty, even if they're guilty. That was what they taught in cop school.
"The puppy was named Roscoe," Littlefield said quietly, rubbing his scalp. "Got run over before it was barely big enough to bark."
Perry Hoyle knelt and examined the open cavity of the victim's skull. Storie took another photograph and the camera's flash glinted off Hoyle's bald head. She pulled a metal tape measure from her jacket pocket. "You mind holding that end?" she asked the sheriff.
He started as if jerked from a dream and took the end of the tape. Storie pointed to the hammer. The sheriff held the tape near the handle and Storie let the tape unwind until it stretched near the body.
"Seventeen feet," she said, though she doubted the sheriff was listening. He was so damned hard to figure out, at times friendly, at times cold and distant. But she didn't need friends, and she didn't need to waste thoughts on Frank Littlefield. She wrote the measurement in her notebook.
Long ago, the child rapist had put his face near the wire screen that separated the front seat from the rear. His breath smelled like sardines and gasoline. "Hey, good-looking, what you doing after work?" he'd said.
Storie had clenched her fists, fighting the urge to pull her nightstick from her belt and drive it into the rapist's face. But, no, he was a suspect and he had rights. No matter that he'd already pulled three years for two separate indecent liberties raps. No matter that he'd be out on the street in two years. No matter anything but that the world was absolutely, hopelessly insane. God had made a pretty good stew, then He'd screwed it up by mixing in humans and giving them free will and brains.
Brains. Zeb Potter's brains were as gray as the old oak boards that covered the barn walls.
"I can finish up here, Sheriff," she said. He nodded absently and moved to the workbench. Deputy Wade Wellborn helped Hoyle put the body on a stretcher. The body made a sticky sloughing noise as it was lifted from the pool of blood.
"Guess I'm not helping much," Littlefield said quietly. Storie didn't want to show him up in front of the others. She understood that vacant look. Because she knew it well.
She'd seen it herself, in her own eyes, in the mirror of a Charlotte Metro police car. As she was transporting a rape suspect with a familiar face and secret mad eyes. It was the same suspect she'd arrested a few months earlier. Purest evil wearing meat. This time, he'd gone for a six-year-old. The girl had died on the way to the hospital.
The rapist recognized Storie. "Hey, honey, you can lock me up, but I'll be back. One of these days, I might even get around to your part of town."
Storie had nearly pulled the car over and shot the creep in the head. But she did her job and took him in, handed him over to a judicial system that was fair but overmatched.
That was when Storie made two decisions: she would leave the Metro force and get a job with a rural department. And she would try her damnedest to make a small difference, even though the world was absolutely, hopelessly insane. Even though God was insane.
Or was God, like the serial rapist, also innocent until proven guilty?
She watched Littlefield follow Hoyle, Wellborn, and the cold body of Zeb Potter down the loft stairs. Outside, a small breeze played through the trees, the sound she imagined gave Whispering Pines its name. Somewhere out there, a killer was harboring a secret madness in his eyes. Storie didn't like secrets.
David Day watched from the hills as the sunset threw bands of orange over the dark lines of the horizon. The air was moist and smelled of damp leaves. Normally, being alone in the woods gave him a sense of peace. But under these trees where he had spent some of the happiest hours of his life, he felt like an intruder. Because now the forest belonged to something else.
Below him, the old Gregg farm was spread out like a wrinkled green carpet. He still thought of it as home, even though he hadn't slept there in weeks. But all the things that made the place home were still behind those white walls of the house: the boys, the bed, the maple gun cabinet, the trophy heads on the wall. Everything but her.
He hated that the boys were alone. But they were safer at the house than with Linda at the church. She would give them to Archer sooner or later, unless David could find a way to stop Archer again. But this time would be more difficult.
The red church was crouched on a little rise to his left, above the road and the curve of the river. Six or eight cars were parked by the old building. People milled around the cemetery grounds, going into and out of the church. They moved like ants on a sugar hill, heads meeting, seeming to communicate silently from that distance. One of those ants was Linda.
The police were finally finished at the Potter farm. David had seen them carrying a stretcher from the barn. From the way the deputies' backs stooped, the load must have been heavy. The sheet-draped load was marred by a dark stain. They'd slid their burden into Perry Hoyle's station wagon. Then the vehicles had driven away one by one, including the sheriff's Trooper. The cruiser driven by that woman deputy was the last to leave, about an hour ago.
Poor old Zeb. And Boonie before him. In California, the killing hadn't seemed as brutal, as casual. But David hadn't known any of those victims. Boonie and Zeb were mountain folks. These were his people who were dying this time, not nameless longhairs and drifters.
Archer was gathering a flock, just as he had done in California. And David had learned that there were only two kinds of people who followed Archer McFall: the dead and the about to be.
David lifted his Marlin rifle and peered into the scope, the odor of gun oil comfortingly strong. Through the magnifying lenses, he saw Lester at the church door. The crosshairs were centered on the man's beet-red face. David shifted the scope and saw Becca Faye Greene, her smile a rapture of lipstick. Another shift, and Linda's face filled the small circle of the scope.
Linda.
They'd met in the ninth grade, a Buckhorn Mountain boy and a valley farm girl. Most of the families, including the Days, who lived on the back side of Buckhorn were the descendants of Union sympathizers. Some people in these parts still held a grudge, the ones who had Rebel-flag license plates and considered summer tourists to be invaders. In seedy bars at each corner of the county, the Civil War was renewed every Friday night.
But, Day or not, Linda had let him pick her books up that time she'd dropped them in the mud getting off the school bus. She had thick books, math and social studies. All David had was an auto-repair manual and a set of plans for a wooden desk.
She had pushed her hair back with one hand and actually looked into his face. Her eyes were deep and blue and seemed to penetrate his skin so that she could see everything he kept hidden. He looked back and grinned like a sick mule. His hands felt as if they were made of wood as he wiped the books clean against his pants.
"Thanks," she said, smiling. Her teeth were only a little crooked, just enough so that David didn't feel self-conscious. He gave her the books. She walked away, her figure shifting attractively inside her knee-length dress.
He had solved the mystery of those curves, though it had taken years. But the waiting was far from a waste. David knew that she liked yellow squash better than butternut, and she hadn't laughed at his big dream of owning a saw mill. She liked Bob Seger, and David liked him a little. She cried every time they slaughtered a beef steer. He cried when each of the boys was born.
Through the scope, her blue eyes were damp and bright. But the depth had been replaced by a flat glaze, her pupils large. She was scared or excited or aroused. Or maybe all three. Just the way she had looked in California.
David swiveled the rifle barrel slightly to the right. Archer smiled into the crosshairs of the scope. The preacher was looking through the lenses at David, the magnifying process somehow reversed, David the prey and Archer the hunter. David shuddered and blinked and the illusion passed.
He couldn't hold the rifle steady. From this range, the .30-06 round would drop only a few inches in trajectory. The hot bullet would pierce Archer's chest, chew up his heart, and shatter his ribs. And then what?
He pictured Linda, screaming, spattered by the gore of her messiah. She would kneel by Archer, the other disciples crowding around as his death tremors passed and his blood cooled. Then their wailing would lift and fill the darkening sky, the moon would moan, the red church would howl in anguish. Just as legend said happened the last time one of the McFall preachers was killed. And those buried in the cemetery would . . .
David closed his eyes and let the barrel of the gun tilt slowly to the ground. Sweat stung his eyes, and the metallic stench of his fear overwhelmed the green smells of the forest.
Forgive me, Lord, for I am weak.
He leaned against a cold hickory and waited for midnight.
"It'll be dark soon," Sheriff Littlefield said, turning from the window in Storie's cramped office. Papers were piled high on the sofa, crime reports and DARE brochures and gun magazines. He had nowhere to sit. He couldn't be comfortable in front of Sheila anyway, even if he were lying in a feather bed. "You coming?"
"Afraid not." She didn't look up from her cluttered desk. "I'd better go over these reports one more time."
Littlefield sagged against the wall, the years heavy on him, the last two days heavier still. "I guess you never thought you'd get a serial killer here."
She looked up. "I guess you didn't, either."
She hadn't mentioned Littlefield's confession, the way he'd broken down in front of her about Samuel. Whether it was kindness or embarrassment that kept her off the subject, he hoped it would continue. "We'll be calling in the SBI."
Storie's lips tightened. "I want this bastard."
Littlefield contemplated the black sludge in the coffeepot. "No witnesses. No prints. No suspects. No motives. Probably no DNA evidence."
"Let's wait for the state lab to have a look. Or did I forget that ghosts don't have DNA?"
Littlefield slammed his fist against the wall. Storie's framed copy of a newspaper article trembled from the blow.
"Look, forget what I said about the ghosts. I wouldn't expect you to understand, anyway. You're not from around here."
Storie stood, the wheels of her chair squealing in the rush. She parodied a hillbilly accent. "'Cause I ain't mountain, I don't know nothin'. Well, Sheriff, I wouldn't believe in ghosts or boogiemen or haunted churches even if I lived in Transylvania County. I'm sorry about your brother, and I know his death must have . . . upset you. But this is the twenty-first century, even in the Appalachians."
They stared each other down. Littlefield finally looked away, out the small window to the lights of town below. "You do it your way. I'll solve it mine."
Storie held up some papers. "The answer's here somewhere. And we'll get the coroner's report back in a few days."
"A few days might be too late."
"You think there's going to be another one?" She sat down, her anger deflated.
"Maybe more."
"You really do think the church has something to do with all this, don't you?"
"There's no such thing as coincidence."
"What's the background on this Archer McFall character? You think we should bring him in?"
Storie was interrupted by the receptionist's voice paging from the speakerphone. "Sheriff, you have a call on line two."
"Who is it?"
"The radio station. Wants to know about reports of murders in the county."
"That's all we need, getting everybody worked up," he said to Storie, then louder, to the dispatcher, "Tell them we'll have a press release going out next week. In the meantime, they can make do with the obituaries."
"Yes, Sheriff." The static was silenced.
"I'd better get to the church. It's going on midnight," he said.
Storie called to him as he reached the doorway. "Sheriff . . ."
Her face was hard, but her eyes were soft. "Sorry I lost my temper," she said.
"We all want to solve this case. And I hope I'm wrong about the church. Lord only knows how wrong I want to be."
"What kind of crazy has a church service at midnight?"
"The kind named Archer McFall."
"Well, be careful."
"I'm going to church. What's the worst that could happen?"
Littlefield was relieved that she didn't prod him for an answer.
"I got to go," Ronnie said.
"You're crazy." Tim was still in his pajamas, watching television with the living room lights off. A half-empty bag of cookies and a bottle of Pepsi were beside him on the couch. The flickering from the screen strobed over him and made his movements jerky. Twin reflections of the on-screen action played themselves out in his glasses as well as in the false eyes of the deer heads mounted on the walls.
"You can either stay here by yourself or come with me." Ronnie's dizziness had passed, and he'd taken one of the pills that made his nose stop hurting. But the pill also made him feel as if he had pillows under his feet.
"What if Mom comes back?"
"Mom won't be back. Not until morning."
"How do you know?"
"I just know, dingle-dork."
"I'm scared."
"The moon's out and we can take a flashlight." Ronnie didn't know why he wanted to go to the red church. Especially at night. But maybe he didn't want to. Maybe something was making him go.
Like the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes.
He swallowed invisible dry needles. Tim was looking at him, waiting. Maybe it would be better if Tim stayed here. But then the thing might get him. No, better to stick together.
Ronnie went to the closet by the front door. Tim reluctantly followed. "Better take a jacket," Ronnie said.
He rummaged in the closet for a flashlight. His heart stopped for a moment when he saw Dad's fishing pole, leaning all thin and lonely in the corner. A pair of hip waders flopped bonelessly against the wall.
If only Dad were here . . .
But Dad wasn't here, for whatever mysterious reason people got mad at each other. Mad enough to hate. Maybe Jesus was paying Ronnie back for all those sins of the spirit, all those questions he asked himself that Preacher Staymore said would lead to eternal damnation.
"The answer is Jesus," Preacher Staymore said, every time Ronnie was getting saved and asked one of those questions. But Jesus was the question. How could He be the answer to His own question? But Dad said the Baptists were the true religion, and Dad was smart enough to catch a trout in four inches of water.
Ronnie found the flashlight and put on a jacket and they went out the door. The driveway and the gravel road were pale under the big moon, like white rivers in the night. But the wooded hills rose black around them, filled with the chatter of a million restless insects. Across the meadows, the Potter farm was dark and still. The stars above were far and cold with great spaces between them. Ronnie wanted so much for there to be a Jesus behind the stars.
"I'm scared," whispered Tim.
"Shh. It's okay. I'm here."
"I want Dad."
"Me, too. But Dad's not here."
"Even Mom."
"We'll get to Mom."
"Are you scared?"
"No," Ronnie lied.
"Then why are you whispering?"
Ronnie looked off the porch into the thick shadow of the barn, then down along the creek bank. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes was nowhere around, or else was really good at hiding.
"I'm not whispering," he said aloud. He hoped Tim didn't hear the tremble in his voice. "Now come on," he said, stepping off the squeaky porch.
"Where are we going?"
"You know."
"Do we have to?"
"Yeah."
"How come?"
"We just have to, that's all. Remember what Dad says: 'Some things, a man's just gotta do.'" Ronnie didn't want to point out that Dad could do anything, wasn't scared of anything, and was a man, and they were only boys.
They started down the driveway, Tim huddling close and Ronnie not minding a bit. When they reached the road, Ronnie looked back at the house and its squares of yellow light. For a moment the light beckoned, promising safety and warmth and the possibility of love. But love wasn't found behind walls. It was found in Mom and Dad and Jesus.
He switched on the flashlight when they reached the road. It made an orange circle in the gray gravel. Ronnie shifted his head back and forth, studying the dark roadside weeds for any movement. The sounds of the forest were smothered by their footsteps crunching on the gravel.
"I thought you didn't like the church," Tim said.
"I don't. But we have to go anyway."
"Do you think whatever got Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter---?"
"No," Ronnie said too quickly. "There's nothing out here now. It's . . ."
It's WHAT? Eaten its fill and flown home to the belfry?
"We'll be okay," Ronnie said.
"Do you think it was the thing that lives in the church steeple?"
"What thing?"
"You know. What Whizzer says. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."
"Whizzer's a dork."
They went around a bend and were out of sight of the house. Ronnie couldn't smell the river, but he could feel its fishy dampness on his face. They passed the last of Zeb Potter's pasture. The barbed-wire fence ran into the forest, and the trees pressed close on both sides of the road. The moon sliced through a narrow gap between the treetops.
"How come Mom's at the church so late at night?" Tim asked. There was a note of complaint in his voice.
"What am I, Einstein or something? And do you have to ask so many stupid questions?"
"Talking makes me not as scared."
They walked faster now, the exertion driving away the moist chill of the spring night. They hit an incline and slowed. One side of the road sloped away into blackness. The river rushed over rocks below, the water gurgling liked a choking victim trying to breathe.
They rounded another turn, and the red church stood on a hill, black under the moonlight. The moon glinted off the windshields of cars that were huddled around the church. Behind the cars, the pale slabs of tombstones stood like soldiers. The dogwood was all black bones and sharp fingers and reaching hands of wood.
The church's front door was open, a gray rectangle against the darkness of the church structure. Yellow light flickered from the church windows, tiny pinpricks that would flash and then disappear. Candles, Ronnie thought. The church had never been wired for electricity.
Singing drifted from the church, a choir of several dozen voices. The music was nothing like the songs they sang at First Baptist. This singing was hollow and creepy, as if half the people were singing off-key on purpose. But if they were singing about Jesus and God's love and mercy and salvation, that would make the music not so creepy. Ronnie listened but couldn't make out the words.
"That song is creepy," Tim said.
"Shh." Ronnie grabbed the sleeve of Tim's jacket and led him toward the edge of the woods where the nearest cars were parked. He wanted to be as far away from the dark wall of forest as possible, but he also was reluctant to approach the graveyard. He pulled Tim down to the ground and they crawled between the cars until they could see into the church. The singing stopped.
"Do you see Mom?" Tim whispered. Ronnie elbowed him in the ribs.
A man's voice resonated inside the church and spilled into the night.
"My fellow worshipers," the voice rang out. During the pause, someone coughed. The voice continued. "We are gathered here tonight to honor the one true God. For He is a jealous God, and many are the lies that fall on our ears. Many are the promises made to us by those who wear faces of evil. Many are the paths that lead from the true Way."
Ronnie peeked over the hood of the vehicle they had hidden behind. The engine was still warm. He saw the rounded light on the dashboard. It was the sheriff's Trooper.
Ronnie felt a little better. Nothing bad could happen if the sheriff was here. Ronnie knew that the cops on the TV shows were all fake, but the sheriff had seemed like a nice guy when he'd asked Ronnie about finding Boonie. So if both the sheriff and Mom were here . . .
". . . and the First Son was a carpenter," came the voice. "The First Son went among the people, among the sick and the outcast and the poor. The First Son taught of love and peace and salvation."
Salvation. So the man was a regular preacher after all. Though he spoke more like an actor than any of the preachers Ronnie had ever heard, the man's voice made Ronnie less afraid.
"And God called the First Son back to heaven, letting Him die on the cross so that we might find grace," the preacher said, his voice rising. "But God always promised that the Son would return. And the Son has returned. The Son walks among us. But it's not the First Son that God has sent. God gave Jesus a chance to save the world, and Jesus failed. Jesus with his false miracles and lies. So now the job goes to the Second Son."
"Second Son," murmured a few in the audience.
Second Son. That didn't sound like something a Baptist preacher would say. But now that he thought about it, it kind of made sense. Why should Jesus be an only child, when God could make as many offspring as He wanted? Jesus certainly hadn't made the world a perfect and sinless place.
And the red church wasn't as scary anymore. In fact, Ronnie felt a kind of warmth radiating from the structure. How silly and dumb and third-grade he had been, thinking the church was a bad place. The church was a good place.
The preacher increased his cadence. "The Second Son spares no one from His love. This one needs no money, asks for no servitude, demands no tribute. The Son has found the path, and it leads through people's hearts. The Son wants to take us all home. But every journey begins with a single step. Tonight, in this house of the Lord, let us begin."
"Let us begin," echoed twenty voices.
"Let us begin," Ronnie whispered.
"Why are you saying that?" Tim said, still crouched behind the Trooper.
"Didn't you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"The Second Son."
"What about it?"
Tim wouldn't understand. All he cared about was cartoons and comic books and miniature action figures and sweets. Preacher Staymore hadn't made Tim get saved yet. Tim didn't know the warm feeling of something moving into your heart. And this warmth-spreading from this preacher's voice straight into Ronnie's blood-was better than anything Ronnie had ever known. This time he was saved for real.
Ronnie felt light, as if made of cotton candy. Even his broken nose, which had been throbbing with every beat of his heart, was forgotten in the rush of purest love. And love was what was between the preacher's words, love was what filled the wooden cavity of the church, love was what emanated like a welcoming fog from the red church and crept out across the hills of Whispering Pines. Love was more numbing than the pain pills.
"Let's go in," Ronnie said.
"Are you crazy?"
"It needs us." Ronnie started around the front of the Trooper. Tim grabbed his shirt from behind and pulled him backward. They fell on the ground, and Tim's flailing hand struck Ronnie's nose. Pain flashed behind Ronnie's eyes in streaks of bright purple and electric lime green. He yelped in agony.
"You dork." He grunted at Tim between clenched teeth. He pushed Tim away and rolled to his knees. He put a hand to his nose and felt something warm and wet.
The people inside the church had started singing again, but Ronnie scarcely heard it. He shivered and realized the night was chilly. The warmth of love had left him, as if he'd been asleep and someone had yanked the winter quilts off his body. An empty ache filled his chest. Something had been taken, and he couldn't remember what it was.
"You ain't going in there," Tim said, his eyes wide behind his glasses. The moon gave Tim's eyes a feral, eager quality.
"Now why in the heck would I want to go in there?"
"You just had a funny look in your eye."
"Shh. Listen---"
The singing stopped. A silence settled over the mountains. The wind waited in the tops of the trees. Not an insect stirred. Even the river seemed to pause in its twisting bed.
Then, a soft sound.
A scratching, fluttering sound.
Not inside the church.
Above.
In the steeple.
A shadow moved, a lesser gray against the church bell.
"Holy crud." Tim gasped.
Ronnie swallowed hard, and some of the blood from his nosebleed snaked down his throat.
It smells the blood. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes . . .
"Run!" he shouted at Tim, but his little brother was already a step ahead of him. They dashed between the cars and hit the gravel road, rocks flying as they scampered away from the red church. They were exposed, vulnerable in the open, but Ronnie didn't dare head into the forest. The pounding in Ronnie's ears almost sounded like laughter, but he didn't stop to listen.
Instead he ran into the night, hunching his shoulders against the monster that swept down from the blackness.
Ronnie ducked low, sensing the cold shadow sweeping down over him and blocking out the moon. Ahead, Tim stumbled in the gravel and veered toward the ditch that ran along the edge of the road. Tim looked back at his older brother, his mouth a round well of fear. Ronnie saw a fluttering shape reflected in Tim's glasses.
Then Tim hurdled the ditch and headed into the trees.
No, no, no, NOT the forest, Ronnie silently screamed.
But Tim was already out of sight, lost amid thrashing branches. Ronnie followed, sizing up the dark gaps between the trees, each like a door to nowhere. Something brushed his shoulder, and he bit back a shout. His body was electrified, sweat thick around his ankles and armpits and trickling down the ladder of his spine.
The monster is going to get me.
Ronnie thought of Boonie Houck, eyeless and mutilated and groping for a handhold to drag himself back to the ordinary, sane world.
Going to get me get me get me.
He held his breath and jumped the black ditch. A pine branch whacked him across the face, and he yelped in pain, then fell to his knees. Blood was flowing steadily from his nose. It made a warm rope down his chin.
Tree limbs snapped above and behind him in the dark.
The trees had arms, would hug him and hold him. The trees were part of the nightmare.
He scrambled to his feet, throwing damp leaves and dirt as he regained his balance. He ran ten steps, twenty steps, blind, his arm raised over his face to fend off the branches. His heart spasmed like a trapped animal in his chest.
Ronnie didn't know where the road was, and couldn't hear Tim above the noise of his own passing. He dodged between the trees, unaware of his feet.
Run, dingle-dork.
Maybe if the Bell Monster follows me, you can get away. If the thing's not too hungry, maybe one boy will be enough for it.
Shards of moonlight cut into the forest canopy in places, creating a mad strobe as he ran from darkness to light, darkness to light. Then all was dark as he moved under the thicker canopy of old oak and hickory, and the branches were higher, no longer beating at his sides.
He was going downhill now, skidding in the mud. He stepped on a flat rock and fell on his rear, sliding and then rolling back to his feet.
A damp chill overlaid his sweat, and he knew he was near the river. Though his nose was blocked, he carried the river's fishy and muddy smell in his memory. The rushing water roared faintly in his ears.
Follow me, but not TOO close, Ronnie silently willed the Bell Monster.
The trees opened and he reached the river. Moonlight glinted off the black water. The froth of waterfalls sparkled like ten million eyes. The air was colder here, fresh and heavy in Ronnie's gasping lungs. The earth vibrated under his feet as he dodged among the gray rocks along the riverbank.
He huddled in a gap between two boulders, peering back up the slope. The tops of the trees moved, all big black creatures, live things, hostile and bristling and in league with the Bell Monster.
Ronnie didn't know how long he had been running, but it felt like years. He breathed with his mouth open, his throat sore. His nose had stopped bleeding. He wiped his chin with his hand.
If the thing smells blood . . .
Ronnie crawled along the rocks until he reached the water. He stuck his hand in the current and a frigid shock ran up his arm. But he cupped his palm and brought the water to his face, wiping, then repeating the process until he thought his face was clean.
The front of his jacket was wet. He drew himself into a ball and waited for the Bell Monster to find him.
Waited.
Waited.
The river roared on, sweeping down below him past the red church and under the bridge into the valley.
A few thin clouds drifted across the sky, made silver-gray by the moonlight.
Did Tim make it? Or did the Bell Monster lose track of me and go after him?
Ronnie suddenly felt ashamed, remembering how he ran away when they'd found Boonie Houck. He'd left Tim behind to face the red, raw horror alone. And now he was abandoning him again.
Big brothers were supposed to take care of little brothers. Even if little brothers were dorks.
Dad was gone, and Mom was at that weird meeting in the red church. Tim had nobody to help him. Except Ronnie.
"Danged rocks are getting cold anyway," he whispered to himself. He stood on trembling legs, his bones aching and stiff. The trees around him were still, their leaves wet and heavy.
He eased his way from behind the boulders, his back to the river. If he went upstream he would eventually come to Buckhorn Mountain, where a series of creeks ran together. If he went downstream he'd reach the bridge near the red church. If he went back into the woods, he would have to climb a hill to see where he was.
The river wasn't too deep to cross, only waist-high in most places, but he was already nearly frozen. Besides, Tim wouldn't dare cross the river. Tim had fallen into it once, and had been scared of deep water ever since.
Ronnie hunched low and headed back the way he thought he had come. His nose was not hurting much but, like the river, pulsed steadily under the bandages. He moved quietly through the trees, the way he did when he was playing Indian scout. He kept his palms up to push the branches from his face.
Once away from the river, he found an old hunting trail. A little moonlight splashed along the clearing, and he paused to listen for Tim. The Bell Monster probably hadn't found Tim yet, or screams would be shattering the night silence.
Ronnie gulped at that thought. What if the thing had gotten Tim while Ronnie was cowering by the water? What if the Bell Monster had come aknocking on Tim's rib cage? What if the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes was even now scooping out Tim's guts and having a late-night snack?
No. Think happy thoughts.
When you have one of those waking nightmares, when you think bad things in the dark and can't go to sleep, you think happy thoughts. Cartoon dogs, fat clowns, things like that. Except sometimes the cartoon dogs bite and the fat clowns grow sharp smiles.
Happy thoughts.
Ronnie kept walking, using those words as a mantra, falling into their rhythm.
Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts . . .
He tried to picture those stupid yellow smiley faces, but the faces kept turning into Preacher Staymore from Sunday School, lips pursed and asking, Can you hear Him aknocking?
Ronnie staggered on, tripping over roots and stones, mentally clinging to his happy-thoughts mantra.
He was nearly on his hundredth repetition when he first heard the twigs snapping.
He froze.
Whatever had been following him rustled some low bushes to his left.
A whisper of wings.
A soft clicking, like that of claws meeting in anticipation.
A wet flutter, like that made by liverish eyes opening and closing.
Ronnie's limbs turned wooden, his feet grew roots, he was part of the dark soil he would die on. As the bushes exploded with movement, Ronnie's last thought was that maybe Tim got away.
And then the monster had him, in a fury of tooth and wing and razor hatred.
The monster had smelled his blood in the dark.
The monster embraced him, eager and sharp-fingered.
The monster---
Ronnie kicked and screamed, flailing his elbows. He pressed his eyes closed, not wanting to watch the thing open his insides and pull out his dripping wet heart.
Ronnie balled his fists.
The creature growled in his ear.
"Ronnie, it's me."
Dad?
Yes, it was. Ronnie imagined Dad's smell, all aftershave and sawdust and boot leather.
He relaxed in his dad's strong arms, finally opening his eyes. Dad's face was pale in the weak wash of moonlight.
"The . . . the thing," Ronnie said, fighting back tears.
"Shh," Dad said. "It's okay now. Nothing's going to get you."
Ronnie shivered against his Dad, burrowing close for warmth. Ronnie was relieved to note that Dad had a gun with him. He suddenly pushed away. "Tim. Where's Tim?"
"Right here." Tim came out from the shadow of the trees.
"Did you see it?"
Tim's glasses flashed as he nodded.
"What is it, Dad?" Ronnie asked.
"I'll tell you later. Right now, let's get to the house." Dad put an arm around each boy and led them up the hill.
"Is Mom going to be okay?"
"I hope so, son. I hope so."
They walked past midnight and into safety.
Midnight.
Linda was lifted by invisible loving arms. The singing, the sermon, the pure love of her fellow worshippers, all flowed through her like the charged juice of her blood. Every cell of her body glowed in the warmth of Archer's glory. Her mouth was flooded with the sweetness of the communion they had taken.
She felt as if she had returned from a long sleep. But it had been a long sleep, years and years and years of religious tyranny, licking at the pierced feet of David's foolish Jesus. But now Archer was back, and everything would be the way it was before.
She would belong again.
She looked to her right, to the owner of the hand she was holding. Sheriff Littlefield. Of course. The Littlefields were one of the old families. They, like the Greggs, Mathesons, Potters, and others, had attended the church back in Wendell McFall's day. Now the families were reuniting, answering a call that was deeper than flesh and blood.
Archer McFall leaned over the lectern, spent from his rampaging sermon. His eyelids fluttered and the muscles in his shoulders twitched. He lifted his head and smiled. The sweat on his face glistened in the candlelight. He reached out with a trembling hand and caressed the broken wooden cross that jutted from the top of the lectern.
"He has found us worthy," Archer said, in a drained voice that had none of its earlier thunder.
"Amen," echoed the parishioners.
Linda turned from her front-row pew and looked at the others. Lester Matheson smiled at her, his teeth yellow. His wife Vivian swayed as if in rhythm to an inaudible hymn, her eyes closed. Old Mamie Pickett was beside Vivian, her wrinkled and spotted hands folded carefully across the waist of her blouse.
Nell and Haywood Absher sat erect in the back row, Nell in her blue hat with the diaphanous netting. Their daughter Noreen wore a blissful, vacant expression. Others filled the church, their eyes bright with joy. Mama Bet sat in the last row, her wrinkled mouth pressed in solemn joy.
Abshers. Mathesons. Greggs. Picketts. McFalls. Only one family was missing. No, two. The Potters and the Houcks.
The sheriff had said that old man Potter had died. And Boonie Houck had lost his sinful eyes and tongue and penis. Linda couldn't mourn their loss. They had found their own path to the everlasting glory that Archer spoke of. They had paid in blood so that the other families might live unto the fourth generation.
Nobody gets anything without a little sacrifice. Archer needed them. He just sent them home ahead of the rest of us, that's all.
Archer lifted his head, his brown eyes as intense as truck headlights. Linda quit thinking. He was about to speak.
"We have done God's work," Archer said, swiveling his head to indicate the refurbished interior of the church.
"We done Him proud," Lester shouted.
"Amen," Vivian said, not opening her eyes. A clamor of approval spread across the room. Linda glanced at the black world outside the windows, momentarily sorry for all the blind, misguided fools who had been led astray by that devil, Jesus. Even her very own sons had fallen for the devil's tricks.
Her eyes welled and spilled over.
I'll bring them. They should know of the true path before it's too late.
She looked back at Archer, so grateful for his rescuing her from the flames of Christianity. She slid from her hard pew and knelt on the floorboards, bowing to Archer. Her heart was a tortured mix of love and regret. She had found Archer, then had lost him, and now she had found him again.
Archer says that the truth will always win out. Faith will beat Satan and Jesus both.
She bent lower, her head near the floor she had spent hours cleaning.
Faith is sacrifice. And sacrifice is the currency of God.
She kissed the floor, tasted the red church. And she knew---knew---that Archer would need her children.
Ronnie and Tim.
But what were their sins?
A voice came to her, unbidden: They don't pay for their own sins. They pay for YOURS, Linda.
She looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor. Archer smiled at her, eyes moist and arms spread in supplication.
Remember Abraham from the Old Testament? When God asked him to kill his beloved son Isaac? Do you think Isaac was the one who had sins to pay for? Of course not. Abraham was the one who needed to suffer a little, who needed to prove his faith.
Around her, the parishioners stood and began to file out, talking quietly among themselves. Their words were joyless now, muted, as if the gathered had given all their emotions to the walls of the church. Outside they went, shuffling sacks of skin and fluid and organs, while within, the wood seemed vibrant, soaked with light and energy and the ghosts of prayers.
Archer stepped off the dais and came to Linda. He offered her his hands. For a moment she thought she saw stigmata, tiny red pocks in the white palms. The mark of Jesus. She recoiled in horror even as the image faded.
"What's wrong, my child?" Archer said. He was the Archer of old, aged and ageless, wise and innocent, his eyes sparkling with love and hate.
"I---I'm . . ." she stammered, looking back down to the floor. She couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't stare into the hot hells inside them, couldn't bear his gracious cruelty. Because she knew she would see the threat in them, the hunger, the need for her children.
But then, Archer was a divine incarnation, the flesh of God, sent among the mortals with a mission to perform. What were her needs next to the needs of Archer?
She felt Archer's strong arms pulling her to her feet.
"Do you doubt?" he asked simply. There was no anger in his voice, no accusation.
Linda shook her head. She could hear the others talking outside, seemingly revived by the fresh spring night. A few cars started and drove away with a crunch of gravel.
Archer cupped her chin and tilted her head up until their eyes met. "You're as lovely as you were in California."
Linda thought for a moment that he was going to kiss her. If only . . .
But she was mortal and he was the Second Son. He didn't need love the way that others did, the way that David did. For Archer, love was a fuel, a human juice that would propel the world to heaven. Love wasn't for the soul, not a contract between two people in defiance of death; no, to Archer, love was for the Soul, the collective, the glory. Not an ounce of it could be spared on carnal yearnings.
Oh, she had loved him. Archer with his long hair and his Volkswagen bus with peace signs painted on the rear and sides. Archer who could never fit into the small-town mountain life. Archer who had dreams, who saw visions, who accepted the taunts and jeers with equanimity.
It was just after her high school graduation, when she and David had been busy planning their marriage and their careers and their future together. And that was when Linda first recognized the glass walls that surrounded her, that would forever keep her caged in the mountains. Oh, she could leave, she could go to Charlotte or the Outer Banks, but only for days at a time. Her life was here, as bound to the mountains as the granite foundations of the earth were. That long-ago summer, she had carried the certainty of it like a lump in her throat.
She was waiting tables at the Mountaineer Diner when Archer came in. She'd noticed Archer in high school, but he kept to himself, carrying at times a Bible or thick books that weren't required reading. That in itself was enough to mark him as an outcast. But coupled with the fact that he was the great-great-grandson of the Hung Preacher, he might as well have had a sign that read Kick Me stuck to the back of his shirt.
He sat in a corner booth that day, under the fake antique Pepsi-Cola sign. Linda looked around, hoping Sue Ann, the other waitress on duty, would take the "weird one." But Sue Ann was leaning over the counter, showing her cleavage to some red-eyed trucker. So Linda pulled out her order pad and walked over to the booth.
"What do you want?" she said, sizing him up as a lousy tipper in addition to being a longhaired creep. He fumbled with the menu and scraped a bit of gravy away with his thumb.
"Coffee," he said.
"That all?" She was irritated by the way he watched her, as if she were a piece of chocolate cake.
He nodded. She turned to hurry back to the kitchen.
"Your name's Linda, isn't it?" he said.
Maybe he would tip after all. "Yeah," she said, giving him her two-dollar smile.
"My name's Archer."
"I know. You go to Pickett High, don't you?"
"Did. I graduated."
Linda didn't remember him from the ceremony. Of course, she and David had hit a little Jim Beam before crossing the stage. Suddenly she felt guilty, as if his stare saw through her, into her. Then she was angry at herself for feeling guilty. Who cared what some longhaired bum thought?
His eyes were brown, vibrant yet distant. She felt dizzy looking into them.
"Uh . . . coffee, coming right up."
She brought the coffee but he didn't drink it. "The body is a temple," he said. "And sacrifice is the currency of God. For He is a jealous God, and He punishes children for the iniquity of the parents."
What a weirdo, she thought, but within fifteen minutes she was taking a break and sitting across from him in the booth, on the edge of the cheap vinyl seat. He talked matter-of-factly, and damned if he didn't know just what he was talking about.
"You're tired of this place," Archer said. "You're tired of these people and all this arguing over whether Chevy is better than Ford and what caliber bullet takes down a deer the fastest. You're about to be married, your union blessed by God, and you think that this is your dream come true, that it's happily-ever-after from now on. But scratch the surface"---he leaned forward as he said this, their faces only a foot apart---"and you find that you're scared to death that this is it, this is all there is to life."
She tried to protest, tried not to show that he had completely peeled back the layers of her soul like an onion. But she was already enthralled, already hooked, already mesmerized by the cadences of his speech. And by the time Sue Ann was calling Linda to get back to work, she had agreed to meet Archer for dinner.
She had to lie to David, but sinning was much easier back then. She and Archer ate at the Chick'n Shack over the line in Tennessee. She didn't resist when Archer took her out behind the old red church after dinner. They rode back through town in his van, her with her head down, hoping no one would see her. At the same time, she was thinking that this was it, she was going to do it, she was going to cheat on David and damn the consequences. It was time to finally get around to the business of taking chances.
But Archer only wanted to talk. She thought at first it was just another come-on line. He wasn't really her type. She was no longer sure just what was her type, even though she had always thought it was David. So they sat in the dark and Archer talked, and even though she was aching with lust and the fire of her flesh would lead her to the fires of hell, she somehow couldn't get up the courage to touch him.
Archer talked of strange things. He made her look at the stars. He pointed to the church bell and the dogwood and told the story of the Hung Preacher. Linda thought at first he was trying to spook her so that she would slide close and he could put his arm around her. But he told the story wrong.
In Archer's version, the Hung Preacher was a victim of persecution. "It was all a conspiracy of Jesus," he said. His eyes seemed to gather the scraps of stray light and glistened like oil. "Jesus got in the heads of all those people and made them kill my great-great-grandfather. And Jesus had to pay nothing for his own sins. Because God loved Jesus more than He loves the entire world."
Linda knew she should be getting the hell out of the van, that he was insane, but he spoke so reasonably and kept his voice level. So she listened to the rest of it, how Jesus hated the McFalls because they would bring forth the holy child. And that child would rise up and reveal Jesus for the fallen angel that he was. By morning, when the first timid rays of the sun peeked over the hills, she was more than in love; she was devoted.
She went through that summer with a bounce in her step, seeing David throughout the week but saving every Sunday night for Archer and his private sermons. When she found out that Archer had others, like Mandy Potter and Esther Matheson, she got jealous. But Archer explained how each had a part in the Divine Plan and that Linda would always hold a special place in his heart.
They moved to California at the end of the summer. Linda wrote a good-bye letter to David, three pages. At the end, she'd written, I hope you understand, but there's a larger mission that I must attend to. I love you. Archer helped her write that last bit, and she cried until Archer made her stop.
They headed west in the van, Archer driving, the seven girls taking turns sleeping, singing silly songs by the Eagles and the Beach Boys, at least until Archer pointed out the sinful subtexts in the lyrics. Then they passed the time wondering aloud what California would be like.
"What are we going to do out there?" Linda asked from the front passenger seat. They were halfway across Tennessee, and the hills were rounded and green. Archer was hunched over the steering wheel, wearing a faint peaceful smile.
"Get delivered," he had said.
Now, with his face only inches from hers, Linda wanted so very much for Archer to deliver her once and for all.
Sheriff Littlefield looked around the churchyard at the trees. The moon bathed the open hill with light, and the tombstones were like silver sentinels, mute and mocking. Littlefield took a deep breath of the chilly air, trying to clear his head. His tongue was fouled with a sweetly putrid aftertaste. He felt as if he had just walked out of the long tunnel of a dream.
He had come to the church to see if he could learn more about Archer McFall. His plan had been to keep a polite smile on his face and sit quietly through the service. He would shake hands if necessary and bow in prayer at the right time. But his eyes would always be slightly open.
His plan had failed. The green digital display on his watch read 1:57. Somehow he had lost nearly two hours. He leaned against the front of the Trooper and tried to remember what had brought him to the red church.
The others had gone already, shaking hands with each other and saying "God bless," and driving back to their dark farmhouses. Linda Day and the preacher were inside the church. He could hear them talking.
The sheriff was hit by a sudden wave of nausea that almost drove him to his knees. The candlelight dancing from the open church door blurred in his vision. The huge, twisted dogwood swayed, as if moving to invisible music. His head roared with the first soul-ripping toll of the church bell.
He covered his ears and looked up at the bell tower, his mind scattered by the noise.
No rope. It CAN'T be ringing.
The dull cast iron of the bell glinted under the moon. As the note pealed through Littlefield, vibrating every nerve ending in his body, he fought to keep his eyelids from snapping shut in agony. The bell hadn't moved an inch.
Archer was at the mouth of the church now, arms spread to the sky. The preacher was a dark shape shimmering in Littlefield's tears. Behind Archer, Linda was bowed in reverence or else hunched in an agony that echoed Littlefield's own.
With the second toll of the bell, Littlefield knew the deep resonance had driven him insane. Because the night walked.
A shape fluttered from the forest and settled in the belfry, a ragged black thing, an insult to the swimming beauty of the stars. The red church took on a glow, as if consumed with bright fire. A rope dangled from a strong, high limb of the dogwood. Pulling the rope taut was a body, full and heavy and limp.
It's HIM.
The thought came to Littlefield along with a flood of other broken thoughts and images. The cemetery ground buckled and swelled, and the turf beneath the headstones rippled like boiling water. Archer grew in Littlefield's vision---grew---until he filled the church door, and the edges of Archer's body sharpened. The nearby trees leaned forward as if to ogle the unreal spectacle before them.
Littlefield surrendered to gravity and fell to his hands and knees. With effort, he lifted his head, transfixed by the still form of the Hung Preacher shimmering twenty feet away. The man's face was waxen, and the skin reminded Littlefield of the way Freeman Harper had looked after floating dead in the river for two weeks. The tongue protruded like a blacksnake's head. The eyes bulged, maniacally gleaming as if lit by strange suns.
The Hung Preacher wore a vested suit of ill-cut cotton that draped about the body like burlap, the ivory buttons resembling teeth. The dull leather square-toed shoes dangled inches above the ground. A leaf stirred between the feet, and Littlefield watched the leaf's shadow skip across the grass on the breeze. He visually traced the shadow of the tree, thrown long across the hill by the candlelit church. But the Hung Preacher cast no shadow.
Littlefield stared the illusion full in the face. But he knew the Hung Preacher was no illusion. He had almost been able to convince himself that the first time had been a trick of the mind, the night that Samuel died. Now here was the ghost again, dangling like a slip of lost light, back to prove that the long-ago Halloween was as horrible as Littlefield remembered.
But in some small part of himself, he knew that such things were impossible, irrational. Dead people don't come back. Samuel had died, and was as dead or deader now than he had ever been. This hideous vision hanging before him had no right to be here. Dead people belonged in the dirt.
He focused on the Hung Preacher's bloated, wan face.
See? It can't be real. You've let it build up in your mind, giving shape to your guilt over Samuel. You've just heard too many stories, that's all.
And the stories are wrong. Because in the stories, right after the Hung Preacher comes back, the congregation gathers around him---
The bell rang a third time, louder and more jarring than before, and the Hung Preacher blinked and smiled.
The black tongue flitted back inside the swollen head. The dead arms trembled and raised as if testing the gravity of a new reality. The Hung Preacher parted his blood-engorged lips and laughed. It was the Halloween laugh, the terrible and unforgettable sound from Littlefield's childhood. All the fear came flooding back, all the memories, only this time he couldn't run away.
Around and behind Littlefield, the cemetery came alive.
His screams sheared the damp silence of the night.
"Do you smell that?" Tim said.
David Day did smell it. He knew the smell intimately. He was a hunter. Death had its own essence, a thick, heady quality that went beyond the olfactory sense. Death seeped inside of you like a mist.
"Smell what?" Ronnie said, his voice nasally because of his bandages. David looked down at the wide eyes of his oldest son. Ronnie was lucky that he couldn't smell. The coppery odor of blood and a sickly-sweet aroma of decay mixed in the night air, tinged with an underlying pungency.
David looked down the gravel road, then back to the woods. He didn't know what was safer, being out in the open stretch of moonlit road or sneaking through the dark forest. Their house was still half a mile away, and the only nearby houses, those of the Potters and the Mathesons, were dark. He gripped the gun more tightly. The weapon probably wouldn't do any good, but it made him feel better.
Tim kept trying to run ahead of their little group. He didn't seem scared anymore, just excited, as if he had sneaked out past bedtime to play some silly chasing game. David tried to keep his fear to himself, but Ronnie was smart. Ronnie knew that something bad had come to Whispering Pines.
"Hey, looky," Tim said, pulling his hand from David's. He pointed into the tall grass along the side of the road ahead. "There's somebody."
It could just as easily have been a sack of grain or a pile of rags, except for the pale hand that extended from the weeds onto the roadbed. Even in the dimness, there was no mistaking the fact that it was a human hand, its fingers curled upward in motionless begging. The hand was slender, feminine.
"Stay here," David whispered, taking a quick look around. The breeze that had steadily risen and fallen was now in a lull. The stillness was almost more unbearable than the flapping of leaves and the groaning of trees bending in the wind. He crept toward the body, his rifle tilted in front of him.
David fought back the vomit that tried to leap from his stomach. He recognized the woman's blouse. He thought at first that her blouse was unbuttoned and that she was wearing a dark, rumpled shirt underneath. But now he realized that her chest was open, not her blouse, and that someone or something had parted her rib cage. Blood pooled in the cavity, a slight steam rising toward the moon.
Her heart was gone.
David glanced at the woman's face. Her eyes were open, her mouth gaping in an endless, voiceless scream. It was Donna. Linda's cousin.
Linda had given Donna the blouse for Christmas two years ago. David hadn't liked Donna because he always got the sense that she didn't approve of Linda's marrying a redneck. But nobody deserved to die like this, to be ripped open like a cow at the slaughterhouse. Horror and sorrow and fear welled up in David's chest, fought each other for space, and then settled into a miserable mixture.
"What is it, Daddy?" Ronnie called.
"Somebody . . ." He fought to keep his voice calm. "Somebody had an accident."
"Are they dead?" Tim asked.
David knelt in the grass and looked at the boys waiting thirty feet behind him. They would have to walk past the body, and he didn't want them to know that it was Donna. He settled his fingers on her eyelids and pulled them closed, the way he had seen soldier buddies do in war movies. He tried to nudge her mouth closed, but her jaw muscles had locked in an everlasting scream.
He pulled the blouse closed across her wound, careful not to get blood on his hands. He took off his deerskin jacket, even though the night was chilly. Then he whispered a quick prayer.
"Dear Lord, I know she took You into her heart. And I know she was messing around at that awful church. But please don't hold that against her. The devil spins a mighty good yarn, and I don't think it's fair if she got tricked off the path of salvation. Judge her by the way she was before Archer got ahold of her. So if it be Thy will, please take her away from him and bring her up into the heavenly fold where she rightly belongs. Amen."
David looked into the woman's face. Death was supposed to be peaceful. But there was no peace in those rigid features. Worst of all, the thin nose and the sharp cheekbones and the rounded eyebrows were Gregg family characteristics. Exactly the same as Linda's. He laid the jacket across Donna's face.
"Are they dead?" Tim repeated, coming forward despite David's order to stay put. Ronnie followed, hesitantly.
"Looks like it, son," David said, standing. "We'd best get home and call the sheriff."
"The sheriff?" Ronnie said. "We saw his truck back at the church."
Tim tried to peer at the body. David put his arm around Tim and led him to the far side of the road. "Come on. Let's get home."
They walked in silence past the forest and into the open stretch of pasture and fields. The Potter farm sprawled dark and empty at the foot of the mountains. The farmhouse and barns were like tiny boats in a rough sea. Nobody let their lights burn all night in Whispering Pines. That was wasteful and expensive. But somehow the darkness in Zeb's windows was more desolate and final than if the occupant had been merely sleeping.
Boonie, Zeb, and now Donna. It's starting again, getting faster. Just like Archer done in California. Except this time I don't know if I can even slow him down, much less stop him.
"How come people are dying, Daddy?" Tim asked.
David thought about how to answer.
The devil's setting up revival camp in Whispering Pines? A preacher got hung over a hundred years ago and he's been pissed off ever since? We've all collected on the wages of sin and now it's payback time?
"I don't rightly know, son," he finally said. "I just know it's going to be all right."
Lying, like marksmanship and tomato growing, got easier with practice.
He could see their house ahead, the mailbox shining in the moonlight. It somehow made him feel safer, even though he knew that mere walls wouldn't keep the Bell Monster away. The lights were off in their house, too.
"Is Mama home?" Tim asked.
"Don't believe so," David said, hoping he could keep his worry hidden.
"How come she was at the church?" Ronnie asked. "We always go on Sunday morning, not late at night."
"Well, she was just being neighborly, helping out," David lied for the third time. Well, it wasn't a complete lie. She was helping out, all right, just not the kind of help a person usually gave to their church. Her service went way beyond bake sales and sending get-well cards and arranging flowers.
She would be out with Archer, taking part in whatever crazy ritual the freak thought up next. She was helping him bring death and fear and hell's madness into their little valley. His chest tightened, this time hot with failure.
He'd rescued Linda once, led her back into the Baptist fold, into the love and light of the Lord. But maybe that wasn't good enough for her, because she'd taken a second taste of the devil's temptation and found it to be sweeter than Christ's redeeming blood.
He clenched his hands tight around his rifle. He tried to offer a prayer, to ask for God's strength, but he'd run out of words. He glanced at the sky, ink-dark and star-filled and stretching from mountaintop to mountaintop.
Just exactly who owns this damned world?
David shivered at the slight weakening of his faith.
He led the boys up the driveway and into the house. He was momentarily afraid that, even if he managed a prayer, it would fall on deaf ears. Or worse, ears that heard but just didn't plain care.
When the bell rang, Linda didn't cover her ears, though the church shook with the vibrations.
That was part of the ritual, Archer had said. The bell had to ring to drive away that crazy Jesus and all the other demons that clouded people's minds. The bell must toll as a reminder of the iniquities of murderous ancestors.
So she welcomed the sound, and each rich resonance washed over her body like a cleansing wave of holy water. Archer folded his hands together and bowed his head.
"Stronger," he whispered after the third toll. "It's getting stronger."
What's getting stronger? Linda wondered. But she dared not break his reverie to ask. She craned her neck to peer outside the church. That was when the sheriff screamed.
Archer ran down the church steps and stood over Littlefield's prostrate form. Linda followed slowly, waiting for a sign from Archer. The sheriff had been looking at the tree. Linda wondered what he had seen that was so frightening. The churchyard was a place of peace and beauty, not a place of fear. Perhaps the sheriff was faithless, weak, unworthy.
Archer knelt on the ground beside the sheriff and lifted his face to the sky.
"O Father," he intoned in that preacher voice that sent shivers of rapture up Linda's spine, "See me take this sinner into my church. He has joined us in communion and has eaten of the host. O Father, watch him join us in the battle against the unrighteousness and evil that masquerades as salvation, so that he may walk into light forever, amen."
"Amen," Linda echoed automatically. She felt a piece of the communion between her teeth. She worked it free with her tongue, then swallowed the soft flesh that Archer had consecrated and administered. The sense of well-being expanded in her chest, swelled her head, made her light with love.
And then she saw.
The Hung Preacher rolled his eyes in her direction, looking at her appreciatively. Then the thick apparition turned his face back to Archer.
The Hung Preacher's black lips parted, and insubstantial things wiggled inside his mouth. "More," he said, moving his lips again, but the second time he made no sound.
A vision, Linda told herself. An honest-to-God VISION. Just like Archer always promised.
The Baptists had raved on and on about Moses and the burning bush, about how such-and-such was revealed to God's chosen, but nobody at First Baptist had ever had a vision of his or her own. Well, Boonie Houck had laid claim to a few, but his revelations never seemed religious in nature, especially since they usually came after a week of the trembles. But this . . . this . . .
The Hung Preacher dangled in full glory before her. But even now he was shimmering, fading back into his holy realm beyond this earth. Linda felt her heart leap with uncertain loss.
Archer clutched his hands together and edged toward the dogwood tree on his knees. "Don't go, oh sweet prophet," he pleaded, his voice almost childlike.
The Hung Preacher mouthed the word more a final time, the dead face contorted in rage. His arms fell limp at his sides, and he drifted into invisibility.
Archer stood and ran to the spot beneath the tree. He reached his arms out and hugged the empty air to his chest. "Come back," he said softly. He had a lost look on his face.
Linda had never seen Archer appear in any way vulnerable. It made her heart soar with joy. She could be of use to him. He did have needs. He needed her.
Archer had given her so much, opened her eyes to the follies of Christianity, saved her soul. The least she could do was comfort him now in his time of trouble. At last she had something to offer. She touched his shoulder. His coat was so hot that it almost burned her fingers.
He spun. Linda drew back, her hand covering her mouth in shock.
Archer's face contorted as if the bones of his skull had broken and the fragments were trying to push through his skin. His forehead flattened and elongated, the lower part of his face funneled together, the nose broadened over the mouth. His eyes widened, and a fierce golden color ringed the black, marble-sized pupils. Archer's eyes glittered, capturing the moonlight and turning it into green and yellow diamonds.
A low, animal growl came from his throat, and triangular ears pricked up at the top of his head. Whiskers like silver wire sprouted from the sides of the black-gummed mouth. The eyes narrowed, cat-like, and Archer fell onto his hands.
No, not his hands. PAWS.
Archer's suit ripped, and reddish-brown fur sprouted over the preacher's flesh. The creature stepped forward, out of Archer's shoes, its thick claws curling into the ground through the socks.
A mountain lion.
David had told her stories about them, her father had hunted them, and the Appalachian settlers used to fear them so much that they became the stuff of fireplace scare stories. But all the mountain lions were dead.
She had never doubted that Archer could work miracles. Now, with this undeniable proof, she gave the last of herself to him. She fell before the great cat and bowed her head, trembling, awaiting the mighty gnash of its teeth or the swift stroke of its talons, whatever method Archer deemed most fitting. Salvation was all about sacrifice, Archer had told her, and she was willing to make the ultimate one.
Jesus divided loaves and fishes and walked on water. Big deal. Jesus had never been anything but Jesus. This proved that Archer was better, the true savior, the real Son of God. This proved that Archer was master of the atoms and cells and all that other invisible stuff that made things what they were.
The animal growled again, a low rumbling noise in its chest. It moved forward and sniffed at Linda. Despite herself, she shivered as warm, moist breath passed across the back of her neck.
Please make it not hurt, Archer.
The mountain lion waited. The sky was a shade lighter now, a deeper blue from the east pushing away the black. The forest was still, hushed in that moment just before dawn when the diurnal and nocturnal animals changed shifts. The great cat's soft breathing was the only sound besides the pounding of Linda's heart.
The cat moved away, toward the still-unconscious sheriff. Linda felt a small surge of disappointment, but also a rush of relief.
So I'm to be spared. I promise to have a purpose if you only let me live, God. You need me here to serve Archer, to help him do whatever he needs done to save the world. To beat Jesus and Satan forever.
She watched as the cat lowered its head toward the sheriff's neck.
The house was dark when Linda drove up. That meant the boys were asleep. She hated to neglect them the way she had been, but Archer needed her more than the boys did. A servant should have only one master, Archer always said. And God was a jealous God.
She had passed the body that had been lying on the side of the road. Some of the other parishioners had probably passed it as well, though all would murmur to themselves, "There must be great sacrifices." Linda recognized David's jacket draped across the body. So her husband had been out nosing around.
She hoped he would stay out of the way. If David left her alone, maybe Archer would spare him. David had married into the Gregg family, not earned the birthright with blood. The Days weren't one of the old families, so they owed no tribute to the red church and had no iniquities to pay for.
She got out of the car and took a breath of fresh air. The smells of the farm, freshly tilled soil, hay, and chicken manure always comforted her. That was one of the ironies of her life: she'd always been afraid that she'd wind up trapped in Whispering Pines, yet she had never really felt comfortable anywhere else, especially in California. Not even Archer's wonderful presence there could totally erase her homesickness.
The moon was low in the sky, three-quarters full over the uneven mountain ridges. The deep indigo of the night and the scattered pinpricks of stars were beautiful. She would miss this world. It was hard to believe that a better one existed, but Archer said he had a place for her waiting in heaven. The real heaven, not that mock-up illusion that the Christians peddled.
Harps and white robes. What a laugh.
She went into the house, careful not to make any noise. She would go in and kiss the boys good night and make sure the blankets were tucked under their chins. Her hand fumbled along the wall until she found the light switch, and she flipped it up.
"Well, well, well . . ." David said. She jumped back against the door.
". . . if it ain't the whore of Babylon," David finished. He sat on the couch, still in his work clothes, eyes alert. His rifle was across his lap.
"What in the world do you think you're doing here?" she whispered, as loudly as she could without waking the boys.
"Taking care of my own." His eyes narrowed as he patted the gun barrel. "Somebody's got to do it."
"Get out."
"Not while that . . . that McFall bastard is on the prowl."
"Leave Archer out of this."
"I wish I could."
"You think this is all about you? This doesn't have anything to do with you, so just mind your own business."
David watched her as she stepped away from the open door and eased toward the kitchen. Only his eyes moved. The rest of him remained rigid. "What's going on up at the church, Linda?"
"Nothing. Just getting services going again." Linda looked away to escape his gaze. "How are the boys?"
"Oh, they're just fine. Ain't nothing like being scared to death and having their mother taking up with a touched-in-the-head bunch of midnight worshipers."
"Those are good folks. You know most of them. They're our neighbors."
"Yeah, at least the ones who are still alive."
"You saw her?"
"Yeah."
Linda's eyes grew moist. She had not allowed herself to mourn for Donna. But now that David had reminded her, she couldn't fight the mortal weakness of tears.
"Boys saw her, too." David's voice was sharper now that he saw he could cut her with his words. "Lucky for them, they didn't find out who it was."
Linda leaned against the jamb of the entryway that led into the hall. The guilty had to die. But why did it have to be Donna? Her cousin had never really done anything wrong, except maybe committing a little adultery. Was Donna's heart really that tainted, just because she liked to love other women's husbands?
"That makes three," David said. "One every night. Just like in California."
Linda slammed her fist against the cheap paneling, and the trophy heads on the wall shook. "Why didn't you just let me stay in California?" she said, louder than she wanted to.
"You're going to wake the boys."
She crossed the room and stood over him. "Why didn't you leave me out there? I was happy. Maybe for the first time ever."
David took his hands from the rifle and cupped them over his knees. "Because you turned your back on the Lord. And on me. I couldn't let Archer McFall and that bunch rot your soul."
She snorted, her nose red from crying. "Soul? What do you know about having a soul?"
"I know what's right. And Archer ain't right. He's the devil. He's worse than the devil. At least the devil plays by God's rules, and knows good from evil. Your precious preacher seems to get them a little mixed up."
"You're crazy, David."
"I ain't the one praying to a murdering monster."
"Archer has nothing to do with the killings."
"Sure he don't. Mighty big damned coincidence, wouldn't you say? Archer goes to California, people die hard. Archer comes back to Whispering Pines, people die hard."
"Sometimes the innocent must die-"
"I got news for you. None of us are innocent."
Linda shook her head. "You don't get it, do you? I've been praying and praying, asking God to throw some light on you so you'd see that Archer is the real savior. But I guess that ten-dollar-a-week Jesus is all you've got the brains for. Serves you right to follow him to hell."
David stood suddenly, the rifle thumping to the floor. He glared down into her eyes, but Linda wasn't afraid. There will come great trials, Archer said. She would be strong. Her faith would not waver.
"You can follow that fool," David said between clenched teeth. "But I'll be damned if you're going to take the boys with you."
"That's right. You'll be damned," she said, angry now that David was taking her greatest possessions, the greatest tithe she could make to Archer. The boys were her ticket into Archer's heart, into the kingdom of God.
David bent and picked up the rifle, holding it across his chest between them. "Then let the son of a bitch come and get them. But he'll have to come through me first."
David's eyes were hard. She knew how stubborn he could be. He had worn that same expression in California, when he came into the temple after Archer had disappeared. He'd carried her out to his pickup, then drove back to the mountains, stopping only for gas and food or when exhaustion forced him to nap for a few hours. Now, as then, Linda realized just how much she loved him. But love was a trick, a scare tactic that led to desperation. Archer said that earthly love was just another vanity, didn't he?
Love in its way was a false idol. Love was as hollow as a golden calf-all shiny and bright on the outside, and nothing but bad dark air on the inside. Love gave you nothing, but took every little thing that you had.
Human love was an altar that you crawled on and then asked to be slaughtered.
Love was Jesus' greatest lie.
She would be strong.
"I hate you," she said, her chest cold, her heart coated with the iron will that Archer had instilled.
David held up a hand, glanced at the front door and then the window. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
David thumbed the rifle's safety off and tilted his head to listen. "Shh."
"It won't come here," Linda whispered, trying to reassure herself. Archer would send his heavenly agent for the boys. But he'd promised to wait until they'd become part of the fold. That would ensure their place in Archer's eternal glory, and secure her place by Archer's side.
Something rattled at the front door.
It can't be. Tonight's sacrifice has already been made.
In the silence, the ticking of the clock was like raindrops on a coffin.
David put his cheek to the gunstock and waited for whatever was outside to enter.
Can you hear Him aknocking?
Ronnie pulled the covers over his head, but the suffocating darkness made his fear grow instead of disappear. Mom and Dad had stopped arguing, so maybe they had heard the noise, too. Tim was snoring, but Ronnie hadn't been able to close his eyes since they'd arrived home. He was afraid that if he slept, he'd dream about the black shape that flapped across the sky like a jaggedy kite.
And now it was here, the Bell Monster, the scary thing from the church that had wings and claws and livers for eyes. It had followed them home, and Ronnie knew---knew---that it had come just for him. Because he had sinned in his heart, and the devil had sent a demon from the pits of hell, just the way Preacher Staymore had threatened in Sunday school.
The claws clicked on the glass. Ronnie chewed nervously on the blankets and a stray fiber got in his throat and made him cough. The clicking stopped. The monster had heard him. In the stillness, Ronnie listened to the wet mist of its waiting breath.
Ronnie tried to pray. The preacher said that the Lord forgave all sins and protected the children. If God had control over the heavens and the earth, then surely He controlled the demons as well.
Dear Jesus, please forgive me for my sins of the heart. I know I've suffered bad thoughts, and I haven't been saved in three weeks. But I want YOU in my heart and not the thing with livers for eyes. Please, please, get me out of this and I promise I'll get saved every week from now on, even if Preacher Staymore's breath smells like rotten fruit. Amen.
Ronnie opened his eyes under the blankets. It was working. The wet noises went away. The prayer had sent the demon back to hell, or maybe back to the red church.
Thankyou thankyou thankyou, O Jesus---
The clicking started again, and Ronnie felt as if the door to his heart had slammed shut. Across the room, Tim rolled over in his sleep. If the Bell Monster came in through the window, it might get Tim.
And maybe if it gets Tim, it will leave me alone.
As soon as he had the thought, his face warmed with shame. Didn't Jesus say to love thy brother? Or was that one of the Ten Commandments? Either way, he had suffered another sin of the heart, and Jesus would punish him even more.
The brave thing to do would be to go out and face the monster. To let the thing rip him open and gnaw on his sinning heart, the way it had ripped up Boonie Houck and probably Zeb Potter and that person on the side of the road.
Mom said that Archer McFall said that sacrifice was the way to heaven. If Ronnie sacrificed himself, maybe Jesus would take him instead of letting the demon drag him down to the hot place. But Archer McFall was weirder than any preacher Ronnie had ever heard of. Who else would hold services in a haunted church? And the memory of those strange hymns that Mom and the others had been singing made him shiver with strange, sick pleasure.
The claws were on the windowsill now, exploring the crack at the base of the window. Ronnie couldn't remember if the window was locked. Mom had raised it yesterday to let in some fresh air, and Ronnie went right after she left and latched it again. But maybe she had unlatched it again while he was asleep.
Footsteps came down the hall, heavy footsteps. Dad's boots. Ronnie pulled the covers off his head and sat up, braver now that Dad was coming to the rescue. He couldn't help himself. He had to glance at the window.
Through the curtains, Ronnie saw the Bell Monster pressed against the glass. It was moist, changing shape as he watched, the lesser gray of its mouth parting in some kind of anger or longing.
And he saw the eyes.
Livers.
Wet, drippy, slick, and red.
Eyes that looked right into Ronnie's, that seemed to crawl down his eyeball sockets and into his brain, to reach from his brain to his heart, as if to say, You're mine now, you've always been mine, can you hear me aknocking?
Then the door to the bedroom crashed open and light from the hall spilled across the room and Dad's long shadow filled the doorway.
"Get down," Dad yelled, and Ronnie fell back against the pillows as the first shot exploded from Dad's rifle.
Glass shattered as the percussion echoed off the walls.
Dad yanked the bolt back, reloaded, and fired again.
Gun smoke filled Ronnie's lungs, and though he couldn't smell it, he could taste it, as acrid as car exhaust on his tongue.
Tim woke up screaming. Mom ran into the room and hugged him, pausing for a moment to look at the window.
Dad hurried across the room and looked through the broken panes. Jagged glass framed him, sparkling in the moonlight like sharp teeth.
"Is it gone?" Mom asked. Tim cried into her chest, his shudders shaking them both.
"I don't see it," Dad said, the rifle at his shoulder.
"Did you kill it?" she asked.
"Who the hell knows?"
"Will it come back?"
Dad turned from the window and glared at her. "You tell me. You're the damned prophet."
Prophet? thought Ronnie. Like Ezekiel and Abraham and all those? Was Dad committing a sin of the heart?
Dad bent over Ronnie's bed. "You okay?"
Ronnie nodded.
Yeah, I'm as okay as I'm ever going to be, considering that the thing with livers for eyes is after me because I've sinned in my heart, and now it's after YOU, too. And my nose hurts and you and Mom are fighting again and I'm not going to cry, I'm not going to---
Dad sat on the bed and wiped Ronnie's tears away. "It's gone now. You're safe. I won't let that thing get you."
"P---promise?"
"Yeah."
"Will you stay here?"
Dad tensed, then looked at Mom. Ronnie felt their hatred in the air, a black electricity, as mean as the Bell Monster and almost as scary.
Tim had stopped crying, and now whimpered a little into the folds of Mom's shirt. Ronnie knew his little brother was waiting for what would happen next. They both knew what was at stake. If Dad left again, they would be helpless against the Bell Monster. And despite the promises, Dad might just be angry enough to leave them all, to go somewhere in his truck and drink beer and do other things that he'd never done before.
This was one of those turning points, like when the Lord came aknocking, and you either opened the door or you didn't. Where everything changed, either for better or worse. No going back to last week, when life was nearly normal and all Ronnie had to worry about was homework and Melanie Ward. This was for all the marbles.
Dad looked at Mom again, then at Tim, then at the shattered window. The sky had settled into that deep blue of early morning and even the crickets had quit their chirping. Somewhere in the hills, a hound dog bayed, a lost, lonely sound in the predawn stillness.
"I'll stay," Dad said, staring out the window at the black slopes of the mountains.
Ronnie admired the muscles in his dad's jaws, the way Dad held his head up proudly, without a bit of back-down in him. Dad said that a man ought to draw his strength from the Lord, that nobody who trusted the Man Upstairs needed to be afraid of anything. And Dad made a pretty good case for it, too: why should you be afraid of dying if dying only brought you into the presence of everlasting glory?
When Ronnie thought of heaven, he always imagined that color illustration in Dad's Bible, right before the New Testament. The picture showed Jesus at the top of a set of golden stairs that rose up into the clouds. Jesus had long hair and a brown beard and the saddest eyes Ronnie had ever seen. He had his arms out and his palms lifted in welcome, but there was nobody on the stairs. Heaven looked like a lonely place.
And besides, no matter how wonderful heaven was, new things were always scary. Like the first day of school, the time he'd given that poem to Melanie, the first time he'd been inside the red church, this business about Mom and Dad being mad at each other. So he'd rather stay right here in bed, with Dad sitting beside him and Mom and Tim under the same roof. He'd rather just go on living, thank you very much.
Even with a broken nose and a monster after him and schoolwork and Mom hanging out with that creepy preacher.
Even with all that.
He closed his eyes and waited for the sun to come up.
Archer crouched in the forest near the church. He had dragged the sheriff under the trees after sending Linda away. She wouldn't understand why the sheriff should be suffered to live. She was a good disciple, and she would willingly sacrifice herself, but she wasn't prepared for the truth. None of them were.
Archer surveyed the landscape, his great cat's eyes piercing the darkness. God ruled the kingdom of heaven, but He had given Archer the kingdom of the Earth, along with dominion over all of its creatures. Archer's brother Jesus had misused that power, had wandered among the humans and confused them with messages of love and hope. Before the rise of Christianity, heaven was attained only through pain, trials, and sacrifice. After Jesus' blasphemy was erased from the earth, people would again turn to those true tests of faith.
Of all the ludicrous Christian beliefs, the most laughable was that being forgiven would earn the sinner a ticket to heaven. Yet it was so utterly human. Why bother living right and enduring the rigors of true faith when all you had to do was say, "Come into my heart" and Jesus would be right there tricking you with lies?
Archer would also grant forgiveness. But his would be delivered after the sinner got on bended knee and begged, begged, even as the dark claws of justice performed the cleansing. Deliverance must be paid in blood. Redemption must be earned the hard way.
And Father above would burn with jealousy as Archer succeeded where Jesus had failed.
Archer felt a brief twinge. Bullets passed through the manifested spirit that lurked at the Days' house three miles away. Archer threw back his head and growled a laugh at the moon, then sent the manifestation back to its home in the belfry. Let it eat the shadows there until the next night's work.
Dawn would be breaking soon. The forest was in the held breath between the changing of the guards, the nocturnal animals returning to their nests and burrows and the morning songbirds shaking sleep from their heads. What a beautiful world God had made. Except for the blight of human hearts, a blight born of God's insecurity, the earth nearly approached heaven in its glory.
But Archer was here to erase that blight. All that sinned must be destroyed, so that a new, pure world could emerge. And all on Earth had sinned, even Jesus. Especially Jesus. All except the Second Son.
Archer licked his fur, patient in the knowledge that he had forever. In the meantime, he would continue the cleansing right here in the place of his mortal birth. Here where Wendell McFall's soul had been trapped, where Archer himself had suffered the taunts and abuses of the unrighteous. Here where the sinless ones could come forth in an exodus of blasphemy and mockery.
Archer brought his teeth to the sheriff's collar and gently closed his mouth around the cloth. The sheriff's eyelids twitched as Archer's warm breath tickled his neck, but he didn't awaken. The smell of the man's sin, and those of all the generations of Littlefields, crowded Archer's sensitive nose.
Before Littlefield paid for his own sins, the sheriff first had to suffer for the sins of his ancestors. Archer dragged Littlefield across the churchyard, to a special place of punishment. Littlefield thought that the death of his younger brother had been enough to atone for Wendell McFall's hanging. But he would soon learn that sacrifice was the currency of a jealous God, and of jealous sons as well.
There was joy in being a messiah.
Det. Sgt. Sheila Storie looked at the clock above her office door. It was one of those old round clocks of the kind that hung in elementary schools, with a black casing and plain, oversize numerals. The second hand didn't sweep smoothly. It locked into place on each tiny mark, then twitched over to the next. She watched twenty-three of the spastic seconds pass before she took her eyes away.
She had spent the night in the office, napping a few hours in her chair. Now her back was stiff. She stood and stretched and made another pot of coffee, even though her stomach ached from the abusive night of caffeine and snack food from the machine in the hall. Just before the midnight shift change, Deputy Wellborn had called in to report that the hounds had found nothing.
Somehow, she wasn't surprised by the negative report. Hounds might be okay for chasing down runaway convicts, but this was the twenty-first century. Sifting forensic evidence and poring through criminal databases were the ways to solve crimes, not sniffing around the woods. But she had to admit that a night spent at the desk with her reports had brought her no closer to solving the two murders.
Where was the motive?
That was one of the first lessons of homicide investigation: find the motive, and you find the murderer. But she had a near-penniless drunk mutilated in a churchyard and a farmer with his head caved in by a sledgehammer. As far as anyone could determine, robbery was not a motive in either crime. In fact, the only connection between the two victims was that both lived in the Whispering Pines area.
No, that wasn't the only connection. There were more of what she called the BDCs---big damned coincidences. And most of the coincidences seemed to center on the old church.
McFall's buying of it. Frank's spilling his guts about the childhood tragedy he'd endured there. Even the ghost stories seemed to be a red flag of some kind, though she would never in a million years admit that she gave them any credence at all.
Storie looked out the window. The sky was just turning pink behind Barkersville. The two blocks of Main Street were shadowed, the brick buildings cold and empty in the gasp of dawn. A few vehicles were on the road, most of them pickup trucks with tools in the back. People were heading to work, another week to get through before another payday, and then another two days to forget that they had to do it all over again on the following Monday.
The Chamber of Commerce mailed out glossy brochures that said, Up here, life moves at a different speed. The idea was to lure rich tourists with the promise of front-porch rockers and lazy river breezes. Of course, once they got here, they were bored out of their minds after two days and then dumped a few thousand dollars in the area craft shops and restaurants. Some different speed.
Then why are you here?
She chewed her pencil. Why the hell was she here? Running from the Metro force and big-city crime, she had wanted as rural a life as she could find. Maybe she thought this would be an easy place to cut her teeth, move up a little in rank, and then make a run for sheriff.
She'd always wanted a department of her own. Storie wanted it the way other people craved sex or fame or a family. Solving high-profile cases was just the means to that end. But she also had developed this very scary need to understand Frank Littlefield, to get beneath his professional veneer and his good-ol'-boy act and figure out just what in the hell he was about.
She didn't know much about him. She didn't know enough about the red church or Archer McFall, either. It was time to change that. She pulled her keys from her desk and poured herself a last cup of coffee.
She pressed a button on her two-way. "Unit Two will be in service."
"Ten-four," came the third-shift dispatcher's voice.
She strapped on her shoulder holster before putting on her blazer. The .38 revolver was comforting against her rib cage. As she went outside, she was struck by the moist scent of life: lilies crawling out of their night pajamas, the wild cherry in front of the library snow white with blossoms, birds chattering from branches and utility poles. She took a deep breath and gazed over the mountains.
On those hills were houses, filled with people who were as deeply rooted as the old-growth hardwoods. Smoke curled from a couple of the chimneys, despite the warmth of the morning. These people were no different from the urbanites she had grown up with. They slept with dreams, and the dreams dissolved when they awoke. Time passed for them as rapidly as it passed for everyone.
Yep, some different speed, all right.
She got in her cruiser and headed for Whispering Pines, staying just under the limit all the way.
Frank.
Get up.
Frank didn't want to get up. He was lying under some hay, and the sun was coming through the open loft door and warming his bones until they were like cooked noodles.
"Get up, Frankie."
Frank opened his eyes. The world was yellow, all sunlight and straw dust. The straps of his overalls dug into his neck, making him itch. But that was only a minor problem. He could endure the itch, and he could ignore Samuel. Samuel was about as minor a problem as a little brother could be.
"Come on, let's go fishing."
"Go away," Frank murmured. If Grandpa or Dad found him lazing off, they'd wear out his rear end with a hickory switch. He could hear Grandpa's crotchety voice now: Corn to be hoed and hogs to be slopped and the goldurned dinner chicken's still wearing its feathers. The chainsaw buzzed like a drunken bee where the two men were cutting firewood on one of the hillsides.
Something poked Frank in the side. He reluctantly rolled over and saw Samuel with a cane pole in his hands, feet bare and an Atlanta Braves cap perched on his head. A grin filled with crooked teeth threatened to split Samuel's freckled face in half. "Come down to the river, Frankie."
Frank sat up, dazzled by the sun. Outside, the fields were a brilliant shade of green. The mountains were sharply in focus, as if each individual tree and rock had been carefully etched onto a fine cotton paper. The sky was so vividly blue that he rubbed his eyes, because the air was like water, thick with currents and eddies and languorous coolness. He stood on wobbly scarecrow legs.
"Got your pole, too," said Samuel. He held out another bamboo cane. A round red-and-white float and a small silver hook dangled from the monofilament line. Frank took the pole without a word, then followed Samuel across the hayloft. His feet felt as if they were wrapped in fat clouds and scarcely seemed to touch the ground. Then they were down the ladder and out of the barn and crossing a long meadow. The grass was alive, like the crisp hair of the earth.
The chainsaw stopped and its echo fell like smoke across the valley and dissolved. In the sudden silence, a bird cried from the trees near the river. Samuel led the way across the meadow, below the garden with its tomato vines and leafy cabbage heads and cornstalks tipped with golden buds. He felt as if he were attached to an invisible line, being reeled toward an unknown shore.
Samuel hummed a church hymn that was a little too somber for such a bright summer day. And Samuel should be skipping, laughing, beating at the thistles with his cane pole. He should be running ahead of Frank to find a hiding place under the cottonwoods. Instead his little brother walked solemnly, watching his toes.
The sky pressed down and Frank swam against it. They were at the river now, and its sparkling silvery eyes watched them.
"We're going to catch the big one," Samuel said, standing on a sandbar and freeing his line. He sneaked a look at Frank and put his hand to his mouth. Then he held out his palm to Frank, showing a writhing mass of thick, glistening nightcrawlers. Frank took one and speared it on his hook. Samuel took one for himself and returned the rest of the worms to his mouth. Frank's stomach tightened in nausea.
The boys launched their baited hooks almost in unison. Dragonflies scooted along the riverbank, their green wings beating against the air. Water splashed over stones, snickering.
"It's almost like Sunday," Samuel said.
"Yeah. Here we are being lazy when there's chores to be done. Dad will get ill as a hornet if he finds out we're fishing." Frank moved down the sandbar a little so the sun didn't flash off the water into his eyes.
"Lazy Sunday. Makes you want to go to church, don't it?"
"Church?"
Samuel smiled and his head lolled limply to one side. "Fun place to hang around, know what I mean?"
"We don't have time for that," Frank said, his hands sweating and his heart pounding.
"I got all the time in the world," Samuel said, as a thick worm crawled from his mouth. The brown tip of it squirmed as if sniffing the air, then the worm inched down Samuel's chin.
"I don't go the church anymore," Frank said. "Not since . . ."
"Since what, brother?"
Samuel's float bobbed once, twice. Then he jerked his pole and it bowed nearly double. "Got one, got one." He squealed in delight.
Frank dropped his own pole and lay on his belly so he could reach into the water and land the fish. In the calm water near the shore, he saw the reflection of the sky and the high white clouds. His own face was dark on the water, unwrinkled, unworried. Young.
"Pull him in," Samuel said. Frank reached out and grabbed the taut line. As he tugged, the river erupted in a silver avalanche.
The Hung Preacher rose from the water.
The fishing line was a rope, the hook a noose that encircled the preacher's neck. The pale figure clawed at the strands, and the skin was purple where the rope dug into flesh.
The Hung Preacher's mouth parted in a suffocated scream, except---no, that wasn't the river, that was the preacher---he was laughing, gurgling, a font of morbid merriment.
Frank's own scream was a dull fist in his throat, a mossy stone, a cold fish. He tried to scramble up the bank, but a hand on his arm held him down.
"Time for a baptism, Frankie," came Samuel's voice, only it wasn't the voice of a child. It was a low voice from beyond the grave, a putrid exhalation of hate, the words rustling and slithering like snakes through a catacomb.
Frank looked up at his dead brother, into the eyes that had once been mercifully sewn closed by the funeral director, eyes that now stared accusingly, filled with the hot hunger of vengeance delayed. Samuel's crooked teeth were sharp, moldy, the spaces between them filled with quick darkness.
Samuel was knee-deep in the water now, his gaunt hand tight on Frank's arm, drawing him across the mud and soggy roots into the lapping, laughing tongue of the river. The Hung Preacher tented his hands in a prayer, and his bowed head was smiling, smiling.
Samuel tugged, and Frank was in the river, his dead little brother pushing down on the top of his head, submerging him, and the water tasted like death, the water was crypt air and flooded his lungs even while he struggled toward the surface that was so far away. He fought, even though he knew he deserved to die for what he had done to Samuel.
The hands tugged, pulled. He felt himself going under, deeper---
"Sheriff, wake up."
Littlefield kicked and flailed, moaning.
"Get up, you're having a bad dream."
Littlefield tensed, his muscles spasming from the struggle. "Sh---Sheila?"
"Yeah, Sheriff. Are you okay?"
He opened his eyes. The morning sun was painful. He blinked up into Detective Storie's face. She was so close that he could smell the coffee on her breath. Her hair fell softly about her cheekbones, but her mouth was lined with worry.
What a pleasant sight to wake up to.
Littlefield's head felt as if Zeb Potter's murderer had done another sledgehammer job. A sweetly foul aftertaste coated the inside of his mouth. He could smell his own body odor.
Storie helped him sit up. His uniform was moist with sweat and dew. Or maybe baptismal water . . .
"What happened?" Storie asked.
"I don't know," said the sheriff, shaking his head. "Last thing I remember . . ."
He looked across the churchyard. The Trooper was where he had parked it the night before, but that was his last memory. Had he been inside the church?
Gravestones surrounded him, the marble and granite bright in the sun. He knew this area of the cemetery. He had brought flowers here many times. He turned and glanced at the marker where his head had been resting.
A small lamb was engraved on the top of the tombstone. The etched symbols beneath the image pierced his heart, just as they had always done:
HERE LIES
SAMUEL RILEY LITTLEFIELD
1968-1979
May God Protect and Keep Him
May God protect him. Because Frank Littlefield sure hadn't. Frank had practically sealed Samuel's coffin shut through stupidity and indifference. A big brother was supposed to be his brother's keeper.
The dream.
"Look," said Storie, pulling Littlefield from his reverie. She pointed to a flattened path in the grass that led from the forest.
"Something dragged me here."
"Something?"
Sure. The Hung Preacher, the Bell Monster, the Tooth Fairy. Maybe even the Bride of Frankenstein. Take your pick. She'll believe any of them, won't she?
"The back of your shirt is dirty," she said. "And your collar's torn. You look like you pulled an all-night drunk."
"Gee, thanks. I feel like it."
"Must have been a hell of a church service. What did they do, make you go back for second helpings of the wine until you blacked out?"
Communion. Vague images floated through his head, images of taking something into his mouth from Archer McFall's fingers. He swallowed and probed his mouth with a thick tongue. He wanted to spit but couldn't muster enough saliva.
The red church stood silent at the top of the rise. The belfry was black with shadows. He watched for a moment, but the shadows didn't move. His fingers explored the shredded fabric of his collar. Whatever had made the wounds had stopped inches from his neck. He had been spared, but why?
He wasn't sure he wanted to know.
"Looky," said Tim. "There's the sheriff and that lady cop. Out in the churchyard."
Ronnie looked past his dad to the two police officers. The sheriff was sitting in front of a tombstone, his hair all messed up. The woman waved at them. He started to wave back, then remembered what Dad had said.
Dad glanced over into the cemetery, then back to the gravel road. He kept his hands clenched around the steering wheel. Ronnie knew that when Dad set his jaw so that it creased, he didn't want to be bothered.
"Shouldn't we tell them about the dead person we saw last night? And the monster?"
David glanced into the rearview mirror and froze Tim with a hard look. "Those things are best not talked about."
"Is it because the sheriff was at the church with Mom? Is he one of the bad people?" Tim didn't know when to shut up.
"Let the Lord sort that out," Dad said. "Our job is to keep our eyes on our own paths."
They rounded the bend and the church was out of sight. Below the road, the river raced them, losing by a wide margin. The water was low because no rain had fallen in weeks. Ronnie looked for places that might make good swimming holes. Anything to avoid thinking about you-know-what.
"Why do we have to go to school, Daddy?" The motor of Tim's mouth couldn't idle for long.
"The best thing to do is to keep everything as normal as possible."
"Is that why we can't tell anybody what happened?"
"Yep. So you two are going to school and I'm going to work."
"What about Mom?"
Oops, Ronnie thought. What a dingle-dork.
"Your mom will be okay," Dad said. "Just took a fool notion. We all do that once in a while. Now let's talk about something else."
Ronnie looked out the window. He didn't mind going to school, even if his nose was still a little sore. The swelling had gone down, and the only problem was that the packing in his nose muffled his speech. Kids would be making fun of him. But at least at school, the Bell Monster had plenty of victims to choose from if it came aknocking. Ronnie wouldn't mind seeing two or three of his classmates come face-to-face with whatever the thing was. But that wish sounded like a sin of the heart, and Ronnie couldn't risk any more of those.
"Got your medicine?" Dad asked. Ronnie nodded.
Yep. A good old pain pill. He would go through the day with a dorked-up brain, that was for sure. He wondered if that was why Whizzer Buchanan smoked those stinky pot cigarettes he brought to school. If so, maybe Whizzer wasn't as loony as Ronnie thought.
Because there was something to be said for going through life in a fog. In the fog, you couldn't see the monsters coming. In the fog, they got you before you knew what hit you.
They reached Barkersville Elementary about a half hour late. Dad said he would pick them up in the afternoon. Ronnie was relieved he didn't have to spend all day worrying about having to walk past the red church. He and Tim got excuse notes from the principal's office and went into the hall.
"See you, Tim," said Ronnie.
"Are you going to tell anybody?"
"Tell anybody what?"
Tim just didn't get it. If Dad said do something, you did it. Dad had his reasons.
"You know. The monster."
"Lock it and throw away the key," said Ronnie, imitating turning a key against his tight lips and tossing the invisible key over his shoulder.
"Even about finding Boonie Houck?"
"If anybody asks, just say the police told you not to talk about it."
"Cool," said Tim, his eyes widening behind his glasses. "We're sort of like heroes."
"Yeah, sure." Heroes. Brave as hell, that was Ronnie, all right. Ran from Boonie Houck and busted his nose. Left Tim to fend for himself when the monster had chased them both. Chickened out when something came scratching around the bedroom window.
At least here at school, the biggest horror was Mrs. Rathbone's pre-algebra class.
"Meet me out front after school," Ronnie said. He turned toward the upper-grade wing. He'd taken about six steps before Tim called.
"Ronnie?" The word echoed off the cinder block walls. Ronnie looked around, hoping none of the teachers came out in the hall to shush them.
"Yeah?"
"Is everything going to be okay?"
"Of course it is."
"With Mom and Dad? And everything?"
Ronnie walked back, made sure no one was in the hall, and gave Tim a quick hug. "Sure. Your big brother's here. I'll make sure nothing happens to us."
Tim almost looked convinced.
"Now get to class, squirt," Ronnie said. Tim hustled down the hall. Ronnie got his books from his locker, then went to Mrs. Rathbone's room. He hung his head as he walked to his assigned desk near the back of the class.
"Why, Mr. Day, we're fortunate that you have graced us with your presence today," Mrs. Rathbone said, folding her arms, stretching her ever-present acrylic sweater over her sharp shoulders.
Ronnie stifled a groan and glanced at Melanie in the next row. He slid into his desk and said, "Sorry, Mrs. Rathbone. We . . . had an accident at home."
"I see," she said, touching her nose in derision. She imitated his stuffy tone as the class giggled. "I trust you have your homework, nevertheless?"
"Uh, yeah, sure." He shuffled through his papers. He hadn't done his homework. Who else but crazy Mrs. Rathbone assigned homework over the weekend?
"Then would you share with us the answer to problem number seventeen?"
Ronnie gulped and pretended to scan down a piece of paper. Mrs. Rathbone was almost as scary as the Bell Monster. Sweat collected along his hairline. He was about to blurt a random answer when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Melanie wiggling her fingers. He rolled his eyes toward her while holding up his paper to hide his face. Melanie had scrawled something and angled her paper toward him so that Mrs. Rathbone couldn't see it.
X = 7.
He looked over his paper at Mrs. Rathbone. "X equals seven?"
The teacher frowned. "Very good," she said, unable to hide the sour disappointment in her voice. She turned her attention to the next victim.
After class, Ronnie caught up with Melanie at her locker. With his heart pounding, he said, "Thanks."
"It was nothing." She smiled. Ronnie grew about two feet and felt as if he'd already taken the pain pill. "Besides, you've helped me a couple of times."
He nodded, unable to think of what to say next.
"What happened to your nose?" she asked.
"Broke it."
"Ouch. Does it hurt?"
"Yeah."
Around them, kids slammed lockers and the intercom ordered somebody to the office. Ronnie checked the clock on the wall. He'd better hurry to his next class before he'd have to think of something else to say.
"How did you break it?" she asked, her eyes blue and bright and her pretty lips parted in waiting.
He swallowed. Better to stare down Mrs. Rathbone than to talk face-to-face with Melanie. But she was looking at him as if what he had to say actually mattered.
It was now or never, one of those stupid turning points again. Did everything require bravery?
We're sort of like heroes.
Well, maybe.
He lowered his voice conspiratorially, his heart fluttering as she leaned closer to listen. He wished his nose worked so he could smell her hair. "You ever heard of Boonie Houck?"
She shook her head. The warning bell rang.
"I got to go," he said.
She put her hand on his arm. "Sit with me at lunch and tell me about it," she said, then disappeared into the bustle of students.
Ronnie floated to his next class. He'd just learned that fogs came in different flavors.
Sheila stood on the steps of the red church and stared it down.
Just a building. Wood and nails and stone and glass. A little shabby, the roof bowed in the middle from age. Walls that creak a little when the wind blows, and mice probably skittering around under the foundation. Nothing but a building.
Then why all the ghost stories? Sure, the Scottish and English and Irish settlers brought their folk legends to the mountains, something to spook the children when gathered around a winter's fire. Maybe preachers were always a favorite target of gossipers, and gossip turned to whispered legend. If Frank could fall for that "Hung Preacher" nonsense, then that was a testament to the power of a whisper.
Even in the flatlands, every town had a haunted house or two. There was one in Charlotte, an old brick house a few blocks from where she had grown up. She had pedaled her bike past it several times, searching the darkness of the broken windows for movement.
One bright autumn morning, Sheila saw something move in the dead space behind a shutter. She stopped her bike and looked up from the edge of the overgrown yard. Something or someone was watching her. She had shivered and pedaled madly away. She hadn't believed the place was haunted, yet she had never accepted her friends' Halloween dares to enter it.
Now, after all her derision of Frank's stories, she hesitated at the church door. Of course this place held horrors for Frank. His brother had died here while Frank watched. A memory like that would haunt anybody. But did that explain why the hair on her forearms tingled erect when she touched the doorknob?
Sheila looked around the churchyard. Frank was at the edge of the forest, searching the ground. Other than the noise of his moving through the brush, the hill was quiet. Though the sun glared down, she was chilled by the shadow of the huge old dogwood. Its branches hovered over her, long bony fingers, reaching, reaching . . . .
Nonsense. You're just catching whatever craziness is infecting everybody else in Whispering Pines. You deal in facts, and don't you forget it.
She went inside. The foyer was dark, since it had no windows. She blinked and headed into the sanctuary. The handmade pews were lined neatly on both sides, even though the heights of them varied slightly. Storie admired the woodwork of the beams and the carved railing that marked off the dais. Once upon a time, somebody had put a lot of love into this church.
The church smelled of hay and her nose itched from dust. The church had been used as a barn, Frank had said. The church had undergone a haphazard cleaning job since the Houck murder. She wondered if the intent had been to hide evidence, and regretted not ordering the church sealed off with yellow crime scene tape. But Frank said he'd checked the church thoroughly.
She approached the pulpit, aware of her footsteps and heartbeat intruding on the stillness of the church. She wasn't religious, but she was respectful of houses of God. Still, the Christian God was all about getting to the truth, right? So maybe Jesus wouldn't mind her snooping around a bit.
Nothing seemed amiss in the sanctuary and a quick look in the vestry revealed only cobwebs and dark corners. She crossed the dais and stood at the lectern, looking out over pews and imagining what it would be like to have a congregation to address. If she were going to understand Archer McFall's motives, she had to put herself in his place. All murderers had a motive, however senseless in the eyes of sane people.
A preacher as prime suspect? That's about as loopy as a murderous ghost.
She put her hands on the lectern and realized her palms were sweating. Was this the power that lured McFall from California, to leave a life of sun and cash to preach in these cold mountains? Did McFall have a messiah complex or something? No, that was giving him too much credit. The only reason he was a suspect at all was that she couldn't come up with anything better.
She checked over the dais one more time, and on the second pass she saw the stain. It was old and brown, faded into the oak floorboards. It looked like a bloodstain, though too ancient to be from Boonie Houck's murder. She knelt and traced her finger around the edges of it.
The stain made a pattern. She stood and studied it. If you looked hard enough, you could imagine it was an angel, all wings and...
She smiled to herself. Yep, she'd failed her own Rorschach test. So much for those criminal psychology classes. It was time to see if Frank had found anything.
She touched the railing as she stepped off the dais, and something clung to her hand. At first she thought it was dust, but she held her hand to the light coming through the windows. Rust-colored flakes glistened against her skin. Dried blood.
Sheila stooped and looked at the rail, wishing that she'd brought a flashlight. A few flakes of dried blood were scattered across the wood. How had Frank missed seeing them? She thought maybe she'd better be more discriminating about the things Frank said. After all, he believed in ghosts.
She had a solid clue at last, something the labs could work with. They could at least determine whether the blood was Houck's or, if she were lucky, the killer's. She wondered how many fingerprints were lying about the church. Even if they were from fifty different hands, at least she would have a suspect pool.
Sheila backtracked down the aisle, scanning the floor for more bloodstains. No luck.
She went through the foyer, better able to see this time because her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. A coat rack was nailed to one wall, wooden pegs angled out like deer antlers. Sheila bumped into the bell rope and it swayed against her blazer with a whispering sound. The rope led up into the belfry.
Wait a second. Frank said there wasn't a bell rope. Why would he lie about something like that? And what ELSE has he lied about?
Well, at least this explains why those witnesses had reported hearing bells on the nights of the murders. Probably some kids messing around in here.
She hurried from the church to share her news with Frank. She wanted to see his face when he was confronted with his lies. "Hey, Sheriff," she called.
He stepped out from a laurel thicket. He looked a little better now, though his eyes were bloodshot and his hair unkempt. "I didn't find anything," he said with a shrug.
Big surprise.
"Well, I did. Bloodstains."
"Bloodstains?"
"In the church."
Frank's eyebrows rose. "I'll be damned."
"I thought you would be. And another thing. You know the ringing bells that you kept talking about?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, I have a simple explanation for that."
"How simple?"
"Follow me."
She jogged to the church steps and waited for Frank. "In here. I thought you said there wasn't a bell rope because of-"
"Right. There hasn't been a bell rope for over a hundred and thirty years. Because people wanted to forget that mess about the Hung Preacher."
Sure. That's why the legend is alive and kicking today, isn't it? Because they did such a damned good job of forgetting?
She smiled to herself as she followed Frank up the steps. THIS will show him.
She blinked. The rope was gone.
She gazed up into the small hole that led to the belfry. Nothing. Had someone pulled it up? If so, whoever it was would still be up there. They would have seen anybody running from the church.
Frank had his hands on his hips, looking at her.
"I swear. There was a rope here."
"Ha, ha. Very funny."
"I'm serious. Give me a boost up to that hole."
The sheriff shook his head. "No way in hell, Sheila. The last time I did that, I lost a brother. I'm not about to lose you."
She balled her fists. "Damn it, I saw a rope. Are you going to tell me one of your ghosts tied it to the bell?"
"There's no rope."
"Do you think I imagined it? That I'm catching whatever craziness seems to be spreading around these parts?"
The sheriff sighed. "Look, maybe I've been a fool. Forget all that crap about the ghosts. If I really believed in ghosts, why would I bother to investigate the case?"
"Because you're the sheriff. You have to act like you know what you're doing."
"You're not going up in the belfry."
"There's no way you're going to fit. One of us has to look. We can't just sit back and cower while people keep getting murdered."
Sheila grabbed two of the coat-rack pegs and pulled herself up, then positioned one foot against the doorknob. If the murderer was dumb enough to play stupid tricks, he was just begging to be caught. She wondered if she should draw her revolver, but her hands were occupied. If the murderer was waiting with a weapon . . .
She poked her head through the belfry, her anger giving her strength despite the poor grip she had on the wood.
Nothing.
Nothing in the belfry but a cold, tarnished cast-iron bell. A few leaves skittered in the breeze, caught in the corners since last autumn. Nothing else.
After a moment she jumped down, the impact jarring her knees. Frank caught her and helped her regain her balance. Their eyes met at the contact and they both looked away.
"Satisfied?" asked the sheriff.
"I swear I saw a rope," she said, failing to convince even herself. Had she seen it?
Well, at least there was the blood. That was real enough. She vividly recalled the texture of the coagulated flakes. Good, hard forensic evidence, with none of the problems caused by haunted eyewitnesses.
She brushed past Frank and hurried to the rail. The blood was gone.
"So where's this blood?" Frank asked when he caught up with her.
She stared at her hand, thinking of that Shakespeare play. Out, out, damned spot. Had she imagined it, just as Lady Macbeth had?
"It was right here," she whispered.
"Maybe it was ghost's blood."
From the windows, shafts of sunlight sliced across the church. Golden dust spun slowly in the air. Wood and nails and stone and glass. The building, the walls, waited.
"Are you ready to call in the SBI?" Frank asked after an awkward stretch of silence.
"Why? So they can certify me as insane as everybody else in these mountains?"
She went outside and sat on the church steps, alone with her confusion.
Linda drove up the narrow dirt road that led to Mama Bet's house. The driveway became so rutted that she had to park along the fence beside the other cars. She walked the last hundred yards, up the hill to a little glen in the forest. She heard the music before she saw the house. Sounded like a fiddle and a guitar playing "Fox on the Run."
Mama Bet's house was one of the oldest structures in Whispering Pines, and generations of McFalls had been born, grew old, and died behind those warped gray walls. It was a perfect place for a good old-fashioned revival, away from the snooping eyes of the cops and those brownnosers from Barkersville. It was only fitting that the church members congregate here. After all, besides Archer, Mama Bet was the last of her line. Though Linda had always thought the old woman was strange, a little bit haughty and holier-than-thou.
Lester Matheson had brought his four-wheel-drive truck all the way up to the house. The truck was parked under a half-dead apple tree. Two of the Buchanan sisters sat on the sidewalls, moonfaced and dull-eyed. The oldest wore a red plastic clip in her greasy hair.
A goat was tied to the apple tree, browsing along the banks of the creek. The goat stared at Linda, its dark eyes knowing and cold. It sniffed the air. The goat's jaws worked sideways, then it shook the flies from its ears and dipped its head back to the brush.
Jim Potter and Stepford Matheson continued their counterpoint melody on guitar and fiddle. Vivian, Lester's wife, sat in a rocker beside them, tapping her toe in time to the music. Rudy Buchanan stood at one end of the porch, nodding his head, though he was about a half beat off the rhythm.
Sonny Absher leaned against a corner post, smoking a cigarette. His eyes moved to the woods behind the house, then fixed on Linda. "You're late," he said, smoke drifting through his ragged mustache as he spoke.
"I got here as soon as I could."
"The reverend don't like people to be late."
"Archer says, 'Everything in God's good time,' brother," she answered.
The Abshers were a bunch of inbred ignorants, and Sonny was the worst of the lot. That was one of the things that burned her up about some of her neighbors: they were on the doorstep to heaven here in Archer's mountains, but instead of reveling in the glory, they lived off food stamps and bootlegging and selling the occasional beef steer. Archer would cleanse them, though. She could hardly wait.
She entered the house without knocking. Mama Bet sat in an overstuffed armchair, a shawl over her lap. Her lower legs were thick-veined below the hem of her dress. The woman smelled of smoke and salt, like a cured ham.
"Hi, Mama Bet." Linda bent and kissed the woman's cheek.
"Hey, honey. How's that man of yours coming along?"
"Not real good. I was hoping he would see the light and be spared, but-"
The old woman cut her off with a hard look, her eyes misted by cataracts. "Ain't for us to decide such as that."
Linda lowered her head.
"Only Archer knows the proper time and place for each man's death," Mama Bet continued. "You ain't the one turned David into a sinner, are you? You ain't the one packed him off to the Baptist church when he was a boy and too young to know any better. So Jesus is to blame for leading David astray, not you."
"Amen to that," said Nell Absher. Her husband Haywood nodded in solemn agreement. Their daughter Noreen went to the window and looked out over the clouded mountains.
"Here come Hank and Beulah," Noreen said.
"Good," said Mama Bet. "Is that everybody?"
Becca Faye Greene came in from the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand. She gave it to Mama Bet and stood beside the old woman's chair. She flashed a smug smile at Linda.
Becca Faye was a Potter by blood, but had married and kept the Greene name after her husband ran off to Minnesota. She was part of Archer's circle back in high school, but had chickened out when Archer asked her to help found the Temple in California. Since Archer had returned, Becca Faye was doing everything in her power to stay in the reverend's good graces, perhaps to make up for her earlier betrayal.
Or perhaps for something more. Becca Faye's blouse was low-cut, and she was flashing enough cleavage to earn her a severe spiritual cleansing. Linda had seen the way Becca Faye had sidled up to Archer at last night's service. She wondered if the woman had had better luck than Linda in Archer's parked van.
Jealousy. One of the greatest sins of all. Forgive me, Archer.
"Call them on in," said Mama Bet. She put the coffee cup to her wrinkled lips and took a sip.
One of the Mathesons went outside, and the music stopped. The others filed in, silent Potters, Abshers, Mathesons, Buchanans, and two Greggs, both Linda's cousins. One of them met her eyes, then turned away in shame.
Linda wanted to shout, There will come great trials, cousin. Archer says sacrifice is the true test of faith. Donna needed cleansing as much as anybody.
But she kept her tongue. No words would bring Donna back from the dead. Except perhaps Archer's words.
About thirty people packed the living room, lined along the stone hearth and against the corner cupboard, filling the kitchen entrance. Some of the Mathesons skulked in the hall, looking into the room over Lester's shoulders. Mama Bet scanned the waiting faces. She worked her mouth in approval.
"You all know why we're here," she began. "The time's almost upon us. We prayed for the return, and now He's returned. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of heaven. Our ancestors came unto these mountains to worship in peace, but then their hearts turned hard and cold and went to Jesus. We thought saying 'I'm sorry' would make all the old sins go away."
The assembled crowd grew silent at the mention of that foul name "Jesus." Linda's stomach clenched in anger. Mama Bet nodded in appreciation of their revulsion, then continued.
"We got away from all the good things we worshiped," she said. "We strayed from the one true path. We needed the savior to return and deliver us from evil. So God sent Archer into the world of us mortals. And God punished us by making our seed go barren and letting our families die out, punishing the sinners unto the fourth generation."
"Amen," said Lester, and a smattering of others echoed the sentiment.
"We are wicked," said Mama Bet.
"Amen," said Haywood and Nell in unison. Haywood adjusted the knot of his red silk tie.
"We deserve God's wrath," the old woman said, her voice trembling as it increased in volume.
Becca Faye raised her hands and threw back her head. "There will come great trials."
The woman's breasts swelled against the fabric of her blouse as she arched her back. Linda sneered, wondering who the hussy was showing off for. Archer wasn't here, and God could care less.
The air in the room was electric, thick with the odor of sweat and tension. "Some of us have suffered loss," Mama Bet said.
Linda looked at her cousins. They lowered their heads. The Potters also looked at each other. Old Alma Potter, Zeb's sister, choked on a sob.
"But don't mourn those who have gone before," Mama Bet said, finding her rhythm. "Sacrifice is the currency of God. It's part of Archer's work. We'll all have to make sacrifices before it's done."
Mama Bet's eyes brimmed with tears. Archer was her son, the last of the McFalls. Linda knew that all the families had suffered losses. But the losses were justified, because all of them, the Greggs, Abshers, Potters, Buchanans, and Mathesons, were touched with sin. All of them had a hand in the murder of Wendell McFall.
"What do we do about the sheriff?" Lester asked. The room grew quiet.
Mama Bet clutched the worn arms of her chair. Her fingers crooked as if she were suffering a spasm of pain. "Archer can deal with the sheriff."
"There's others that are against the church," said Becca Faye, staring at Linda.
Linda's face flushed with anger and shame. "He's my husband. The Old Testament says to honor your husband."
Not that you would know about honoring a husband. The only thing YOU honor is whatever big-spending cowboy picks you up at Gulpin' Gulch on Friday night.
"What about your boys?" Becca Faye said, her eyes half-lidded with pleasure at Linda's discomfort. The other members of the congregation looked on with interest. Ronnie and Tim were the youngest descendants of the families that had committed deicide more than a century ago.
Linda looked out the window, at the trees green in the sun, at the dark ridges, at the creek winding between the slopes toward the river. She wished she had stayed in California. Then Ronnie and Tim would have never been born. But she couldn't imagine a life without them, even a life spent in Archer's divine arms.
"I pray for Archer's mercy," Linda finally said. Becca Faye had no response to that simple plea.
Sonny Absher broke the silence. "They got to pay like everybody else."
"But they're innocent," Linda said, angry now.
"Ain't nobody innocent."
Especially you, Linda thought, but she shouldn't pass judgment on a fellow sinner. All were equal in the eyes of Archer. All were equally guilty, and all would pay the same price.
No, not exactly the same price. Sonny would lose only his own miserable life. Linda was more than ready to give Archer her life if that was required to complete his sacred work. She even understood that David would have to die if he insisted on interfering. But the boys . . .
The boys shouldn't have to pay for sins that only barely touched them. Their blood was nearly pure. But so had Isaac's blood been pure, and Abraham still had to lay him on the altar.
Mama Bet tried to stand and fell back into the armchair. Two of the Potter brothers moved forward to help her rise. She wobbled slightly in their grip.
"Archer be praised," she said. "Y'all go on now. I'll see you at church tonight."
"Archer be praised," said Haywood Absher. He had been one of the last to leave the Baptist fold, but he had embraced Archer's gospel as wholeheartedly as anyone. At least, he put on a good act of believing.
Linda joined the others in a closing "Amen."
The families began filing out, their heads down. Linda thought they should be joyful, but instead they were worried about their own mortal flesh. Death wasn't the end: death was the beginning of a new life in the kingdom. The coming deliverance was a time of celebration and exaltation, not punishment. God had blessed them by sending Archer to serve as His mighty sword.
Then why did she so dread giving her boys away?
Linda waited on the porch for the crowd to thin. Becca Faye brushed past, leaving a trail of dimestore perfume. Sonny Absher flashed his four-toothed grin and nodded good-bye, then took Becca Faye's arm. He escorted her to his rusty Chevelle, where they would probably spend the afternoon sinning in the backseat.
"You coming to the church early tonight?" asked Lester.
Linda chewed at her thumb. "If it's Archer's will."
"Don't worry none about your boys. Mine went to God years ago, and I've come to accept it." Lester nervously chewed his tobacco.
"What if Vivian is the next sacrifice? How would you feel then?"
"Sins got to be paid for."
"Why can't we just pay for our own sins?"
Mama Bet was listening from the screen door. "It don't work that way, child. Sacrifice is the true test of faith. Remember the lesson of Abraham? It ain't a sacrifice unless you lose something dear."
"And what are you losing, Mama Bet?"
The old woman looked out across the mountains, squinting her milky eyes. A small breeze was blowing from Tennessee, carrying with it the smell of sourwood blooms and pine.
"Flesh and blood," Mama Bet finally said. "Just like everybody else."
The last bell rang, and Ronnie ran to his locker, holding his books in front of his face so that no stray elbows would bump him in the nose. The injury throbbed a little, but he'd decided not to take the pain pill. After he'd spent lunchtime with Melanie, pain barely touched him. He felt bulletproof, especially because she said maybe they should eat lunch together every day.
He was mentally going over the poem that he'd given her last month. He had tried to be funny and sweet at the same time, so that maybe if she read between the lines, she'd see that he thought she was the most beautiful flower in the whole garden. Dripping in the rain. Soaking color from the sun. Flashing beauty in the breeze.
Plucking petals. She loves me. She loves me not. Well, he'd left out that last part. No way was he going to say love in a poem. Plus, she might think that, since she was the flower, that would mean he wanted to pull her arms and legs off.
The best thing about the poem was that she didn't giggle and show it to all her girlfriends. Ronnie didn't think he could stand that. A lot of the other kids already thought he was weird because he carried around books that weren't even assigned. He also wore bargain-brand blue jeans and sometimes his Tshirts didn't even have messages on them. He wasn't cool: he didn't play sports, hang around the Barkersville mall, or watch MTV.
But right now, he didn't care what people thought or how far out of it he was. All he cared about was that Melanie would sit with him at lunch. He recalled the breathless way she had said, "I promise," when he told her not to tell anyone else about Boonie Houck and the Bell Monster. His heart was made of helium.
A commotion in the hall pulled him from his pleasant thoughts. Shouts erupted, and a gawking ring of students had gathered in the math wing. Something was happening, possibly a fight. Most likely a fight. That was about the only thing that drew people's attention these days.
"Leave me alone," came a scared voice.
Tim! Ronnie fought through the circle. He heard Whizzer Buchanan's smoky, snickering voice.
"Tell us about it, goober-head," taunted Whizzer. "Tell us about the thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."
"No," whimpered Tim. "Let me go."
Ronnie shouldered past the eighth graders in the front row. Whizzer had Tim by the shoulders, shaking him. Tears trailed down Tim's cheeks. His glasses were on the floor, and books were scattered around his feet.
"Tell us, Tim," said Whizzer. "Inquiring minds want to know."
This drew a laugh from the crowd. Ronnie threw down his books and shoved Whizzer in the back. The crowd gasped and grew silent. Whizzer turned, all five feet ten of him, jaw muscles twitching. Ronnie imagined the bully's muscles tensing under his camouflage jacket.
"Well, well, well," said Whizzer. "If it ain't Mr. Hero himself."
Whizzer's eyes half closed, as if Ronnie were a bug that he wanted to squash with one big lace-up boot. Ronnie looked around the looming hulk at Tim, who was pressed back against the lockers that lined the hall. "You okay, Tim?"
Tim sniffed and nodded.
"Get your books, then. Dad's waiting."
"And what if I say it ain't time for you to go yet?" said Whizzer.
Ronnie looked at the faces in the crowd. Their expressions were eager, expectant, relieved that they weren't Whizzer's victims of choice this time. If only a teacher would come. He'd even be happy to see Mrs. Rathbone.
"We didn't do anything to you," Ronnie said.
"Yeah, you did. You got born, didn't you?" This drew another laugh, but Whizzer wasn't smiling.
Tim stooped to pick up his books. Whizzer kicked them away.
"Heard you been to church," said Whizzer. "And you got a little friend there. Something with wings and claws and livers for eyes. Everybody likes a good ghost story, Mr. Hero-Man. Tell us about how you saved Tim from the Bell Monster."
Ronnie's heart lodged in his throat. "Did you tell anybody, Timmy?"
Tim shook his head, then knelt and found his glasses and put them back on.
If Tim hadn't told, then . . .
Ronnie spun and searched the crowd. Melanie was on the edge of it. To her credit, she was a little pale. She looked away in shame.
He would not cry. Oh, no, Ronnie would not cry, at least not here and not now. He balled his fists, and a sigh of satisfaction rose from the crowd.
"Tell us about the rest of it," said Whizzer, looking down at Ronnie, his smile like a possum's. "Tell us about your Mama and the temple in California."
Temple? California? His mom had never been to California. "You're crazy, you . . . you---"
Ronnie was aware that he could never take back what he would say next. "You gap-toothed redneck."
A murmur rippled through the hall. Some of the kids had buses to catch, but the crowd had grown larger. Sweat trickled down the back of Ronnie's neck.
Where were those teachers?
Whizzer shoved Ronnie in the chest. Ronnie stumbled but kept his feet.
"Now you done it, you sissy," said Whizzer. "The reverend says everybody got to pay for their sins in blood. Time for a down payment."
The reverend? Ronnie's head spun in confusion. His ears rang because of the pulse throbbing in his head. He was scarcely aware of the crowd now. It was just him and Whizzer and hate and pain.
Whizzer drew back a fist that looked the size of a football. Ronnie heard the whisper of air just before the fist crashed into the side of his head. His vision went black for a moment, and when it returned, he was looking at Whizzer's boots only inches away.
One of the boots nudged him on the shoulder. "Get up, weasel. Or you want me to step on you a little?"
Ronnie struggled to his knees, then stood on wobbly legs. He realized that the crowd was roaring, shouts and laughter and jeers. Tim had slipped to safety. The blood hunters had bigger game now.
Ronnie pretended to be hurt. It wasn't a far stretch of his imagination. His ears rang and the side of his face throbbed.
"Come on. Archer says there will come great trials," taunted Whizzer. "Archer says it's high time for a cleansing."
Did none of the other kids realize Whizzer was a raving lunatic? No. They didn't care. Reasons didn't matter. Only entertainment at someone else's expense.
Ronnie stooped and bulled his way into Whizzer's belly. He heard the wind rush from Whizzer's gut, and they both slammed into the lockers. Whizzer pounded on his back, but he could hardly feel it. He held on and squeezed, his nose pulsing now. He tasted blood on his lips.
An authoritative voice boomed through the hall. "What's going on here?"
It was Mr. Gladstone, the principal. The one everybody called either Glad-Stoned or Fred Flintstone. The students backed away, and Ronnie relaxed his grip on Whizzer, though he didn't let go. The principal grabbed Ronnie by the collar and finally dragged him to his feet. Whizzer stood and smoothed his jacket, his face red.
"Ah, Mr. Buchanan," Mr. Gladstone said. "Why am I not surprised?"
He turned to Ronnie. "And you are . . . ?"
Lying was useless. Everything was useless. "Ronnie. Ronnie Day."
"Okay, gentlemen. Let's take a trip to my office."
Ronnie and Whizzer marched down the hall like prisoners at gunpoint. The crowd had broken into lines on each side of the hall, whispering among themselves, already expanding the fight into a bloody schoolyard legend. Ronnie realized he was the first person stupid enough to stand up to Whizzer Buchanan. He wiped his nose with his hand. At least Whizzer hadn't punched him there.
Sins paid for in blood. Well, how much freaking blood does it TAKE?
He looked behind him. The kids were juiced on adrenaline, dispersing now, a few shadow-boxing to re-create the fight. Tim's tears had dried and he followed Mr. Gladstone as if in shock, carrying an armful of books. Melanie was behind Tim, and Ronnie looked back into her blue eyes.
So this is what it feels like when the Bell Monster rips open your chest and takes your heart. Except this way, you don't die. This way, your heart keeps working, and you get a dose of nails and barbed wire and broken glass with every beat.
Melanie opened her mouth as if to explain, then looked down at the floor and shook her head. Her lip quivered and her eyes were moist.
She loves me. She loves me not.
At least that was one less thing to worry about. The principal nudged Whizzer and Ronnie into his office and closed the door.
"Another one dead." Sheriff Littlefield let the deerskin jacket fall back over the face of the mutilated woman. "One of the Gregg girls."
"You know her?" Detective Storie asked.
"Used to date her sister back in high school." Littlefield looked up the road, where it wound into the hills. He knew this area well. A half dozen houses were tucked away in the shadowed folds. Behind them, Buckhorn Mountain rose so steep and rocky that no one could settle there. The mountain was the end of the world, a great wall that imprisoned as much as it protected.
Littlefield had grown up in one of those old houses. He still owned a couple of acres of sloping timberland at the foot of the mountain. He had visited the land only twice since his mom had died some ten years ago. She had gone to her grave still heartbroken over the deaths of her husband and youngest son.
Frank was the last of the Littlefields. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Seemed all the old families were dying out. The world had changed under them, time had left them in the dust, and all that remained was the demolishing of homesteads and the erecting of monuments. Stone markers that read, May God Protect and---
"Sheriff?" Storie called from the ditch.
He rubbed his eyes and looked up from where he was kneeling over the body. Whatever haze he'd been in last night still affected him. He felt as if he were moving underwater. "Did you find something?"
She held up a yellow receipt, gripping it carefully by the edge so that she wouldn't smudge any fingerprints. "This must have fallen out of the jacket."
"What does it say?"
"It's from Barkersville Hardware. Made out to Day Construction."
"David Day. He lives about a mile up the road."
"We couldn't be that lucky, could we?"
"David ain't a murderer. I've known him since we were kids."
David sometimes wore a jacket like the one over Donna Gregg's body.
"How well do you know him?"
Littlefield stood, his knees sore. "Well enough."
"As well as you know Archer McFall?"
The sheriff looked up the road, then at Sheila. "I'd better go question him."
"I'll call for Perry Hoyle," Sheila said.
The county's station wagon was putting on a lot of miles these days. Sheila headed back to her cruiser, which was pulled off the side of the road behind the sheriff's Trooper.
Littlefield checked around the body. Chest ripped open. Heart gone. No mountain lion had performed that particular atrocity.
How about the Bell Monster, Frankie?
Samuel's voice. Littlefield glanced into the forest on both sides of the road. His ears rang, a high-pitched buzz that ripped like a jigsaw blade through his brain.
He tried to blink away the darkness that seeped from the corners of his vision.
Not another blackout. Not in front of Sheila.
He wouldn't allow himself to go insane. Too many people were counting on him. Samuel was dead. So were Donna Gregg and two others. More, unless he did something.
A car came down the road and slowed as it approached the scene. Littlefield forced himself to stand erect and wave the car past. One of the Absher boys was driving. Becca Faye smiled at him from the passenger's side. Neither of the pair looked at the body lying in the weeds, though it was visible from the road.
The sheriff waited until his hands stopped trembling, then walked to Sheila's cruiser. She was just hanging up her radio handset when he reached her open door.
"Another unit's on the way, and Hoyle will be out in a half hour." Her eyes narrowed. "Are you okay, Sheriff?"
He nodded, hoping she didn't notice the sweat on his face. "I'm going to ride up to the Day place."
"Good. I'll wait here for backup, then I'm going to pay a little visit of my own."
"Who to?"
"The Reverend Archer McFall."
He came around the door and leaned over her. "Listen, Shei---" He started to say her first name, then caught himself. "Sergeant. We got nothing on him."
"In that case, he won't mind answering a few questions."
"Maybe we should go together."
She shook her head. "We don't have time. Who knows when the killer's going to strike again? We need to jump on every lead we've got."
"Then let me take Archer."
Her eyes shone with defiance. "This is my case, remember? You assigned it to me. What are you so worried about, anyway?"
Ghosts don't exist. Archer McFall is just another preacher, another ordinary person who took up the Bible and found something in its pages that meant something. That doesn't make him dangerous. That doesn't even make him that unusual.
He didn't want to admit that he was scared. The detective would perform a better interrogation without him around to muddy the waters. After all, Littlefield had taken his chances with Archer the evening before, and had nothing but a gaping hole in his memory to show for it. Littlefield was losing faith in his own abilities, and that was even scarier than the Hung Preacher's ghost.
"Do you know where he's staying?" he asked.
She nodded. "I checked around. He's rented a room down at the Holiday Inn."
"That's funny. His mother has a place up the road. Wonder why he's not staying with her?"
"With his money, you'd think he'd rent one of those chalets by the ski slopes. You're the one who's supposed to know him, remember?"
He looked at Donna Gregg's cold body. "No," he said quietly. "I don't remember."
"Maybe after you talk to David Day, you should get some sleep." Sheila went past him and continued her search of the scene. Littlefield got in his Trooper and started the engine. He rolled down the window as he pulled away. "Be careful," he called over the motor's roar.
She nodded absently, her mind already consumed with analyzing the victim's ragged flesh. Littlefield swallowed hard and headed toward Buckhorn Mountain.
It was past four o'clock. David and the boys should have been home by now.
I hope Archer didn't take them early, Linda thought. The angel of God would be coming for them all sooner or later. She couldn't help but hope it was later. She was going to miss the boys when they were gone. But at least the reunion would be sweet and everlasting.
For the tenth time, she peered anxiously through the curtains. The sheriff's Trooper turned off the river road onto their packed dirt driveway. Linda dropped the curtain, heart pounding. Even though he'd attended last night's service, she didn't trust him.
She waited by the front door until she heard his feet on the porch. She swung the door open and forced a smile. "Hey, Sheriff. What brings you out to these parts?"
The sheriff bobbed his head in greeting. "Bad news, I'm afraid."
Was there any other kind?
She cleared her throat. "It's not the boys, is it?" Hoping, hoping.
Please, God, don't take them yet.
"No." The sheriff looked at her closely, as if they had once shared some secret that he'd forgotten. Then he pointed to the side of the house, where David had nailed a piece of plywood over the window. "Looks like you got a broken window."
"Yeah. Those darned blue jays, they see their reflection and just got to pick a fight. One of them hit it just a little too hard."
"Is David home?"
"He went to pick up the boys at school. Should be back any minute."
"Mind if I wait for him?"
Linda opened the door all the way and stepped aside. "Please come in."
The sheriff sat on the edge of the easy chair and leaned forward. Linda sat across from him, not knowing what to do with her hands. She straightened the magazines on the coffee table, wrinkled copies of David's Field & Stream and her Woman's World Weekly.
She sat back and cupped her hands over her knees, then pushed her hair away from her forehead. "Wasn't that a wonderful service last night?"
"Reverend McFall sure knows how to preach up a storm. I'll say that for him."
The sheriff's eyes focused behind her. She turned to see what he was looking at. It was a knitted sampler, one Grandma Gregg had made for her, which read, May God Protect And Keep This House. A little farm scene was stitched below the words.
"We're mighty blessed that he came back," she said.
"Came back?"
"To the mountains."
The sheriff nodded. The room was cramped with silence. The air smelled of the trout she had cooked for lunch.
"So what do you think of this weather?" she asked.
"Pretty nice."
"Yeah, we've got to get our pole beans planted. Been in such a commotion lately, we got behind on our chores."
"How's Ronnie?"
"Ronnie? Oh, he's fine. Good enough to go back to school today. I got to take him to the doctor next week to get his stitches out, but he won't have a permanent hump on his nose or anything."
"That's good."
Another long silence. The sheriff looked at the wall again. "What's that?" he asked.
Linda's heart warmed as she looked at the small metal ankh on the wall. She had put the symbol of the temple in place of the old wooden cross David had nailed there. "It's a joyous time, isn't it?"
"Linda, what's going on at the church?"
She swallowed some air and nearly choked on it. "You heard Archer last night. It's time for a cleansing, time to pay for iniquities."
"People are getting killed."
"Archer says sins have to be paid for in blood."
"Jesus did that for all of us by dying on the cross."
Linda held her breath. Blasphemy. Archer had allowed this nonbeliever into the church?
Archer must have his reasons. Who was she to doubt his holy ways?
Outside, a vehicle pulled up. She jumped up from the sofa and ran to the door. The sheriff followed her out onto the porch. David and a glum-looking Ronnie and Tim got out of the Ranger.
David cast a hostile look at the sheriff. "What do you want?"
The sheriff looked at the two boys, then back to David. "It's about Donna Gregg."
Linda put her hand over her mouth. David turned to the boys. "Why don't y'all go play in the barn for a while?" he said to them.
"What's wrong?" Tim asked. His glasses sat askew on his nose. He pushed them up with a thin forefinger.
"Come on," Ronnie said to Tim. "Let's get out of here."
As Ronnie turned, Linda saw the large bruise on his temple. "What happened?" she asked David.
"He got in a fight."
Ronnie? In a fight? He wouldn't hurt an earthworm.
"Something bad happened, didn't it?" Tim said to Linda. "You always send us away when you want to talk about bad stuff."
Ronnie took his brother's arm and led him across the uneven stretch of green lawn. The sheriff waited until the boys had disappeared inside the barn, then said, "Donna's dead."
David looked at Buckhorn Mountain as if he wished he were walking its ridgeline. He always wanted to be away, alone, in troubled times. Linda tried to fake a sob, but failed.
"I found your jacket at the scene," the sheriff said to David. "And a receipt made out to Day Construction. That kind of evidence is enough for me to take you in for questioning, but I'd just as soon do it here."
"She was still warm when I found her," David said, his voice as hollow as a potato barrel in spring. "Must have been about two in the morning."
"Why didn't you report it?"
"You were around. I figured you knew about it before I did."
"Did you see anybody?"
"Depends on your definition of 'anybody.'"
Linda tried to signal David with her eyes. Then she realized she didn't know whose side to be on. The sheriff was one of the flock, but somehow wrong, Jesus-tainted and closed-hearted. And David was . . . well, she didn't know what David was.
"Tell me what you saw," the sheriff said.
"Probably the same thing you saw." David folded his arms. "After all, you're one of them, ain't you?"
"One of what?"
He nodded at Linda. "Them. Archer's little angels. I saw you at the church last night."
Linda looked from the sheriff to David, as if she were watching a badminton match being played with a live grenade. She chewed at her fingernail. Blood rushed from the ragged quick and filled her mouth with a brassy sweetness.
"Three people are dead," the sheriff said. "All of them were somehow connected to the church."
"It's not Archer," Linda said too quickly and forcefully.
"The old families," Littlefield said. "Houck. Potter. Gregg."
"They needed cleansing," Linda said. "Archer says we all need cleansing."
"Shut up," David said. "I'm sick to death of 'Archer this' and 'Archer that.' I had enough of that the first time."
"The first time?" the sheriff asked.
"Yeah," David said. "In California."
"What's California got to do with what's happening now?" Linda asked.
David slowly shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? He was a lot smarter out in California. Or maybe he just didn't know his own power."
"Don't bring your blamed old jealousy into this."
"You didn't see him," David said, his voice rising in pitch. "You didn't see him carry the bodies into the so-called temple."
"What are you talking about?" Linda said.
"The Temple of the Two Suns," he spat. "You didn't hear about the murders out there. Who misses another lost drifter on the Santa Monica freeway? Even a half dozen. Plenty more where they came from. Now I just got to figure out why Archer came back."
Linda shook her head. What was he saying? Archer didn't kill anybody. It was God who performed the cleansings. Archer was merely the savior, the earthly vessel.
"You're saying that he committed murders in California?" she heard the sheriff ask David.
"Saw it with my own eyes. How do they taste, Linda?"
Linda looked in horror at the gnawed flesh of her fingertips.
"How do they taste, Sheriff?" David asked.
"What the hell?" the sheriff asked.
"Communion. The body. The bread of life." David walked to the Ranger.
The sheriff looked questioningly at Linda, then called to David, "I'm not through talking yet."
"Well, I am." David pulled his rifle out from under the Ranger's seat.
"Don't do it," the sheriff warned. He fell into a crouch, like one of those television cowboys in a showdown. Except Linda saw that the sheriff wore no firearm.
David laughed. "Don't worry. I won't waste good bullets on the likes of you and her. These are for Archer. I'm going to kill him as many damned times as it takes. This time, I'm going to blow him back to hell for good."
"What's going on?"
"Shh." Ronnie pressed his cheek against the board so that he could see through the knothole. The air was thick with dust. He wondered what would happen to the packing in his broken nose if he sneezed. Could he even sneeze if he couldn't smell?
Dad strode back to the Ranger, leaving Mom and the sheriff standing on the porch. When Ronnie saw the rifle, his heart stuttered in his chest. "No," he whispered.
"What?" Tim said.
Dad went into the house. Mom said something to the sheriff that Ronnie couldn't hear. The sheriff got in his Trooper and drove away. Mom looked around, then also went into the house.
Ronnie moved away so that Tim could look through the knothole. Tim stood on an overturned bucket to get eye-level with the hole.
"I don't see nothing," Tim said.
"They're in the house."
"Is it bad?"
Tim's not dumb. He knows what's going on. I guess this is the part where I have to play Brave Big Brother.
Ronnie tried to sound nonchalant. "Dad's home, isn't he? How bad can it be?"
"I'm scared."
"It's daytime," Ronnie said, though the shadows and dusty cobwebs and the creaking planks of the barn made him nervous. "Monsters don't get you in the daytime."
"No, I mean scared about Mom and Dad." Tim stepped off the bucket and sat on a bale of hay.
Ronnie stared into the row of wooden stalls that lined the far side of the barn. They didn't keep cows anymore. Dad said with beef prices being so low, it was cheaper to buy meat at the supermarket than to raise it. Ronnie almost missed taking care of the animals, putting them up at night and making sure they had hay in the winter. Dad and Ronnie had slaughtered cows, too, hung them up by a chain and cut them open, the steam rising from the animals' insides. Ronnie didn't miss that part of it.
"Mom and Dad will work it out," Ronnie said. "They have to."
"What if they don't? What if she makes him mad again and he leaves? Who will protect us then?" Tim's lower lip trembled.
"Look, I saved you from Whizzer, didn't I? You have to trust me."
"Yeah, right. Like you're going to be able to beat up the Bell Monster?"
Ronnie coughed from the dust. "I'll think of something."
"Anyway, how do you kill a ghost? Dad shot it, but I know it's coming back."
Ronnie had been wondering that himself. Why would a ghost want to kill people? It didn't make sense. If a ghost were crazy, maybe, but just a plain old ordinary ghost?
Whatever it was, the red church was to blame. He'd read books about hauntings. Supposedly, "psychic imprints" could be projected into the walls if a person suffered great emotional turmoil. That seemed kind of stupid to Ronnie, but the Bell Monster was real. What if the Bell Monster was the spirit of the preacher who had been hanged there? Surely having a rope around your throat would cause some emotional turmoil.
But then, everything that had ever died would leave a ghost. What living thing hadn't suffered a little emotional turmoil in its life? A lot of cows had been killed right there in the middle of the barn, shot in the brains with a rifle and cut into pieces and their guts hauled away in a wheelbarrow. But you didn't see ghost cows lurking around everywhere.
Maybe God was trying to take the preacher's soul to heaven, but decided halfway up that the preacher was too evil to enter the kingdom. Maybe the devil didn't want the preacher, either, because the preacher knew too many Bible verses and would tell them to the other people in hell. Maybe the preacher would try to save people who had already been condemned to the everlasting fire. No way the devil would want something like that going on. So the preacher got stuck in the middle, and killed people because he was lonely and wanted some ghosts for company.
That was dorky. He was thinking like a third grader.
"You don't have to kill a ghost," Ronnie finally said. "It's already dead. The trick is to make it stay dead."
"How do you do that?"
"By giving it what it wants."
They looked at each other. "What it wants is to kill us," said Tim.
"Yeah." Ronnie sighed. "A real kick in the rear."
"I don't want to die."
Ronnie didn't, either-no matter how many times Preacher Staymore tried to tell him that God had a special place for children. The preacher had also introduced him to the idea of committing sins of the heart. It was bad enough back when doing something bad would get you scratched out of the Big Golden Book. Now he'd learned that just thinking about bad stuff would damn him to hell.
He'd asked Jesus into his heart every few weeks, just like Preacher Staymore wanted. How long did your heart stay clean after Jesus washed away the sins? What if you died while you were thinking a bad thought, and didn't have time to ask forgiveness? The whole business sounded pretty risky to Ronnie.
And he was in no hurry to find out for sure.
"You're not going to die, Tim," Ronnie promised, hoping he sounded more reassuring than he felt. He was about to say something else when the shot rang out.
The Holiday Inn was off the only four-lane highway through Pickett County, just outside the Barkersville exit. Sheila Storie pulled into the parking lot. The lot was nearly empty. Tourists were rare between the ski season and summer, when Floridians came to escape the heat and New Yorkers came to escape New York.
Archer McFall's room was on the first floor, just beside the motel's drained pool. McFall's black Mercedes was parked in front of 107. Storie parked beside it and got out, checking her watch and wondering how the sheriff was coming along. She glanced through the driver's-side window of the Mercedes. The interior was spotless. She knocked on the door of 107.
A tall man answered the knock. He was handsome, but a little slick-looking, like a lawyer on a television show. He had strong cheekbones and a wide face that was freshly shaven. He smiled at her.
"Archer McFall?" she asked.
"Yes, my child. How may I help you?"
The way he called her "child" irritated Storie. He couldn't have been more than ten years older than she was, about Frank's age. He smelled faintly of cologne and a more pungent odor that she couldn't identify. The room behind him was dark, the shades drawn.
"I'm Det. Sgt. Sheila Storie, Pickett County Sheriff's Department," she said, not bothering to dig her badge out of her jacket.
McFall blinked, but his smile didn't waver. "It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. Your sheriff and I go way back."
How far back?
Storie looked into his eyes, trying to read them. He gave nothing away. "I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."
"Oh, about Mr. Houck." His eyes went colder, darker. "That poor, unfortunate man. I hope you've caught his killer."
"No, sir, but we have a few leads."
"I'm glad. What kind of perverse notion leads someone to commit such an act on holy ground?"
"Well, sir, at the time, the red church was being used as a barn."
McFall laughed, a low sound that started in his abdomen and shook his entire body. "That's true. Without a congregation, a church isn't much of a church, is it? Without people, and what they believe-"
"Did they believe in you in California?" Storie said. She gave him her "sunglasses stare," the kind of cool look that some of her fellow cops gave only when hidden behind the safety of tinted shields.
"The people of Whispering Pines need ministering as much as anyone else."
"Badly enough to make you give up an easy life in California?"
"Why, Sergeant," he said, tugging at his tie. "I do believe you are interrogating me."
"Not really. Just dropped by for a chat."
"In that case, please come in." He showed his capped teeth and pushed the door wide.
Storie went inside. The bed was neatly made, with no clothes or suitcases in sight. A Bible lay open on the bedside table. McFall shut the door and flipped the shades. Afternoon sunlight striped the room.
She sat in the stiff-backed chair by the desk. McFall sat on the edge of the bed, looking uncomfortable. "So why did you come back?" she asked.
"I'm of the mountains. My heart has always belonged here. My mother still lives in Whispering Pines, in a little farmhouse at the base of Buckhorn Mountain."
Storie nodded at him, encouraging him to continue.
"I felt the calling as a child," he said. "As you may know, my family has a long history of serving God and spreading the Holy Word. Even as a child, I always knew I was going to be a preacher."
"Like your great-great-grandfather?"
McFall looked out the window, his jaw twitching. "Wendell McFall was an unpleasant twig on the family tree. Still, I don't think he deserved hanging, do you?"
"I don't know anything about him but the legend."
"Oh, the so-called 'ghost' story. Let me assure you that the only spirit that walks the church is the Holy Spirit. I should know. I spent a lot of time there as a teenager, praying to God for direction."
Storie shifted in her chair. "Tell me about California."
"I thought I would start a church out there. A few local girls went with me. We were a fine bunch, not a sinful thought among us, our hearts as pure as the sun. We were going to start a commune and live a simple, ascetic life."
"Seven girls went out there, I hear." Storie had traced the seven. Of them, only Linda Gregg, now Linda Day, had ever been heard from again.
"When we got there, most of the girls wandered off to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I guess the big-city life was more enticing than a life spent in the service of God."
"How come your church out there failed?"
McFall smiled at her. "It didn't fail. The Temple of the Two Suns prospered, thanks be to God. I had a television show that ministered to thousands. I opened a music store, a religious bookstore, and some other businesses. Even with the success, even though I was reaching the people, my heart held an emptiness. I prayed for guidance, and God told me to go home. So here I am."
Storie watched his face carefully. "If you don't mind my saying so, the Temple of the Two Suns sounds like an unusual name for a church founded by someone from the Bible Belt."
"There are many paths to God. The true path is to follow your own heart. My heart says that what I do is right."
"What denomination is your religion?"
"Christian, in a manner of speaking. Of course, every sect or order has its unique qualities. 'Two Suns' comes from the idea of God sending a second light into the world. That's one of God's promises, you know."
"It certainly didn't take you long to get a church up and running here," she said.
"I was fortunate that Lester Matheson let me buy the property and return it to the family. And the people of Whispering Pines opened their hearts and welcomed me into their community."
"You have to admit, it's something of a coincidence that murders started occurring as soon as you came back to the area."
"I came because God called." He leaned forward. "He calls all of us. He asked to be invited into our hearts. Is He inside you?"
Storie shifted in her chair. "That's not important."
His mouth twisted. "It's the only thing that's important. What's in your heart?"
"Look, Mr. McFall---"
"What's in your heart?" His eyes were bright, feverish.
Storie stood and headed for the door. A hand fell on her shoulder. She spun, instinctively crouching into the defensive judo stance she had learned in cop school. For a long second, her muscles froze.
His FACE.
McFall's chin lengthened, and his teeth sharpened between his wide black lips. His eyes were feral, so glitteringly yellow that they seemed to float in front of his face. His nose lifted in a snarl.
Just as suddenly, the illusion passed. McFall stood before her, his hands up in apology. "I didn't mean to startle you, my child," he said in a calm voice.
Great. As if seeing bloodstains and ropes that don't exist wasn't bad enough, now I'm starting to think . . .
She put her hand to her forehead. Stress, that was what it was. Three murders to solve before more people died. Her people, the ones she had sworn to uphold and protect.
"What's troubling you, Sergeant?"
His voice soothed her. She had a sudden urge to break down in front of this man who was unruffled by life's traumas and worries. He was like the sun on the smooth surface of a lake. His serenity radiated in almost palpable waves.
"It's nothing, Reverend. Nothing at all."
"You don't have to keep it inside," he said, taking a step nearer. She backed against the door.
"Just turn your troubles over to a higher power," he continued in his soft, firm voice. "Open your heart and trust in God."
That sounded like a good idea. And as soon as she realized it sounded like a good idea, a warning flare rocketed across her mind.
Wait a second. I don't trust ANYBODY, much less a man who's on a suspect list for three counts of murder.
But there was something about his tone, the gentleness and concern in his dark eyes. He was close enough so that she could smell mint mouthwash on his breath. For a moment, she thought he was going to lean forward and kiss her, and the worst part was that she didn't think she would stop him.
Instead he said, "Don't be afraid. Open your heart. Have faith."
She looked into his eyes, and her skin tingled with mild electricity. Such warmth, such promise, such peace emanated from his eyes. Such humanity.
Oh, yes. She had faith. She believed. Her heart felt swollen and warm in her chest, like a balloon on a summer day.
I believe. Just tell me WHAT to believe.
This was insane. She should have called for backup, told Communications what her 10-20 was. The only person who knew what she was doing was Frank. She tried to picture his face, but all she could see was the golden light that emanated from Archer.
He touched her face. His fingers were hot. She couldn't look away from his eyes, though part of her wanted to vomit, to punch him, to claw at the corners of his smile.
"Faith comes with a price," he said. "All you have to do is give me everything. But the rewards are great, too. The kingdom of heaven can be yours, which contains all the world and more."
She would give and give and give. No, she wouldn't. She served only the taxpayers and law-abiding citizens. She---
"The congregation must have communion," he said. "One bread, one body. And sacrifice is the currency of God. All I ask of you is that you serve."
She nodded. She could do that. Faith required a little sacrifice, but the rewards were everlasting, weren't they?
"Please," she said, lowering herself to her knees. She gazed up into that beatific face. "Let me serve."
He gave a benevolent nod. "You're not one of the old families. But you are working against the purpose of God."
I have fallen short. I am unworthy. I deserve punishment.
What could she offer that would compensate for her sins? What did she have? She could offer her soul, but that was nearly worthless. She did have flesh. She could sacrifice that, and perhaps appease the God she had so callously ignored all the days of her life.
"Take me," she said, her voice hoarse and her eyes moist. So great was the glory of God. And equally great was the glory of Archer McFall. "Use me any way you need."
McFall cocked his head, as if he were consulting God, listening to a divine command that would determine her fate. He knelt quickly and lifted her by the shoulders of her jacket, then wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
"Don't cry, my child," he said.
She smiled at him. How could she bury the happiness that filled her and brimmed over, the joy and rapture that he had delivered unto her?
He pulled her away from the door. "Say nothing of this. Tonight you will serve, and thus gain a place in the bosom of God."
Oh, glory! Oh, how merciful is God in his wisdom! She would make the sacrifice to earn her place, to please Archer, to pay for the sin of pride that had shadowed her life.
"Come to the church tonight," he said, then turned and crossed the room, again sitting on the bed.
He adjusted his tie, then clasped his hands lightly in his lap just as someone knocked on the door. "Would you get that, please?" Archer said.
Storie spun, fumbling with the doorknob in her haste to serve. She opened the door and Frank Littlefield stood before her, his fist held sideways, preparing to knock again.
"Hi, Sergeant," Frank said, no surprise in his voice.
She blinked against the sudden rush of sun, annoyed by this trespass into her spiritual communion with Archer. "What are you doing here?" she said.
He looked past her to the reverend. "I came to get some answers, same as you."
"Come in, Sheriff. We've been expecting you," McFall said.
David lowered the rifle and smiled.
The front door burst open, and David thought the sheriff might have returned to sneak up on him and jump him. He swiveled the rifle toward the door, his finger tight on the trigger. Ronnie stood in the doorway, Tim small behind him.
David sniffed the comforting aroma of gun smoke. Linda was facedown on the living room floor. Tim ran to her and got on his knees, touching her hair, murmuring "Mommy" over and over again. Ronnie stared at David, his eyes wide with shock, his face pale.
"Did you . . . did you shoot her?" Ronnie asked.
David leaned the rifle against the coffee table. "I ain't that crazy yet."
Linda groaned and Tim helped her sit up.
Ronnie clenched his hands, a tear running down his cheek. "What in the hell's going on, Dad?" he said, shuddering with sobs. "Why are you trying to kill her?"
"I'm not the one trying to kill her," he said, looking down at his wife. "It's that damned Archer McFall."
"Archer McFall's the preacher. The preacher's supposed to be the good guy."
"Don't believe everything you hear in Sunday school, son."
"You're scaring me, Dad. You told us a family's supposed to stick together when times get bad." Ronnie helped Tim lean Linda against the easy chair. She had a welt above her eye. Ronnie looked at it and then glared at David.
He looks so damned much like his mother.
"I didn't touch her," he said. "She fell when I shot that damned thing."
He pointed to the little symbol that hung on the wall, the lopsided cross that Linda had kept from her days in California. She'd told David she'd thrown it away, that all the old nonsense was over. Well, the devil's hooks sank deep. All it took was a little whiff of sulfur and brimstone to fan the embers in a sinner's heart.
The bullet had penetrated the center of the mock cross. The metal arms had twisted outward, curled by the impact. Gypsum powder trickled from a hole in the sheet rock. David nodded in satisfaction at a good shot.
"Hell followed her from California," he said.
"California?" Ronnie said. "She's never been to California."
David wiped sweat from his forehead. Maybe some secrets were best left buried.
"Are you okay, Mommy?" Tim sounded like a four-year-old.
"Yeah, honey," she said, pushing her hair away from her face and looking at David with mean eyes. "There will come great trials, but we keep on walking."
David was filled with renewed rage. So this was what Archer had driven his family to. Linda, ready to give up everything she owned, including her own flesh and blood. Tim, not knowing which of his parents to trust. Ronnie, learning too young that the world was a screwed-up and hard-assed place. And he himself wondering if faith was enough, if he could single-handedly take on the devil who wore lamb's clothing.
No, I won't be single-handed. I've got God and Jesus and a rifle and everything that's right on my side. Surely that will be enough. I pray to the Lord that will be enough.
"What are we going to do, Dad?" Ronnie looked pathetic, his eyes red and moist, his swollen nose a bruised shade of purple.
"It's high time for a cleansing," Linda said, her voice distant. She rocked back and forth as if tuned into an invisible gospel radio station.
David looked out the open door. Dark mountains huddled on the horizon, cowering before the sinking sun. Even the trees seemed to dread the coming night. The shadows held their breath, waiting to send out an army of monsters under cover of darkness.
Linda's eyes focused on a high spot behind the wall. Tim and Ronnie looked at David, expectant and fearful.
Maybe it was high time for a cleansing.
"We're going to beat that thing," he said, more to himself than to the boys.
"How do you kill a ghost?" Tim asked.
David rubbed the stubble on his chin. "Hell if I know, Tim."
"Ronnie says the trick is to make it stay dead. By giving it what it wants."
"Maybe so. We're just going to have to trust in the Lord."
"The Lord," Linda said with a sneer. She stiffened and contorted her features. She resembled the wrinkle-faced bat that David had found dead in the barn one morning. The old Linda, the pretty wife and loving mother and good sin-despising Christian, was as dead as Donna Gregg.
David knew Linda had been saved. He had knelt with her at the foot of the pulpit and held her hand while she tearfully asked Jesus into her heart. Once Jesus was in there, He belonged forever. Or was being saved a privilege that He could take away, like the court took away your driver's license if you drove drunk?
David was getting a headache thinking about it. That was God's business, and not for him to worry about. His mission was to protect the innocent, and let the guilty be damned.
"Get out," he said to Linda, trying not to raise his voice.
She lifted her face to him, her eyes wild. The boys wore twin masks of terror.
"Get out," David said more firmly. He gripped the rifle. "Go to the red church or Archer McFall's bed or straight to hell if you want. Just as long as you stay away from the boys."
Linda trembled as she stood.
"Don't hurt her, Daddy," Tim yelled.
David felt a smile crawl across his face, and a chill wended up his spine. He was sickened by the realization that he was enjoying this. A Christian was supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. A man was supposed to honor his wife. The Lord's number one lesson was that people ought to forgive trespasses.
But the Lord also knew that the human heart was weak.
David pointed the rifle at her.
Tim jumped at Linda and hugged her, his face tight against her chest. "Don't go, Mommy," he pleaded.
David motioned with the rifle barrel toward the door. Linda glared at him, then leaned down and kissed Tim on top of the head. "Shh, baby. It will be okay."
She gently pushed Tim's arms from her waist. Her blue blouse was dark with Tim's tears. She rubbed Ronnie's hair and smiled at him. "Take care of your brother, okay?"
Ronnie nodded. Linda pulled the mangled cross from the wall and clenched her hand around it. She paused at the door. "It's tonight, you know," she said to David.
He swallowed hard. He started to tell her that he still loved her, despite it all. But he could only stare numbly, his fingers like wood on the rifle.
"Lord help us all," he whispered as she headed into the shroud of twilight. His prayer tasted of dried blood and ash.
The sunset threw an orange wash over the ribbed clouds in the west. The strong green smell of the day's growing died away on the evening breeze. The river's muddy aroma rose like a fog, seeping across the churchyard so thick that Mama Bet could almost taste it. She eyed the shadows in the belfry, clutching her shawl tightly across her chest.
This was bad ground, here at the church. She didn't know why Archer insisted on holding services in this marred house of worship. Wendell McFall had died right there at the end of a rope, one end of it tied high in that bedeviled dogwood. The tree's branches stretched both high and low, toward the sky and the ground, like fingers reaching to grab everything and everybody.
"What's wrong, Mama Bet?"
She turned and looked into the dirty face of Whizzer Buchanan. Fourteen and already in need of a shave. He was all Buchanan, wall-eyed and his hands as plump and clumsy as rubber gloves filled with water. And to think his family used to be fine whittlers, back in the days when people made what they needed instead of buying it down at the Wal-Mart.
"Why, nothing's wrong, child." She smiled at him.
Whizzer smelled of sweet smoke, probably that wacky weed she heard some of the hippies were growing up in the mountains. Archer would cleanse them, sure as day. Archer held no truck with such trash. Hippies were as bad as the hard-drinking Mathesons and Abshers. Sins of the flesh, sins of the heart. All sins led down one road, down one tunnel, into the dark heart of hell.
"How come we ain't seen the Bell Monster yet?" Whizzer asked. Like the Bell Monster was some kind of video game that you could switch on and off at your convenience. The boy had a lot to learn about the workings of God.
"We got to be patient," she said.
Whizzer nodded and ran into the church, his boots thumping across the wooden floor. She looked across the cemetery. Stepford was relieving himself against a tall granite statue. The faded angel accepted the insult with nary a peep.
In the woods, shadows moved and separated. Becca Faye and Sonny came out from the trees, holding hands and giggling like kids at an Easter egg hunt. Crumpled leaves stuck to Becca Faye's blouse, and the top button was undone. Mama Bet hoped the hussy enjoyed her sweaty little frolic. Because soon she would be sweating the long sweat, the devil riding her back, until forever ate its own sorry tail.
Mama Bet walked across the gravel to the church steps. Diabetes was making her feet hurt something awful. She slowly went up the steps, keeping a grip on the worn handrail. She figured she might as well get used to taking them one step at a time, because she just knew that God had a mighty high set of golden stairs for her to climb to get to heaven.
She rested in the windowless foyer, in the cool darkness. Voices came from the main sanctuary, scattered and echoing in the hushed hollow of the church. She overheard Haywood telling Nell about the benefits of a high deductible with a low co-pay.
"You see, honey," he said, as Mama Bet entered the main body of the church, "odds are that if you do get sick enough to meet your deductible, it's going to run into the tens of thousands of dollars anyway. And the way hospitals charge these days, a body pretty much meets their deductible just walking in the door. So you might as well save that money up front with the cheaper plan."
Nell nodded and put the back of her hand to her mouth to hide her yawn. A couple of pews in front of them, Jim and Alma whispered about Zeb's funeral arrangements. Rudy Buchanan knelt near the lectern, on both knees, practicing his Archer-worship. Almost as phony as a bootlicking Christian.
Mama Bet chewed her lower lip between the nubs of her gums. She didn't want to have one of her spells, not on Archer's night. She took slow deep breaths until her rage subsided.
Some congregation this was. As addle-brained as fish-head stew. But it wasn't Archer's fault. Her boy worked with what material God gave him. If anybody was to blame for this shoddy bunch of backwoods nonbelievers, then you had to turn your eyes upwards-to Him that would plant the seed and then laugh until the skies busted open. And all you could do was let your belly swell until you busted open yourself, until the child crawled out from between your legs and took its rightful throne.
"It's going to be tonight, ain't it?" said Jim, pulling her from her reverie.
"That's for God and Archer to know," she answered. "It ain't for the likes of us to worry about."
"Can't help but worry," he said, sweat under his eyes. "It might be any of us up on the chopping block."
"Pray that you're worthy." She couldn't abide such selfishness in the face of a great moment, the moment the whole world was born to see, the reason God clabbered the mud together and shaped the mountains and spit the seas and breathed life into dust. This one shining moment of glory. This end to everything, and the start of the business beyond everything.
She gazed upon the dark stain on the dais. The thing was taking shape, drawing on the sacrificial blood spilled onto its wooden skin. It had slept for 140 years, fighting free once in a while to drift across the night hills or to spook up some teenagers. But now it was awakening for real, busting loose of whatever kind of invisible chains bound the past.
Archer said the red church had to feed, so let it be fed. Let the juice of these sorry souls soak into the floorboards. Let this church absorb all their human blood and sweat and sin. Let them be cleansed for the final journey. Because Archer so ordained.
A tear collected in the corner of her eye. Jim stood and gently clasped her hand, thinking she was afraid or mournful. No, she was joyful, grateful to be allowed to hobble into the church, though it was tainted with the sins of their ancestors. Even aching and stiff, her bones as brittle as chalk sticks and her blood vessels as narrow as flaxen threads, even with eyes that could barely tell day from night and fire from ice, even with all the crush of eighty-odd years weighing down and crooking her spine, she could stand proud before the altar.
Here, she could surrender. In this sick house of God, she could give up her flesh and blood.
Frank Littlefield looked around the motel room. Sheila appeared dazed, her eyes wide and her pupils unnaturally large. Archer McFall sat on the bed like a patient king who was deigning to accept tribute from a minor subject.
"Did you learn anything from David Day?" Sheila asked, though judging from the tone of her voice, she could care less.
"He pulled a gun on me, mostly just for show," Frank said. "He's crazy, but not the kind of crazy that kills three people."
"David Day?" Archer said. "I believe his wife is a member of the congregation."
"Linda," said Frank. "And if I remember right, she was one of the ones who took off to California with you."
Archer looked from Frank to Sheila, and back again. "California has nothing to do with what's happening here. Please put your minds at rest about that. We're all home now, and that's what's important. We're all fulfilling God's plan."
"God's plan," said Frank. "God's plan has left three innocent people dead, assuming that God is the one who pulls the strings."
"Nobody's innocent," said Archer. "And God doesn't pull the strings."
"Sure," Frank said. "I forgot. You do."
"Have you been talking to my mother?" Archer smiled. Shadows flitted in the corner of his mouth, or maybe it was worms crawling from between his lips.
Frank blinked away the illusion. "Oh, no, Mr. McFall. I don't have to talk to your mother. Because on the way over here, I was thinking back on a night a long time ago. One night when you and me were both younger and, I reckon, more innocent."
"Nobody's innocent," Archer repeated.
"Samuel was," Frank said.
"What's your brother got to do with this?" Sheila asked, her voice hesitant. She put a hand to her head, then rubbed her face as if wiping away sleep.
"That Halloween night at the red church," Frank said hurriedly. His blood raced, his face grew warm, his stomach clenched around a bag of hot nails.
Archer's eyes widened in interest, his face passive and unconcerned, his hands in his lap. As if he were watching a bug in a jar, curious to see what it would do next. "Halloween? There've been so many Halloweens."
"When Samuel climbed up into the belfry, something came up behind him. A shadow. Except the shadow laughed." Frank balled his hands into fists.
"Please, Sheriff, not the ghost story again," Sheila said. She seemed to have recovered from her daze, and was probably worried that Frank would make a fool of himself in front of the public. Probably thought that Frank would blow his law enforcement career, maybe his whole future in Pickett County. But right now, Frank wasn't thinking about the future. He was thinking about the past. About the dead and buried. And about a familiar laugh.
"I recognized that laugh," Frank said. "Sent a chill through me, the first time I heard it again-at the red church, the day after Zeb Potter was killed."
The Halloween laugh. Frank had heard it hundreds of times, keeping him awake at 4 A.M. or jerking him from nightmares. He heard it in the squeal of car tires, in the wail of a police siren, in the rush of the cold river. He heard it in the howl of the wind, and he even heard it in silence. The laugh was loudest in silence.
"You were there." Frank raised his fist toward Archer's face. Archer ignored the threatening gesture.
"Sheriff," Sheila said, in her stern cop voice.
"You were in the belfry that night," Frank said to Archer.
He'd heard assault suspects talk about being so mad they "saw red," and now Frank knew what they meant. It was a real thing, the red brighter than the blood of the sun. It poured down over his vision, blocking out Sheila, blocking out the Bible on the nightstand, blocking out the consequences.
"You scared Samuel." Frank was trembling now. "You made him jump. You killed him."
"Sheriff, Sheriff, Sheriff," Archer said, shaking his head slowly as if having to explain an obvious truth to a child. "I didn't kill Samuel. You did."
Frank leaped at Archer, the red in his vision now completely obscuring everything but the smile on Archer's face. Frank wanted to tear that smile from the man's face, to hear the satisfying rip of flesh and crack of bone. Frank wanted to feed the man his own smile, shove it down his throat until he choked.
His hands snaked around Archer's neck, squeezing. Frank looked at his own fingers, white from the pressure. He felt removed from the attack, as if it were someone else's hands shutting the air from Archer's lungs. As if he were watching a movie. The thought angered him. He didn't want to be distanced, removed, cheated of his satisfaction.
Hands pounded on his back, pulled at his shirt. He barely felt the blows. Sheila's voice came to him as if through a thick curtain of dreams.
"Stop it, Frank," she shouted. "Damn you, you're killing him."
Killing him.
A wave of pleasure surged through Frank, almost sexual in its intensity. At the same moment, he was repelled by his joyful vengeance. He was no better than Archer, no better than whoever had killed Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, Donna Gregg.
Sheila had one arm hooked under his right bicep, the other pressing on his neck, her weight full on his back. Frank kept his grip on Archer's neck, watching the carotid artery swell from the stifled circulation. Throughout the attack, Archer had made no move to defend himself. As if he were submitting, a willing victim. A sacrifice.
Frank stared into Archer's eyes. He saw nothing human, no fear, no anger, no pity.
"If he did it, we can take him to trial." Sheila grunted, levering her body against his, trying to break his chokehold. "Let the justice system make him pay."
Justice system.
God supposedly ran a justice system, one where the meek and the just earned a place in the kingdom of heaven. One where the guilty paid for their sins eternally. But eternity was a long way away, and revenge was like chocolate on his tongue, the taste sweet and rich and consuming.
Frank pictured Samuel in his mind as he pressed his fingers tighter. The gristle of Archer's throat popped and clicked, his breath coming in shallow, whistling gasps. Still Archer endured his own murder without raising a finger to protect himself.
Sheila's knee pressed against Frank's lower spine and he shouted in pain. Sheila seized the opening, bending him backward and jerking one of his hands from Archer's throat. She twisted her hip against Frank, and the sheriff slammed against the nightstand as Archer fell back onto the rumpled bed.
Sheila drew her .38 and stood in cop stance, both arms extended, legs spread, jaw tense. Frank looked up at her. His shoulder throbbed. He ignored it, and rubbed his scalp instead.
"Are you okay, Reverend?" Sheila asked, her hard gaze never leaving Frank's face. Archer didn't answer.
"Reverend McFall?" she said, her voice rising in both pitch and volume. Still she didn't look away from Frank.
The sheriff tried to stand.
"Don't do it, sir," she ordered.
Archer rose slowly from the bed behind her. Floated up without bending his legs. As if God were pulling invisible strings.
"Look out, Sheila," Frank yelled. "Behind you."
She gave him a disbelieving look, as if use of this oldest trick in the book was proof of his utter madness.
Behind her, Archer came to full life, the skin of his neck unblemished, his face contorted.
Changing.
Archer's smile returned, a curved gash of bright, sharp teeth that dripped hate. His wings filled the room behind Sheila, stretching themselves and stirring a wind to life.
Something broke inside Frank's head, some thin threshold was breached, and his thoughts spilled out into dark places where thoughts should never go. He sprang at Sheila, trying for her knees in a perfect flying tackle.
Her gun went off, and the blood spilled along with his thoughts.
It all happened at once, distorted in jerky slow motion, as if the filmstrip of reality had jumped its sprockets and was jamming the projector.
Frank had cracked. Sheila had no doubt at all about that. Attacking a suspect like that, trying to choke Archer, trying to . . .
She still felt groggy, and barely trusted her own thoughts, but now she was acting on instinct. She heard a whisper of movement behind her at the same time that Frank jumped at her knees.
Aiming to wound instead of kill was also instinctive, the product of countless hours of training. Still, she was surprised when the revolver roared in her ears and twitched in her hands. Frank shouted in pain as a red rip erupted in his left shoulder. Frank slammed against the nightstand, the bedside lamp and Bible knocked to the floor, his head bouncing off the edge of the mattress as he crumpled to the floor.
The sulfurous tang of gunpowder reached Sheila's nose at the same moment she realized what she had just done. She had shot Frank. Her sheriff and the man she cared about most in the world was bleeding at her feet. And Archer was laughing.
The source of the laughter was so close that she could feel its wind stirring her hair. The preacher's breath was cold on her neck, sending icy rivers down her spine. Or maybe it was the quality of the laugh itself that chilled her. The voice was scarcely human, a cross between an animal's growl and an asylum inmate's demented cackle. Or maybe Archer's windpipe was so damaged that he could scarcely breathe. It was a miracle he could stand at all.
She stepped backward and pivoted to face Archer, expecting to see red fingerprints around the preacher's throat. She nearly dropped her revolver.
The thing hovering before her was not real. Not real, not real, not real. She had cracked, same as Frank. Too many murders to solve, not enough sleep, too much processed food, she shouldn't have watched Rosemary's Baby as a child, yeah, that was it, that was why she was crazy, and she began laughing herself.
Because this just ain't HAPPENING, this thing's got wings and nothing that big has wings and oh my what big TEETH you have, the better to eat you with, my dear and Oh God your EYES, what have they done to your EYES they look like split meat in a butcher's counter and where's Archer and hee hee since I'm absolute apeshit crazy it's OKAY if I shoot you, especially if you don't exist.
Sheila pulled the trigger, the firm metal beneath her finger her only link with reality. The .38 flashed a second time, and the window exploded. Still the impossible vision hovered before her, the hideous face gleaming with a wet, sharp smile. She fired again, and Frank groaned from the floor. The sheriff's hand gripped her pant leg as if he were trying to pull himself to his feet.
"Nice try," said the thing, only now it was using Archer's voice, and the flesh rippled and changed and became the preacher again. His suit had three holes in the breast. He fingered them and smiled. "This is a three-thousand-dollar suit," he said.
Yeah Judge, I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if only I could figure out what it IS, but I testify that one Archer McFall turned into a . . . a THING . . . yeah, right in front of my eyes, it had big teeth and gray wings and you could smell the rot in the wrinkles of its meat and . . . no, of COURSE I didn't sneak into the evidence room and sample the contraband drugs, hee hee, I'm just apeshit crazy, that's all---
"And I would be a good boy and lie down and die, but that isn't the way this works," Archer said. "Is it, Frank?"
Archer's face changed again, the body quivered and shrank, and a young boy of about eleven stood before her, his hair mussed and his eyes sparkling blue above his freckled cheeks. Beneath the freckles, his skin was as pale as milk. A beach towel was tied around his neck and hung down his back like a cape.
"Tell her, Frankie," said the boy in a rural mountain accent. "Tell her how it's got to be done."
Frank leaned against the bed, his right hand pressed against the gunshot wound, his left arm dangling limply. "Suh . . . Samuel?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
Sheila looked in disbelief from Frank to the pale boy, then to the revolver in her hand. A small trail of smoke wended from its barrel.
I killed him, Judge. I swear, as God is my witness. I shot Archer dead, but you know the rules. Innocent until proven guilty.
"Tell her how it is, Frankie," said the boy, his eyes darkening. "What the legend says. The gospel according to the Hung Preacher."
"Sacrifice is the currency of God," Frank said in a hiss between clenched teeth.
"And everybody pays," said the smiling boy. The gap between his top front teeth did nothing to dampen the corruption of his smile.
"Not you, Samuel," Frank said, struggling to his knees. Tears pooled in his eyes. "You're innocent."
The boy's face changed yet again, became that of a balding middle-aged man with sweat beading his upper lip. "Innocent until proven guilty," he said. "Just ask your lady-cop friend."
Storie recognized that voice, the one that sometimes slithered into her own nightmares. Hey, honey, you can lock me up, but I'll be BACK.
Years ago in Charlotte, she couldn't ram the nightstick into the kiddie-rapist's face or pull the car over and shoot him in the head. But she was already a murderer now, so one more victim wouldn't matter. She pulled the trigger, then again, then again, only the last time the hammer clicked on a spent shell. And still the pudgy man licked his lips and leered at her.
"Except nobody's innocent," the man said, his shape shifting again, growing taller and becoming Archer McFall.
"What have you done to Samuel?" Frank shouted.
"I told you, it's not what I've done to Samuel," Archer said. "It's what you've done."
Archer touched the spot on his forehead where Sheila had aimed the revolver. "Not bad," he said to her, in his calm televangelist voice. "But you have some deep sins in your heart, Sheila Storie. If only you would open up and let God come inside, give over all your troubles, then you'd find the one true Way."
Sheila stumbled slowly backward, away from this insane vision, away from the black pit of madness that threatened to swallow her whole.
If I close my eyes, it will all go away. Criminal Psych 101: "psychotic episodes can be triggered by extreme emotional stress, leaving the subject temporarily displaced from reality," yeah, that's a good one, I'll have to remember to tell that to my defense lawyer, because when I open my eyes, Archer McFall is going to be lying dead on the floor of a Holiday Inn motel room, unarmed, with five bullet holes in his body.
And with luck, I'll only get six to ten for manslaughter, only I've got the funny feeling that this is a life sentence. Innocent until proven guilty? Hell, we're ALL guilty, just like the man says.
She sat on the bed, eyes still closed, the .38 in her limp fingers. She could smell Frank's blood and her own sweat. A breeze seeped through the broken window, raising goosebumps on her neck. A hand touched her just above the knee, and she tensed. Frank's voice broke through the knotted fabric of her thoughts. "Sheila? Are you okay?"
"She'll live," Archer said. "At least for a while."
Sheila's eyelids fluttered open despite her best efforts to keep them clamped tight. Archer smiled at her with his most benevolent and beatific expression.
"I'm sorry to have misled you earlier, Detective," the preacher said. "You will not serve me, nor God, nor the church. That's only for the old families, right, Sheriff?"
Frank's lips pressed tightly together, as if his anger would crawl up his throat and erupt in sharp claws and needles of fire and silver blades.
"Now if you two will excuse me, I have a congregation in need of tending." Archer turned and walked to the door. Three holes formed a triangle in the back of his jacket. Archer opened the door, and the darkening hills were behind him, the security lights in the parking lot blinking on. A car whisked by on the highway beyond the lot. A siren, probably from a patrol car responding to reported gunshots, bounced off the high, hard mountains.
"See you at church, Frank? It's the Third Day, you know." Archer stepped into the twilight and closed the door.
Night.
It pressed down on the whole world, stretching out and smothering the trees, crushing the mountains, swallowing the weak light of the stars. The night pressed against the remaining bedroom window, and Ronnie knew it was equally thick outside the walls. The scariest thing about the night was that it always came back. You could shine the universe's brightest light into it, make it run away, but the second you switched that light off---whoosh---the night came swooping back in blacker than ever.
"We're going to be okay, ain't we?" Tim said. He was in the bottom bunk, bundled in blankets.
Ronnie nodded in the bunk above him, not trusting his voice. Then he realized that Tim couldn't see him, though Dad had left the light on. He took a quick breath and spoke. "How many times do I have to tell you it's going to be all right?"
His anger had no force, like a bad actor's in those stupid daytime soaps that Mom used to watch, back before she joined the red church.
"What about Mom?"
Ronnie rolled over and stuck his head over the edge of the bunk. "She'll be fine. Things will work out. You'll see."
"I don't like it when they fight." Tim squinted, his glasses put away for bedtime.
"They don't like it, either."
"Then why do they do it?"
Why? That was the big question, wasn't it? Why did the Bell Monster want to eat Ronnie's heart? Why did Mom have to join the red church? Why did Melanie turn out to be the queen of mean girls?
And there was always the big question: why did God let bad things happen? God let Boonie Houck and Mr. Potter and that woman by the side of the road get killed. He even let people kill His only begotten son. What sort of all-merciful God was that? Maybe Ronnie would ask Preacher Staymore that one, if Ronnie was lucky enough to live until the next Sunday school meeting.
"Ronnie?"
Ronnie realized that Tim had been talking for at least half a minute, but Ronnie had just zoned out. Better to keep the kid occupied, so he didn't completely lose it. "I'm listening."
"We have to give it what it wants."
"Give what to who?" Ronnie said, though he knew exactly what Tim was talking about.
"To . . . you know."
"Yeah, yeah. The thing with wings and claws and livers for eyes."
Tim pulled the blankets up to his chin. His eyes were wide now, his lip quivering from fear. Ronnie swung down off the bunk and got in bed with him.
"I won't let it get you," Ronnie said. "No matter what. Dad will beat it somehow."
Tim didn't look like he believed Ronnie, but he didn't say anything. He closed his eyes and Ronnie told him the story of Sleeping Beauty, and he was halfway through "Hansel and Gretel" when Tim fell asleep. Ronnie lay beside him in the cramped bunk, trying to figure a way out of this mess.
Then it struck him, the revelation like an icicle in the chest: God was sending all these trials down on Ronnie as some kind of test. If there was one thing that stood out clearly in the Bible, it was that God liked to test the faith of His people. Job, Daniel, Abraham, why, heck, even Jesus got tempted by the devil, and if God was all-powerful, surely He pulled the devil's strings, too.
Imagine that. Jesus was God's own son, His flesh and blood, His earthly incarnation, yet even Jesus had to measure up. And with Ronnie committing all these sins of the heart lately, it was no wonder that God wanted to visit some great trials on him. And that was the scariest thing of all.
Because Dad said that when the night was dark and the pain was great and you were all alone, then you turned your eyes up to God and you opened up your heart and let Jesus come on inside. You let God take away the fear. You let Him work out your problems, you let Him push back your enemies. But what if God was the enemy? What if God was the source of your fear?
Even as he thought it, he knew it was wrong. The idea of God as the bad guy was just too awful. You had to have faith. If you didn't, you might as well curl up in a ball and let the Bell Monsters of the world eat your insides. You might as well roll away the stone and head down into hell. So Ronnie tried to picture the face of Jesus from those color plates in the Bible, that man with the beard, long brown hair, and sad, loving blue eyes.
Something clicked against the window.
A rap on the glass at the good window, the one that hadn't been boarded up.
Can you hear him aknocking?
Oh, yes, Ronnie could hear the knock. Only this wasn't Jesus. This was the Bell Monster, come back to finish the job.
This was what God wanted---for Ronnie to get up out of bed and open the window and give himself away. Then the dead would stay dead, ghosts would stay in the ground, and Tim would be saved. And Ronnie would have passed the test.
Ronnie almost yelled for Dad, so Dad could come in with the rifle and kill the thing again. But what good would that do? You could kill it a million times, but still it would come back, night after night forever. Until it had what it wanted.
Until it had Ronnie.
He slid out from under the covers, looked at Tim's face relaxed by sleep, and crossed the room. Even though he was wearing pajamas, he shivered. The thing rapped on the glass again, and Ronnie heard slithery whispers. He hoped the claws were fast, so that he could die without pain.
He was carrying plenty of pain already. His broken nose, the welt on his face where Whizzer had punched him, the stone lump in his chest. At least all those would pass away. Soon Jesus would come and take his hand and float with him up to heaven, where there was a cure for every pain. Because Ronnie believed.
Don't you, Ronnie?
He took another trembling step to the window. He couldn't see through the blackness beyond the glass. All he saw was his own reflection and the lighted bedroom. It was better this way. If he saw the Bell Monster, he would scream, Tim would wake up, Dad would come in, and the Bell Monster would get all of them. Or Dad would kill the Bell Monster and they'd have to do it all again, every night forever, until the test was taken.
So he pulled back the sash-lock and held his breath and slowly slid the window up. It squeaked in its frame, and the cold night air poured through the crack and chilled his belly. He tensed for the claws to his gut, his eyes closed. Nothing happened, so he lifted the window another few inches.
"Ronnie," came the whisper.
Mom.
Relief surged through his body, a warmth similar to the one made by Jesus coming into his heart. But what was Mom doing out there with the Bell Monster?
Confused, Ronnie opened his eyes. The light from the room spilled on Mom's face. She didn't look scared at all. She smiled and put her finger to her lips. "Shh. Where's your dad?"
Ronnie stooped until his head was near hers. "In the living room. He thinks the Bell Monster will come through the front door this time."
"Let's go," she said, waving at him to come outside.
"Where are we going?"
"The church."
The red church. At night. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Mom really was crazy.
"Get Tim," she said.
"Tim?" Ronnie glanced back at his brother. Tim moaned in his sleep from a bad dream. "Why does Tim have to come?"
"He's of the blood." Her eyes were strangely bright. "We all are."
"What about Dad?"
Mom's eyes narrowed. "He's not a member of the church."
Ronnie started to add that he and Tim weren't, either. Mom smiled again, and it was the old Mom smile, the one that said Everything's going to be all right and Mom will kiss it and make it better and I love you more than anything in the world.
"I'm scared of the red church," Ronnie said.
She took down the screen, reached through the window, and gently squeezed his shoulder. "Honey, it's so wonderful. You know how good it feels to be in the First Baptist Church?"
Ronnie nodded.
"Well, this is a hundred times better. This is like having God right in the same room with you. No more pain, no more anger, no more earthly worries. Nothing but everlasting peace."
Being in the red church was starting to sound a whole lot like being dead. But Ronnie thought that if he went with Mom just this once, he could figure out why she loved the place so much. Besides, she wouldn't let anything happen to her sons. She would protect Tim from the Bell Monster and other bad things, and she'd help Ronnie pass the test.
He woke Tim, putting a hand over Tim's mouth before he could yell out. "Mom's here," he whispered. "We have to go to the church."
Tim's lips moved beneath his palm, so Ronnie moved his hand away. "Why do we have to go to the church?" he said drowsily.
"Why do we ever go to church? Because we have to, that's why. Mom's here to take us."
At the mention of Mom, Tim came fully awake and sat up. "Is she here?"
"At the window."
"Hi, sugar," she said. "Now hurry, before Dad hears. Don't worry about changing clothes. We won't be there long. Just put your shoes on."
"Don't we need to tell Dad?" Tim asked.
"He'll only get mad, honey. He'll yell at me. You don't want him to yell at me, do you?"
Tim rushed to the window and hugged her. Ronnie locked the door and the boys put on their sneakers. Then Ronnie helped Tim slip through the window. Ronnie followed, taking a last look into the lighted room before heading into the night.
The siren was louder now, closer. Frank shut his eyes and leaned against the bed. His shoulder throbbed, but he could still flex the fingers of his left hand. No major nerve damage, at least from the bullet wound. But Archer McFall had damaged his nerves plenty.
Sheila's fingers explored the area around the wound. "Does it hurt?" she asked, her voice as spaced-out as it had been when he'd first entered the motel room. He thought about trying to make a wisecrack, like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard," but he gave up. Bruce Willis had a writer to feed him lines. All Frank had was a jangled-up nest of thoughts and red wires of hurt in his brain.
He grunted and opened his eyes. Sheila's face was corpse white, as white as Samuel's had been.
Samuel.
Anger and hate pushed Frank's pain away. That bastard Archer had killed Samuel. Whoever or whatever Archer was, ghost or demon or the best damned magician this side of Houdini, the "preacher" was to blame for Samuel's death. And for Frank's long years of guilt.
"You know what's funny?" Frank said.
"Nothing's funny," Sheila said. "I just shot you."
"No, really, it is funny," he said. "Once you throw away all the old rules, all the things you thought you knew and that you counted on, then you can believe just about anything."
"What in the hell are you talking about?"
"Ghosts. Archer McFall. Whatever he is, he's real. Not some trick of the mind, or a vision to fit in with your criminal psychology theories."
"He's real, all right," she said, though she sounded unsure. She folded back the bedspread and yanked the sheet free. She tore a long strip from the sheet and wrapped it around Frank's shoulder and upper arm. He winced at the fresh pain.
"Damn, it's only a flesh wound," she said.
"That's good."
"No, it's not. I was aiming for your heart."
"I'll take that under advisement, for the next time you threaten to shoot me."
She tied off the bandage as the wailing patrol car pulled up to the door. It skidded to a stop, tires squealing, and Wade Wellborn shouted from the parking lot.
"Sheriff? Detective Storie?" He had seen their vehicles.
"It's all clear, Wade," Frank yelled back.
Wade rushed through the open door, gun pointed to the ceiling. "What in the holy heck happened?" he said, eyes wide.
"We had us what you call an 'incident,'" Frank said. His blood stained the makeshift bandage, but the spreading seemed to have slowed. He stood, Sheila taking his good arm and helping him up.
As he struggled to keep his balance, he said, "Maybe it was more of an 'encounter' than an incident."
"Sir?" Wade said.
"Call in backup. Then stay and secure the scene."
"Who done it?" Wade gaped at the bandage, then at the broken window and the holes in the motel's sheetrock wall.
"You'll have to wait for the incident report like everybody else," said Frank. "I won't even know what happened until I make it up."
Wade hesitated, a confused expression on his face. Then he obeyed Frank's command. When Wade left the room, Frank said to Sheila, "You up for a church service?"
"I don't know. I always thought I'd believe in ghosts when I saw them. Only now I've seen one, and I still don't believe it."
"You ought to have a little faith, Sergeant."
"Faith?"
"Yeah. I told you the church was haunted. I just didn't know what was doing the haunting."
"Like I was supposed to believe you when you babbled on about the Hung Preacher?" Sheila seemed to be coming around, emerging from her daze and regaining her sarcastic edge. Frank was glad she was her old self again. He kind of liked her old self. Maybe the old Sheila wouldn't shoot him next time.
They went out the door, Frank taking a last look at the bloodstain on the carpet, the mussed bed, the Bible on the floor. "You drive," he said to Sheila.
"Yes, sir."
"Stop calling me 'sir.' If we're going to try to kill a ghost together, we might as well be on a first-name basis."
The few motel tenants had left their rooms and stood in clumps of two or three, whispering to one another in the parking lot. Blue lights strobed off the windows, adding to the disorienting power of the experience. The Holiday Inn's night manager stood at the far end of the parking lot, half-hidden behind a concrete planter.
"Everything's under control," Frank shouted to him.
"Don't look so damned under control to me," said the manager in a squeaky voice. "Where's Mr. McFall?"
"Checked out early," Sheila replied. She got in the driver's side of her patrol car and opened the passenger door for Frank. As he settled onto the seat, Wade ran over to their car.
"Where are you going?" he asked, his face red from exertion.
"Following up on a lead," Frank said. "We'll radio in the details."
Sheila gunned the engine to life, backed up, then fishtailed out of the parking lot. When they were on the highway and accelerating smoothly, Sheila pulled her revolver from her shoulder holster.
"You're not going to finish the job, are you? Shoot me for real?" he asked.
She handed the gun to him. "Need to reload."
"Why? We already know that bullets can't stop him. Or it. Whatever the hell it is."
"There's still such a thing called 'proper procedure.' It might be the last thing I can do by the book." She hit eighty and held steady, running without siren or blue lights. He watched her face as she drove.
He liked her.
Crazy as it was, he liked her. Hell, the world was touched-in-the-head crazy anyway, with its haunted churches, shape-shifters, Hung Preachers, and Looney Toons sheriffs. Why couldn't he like a woman he had worked with for years? So what if she'd shot him? He knew men who'd been treated worse.
Sheila glanced at him for a moment, and must have seen his strange expression. She glanced again. "What are you looking at?"
"You."
She gave a tired smile. "Just reload the gun."
"Yes, sir," he said, struggling to open the box of shells she'd flipped onto the seat. She turned off the highway onto a narrow road that was paved but unmarked. Frank looked up at the dim stars. A high haze belted the sky, and the three-quarters wedge of moon was wreathed with electric-blue clouds just above the mountains.
"Sheila?" he said, the first time he'd said her name aloud. At least to her. He'd tried it on his tongue a few times, back in his small apartment in the wee hours between nightmares.
"What?" she said.
"What are we going to do when we get to the red church?"
"You're the sheriff," she said.
"I mean, how do you kill a ghost?"
"Good question," she said.
They rode in silence as Frank clumsily dumped the spent shell casings and reloaded the revolver using his one good hand. He passed it back to Sheila.
"Feel better?" he asked after she'd returned it to its holster.
"No," she said. "What about you?"
His shoulder still throbbed with every beat of his heart, but the pain was just a background distraction now, mental white noise. "I'll live. More or less."
The dispatcher's voice fuzzed from the radio. "Base to Unit Two, come in, Unit Two."
Frank turned the radio off.
Sheila glanced at him, her hands still tight on the steering wheel. "Guess we do this without backup?"
"Seems like those are the rules."
Her next question made his breath catch. "Do you believe in God?"
"Sure," he said without thinking. "Jesus is our Lord and Savior."
"No," she said. "I mean really believe."
"Look, if you think Archer is the devil and this is the ultimate battle of good and evil---"
"Don't be a jerk, Frank."
"I don't think it's ever that simple," he said. "I mean, God is good and the devil is evil. One's right and one's wrong. You ever known anything that clear-cut?"
"Well, we're only human," she said with some sarcasm. "What the hell do we know?"
"Archer says it's the flesh itself that leads to sin," Frank said, wondering where he'd picked up that little nugget of wisdom. "The heart is pure, but the flesh gets us in trouble."
"Archer says a lot of things." Sheila slowed the cruiser and turned onto the gravel road leading to Whispering Pines. The river glinted below them, the silver of the moon dappled across its surface. They rounded a bend and the dark shape of the church stood out on the hill above them.
"Here goes nothing," Frank said, his voice barely audible over the gravel crackling beneath the wheels.
"What's the plan?"
Frank looked at the long dark fingers of the dogwood, at the black belfry, at the white bones of the tombstones. Figures moved around the church, and cars were clustered in the driveway. Archer's fold was gathering.
"If I come up with one, you'll be the first to know," he said.
It happened so fast that it seemed like slow motion.
He yelled, Sheila braked, and the cruiser slid sideways. Her elbows flailed as she fought the steering wheel, trying to avoid the boy standing in the road. The momentum slammed Frank against Sheila's side and she lost control. The car skated across the loose gravel onto the soft dirt shoulder, then slipped down the embankment to the black river below.
Frank's head bounced off the dashboard, then rammed into the roof, and he reached for Sheila as metal twisted and glass shattered and the world turned cartwheels. As his thoughts turned black and blue, he held on to the image of Samuel in the road, arms spread in welcome, worms dripping from his smile.
Then, wet darkness.
"Where's your car?" Mama Bet asked in the dimness of the vestry. Not that a car mattered much to her, but few around these parts had raised a son who made good in the world. Maybe she suffered from sinful pride, but a flashy luxury car just flat-out said, I done proud. Soon cars and pride and such wouldn't matter, but you clung to life's little joys while you had them.
"I won't need a car where I'm going," Archer said. "Where we're going."
Archer lit a candle. Waxy smoke mingled with the smell of the communion. The reverent murmurs of the congregation filled the wooden shell of the church, anticipation in the air as thick as flies on roadkill.
Archer's suit was a little rumpled. Mama Bet frowned and straightened his tie. A messiah had to look the part. People didn't fall in for just any old body.
"You going to make me walk into the kingdom on these tired old feet?" she said, trying to get Archer to smile. He was so blamed serious all the time.
"We each must make the sacrifice," he said.
Mama Bet worked her shoulders so that the lace of her dress collar stopped tickling her neck. "Guess we'd best get on with it."
"Yes . . . you go ahead. Give me a moment to commune with God the Father," Archer said without a hint of irony.
That was one part of this deal that worried Mama Bet. She was finally going to come face-to-face with that low-down, sneaky thing. The one who'd planted the seed and left her with all the pain and trials of raising a messiah. Well, He couldn't properly claim any of the benefits. She was the one who had made the hard decisions, the sacrifices, endured the whispers. Even though the reward of heaven was great, she felt she deserved a little something more.
Like maybe God ought to get down on His knees and beg her forgiveness.
She smiled at the image, though she had no clear picture of what God should look like. She remembered that night of sweaty pleasure, but His flesh had been moist and cool as clay. She hadn't glimpsed His face, but had felt his mouth slick on her neck, her shoulders, her chest. She shuddered in a mixture of remembered pleasure and revulsion.
Everybody knew that saying, "An eye for an eye," from the Old Testament. But not many knew the part right after, Mama Bet's favorite verse: "A stripe for a stripe, a burning for a burning."
You got what was coming to you, what was due, the very thing you deserved. That was the best thing about God. He was fair. What you dished out to the world, He fed back to you, over and over, for an eternity.
And her heart swelled at the thought of her part in it, of Archer's part. They were doing holy work. Nothing so dirt-common as fulfilling a prophecy, but rather they were guiding people onto the True Path. Every nutcase who ever took a knife to little girls and boys claimed they had a hotline to God. But Archer was the real thing, the Second Son, God in the flesh.
She paused at the threshold of the vestry. Archer stood with his head bowed, eyes closed, the candles throwing golden light on his peaceful face, the deep brown of the wooden walls busy with shadows. Tears came to her eyes at the beauty of the scene. She could give him up.
See, God, how strong I am? I know You need to take him, that's the Way and the Word. But I hope You got some idea just how much it pains me. If I didn't know the stone would soon be rolled away forever, I'd throw myself down at Archer's feet and not let him go through with it.
Then Mama Bet realized she hadn't been totally truthful to God. She was actually looking forward to the cleansing. Sure, most of the old biddies who had whispered about her unexpected pregnancy were long dead, were under the cold dirt and damp grass of the cemetery. But she had a feeling that those long-dead weren't out of the woods yet. They still had a part in Archer's plan. Archer would sink his claws into them, one way or another.
Thy will be done, amen, she silently added as a catch-all apology to God. Just in case He was one to hold a grudge. He had a long memory, that much was plain. The whole history of the human race was one everlasting bout of suffering.
She opened the door and slipped into the sanctuary of the church. The murmurs quieted, then picked back up again as the parishioners realized Archer wasn't coming out. She glanced at the dark shape on the floorboards of the altar, saw that it had grown larger and sharper, that the Death's Angel was nearly formed. Just a little more blood and it would be whole. Mama Bet lifted her skirt so that the hem didn't brush the floor, then raised her chin proudly and walked across the dais to take her place in the front row.
Nearly thirty of the faithful had gathered. The candles mounted on the wall bathed their faces in unsteady shadows. Mama Bet was pleased to note that the Abshers lined the pew in the second row, Sonny looking uncomfortable in a button-down shirt and bow tie. Becca Faye sat beside him, the vee of her dress offering up the pillars of her flesh. At least the slatternly hussy had worn a bra, even if it was one of those push-up kinds that made a woman look more womanly than was proper.
Becca Faye was wasting her time. Archer had no need for such offerings, and Mama Bet wouldn't let him sample the vile fruits even if he was of a mind to. Sonny could drool over that harlot all day, but Sonny would pay and pay and pay for the privilege, maybe with his tongue, maybe with his eyes, maybe with other things, according to God's will.
"Don't see why we have to put up with this foolishness," Sonny muttered just loudly enough for Mama Bet to hear. "I got better things to do than hobnob with you God-fearing folk."
"Shush," Becca Faye said, though she giggled. Haywood cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Mama Bet turned around and looked Sonny in his oily eyes. "You'd best open them big ears, mister," she said. "You don't get many chances at salvation in this life. So you best be ready when the light shines on your stupid greasy head."
Becca Faye looked around nervously, like a cat caught in a hedgerow, a whiff of her fear carried on the scent of department-store perfume that probably went by the name of Passion Flower or Wild Meadows or such. Sonny's eyes grew bright and fierce.
"I ain't the one that hung Wendell McFall," he said. "None of us are. So why do we got to pay for it?"
Mama Bet shook her head, her mouth wrinkled in weary amusement. "You ain't heard a single word Archer's said. Sacrifice is the currency of God. It ain't a sacrifice if all you're doing is paying what you owe. No, you got to pay more than you owe."
Haywood tried to change the subject. "Did y'all hear about the car that run off the road? Jim Potter says it just went over the side for no good reason. Probably a drunk or something."
"Nobody went to help them?" his wife Noreen said.
Haywood glared at her. "They ain't of the old families, so what's it to us?" He added, as if to himself, "Wonder if they had insurance?"
Mama Bet glanced past them to the other rows, at Alma Potter, Lester and Vivian and Stepford Matheson, the Buchanans in the back row, where their barnyard smell barely reached her, Whizzer sullenly chewing on the stump of a half-smoked cigarette. And across the aisle, oh, yes, there they were.
The Day family, minus that meddling David, the boys wide-eyed and fidgeting, the mother glowing with an expectant pride.
There he was, the one Archer needed.
A warmth expanded from Mama Bet's chest to the rest of her body. Let the cleansing begin.
Icy coffin black.
Drifting, on beyond black. So easy.
So cold.
At Samuel's viewing, Frank had touched his little brother's hand. Samuel had looked lost in the splendid folds of the casket, a little too pink-skinned and hollow-cheeked. His lips were unnaturally red, a shade they had never been in life. But worse than the interrupted smile was the coldness of Samuel's skin, colder than November air, colder than shaded marble.
That same coldness gripped Frank now. It flowed through his veins, clasped him in its shocking dullness, enveloped him in its numbing shroud. He was dimly aware of the currents around him, the water softly swirling around his skin. The river murmured in his ears, telling him to drift, to surrender, to submit to the embrace of long sleep.
Years passed in that near-perfect state, years in which Frank remembered the roughness of his father's hands, callused and cracked from farm work, hands that could break a locust rail if they had to. Those same hands had met, tucked under chin in desolate prayer, during Samuel's funeral. A week after, those same hands had threaded and looped one end of a thick rope. Then the hands' owner joined his youngest boy in whatever afterlife they each deserved.
And Frank's mother followed six months later. She also killed herself, though she wasn't cowardly or brave enough to take a direct route like her husband. No, she was subtle. She went into the darkness by fading a little at a time, losing appetite and health and soul to the great erosion of apathy. And only Frank had carried on, the weight of all their deaths on his shoulders, pressing down on him as heavy as a cross, the guilt a constant, cold lump in his heart.
And now he followed them into darkness. He could almost hear their whispers drawing him forward, pulling him more deeply into the numbing cold. They were waiting.
He almost smiled in his sleep. So many years of waiting, so many more years of journey ahead.
But what would be waiting?
The bright light of heaven, as promised by his parents and the Baptist preacher and practically everybody in Pickett County.
But if heaven was bright and warm and welcoming, then the change should start occurring any moment now. Because if God and Jesus wanted the eternity of worship they deserved and demanded, then they were being robbed of Frank's servitude by this extended dark purgatory. This cold and peaceful drifting. This slow suffocation.
He was aware of hands reaching, hands darker than the darkness, gentle hands. He relaxed, glad for the end to this interim end. Anxious for heaven. Anxious for the love and light and heat.
Then the hands clamped onto his wounded shoulder, and he screamed into the darkness.
His eyes snapped open against wetness, and he realized he was underwater. Then he remembered the crash. He struggled against the current as the years of drifting became seconds of chaotic tumbling and thrashing and pain. His body was trapped in the submerged car.
The hands on his shoulder . . .
Sheila.
The hands worked down his arm, and Frank stopped flailing, realizing she was trying to help him. The seat belt loosened across his chest. He reached for her, and his fingers brushed her softly flowing hair, and then she was gone.
He blinked into the blackness, his limbs stiffening from the intense chill. His right hand found the door, then the opening of the shattered window.
The water he'd inhaled burned in his lungs as he kicked through the window. A small pocket of air in his chest told him in which direction the surface lay, and he fought toward it.
The car had tumbled into a deeper part of the river, so the current was sluggish, but the weight of his wet uniform limited his progress. Bright streaks of lime and fluorescent orange rocketed across the backs of his eyelids as he paddled upward. Then he broke through the skin of the river, his lungs greedy as he gulped at the night air.
The air tasted of muck and mud and fish, and he spat to clear his mouth, then drew in another gargling gasp. The current tumbled him lazily against a boulder, then another, the rush of the river like white noise.
In the glimmer of the moon, he saw the scarred ground and broken saplings where the car had rolled down the bank. He spun around in the water, looking for Sheila. Nothing but black stones and the white phosphor of the current.
He spat once more, took a deep breath, and dove toward the twin streams of yellow light that rippled ghostlike in the riverbed.
The current pulled him away from the underwater lights. He frantically paddled toward the bank until his feet hit bottom, then waded back upstream, his teeth chattering. He'd been up for nearly a minute. Could Sheila hold her breath that long?
When he reached the spot where the car had gone under, he dove in headfirst. His hand hit smooth metal and he opened his eyes. Judging from the position of the swirling headlight beams, he was on the roof of the car. He let the current drag him to the driver's side. Luckily, the car had settled nearly flat on the riverbed, so he didn't have to worry about the door's being jammed.
Frank forced himself deeper, his lungs already longing for a taste of oxygen and nitrogen. He found the door handle, opened his eyes again, and thought he made out a shadow in the front seat. But the water was dark, as dark as his drifting dream of death.
He yanked the handle up, and the dented door opened with a burp of released air. Reaching inside, he felt the vinyl of the seat, the warped steering wheel, the freely drifting seat belt.
He probed deeper, holding himself suspended in the cold water with his left hand on the chassis. He found her draped halfway across the seat, her legs dangling limply.
How long had she been under? Had she reached the surface, then come back to rescue him? Or had she been submerged all along? Frank was losing track of time, his thoughts gone fuzzy from lack of air, and he knew they were in trouble.
He squirmed his body into the cab and reached for her torso. Wrapping his arm around her, he tugged her toward the door. His knee caught on the steering wheel and the horn emitted a pathetic, drowning bleat. He pulled again, and the current nudged them out of the vehicle. Vomit and fear forced Frank's mouth open, and rank, muddy water rushed between his teeth.
He spun lazily and acrobatically with Sheila in his arms. He thought of Friday night hoe downs at the Gulp 'n' Gulch, how he'd never had a partner this graceful. He nearly laughed. Choking on Potter's Mill River, with the ghost of his dead brother waiting for them up on the road, with the red church owned by whatever nightmare inhabited Archer McFall's transient flesh, with everything he'd ever held as sane and right and normal now as distant as the sweet night air above, he'd finally found a dance partner.
At least I'll die in somebody's arms, and not all alone, like I always figured would happen.
And he almost surrendered again, almost opened his mouth and let the river sing its song, almost let the cold black in-between sweep them both away to the endless sea. But just as he thought of it, just as he realized that your life doesn't flash before your dying eyes, only the very end of it does, he pictured Sheila. He pictured her behind her desk, and him standing before it, explaining to her why he'd given up.
A little bit of pain? she would say. You were cold and tired and just wanted to rest? It was easier to give up than face a world where things were topsy-turvy gone-to-hell, where spirits walked and shape-shifters drove luxury cars and you had to stare your embodied guilt in the eyes? You gave up on me, you gave up on yourself, you gave up on us, just because you didn't have faith?
And her imagined anger flooded his wet and scalding chest, lit a fire in his rib cage, made him angry. Frank kicked until his feet found solid purchase. He shoved upward, his arms tightly clutching Sheila around the waist.
He silently prayed as they rose through the water, though he could not decide to whom to send his prayers or what he should ask for. His limbs were so numb he wasn't even entirely sure it was Sheila in his grasp. It could easily have been an old sodden stump.
And then they broke the surface, the air as sweet as a ripe plum, the moon as welcome as a smile, the million bubbles of froth on the river joyously whispering in Frank's ears.
He tilted Sheila's head back so that her mouth and nostrils were clear of the water, then half swam, half drifted to a sandy shallow. He carried Sheila to a flat outcropping of rock and laid her gently on her back.
He had learned CPR as part of his officer certification, and leaned over her face, ready to pinch her nose and force breath into her lungs and reach inside her shirt to massage her heart back to action.
But suddenly she coughed, spat, and blew a clear viscid fluid from her nose. She coughed again, and Frank called her name, then rolled her onto her side so that she wouldn't choke. Her skin was white in the moonlight, almost glowing in its bloodless pallor.
"Sheila?" he called again, louder this time, so that his voice carried over the rushing waters. Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and she coughed again. Then her eyes snapped open and she raised herself on one elbow, her hair trailing water onto the gray stone.
"C---cold," she said, teeth chattering. That reminded Frank of his own chill, settling as bone-deep as a toothache. But he brushed aside his discomfort in the face of this miracle. How long had she been under? Two minutes? Three? Five?
"Are you okay?" he asked, knowing how stupid his words sounded even as he said them.
"Next time . . . you take me for a swim . . ." she said, panting, her throat rattling with trapped liquid, "can you make it . . . a heated pool?"
She sat up, tucking her knees against her chest and hugging them. Her body trembled, and Frank pressed against her, even though he had little body heat to offer.
"You saved my life," he told her. She felt good in his arms, even with cold flesh.
"No . . . you saved my life," she said. Her shoulders rose and fell with her deep, even breathing. She was recovering quickly.
Too quickly.
There must have been a pocket of air trapped in the car, perhaps near the back windshield where her head had been. That was the only explanation. That, or else maybe there really was a God, prayers sometimes did get answered, sometimes miracles happened.
Frank glanced at the deep black sea of sky overhead, at the winking blue-white stars that stretched out and out forever. Then he cleared the brackish aftertaste of the river from his mouth and spat into the dark water. Sure, God just happened to break from His constant job of keeping the stars burning to actually save a human being. That was a laugh.
God hadn't bothered with saving Samuel, or Frank's father and mother. He hadn't saved Boonie Houck or Zeb Potter or Donna Gregg. Hell, if you got right down to it, He hadn't even saved His only son, Jesus. God was cold and uncaring, as distant as the blue behind stars. God didn't even deserve Frank's hate, only the apathy He showered upon those who would love Him, so Frank spat once more and turned his attention to Sheila.
"Are we dead yet?" Sheila said, her eyes bright with her old sarcasm and verve and maybe that little glint that comes only from seeing the light of life's end.
"No, but you're going to have so much paperwork, you might wish you were," he said. "You wrecked a Pickett County patrol car, and the taxpayers are going to want an explanation."
"And the worst part is, you're only half joking," she said, followed by a laugh that turned into a cough.
"That Frankie, he's a laugh a minute," came a voice from the shadows along the riverbank.
Frank's blood temperature plummeted the rest of the way to zero. Sheila tensed beneath his embrace.
A milky shape came out from the dark trees.
"Samuel?" Frank said.
"Thought you were going to get baptized for sure that time," the dead boy said. "Somebody up there must like you."
Frank had often dreamed of the apologies he wished he could make to Samuel, all the ways he could try to put things right, a hundred ways to say he was sorry. But now that he had the chance, all he could do was respond dumbly to his brother's ghost. "You mean God?"
Samuel's laughter drifted across the river like a mournful fog.
"No," came the hollow voice. The ghost turned its head up the embankment toward the hill, where the orange lights of the church windows flickered between the trees. "I mean Archer McFall. Him what owns God."
"Samuel?" Frank held up a quivering hand as if to touch the thing that couldn't be there, that couldn't possibly exist. "Is that really you?"
"What's left of me."
Sheila squeezed Frank's forearm. Frank wanted to ask Samuel so many things. But his dead brother spoke before he could think of anything to say.
"Why did you let me die, Frankie?" The hollow eyes became part of the greater night. The wispy threads of the ghost rippled as if fighting a breeze. Then the ghost turned away.
Samuel drifted up the steep bank and disappeared between the mossy boulders. Frank stood, his wet clothes hugging him like a second skin. He was to follow. He knew it as surely as he knew that all the roads of his life led to the red church, led back to that night of his greatest failure, led forward to Archer and the Hung Preacher and the Bell Monster with its Halloween laugh. As surely as he knew that even the dead weren't allowed to rest in peace. Until Archer said so.
And the thing behind Archer?
Did it have a name, or did it have its own Archer, its own God to obey?
No matter. All that counted now was the arrival of midnight. He took Sheila's hand and helped her to her feet. Wordlessly they began the climb to the red church.
Ronnie's nose hurt.
Not so badly that the pain drove away the throbbing in the side of his head where Whizzer had punched him, but plenty bad enough. Whizzer had glared at him when the Day family entered the church, had even tried to stand, but one of Whizzer's moronic brothers held him back. Whizzer grinned around his cigarette butt in an I'll see you after church expression.
Ronnie flipped him a secretive finger and followed Mom to the second row. Tim sat between Ronnie and Mom, looking around the church with an awe struck expression. Tim wasn't that hard to impress. Ronnie had trembled a little coming up the church steps, but now that he was inside and could see this was just a church like any other, only a little bit older, he was able to bite back his fear.
He recognized most of the people in the church, though he didn't know everybody's name. There sat creepy Mama Bet McFall, who had stopped by last week to sell Mom a few jars of pickled okra. Anybody who ate okra at all, much less pickled it, must be batty. Plus she was Archer McFall's mother, and Ronnie knew that Archer had something to do with the trouble between his parents.
"Sit still," Mom whispered to Tim, who had been kicking his legs back and forth in his excitement. He sat back in the pew and held himself stiff for about twenty seconds, then started swinging his legs again.
Ronnie looked at Mom. She seemed happy, her eyes shiny in the candlelight, a little smile wrinkling the corners of her mouth. She hadn't smiled this much in years, not ever in the Baptist Church, hardly ever at home, not even at the Heritage Festival at the school when Dad made her get out on the floor and do a little flatfoot dancing. But she was happy now, her hands held over her heart as if she were going to reach in and grab it, then give it away.
The other parishioners whispered to each other, as agitated as Tim. Something was up. You could feel it in the air like a mild dose of electricity, sort of like the shock you got when you touched a wire between the posts of a car battery. Not bad enough to hurt, but enough to make you uneasy.
This felt like one of those turning points. Ronnie didn't like so many turning points popping up in such a short period of time. If you turned in too many different directions, you got twisted up in knots and couldn't tell which way you were headed.
Mama Bet turned around in her seat and smiled back at the Days. She was missing three of her teeth, and the grin looked like that of a sick jack-o'-lantern. "Glad you could make it tonight, Linda," she said, her words liquid and snuffy.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Mom said, smiling in that empty and satisfied way.
"See you brought the boys." Mama Bet nodded at Ronnie, then reached out to pat Tim on the head. "Little Timothy Day. What do you think of the church?"
Tim shrank back from her gnarled fingers, then shook his head from side to side as if to shed himself of her lingering touch. "It ain't so scary," he said in that defiant nine-year-old way. "They said it was scary."
Mama Bet's eyes narrowed, and some of the Mathesons at the other end of the pew stopped whispering and stared.
Tim went on. "I mean, it's supposed to be haunted, but it's just like the Baptist church, only it smells funny. Like wax and old meat and-"
Ronnie elbowed Tim in the side.
"Your mom did a lot of work on it," Mama Bet said. "Cleaned it up right good, along with some of the other folks. Made it worthy of Archer's glory."
Ronnie frowned. Archer's glory? In the Baptist church, they always talked about the glory of Jesus and God. People weren't supposed to be glorious, at least not until they were dead. But here was Mama Bet saying bad stuff right in the middle of the church. And God didn't come out of the woodwork and strike her dead.
Mom's smile faded. "What's wrong, honey?" she asked Ronnie.
"Preacher Staymore says that everything is for the glory of Jesus."
Mom and Mama Bet laughed in unison.
"This church is a little different," Mom said.
"You mean like the Methodists and Catholics and all those other people that Dad says don't know any better?" Tim said.
"Sort of like that, yeah," Mom said. "Only here, when the plate is passed, you get to take instead of having to give."
"Cool," Tim said.
Ronnie had a bad feeling in his stomach, as if he had swallowed a boot. "Mom?"
"What?"
"You ever been to California?"
Mom and Mama Bet exchanged glances. The Mathesons had gone back to whispering among themselves, but suddenly fell silent again as the little door off to the side of the pulpit opened. Mama Bet turned and faced forward. Even the candles stopped flickering, as if not daring to absorb any of the preacher's precious oxygen. The night beyond the windows turned a shade blacker. A stillness crowded the church like water filling a bottle, and thirty pairs of eyes fixed on the man in the doorway.
Archer crossed the stage like an actor. Mom's mouth parted slightly, as if she were witnessing a miracle. Ronnie studied the preacher's face, trying to see what the others must see, the special quality that held the congregation rapt. Archer met his gaze, though surely that was Ronnie's imagination, because the preacher was looking everywhere at once, meeting every eye in the church.
Ronnie had seen eyes that intense only once before. Painted eyes. In the color plate of his Bible, on the portrait of Jesus. Sad, loving eyes. Eyes that said, I'm sad that you must kill me, but I forgive you.
Ronnie shivered. He wished Preacher Staymore were here. The preacher would tell Ronnie in a calm yet strong voice that Jesus was the light and the truth and the way, that the Lord was aknocking and all you had to do was open up. But Preacher Staymore was miles away, and this wasn't even Sunday. Ronnie didn't even know if you could be saved on any day besides Sunday.
If only Preacher Staymore had told him all the rules. Then this new preacher with his peaceful face and wise eyes and graceful hands gripping the lectern wouldn't scare him so much. If Ronnie knew the rules, if he didn't need the preacher to help show Jesus the way into his sinning black heart, then maybe Ronnie wouldn't dread the words about to come from the preacher's mouth. If Ronnie could be positive that Jesus was still inside him, then nothing else would matter. Except Mom and Tim and Dad.
But he wasn't sure.
Archer smiled from the lectern, his teeth gleaming in the candlelight. And twenty-nine people smiled back, Mama Bet and Whizzer and Lester Matheson and Mom and even Tim. Only Ronnie doubted. It seemed in all the world, only Ronnie failed to understand and believe.
And Ronnie wondered if he was the only one who heard the stirrings and scratchings in the church belfry.
"Sacrifice is the currency of God," Archer said to the flock, gathering the prepared communion from a shelf beneath the lectern. The plate was covered with a dark cloth, but stains were still visible on the fabric. Archer inhaled its sweet aroma.
Conducting the ritual was Archer's favorite part of playing messiah.
Rituals were important to the congregation. It was as true for the Catholics and the Baptists and the Jews and the Muslims as it had been for the unfortunate members of the Temple of the Two Suns, and now, the fold of the red church. This was the act that bound them together and bound them to Archer, that made them willing to pay the currency of sacrifice. And the preacher's job was to make the show worth the price of admission.
"And God sent the Son, who led the world astray," Archer said, lifting the communion. "And that Son, the terrible, blasphemous Jesus, who was called the Christ, gave his flesh to the people, that they might be tainted. And God looked down, and saw that evil had been set loose upon the world."
Archer looked out at the congregation. The "old families." The living flesh of those who had murdered Wendell McFall so many decades ago. They deserved their cleansing. Anger burned his chest, but he kept the beatific smile on his face. One corner of his mouth twitched, but he doubted that anyone noticed. The lambs were too intent on the offering.
"And because we have been tainted, we must be cleansed," he continued, raising his voice, working toward the payoff.
He sensed the stirrings in the belfry, and knew that his shadow had chosen a new victim. Tonight it would be the boy.
But first, the families must taste the bitterness of their treason. They must know the depth of their iniquities. They must prove themselves worthy of cleansing. He would feed them. Matheson, Buchanan, Potter, Day, all.
He looked down at his mother in the first row. Even dear Mother must be cleansed. Perhaps she was more deserving than anyone. The ritual was his sacred duty, the reason he had been fashioned into flesh. He would not disappoint her.
Archer held the plate before him and gazed upward.
For you are a jealous God.
He bowed his head to hide his smile, then stepped off the altar and gave the plate to his mother. He removed the cloth and watched her face as she took some of the communion in her fingers. She opened her mouth and slid the host between her rotten teeth.
Outside, the world slithered toward midnight.
Frank and Sheila were on the roadbed below the church when the congregation fell silent. Then a sermon began, filling the wooden shell of the church, and though the words echoed together into an indecipherable wall of sound, Frank recognized Archer's voice.
Through the trees twenty feet ahead, the washed-out flesh of Frank's brother floated among the bright tombstones. In the still night, Frank could almost hear the whisper of the clouds that brushed the face of the moon. The sheriff gripped Sheila's hand tightly, as much to reassure himself that she was real as to ease his fear. She squeezed back.
Samuel turned, Frank's dear, departed brother, Frank's greatest failure. "You gotta kill me again, Frankie," Samuel rasped. Though the ghost smiled, the blue eyes revealed nothing.
"Kill you?" Frank stumbled into the border of weeds and saplings that surrounded the cemetery. He knew where Samuel was now. He recognized the curve of the granite marker, the two tombstones beside it. Home. Samuel's home.
"Samuel?" Frank said, keeping his voice low. He had talked to his dead brother many times, kneeling in that lush grass whose roots were fed by his brother's decay. But he never dreamed that Samuel would one day talk back.
"Kill me, Frankie," pleaded the ghost, and suddenly Samuel was a small boy again, not a thing to be feared, just a scared and lost and lonely little boy. A brother. "You got to set me free."
"Why me?" Frank said.
"Because it will hurt you," Sheila said. Samuel's mouth parted in a wicked grin as he nodded agreement.
"What the hell does that mean?" Frank said, angry at his own helplessness and confusion. Guilt and fear were in a battle that rivaled the great bloodfests of the Old Testament.
"Because it's the hardest thing you can ever do," Sheila said. "Killing Samuel again would be your greatest sacrifice."
"And sacrifice is the currency of God," Samuel said.
"You got your gun?" Frank asked Sheila.
"No. Lost it in the river."
Frank crashed through the brush, not caring if the congregation heard him. Sheila was right behind him. Frank felt foolish, thinking of killing a ghost. But what else could he do? He finally had a chance to fix a past mistake, but all he could do was repeat it. He had to kill Samuel for real this time, up close and personal. He had to take Samuel away from whatever or whoever owned the boy's spirit.
Samuel spread his arms in supplication, awaiting whatever would happen after the afterlife. His mouth writhed and bulged with the worms that crawled among his teeth. One slipped out and poked its sightless head around, and Frank fought back the revulsion that curdled his stomach. He crossed the grass, weaving between grave markers and monuments. As he came nearer he could smell Samuel, the odor of maggots and loam hot in the air.
He reached Samuel's grave, saw the shadow of the bas-relief lamb engraved on the marker, read the words "May God Keep and Protect Him," felt the coldness radiating from his dead brother's flesh as he reached his hands up to grip Samuel's neck. And his hands met empty air as the apparition flickered and faded before his eyes.
Frank fell to his hands and knees and ripped at the grass, heedless of his shoulder wound.
"Samuel," he yelled, his voice breaking. He clawed at the soil, ignoring the pain as his fingers raked over small stones. He dug like a starved dog after a buried bone, throwing dirt high in the air. Finally he collapsed on the marred grave, the deep reservoir of his tears overflowing, the water of pity and self-pity backed up for too many years.
Archer's sermon was building in intensity inside the church. Frank listened to the mad rhythm of the words as his sobs subsided. After a long, slow thunder of heartbeats, Frank felt a hand on his head.
"It's okay, Frank." Sheila's voice was as soothing as an evening summer breeze, silk on a sunburn.
He lifted his face from the mud he had made. "I failed him again."
"What could you do? Just then, or twenty years ago? It's not your fault."
He met her eyes. They were understanding, forgiving, sympathetic. All things that he had never seen in a woman's eyes. All the things he had never looked for, until now.
"I don't know why, but Samuel still needs me," Frank said.
A shadow fell over Sheila as a dark hulk blocked out the moon. Frank stiffened. What madness was the night sending next?
"You have to kill these things more than once," said the looming figure.
David Day.
The barrel of David's rifle caught the moonlight and sent a menacing glint into Frank's eyes. Sheila tensed beside Frank, ready to attack. The sheriff clutched her arm to restrain her.
"Only, I can't be the one who does the killing," David said.
Frank suspected the carpenter had a screw loose. David had already pulled the gun on him once today, had already proven himself dangerous. But there was something conspiratorial in David's tone, and his eyes were focused on the church instead of on Frank and Sheila.
"What are you talking about?" Frank asked him.
Sheila interrupted. "He's crazy, Frank."
"And what ain't, around here?" David replied, crouching behind a concrete angel whose wings were so rain-worn that the feathers had lost detail. David aimed the rifle toward one of the windows of the church and squinted through the rifle's scope. He seemed to have forgotten all about Frank and Sheila.
Inside the church, Archer's voice rose to a fevered pitch, though the words were unintelligible. It reminded Frank of those old film clips of Adolf Hitler's speeches he'd seen, the same thundering and maniacal tirade. He'd always wondered how people could be so stupid as to fall in with anybody so obviously insane. Now he knew the kind of odd power and charisma that could totally pull the wool over people's eyes, power that could make them forget their own hopes and hearts and even humanity.
It was the kind of power that Archer possessed. Or that possessed him.
Power that no human should have, because no human knew how to wield it. But then, Archer wasn't human. Frank looked at David's form huddled around the rifle and wondered if anybody was human. Then he felt Sheila's hand in his.
Yes. Somebody was human.
Somebody lived and breathed and loved.
"What did you mean by 'You have to kill these things more than once'?" Frank asked David.
The man turned from his aiming, the shadows eerie on his eyes. "Remember what I said to you out at the house today? About killing Archer as many times as it takes?"
"Yeah?"
"When he took all those local girls out to California, he set up the Temple of the Two Suns. Don't know if you knew that part of it, but I expect it was just more of the devil's work. I went out there to bring Linda back. She was eighteen. Hell, she didn't know what she was doing. I guess I didn't, neither. All I knew was that I loved her, and I wasn't going to give her up without a fight."
"Some people don't need to be saved," said Sheila.
"No offense, Detective, but them twenty-dollar opinions won't buy you a dirty cup of water in these parts," David said. "I went out to California for Linda's good, not my good. That's when I saw what happened to one of them girls that went out there with Archer."
Frank's stomach tightened. Archer's voice ranted, roared, reached heights of frenzy that even a Baptist evangelist at a tent revival couldn't match.
"He killed her," David said. "Cut her up. Took her heart, and maybe some other things. I shut my eyes after that first part. But not before I seen them pass around the plate of meat."
"Just like he did the ones here," Frank whispered. Then he remembered the odd taste that had filled his mouth after attending Archer's service. What had happened during those lost hours?
"No," Sheila said, shaking her head in disbelief.
But nothing was beyond belief anymore. They had both seen Archer McFall change shape before their eyes. They both had watched as Sheila shot him five times at point-blank range. Yet here the preacher was, tending to his flock, culling the stray lambs, feeding them the Word.
"That's why I shot him," David said. "Killed him, or so I thought."
A thick cloud passed over the face of the moon, momentarily darkening the hill. The candles burning in the church cast the only visible light. There were no streetlights in Whispering Pines, and the scattered houses were hidden by the hills. Frank felt as though they were the only people in the world, that everything outside the cemetery and the surrounding mountains had fallen away into a dark emptiness. And all that remained of civilization, of humanity, hope, and sanity, resided right here. Frank and Sheila and David. Archer and the congregation.
And the church.
The red church, with its golden eyes.
The church that had swallowed Samuel.
The church that also claimed Frank's father and mother.
The church that held secrets in its stained and stubborn boards.
The church that had hoarded the iniquities of the old families, that had leered at their weddings and eavesdropped on their funerals and absorbed the soft, spirited seepage of their prayers.
The church that housed the ghosts of memories.
The cloud drifted on and the moon again gave its baleful glare. The steeple thrust toward the sky, the awkward broken cross barely visible against the night sky. The dogwood's branches dangled in the gentle breeze, brushing the steeple like a mother caressing a babe. The shadows shifted in the belfry, the darkness dividing itself.
"You see it, too, don't you?" David said.
Frank nodded.
"What?" Sheila said.
"The Bell Monster," David said.
"The thing that killed Samuel," Frank said.
Yes, the church was to blame, not Frank. If the church hadn't stood all those years, gathering legends like a stone gathered moss, then Frank, Samuel, and the others wouldn't have been there that fateful Halloween night. If not for Wendell McFall's sins, none of the tragedies would have occurred. If, if, if.
If Samuel were still alive, he wouldn't be dead. If Samuel were still dead, he wouldn't be a ghost.
David's next words interrupted Frank's thoughts and brought back the river chill that he'd been trying to ignore.
"You're the one that's got to do the killing, Sheriff."
"What are you talking about?" Sheila said.
"You're of the blood," David said, ignoring her. "You're of the old families. That's why my bullets don't do nothing. It's got to be done by one of Archer's own."
Maybe. Sheila didn't say anything, but Frank knew what she was thinking. Her bullets hadn't killed Archer, either. Maybe that was the way this thing worked.
Wendell McFall had been killed by his own people. And if Wendell was behind this, if Wendell was a restless spirit that was tied forever to the church, then maybe the scene had to play itself out again. . . .
Frank balled his hand and ground his fist into his temple. The pain drove away the foolish thoughts. What was the use of trying to figure out why Whispering Pines was go-to-hell inside out? The important thing was to make it all go away.
"He's right, Frank," Sheila said. "I know it sounds silly-hell, you know I don't believe any of this-but if there are rules to this game, that one makes as much sense as any. That's what Samuel was trying to tell you."
"My boys are in there," David said, nodding toward the church. "You've got to save them. And Linda, too. I reckon if the Lord can forgive her, I can, too. I guess when you save somebody once, you owe them."
David handed the rifle to Frank. He glanced at the belfry, at the quivering fabric of darkness. Frank took the rifle.
It was heavy and awkward in his hands. He'd never liked guns much. He'd hunted as a boy, had shown enough targeting skill to earn his police certification, but had rarely fired a gun since. He'd stopped wearing a holster piece when he'd been elected sheriff eight years ago.
"What if you're wrong?" Frank said to David.
"He's not wrong," Sheila said. "Archer says sacrifice is the currency of God."
Frank's jaw tightened. "What did you say?"
Sheila fell silent, her face pale in the moonlight. Frank was about to ask her again, to slap her, to do something to drive her words from his memory, to make her take them back and swallow them, but the day died as he stood before her.
Midnight.
The air screamed with the first toll of the bell.
This is just like the Baptist church, Ronnie thought. Nothing to be scared of here. They're just passing the plate, taking up money for God. So what if Reverend McFall's sermons are a little wacky? When you think about it, Preacher Staymore's gone off the deep end a time or two.
In the pew in front of him, Mama Bet took the plate, her hands trembling. The reverend pulled the cloth from the heaping plate. Tim wrinkled his nose, then pinched it closed. Other members of the congregation craned their necks, trying to see the offering.
"Shoo," Tim said. "Something smells like donkey crap."
Ronnie elbowed Tim at the same time that Mom squeezed Tim's forearm. "Ow," he yelped.
"Shh," Mom whispered. "Show some respect in church."
That was just what Dad always said. This place was getting more and more like the Baptist church with every second. If you could forget that it was the middle of the night and that the red church was haunted, why, you might as well be in any of them. You still had to be quiet whenever somebody performed some ritual or other. You had to pretend like you were paying attention, and you couldn't talk or laugh. You had to sit up straight and stay awake.
And sitting up straight was getting harder and harder to do. The pain pill Ronnie had taken before bedtime was kicking in. His thoughts spread fat and happy, the joy juice was sloshing around in his brain, the hard wooden pew felt like cotton candy under his bottom. He was almost having fun in church. If old Preacher Staymore could see him now, then Ronnie would be in for a serious session of heart-opening, head-bowing penance.
Mama Bet held the plate, then bent and mumbled what sounded like prayers. Becca Faye's and Sonny's faces both curdled in disgust. Stepford held his nose closed as if he were diving into a swimming hole. If something stank that bad, Ronnie was glad his nose was packed with gauze. He almost giggled. That pain pill was sure doing a number on his head.
Mama Bet reached into the plate, and Ronnie leaned forward for a closer look. Mama Bet was putting whatever was in the plate to her mouth. Dad said that the Catholics ate bread and pretended it was Jesus' body, and drank wine pretending it was the blood of the Lamb. But this looked even weirder than that.
A string of thick fluid escaped from Mama Bet's fingers. It glistened in the candlelight, looking for all the world like . . .
The happy pill was definitely messing with him. Because it looked like blood dripping from her hand, but before he could get another look, she had put the stuff in her mouth and started chewing.
"Gross," Tim said.
Mom didn't even pinch him this time, because she was gripping the back of Mama Bet's pew so hard that her fingers were white. She had a strange smile on her face. Mama Bet smacked her lips as she worked the offering.
"The body of God," the reverend said.
"Amen," Mama Bet responded, the word sloppy because of her chewing.
Archer McFall took the plate from her and stepped to the end of the next pew. Mom eagerly looked up at him, and he held out the plate to her. Tim edged away from her until he was pressing against Ronnie. Mom reached out, her eyes bright as ice, and Ronnie saw what was in the offering plate.
Clumps of tattered meat.
Moist, raw, and stringy.
Barf-out. She's not EATING that stuff, is she?
Mom took a morsel between her fingers and brought it to her lips. She bit down and turned and smiled at Tim and Ronnie. Bits of the pink meat dangled between her teeth. Ronnie's stomach tumbled and knotted.
"The body of God," Archer McFall said. He reached out and patted Tim's head. Then he looked at Ronnie. McFall's eyes were as deep as quarry holes, black and hiding secrets. Ronnie shivered and tried to look away, but the man's gaze held him hypnotized.
It's the PAIN PILL, dummy. You've fallen asleep and you're just having a stupid dream. Little snakes are NOT squiggling in his eyes.
"Amen," Mom said in response to the reverend's blessing. She passed the plate to Tim, who slid back in his seat away from it. Ronnie moved away, too, but Sonny Absher pressed against him from the other side.
"Where you going, runt?" Sonny said, his lips curled in menace.
Ronnie looked wildly about the church. Whizzer made a chewing motion with his mouth and leered at him. Mama Bet nodded encouragement, her rheumy eyes like pails of rainwater. McFall leaned forward, his mouth hanging open.
Worms. Worms between his teeth.
"Come on, Timmy," Mom said, her voice creepy and soothing. "It's good for you."
She nudged the plate against his arm. Some of the grue slopped over onto Tim's flesh, and he stared it. He looked at Mom, eyebrows raised.
"Do it, honey," she said. "Let the reverend bless you."
Tim reached toward the offering plate.
No. NO. NOOOO.
Ronnie reached out and slapped Tim's hand away. The plate flipped out of Mom's hand, hitting the back of the pew and splashing into Mama Bet's face. The viscid blood clung to her wrinkles, small tatters of pulpy flesh on her checks.
McFall roared, his voice thundering, the wooden shell of the church vibrating with his rage.
And the bell struck.
The coppery, heavy taste of the communion filled Linda's mouth, her heart, her soul. She felt strong, reborn, just as she had in California in the Temple of the Two Suns. Just like always.
She lovingly held the offering out to Tim, and he was almost convinced, almost saved, almost there, when Ronnie knocked the plate away.
Archer's anger was radiating in waves of heat beside her. He wasn't angry over the spilled offering; no, there was plenty more where that came from, and a little dirt never hurt the sacramental flesh. But Archer couldn't abide betrayal in any form.
Neither could Linda.
God knew she loved her boys, but Ronnie was getting to be a real pain in the rump. Ronnie was displeasing Archer. Ronnie was sitting there with that defiant look in his eyes, looking so much like his dad did when he set his mind to something. It was that same stupid Christian stubbornness, the look that said, Don't tell ME there's another path to God.
Well, she wasn't going to let Ronnie get into the clutches of that devil-worm Jesus without a fight.
But she wouldn't have to fight alone.
She smiled as the bell's long arcing note rattled her eardrums.
Now would come the cleansing, the true reason Archer had been sent to this earth.
Perhaps it didn't matter that the vessel had not been fully prepared, that the sacred meat had not passed his lips. He still needed to be given to God.
Ronnie needed to die for the glory of Archer, of Wendell McFall, of the old families. He needed to pay for the iniquities of the Days. Most of all, he needed to die for the greater glory of herself. God would surely smile upon this great sacrifice she was making.
Around her, members of the congregation were rising, some heading for the door, some shouting in anger at Ronnie's betrayal. Sonny Absher grabbed Ronnie's sleeve, but Ronnie pulled free and scrambled to the floor.
"Come on, Timmy," Ronnie screeched, tugging on Tim's right arm.
No. He can't get away.
She grabbed Tim's left arm and held on with all the strength borne of desperate love. A mother's love.
For a brief moment, Tim was caught in the middle of the tug-of-war, and Archer reached over, talons extended, to take the boy. But then Tim was gone, stolen by the meddling Ronnie.
The boys scurried underneath the pew as Linda's anger rose to match Archer's. She wouldn't let Ronnie rob her of this chance to win Archer's favor. She'd wanted the reverend for so long. Not just in the lustful flesh, though that would be fine with her, but she wanted to join in spirit.
And now Ronnie was depriving her of the gift that would buy Archer's undying love.
Her oldest son had always been a troublemaker, now that she thought about it. Always reading books and getting ideas and asking dumb questions when there was really only one question. And the answer to that question was Archer.
She added her voice to the clamor and vaulted over the front pew, where the boys had gone. She lost her balance and slammed against Mama Bet, and the old woman fell heavily to the floor. Mama Bet moaned in pain, but Linda ignored her. Mama Bet may have given birth to Archer, but she was just another vessel, just another piece of meat used by God to bring Archer to Linda. Mama Bet mattered no more than rain mattered to a river.
Ronnie pulled Tim to the dais and helped him over the railing. Linda followed. Where was Archer? Didn't he see that Tim, the youngest descendant of all the old families, was getting away? Didn't he care? Didn't he want to accept the sacrifice as badly as she wanted to offer it?
Wasn't sacrifice the currency of God?
She crossed the railing and looked down at the shape on the old boards. Wings, claws outstretched, a terrible angel of dark blood.
Back again.
The work that Wendell McFall had begun was now nearly complete. Only one more sinner's blood needed to be spilled to flesh it out and bring the Bell Monster's spirit from shadow to fully formed life.
Only one more cleansing.
She yelled at the boys to stop, but they didn't even look back. They ran into the vestry and the door slammed shut. Linda clenched her fists until her knuckles ached, then turned to look back at the congregation.
The Buchanans had spilled out the front door, their spell broken. Sonny and Becca Faye were edging toward the side of the church, away from Mama Bet, who had risen to her knees and lifted her arms.
"Look what you done to me now," Mama Bet yelled to the ceiling. She paused to lick at the offal in the corners of her mouth, then said, "You ain't made me suffer enough, now you got to go and mess up my Sunday-go-to-meeting dress. I can't wait to get my hands on you."
Linda glanced across the rapidly thinning crowd. Where was Archer?
"Let's get the hell out of here," Sonny yelled to Becca Faye. "This bunch is crazier than a bug in a bottle."
Mama Bet chanted again, a toothless prayer: "I can't wait to get face-to-face with you, mister. Then, by God, there'll be hell to pay. Cause you owe me big."
Oh, them of little faith, Linda thought, but Archer would deal with them later. After tonight's sacrifice, Archer would have all the time and power and anger in the world.
She shivered with rapture and went to the vestry to fetch her boys.
"Holy hell and D-double-damned," David muttered.
The bell's clangor rolled across the hilltops, slapping the mountain slopes and reverberating back in a trapped tide. The vibrations wriggled against David's skin, a thousand live things.
"There's no rope," Sheila said to herself.
She was starting to get on David's nerves. Damned woman ought not be a cop, anyway. Women were too sensitive, too caring. Too easily fooled. And that thing she'd said about sacrifice being the currency of God, why, she'd said it exactly the way Linda did.
Kind of worshipy and dreamy, in-love, like.
But she was the sheriff's problem, not his.
Because his problem was What in hell do I do about that shadow-shape thing coming out of the steeple?
But maybe that was everybody's problem, because the thing swooping down was full of sharp edges.
The shadow swerved and skimmed across the roof of the church, then tangled in the branches of the old dogwood. David glanced away to look inside the church. The congregation was scattering and shouting, and for a brief instant David saw Ronnie and Tim scrambling toward the front of the church.
And behind them, Linda.
He saw Ronnie lead Tim into the vestry.
"Get Archer," David shouted at the sheriff, who stood as stiffly as any of the stone angels around them, the rifle like a weight in his hands.
Sheila said, "It's not Archer's fault. He's just doing God's work."
"What in hell?" David shouted at her, and now the church door had slammed open and people were spilling out onto the cool dewy grass.
Sheila had turned. Archer had gotten to her somehow. Softened her up. Fed her the big lie and shut the door to her heart away from the saving grace of Jesus.
But the sheriff . . . well, the sheriff would take care of business.
Except he was from one of the old families.
Same as Linda, same as Mama Bet, same as Donna and Zeb and Boonie.
Same as them that was running away from the church like rabbits from a brushfire.
And David had seen Sheriff Littlefield at last night's service.
Chowing down with the rest of them.
Eating what Archer offered.
Damn.
Was everybody on the side of Satan?
And David had given him a rifle.
About the smartest thing you ever done, Mr. David Day. Now you'd best forget about him, forget about all of them. Save the only things that matter.
Save the boys.
And to hell with the rest.
He raced across the graveyard to the rear of the church, keeping one eye on the dark branches of the dogwood and the other on the sheriff.
Frank watched David disappear into the shadows behind the church.
The congregation, Frank's constituents, the people who had once been his neighbors, scattered across the graveyard, some getting into their cars. Others disappeared into the trees. Haywood and Nell Absher crouched behind a large marker near the sheriff and Sheila.
"You've got to kill him," Sheila said.
"Haywood?"
"No, Archer."
"I . . . I don't know if I can."
"That's the way it has to be done. For God so loved the world, He gave His only other begotten son. Kill Archer, and set Samuel free. Set all the sinners free."
Frank shook his head. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. His wet clothes gave off a mist in the moonlight.
"You got to, Frankie," came a muffled, hollow voice from the ground, the sky, nowhere. Samuel's voice.
Frank gripped the rifle, stood and strode toward the church. Stepford Matheson ran toward him, saw the rifle and froze, then fled in the opposite direction. The night was filled with the gargle of car ignitions and excited shouts. Twin beams swept over Frank as the Buchanans' pickup turned around. Frank didn't even blink as the headlights pierced his eyes and the truck growled its way to the main road.
He came to the foot of the old dogwood and stared up into its black branches, to the scattered white blossoms at its top.
Where is that damned brother-killing shadow?
But he knew that the shadow wasn't the real monster. The real monster was the one who cast the shadow.
The Reverend Archer McFall.
Frank climbed the steps and entered the church foyer. He heard Sheila behind him. She would want to see. She was part of it now. Though she wasn't of the old families, she had been touched and changed by Archer.
In Archer, they were all one big happy family.
Frank entered the dimly lit sanctuary. Some of the candles had blown out because of the open door, and it took Frank's eyes a moment to adjust. Someone moaned near the front of the church. Another person---it looked like Linda Day---stood to one side of the altar, her back to him.
"You got to do it, Frankie," said Samuel.
He spun, and Sheila smiled at him. "Sacrifice is the currency of God," she said in Samuel's voice.
"What the hell are you?" Frank said, the muscles in his neck rigid.
Sheila batted her eyelashes. She spoke in her own voice this time. "Just a woman, Frank. Just somebody else for you to love and lose. Just another piece of God's great puzzle."
Her face twisted, dissolved, shifted into Archer's.
"Just somebody else for me to take away from you," Archer said.
Frank swung the butt of the rifle at Archer's smirk, wanting to drive the bright, secretive glee from the monster's eyes. Just before the wood struck flesh, the face shifted back into Sheila's.
Her eyes widened in surprise and anticipated pain.
Dark.
So black that Ronnie couldn't see his hand in front of his face.
He was in a box, a coffin, with nothing but the hard thud of his heart to mark the passing of time.
"I'm scared," Tim whispered.
"Shh," Ronnie said. "They'll hear us."
Though they already knew the two of them were locked in the vestry. It wasn't as though there were a whole lot of places to hide inside the red church.
Ronnie finally opened his eyes. The weak gleam of moon fought through a small window set high in the back wall. He could barely make out Tim's pale face, though his eyes and mouth were steeped in shadows. He pressed his ear to the door again.
She was out there.
Waiting.
Wanting.
Ronnie shivered, remembering the deep and creepy look in his mother's eyes as she ate the raw meat, as she passed the plate to Tim, as she screamed at them for running away from Archer McFall.
Mom knocked again. "Let me in, boys."
Ronnie put his hand over Tim's mouth before his younger brother could cry out. Tim's hot, rapid breath passed between his fingers.
"Mommy won't hurt you," she said.
Ronnie put one finger to his lips to shush Tim, then slid quietly around until his back was against the door. To get inside, she'd have to bust the old metal lock. But they couldn't stay here forever. Some of the other church people might help her. Like Mama Bet. Like Whizzer.
They'd have to find a way out.
The window was too high to reach. Ronnie wasn't sure if he could even fit through it. But maybe Tim could.
The door rattled. "Come out, my honeys. I'll protect you."
Said the spider to the fly.
But that was Ronnie's mom out there, the one who had raised him and burped him and kissed the scrapes on his knee and stood up for him when the school counselor said Ronnie wasn't playing well with others.
This was the only mom he had.
He fought back the tears that burned his eyes and wet the bandages on his nose.
Think, think, think. You're supposed to be smart, remember? At least, that's what all those tests say.
What would Dad do?
Something shuffled in the corner, a light, whispery sound.
A leaf?
A mouse?
This was supposed to be a fancy mouse motel, after all.
That was what Lester Matheson had called the church. But Lester also said, It's people what makes a church, and what and all they believe.
The people here believed some pretty weird stuff.
People like his mom. And he was so scared of his Mom that he wouldn't open the door.
The soft, dry rattling came again, so quietly that he barely heard it over his pounding pulse.
He'd have to do something fast.
"Ronnie," Mom said from the other side of the door.
He tensed.
"Listen," she said. "It's Tim that Archer needs. Open the door and let me have Tim, and you can go. Mommy promises."
Tim gasped.
Mom usually kept her promises.
Ronnie looked into his brother's face, saw the glint of tears on his cheeks, the weak reflection of the moon in his glasses.
This was the dingle-dork who pestered him and tore the covers off his Spiderman comics and said that Melanie Ward wanted to give him a big, sloppy kiss.
Tim was the biggest pain-in-the-rear of all time.
And this moment, this choice, was another of those turning points that were popping up so often lately. This was some kind of test.
Everything was a test.
And to win, to make an A-plus, all he had to do was stand up, turn the brass catch, and let the door swing open, let Mom give Tim a big, bloody hug and carry him off to Archer. And Ronnie could walk right down the road to the rest of his life.
Yeah, RIGHT.
Mom knocked again, more firmly. "Ronnie? Be my big boy."
"Mommy," Tim whimpered, a bubble of mucus popping in his nose.
"Tim?" Mom said. "Open the door. Come to Mommy."
Tim's hand snaked toward the door handle, trembled, and stopped halfway. Ronnie reached out and caught it, then pulled Tim to his feet.
The thing in the dark corners shuffled again.
Mice.
He led Tim underneath the window, then put his mouth to his brother's ear. "When I boost you up, break the window and crawl out."
Tim's glasses flashed in the moonlight as he nodded.
Ronnie stooped and cupped his hands, and Tim put a foot in them. Ronnie grunted as he lifted, and Tim grabbed the small splintered ledge and pulled himself up to the glass.
"Close your eyes and hit it with your elbow," Ronnie commanded. "Hurry."
Ronnie didn't worry about remaining quiet, because whatever was in the corner was growing louder and larger and darker than the shadows. Tim hit the window once, and nothing happened.
"Harder," Ronnie yelled, his voice cracking.
Tim smacked the window again and the brittle explosion was followed by the tinkle of showering glass.
"What are you boys up to in there?" Mom shouted, banging on the door.
Ronnie pushed Tim higher. "Watch out for the glass," he said, as Tim scurried through the small frame. When Tim had tumbled through, probably landing shoulder-first on the grass outside, Ronnie jumped as high as he could. His fingers scratched inches short of the window ledge.
At least Tim made it.
He leaned against the wall. Alone. He would have to face the darkness alone.
The darkness moved away from the lesser darkness, and the moon fell on its face.
His face.
Preacher Staymore.
Ronnie exhaled a lungful of held fear as the preacher's voice reached and soothed him. "With the Son of God in your heart, you're never alone."
The preacher stepped forward, calm and smiling.
Wait a second.
What's the preacher doing here? During the First Baptist services, he said time and again that all the other churches led people straight to hell.
Ronnie stepped back from the man's broad, grinning face and fervent eyes.
"You're wondering what I'm doing here, aren't you, my child?" Preacher Staymore spread his arms and held his palms upward, like Jesus in those Bible color plates.
"Let me in, Ronnie," Mom yelled, rattling the door again.
"I hid back here so I could help save you, Ronnie," the preacher said, ignoring her. "God sent me special just to watch you. We knew you'd be tempted."
"Tempted?" Ronnie glanced at the window.
"Yes. You know there's only one true way."
Mom pounded on the door.
"Can you hear Him aknockin', Ronnie?"
I can try for the window one more time. Maybe if I get a running start---
Mom flailed at the door. "You boys had better get out here right this second," she said, her voice a mixture of anger and hysteria.
"Escaping won't save you, Ronnie." Preacher Staymore took another step closer. "You can run to the ends of the earth, but you can't get away from your own sorry heart. Only one person can cleanse you."
Ronnie pressed against the wall, clawing at the wood behind him.
The moon bathed the preacher's face, almost like a dramatic spotlight on some crazy stage.
"Can you hear Him aknockin'?" the preacher repeated.
Mom pounded on the door. "Ron-NEEEEE."
The preacher reached out to touch Ronnie's forehead, just as he had done the dozen or so other times he'd helped Ronnie get saved. Ronnie closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly, the way he was supposed to do.
At least I'll get saved one last time before Mom and Archer and the Bell Monster get me. And dear Jesus, when you come in this time, please stay awhile. Please don't let me have more of those sins of the heart that make you so mad. And please, please, please, let Tim get away.
"You got to throw open the door, Ronnie," the preacher whispered, his hand moist and cool on Ronnie's forehead. "You got to let Him in."
The feeling came, that mixture of warmth and airiness expanding in his chest.
The good feeling.
The kind of feeling he got when Mom hugged him or Dad mussed his hair.
A feeling of being wanted, of being loved.
Of belonging.
He smiled, because he was going to tell Preacher Staymore that the door was open, that the Lord had come right on in and then slammed it shut so that no sins could sneak in behind Him.
Ronnie opened his eyes to thank the preacher, but the preacher wasn't there.
A slick stack of something that looked like gray mud stood before him. Touching him.
Some of the mud slid down his forehead and clung to his bandaged nose.
The mudstack made wet noises, a bubbling like snotty breath.
Ronnie choked back a scream. The darkness took shape, the shadow behind the mud gaining sharp edges.
The Bell Monster.
Ronnie slapped away the branch of mud that stretched to his head. It was like punching a giant slug.
Mom screamed his name again from behind the door.
The mudstack jiggled forward, the shadow looming behind it.
It's moving, oh, sweet Jesus Christ, it's MOVING.
Ronnie tried to tell himself it was the pain pill, this was a stupid dream and he'd wake up with a pillowcase tangled around his head. That he'd wake up and the only problems he would have were Mom and Dad's arguing, Tim's pestering, Melanie Ward's hot-and-cold flirting, and all the hundreds of ordinary problems that boys across the world faced every day.
Oh, yeah, and the big one: whether Jesus Christ was going to stay with him and help him get through it all, or whether He was going to cut and run at the first tiny sin of the heart.
But the mud monster moved again, pressing against Ronnie, and he could no longer lie to himself. This was real.
And the worst got worser, as Tim would say.
Because the thing spoke.
"Come into me, Ronnie," came the slobbery, mumbling voice. "Give it up. It's the only way to get cleansed forever."
Ronnie didn't ask how getting smothered in a nasty, creepy mound of walking, talking mud would make him clean.
"I need you," the mud monster said. The shadow grew larger behind it, filling the room, blocking the window. "Give yourself to me."
Yeah, RIGHT.
It's all about sacrifice, ain't it? I give myself up, and you let Tim go. That's the deal, huh?
Ronnie struggled against the crush of mud.
But then you'll be back, and it will be TIM'S turn to sacrifice. And then Dad's, and then everybody else's. And everybody loses but you.
Because YOU don't have to sacrifice anything.
All you do is take and take and take.
The weight of the mud pressed Ronnie to his knees. The slimy fluid soaked through his clothes. Mom called again and pounded on the door, the sound a million miles away.
All he wanted to do was sleep. He was so tired. It was so much easier to just give yourself up than actually try to fight.
So much easier.
Frank tried to pull back on the rifle, but his swing had too much momentum.
Sheila's eyes widened as the rifle butt struck her cheek.
Oh, my God. No, no, NOOOO.
The wooden stock glanced off her jaw, and for a split second, Frank had the illusion that the butt had passed through her skull. But he'd been suffering a lot of illusions lately, and the slapping sound echoed off the church and tombstones.
Sheila dropped like a sack of wet seed corn, and Frank dropped to her side almost as rapidly, calling her name.
A red splotch spread across her cheek. Frank put his fingers gently against the bruise. "You okay?" he whispered.
Her eyes fluttered open and she groaned.
"I didn't . . . you were Archer . . ."
She gripped his shoulder, the one she had shot hours earlier. Frank winced but swallowed his grunt of pain.
She worked her jaw sideways twice, then said, "It still works."
So maybe he'd held back enough.
"You were Archer," Frank repeated stupidly.
"Gee, thanks for the compliment," she said. "Have I told you lately that you're ape shit crazy?"
"Not in the last five minutes or so." Frank glanced into the branches of the dogwood above, making sure nothing sharp and black was moving around up there.
Where was Archer? And how was Frank going to kill something that couldn't be killed when he couldn't even trust his own eyes?
Sheila sat up, rubbing her jaw. "Guess that was payback," she said, pointing at the blood seeping through his bandage.
"Yeah," he said, gripping the rifle. "Now we're even, but somebody else has a debt to settle."
He rose and headed for the church. Most of the congregation had scattered, and the church was silent except for Linda Day's shouting. Frank stood before the door and stared at the belfry, then into the dim interior of the church.
Twenty-three years ago, at Samuel's funeral, Frank had entered this structure with only one comfort: that God would take care of Samuel in the afterlife.
And that comfort had kept Frank going all these years, even though a tiny niggling voice in the back of his mind never let him forget what the Bell Monster had done. God had been with Frank then, had helped him deal with the sorrow of losing his family, had laid by him and with him and inside him during a thousand sleepless nights.
But now, as Frank entered the church, he knew the kind of tricks that God liked to play. And that God's closeness was only another illusion.
This time Frank walked alone.
Mama Bet crawled on her hands and knees across the floor to the altar. The muck that had been Donna Gregg's internal organs soaked into Mama Bet's Sunday dress and coated her skin. She didn't mind the sticky blood on her face or the rank, coppery taste that clung to the inside of her mouth. This was an offering, after all. A sacrifice.
There's nothing as glorious as the flesh of one of the old families.
The others had fled, those of little faith who shied from the brilliance of Archer's power. But not her. No, she would follow to the end. And the others were only delaying what was meant to be, what was ordained by God. The only thing that heavenly son of a snake ever did right was to give Archer to the world.
To her.
She licked her lips and raised up in worship of the crooked cross. The wood caught the dying light from the candles, standing as defiantly as a true believer on a devil's playground. The Jesus-demon had been nailed to such a cross, and people had fallen all over themselves to get on the bandwagon. But when the real thing, the true messiah, came unto their midst, they scattered like a bunch of hens running from a fox.
Except Linda Day.
The woman banged on the vestry door like there was no tomorrow, screaming Ronnie's name over and over again. Mama Bet chuckled to herself.
I reckon faith is either all or nothing. Linda's gone whole hog for Archer, giving up her boys without a second thought just so Archer will pat her on the head and flash that television smile. And people think I'M crazy.
She wiped a fleck of flesh from her chin and stood on trembling legs.
I'm getting too old for such foolishness. About time I took Archer up on that eternal peace he keeps promising. As long as God stays way over to the other end of heaven, I don't think I'll mind one bit. I believe I've earned a little rest.
But first they had to nail down one little piece of unfinished business. Business by the name of Ronnie Day. Mama Bet looked at the dark shadow on the dais, at its flickering edges, at the blackness that seemed to burn through to the belly of the earth.
She started laughing.
Linda turned from the door, her face wet with hysterical tears. "He won't let me in."
Mama Bet was enjoying the woman's misery. After all, the blood of the old families ran through Linda's veins. Linda was one of them---them that had hung Wendell McFall, because they were just as blind to glory back then as they were today. Them that deserved all the suffering that Archer could dish out.
You showed them the way, you lit the path, you spoon-fed them the truth, and they spat in your face.
People didn't change.
"You didn't say the magic words."
"Magic words?" Linda blubbered, her eyes roaming wildly over the church as if a message might be written on the walls. "What magic words? Archer didn't say anything about magic words."
"I believe the words are 'Let me die,'" boomed a voice from the back of the church.
Mama Bet turned.
Sheriff Frank Littlefield strode up the aisle, carrying a rifle, his eyes narrowed and his face clenched in a strange smile. Blood soaked the left half of his uniform shirt. In the foyer behind him, the detective woman leaned against the wall.
Mama Bet laughed again. "You think Archer will fall down for a bullet? You're crazier than a liquored-up Absher."
"Archer wants to be killed. And it's got to be done by one of us. One of us who belong to Archer."
Maybe so. Maybe Littlefield's been chosen. Though he didn't seem all that gung-ho at the service the other night. Just nibbled on a bit of old Zeb's stringy flesh like it was a piece of black licorice. Didn't put a whole lot of gumption in it.
But Archer had his own ways, and who was she to question his workings? One Judas was as good as any other. Let the sheriff come.
"He's in there," Mama Bet said, pointing past Linda to the door. "Doing a little holy work."
Linda gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
As the sheriff stepped before the vestry door, Mama Bet said, "You ain't got it quite right, Sheriff. The magic words ain't 'let me die.' They're 'let me die for you.'"
The sheriff pounded on the door. "Open up, McFall. I got a message for you. From a boy named Samuel."
Mama Bet rubbed her hands together, smearing the coagulated blood. This was going to be good.
The old brass handle turned and the door swung open.
David crept from the woods behind the church, keeping his eyes on the dark canopy overhead. But one of those hell holes might be under his feet, one of those gateways that allowed the devil to crawl up out of his hot pit in the center of the Earth and stir up a ruckus. God had kicked the devil's hind end a thousand times over, but still the red-faced son of a skunk kept on trying. You had to hand it to the devil: long odds never dampened his enthusiasm one bit.
David almost felt guilty about sending the sheriff into battle. You couldn't fight a holy war unless you were serious about the "holy" part. The sheriff hadn't been to church of late, and never had been a regular. David had seen the man baptized when they were both children, but sometimes the water didn't soak completely through.
Branches snapped about a hundred feet to his right, and he tensed and crouched behind a thick oak. The sound faded. Probably one of Archer's folks. One of the stray lambs, bolting the pen now that the gate was unlatched.
David reached the clearing behind the church just as glass shattered. The moon flashed on the jagged pieces that flew from the high window. Then he heard Ronnie's frantic voice.
David ran from the trees, not caring that he was out in the open where the devil could strike him down. All he cared about was that his two children, the dearest things a father could have, were inside that church with the devil's incarnation. And, almost as bad, they were with Linda, who was so cross-eyed over Archer that she couldn't tell right from wrong.
He almost shouted, but the devil's keepers were all around. Some of those stray lambs might have a few teeth. They might just want to get a good bite of God-fearing flesh, so they could chew it up in mockery of dear sweet Jesus. Just like they had in California, and just like they had in the red church.
And then David put it all together.
The boys.
Linda was going to give them to Archer as an offering. As soul food.
He ran, sweat bleeding through his pores faster than the night could chill his skin. Tim's head appeared in the broken window, then his shoulders and arms, and he was falling head first ten feet to the ground.
Tim gasped in expected pain.
But David was there to catch him. He'd always be there to protect his boys. Him and Jesus.
"Shhh," David said, putting his hand over Tim's mouth before the boy could scream. Tim's glasses bounced away, settling softly in the graveyard grass.
"It's me," David said, then moved his hand away.
"Ronnie," Tim whispered, his throat tight. "It's got Ronnie."
"Who?" David said, though his heart sank like a stone down to his belly.
"The preacher."
Littlefield had better have enough faith. Littlefield had better do what the Lord required. Littlefield had better make the sacrifice.
Because even though God always won the battle of good and evil, sometimes innocent blood was shed. That much was plain through all the books of the Bible.
"Ronnie will be saved," David said, as convincingly as he could manage.
Slurping noises from inside the vestry spilled through the window. Talking. Ronnie and someone whose voice was familiar.
Naw, couldn't be.
"You said the preacher got Ronnie?" David asked.
"Yeah. Preacher Staymore."
Staymore. David smiled and looked to the sky. God always sent a champion when times were tough, when the good guys had their backs against the wall.
A real preacher, a bathed-in-the-blood Baptist preacher.
Ronnie would be all right.
"Mom's in there, and she's acting really weird," Tim said. David set him down and the boy knelt to retrieve his glasses.
"She don't know what she's doing, son. The Lord will set her straight."
Just like He had twice before. Once when Linda was young and pure, and once after she had returned from California. Third time's a charm, they said.
David led Tim past the gray tombstones to the edge of the woods. They could wait there, in the safety of shadows, for the battle to end and the Lord to come out on top.
Just like always.
Frank nearly dropped the rifle as Ronnie came from the dark vestry. The boy's face was pale, his eyes feverish on either side of the soiled bandage that covered his nose. His lips moved as if to speak, or maybe he was whispering something to himself.
It was the same look Samuel had worn the moment he realized that the Bell Monster was behind him and was going to get him, get him, get him. Frank's heart twisted in rage, but he instantly forgot Samuel.
Because behind Ronnie shambled a creature that was the crowning glory of a day full of impossibilities. The mud and clay of the thing's flesh glistened in the candlelight, its limbs an awkward and perverted imitation of a human's. Worst of all were the black slits that hinted at eyes and a mouth.
The mouth flapped, the edges like cold gray syrup.
Mama Bet and Linda gasped in unison, and Linda grabbed Ronnie to pull him away.
"Welcome," said the thing, and even though the word was drawn-out and slushy, Frank knew it was Archer's voice.
"Archer?" Mama Bet said, her withered face taut.
"Mother," the thing said. The clay rippled, shifted, and for a split second, the preacher's face appeared, the powerful eyes sweeping over them like a lighthouse beacon over a troubled sea.
Linda drew back from the preacher, Ronnie tucked behind her. The preacher turned his smile to her and then the flesh fell back into corrupted mud.
"Linda, give me the child," the thing commanded.
She shook her head, speechless and numbed.
"Give me the child," it repeated.
Frank lifted the rifle.
"You've got to kill it, Frank," Sheila said from behind him.
How could you kill . . . this?
But he pointed the rifle anyway, lodged the stock against his shoulder and looked down the barrel. The rifle weighed a thousand pounds, and he felt as if he were still underwater.
"Give me the child," the thing said a third time.
Mama Bet fell on her knees before the mudstack.
"You . . . you're not Archer," Linda said.
"Does it matter what face God wears?" the thing said in Archer's smooth and seductive voice. "You promised. And I ask so little, after all."
Linda backed away another couple of steps. "Not like this," she said. "You're not Archer. You can't have my baby."
The mudstack trembled, dropping bits of itself on the dais. The tiny clods writhed like worms on the blotched dark angel that stained the boards.
"Sacrifice is the currency of God," it said. "And Ronnie is the sacrifice."
"I won't let you kill him," Linda said.
The thing gurgled a laugh. "Oh, I'm not going to kill him. You are. That's what sacrifice is all about. Blessings are better given than received."
Linda looked at her son, whose eyes were wet with tears.
"Mom?" Ronnie whispered. He gulped.
Frank fought the strange gravity that wrapped him like a thick skin. He could kill it. Sure, he was of the old families. He had a right. It was his job.
"Do it," Sheila whispered in his ear, a little too gleefully.
Frank remembered how the rifle butt had seemingly passed through her cheek, how she had been underwater for far too long. How she recited Archer's words in a chilling and worshipful way.
He glanced back at her. For just a moment, so briefly that before this recent madness he would have chalked it up to illusion, she wore Archer's eyes, deep and brown and brimming with secrets. She blinked them back to blue.
"You heard what Samuel said," she whispered, her eyes never leaving the quivering pile of clay. Her doting eyes, her eyes hot with a faraway and deep and inhuman love. A fervor that went beyond the flesh.
She was Archer's now.
Frank's throat tightened.
They were all Archer's. They always had been. Frank had tasted, and found it sweet. He had swallowed his way into the red church and he had let the monster into his heart. And he hated his own weakness almost as much as he hated Archer.
Yes, he could kill it.
But as his finger tightened on the trigger, the mud rippled again and shrank. Samuel stood before him with pleading eyes.
"You can do it, Frankie," his dead brother said. The boy pulled a worm from his mouth and held it up. It squirmed between white fingers.
Samuel put the worm back in his mouth and chewed noisily. "Archer ate me, you know. He eats all of us."
Then Samuel blossomed hideously into the mass of putrid clay.
Archer wanted to be killed.
As if somehow being killed by one of his own would give him great power. Just as Judas had given up Jesus. The sons of God always needed a betrayer. Even though Frank no longer believed in God, it was just the sort of logic that ruled in an insane universe.
And he wouldn't obey. He wouldn't give Archer what he---or it, whatever it was---wanted most of all. Frank wouldn't make the sacrifice.
He dropped the rifle and it clattered across the hard floor.
The thing let out a damp moan, its thick arms reaching for Ronnie.
Mama Bet gazed up at the thing she had made, birthed, delivered unto the world.
A flawless monstrosity.
Her perfect, sinless child.
She reached out and touched the moist clay. This was the flesh of her flesh. Had she ever dreamed she would be part of something so glorious, so big?
And I done it all by myself. I brung it out myself, taught my Archer all about the wicked ways of the world, about the evil of the old families. I passed down the story of Wendell McFall, about how preaching was in the blood, how it was Archer's job to bring salvation to these heathen Jesus followers.
She slid her hand down the slope of the mud shape. Dimly, she heard Archer's golden-throated voice demanding the Day child.
Let them be cleansed, young and old. Then, when we're done with the Days and the Mathesons and the Potters, we can go on to bigger work. Because Jesus is legion. A whole lot of hearts got to be plucked out of tainted chests. A whole heap of iniquities got to be paid for.
The Archer-mud shook and became the boy, the one whose corpse she had dug up and pickled and then canned in glass jars so that young Archer could have offerings throughout the year. There had been other corpses along the way, a Day here, another Littlefield there, the whole graveyard like a fresh, sacred garden. Even the embalmed ones were worthy.
But getting them fresh was so much better.
The cold mockery of flesh rippled again and changed back into the mud shape.
The rifle that the sheriff had been carrying landed on the floor beside her. The sheriff was weak. That was just like a Littlefield, to fold like an accordion when there was work to be done. Well, he'd get his in due time.
Mama Bet sank her fingers into the mud and pulled a clump free. She put it to her face and rubbed it over the blood that had coagulated on her cheeks. Her boy. Her son and savior.
She pressed it against her lips, savoring the humus, this flesh of the earth.
It was between her lips, her tongue probing the holy matter, when she recognized the texture. She froze.
That night.
Nearly forty years ago.
When she gave away her virginity and took the seed.
And she remembered how, the next day, she'd found the stone rolled away, the stone that sealed off the hole in the back of the pantry. The hole that led down into the dark, moist tunnels of hell.
The clay squirmed between her gums. She tried to spit it out, but it thrust toward the opening of her throat, wriggling toward her belly.
As its rank flavor flooded her mouth, she tasted the bitter truth.
It wasn't God that had impregnated her.
It was . . . this.
No.
Archer was her flesh, her body, her blood. He was born of the heavens, not the earth.
Not like this thing.
But this was Archer. Her only son.
The word made flesh.
The flesh made mud, from that which crawled up through deep holes in the ground.
How could she ever have loved this thing?
This thing that walked among humans like some gift from above, throwing off lies and laying out tricks that made Jesus look like a two-bit street magician.
This thing that stood at the pulpit, slick and foul and throwing off a fungal rotten smell. The odor of the grave.
A deceiver.
Just another in a long line of false prophets and God-pretenders.
May God forgive me, I HELPED it. I gave it LIFE.
She clamped her legs together, as if she could change the past and keep the thing's head from appearing, to prevent its birth. But it was too late. It had always been too late.
The McFall secret was even more secret than she had known.
The thing, the hideous coalition of accumulated sin and pain and sorrow, moved toward Linda and Ronnie.
It wanted a last supper.
Mama Bet looked at the thing that was its own father, the thing that had fooled her more deeply than it had fooled anyone, and anger burned her from the inside out. It began in her chest, where the small clump of mud had lodged, and expanded out to her skin. Her head felt as if it were glowing, as if some power from beyond had lit her hair like a torch.
Strength flooded her aged limbs, a strength born of self-loathing.
Sacrifice was the currency of God.
And damned if she didn't know what sacrifice was all about.
Ronnie stepped in front of his mother, protecting her, though the creepy mountain of mud was the worst nightmare ever made.
Mom tried to pull him back, but he shrugged her hands away. "I got to do this, Mom," he said, trying to keep his voice from cracking, but failing.
"No, Ronnie," she said.
"If I give myself to it, maybe that will be enough. That's all it wants."
So I hope and pray. Because if it takes me in, and I'm full of Jesus, then it will be filled with Jesus, too.
Though Ronnie's vision blurred with tears, he knew he was doing the right thing. After all those sins of the heart, all those selfish things, this was something he could do for the whole world. He would give himself so that the world could live. And if Mom loved him enough, she would give him up, too.
His heart, which had been shriveled with fear, now felt light and warm in his chest. A strange calmness came over him. This thing could eat him, smother him, rip him apart, whatever it wanted to do, but it could never touch the real him.
The part of him that floated in his heart.
With Jesus.
Because Jesus was there, all right, big and happy and brave. Jesus had always been there, only Ronnie realized sometimes you couldn't see Him because you got caught up in your own little sorrows and worries and dreams. All your little selfish things.
But Jesus stuck right there with you, no matter what.
And Ronnie knew that Jesus wouldn't step in and save him from the monster.
Because Jesus had already saved him.
He twisted away from Mom and stepped forward to meet the monster's embrace, a smile on his face, the pain in his nose and heart now as far away as heaven was near.
Mama Bet picked up the rifle.
She had no doubt that Archer could die, would die. And only she, who had given it life, could free it. Hers was the greatest sacrifice, after all. She was giving up her only begotten son.
Her cataracted eyes fixed upon the mass of mud that was only inches from taking the boy.
Sure, that boy deserved cleansing-he had that awful and tainted Day blood in him-but the sins of the old families were nothing next to the blaspheming joke of an angel that slopped before her.
Angels didn't fall from heaven. They rose up from the meat of the earth.
Her guts ached at the thought that this thing had been harbored in her belly, had grown by sapping her strength, had come forth under the lie of a miracle.
"Archer," she called with all the strength she could muster. Her diabetic limbs trembled as she aimed the rifle. The mud shape turned, its slab of face rippling. The mud changed, slid into Archer's human features.
"Mother?" he said, eyes wide and pleading and oh so damned innocent. Like he'd never had a nasty thought in his life. Like God was the one lighting up his eyes, a holy filament burning inside that glorious, handsome head.
Mama Bet wavered. She'd suckled this thing. She'd told it bedtime stories. She'd fed it from a hundred worthless sinners. Why, surely there was one good thing about it, one thing worth a mother's love.
"Archer," she whispered. The rifle tilted down toward the floor, and she saw the dark stain moving, rising up like a fat and sinuous snake, draping Archer like an oversize shadow. Something else moved out of the corner of Mama Bet's eye---the sheriff jumping over the railing.
"The Bell Monster," Ronnie screamed.
The Bell Monster.
The real evil.
Because evil didn't wear flesh. Evil didn't need substance.
As the black shape settled over Archer and sank into him, soaked through his smooth suit and styled hair, Mama Bet's son smiled at her.
"I love you, Mother," the preacher said, though his teeth said exactly the opposite.
His teeth said, You're about due for a turn in the offering plate, you stupid blind bitch. And let me tell you something: you're worse than all the others put together. Because you served me, and you LOVED it. You loved having your face pushed into the corrupted flesh of the old families. You swallowed the body of God like a pig snorting at the trough.
And the horrible truth of it slammed into her like a twenty-pound Bible dropped from the heights of heaven.
She lifted the rifle and pulled the trigger, and the stock kicked against her shoulder as the report bounced off the wooden walls of the red church.
Frank eased over to the railing. The others had forgotten him, all except Archer, who knew everything and seemed to always have a gleaming eye on the sheriff. Even in his mud incarnation, the preacher owned the red church.
But when the shadow of the Bell Monster had risen, Frank knew that Archer had always been here, in many forms, troubling the people of Whispering Pines since the first family had settled in these hard hills. Maybe it had been here since the first sun rose. Maybe it was an evil older than hope, older than religion, older than everything that people thought they understood. And since Frank no longer believed in God, he no longer believed in the devil, either.
Those things didn't matter. Who cared about some nameless, faceless eternity? What counted was that he could save Ronnie, right here and right now. Frank had failed Samuel, but maybe this was a chance at redemption.
The sheriff jumped over the rail and grabbed the boy, lifted him and carried him away from the preacher. Archer didn't even glance at them, his hands spread wide in acceptance as he spoke to his mother. Linda stood in shock at the edge of the altar, slowly shaking her head as if someone had told her that the emperor had no clothes, and she had just noticed the nakedness.
Shoot it.
Frank couldn't kill it, because that would only bring the thing back, more powerful than ever. But Mama Bet was its creator, in a way. At least in the human way. If the Archer-shadow-thing was an ancient evil, it must have started somewhere. And everything that had a beginning also had an end.
Ronnie was light in the sheriff's arms as they fled from the altar and down the aisle. Sheila, or whatever Sheila had been, was gone. Frank thought of her touch, but only briefly. He was getting better at forgetting.
The shot exploded when he was in the middle of the church, and he couldn't help himself. He had to turn and look.
Archer, arms wide, palms up, eyebrows raised, mouth stunned open, a messiah on an invisible cross.
A small red spot appeared on his white shirt, just to the left of his tie.
Shot in the heart.
Archer's lips moved, but no words came. The face shifted rapidly, to mud and mountain lion to Samuel and then to a dozen, no, a hundred faces that Frank didn't recognize. Then it settled back into Archer's face.
"Jeez," whispered Ronnie.
Archer's eyes rolled heavenward, as if looking for some large, compassionate hand to come down and collect him. But above them was only the dark ceiling of the red church.
Then the bell rang, a belch of hellwind ripping the night.
"Mom," Ronnie called, struggling in Frank's grasp.
Linda looked from Ronnie to Archer, then back again, as if making a hard choice.
The wound on Archer's chest blossomed wider, leaking a gray gelatinous substance along with the blood. Frank thought he saw bits of stone and root in the seepage. Archer lurched toward Mama Bet as the bell rang a second time.
"Why hast thou forsaken me?" the preacher-thing said to its cowering mother. The words were as thunderous as the tolling bell, but Archer was smiling. As if getting killed was all part of some perverted sacrament.
"Come on, Linda," Frank shouted.
"Ronnie," she called, holding her arms up and running from the altar. This time they were a mother's loving arms, not the snatching arms of a conspirator.
Frank set Ronnie down, and the boy hugged his weeping mother.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Frank said, leading them down the aisle.
He turned one last time, just before they went out the door. Mama Bet had stood and was meeting her son's embrace. Except her son, her savior, her hope for the world, was a glistening mass of clay. The mudslide swept over her and suffocated her screams. Frank's feet were in the graveyard grass when the bell rang for the third and final time.
This is it, Ronnie thought. The all-time, Whopper-with-extra-cheese turning point, the up-close-and-personal end of the world.
And the weirdest thing was, he was no longer afraid. No matter what happened from here on in, he knew he wasn't alone. Because when Jesus came into your heart, He signed a lifetime contract with a no-trade clause. Ronnie wished someone had told him how simple it was, that you didn't need Preacher Staymore or an angel or even Dad to tell you God was right there all the time.
He gripped Mom's hand as they ran across the graveyard. A smattering of starlight and the half-faced moon threw the shadow of the dogwood tree over them. The black branches swayed in an unfelt breeze like fingers reaching to grab them.
"Are you okay?" Mom asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"I-I'm sorry," she said, but Ronnie barely heard her, because the bell rang for a third time and the ground trembled beneath his feet.
"Over here," someone shouted.
Dad!
Ronnie dashed for the trees at the edge of the woods. Dad stepped from the darkness and grabbed him, hugged him, and pulled him into the underbrush.
Tim squinted from behind a laurel.
"Timmy," Ronnie said, his heart lighter than it had ever been. Prayers worked. Prayers kicked ass.
"What happened?" Tim asked.
"Did the sheriff kill him?" Dad asked, before Ronnie could answer Tim.
"She did."
"She? The detective?"
"No, Mama Bet."
"Did they hurt you, son?"
"No," he said, wanting to tell Dad about his new discovery, that Jesus was a pal and an ally, and who cared about an old stupid Bell Monster when you had the top gun on your side?
But he forgot about Jesus.
Because Mom was standing in the graveyard, and so was the sheriff, and the grass stretched open and the ground cracked and tombstones shivered.
Archer appeared in the doorway of the red church, the hole in his chest miraculously healed, the shirt unstained. He was bathed in a strange light, a sick yellowish orange the color of a dying fire. His face was sad and peaceful, and once again Ronnie was reminded of Jesus' face in the Bible pictures.
Ronnie swallowed hard. Because what if this was the Second Coming, only this time God did it in a roundabout way, the ultimate big-time test of faith?
"What's happening?" Tim said, nearly blind without his glasses.
"God only knows," David said.
Archer walked---no, floated---down the steps. Mama Bet was behind him, looking nearly the same as she had, the dried blood and dirt streaking her face. But her eyes were somehow wrong, looking past the seen and known world.
Then the ground quivered again. The dirt at the base of the grave markers roiled, and pale, wispy shapes slithered up into the night air.
Arms topped with clawing, grasping hands.
Arms followed by heads, whitish lumps that were half skull, half milkish vapor.
Then more, rising up from the ground like heavy fog. A sound like a hurt breeze wended through the forest.
The shapes solidified, became translucent people. Some wore old clothes, long dresses and bonnets, some of the men in Confederate Civil War uniforms, their blanched faces stretched and sagging, mouths yawning mournfully as they moaned. Others wore clothes of more recent vintage, suits and cravats or ties, with or without shoes. Ronnie recognized some of the more freshly dead.
There, Willie Absher, who had been crushed to death while working on a truck last year. Jeannie Matheson, an old schoolteacher who had finally given in to cancer. And Grandma Gregg.
The same Grandma who used to perch Ronnie on her knee and tell about the old ways and the old stories. Now she shook the dark dirt from her burial gown and moved forward, feet hovering above the ground, vacant eyes shadowed.
A dozen, a hundred dead, all rising up from the grave, answering the call of the bell.
Summoned by Archer.
The preacher was beneath the dogwood now, reaching out with his luminous hands to rip the air in front of him. A separate entity shimmered into being.
"The Hung Preacher," whispered Ronnie.
"May the good Lord protect us and keep us," Dad prayed aloud.
"What about Mom?" Tim whimpered.
"She bargained with the devil. Now she's got to pay the price."
"No," Ronnie said. "She changed. When Archer got shot, she became one of us again. We can't give up on her now."
Ronnie couldn't explain. Mom was Mom. Mom belonged to them, not Archer. And Archer wasn't the devil, anyway. For the first time ever, Dad was wrong.
Ronnie looked for her in the herd of haunted figures. At first he saw only the aching dead collecting around Archer. Then he saw Mom, hiding behind Grandma Gregg's tombstone. The sheriff was with her.
"There she is," Ronnie said. "You got to save her."
"Only Jesus saves, son."
"But you love her. You can't let Archer have her."
"She was more than ready to give you up. She thought she was making that sacrifice for love."
"What's happening to Mommy?" Tim said.
"Please, Dad," Ronnie said. He was nearly ready to run out there himself, out in the middle of those dead creepy things, to help Mom. "Jesus will run with you. Archer can't touch you if you're carrying Jesus in your blood."
Dad said nothing. As they watched, the Hung Preacher materialized, his plump bloated face beaming with joy. Archer embraced his ancestor, lifted him as three of the new congregation removed the noose. The sinuous threads that comprised the Hung Preacher's revenance collapsed onto Archer, and the two coalesced into one body.
Then the crowd of corpses parted, and Archer headed across the corrupted cemetery. The others fell in line, a ghostly caravan.
The sheriff shouted and ran from his hiding place. He caught up to one of the figures, a young boy.
"Samuel," the sheriff screamed. "Don't go."
The sheriff grabbed at the apparition, tried to embrace it, but he might as well have been harvesting the air. The boy didn't even turn, just kept marching in that solemn regiment. The sheriff fell to his knees, weeping.
When the last of the dead disappeared into the brush, Dad said to Ronnie, "Stay here with your brother. I'll get your mom."
Ronnie looked at the dark gaps in the bushes where the dead had gone, wondering where Archer was leading them. Then he looked at the belfry, at the unmoving shadows that filled its hollowness. The candles burned low in the red church, the eerie flickering making the building seem alive.
"I can't see nothing," Timmy said. "My glasses broke. Tell me what's happening."
"Exactly what you see," Ronnie answered. "Nothing is happening."
The sheriff crawled into the shrubs. Below him, the road and the valley lay spread beneath the grim moon. The congregation drifted down the embankment, and there, near the end of the speechless column, was Samuel.
His dead brother, now and forever Archer's.
Frank watched as Archer reached the great stones bordering the river. The monstrosity stepped into the water. No, not into---onto. Because the preacher walked on water.
Archer turned and waited as his congregation followed, first Mama Bet, then others old and new, including Frank's grim parents, all entering the black river. The water swallowed them, took them under its frothy tongue and carried them back to the ancient belly of the Earth.
Frank hoped Samuel would look back and wave, do anything to show that he remembered, that part of Samuel's human life would remain even in this bleak new eternity. But Samuel slipped beneath the currents as silently as the others had, and when the last ghost faded, Archer himself dissipated and sank into the water.
Only the river mist remained, like the shroud of a final burial. The water laughed as it carried Archer's people to the deadest sea.
Frank returned to the red church three weeks later.
The cemetery was quiet, the grass thick from gentle rains, the earth undisturbed. Birds chirped in the nearby forest. Wildflowers erupted along the road, black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne's lace and winding morning glories. At the feet of the giant slumbering mountains, the river rolled on.
They'd found Sheila's body two miles downstream. Hoyle said that sometimes fish or turtles nibbled on the flesh when it became softened by prolonged exposure. Frank tried to believe that. At the hard edge of midnight, as he convinced himself that haunted congregations didn't exist, Hoyle's little forensic tidbit gave a tiny comfort.
But right now, he didn't need comfort.
He pulled the cord, and the chainsaw leaped to life, its racket drowning out nature's blissful stirrings. As he dug the spinning blade into the base of the dogwood, his teeth were clamped so tightly together that his jaw ached. The sawdust was bitter on his lips and in his nostrils as he sliced into the wood. Finally the deformed tree fell, and the sun bathed the red church with its cleansing rays.
He'd filled out a missing persons report on Mama Bet and Archer McFall, writing that he suspected they'd moved to California. He also postulated that Archer had murdered Boonie Houck, Zeb Potter, and Donna Gregg. Never mind that no solid evidence had ever been recovered, and that the state medical examiners were left as baffled as everybody else. Who cared if the FBI spent ten years tracking down a person who no longer existed, who may never have lived?
Frank sawed the dogwood into smaller lengths, then carried the brush to the edge of the forest. The work raised a good, honest sweat. Lester rode by on his tractor, gave a neighborly wave, and kept driving. The people of Whispering Pines were good at keeping things to themselves. Sonny Absher had tried to blabber, but everybody chalked it up to liquor-induced delusions.
When Frank was finished, he took off his gloves and went into the church. A pile of dry, gray dirt lay in the spot where Archer had been shot. Frank kicked at it, and dust spun in the air. The stain on the altar was gone.
He had thought about burning the church. Arson was a difficult crime to trace. But a church couldn't be good or evil---only people could. Or things that walked as people. Without people, and what they believed, a church was just a bunch of wood and nails and stone and glass.
Maybe someday God would return to this church. Maybe pure-hearted people would take up psalms and hymns and prayers here. Maybe a preacher would come here as God's servant, not as a jealous rival.
Maybe.
Frank went outside and gathered some wildflowers. He put some on the grave of his parents, then knelt before the stone that contained the engraving of a lamb.
If only God truly did keep and protect people.
If only.
Forgiveness.
That was something Jesus taught.
So Ronnie figured it was only right that he forgive Mom for trying to sacrifice him to Archer. Besides, Dad said that Jesus had already forgiven her. If Jesus, with all His problems and worries and duties, had room in His heart for Mom, then surely Ronnie had room, too. It helped that Mom and Dad had made up, and that Mom had joined the choir at Barkersville Baptist, and life was almost back to normal.
His nose was healing nicely, though he suspected he'd have a small hump on the bridge. Gave it character, Mom said. He looked forward to being able to smell flowers again.
Because he'd also forgiven Melanie. They sat together every day at lunch, and maybe in a week or two, he'd be able to smell that sweet little smell that her hair gave off. Melanie had asked him several times about what had happened at the church, but he'd never told her. At least, not yet. Every time she batted those long eyelashes and made his heart float, he weakened. Maybe someday he'd tell her, as soon as he figured it out for himself.
Summer was coming, the days long and full of sunshine. And the sun had a way of killing darkness and dark thoughts. He still walked past the red church, and he still shivered when he was near it. The Days didn't talk about what had happened at the church. Forgetting was part of forgiving.
But sometimes, when the sun was burying itself in the cut of Buckhorn Mountain, Ronnie couldn't help glancing at the belfry. And he couldn't help remembering how, that night of the ghosts when the Hung Preacher moved into Archer, the black shadow had slipped away and seeped into the old dogwood tree.
But surely that was only his overactive imagination trying to get him in trouble again. The sheriff had cut the tree down. Besides, Ronnie had Jesus, didn't he? Jesus would protect him. Doubting would be a sin of the heart, and Ronnie had suffered enough of those to last a lifetime.
So he kept his eyes away from the shadows and looked ahead to a life where dead things stayed dead, except for good things like Jesus.
These humans were the source of endless joy, endless fascination.
The thing had played many games throughout the billion passages of the sun, but this new one, the one of godhood, was the best.
With their belief in miracles, with their faith, with their frailties and failures, humans were a rich and abundant playground. From the beginning, when it had first burrowed up from the core of the Earth, it had inspired awe among those who wore flesh. The thing had taken many forms, many faces, and they had given it many names, but most of all, they had fed it fear and worship, and it craved those things that had been reserved for the gods.
And though it had been many things, trees and rocks and wind and meat, all those things were of the Earth. As it settled into the sandy riverbed and seeped back toward the hot magma of the earth's core, it considered the human thoughts it had stolen.
The time as Archer McFall had been pleasurable, as had its venture as Wendell McFall. But so had a thousand other forays into the flesh. So had many other possessions. Perhaps it would return one day, to shape clay into human form, to breathe life into hollow vessels and again bring a McFall among the people who lived in those old mountains. Or perhaps it would rise somewhere else, to play havoc in a new place, or revisit the site of other former miracles.
Because miracles never ceased.
Sometimes, when it owned thoughts, it wondered if its own existence was a miracle.
No. That would mean that greater things, greater forces, existed.
And the thing did not believe in anything greater than itself.
In the riverbed, it surrendered thought.
The master of the world returned to the dirt from which it had arisen.
THE END
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###
Julia Stone will remember, even if it kills her.
THE SKULL RING
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright ©2010 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
For Miranda and Lexie and our ring of love. May the circle be unbroken.
THE SKULL RING
I locked the door.
Didn't I?
Julia's sweating palm gripped the doorknob, the click of the tumblers still echoing inside her skull. Would he be inside, waiting, his lungs holding a hateful breath? The years fell away, and for a moment, she was a child again. A scared little helpless---
No.
That was Memphis, this was Elkwood. This was the new and improved Julia Stone, the one who was on the path to healing. Imaginary Creeps no longer stalked the alleys of her mind. Thanks to Dr. Forrest.
She glanced behind her at the woods, which seemed to have crept closer to the house since yesterday. The Appalachian Mountain shadows reached out like fingers, and she searched there for movement, any sign that people were watching. That he was watching.
Julia let the door swing open and squinted into the dark throat of the house. Nobody home. Nothing to fear, just the bland patterns of her furniture to welcome her. Just another day in her new normal life.
Nonetheless, her hand went into her purse and touched the cool canister of mace. She went inside, not letting herself look back. When you were cured, you didn't care what was behind you. Forward was all that mattered. Coat rack, recliner, sofa, television. Forward, another step, even though something was wrong with the coffee table.
At first she thought they were small boxes of food, maybe delicate chocolates or caviar, arranged in a line across the table. Something Mitchell would buy her to make up for a slight. But how did the packages get inside?
Her legs carried her closer, her fist clenched around the mace. The row of squares weren't boxes. She touched them in the dimness, let her fingers track over the raised surfaces. A child's wooden blocks.
She picked up the nearest one, her breath catching. Tilted toward the window, the embossed letter caught enough light to show its cruel hook, its sharp teeth.
J.
She placed the block back on the table, casting a look down the shadowed hall. Nothing there but dark and darker.
Her hand trembled as she picked up the next block in line. She lifted it six inches before she dropped it, and the wood clacked against the table's surface and tumbled under the couch like an oversized dice.
She didn't need to read the letter to know what it said. Because the next block was the same, and so was the next.
O.
She slapped the blocks off the table and knelt on the carpet, her heart playing her ribs like a mad xylophonist, the melody broken, the rhythm spastic, the blows landing much too hard.
A noise behind her, louder than her heartbeat. Nothing, she knew. She would be strong, because this was Elkwood, North Carolina, and bad things couldn't follow her here. She wouldn't look, because cured people didn't jump at every imagined sound.
Kurr-chack chack.
Nothing but the wind pushing branches against the house.
Chack.
Only in her head. She couldn't help it. She turned.
The Creep stood on the porch, six-foot-two.
Metal glinted in his fist.
The fish-eye lens of panic both distorted and magnified her vision. Julia tried to scream but had no breath, she rose, glanced frantically for the canister of mace she had dropped, knowing it was too late, it had always been too late, they'd had her since she was four.
The Creep's hulk blocked the doorway, a belt loaded with weapons circling his waist. His eyes were hot and steely, his mouth open in passionate rage.
He had long, long fingers.
The blade flashed, quivered.
Her heart had been set afire and shot from a catapult.
The past had reached her, despite all her running and hiding and pretending. It was here, now, come to towering, fire-breathing life. She would never make it to the bedroom door in time. If she fled, his pleasure would only intensify, and her legs were like stacks of wooden blocks shot through with string.
Why fight any longer?
The Creep was silhouetted against a backdrop of sun and light blue sky, the wild colors of autumn wreathing his head like a halo.
Julia lifted her forearms out of instinct, shut her eyes, and waited for the swift delivery of his decades'-old promise. But first would come the benediction, the words that would cut deeper than any blade.
His voice came, not in the thunder of a murderer, but in a soft, shocked exhalation. "Jesus, lady."
She peeked from behind her arms. The stranger's eyebrows furrowed in concern. His eyes were light green, the color of a murky pond under sunlight. Light green, not red like The Creep's. His arm lowered to his side, and she saw that it was a screwdriver he held loosely in his fist, not a knife.
The man took two steps backward, almost losing his balance at the edge of the porch. "I was sent here to check the windows."
"Windows?" She managed to squeeze the word through her constricted throat.
"With winter coming on and all. The landlord sent me." He paused, squinted, and continued, his vowels stretched by his native Southern Appalachian accent. "This is 102 Buckeye Creek Road, isn't it?"
She forced her head to nod twice. She saw now that the weapons at his waist were only tools, a hammer, tape measure, a couple of screwdrivers, all tucked into his leather belt that had pouches on each hip.
"I was just going to knock when you popped around the corner," he said hurriedly, as embarrassed as she was. He patted his chest with exaggerated force. "Whew. About made my heart jump like an electrified frog."
She nearly grinned in relief, but the muscles of her face were frozen. This was no Creep, after all.
Or was it? Sometimes they were clever, took their enjoyment more from the playing of the game than from the final victory. They'd played their games for years.
But she had asked the landlord two days ago if all the windows could be checked, both the sash locks and the weather stripping. Unless this Creep had tapped the phone line and knew---
No, Dr. Forrest wouldn't like that line of thinking. I'm new and improved, remember?
Looking past the handyman, she saw an old green Jeep parked off the far edge of the road. It was parked under the trees where she wouldn't have seen it while driving up.
A Creep in a Jeep? Sounded too much like Dr. Seuss to be dangerous. Silly. A coy boy with a toy, bark in the dark, a metal muddle mental puddle. Still, the adrenaline jolt tingled her nerves at a hundred amps and caused her fingers to twitch.
She cleared her throat. One final test. "Did George Wellman send you?"
"Webster," he said, staring at her strangely, as if not sure what to make of someone who didn't know the name of her own landlord. "Mister George Webster from Silver Key Properties. I do a lot of work for him. Name's Walter."
"Of course," she said, gathering her nerve enough to step forward. They were both looking at the red canister of mace on the floor. His forced smile was more like an embarrassed grimace, his cheeks creasing and blushing slightly. She bent and picked up the mace, kicking aside one of the wooden blocks.
"You have kids?" he asked.
She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. How could she explain that the blocks weren't hers without sounding like a lunatic? But the problem was she couldn't be sure the blocks weren't hers or whether or not she was a lunatic.
"Listen, I can come back later," he said. "I'll just pick up a key from Mister Webster and do it while you're at work."
"No, I'm fine. Really." She wiped her hair from her eyes, and her fingers came away moist with sweat. She tried to cover her jumpiness with a lie. "I just ran through the house, I heard the phone ring, and I thought I heard somebody at the door, and---well, look at me, I'm just a babbling mess."
He looked, a few seconds longer this time. Then he cast his gaze down to the porch. "Well, ma'am, I guess I should have hollered when I saw the door was open."
"Don't be silly." Julia hated herself for her panic. "I just wish Mr. Webster had told me you were coming."
"He said he left a message on your answering machine."
She nodded again, feeling as wooden as the blocks that were scattered across the floor. "Why don't you go ahead? I've got to go back to work in a little bit."
"Won't take long." He was around thirty. His hair was brown and just long enough to curl a little at the ends. His muscular hands bore several scars, but the skin on his face was smooth under his short beard. He didn't have the beaten expression worn by many people who worked with their hands, though the shadows of his face harbored a hint of sadness and darkness. He didn't look like the sort who would play pranks with wooden blocks.
Then again, they never did.
"Come on in." She stepped aside so the handyman could enter. His tool belt jangled as he passed. He went to the front windows, flipped back the locks and slid them up. A draft of forest-flavored air wended across the room.
Julia left the door open and crossed to the sofa, sat where she could see him, and pretended to thumb through Psychology Today. Her hand gripped the mace tightly. The landlord had seemed overly eager to rent this place. How many keys did Webster have for the house?
"These are fine," the handyman said, sliding the windows closed. "Anderson windows are built good. Double panes. Ought to really help on your heating bill."
"I'll be burning wood," she said, turning the magazine page to an article entitled "Precious Memories: How To Preserve Your Family's Past." She kept looking past the magazine to the blocks on the floor.
"Good for you. Cheaper and you get a little exercise. Where you from?" he asked without turning around, his screwdriver creaking as he tightened a curtain rod hanger.
"Memphis."
"You're in for a treat. We get about eight or ten snows every year. Don't get much down there, I reckon."
"Just once in a while. It melts before you even get to pack a dirty snowball."
"Can't stand to be in the city myself. Breaks me out in a sweat. People piled on top of each other like Japanese beetles on a cherry leaf."
Julia said nothing. She wasn't used to loquacious carpenters. In Memphis, skilled laborers did their work in silence. She was used to her own crowd, other reporters, artists, Mitchell's lawyer friends. In the city, strangers kept to themselves. Unless they wanted flesh, blood, or soul.
"How long you been in Elkwood?" he asked, not pausing in his work.
"Four months," she said.
"That figures," he said. "I did some work here at the start of summer. House had been empty for a couple of years."
"I wonder why. It's a cozy little place."
"Hartley used to live here." The handyman said "Hartley" as if spitting out the name of an old enemy.
"Don't tell me I'm living in a haunted house," she said.
"No ghosts here. Just bad memories."
He gathered his tools and moved into the kitchen. Julia remained where she was, slipping the mace into her pants pocket and browsing the magazine.
After several minutes of the windows sliding up and down and tools rattling, the handyman appeared at the end of the hall.
"Okay if I go in the bedroom?" he asked.
He probably found some embarrassing things in his job. He went into private places, patched things where secrets hid. But Julia had no secrets there, not much to blush about in her bedroom. No ceiling mirrors, no bedside sex toys, no leather straps or chains dangling from the bedposts.
Just a crazy clock that was stuck on 4:06.
"Go ahead," she said. "Can I make you a cup of coffee?"
"No, thanks, ma'am. I don't want to put you to no trouble."
"It's no trouble. I'm going to make some anyway. I only want a cup or two, though."
"Well, in that case, I'd appreciate some to go. I got my thermos out in the Jeep."
Julia busied herself in the kitchen, whistling as she filled the pot. She didn't glance over her shoulder, even though the urge was strong. With the water running in the sink, he could sneak right up behind, reach out his long, long fingers---
She twisted the tap angrily. Tears filled her eyes. Her lip quivered.
It owned her.
Maybe it---the fear, the darkness, The Creep---wouldn't take her this morning, but she knew it was out there.
No, not out there. In here.
In her head.
The worst place of all. This was an inside job all the way. The monster rummaged in the rooms of her mind, hid in cramped closets, staked out the shadowed corners of her psyche. What scared her most was the knowledge that she had built that monster herself, bit by bit, sewn it from scraps of memory and the threads of what-if, imagined it to life. The cellar of her head-house was a Frankenstein laboratory for bringing strange creatures to life.
No monster had spread those blocks on her coffee table, had spelled out that name. Because everybody knew that monsters weren't real. Especially Dr. Forrest.
She started the coffee maker. Her therapist in Memphis told her to lay off the caffeine. Dr. Lance Danner. Lance. Freud could have had a field day with that name. Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar and a lance was just a lance.
Dr. Danner also told her that, although they had been progressing in the therapy, a move was probably a good thing for her. He'd encouraged her to take the job in Elkwood, depressurize, embrace a rural lifestyle. Dr. Danner even made a referral to a doctor here that Julia felt comfortable with, touting it as "a continuum of care." Mitchell had been against her leaving, but his possessiveness had only made Julia more determined. If she was ever going to show him she was a big girl, now was the time.
Big girls don't cry, though.
Julia wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. She was glad she didn't wear make-up, because the streaks would show. Not that she cared much what the handyman thought of her. She definitely wasn't out to appear attractive to anyone, especially a potential Creep in a Jeep.
She took her cup of coffee to the living room, picked up the magazine, put it down again. She stared out the window at the red, purple, and yellow of the changing leaves. The mountains were comforting despite their mystery. The ancient ridges of the Appalachians rolled out like soft ocean waves, in a rhythm that promised protection and peace.
The buildings of Memphis had been suffocating, the giant walls looming, dense traffic like a herd of sulfur-spewing demons. The hot jaws of the city nipped at her heels with every step, hounded her, gnashed steel-and-concrete teeth at her. A million Creeps lurked in the alleys, two million eyes followed her every move. Memphis would have chewed her, ground her bones to powder, swallowed her.
The move here had not been a mistake. For the first time in his exalted reign, Mitchell had been wrong, though Mitchell would never admit it.
"All done, ma'am," said the handyman, coming back into the living room. "The locks are all sound, and you shouldn't get any bad drafts come winter."
"Great." She reached for her purse on the floor beside her. Her foot kicked one of the blocks and it rolled to Walter's feet.
"You a schoolteacher?" he asked.
"No, I write for the Courier-Times. How much do I owe you?"
"Nothing," he said. "Mister Webster pays me. Repairs are the landlord's responsibility."
She thought about tipping, decided against it. These mountain folks were proud about such things. Far different from the grabby people in the city. Instead, she said, "Let me get that coffee for you. Soy creamer's all I got. Me and dairy disagree."
"That would be fine, ma'am. I'll go get my thermos. I have to check a couple more things outside first."
He went out the open front door. When he reappeared several minutes later, he was without his tool belt. He gave her the thermos and waited by the door.
"Say, did you know your clock was messed up?" he asked when she returned with the filled thermos.
"My clock?"
"Yeah, in the bedroom. It was stuck on 4:06 the whole time I was in there."
She had unplugged the clock. Hadn't she?
She smiled to disguise the icy rush that shot through her veins. "Thanks for telling me. It's been acting up lately. Guess I'll have to get another one."
"Yeah. Never heard of a digital clock doing that. Usually they just blink or go dark."
"Stuck in time." Just like me. The smile felt painted on her face, like a dimestore mannequin's.
"Keeps you young," he said. "Growing old is for people who give up too soon."
"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the work."
"Sure. You need anything else, ask for me. Walter." He smiled again as he reminded her of his name. It wasn't a come-on smile. It was a friendly smile, with slightly crooked teeth, the kind you could trust.
No, that's not true. You can't trust ANY smile. Because every smile has teeth behind it.
She almost gave him her name then decided against it. "Okay, Walter."
"You found a church yet?"
"Pardon me?"
"Church. It can be hard to settle in to a new place." He looked at her with inquisitor's eyes, as if he had a personal stake in her soul. She resented the notion that he saw her as a chance to bank some goodwill and capital in some heavenly coffer.
"I'm set." She smiled, the conditioned reflex of people being mindlessly civil to acquaintances. He'd been kind to her and was probably just extending a small-town politeness. She owed him better than a bland brush-off, and her thoughts were already drifting into the dark cracks of the past.
"Have a good day, Miss Stone." Walter waved and headed for the Jeep, humming a country-tinged tune. Julia closed the door.
Now she was alone.
No, not alone. Inside with the Creep.
The Creep was always in the house, no matter where she lived.
The phone bleated in a slaughter of electric sheep.
She had two phones, one in the living room, one by the bed. Perhaps overkill for a three-room house, but she liked to have one within reach if she couldn't find the cell. In case of emergencies.
Julia started down the hall so she could lie on the bed while she chatted, remembering the frozen clock. She couldn't face that right now. She picked up the phone on the coffee table and flopped onto the sofa.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Julia." The voice on the end of the line was buoyant and brimming with self-confidence.
"Mitchell," she said, unsure whether she was glad to hear from him or not.
"What's going on, honey?"
She winced at the rote, nearly toneless endearment. "Nothing."
"Great." There was a pause, the quiet hiss of eight hundred miles.
"So . . . what's new?" Julia finally asked.
"The usual."
That was the trouble with Mitchell. The usual was always new to him. "Working on any interesting cases?"
"Yeah, come to think of it. I've got a beaut. This woman owns a piece of land, right? Inherited it from her father, been in the family since Reconstruction. Ugly stretch, half swamp and half hill, forty acres. So this developer makes her an offer so he can build a strip mall."
"Just what Memphis needs," she heard herself saying.
Mitchell didn't catch her sarcasm. "Exactly. This woman wants to keep it, maybe turn it into an organic garden, or heaven forbid, a natural habitat. Jesus, conservation easements are the tool of the Devil. Well, the Board of Adjustment votes to zone the property for commercial use, claiming the area is---let's see . . . ."
Julia heard the rustling of papers. Mitchell must be at his office on General Pickett Avenue, the one with the view of Beale Street. From his window, he could watch the tourists and the busking blues musicians clog the sidewalks. Most of the modern Memphis bluesmasters knew only the blues of a bad day at the stock market.
"Here it is," Mitchell said, his words coming out faster in his excitement. "This is classic. The Board ruled that the property was, quote, 'in an area of urban development of vital interest to the municipality's extraterritorial jurisdiction.' And the property's three miles from the city limits."
"Poor woman. How can she afford to pay you?" Mitchell billed hourly in the high triple figures.
He laughed, that silk-tie, champagne-etched laugh that sometimes made her skin crawl. "She can't afford anybody. She's got the ACLU. We're going to feed them their lunch. The developer is picking up my tab to work as a consultant to the city attorneys."
Of course. Mitchell would be on the side of big business, fat money, legal tender that was more immoral than legal and about as tender as a metal-toed boot. The worst part of it was that his cockiness appealed to her sick, weak nature, an addiction that even distance couldn't break. He was a Leo, through and through, his lion a voracious predator to her moody Gemini.
"But enough about me," he said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," she said. "Really."
"Really?"
Had a note of concern crept into his voice? She gave him the benefit of a doubt. "Yes. The people at the office are really nice. It's refreshing to cover community issues, the school board and that sort of thing, instead of working the crime beat."
"Good. You know I never wanted you to mess around in all that murder and stuff. I love this city, but it's really gone to hell ever since---"
"How are your parents?" she asked, before he could rant about crime and taxes and the lower class.
"My parents are doing really well. They're up at Martha's Vineyard right now." At one of their four seasonal houses. Christmas in Boca Raton, Easter in Santa Monica, Fourth of July in Boulder, slumming in Yankee country through Halloween.
"Tell them I said hello."
"Sure. You know, they'd love to hear from you. They ask about you all the time. You're practically family, you know."
"Maybe I'll give them a call," she lied. If she called, they'd use the M-word. Every woman needed a diamond for validation, and a gold ring to seal the deal. That was as certain as the rising sun, increasing property taxes, and Mitchell's cologne being made by Jovan.
"So, how's your new doctor?"
"Good. Really good. We're making progress."
Mitchell sighed. "You were making progress four years ago, with Lance what's-his-name."
Mitchell hid his jealousy so poorly. He assumed that any man that got a woman on the couch was automatically on top of her within fifteen minutes.
No, only YOU, Mitchell. Besides, nobody lies down for therapy anymore. That went out with assembly-line frontal lobotomies and Mesmerism.
She said, "I feel like we're close to a breakthrough. I'm feeling much better. I don't . . . ."
---get the Creeps?---
" . . . suffer from as much anxiety. I think the mountains are helping me. They make me feel safe."
To his credit, Mitchell didn't laugh. "If you'd let me buy you a gun---"
"Are the leaves changing there?"
"Leaves?"
"On the trees."
"Hold on. Let me look."
"Never mind."
"When are you going to let me come see you?"
"Soon."
"How soon? You said August. It's already football season."
"Soon," she repeated. "I just . . . want to be ready, that's all."
She could almost hear his thoughts, see his handsome eyebrows raised in perplexity. Women. Why can't they make up their minds? If I have to wait for Julia to get her head together, I'll be old and gray and Mr. Happy won't be able to jump up and do his little dance of joy anymore.
"You know I love you, Julia."
She nodded at the phone. Her eyes were fixed down the hallway, on the bedroom entrance. The handyman had left the door open, but he must have closed the curtains because the room was dark. She thought again of the clock and those red numerals stuck on 4:06.
The handyman had seen those numerals. But she had unplugged the clock. She was sure, just as she'd been sure she'd locked the door.
The handyman had also seen the blocks lying near her feet. Those weren't imaginary, either.
"Julia?"
"Yeah?" She realized she was still holding the phone.
"I said I love you."
"I know you do."
"Well?"
"Me, too. I . . . love you."
Then it started, at that brief hesitation. The slightly perceptible lift, the higher pitch to his voice. The calm before the storm. Those who dealt with Mitchell Austin in the courtroom knew only the calm, never the storm. "When are you going to start thinking about us again, and not just yourself?"
"I'm making progress. Dr. Forrest is really good. I'm---"
"Please. Spare me the details."
"Mitchell---"
"How about next weekend? I can catch a morning flight to Charlotte, be up in time for lunch. I'll stop at one of the gourmet shops on my way to the airport. Bet they don't have brie or leeks vinaigrette in Elkwood, do they? Or wine that doesn't have an expiration date on the label."
Mitchell was on track now, as if this were a jury civil trial and he had the main witness squirming. Julia felt oddly defensive about this community that she'd only recently joined. "They're good people here. I like this place. I like these mountains."
"When are you going to give in and marry me?"
Said with the same tone as "What flavor of ice cream would you like?" Her own anger rose slightly, a hot snake writhing in her chest. "Mitchell, we've been through this a hundred times---"
"Okay, okay. But, really, I'd love to see you. I need to see you." Voice softer now, trying a different tack. "I miss you."
"I want to see you, too, Mitchell. I just want to be ready, that's all. You deserve me at my best, and I don't think I can give you that right now. Maybe in a few weeks."
"A few weeks, then. I'll hold you to that, honey. Listen, got to go. Another call's coming in."
Wouldn't want you to miss a call. Some savings and loan might need help foreclosing on an orphanage.
"Bye, Mitch---"
He'd already hung up.
Julia held the phone to her chest for a moment. No shadows had crawled from the bedroom. No Creep had tiptoed past her to mess with her clock. Nobody had spelled out strange words on her coffee table.
One good thing about Mitchell, he never failed to make her forget her other worries. He'd driven her crazier than a hundred Creeps could. First by getting her to fall in love and then leaving her wondering if love really existed.
It was nearly noon. She took a sip of cool coffee, carried the cup to the kitchen, and rinsed it. She gobbled an avocado-and-bean-sprouts sandwich and grabbed an apple on the way out the door. Even though the day remained chilly, Julia didn't get her sweater from the bedroom.
The clock might still be stuck on 4:06. Could electronic brains go insane? Or only people?
She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.
To warm herself, she balled some newspaper, piled the clumps in the fireplace, and struck a match to them. Then she stacked on the wooden blocks, staring wide-eyed as the tongues of fire licked the wood into a gray pile of ash, erasing the name that had been spelled out on the flat wooden faces.
"What did you dream last night?"
Julia stared past Dr. Forrest to the painting that dominated the office wall. It was done in shades of orange and brown and red, an abstract piece with jagged edges. Piled triangles, shredded squares, the angles reamed and raped. Art that was disquieting instead of soothing.
Dr. Danner had favored pastorals, not-so-skilled paintings of the sort seen in beginner's art classes. Barns and willows, creeks and fences. No people. No threats. Just plain old boring nature.
"Julia?"
"Oh, sorry." Julia looked at the doctor. Pamela Forrest smiled wisely, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. Fortyish, well-dressed, low heels and short, up-to-date hairstyle. Comfortable in her leather chair, her neat office the external manifestation of an ordered mind.
And here Julia was again, shrinking her shrinks, comparing their defects.
Dr. Forrest nodded, nudging her along. "You're a little distant today. What were you just thinking about?"
She thought about lying. But then she'd really be crazy. If you couldn't trust your therapist, who could you trust?
"I had an episode," Julia said. "When I came home this morning. I . . . I thought I had locked my front door, but then I found it open."
"Open?"
"Well, not open, just unlocked."
"And how did that make you feel?"
"Scared."
"Scared of what?"
Julia looked down at her hands. "I don't know."
"I think you do."
"Him. It. The Creep."
"Ah." Dr. Forrest leaned forward in her chair. "You thought the Creep had unlocked the door and was waiting inside."
"Yes."
"Was there a Creep inside?"
"No. But there could have been."
"And what would the Creep have done?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do. It's not very hard to imagine."
Julia dreaded imagining it again. The fantasy was almost as painful as the real act would be, had been. But if she acted out the scenario, Dr. Forrest would be pleased with her. Julia needed to please someone.
So she concentrated on what the attack would have been like. The anxiety of that morning came back to her, as fresh as it had been the first time. She gripped the arms of her chair and squeezed until her knuckles were white. "Please don't hurt me," she gasped through clenched teeth, almost feeling the knife thrusting with every word.
"Yes, that's it," said Dr. Forrest, her voice low, intense, urging. "Let it out, live it. Bring out the fear and face it."
"He's got me," Julia said, eyes closed, drenched in the sweat of tension, aching from the hot knife in her chest, seeing her blood spilling on the living room carpet.
"Can you see his face?"
"No."
"Try."
"I'm trying," she said, barely above a whisper. Though the room was sweetened by the chrysanthemums perched in a vase on the doctor's desk, Julia could have sworn she smelled smoke.
"Try harder. If you can see him, it will be a small victory over him."
"I . . . " The Creep's features almost coalesced from the mists of her imagination. The handyman? Mitchell? That college kid who been watching her from across the street yesterday? Or was it older than that, older than her, older than time?
"Who is it? Who has brought this fear into your life?"
Julia exploded from the chair and strode to the window. She paced back and forth, rubbing her upper arms. She was panting, wired from worry yet nearly exhausted at the same time.
Dr. Forrest came to her, put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Julia. I know how much it hurts you to face it. If I thought there was another way to beat it, I'd try it. But you've refused Klonopin and Prozac and--"
"No drugs," Julia said. "I want to beat it with my own head."
"I know, Julia. But we all need help from time to time. At least you're letting me help you." She led Julia back to the chair. "Let's try something different. We've come far enough that I think you're ready for the next stage."
Julia sat meekly and Dr. Forrest leaned the chair back, crossed the room, and lowered the lights. The sky was still overcast, the room nearly dark. Julia closed her eyes and waited for Dr. Forrest's instructions.
"Let's go back," the therapist said.
"I don't want to," said Julia.
"But that's where the problem started, Julia. Everything else, all your troubles, your fears, were born there. Your body knows it, your subconscious knows it. All the rest of you is waiting for you to admit it."
Julia swallowed hard and licked her lips. Darkness. She opened her eyes. Darkness.
"Look up at the ceiling, Julia."
Julia obeyed, but couldn't see the ceiling.
Dr. Forrest's tone softened, but her words kept their even pace. "Look past the ceiling, Julia."
Julia looked. More darkness, a deeper black.
"Look beyond that, Julia. And while you're looking, let your arms and legs relax. Your limbs are like large helium balloons, very light, very relaxed."
Julia floated on that image. For the first time since waking that morning, she felt completely at ease.
Dr. Forrest's soothing voice came from somewhere near her. "Very peaceful, very light. You trust me, don't you, Julia?"
"Yes," she heard herself whispering. It was almost someone else's voice.
"You're free now, Julia. Nothing can hurt you. I won't let anything hurt you."
Julia smiled. Her face felt like a mask of warm taffy.
"You really have to trust me now. We're going to go back. Way back into the past."
Julia mumbled a protest.
Dr. Forrest took her hand. "Shhh. It's okay. This time, I'll be with you. We'll go back together. I won't let anybody hurt you."
Julia waited, looking beyond with eyes closed.
"I won't let him hurt you," Dr. Forrest said.
Julia nodded. A few moments more, looking beyond blackness, and she was small again. Four. In her room. Chester Bear against her shoulder. In the middle of the night. Darkness. Darkness. Except . . .
The light spilling through the crack below the door.
"What do you see?" Dr. Forrest said.
"Light." Julia's voice sounded childish even to herself.
"Where are you?"
"My bedroom."
"Which bedroom?"
"In the house. The big house where Daddy lives."
"Daddy? How do you know?"
"I know."
"What's happening now?"
"I get out of bed. I hear voices in the other room. Loud. Like somebody's mad. I'm scared."
Dr. Forrest squeezed her hand. "I'm with you this time. Go on."
She went to the door. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet. "I've wet the bed. Daddy doesn't like it when I wet the bed."
Julia went to the door, listened. "The people are mad at Daddy. I hear them. The bad people."
"What does your father say, Julia?"
"I don't know. I can't hear him."
"What do you think he says?"
"I don't know."
"Try harder, Julia. Do it for me."
Julia listened. A car horn sounded. Had it come from outside the office, or outside her childhood bedroom?
"No good," she whispered, mouth dry.
Dr. Forrest was quiet for a moment, still holding Julia's hand. "Let's pretend for a little bit. Can you do that?"
"Yes," said Julia eagerly, not wanting Dr. Forrest to get mad like the bad people.
"Let's pretend that the people have come to take your father away."
"No," Julia cried, trying to sit up. Dr. Forrest held her pinned against the chair.
"You're at your bedroom door, Julia," Dr. Forrest continued, holding on as Julia thrashed weakly. "You're four years old, and the bad people are in the living room."
"Bad people," Julia moaned.
"Open the door."
"No. Please don't make me."
"Open the door, Julia."
Her hand was against the wood, pulling, a mixture of horror and excitement racing through her with every ragged leap of her heart. The light made her eyes hurt and she blinked. The door opened only slightly, but she was afraid the bad people had heard the hinges creak.
She blinked and hugged Chester Bear. Daddy stood in the living room. Three people without faces were with him, surrounding him. They wore black robes with hoods.
"Come on, Douglas," said the tallest of the faceless people. "You're either all the way in, or all the way out."
Daddy shook his head, his face pale and sweating. "I can't do that, Lucius."
"You drank from the cup," the hooded man said. "You made a pledge."
"But that wasn't part of the deal," her father pleaded. He looked around wildly. It was the first time Julia had ever seen him scared. He'd always been so big, so brave, so strong---
"You wear his ring," said the leader of the bad people. The other two closed in on Daddy, one at each arm.
"You're crazy," Daddy said. Julia almost cried out, but fear tightened her throat and froze her tongue.
Then Daddy looked at her bedroom door, saw the light spilling on her face through the crack. And the bad man, Lucius, saw Daddy's eyes widen. The hooded head turned in Julia's direction.
This time she did cry out, dropping Chester Bear and feeling as if she were going to wet herself again. She cried and shook her head, screamed and screamed against the night.
"Tell me what's happening," came a voice.
Dr. Forrest? What was she doing here?
A hand gripped hers.
And Julia tore herself from the past, remembered the earlier sessions and how they had gone this far into Julia's past, this far and more, and suddenly she didn't want to relive it again, just wanted that night to stay back there in the dim, dark forgotten.
"You know what happened, don't you, Julia?"
She nodded. How could she forget? Her mind had tried, had locked it away in some secret compartment.
"Are you ready to tell me about it?"
"No."
"Julia. I thought we were making progress."
"I can't remember."
"Yes, you can. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. The memory is in your blood, in your cells. In your heart. Listen to it."
Remember.
No matter how much it hurts.
"They came and got you, didn't they?"
"Got me?"
"The bad people."
"The bad people," Julia echoed.
"And what did they do to you that night?"
Tears rolled down her cheeks, hot on her skin. Her stomach clenched as if expecting a blow from a fist. The muscles of her arms trembled uncontrollably.
"They . . . they got me."
"Yes. And you know what they did next."
Julia shook her head, still denying. Needing to deny.
"Let it out," Dr. Forrest said, squeezing Julia's hand so tightly it hurt. "Bring it to the light, so you can defeat it."
It came in a rush. The scraps of images, thoughts like broken glass, a jigsaw-puzzle dream with its pieces spilled in dark water, reflections in fractured mirrors, the splintered bones of memories, fantasies built on smothering air, all clashing together like invisible armies in the night.
Cold stone beneath her naked back. Her legs and arms fastened with rough rope. The candles around her, their orange light flickering off the gray walls and mingling with shadows that slithered like snakes. Above her, ropes dangling from rough wooden beams backed by an endless night. Singing, humming, many voices.
She wanted Daddy. She wanted Chester Bear. Then she saw the bad people. All around her, in their robes, eyes glowing under the dark hoods. Then they were hurting her, even though she screamed and fought against the ropes.
She struggled free, sat up, her lungs on fire. She blinked rapidly.
The office. The impressionist art on the wall, oak paneling, the slight scent of leather and flowers. Dr. Forrest sitting beside her, beaming, her glasses fogged.
"Yes!" said Dr. Forrest triumphantly. "You did it."
Julia looked around, saw the clock on the wall. Her hour was almost up. Good. She didn't think she could stand another minute with the punishing past.
"How do you feel?" Dr. Forrest asked.
"Awful. I've got a headache. My muscles are sore." She rubbed her wrists where the imagined restraints had squeezed her.
"The memory's in the flesh," Dr. Forrest said. "Psychogenic. The pain's locked away, too. But we can draw it out."
"I wish it didn't have to hurt so much."
Dr. Forrest put her face near, so close that Julia could smell the fettuccine Alfredo the woman had eaten for lunch. "You're the victim, Julia. Don't forget that. You didn't ask to be abused."
"Except I do keep asking for it, don't I? Isn't that why I fear The Creep so much? It's like I expect bad things to happen to me."
"Yes, but it's not your fault. You're helpless. Those people---bad people---have enslaved you. The past has a long reach."
"Then why do I have to keep returning to the past? Can't we just leave it alone?" Julia shook the smoke and sweat and pain from her head.
"Don't you want to be better?"
"Good enough. You know that. That's why I'm here."
"We have a lot of work left to do," the therapist said. "But that's enough for today. I really feel we've made a breakthrough this session."
Julia felt as if the breakthrough had been made from the inside out, that the memory in her meat had slashed and clawed its way to the skin. She stood and gathered her purse, slightly dizzy. Dr. Forrest was behind her desk, thumbing through her calendar.
Julia almost mentioned the wooden blocks, but knew that Dr. Forrest would make her search her purse for the receipt. Because the doctor would say that Julia bought the blocks herself and spread them out on the table to engage in psychological self-torture. A bit of self-indulgent trickery. Julia's diagnosis would change to something meaty like Schizophrenia, Stable Paranoid Type. And Julia would be no closer to being cured.
"Tell me something about your father," the doctor said without looking up. "When you used to play on the floor with him."
No, Julia thought. Dr. Forrest can't read minds. And believing people can read minds will definitely nudge you into the schizophrenic folder.
"I'd spell my name with my wooden blocks. And he'd laugh and say, 'No, honey. It's Jooolia.' And he'd take away the second block and put in three O's."
"And what would you do then?"
"I'd say, 'No, it's not,' and then he'd laugh and hug me and rub my hair and lay out the blocks the right way." She glanced at the door, regretting the hour's excursion from her chronic state of denial. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"Recovering good memories is just as important to healing as flushing out the bad ones."
"Right now I'm tired of remembering."
"Next week as usual, then."
Julia nodded. Dr. Forrest scribbled down the appointment. "Call me if you need me." Dr. Forrest handed her a reminder card. "And I want you to try something for me."
"Yes?"
"Keep a journal. Jot down some of the things that happen, your dreams, anything. It doesn't have to be formal. In fact, the more stream-of-conscious, the better."
"I'll try," Julia said, knowing she would do more than try. Dr. Forrest was a good therapist. She wouldn't assign Julia busy work. Everything was done with a purpose in mind. Julia knew a little therapeutic theory from her own college psychology class. And she wanted to please her doctor.
We're making progress . . . .
Dr. Forrest walked her to the door. Julia went blinking into the parking lot. As always after a session, the world seemed unreal, the pieces of it incoherent and unstable. The asphalt was a separate thing from the ground, as if it floated over ether. The mountains and sky didn't seem to quite meet up on the horizon. Though the clouds still veiled the sun, the flecks of mica in the sidewalk sparkled like tiny stars, forming galaxies beneath her feet. Even the trees that lined the streets seemed to exist in a two-dimensional universe of their own, as flat as colored leaves pressed in a keepsake book.
It was only after she'd started her car and edged out onto the highway that she remembered her bedroom clock. She hadn't told Dr. Forrest about 4:06, either. The oddity wasn't concocted by her imagination. She had the handyman Walter as a corroborating witness. But Julia had unplugged the clock before Walter saw it. She was sure.
Julia had a feeling that Dr. Forrest would be displeased to hear about the clock. The therapist didn't like Julia's focusing on little coincidences. Maybe Julia would casually mention it next time, or scribble it in her journal. Or maybe just forget all about it. Sometimes the past was best left alone.
She skirted the main drag of Elkwood, four blocks of downtown where the highest building was five stories. The town billed itself as "The Gateway to the Mountains," and had originally been a trading outpost for the hunters who tamed the wilderness, displaced the Cherokee, and eradicated the buffalo and even the elk from which the town had derived its name. Now it was a growing tourist destination, nestled in a river basin between the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains.
Julia drove across the Amadahee River and the unused railroad tracks that circled Elkwood's small industrial section. Two of the factories were abandoned, their chain-link fences ripped and sagging, the parking lots pocked with grass, stubborn oil stains, and broken bottles. Some of the factories were being torn down and replaced by condominiums and technology parks, the South's New Reconstruction.
Maybe Julia would write a series about it. Her editor had pigeonholed her, though. She was a "soft" writer at the Elkwood Courier-Times, even though she'd been a straight news reporter for The Commercial Appeal. That was okay, too. She no longer had to sleep with a police scanner, hoping for someone's personal tragedy to supply her day's work.
She made it to the office just in time for her 3:00 writers' meeting. Her assignments for the week included a flower show at the mall, a disease outbreak at the animal shelter, some famous literary writer she'd never heard of speaking at the library, the dedication of a new soccer field, and a crafts festival coming up in three weeks. The crafts festival included a lot of the paper's advertisers, so the editor wanted to give it a big push. Julia could handle it, although glorifying glued beads and poorly-woven baskets was a challenge to her writing skills.
Covering the local school boards and arts committees was also a challenge. She'd learned that the most valuable journalistic skill was making people's quotes sound smarter than they actually were. She was bothered when readers referred to the weekly paper as "The Snooze," but she was thankful for the low-stress job. Pulitzers could wait. She was in Elkwood to get her head together.
As she left the conference room, her coworker Rick O'Dell caught up with her. "Hey, Julia, what's up?"
"Same old," she said.
Rick smiled, eyes bright behind his 1950's science-teacher glasses. He had a Clark Kent-style curl in the middle of his forehead, the studly tress glistening with mousse. His zoot-inspired suit was tailored, a luxury at his salary. His retro style was tarnished by the gold chain around his neck, as if he were Palm Beach by way of Cleveland. "Did you read the opening of my series?"
"I don't get the paper," she deadpanned.
Rick laughed too enthusiastically. He was a hot reporter, on the way up, two North Carolina Press Associations Awards under his belt already. But he wanted other things under his belt, such as every young woman who crossed his blotter. "It's a killer story," he said. "Literally."
"Do tell," she said, continuing to her desk, knowing Rick wouldn't need a nudge. Persistence was important for a good reporter, and Rick's cockiness meant he didn't give up easily.
"Remember in the 1980s, when there was all this buzz about Satanism, the huge underground network, how all these children were disappearing that ended up as human sacrifices?"
Julia's head lifted at the word "Satanism." She stopped walking and turned to Rick. "Yeah. Didn't everyone pretty much agree that the whole business was overblown?"
"Sure. I mean, how do you account for some of those claims that as many as 50,000 people were murdered as human sacrifices? You just can't hide that many bodies without somebody finding a bone here or there."
"Bone?" Last night's dream stirred in its slumbering grave.
"Yeah," Rick said. His angular sideburns lifted as he smiled. "Well, maybe it's coming back. Did you hear about the body they found in the Amadahee?"
"No." Julia avoided the television news, the radio, even the paper when she could. She hadn't been kidding about not subscribing to the newspaper. If ignorance was bliss, she wanted to be as blissful as a meditating Buddha.
"Caucasian male, in his twenties. Nude, hands bound, his abdominal cavity ripped open. Pretty ritualistic."
"Wow," Julia said, her interest piqued. Elkwood didn't have as many murders as Memphis, but was as suspect to that particular sin as any other American community. Still, this one sounded different from the run-of-the-mill Saturday night armed disagreement. Julia hadn't shaken the habits of the crime beat as easily as she had thought. "But what's the link to Satanism? If you've done your research, and I bet you have---"
Rick grinned, showing perfect white teeth that could afford smugness, and nodded at her to continue.
"Then you know that ritualism is usually more to fill a psychological need than a spiritual need. At least when it comes to murder."
"Sure. Serial killers do what they do to fulfill a sexual need. Everybody knows that. They don't make necklaces of women's body parts just because they want to please some higher or lower power. They do it because they like it. They get off on it. And they keep doing it until they're caught or dead."
"So, you took 'Creep 101' in college, too?" Julia asked.
"The home course."
"Then why do the authorities think this was a Satanic killing?"
"They don't. Not yet. But the victim was male. Gutted. And here's the kicker. The guy's pinkie was chopped off."
"Chopped off?" Julia was hooked, despite herself. She loathed the public's unending appetite for atrocity, the hunger for controversy, the prurient fascination for the dark side of humanity. She'd even made it her stock in trade, trafficking in human misery to deliver juicy headlines for her Memphis editors. She was as guilty as anyone for wallowing in bad news, but she could understand it. She had her own built-in dichotomy, the black past that she kept re-entering like a prospector probing a shaky mine shaft.
"Sure. Now, a chopped finger doesn't seem so bad compared to being gut-hauled, but the thing is, the pinkie wound was healed. A stump of scar tissue. Meaning the injury had been inflicted years ago."
"So? He could have had an accident, caught it in a textile machine or a car door."
"He could have," Rick agreed, adjusting his already-perfect jet-black curl. "But pinkie amputation is another ritual practiced by the you-know-whos."
"Our old buddies, the Satanists." Julia shook her head. "Rick, you've watched too many 'X-Files' reruns."
"I've got plenty more evidence. Let me buy you a beer at the Whistle Gate and I'll tell you all about it."
"No, thanks," she said, smiling to disarm him. Then she thought about going home, with darkness falling and her house waiting and the clock in her bedroom still stuck on 4:06.
Better the Creep you know, I suppose. At least this one has a face.
"On second thought," she said. "I haven't eaten out for a few weeks. Might do me some good to see what civilization is up to these days."
Rick's chest swelled visibly. "Great. Great!"
"I'll meet you there. Six-ish."
He backed down the hall, grinning like a kindergartner who'd put a worm down a girl's dress. "Wonderful. I'll get us a good table."
As Julia went to her desk to put her notes and papers away, she wondered if Dr. Forrest would approve.
Julia got home after dark. The Subaru's headlights swept over the house as she drove up. Lights blazed from the neighboring apartments, and Mabel Covington's front porch light was on, a flotilla of moths seeking out its heat. Even though the forest hovered dark and thick, Julia was determined not to be afraid.
Music spilled from one of the bottom apartments, the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." Mick Jagger was the one that needed sympathy. Hobbling out on stage with his cane and hearing aid, but still dressed in Spandex and feather boas. The Devil had obviously not kept his end of the bargain in that deal.
A tan boxer barked at her from the ragged grounds of the apartment. The dog was friendly, but it made a habit of dropping smelly little presents around Julia's door. She was torn between shooing it away and feeding it snacks, and in the end they'd reached an uneasy truce in which Julia gave the dog a pat on the head instead of bacon bits, and Fido kept his poop to the edge of the driveway.
Rick had practically invited himself over to Julia's for a nightcap. Julia had deflected him, casually mentioning her fiancé and all the work she needed to get done. Now, entering the dark, silent house, she almost wished she'd accepted his offer, assuming he could keep his hands in his pockets. Maybe a little platonic companionship would ease her sense of isolation.
But she wanted to beat the fear alone. Even with Dr. Forrest helping, Julia knew that only one person could clean the mental house. Only one person could go into those rooms, sweep away the cobwebs, roll up the shades and let in the light. Only one person held the key.
She flipped on the living room light and closed the door, cutting off the Stones in the midst of their endless "whoo-whoos." No wooden blocks awaited her, spelling a cryptic message. She laid her purse on the coffee table and gave a cursory glance around the room to make sure everything was in its place. So far, so good. No sweat. No problem. No Creeps here, ma'am.
But now the real test came. Could she walk down the hall into the bedroom? Could she look at the clock?
Sure you can.
Even though now you know there's at least ONE Creep in Elkwood. A Creep who went to the trouble of binding his victim's hands and feet before eviscerating him. A Creep who knew how to operate the business end of a knife. A Creep who did it slowly, making sure the victim expelled the greatest amount of blood and endured the deepest possible suffering. A Creep who took pride in his work.
Rick had taken great joy in sharing the grisly details over dinner. He knew she'd worked crime for The Commercial Appeal and hoped to impress her. She had to give him credit for originality. He was the first man who had ever tried to talk his way into her bed with a Satanic murder theory.
But her bed might already be occupied. That very same murdering Creep might be under her blankets this very moment, his sharp toys carefully resting on the pillow like a lover's flowers. Maybe he had a ring of black candles waiting for the touch of a match. Maybe a red pentagram was painted on the floor, some demon holding its foul breath in anticipation of being summoned.
Like HELL, she thought, laughing, though the sound came out like the choking of a horse. She accepted the idea of God, something big behind everything. In the house of her head, she could give God a little shelf in the cupboard. But the idea that evil existed beyond the minds of humans, well, that was a wider leap of faith than she could make. She was merely crazy, not bug-brained insane.
But remember what Dr. Forrest said. You're not crazy. You just suffer from a "behavioral disorder." Something with a safe, handy label like "delusional" or "borderline personality" or "non-specific anxiety" or whatever diagnostic bricks the doctor cared to stack.
And, ultimately, she was in control of her own behavior. She could walk right into that bedroom, turn on the light, look at the clock, and then get on with the rest of her life. Conjuring up Satanic cults did little for her peace of mind.
She left the mace in her purse. She could do this alone, just like Dr. Forrest recommended. Down the hall, with every step bringing a slight creak of the floor in the silent house. The bedroom door was open. She reached around the wall, quickly, and flipped the switch.
The room was empty, her bed neatly made. The digital clock said 10:13. She checked it against her wristwatch. Right on time, just like clockwork. She was about to leave when a draft rippled the curtains. Muffled music leaked into the room from across the road.
The window was open. Why hadn't Walter shut the window when he finished checking the locks? These mountain people expected everybody to suck down fresh air all the time, even when the mercury dropped.
Julia frowned and parted the curtains. She didn't have a backyard. The forest grew right up to the rear of the house, the autumn canopy so thick that the distant streetlights couldn't penetrate the trees. The smell of loam and damp wood drifted in the dew. She closed and latched the window. Then she saw the muddy footprint on the floor.
The print showed only the outline of a heel. A small broken oak leaf was stuck in the tread marks. Walter must have left it.
Then why hadn't he left tracks all through the house? And he'd wiped his feet well, she'd seen him.
Julia knelt and touched the print. The dirt was damp.
Electric worms crawled up her spine.
Someone's been in the house.
For real, not for pretend.
And The Creep might still be here.
She grabbed the phone off the bedside table. She punched a nine and a one, and was about to touch the one again when she looked down at her own shoe. Mud ringed the heel.
No, not mud.
Fido had broken the peace treaty. Julia's smelly trail was marked from the living room.
"Oh, poop," she groaned, putting the phone in its cradle. She'd almost made a fool of herself. The cops could have been in here, responding to her breaking-and-entering report.
She could hear them now.
First cop: "You want to run a test on that, Lieutenant?"
Second cop: "Sure. Got the measurements already."
First cop: "Wait a second. This ain't mud."
Second cop: "Shoo. Smells like dog crap. What's that on your shoe, ma'am?"
Julia cleaned up the mess and put on a Natalie Merchant CD. Nothing bad could happen while Natalie Merchant was singing of motherhood and gratitude. She checked her e-mail, spam jokes from coworkers and a few posts from her St. Louis Cardinals newsgroup. The Cardinals were about twenty games out, as usual. But with the season winding down, the hot prospects were up from the minors, getting some playing time.
She deleted the messages because one of the newsgroupies was giving away the events of the day's game. Julia had taped it and wanted to watch it free of spoilers. She sat on the sofa and flipped the remote so that the videotape rewound. She punched the answering machine and stared at the blank TV screen.
The only message on her answering machine was the one from George Webster, telling her that Walter Triplett would be out to check her locks. She reset the machine, wondering if Rick would call.
That wasn't a date, she reminded herself. That was definitely "hanging out." But I hope he knows that.
She didn't want to spend all her office time fending off advances, but being noticed was always flattering. Rick was different from Mitchell. Not quite so pushy, respectful of her opinions, interested in more than just making money---
Whoa, girl. Back up a little. If you start down the road to where you compare other men to the one you're marrying, the potholes are going to bounce you out of a happy future. That's as bad as comparing shrinks.
And her future would be happy. She'd move into Mitchell's three-story house in Colliersville, join a tennis club, maybe volunteer for a library board. Social evenings with Mitchell's lawyer circle, the men talking shop, the few female lawyers trying to shoehorn into the conversation, the wives comparing vacation packages. She would wear pearls and heels and scan the fashion magazines to find out which perfume maker was conducting the most extravagant ad campaign. She would eventually give in and wear makeup, hiding all the damage done by time and gravity.
Mitchell would let her continue in therapy as long as she didn't take it too seriously. His circle would view it as just one more of the fringe benefits of affluence, a way to pass idle time, the same way one passed time by taking crafts classes. Mitchell would have an affair in his forties, maybe even more than one, when the first gray crept into his hair and he thought he'd missed out on something in his youth. Julia would accept the dalliances, get a facelift and Botox injections, maybe have some plastic surgery to lift her breasts so that Mitchell could still proudly display her.
They would inherit two of the seasonal homes owned by Mitchell's parents, the others going to his sister. He would choose Santa Monica, and would humor Julia by taking Martha's Vineyard as well. Julia would sit on the beach in the fall, sipping margaritas and rum punch. She didn't drink much now, but she would take up the habit in earnest, because everybody drank in Mitchell's circle. She might even become an alcoholic, a solidly fashionable occupation for the wives of overachieving men. The new disorder might even overwhelm her current one.
And would that be so bad? The fear slowly eroding into a great gray fog, the memories growing dimmer and more distant. The past lost in the wash of years instead of being probed, mined, collected, and analyzed. The past as past only, nothing to do with the wobbling, hazy present that ended at arm's reach, in the soft, cold bite of liquor, easy amnesia a swallow away.
A metallic click and whir brought Julia back to the blank TV as the tape finished rewinding. Tears burned in her eyes, refusing to fall. She wiped them away and pressed the remote. The screen flared to life and the tape started. Julia put her thumb on the fast-forward, ready to skip the pre-game analysis.
The game wasn't on the tape. Instead, the screen was filled with a man's smooth-shaven face, his eyes fevered and bright. The man was pointing at the camera as if chiding both the camera operator and the audience. At high speed, the man looked comical, making wild hand gestures like something out of an old Keystone Kops short.
Julia was positive she had set the tape for ESPN2, the network of choice for also-ran teams like the Cardinals. She double-checked the schedule lying open on the coffee table. There, Cardinals vs. Astros, 4 PM, Channel 27. VCR's were notoriously complicated to program, but she'd taped much of the season without being thrown a single curve.
Unless her memory of setting the VCR had been a tiny little game she had played on herself, another trick to scare herself stupid. And didn't delusional people lie to themselves?
No. I didn't spread the blocks out on the table this morning, and I didn't tape this . . . this WHATEVER.
She stopped the tape and let it play at regular speed.
The man's face crowded the edges of the screen, the close-up so intense that she could see drops of saliva spraying from his mouth as he spoke. The man's manic voice thundered forth as she thumbed up the volume on the remote.
"And Satan has come unto the world, the world that Satan owns, the one that he has stolen from God," the man said. "And Satan spread his wealth, spread his lust disguised as love, spread his greed disguised as need, spread his warfare disguised as righteousness. Satan stretched his fingers out across the world, touching every man, woman, and child."
The man pointed at the camera, at Julia, his voice softening. "Touching you."
Yeah, right. The Devil touched me in the HEAD. Thanks, mister. Now I have an excuse. Here I was, all ready to accept the blame for my little problem, and now you come along and give me the greatest out of all time. I'm only a victim. Of course. Why didn't I see it before now?
The preacher allowed a dramatic pause. "This world belongs to the devil. It's right there in the Book ff Luke, set down by God's own hand. 'To you I will give all this power and glory,' the Devil says to Jesus, as they stood on the mountain overlooking the wonders of this world. 'For it's been given over to me to do with as I please.' The Lord could withstand the temptation, but you would snatch it right up, wouldn't you? You'd take it all and still want more.
"And I don't blame you," the wild-eyed man continued, wiping away the sweat that was collecting on his face from the Klieg lights and exertion. "I don't blame you for biting into the apple, into that red, shiny, sweet apple. I've tasted it myself, we all have. How can we resist?"
Julia almost clicked the screen off, but something about this televangelist's spiel fascinated her. His hair was slick and perfectly styled, swooped up in a grand swirl that would stand in a hurricane. The man's teeth sparkled, brighter than heavenly pearls, his jaw muscles contorted in the rapture of his delivery. She had no doubt of his utter sincerity.
"How can we resist?" he repeated, and the camera pulled back to reveal the man's outstretched arms, as if he were offering himself up for Christ's welcoming hug or the next UFO. "We are empty vessels, and unless we fill ourselves with the Lord, the devil will wash in"--the man arched his arms as if diving into a lake---"and drown us with sin, drown us with sorrow. He'll steal our breath with his false promises. He'll take us down and we won't even fight it. We'll hug him right back and give him thanks."
The man paced back and forth in front of the plush purple curtain and floral arrangements that served as a stage setting. The Love Offering telephone number was emblazoned on a banner in great golden numerals.
"But the Lord will fight," said the man, voice lifting, fist shaking in the air. "The Lord will burn Satan's eyes out, the Lord will take our love and use it as a weapon, a mighty sword that will cleave down into the fire---" He made a slicing motion with his free hand "---and cut Satan's grasping fingers and silence that nasty tongue, the one that whispers such sweet lies to us. Lies of all the pleasures we can have, if we only turn our hearts from God."
Pause. Medium close-up. The man lowered his head in sad reverence. A perfectly scripted moment.
He pointed again. "Satan wants you," he said, almost a caricature of those patriotic Uncle Sam posters. "He owns you."
Julia pointed back, her fascination shifting to boredom. "No, he's only borrowing me."
She'd rather watch the Cardinals lose by six. The VCR must have jumped its memory, shut off and lost its programming. First the clock and now this. She'd have to call George Webster and have Walter check out the wiring.
Sure, blame it on mechanical failure, not operator error. Or operator insanity. Talk about God sending messages wrapped in ridiculous packaging.
She clicked the set off, the sound dying, the televangelist's face sinking rapidly to black. After checking the front-door lock, she went to the bathroom and took a shower. She managed to shampoo and rinse without once looking outside the shower stall. No Creeps here, no Anthony Perkins wannabes, no peepholes carved in the walls, nothing but the sweat of mist on the tiles.
Before leaving the bathroom, she glanced at the figure in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. The steamy glass almost disguised the two long scars than ran up her belly and just under the swells of her breasts. Aside from the scars, she was not too bad for an oldtimer of twenty-seven. Mitchell certainly found her worthy.
She went to bed and read some Jefferson Spence and was carried away to a land where the protagonists always drew upon inner reserves to overcome evil obstacles. The clock was still behaving itself, so she set it to wake her early. As she turned off the bedside light, she went over a checklist in her head.
Doors locked. Windows locked. Curtains pulled closed. Mace in the living room. Baseball bat under the bed, the commemorative Louisville Slugger her adoptive parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
All set.
Nothing but darkness and the quiet settling of the house. The leaves flapped a little on the trees outside, one of them occasionally brushing against the window screen. The neighbors had cut the music. They were pretty considerate about that, except during their weekend parties.
She lay in the dark thinking of the morning's episode of paranoia, the wooden blocks, the session with Dr. Forrest, the Satanic murder, Rick. Dr. Forrest. Something during the hypnosis. A memory, crawling from its slumber, fingers reaching from the damp murk of the cellar. Clawing its way out.
The bad people, around her, touching and hurting her.
No.
That memory was for Dr. Forrest's office, where it could be bound by walls. Not here, not in Julia's house, where it could slither out of her ears and under the bed to lie in the beggar's velvet and wait. Wait for just that right moment when Julia was asleep, tangled in the sheets of nightmare. Then it would grab her ankle, open its slathering jaws and---
She sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp.
The digital clock moved on, counted its way from the past or toward the future, however you wanted to look at it. Julia watched it for a while, and then picked up her book. Julia read until after midnight. By that time she was thoroughly irritated with Spence's too-perfect heroine and his libertarian worldview, not to mention the obligatory dog chuffing here and there among the pages and occasionally bloated, pompous prose. But the book had helped her forget her troubles. Spence was reliable for that, as solid as a dictionary.
She tried the pillow again.
Not so bad this time. She was almost ready to try the dark, but decided to sleep with the light on. Just once more wouldn't hurt.
She thought of the tape, tried to remember setting the VCR. She could remember. She could see herself punching the buttons, Channel 27. And she'd gotten the hair-oiled preacher from hell.
Oh, well. Everybody made mistakes.
Her thoughts spilled into nonsense, Rick's face, the lake at the club where she'd met Mitchell, her dead adoptive parents, a teacher she'd had in the sixth grade who had worn green suspenders, Mickey Mouse, images skipping by faster and faster on the preview screen of dreams.
She was nearly asleep when she heard a crack outside the window. The sound of a damp stick breaking.
She held her breath, kept her cheek against the pillow. Listened. Listened.
A scrabbling sound on the outside wall. How close was the baseball bat?
It's nothing, Julia. Probably the neighbor's boxer, leaving you a stinky present for tomorrow. Or a raccoon. You live right by the WOODS. Remember wildlife?
A swashing across the window screen. The boxer couldn't reach six feet off the ground.
It's a Creep.
Should she pretend that she hadn't noticed, turn off the light as if preparing to sleep? In the darkness, she could reach the bat unobserved. She could roll to her feet and wait by the window for the Creep to come through. Then---
What? Whammo, like a steroid-stoked Mark McGwire in his prime feasting on a rookie pitcher's fastball?
No. She could call the cops.
The cops.
First cop: "You see anything?"
Second cop (playing his flashlight beam on the ground outside the window): "Hmm. Looks like some kind of animal tracks."
First cop: "What kind of tracks?"
Second cop: "Damn. I just stepped in dog crap."
Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar.
Sometimes noises were only noises.
She reached out, switched off the light without looking at the window.
Swash against the screen.
She couldn't resist looking.
Eyes.
A scarce glint of fire on them from the distant streetlight, weak between the curtains.
But eyes.
And a face behind them?
She eased one hand off the bed, tensing, ready to scream, to reach for the Louisville Slugger, the phone, anything.
The eyes were gone.
She lay in her own sweat, trying to convince herself that she'd imagined the eyes, that she was safe as milk. Dr. Forrest warned her about letting her fantasy world intrude on reality. Dr. Forrest wasn't going to like hearing about nonexistent eyes at her bedroom window.
The wooden blocks had been real. But, if she closed her eyes, she could picture herself selecting them off the toy rack, paying the cashier, taking them home and arranging the letters on her table. Then forgetting so she could scare herself later.
That sounded crazy, multiple-personality loopy, and she was not ever going to be crazy. Dr. Forrest wouldn't let her. Better to pretend that the blocks had never existed. No Creep played tricks on her except the one inside her head.
Julia would leave that part out of the journal she would start in the morning. And if she didn't want to imagine eyes at her window, the best thing was to shut her own eyes and watch the imaginary silent movies on the backs of her eyelids.
For a moment, she longed for Mitchell's presence in the bed beside her. Better the devil you know.
She lulled herself into a shallow, exhausted sleep by the second reel.
"How many did you say?" Julia asked.
The manager of the animal shelter took a draw on his cigarette, exhaled, and made a futile attempt to brush cat fur from his sweater. "About thirty or so. Might not seem like much, but if you're the pet owner . . . "
Thirty dogs and cats reported missing in the last two weeks. The leathery old man who'd walked her through the shelter and let her take pictures with her digital camera leaned against the fence, flicking his ash to the gravel. Five dogs pressed their noses against the chain links, only one wagging its tail. The rest looked like lifers, fur dull, ears drooping from the boredom of chronic confinement.
"We usually get about three reports a week," the manager said, his voice rough from half a century of smoke. "Most of them are killed by cars, of course. Some just plumb run off, but a dog or a cat is a lot smarter than you think. But, just lately, a hell of a lot of them been lost, if you'll pardon my French."
"I don't speak French," Julia said. "That's a hell of a language."
The man laughed, coughed.
Julia wrote some notes on her pad. "Has this ever happened before?"
"Not since I been here, ten years," he said. "I'd just as soon you leave that part out of the story. The people who did our stories before focused on what important work we do, how much we rely on donations, that sort of thing."
"A warm and fuzzy piece?"
"Yeah." He knocked the fire from his cigarette butt, stomped it out, and put the butt in the pocket of his coveralls. The strong smell of animal waste rose with the shifting of the wind. The man didn't seem to notice. "We got enough problems here, as you can probably imagine."
"Let me guess. The county funds only a tiny portion of your operation, but they impose all kinds of regulations. Not to mention all the state laws you have to follow. Then there are the outbreaks of parvo and feline leukemia and mange and fleas and heartworms. And the only thing you get out of it is, every once in a while, somebody comes by and adopts one of these guys."
She reached her fingers through the fence and rubbed the nose of the nearest dog. It licked her fingers and gazed at her with morose, questioning eyes. She looked away before the guilt could finish its journey from her heart to her brain.
"That's about the size of it," the man said. "A lot of people don't give a second thought to the way animals are treated. I just wish I could take them all home with me."
The manager's eyes misted a little. Julia averted her eyes and scanned the wedge of sparse woods, the river, and the Elkwood wastewater treatment plant on the neighboring property. The mountains rose in the distance, red and gold and orange with the changing of the leaves. The clouds were high and thin in the sky.
"Okay, warm and fuzzy it is," Julia said. "Just a question. Off the record, of course. Why do you think so many animals are missing?"
The man reached into his pocket as if for another cigarette, but brought his hand away empty. "I used to live down in Austin, Texas," he said. "One morning a few farmers on the outskirts woke up to find some of their animals dead. Dogs, cats, a few lambs, even a cow. Had their throats cut. The cops found a little mashed-out place in a mesquite thicket. Whoever done it had themselves a little party."
"Party?"
"They made a ring of blood on the ground and poured out a star shape in the middle of it. Devil worshippers, the cops called it. Never did catch nobody."
"Did it ever happen again?"
"Not on that big a scale. They got reports now and then, dogs mutilated and such as that. Cops said some of them devil worshippers was known to actually drink the blood." The man's face wrinkled in revulsion. "Kindly hard to believe, ain't it?"
"Not in this crazy world," Julia said. "Did you ever hear of any mutilations of people?"
"Hell, that was Texas," he said. "People would throw down on each other with knives over which model of pickup was best. Sometimes they'd whittle a fellow right down to the bone."
"Do you think somebody in Elkwood is killing animals?"
He shook his head. "It can't happen here. Not in a town like this. They're good, God-fearing folks who live by the Bible."
"That's what they say everywhere," said Julia.
"Excepting Los Angeles. And maybe New York."
Julia smiled and nodded. "Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Cole. Look for the story next week. It'll be the piece that's so warm and fuzzy that fluff will drift off the pages."
"I sure appreciate it, ma'am."
He called after her as she headed for her car. "Sure you don't want to take one home with you?"
She paused with the car door open. She scanned the entire shelter, the tiny shack that served as the office, a larger shed that housed the cats, the cinder block-and-wire kennels for the dogs. The dogs by the fence were sitting now, except for the little white dog with the furry butt. Its tail whipped back and forth, the dark eyes shining in some secret game.
Don't make me feel guilty, she mentally commanded the dog. That's all I need is another thing to worry about. I've got enough on my mind. Like my own selfishness. That takes up ALL my time, you little Fido or Fidette.
"I don't think my lease allows it," she said to the manager.
"Well, you think about it." He waved.
"I will," she said, getting in the car. I most definitely will.
As she drove back to town, she thought of what she'd written in her journal this morning, wondered if it was the kind of thing Dr. Forrest wanted. She'd awakened on the first brittle cry of the alarm, the clock having kept time through the night. Even before going to the bathroom and brushing her teeth, she opened a notebook and wrote down her dream.
The same dream.
The one of the bones hidden under the floor.
The floor wasn't the one in her house, or of any house she had lived in. It was of long wooden planks, tongue-in-groove hardwood. For some strange dream-reason, she had to keep the secret of the buried bones from others. She was pretty sure she hadn't buried the bones, hadn't killed anyone, but that part of the dream wasn't very clear.
Maybe Dr. Forrest would know what it meant. Dr. Forrest had helped her decipher an earlier dream, one where Julia was pregnant and a snake was trying to take her baby. According to the Freudian interpretation, the snake was her father, and the fetus was herself as a small child. Therefore, Julia's father had stolen her childhood, and was the one to blame for Julia's current disorder.
She was still thinking about her father when she pulled into the parking lot of the Courier-Times office. The afternoon sun was behind her, and she saw her reflection coming to meet her in the glass of the front door. Did she look like her father? She could scarcely remember his true face, only the one she had fashioned out of dim memory. Was he alive? Why had he left her? How much of him still lived on in her? How much should she hate him?
She shivered, even though the day was warm, and went inside. Rick was waiting in the chair beside her desk.
"Hey there," he said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine, thanks. And thanks for last night. I really needed to get out."
"Yeah, I could tell. Maybe you need to get out more?" He leaned toward her, smiling, as she sat.
"Are you asking me?"
"Maybe," he said.
"You know I'm engaged, right?"
He waved his hands as if brushing aside a cobweb. "You've been here four months, and I've not seen any sign of this knight in shining armor. He can't be too big a part of your life."
Julia booted up her computer. Rick finally decided she wasn't going to take the bait. "So, what did you think of my Satanic murder theory?"
"Pretty creative," she said. "I guess you're going to need a little evidence before you run it. Or even get editorial approval to stick with the chase."
Rick sat back and put his hands behind his head, sprawling in the chair, casually accepting her rebuff. "The Independent is all over this case. Sometimes I hate being a weekly. They beat us on almost everything. Except they aren't working the Satanic angle."
"They don't have time for the depth of coverage that we get, either."
"The cops identified the victim."
Julia nodded, half-listening, clicking her way through her files. "Poor guy."
"Charles Edward Williams. Age 39. Last known address, Memphis, Tennessee."
Julia froze over her keyboard. "Memphis?"
"Your old stomping grounds. Is it known as a hotbed of Satanism?"
"Well, aside from Elvis selling his soul to the devil and Richard Nixon . . . and we all know how that turned out."
"Eternal life on a hundred thousand collector plates and black velvet paintings, but in exchange, he had to die drugged out on the porcelain altar."
"You are so delicate, Rick."
"Yep. Journalism hardens your heart, and that explains everything," he said, shifting into a mocking tone. "How long did you say you've been a reporter?"
"Very funny. Do the police have any new leads?"
"No. They've shipped the body off to the state medical examiner's office. Should be able to tell if the guy was drugged when he died. If the Brotherhood used him as a sacrifice, they probably had to drug him pretty heavily."
"Unless the sacrifice was voluntary. What's this 'Brotherhood' business?"
"One of the names Satanists use for their group."
"Boy, even Satanists are sexist. What's the world coming to?"
Rick's face grew serious. "Are you religious?"
"More spiritual than religious," she said, expecting Rick to ask which church she attended. She considered telling him she was a Scientologist or Moonie, something offbeat that might throw him off the scent. "I believe in a higher power. I just don't think you need an escort to get you there, and you don't have to kiss the Pope's ring, the Buddha's feet, or Pat Robertson's ass."
Rick nodded and smiled. "Sorry to put you on the spot. Some people get touchy about things like that."
Julia almost asked Rick about his spiritual beliefs, but decided against it. What if he'd only taken her out to dinner to try to convert her? She liked the idea of being desirable company better than that of looking like a lost soul. Too many people lately had seemed hell-bent on saving her. "Well, for the sake of intellectual argument, I don't think Satan exists, but I'm willing to believe that other people do, and that they might perform all kinds of crazy acts in the delusion of devotion."
"One thing's strange. There's a case a couple of years ago that never got solved. A little girl was stabbed to death. They found her body out in the woods."
"That's sickening." Julia's heart clenched. "Any suspects?"
"A few names were kicked around. Deacon Hartley's came up the most often."
"Hartley? That's a common local name, isn't it?"
"There's a few dozen of them, been here since the buffalo walked these mountains."
"Any rumors of Satanism with that murder?"
"No. But that's the kind of thing the police like to keep quiet. Especially when they can't solve it. Maybe my series will be called 'The New Satanism.' Catchy, huh?"
"Better get some more evidence first. Otherwise, you'll come off as preachy. Besides, even the Baptists have pretty much given up the idea of Satan."
"If I were the devil, Elkwood would make a fine place to get started on that Armageddon thing. Go where people are the most complacent in their faith."
"You're just stirring up controversy for the sake of that journalism creed, 'If it bleeds, it leads.'"
"It wins press awards," Rick said. "Satanism's got everything you want in a story. Murder, drugs, bondage, orgies, and the ultimate in good versus evil."
She thought about sharing her tidbit of the disappearing animals, but if he was going to go ahead and run his stories on nothing but rumor, theory, and a handful of spotty research, she wanted to distance herself as much as possible. If Rick would let her. "Well, good luck, but don't take it personally if I hope your story is a dead end. I'd better get back to work. Deadline. You know."
"Yeah." Rick stood and adjusted his glasses. He paused at the door to her tiny office. "Mind if I call you later?"
Whether he was a Christian soldier hell-bent on recruitment or a chronic womanizer, he sure didn't know when to give up. His cheeks wrinkled when he smiled, like a young Robert Redford in "All The President's Men." He'd probably practiced it in the mirror. "I'm pretty busy," she said. "Maybe some other time?"
"Sure. After you're married, maybe."
"It won't be your problem." She smiled at him, hoping he didn't take it as a sign that she was ready to roll back her sheets and let him slide his lithe, fitness-club physique onto her mattress. She wondered if his moral compass allowed him to seduce another man's fiancée, and decided most men only followed one compass, and it was the pointy one in their pants. "Thanks for last night."
Rick straightened up, seeing something in her eyes, the old cockiness back on his face. "We'll do it again sometime. Real soon."
After he left, Julia finished her article, downloaded her digital photographs, and drove home. By the time she'd put away her camera and satchel, dusk was still an hour away. She decided to take a walk down the little trail that ran through the woods behind the house.
Artificial courage. It works for drunks, so maybe it will work for me.
She locked the door behind her and put the key ring and mace in her pocket. With many of the leaves falling, she'd be able to keep the house in sight along much of the walk. Autumn was her favorite season, and she wasn't going to deny herself the pleasure of it all just because some knife-wielding Creep could be waiting behind a tree.
The trail ran down to a little creek. There, the forest was more welcoming than threatening. Autumn wasn't just a glorious color show. The season had a taste and a smell. Julia relished the sweet decay of leaves in the air, the late-blooming goldenrod and rust-topped Joe Pye weed, rushing water that was silver clean against the rocks. Away from civilization, with only the wild woods and water and sinking sun for company, she felt perfectly normal and worry free. But the sun always set, and darkness always fell, and she was not alone in the world.
The other end of the trail bordered Mabel Covington's back yard. Yellow apples lay on the ground beneath a gnarled tree and two quilts hung on the woman's clothesline, airing out for winter. The grass was thick and nearly blue. The aroma of fried chicken came from the kitchen of the large colonial house.
Mrs. Covington appeared at the door of the screened-in back porch. "Hey there, Julia," she called. "Saw you from the window. How you doing?"
"Fine, Mrs. Covington. Taking a walk. How are you?"
"Just dandy. Won't you come in for a piece of pie? I haven't seen you in a while." A gray cat appeared between Mrs. Covington's ankles, its tail brushing the hem of the woman's dress as it pussyfooted down the wooden steps.
Julia was about to decline the offer, but Mrs. Covington's smile radiated from her ice-blue eyes as well. Julia stepped through the low hedge and started across the yard. "Thanks. That would be nice of you."
"No, just neighborly. With all these outsiders coming in, people don't keep up with their neighbors much anymore. We all got to watch out for each other, especially out here on Buckeye Creek."
Julia braced herself for a lecture that would condemn anyone who dared to be born somewhere besides Amadahee County, but the woman only held the door open until Julia entered the house. They sat at the wobbly, hand-crafted cherry table in the kitchen, though Mrs. Covington had a large dining room with a beautiful walnut table. The whole house was filled with enough rustic antiques to make a scavenger drool.
Mrs. Covington set down plates with thick wedges of cherry pie on them, a scoop of vanilla ice cream to the side leaking white into the red filling. Julia accepted a cup of coffee, waited until Mrs. Covington shooed a black cat out of the kitchen, and then they ate together.
"This is delicious," Julia said.
"Thank you kindly," the woman said, her false teeth stained by the cherries. "Don't have no call to cook much anymore, with my Archibald dead and the boys living out West. It's nice to have somebody I can fuss over."
She patted Julia's hand.
"I only hope this doesn't spoil my appetite for dinner," Julia said, before lifting another forkful.
"A girl your age ought not worry about what she eats. There's a lot of that going on, I hear, girls throwing up and wasting away because they're scared of getting fat. A real man doesn't mind a little meat on the bone."
Julia grinned. She wasn't called a girl very often, not at twenty-seven. "No need to worry. I'm not afraid of a few extra pounds."
Only other things. Lions and tigers and bears and Satanic cults, oh my.
"Mrs. Covington---"
The woman held up a wrinkled hand. "How many times do I got to tell you? Call me 'Mabel.'"
"Okay, Mabel."
"Walter Triplett's been around a right good bit lately."
"He seems like he knows what he's doing."
"A real fix-it man," Mrs. Covington said. "Fixed everything up real nice. Got away with murder, some say."
"Murder?"
"I shouldn't be airing out nobody else's dirty laundry," Mrs. Covington said, as if she didn't get the opportunity as often as she liked. "But a body ought to keep themselves informed. So it ain't gossip, it's more just passing along information."
Julia gripped her purse tighter. The falling dusk suddenly felt like a suffocating blanket, a funeral shroud for the living. The cat jumped into Mrs. Covington's lap, barely visible except for the green glow of its eyes. The woman stroked it and resumed rocking.
"Walter lost his wife about eight years back. When I say 'lost,' that's exactly what I mean. They was out camping on Cracker Knob yonder." The woman waved a trembling arm toward unseen mountains. "And Walter came back the next day and said she had disappeared. Just up and walked off in the middle of the night. Of course, they rounded up a big search team, every man what could walk and even a few women, and went over every square inch of that mountain. Never was no sign of her."
The chair's squeaking was amplified by the silence of the night. Julia noticed for the first time how softly night descended, how it crept up around you, drifted from the trees, rose like smoke while simultaneously descending like dark snow. Insidious, slow, and determined.
"Walter swears up and down she was right next to him in their little tent, sleeping one minute, gone the next. Didn't take her hiking boots or nothing, just whatever clothes she was wearing at the time. And she was a Stamey, old family. Not the sort to do foolish things, raised to know a little bit about the woods."
"Poor Walter," Julia found herself saying. So that was the thing she had seen in his eyes, the bit of gray haunting the brown of his irises. A sadness buried deep.
"Poor Walter, maybe. But poorer for her, I'd say. 'Course, there is all kinds of caves and cliff edges on Cracker Knob where a body could meet the Maker, but a mountain girl would know to watch out for such dangers. And a mountain girl wouldn't wander off in the dead of night no way."
Mrs. Covington spoke as if looking through the mist of years. "Some say Walter kind of helped her along in her disappearing act. That he helped her over a cliff, if you know what I mean. Or maybe strangled her and tucked her in some of those rock crevices on the north slope."
"He seems okay to me. He's polite."
"Well, I hate to speculate on things I don't know for sure, but I hear the Stamey girl was pregnant when she went missing."
The pie felt like a lump of wood in her throat as she imagined a scared young woman wandering lost in the wild mountains, with their granite rock shelves and laurel tangles.
"Of course, that ain't too surprising, since they hung out with Hartley," Mrs. Covington asked.
The name clanged a faint but disturbing bell. "What about Hartley?"
"Deke Hartley lived in that house for five years. A strange old coot. Burned the lights through the night, came and went at all hours, never seemed to settle into a routine. I never trusted nobody who didn't have a routine."
"What's that have to do with weird noises in the woods?"
"All the Hartleys is rough, but Deke managed to stay out of trouble. Some said he was up to funny business, though. I never was one to snoop in other people's affairs, myself, but a body tends to hear gossip."
Despite her unease, Julia hid a grin behind another bite of pie. She suspected she was about to hear everything Mrs. Covington didn't want to talk about.
"I reckon he was into drugs," Mrs. Covington said. "The strangest smells used to come from that house. People would come by to visit in the dead of night, and you'd never get to see their faces. About drove me batty, trying to keep up with the coming and going."
"Mr. Webster told me the former tenant ran out on his lease, and that the house had been sitting empty."
"He ran out on everything. Left all his clothes, the television on, food in the fridge, like he just up and walked off the end of the earth. His car was sitting in the driveway for three weeks, never moved, when I finally called the police. I reckon they've still got him down as a missing-persons case. That was about two years back, if I remember right. About the time that little girl got killed."
Julia wondered why Mr. Webster hadn't told her any of this. Maybe he was scared she would have backed out of signing the lease. And the fate of the previous tenant wasn't the type of thing one usually inquired about when house hunting. Julia didn't believe that houses could be haunted, whether the ghosts were dead things or only memories. The house had been a good choice, solid and cheap, despite these revelations. Just enough peace to allow her time to think, and just enough people around to avoid a sense of total isolation. Even if the neighborhood boxer enjoyed spreading little land mines around.
She scooped up the last of her dessert, a bit of crust softened by the ice cream. "You don't think he's missing, do you?"
Mabel Covington's eyes flicked left and right. "I hear things myself, sometimes. When it's dark, people coming through the woods. See, I think they stashed some drugs or money or something, and they want to get it back. Only they don't want to get discovered by having somebody file breaking and entering charges, so they're waiting for the right time. I got a feeling Hartley likes to be missing."
And I thought I was paranoid. Maybe SHE could use an hour or two in Dr. Forrest's office.
Julia wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin. "Thank you for the pie," she said. "That was the best I've ever had."
"You do my heart glad," the old woman said. "I won't even share no credit with the corporation that boxed it up."
Julia made a show of checking her watch. "Well, I'd better run. I've got some work to do."
Plus it will be dark very soon. And even though my house is only fifty yards away . . .
Mrs. Covington walked Julia to the door. "Didn't mean to scare you none. About Hartley and all that. It's just best to be informed."
"Yes, ma'am," Julia said. She reached down and petted the cat that rubbed against her leg.
"You come on back any time."
"Thank you, Mrs. Covington."
"And call me 'Mabel,' hear?"
Julia nodded, waved good-bye, and headed across the grass. The sun was large and golden in the west, just touching the blazing mountainsides. A sudden gust rattled the leaves like paper skeletons. The hint of coming frost rode on the wind.
Julia crossed the woods into her own yard and circled back behind her house, just to set her mind at ease. Not because she really expected to find anything.
Below her bedroom window, on the ground, was a set of footprints.
Her heart crawled into her throat. She ran blindly for the front door, found her key, rammed it home, and burst inside. She slammed the door closed behind her and stood with her back against it, chest heaving, as daylight ebbed inside the house and every creak was like the lifting of a coffin lid.
Call the police?
The phone waited across the room.
Think, think, think.
Julia tried to calm her breathing, tried to slice through the crippling blackness that enwrapped her brain like a sheet shrouded a mortician's meal ticket.
A Creep had walked up to her window. Maybe peeked in. The tracks outside had looked fairly fresh, though a couple of leaves had covered part of one heel print.
But a Creep is the least likely culprit. Because Creeps don't exist, remember?
Who else had business that might have brought him to the rear of the house?
Think, don't panic.
The electric meter was on the side of the house, clearly visible from the drive. Whoever read the meter wouldn't need to look around back. Same with the phone line. The water supply came from a well at the rear of the property, so there was no water meter.
Then she remembered Walter.
The handyman had probably checked the outside of the windows as well. The prints looked as if they were made by boots with a thick tread, someone with a large foot. Walter was well over six feet tall.
That was it. Sure.
She relaxed against the door, her muscles limp.
No Creeps, no calls to the cops.
The Memphis police had responded to her calls four times in the last year before her moving. All false alarms. They were always patient, except for the fourth call, when the same thin, sneering cop from her first call had shown up.
"What's it this time?" he'd said.
"Someone under my bed," Julia said, already feeling foolish.
The cop had nodded wearily, waited until she unlocked the door, and brushed past her. He went into her bedroom, rummaged around in her closet for a moment, peeked into the bathroom, and waved Julia into the apartment.
"I . . . I swear I heard him. I came in and---"
"All clear." He glared at her. "Same as last time. Did you have the door locked?"
She nodded.
"Then how's a burglar or rapist or whatever going to get in?" He flipped the lock on her sliding glass door and removed the security bar, slid the door open on its track, and stepped onto the small balcony. He looked out over the Wolf River four stories below.
"I heard him. I swear."
"Sure you did. I checked on my way over. This is the fourth call since last July. I don't know what you're after. Some like the attention, some are cop groupies"---he'd given her a leer that made Julia want to push him over the railing---"and some just want to screw the system. Whichever reason is yours, filing a false report is a crime."
"I really heard him," Julia said, near tears but not allowing herself to cry in front of that monster.
"Yeah, well, next time, do us a favor and call a private investigator," he said. "We got people out there with real problems."
After he left, Julia cried for a half-hour. She never again called the police, even when she was trailed while walking two blocks home one evening, even when she found scratch marks near the lock as if someone had tried to jimmy open her door. And she was determined not to start the same sort of thing in Elkwood. When she called the cops to her new place, she wanted some solid proof to show them.
Except, even in Memphis, you were never really SURE that you heard anything, or that you were followed, or that some Creep had a hot-drool thang going for you. How are you going to convince anyone else when you can't even trust your own mind?
Julia's fear slewed into anger. She slammed into the kitchen, washed the dishes with a great deal of rattling and water-sloshing, and took a shower. She walked nude into her bedroom without bothering to see if the curtains were still closed. She read Spence until he put her to sleep.
She dreamed of bones again.
This time, she was lifting the boards from the floor, prying them up with a long sharp tool. The floor insulation was like yellow cotton candy and had been pushed to the side. She lowered herself between the floor joists to the dirt below. The soil was dark, soft and dry.
Julia dug into the ground with the tool. The first bone was several inches beneath the surface. She cleared it away with her fingers, and held it to the strange, amber dream-light. It was a femur, long and pitted with nicks and cuts, the color of bleached ivory. She placed it on the floor and dug again, coming up with a skull this time.
She picked it up and held it as if she were Hamlet about to reflect on Yorick's demise. She stared into the skull's empty eye sockets. The dark blank eyes had just begun staring back when she awoke.
Lasers of the sun sliced through the trees into her window. Julia blinked against the sudden light, confused, lost in that wasteland between dream and dawn. It was late. Her alarm should have woken her just before the sun crept over the horizon.
Heavy with sleep, she rolled over and reached for the clock. Her hand froze inches away from it.
4:06.
Red digits, simultaneously ice cold and hell hot.
A minute passed, one in which Julia breathed only twice.
Another minute, and still the clock stood at 4:06.
Julia peered over the edge of the bed. The clock was plugged in. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillow.
A malfunction, that's all. Something in that idiot digital brain has a hang-up about 4:06. Throw the damned clock out and buy another one instead of worrying about it.
She reached out, found the plug, and jerked it free of the wall socket. She didn't look at the clock as she shoved it into the wastebasket. She was afraid those same numerals might still be glaring, even without electricity.
After she dressed, she called George Webster and told him the wiring had been acting up. She described what had happened with the clock and the VCR. Nothing major, but she just thought he might like to know. Maybe ought to get it checked. Webster said he'd send somebody around to check it that afternoon, and asked if she would be there.
Yes, she would be there, armed and ready if need be.
Before she went to work, she walked around the back of the house. The footprints were still there. Were there more, a fresh set pressed into the dewy grass? She couldn't tell. Leaves had fallen overnight, making a carpet of red and brown. She hoped enough would fall to cover the tracks so that she wouldn't have to see them anymore.
The day passed swiftly as she wrapped up a couple of articles and sat through a staff meeting with the graphics people. Graphics people always complained that they were pushed up against the deadline by slack advertisers who turned in their copy at the last minute. Poor graphics people. They were artists, while writers were only hacks and glorified typists. In the world of modern media, words seemed the least-valuable commodity.
Walter's Jeep was parked in the drive when she got home. A little shiver wended through her belly, and at first she thought it was fright. Then she realized she was glad to see him. She and Walter had already shared a mutually embarrassing moment--after all, it wasn't every guy who came across as a crazed killer on the initial encounter.
Her front door stood open. Walter was in the living room, kneeling by an outlet, a meter in his hands, wire probes sunk into the outlet slots. He looked up and smiled when he saw her.
"Hey there, ma'am."
"Hello, Walter. Have you found anything?"
The room was dark, and she realized he must have switched off the power main. He stood, his face in shadows, his dark eyes glinting. "Nothing so far. What kind of problems are you having?"
"Remember the clock?"
"Yep."
"It got stuck again."
"That's weird. But it's more likely the clock than the wiring."
"It was stuck on the same time. 4:06."
Walter's mouth twisted sideways. He smelled of sawdust and sunshine, honest, warm aromas. "Hmmm. I'd throw that thing in the weeds. It ain't worth the cost of fixing it."
She told him about the VCR problem. She showed him that the programming was still set to record the game. Only, instead of taping the game, she had taped God's greatest snake-oil salesman.
"You like baseball?" Walter asked.
"I love the Cardinals. Ozzie Smith was my favorite player. Just watching him turn backflips made me happy."
"I played a little baseball in high school. I could hit like crazy, but I couldn't catch water in a thunderstorm. Anyway, it looks to me like the VCR is set up okay. I tested all the electric lines, and I ain't found any short circuits."
"Darn. I was hoping it would be something obvious."
"Maybe it's just a stretch of bad luck. Sometimes it happens that way. They make machines smarter than people these days." Walter put his tools back in his belt.
Julia looked at his boots, sizing them up. Walter caught her staring.
"I wiped my feet good," he said. "I noticed you had dogs around the neighborhood."
"Oh, sorry," she said. "Did you by chance go around back when you were here the other day?"
"Yeah. I checked the windows inside and out."
Julia hoped her relief wasn't too visible. "I just saw some footprints around back, and it made me wonder."
"Don't blame you," he said. "Lots of bums and Creeps in the world nowadays. Too many outsiders. You ought to keep your bedroom window locked, though, if you're so worried about it."
"Locked?" She had locked it, almost always kept it locked except when she wanted to air out the house.
"I put the screen back up, too. One of those Tennessee winds must have blowed it off."
Screen off, window unlocked. Clock stuck on 4:06.
Suddenly she wanted Walter out of the house, wanted to bar the door, the windows, and never ever ever open them again. But that was stupid. If Walter wanted her in any of a number of Creepy ways, he'd passed up plenty of opportunities. So far, he'd been a tiny island of sanity in this strange sea of uncertainty.
But he did have several sharp tools in his belt. And Mabel Covington had reacted strangely at the mention of his name.
"Thanks, Walter," she said. "I appreciate your checking the wiring."
"Glad to," he said, pushing back his cap. "Sorry I didn't find nothing wrong. Usually its something simple."
"Nothing's ever simple in my life." She followed him to the door.
"I'll turn your power back on," he said. "Reckon I'll see you later. Lots of things seem to go wrong in this house."
"I reckon so," she found herself saying. She waited until he drove away. Then she locked the door and went to the bedroom. The window was closed. The clock was still in the wastebasket.
Julia was tempted to plug it in again, to see if those same haunting numerals were still frozen on the display. But what if they were? Or, almost as bad, what if they weren't?
Had someone taken her screen down, perhaps crawled in through the window she had somehow forgotten to lock? Or had the wind really blown off the screen while she was at work?
Or had she opened the window and forced herself to forget?
Julia sat on the bed and picked up her cell phone, punching the top number in her book.
"Hello?" came that comforting voice.
"Hi, Dr. Forrest?"
A pause. "Yes."
"It's me, Julia Stone. Sorry to bother you at home."
"That's quite all right, Julia. That's why I gave you my number." Someone else's voice, a man's, was in the background. Julia couldn't make out the words. "Is there a problem?"
Of course there's a problem, Julia wanted to scream. After four months of therapy, you've probably figured that out by now.
But that was misplaced rage, the kind of thing that didn't bring awareness and healing. That was abdicating responsibility, as Dr. Forrest had so carefully explained. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said, "I . . . I think I'm having another episode."
"Worse than the last one?"
"Not as intense, but longer in duration. I'm imagining things." Julia tried to sound matter-of-fact, almost bored. She related the stories of the clock, the VCR, and the footprints at the window.
"Hmm. Have you been keeping the journal like you promised?"
Julia nodded before remembering that Dr. Forrest couldn't see her. "Yes."
"Did you write down those incidents?"
"No."
"Julia, it's very important that you keep track of everything out of the ordinary, each thought or idea, each fear. I'm very disappointed in you."
"I . . . I'll try harder from now on."
"You do want to get better, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You know that you have to work hard at it. You have to fight. I can help, but only if you let me. Will you let me, Julia?"
"Yes."
"Can you come by the office tomorrow?"
"Sure. But tomorrow's Saturday."
"We'll just squeeze in a little extra session. The problems are very close to the surface. You just have to let them go, bring them into the light."
"What time should I come by?"
"Eleven in the morning."
"Okay. What should I do tonight?"
"Try not to worry. Think about the things we've worked on. The truth is locked inside you. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. Pay attention to your dreams."
"Thanks, I'll do that. See you in the morning."
"Bye. And Julia?"
"Yes?"
"We'll beat this thing."
Dr. Forrest hung up. Julia slid the cell back on the nightstand. She wrote the clock incident in her journal and added the part about the VCR. Lastly, she wrote down her dream of bones. Then she drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Bones.
Rattling at the window, hanging dry and dusty in her closet, tumbling around on the floor of her childhood bedroom like so many Barbies and wooden blocks.
The bones stitched themselves into a skeleton.
Julia was four. She got up from the bed. Chester Bear had fallen behind the headboard, but she didn't retrieve him. Instead, she went to the door, listened to the voices in the next room, turned the knob.
The skeleton stood before her, its skull grinning like a jack-in-the-box puppet.
She tried to cry out, but then its hard clattering fingers were on her, dirty-white, squeezing, sharp, insistent. The skeleton pulled her from the room, dragged her into the living room. Daddy was gone. The bad people in the robes stood around, watching her. She opened her mouth to scream but a blanket was thrown over her. The wool scratched her skin.
She was carried from the house into the cool dark night. A long time later, maybe hours, the blanket was pulled from her. Two of the people in robes held her. Others stood watching in the darkness. They took her clothes and tied her. Someone stuck a needle in her arm.
She was laid on a stone, its hard chill sinking into her flesh. The bad people circled around her. She wanted to yell for help, but she was so tired, so sleepy.
Candles burned near the stone, along with other things in clay pots. Trees loomed overhead under the bright, full face of the moon. A sweetish, heavy smoke filled the air. The bad people began swaying, singing slow songs that made her blood freeze in her veins.
One of the bad people stood over her and held out his hands. A large ring, of a silver skull with tiny red jewels for eyes, flashed on one finger. The hand with the ring went inside the fold of his robe. He brought out a long knife, its blade gleaming in the moonlight.
The bad people gathered near, the stench of their sweat making her want to throw up. The skull ring flashed a gleaming grin. She struggled against her bonds. Why couldn't she scream?
The bad man with the knife leaned forward and raised the blade high. He lifted his head as if to gaze imploringly into the night sky and his hood slipped backward. Four-year-old Julia looked up at the lower portion of his face revealed beneath the wedge of shadow. That mouth, that chin---
No.
Not him.
Pleeezzzzzzzzzz--
At last she could scream, and she awoke in her bed, the darkness thick around her, the sheets entwined in her limbs. She sat up, a clammy sweat on her skin.
For a horrible moment, that face was still frozen in her mind. She fought for breath. It was all a dream, only a stupid, strange nightmare.
Then why did two rivers of pain sluice down her abdomen?
She ran her hands under the sheets and touched the scars.
They were moist.
She fumbled for the bedside lamp, nearly knocked it over before she found the switch. The light burst to life. Julia looked at her fingers.
Only sweat.
Not blood.
Julia glanced instinctively at the clock then remembered it was in the trash. She lay back down and thought of soft, sunny things, the lake shore at the country club where Mitchell had taken her virginity, the little beach house at Cape Hatteras that her adoptive parents had owned, the playground at Denton Elementary where she'd been a diminutive kickball star.
Soon she was breathing evenly. She pulled out her journal and wrote down the dream. The images of the fire and smoke and skull ring sliced into her willful focus on mundane things. She thrust all memories aside and calculated the Cardinals' chances of moving up in the division standings the next year and their perennial search for a decent closer, centerfielder, and left-handed starting pitcher.
Julia turned out the light. As much as she feared the dark, and the things it could harbor, she hated the thought that something outside could see her more easily than she could see it.
Darkness won't win. Please, God, if you're up there, don't let it get me.
She couldn't fix an image of God in her head. The pasty, stringy-haired old man with the shimmering aura that was popular in children's Bible books was the first to emerge from the mists of drowsiness.
That stern, paternal visage was no comfort, so she let it shift to a woman. She had no model for a female godhead, except the popular depictions of Venus, Athena, and other mythological goddesses, and their beautiful faces came off as haughty and vain instead of generous. She killed the formative image before it could sneer down at Julia in disdain. She recalled something she'd read once, probably by Nietzsche or Heidegger or one of the other renowned existentialists, that posited the theory that if God were dead, he'd have to be replaced.
Sounds like something Dr. Forrest would say.
The therapist's face took over the spot that had been occupied by the gods. Dr. Forrest's smile was benevolent, patient, and understanding. Existentialism gave no comfort in the night, but human kindness was a snug lover.
Finally, sleep crept over her, mercifully blank, the fingers of the past receding into shadow.
The next morning, the first thing Dr. Forrest said was, "You look exhausted."
"Thanks, I've been working at it." Julia forced a smile. She felt rumpled, like a silk shirt in a sock drawer. Dr. Forrest had just started a pot of coffee. Her receptionist wasn't in, and neither was the other psychiatrist who shared the small office building.
"Do you mind if we lock the door?" Julia asked when they were in the office.
"I don't really think that's necessary. It's good that you are recognizing your fear, that you're not lying to yourself. But let's just risk leaving the door unlocked. Then, when we're finished and no crazed stranger has burst in, you can claim a small victory."
Julia nodded. Dr. Forrest had elicited a lot of small victories. But Julia was ready for a big victory. The dark place inside her head felt as if it were growing, like a cold black fire that was consuming her from the inside out.
Julia settled in her chair as Dr. Forrest closed the blinds. As she dimmed the lights, Julia said, "Do we have to be in the dark?"
"Trust me," Dr. Forrest said. "You want to become whole, don't you?"
"Yes," Julia said, reciting the mantra Dr. Forrest had given her. "The whole Julia Stone."
"Where shall we start?" the therapist asked, sitting across from her.
Julia wondered if she should mention her imagining of Dr. Forrest on the high throne of heaven and decided sharing such a thing would be as disturbing as having had a lesbian fantasy about the older woman. Both were silly when laid on the harsh examining table of daylight, since Julia was heterosexual and secular. As far as she knew. "Maybe I should tell you about my dream."
"Ah. Did you bring your journal?"
Julia fished the notebook out of her purse. Dr. Forrest perused the recent entries and looked up with excited eyes. "I think we're onto something here. Are you willing to face it now?"
"Whatever you think is best."
"Okay. I'm going to hypnotize you, and this time, we're going to go all the way."
Julia's breath caught. "All the way?"
"Let's find out what happened to little Julia Stone. I think I know, but what's important is that you know."
Julia dug her fingers into the arm of the chair, but listened as Dr. Forrest gave the relaxation instructions and then began counting down slowly from ten, leading Julia more deeply beneath the surface of the world like Persephone making her annual descent into Hades. Her eyes were open, and she could still recognize her thoughts as her own, but she floated on a soft, insistent current. She was carried through the shadowed past, twenty-three years back.
"The hooded man is standing over you," came Dr. Forrest's voice, as if from behind a wall of water. "The man with the skull ring."
"Help me," Julia said, scared, her hands tight in the knotted rope, the stone hard beneath her bare back.
"The bad people are around you, Julia. They're chanting, belladonna and incense are burning in the crucibles. At the end of the stone is an inverted cross, a decapitated goat's head speared on its tip. Its eyes are open and black, and flies circle the rotting flesh."
Julia squirmed in her chair. She couldn't remember giving Dr. Forrest all those details. But Dr. Forrest had taken her deeply into her subconscious, had mapped and mined it, perhaps knew the territory more intimately than Julia herself did.
And Julia was so forgetful, wasn't she?
"What's the hooded man doing, Julia?"
"He---he's putting his hand inside his robe. He pulls out---"
"A knife. He pulls out a long sharp knife, doesn't he, Julia?"
She nodded, a lump in her throat, sweating even in the chill of the imagined night air.
"What happens next?"
"He . . . he's raising the knife. He shouts something."
"You remember, don't you? Tell me what he says."
"He says 'Lord Master Satan, we offer you this blood in your sacred name, that you may smile upon . . . that you may smile upon---"
"You recognize the voice, don't you, Julia?"
Julia moaned, writhing on the granite slab under the bright eye of the moon.
"Whose voice is it, Julia?"
Julia whispered, her mouth dry.
"Tell me, Julia. Who did this to you? Who is to blame for all your fear and pain and sorrow?"
Julia looked up at the man whose hood had fallen back, his face revealed. She struggled to sit up against invisible bonds.
The name tore itself from her lips. "Daddy."
And the response, drifting from the corners of the world and the cracks in her mind, insinuated in a whisper:
Jooolia . . . .
Julia ripped free of the dream altar, broke the hypnotic trance.
Dr. Forrest held her as she cried.
"You're not alone, Julia," the therapist repeated over and over.
Julia wept herself dry, trying to forget the face beneath the hood, the man who held the knife, the man who had given his daughter to the bad people.
"It's always hard to accept a truth that's so awful, but it's the only way to let the healing begin," said Dr. Forrest. She opened the blinds and let light spill into the room, and then sat across from Julia in her usual chair.
"Daddy," Julia whispered to herself, blinking against the harsh glare of reality. She shook her head. "No. He couldn't have done that. He loved me."
She could remember his arms around her, hugging her, dressing her, holding her hand and walking her through the park. Taking her to the Pink Palace outside Memphis, showing her all the strange animals that stood stiff and still in the museum's glass cases. She remembered his smiles, his blue eyes as warm as August sky, the way his stubble tickled her cheek when he kissed her. She told Dr. Forrest these things, evidence against this cruel, freshly conjured memory.
"All that may be true as well, Julia," Dr. Forrest said. "The mind tries to protect us. One of the ways it does that is by burying the bad memories deep in the basement, way down there where they're hard to dig up. It's natural that the mind lets you retrieve only the happy memories. A survival mechanism."
"He loved me."
"The body remembers what the mind wants you to forget. Don't you feel the pain in your stomach and chest? In all the places the bad people touched you?"
Julia nodded. Her muscles were sore, her stomach felt as if someone had punched it with a fistful of nails, and the place between her legs---
"I know it's hard for you, Julia," said Dr. Forrest. "But we have to do this all the way. We have to be honest. What else do you remember about your father?"
"He . . . he told me bedtime stories when he tucked me in at night."
"Would this take place in your bedroom, or in his?"
"In mine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. Chester Bear was always beside me. There was an oak tree out the window, and a streetlight on the other side of it. My room almost always had stripes of shadows across it. We lived next to a farm, you could smell the chickens."
"When he tucked you in, how did he do it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did he help you put your pajamas on?"
"Sometimes."
"Were you ever naked when he tucked you in?"
"Maybe."
"Did he ever touch you in ways that felt wrong?"
Julia thought of that creased face, those clenched features beneath the hood, the strange light in the eyes of the man who was going to cut her. Her father. She shuddered and looked down at her hands fidgeting in her lap. His blood was in her. Or maybe he thought of her flesh and blood as his possessions, free to give and take.
"It's very important, Julia." Dr. Forrest leaned forward and touched her knee. "Other women have gone through the same experience. Do it for all of them." A pause and a whisper. "For all of us."
Julia looked at the therapist, trying to read those somber gray eyes behind the glasses. Not her, too? Had this wise and supportive woman suffered through a similar experience? Was her compassion constructed on determination, perhaps seeking to resolve her own psychic wounds by applying salve to others?
But Dr. Forrest had survived, had conquered the past and shed all its baggage. Dr. Forrest had not let abuse destroy her present and future life. The doctor was whole and healed.
A surge of anger swept through Julia. Her life was being stolen from her. She was being raped and tortured more viciously today, by her fear and doubt, than she had been as a child. In this instance, the scar was worse than the wound, because at least wounds brought pain. Even pain was preferable to numbness.
"Did he ever touch you, Julia?" The woman's voice had slipped from its calm professionalism into a sharp, firm tone.
"I don't remember," Julia said, her eyes welling even though she thought she had drained her reservoir of tears.
Dr. Forrest squeezed her wrist as tightly as the bad people's ropes had. "He touched you, didn't he?"
Dr. Forrest should know. Dr. Forrest had learned things about Julia that Julia herself hadn't accepted yet. But she wasn't going to take this last terrible step, she wasn't willing to throw open the cellar door and shed light on those bones. She couldn't force herself to face a memory that made her entire life a lie.
"Okay, let's pretend for a moment," Dr. Forrest said softly, releasing her wrist. "It's safer to play make-believe at first. Suppose he had touched you?"
Julia said nothing.
"How would that make you feel?"
Julia looked at the clock. The session had lasted nearly two hours. The televangelist that had hijacked her VCR had threatened an eternity of fire and brimstone for sinners, and Julia wasn't sure such a punishment could be worse than a life sentence inside her own skull.
"I'm sorry," Julia said, rubbing her temples. "I think we'd better stop. My head's splitting."
Dr. Forrest sat back and pursed her lips. "It's always hard to admit. Perhaps the hardest thing in the world. That a father's love could go so wrong---"
Julia gathered her purse and headed for the door.
"You're not alone, Julia," Dr. Forrest called after her. "You're never alone."
Julia drove home, her thoughts jumbled. The world outside the car windows seemed unreal, a strange movie set onto which she had been dropped. The faces in the passing cars showed no signs of comprehending the conflict of this particular scene. And the script, well, apparently the script could be rewritten at any time, to alter the opening scenes and therefore change the meaning of everything that came after. Even though the later scenes contained the exact same sequences and dialogue as before.
As she left the office district and came to the outskirts of Elkwood, some of the tension fell away. Fewer cars closed her in, fewer traffic lights ordered her to stop. The trees were more numerous, and the colorful leaves provided momentary distractions from her rage and pain. By the time she pulled onto Buckeye Creek Road, she had almost convinced herself that the session had never happened, that the vision of her father's face beneath the hood was just one more misleading memory.
She went straight to the phone.
"Hello?"
Good. He was home, probably watching golf on television, a Chivas Regal and coke sweating cold in his hand.
"Hi, Mitchell, it's me."
"Julia!" He sounded pleased to hear from her. She very rarely called him, and she felt a brief shiver of shame at her diffidence. After all, this man had stood by her through her adoptive parents' death, through her reluctance to offer her heart fully, through her budding disorder and relocation.
"How are you doing?"
"Fine, fine. Is something wrong? Your voice sounds strange."
"I've just been busy. Absentminded. What's new with you?"
"Nothing since the last time we talked, what, two days ago?"
"The reason I called is . . . I'm coming down."
"Here? Hey, that's really great! I can't wait to see you," he added. "When are you coming?"
"I hope I can get an afternoon flight."
"Wow. That's short notice. You want me that badly, huh?"
She couldn't tell if he were joking. "No, it's not like that, Mitchell. I'll be getting a room."
Petulance entered his voice. "You should stay with me, honey. It's been months."
She wondered if he'd managed to resist temptation in her absence. He was handsome and wealthy, the kind of big catch a lot of women were trolling for. But he sincerely seemed to be willing to wait to marry her. Predictable. She didn't deserve him. Perhaps no one did.
"I need a favor from you," she said.
"I can't figure you out."
Neither can I. "Will you check with some of your contacts in the police department and the D.A.'s office?"
"Look here, Julia. My friends are starting to think I'm weird, turning down dates with sweet, young, interested women so that I can save myself for you. And I'm starting to get tired of waiting. I mean, I love you, but--"
"When you love somebody, you don't impose conditions," Julia said.
"Where did you get that little nugget of wisdom? From one of your shrinks? As if you know the first thing about love."
"Mitchell---"
"Have you ever loved anybody, Julia? Besides yourself, I mean? And the little voices in your head?"
"Mitchell, please don't get mad." Her voice cracked. "I'm trying---"
"Jeez," he said, exasperated at her tears. Surrendering. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"
Say you're sorry, for one thing.
But she knew he wouldn't. Mitchell was never sorry. "Could you check around, see whatever happened with the investigation into my father's disappearance?"
"Julia, we've been through that a hundred times. The case is dead. No leads. He just walked off the face of the earth. Why can't you let it go and get on with your life? Sometimes I think you wouldn't be so crazy if you left the past alone. Hooded men and all that crap."
She squeezed the phone until her knuckles were white. Eight years. She'd known him nearly a third of her life. In those early years, they had made passionate love often, and she had unfolded like a flower beneath the sun of his affection. Then her problems had started, tiny paranoid thoughts, a nervous stomach, a sense that she had forgotten something important. Soon came the little surprises, the bad dreams, and the blame.
Mitchell had encouraged her when she first started seeing Dr. Danner. He had already elaborately planned their future and saw therapy as only a minor detour on the road to their eternal bliss. Over the years, though, as he became more mercenary in his law practice, he'd grown stubborn and possessive, angry at her both for her weakness and for her refusal to marry him. He'd given her an obscenely large engagement ring that she kept in a safe-deposit box. What was scary was that she couldn't let him go, couldn't grant both of them their freedom. This was love held hostage, love with a gun to its head, love in a straitjacket.
"Will you do it for me?" Julia asked when she had regained control of herself. She didn't want to prostitute herself by tempting him with her flesh when her heart and mind wasn't fully ready, but she could appeal to his ego. "You know how to get things done. People jump when you call, Mitchell."
"Well, I'll give it a try." He sounded mildly assuaged. "No promises, though."
"Thanks, Mitchell. I'll call when I get in to Memphis International."
"Can we at least have dinner together?"
"I'd like that," she said. And she realized she did look forward to seeing him. Mitchell had helped her get through the car-crash death of her adoptive parents, providing moral support in his own domineering, Leonine way. Sometimes she wished she could adopt more of his philosophy, just give in and be his country club ornament, the one who completed his image of the successful young professional.
"See you in a few hours," she said. "Bye."
She made flight reservations and took a shower. Her suitcase was nearly packed when she heard a knock on the front door. She tightened her bathrobe and went to the living room, peering through the crack in the curtains. Walter's Jeep was parked at the curb.
She hadn't called Mr. Webster about any repairs. What was the handyman doing here?
"Hello?" she called from behind the closed front door. Perhaps she should have waited to see what he would do first. If he were a Creep, he might try to break in one of the windows. Then she remembered that he probably still had the key to her house, the one he had gotten from Mister Webster.
"Hello, Miss Stone?"
He could come right in if he wanted, and she couldn't do a thing about it. She considered what Mabel Covington had said about Walter's wife.
She glanced at the phone. The cops might need fifteen or twenty minutes to respond to a call this far from town. Plenty of time for Walter to do whatever he had in mind, unless he was one of those meticulous Creeps, the kind who liked to slowly peel his victims like ripe peaches---
She pressed her fist to her forehead.
"Miss Stone?" Walter repeated.
"What is it?" she asked, careful to control her voice, trying to sound unconcerned.
"I was just on my way into town, and I had something I thought you might like."
A knife to the throat, maybe? Or a screwdriver punching me a third eye socket? Or whatever you did to your wife when you took her to the woods on Cracker Knob?
In jurisprudence, suspects were innocent until proven guilty.
Julia remembered the kindness with which he'd treated her.
"Hold on a second," she called.
She glanced at the phone, decided against it, went to the bedroom and slipped off the robe. As she slid into a T-shirt and jumper, she thought she heard something bump against the window. The glass was misted from the shower's steam, so she saw nothing. She collected the mace from her purse and held it behind her back, and then returned to the door and opened it.
Walter stood off the edge of the stoop, by the snowball bush. He looked ill at ease, without his baseball cap and wearing a short-sleeved knit shirt instead of his usual flannel. Like a starched golfer instead of a carpenter.
"Sorry to drop by unexpected," he said, his cheeks crinkling as he tried to smile.
Julia pushed her wet hair behind her shoulders. "Is something broken that I don't know about?"
"Uh, no. I was just passing by, and I thought of you."
"The electricity has been fine," she said. Did Elkwood handymen drop by to check up on their work? Was that another of the maddening unwritten rules of mountain pride, along with extending invitations to church?
"Good. Wouldn't want the house to catch on fire."
"Thanks for checking," she said. "But I'm afraid I'm in a hurry. I've got to make a flight."
Walter nodded, the smile frozen on his face, squinting in the day's brightness. "Where you fixing to go?"
"Memphis."
"Oh. Old friends, I guess."
"Something like that."
"I won't keep you, then. I brought something I thought you might like." He pulled an envelope from the rear pocket of his jeans and gave it to her.
Julia looked across the street to the apartments, and then shifted her gaze to Mrs. Covington's house. She peeled back the flap and peered inside the envelope, expecting one of those cartoonish Bible tracts that showed the car-crash victim wandering through the flaming tunnels of hell and eventually realizing he was dead and it was far too late for the salvation offered by John 3:16.
Her first peek, however, suggested photographs.
She pulled them out. Not photographs, but baseball cards.
Ozzie Smith. Jack Clark. Willie McGee. Ted Simmons. A few scrub pitchers and utility infielders, the Julian Javiers of the world. And some older cards, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ken Boyer. And the last . . . probably the greatest Cardinal ever. Stan Musial. The Man.
"Do you like them?" he asked, his eyes wide and serious.
"Yes, they're wonderful!" she said. "My father used to give me baseball cards when I was little."
Walter grinned at her happiness, his slightly crooked teeth making him look innocent and young. "One of my buddies gave them to me a long time ago. They were tucked away in a drawer. I got some others, too, but they ain't Cardinals."
"That's really thoughtful of you," she said. "But I can't take these. They must be valuable."
"Some of the old ones might be worth a little bit of money, but value is from what you care about them," Walter said. "I don't care that much. I bet you could care about them more."
That made sense, in a strange kind of way. She studied the cards. Pieces of the past. But not a bad past, because in the photographs the outfield grass was green, the players smiled, and baseball was just a game.
"Well, I'll let you go," Walter said. "Hope you have a good trip."
"Thank you, Walter," was all she could think of to say. "This is the best thing to happen to me since I've been to Elkwood."
He waved as he drove away, the cloth top off his Jeep, his hair ruffled by the wind.
Julia sat on the couch and looked at the cards for a few minutes, read the statistics on the backs, spread them out on the coffee table. She arranged them into a lineup, setting the batting order by position. The smile felt good and rare on her face. She'd almost forgotten such simple, childish delights existed.
She set the VCR to tape the evening's doubleheader, finished dressing, and drove to Charlotte-Douglas Airport, where she caught a jet. As the plane lifted off the runway, she embraced the freedom of flight and vowed to leave her mental baggage behind, even though she wasn't sure what memories were tucked inside it.
On the approach to Memphis, Julia marveled at the lights of the big city, a million stars spread against a dark backdrop, the Mississippi like a galactic rift. After the months in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains, the crush of people at the airport seemed senseless, like a stampede of cattle into the slaughterhouse.
Mitchell met her as she debarked. He wore his unbreakable lawyer's smile, a Rolex, a tailor-cut pinstriped suit, shoes so gleaming that he could check his dark, curly hair in them. Perfect Mitchell. Still perfectly, utterly the same as when she had last seen him, as when she had first seen him. He didn't age, only accumulated thicker layers of sameness.
As he headed toward her at the luggage conveyor, she wondered why she couldn't be grateful for the stability he offered. All she had to do was say "Yes," and she could be Mrs. Austin by April. Sure, he would irk her from time to time, would grant only the perfunctory four minutes of intercourse before rolling over to call his stock broker, would pat her on the hand and call her his "Little Woman," would smother her with boring endeavors like tennis dates and new window treatments. But he would never, ever create a bad memory for her. In fact, she was quite sure that, after a lifetime with him, she would have very few memories at all.
And that might not be such a bad thing.
They hugged stiffly, him looming over her, trying to press her breasts against him. He kissed her cheek before finding her lips. No tongue, and she didn't offer hers. His cologne was musky and sweet.
"You're looking great," he said, letting his eyes roam over her figure. If he noticed the weight she'd put on, he didn't say anything, but he might have been calculating its effect beside the country club's pool, and how a small bulge around the bikini lines might affect that complex formula of social standing. Arm candy couldn't eat candy, at least not too much of it.
"You're looking perfect, as usual," she said.
"I work at it," he said. Truer words never spoken. Another thing about Mitchell, he was pretty honest for a lawyer.
"Did you find out anything about my dad's case?" she asked.
"A little, but can't it wait? I got us reservations at The Blue Note, and it wasn't easy, let me tell you. Even Mitchell Austin has to grease a few palms to get a good seat in this town."
Now he was referring to himself in third person. How the mighty had risen in her absence.
He pointed to her hand. "Hey, where's the rock?"
She mulled the short list of lies and came up with a tired one. "I was cleaning the stove before I left and didn't want to tarnish it. I was in such a rush packing, I forgot to put it back on."
"Jesus, Julia, do you know how much that cost?"
She supposed in the five-figure range, but she merely said, "Don't worry, I left it in a safe place."
"You're not waffling, are you?"
Lying got easier with practice, and she served it up with one of Mitchell's pet phrases. "No, Mitchell. I'm sticking with the game plan."
He smiled but the gesture didn't reach his eyes. He took her hand and dragged her toward baggage claim.
They caught a cab downtown, Julia gawking at the skyscrapers like a tourist as Mitchell possessively put his arm around her. He helped her out when the cab pulled to the curb. The muggy air on the sidewalk settled around Julia like a second skin. The car exhaust, the noise of traffic and evening commerce, the kaleidoscopic neon and flashing lights all kept her off balance. How had she survived this sensory overload for so long?
They had a cucumber salad for openers, Mitchell ordering wine, Julia sticking with lemonade. "So, tell me what you found out about my father," she said.
Mitchell arranged his napkin with a flourish. "Later. This meal is costing a small fortune. You can pay me back by gazing into my eyes and melting."
She gazed, but didn't melt. She hoped someday soon she would be able to melt again, but not tonight. "It's important, Mitchell."
He sighed and drained his glass, tapped it until the waiter brought more. "It's like I told you, not much new. I got hold of the detective who worked the case, a Lieutenant James Whitmore, he's retired now, but I served on a Chamber of Commerce committee with his sister, so he was easy to track."
Mitchell fumbled in his jacket pocket, brought out a small sheaf of papers. "Got these at the records division. The case is still officially open, of course, but several hundred people have disappeared since then. Yesterday's news."
Julia scanned the documents. The basic details were unchanged: Douglas Arthur Stone, age thirty-six, reported missing on the morning of September 28th. He'd called the police to his house for an emergency. Stone's four-year-old daughter was found outside the house, confused, bleeding from cuts on her belly, and asking when her father would be back. The front door was unlocked, none of Stone's clothes appeared to be missing, his car still in the driveway. Credit-card and financial records had gone unchanged. The few distant relatives lived on the West Coast, and had heard nothing from him. And that was that.
Strange that, for years, all she could remember of that night was standing barefoot in the grass. Now, Dr. Forrest had led her to the memories that had been lost for so long.
"What did Whitmore say?" Julia asked, after reading the neighbor's unrevealing statements.
"Said he remembers following up leads at the school where your father taught. All dead ends. The case got buried pretty fast." Mitchell leaned over the table and held her hand. "Why don't you just let it go?"
She pulled her hand away. "I can't."
If only she could tell him about the image of the Black Mass, the recovered memory, the only piece to this puzzle that she had. However elusive that memory was, at least it was something. But part of her was afraid that Mitchell would be shocked, view her as damaged goods, and once and for all decide that her "behavioral disorder" was no longer just a cute little quirk and decide to cut his losses. Though she was unsure what place she had in Mitchell's life, she couldn't bear the thought of being without him and the secure future he offered. The other part of her was afraid that Mitchell would laugh in her face.
Dinner came, and they ate over small talk of Mitchell's legal cases, local politics, how Julia should re-invest the small inheritance that her adoptive parents had left. It was easy for her to fall into the role of sympathetic listener, nodding and affirming Mitchell's rightness in all matters.
Mitchell walked her to a downtown hotel and rode the elevator with her. "Your skin smells sweet," he said at her door, his breath on the soft nape of her neck.
"You feel good," she said, her arms embracing his familiar and comforting form. He took that as an invitation and dug his fingers into her shoulders. She dodged his next maneuver, a nuzzle under the ear. He hadn't changed his repertoire in her absence.
He would follow his instructional manual by rote until Tab A was inserted into Slot B. Part of her wanted to surrender, through the genetic instinct that needed a mate and provider, but her head was swirling so much she wouldn't have been able to derive any pleasure. And though Mitchell was certainly not afraid to indulge himself irrespective of her response, she wasn't up for a game of false enthusiasm.
She kissed his cheek and danced away from his grasp. "Not tonight, honey. But soon."
His face darkened. "As soon as you're better?"
"You've always said you don't want half a woman."
"I don't want half, but I could at least get a piece."
"Mitchell."
"If I didn't have so much invested in you . . . "
"If you really love me, it's worth the wait."
"I can't wait forever," he said, anger flushing his cheeks red, portraying emotion he would never let loose in a court of law. "I'm under a lot of pressure. I'm out on the gangplank with some creditors, and these people play for keeps. Once we're legal, I can get your money for you. For us."
"My inheritance wouldn't even cover the down payment on a house, much less bail you out of big trouble. And I'd give that to you right now if you ask."
"Never mind," he said. "I've got people to see."
He gave her a kiss and pressed a slip of paper in her hand. He hurried down the hall, giving her a terse wave as the elevator swallowed him. She put her fingers to her lips, about to blow him a kiss, but he was gone before she could float the gesture his way.
She looked down at the paper. It was James Whitmore's phone number. Beneath it, in Mitchell's neat, obsessive-compulsive writing, was written: "Sweet dreams, Jooolia."
Julia met James Whitmore at the hotel bar. She picked him out immediately. He'd told her to look for the man who didn't belong, and that would be him. Whitmore sat on a stool, three hundred pounds, his bald head reflecting the neon beer signs. His face was wrinkled with great folds of ebony skin, but his eyes were clear. He was drinking milk, and a milk mustache contrasted with his broad lips. He nodded at her in the bar mirror as she sat beside him.
"Mr. Whitmore?"
"My, haven't you grown up," he said.
She realized he must be comparing her to the four-year-old Julia, the one whose father disappeared one autumn night long ago.
"Thank you for coming down. I know you don't owe me anything, and you probably had plans for the evening."
"A drink with a pretty lady? Sounds like a plan to me."
The bartender came, and she ordered a gin gimlet. The strong bite of the alcohol kicked away some of the day's accumulated weariness. "I know Mitchell Austin talked to you about my father's case, but I was hoping you might remember something he overlooked."
"Doubtful," Whitmore said. "Lots of people owe him favors. If he asks for something, he usually gets it. You with him?"
"Excuse me?"
"You his girlfriend? Wife? Or, what do they call it now, significant other?"
"We're engaged," she said, taking a second, larger swallow of the gimlet. "Could you please go over the case for me? Just one more time, and I promise I'll leave you alone."
"Not much to add. I wasn't the lead, that was Lieutenant Snead. I was just part of the investigating team. You've seen the case files and the incident report. We put out an APB, sent photos to the FBI and the state agencies, dug into his background to see if anybody had a grudge."
He looked down at her. "We talked to you, too, of course. But you were so confused, you didn't know what happened. My, you were cute. We felt so sorry for you, losing your Dad like that. And the deep cuts on your belly, from the broken window in your room. You must have tried to crawl out."
"The reports said that, besides the broken window, there was no evidence of forced entry and nothing was taken."
"As far as we can tell. Of course, he might have had a million dollars in a paper sack, for all we know."
"He was a high school teacher."
Whitmore looked at her over his glass of milk. "Some people don't like to hear bad stuff about people they thought they knew. What about you?"
"Try me," she said. "I've probably imagined worse things than you can come up with."
He smiled, eliminating the fierceness that would otherwise show in his bold features. "I suppose you have. Well, he could have been into drugs, maybe he was dealing. Couldn't find anybody who dealt with him, but it's not exactly the kind of information you volunteer to the police just to be a good citizen."
The night's band was setting up on the stage at one end of the room. A stringy-haired teenager plugged in a guitar, one of the legion of fast-fingered guitarists that wandered through Memphis on their way to nowhere. Julia had watched them all her life, marveled at the endless power that dreams held on people, dreams that let them lie to themselves about the odds of making it. Or of being happy.
Whitmore's bulbous eyes took in the scene. "Your father was pretty white-bread plain, as far as we could tell. Could be that he tried real hard to make it look that way. Wouldn't be the first."
"No plane tickets, no cab calls, car sitting in the driveway. Anything turn up on his driver's license or credit cards?"
"Nothing. In a missing person case, you retrace the victim's steps over and over, trying to find the point where the trail veers off. The day he disappeared, Douglas Stone taught class, dropped you off and picked you up at daycare, took you to the library and the park, fed you at McDonald's. Apparently tucked you in that night. Then just up and walked off the face of the earth."
The teen played a blues lick, not bad but nothing special, and began helping the drummer put her kit together. A tall man with a bass guitar strapped across his shoulder began running cables. It would probably take another half-hour before sound check, and Julia wanted to be far away before the first out-of-tune chord screamed.
Julia finished her drink, closed her eyes, and tried to summon details from her dreams and hypnotism sessions. What would Dr. Forrest ask her to look for? "What happened to his personal effects?"
"They were held in the evidence locker for two years then sold at public auction. The money went to the foster home where you were staying."
"Any valuables or personal effects?"
"Men didn't wear much jewelry back then, not like they do now. But I remember something that I thought was strange. Didn't Mitchell tell you about the ring?"
"The ring?"
"Yeah. Big silver thing, shaped like a skull. Had two tiny rubies set in the eye sockets."
The ring. The one on the hand that held the knife. Julia's stomach tensed, and a shiver of remembered pain ran up the twin scars on her abdomen.
"That's kind of how we figured the disappearance wasn't in connection with a larceny," Whitmore continued, studying her face. "That ring was probably worth a few grand."
"Did that get auctioned off, too?"
"Yeah, as far as I know."
"Any records of sale from the auction?"
"Probably someplace, yeah. That was more than twenty years ago, before computer databases, and paper records have a way of falling through the cracks sometimes. But you might go down to the Records Division and take a look. They'll probably put up with you for fifteen minutes before they run you off."
He finished his milk. A man at the end of the bar lit a cigarette. Whitmore glared at the smoker, who promptly picked up his drink and ashtray and went to find a booth.
The bartender came by, Julia ordered a second gimlet, Whitmore passed on more milk. "Can I ask you something, Mr. Whitmore? And you don't have to answer, because you don't owe me anything and, as you said, some people don't want to hear bad stuff about people they thought they knew."
"Ask away," he said, glancing at his watch, and then at the band in the corner.
"Were there any reports of Satanic activity in Memphis around that time?"
The corners of Whitmore's lips lifted a little as if he were about to laugh, but realized she was serious. He must have seen his reflection in the bar mirror. He covered his mouth, wiping away the milk mustache. "There's always talk of that kind of thing," he said. "And, no, I don't believe the devil popped up and dragged your daddy down to hell through the bathtub drain."
"I don't, either. But some people apparently take it deadly seriously."
"We've had our share of mutilated animals," he said. "Most of it was just high school kids with too much time on their hands and too many people to impress. As for an organized effort, we don't have any Church of Satan branches here or anything. Who was that guy that started that mess out in San Francisco?"
"Anton LaVey? The guy who wrote the Satanic Bible?"
"You really did study up, didn't you?"
"Even better. I work with a guy who did. He's either the world's leading expert on Satanic ritual or else he ought to be writing horror novels. But LaVey was nothing but a glorified carnival barker. I'm talking about the real thing, people who are into it so deeply that they're willing to kill to protect their secrets."
"Well, there was a lot of talk a few years back, claims of Black Masses and that sort of thing. Mostly came out of psychiatrist's reports. You know, ritual child rape, child sacrifice, chronic abuse. Cops watch the news and read the papers, just like everybody else. Sometimes we'd see things that made us wonder, but there was one big problem with all those reports."
"Let me guess." Julia took a large gulp of her drink. "Same as with my father. No hard evidence."
"If even a dozen kids were sacrificed every year, they would have been noticed. Sure, Memphis has a lot of runaways just like everywhere else, and probably more kids run to here than away from here." Whitmore nodded his head toward the girl sitting beside the sound board, a pale, trembling fifteen-year-old blond. "It's either music or go into the trade. Sometimes both."
"So you don't think it's possible for a huge, organized, underground cult to exist without being discovered?"
Whitmore shrugged. "Hey, I was a cop for thirty-five years. I know anything's possible. But, you'd think at least one or two of the cult members would eventually become . . . now, what's that word I'm looking for? Disillusioned, maybe?"
"'Disenchanted' might be more appropriate."
He laughed. "Maybe you ought to be a writer or something."
"Or a reporter, maybe. So nobody ever came forward?"
"Not in my experience. But looking back, there's maybe a handful of unsolved cases that still give me the Creeps. The Mississippi floats up something ugly once in a while."
"Like an eviscerated corpse?" She told him about the Elkwood victim, and Whitmore's eyes opened wider.
"We had a couple of cases like that," Whitmore said, his voice soft. Julia had to lean forward to hear him over the noise of the gathering crowd and clinking glass. "Cut up just as you described," he said. "Come to think of it, one of them turned up a month or so before your father disappeared. Of course, there was no connection between the two, and no reason to think there might be."
"You've got a good memory."
He looked down at the bar, at the streaks of light in the polished oak. "A detective never forgets the cases he doesn't solve. Because, deep down inside, he never stops trying to solve them."
The guitarist had cranked his amplifier and strummed an ominous minor chord. The audience hooted, whistled, and drank. The drummer played a fill, checking the angles of the drum heads and cymbals. Ten years ago, the anticipation would have Julia electrified and ready to dance all night. Now, she preferred a radio so she could control the volume.
Whitmore looked similarly pained. "That's my cue," he said, heaving himself from the stool.
Julia gathered her purse, finished the last sip of her drink, and paid her tab. She walked Whitmore to the sidewalk and thanked him again.
"Doubt if I helped you any," he said. "Probably just made you more troubled than you already were."
"Trouble is only what you make of it," Julia said, reciting one of Mrs. Covington's mountain sayings. It sounded alien in that world of concrete and steel.
"I won't tell you that you'd be better off just letting the past alone, and getting on with your life," he said. "I'll bet you hear that enough already."
She smiled. "A detective never stops trying to solve them, right?"
His teeth gleamed in the streetlights. "Keep my number and give me a call if anything turns up."
She shook his hand and went up to her room, slightly woozy from the drinks. She lay on the bed and listened to the steady throb of traffic, the city's blood pumping through its monstrous asphalt veins.
Why hadn't Mitchell told her about the ring? Surely he knew that James Whitmore would mention such an unusual item. But he could have easily withheld Whitmore's number from her, he could have failed to mention the detective at all. She may or may not have found Whitmore through her own efforts.
By the time she fell asleep, fully clothed, she had convinced herself that Mitchell had only been trying to protect her. Mitchell didn't want her bothered by the past because he wanted a perfect future for her. As she drifted into a haze of jumbled imagery, she tried to pray but no words came, and neither did a response to her seeking.
Julia hadn't dreamed at all, at least as far as she remembered in the morning. She had a mild hangover, and she gave her reflection a hard time in the bathroom mirror.
"All it takes for you to avoid nightmares about bones is to slug down some eighty proof," she said, looking into her own red eyes. "You could be onto something there, girl. Something that doesn't sound like it leads to a happy ending. I believe I'd just as soon be crazy as turn into a lush."
Then she realized that probably only crazy people talked to themselves in the mirror, so she showered away the muscle aches and then dove into the Memphis phone book. She got the answering machine of her friend Sue McAllister, who had been a fellow reporter with The Commercial Appeal. Julia left a message that she was in town and wondered if they could get together tomorrow.
Mitchell called, and they met downtown for lunch. Julia glossed over her meeting with James Whitmore and didn't mention the skull ring. Mitchell had been a patient ally so far, and she didn't want him to turn on her. She concentrated on being pleasant, the kind of woman she thought he craved. But her mind strayed back to Elkwood, and halfway through dessert of lime Italian ice, Julia found herself thinking of the baseball cards Walter had brought her.
Mitchell's cellular phone interrupted his eating, and as he spoke into the mouthpiece, Julia studied his features. He was tan, with a strong jaw and cheeks that could raise a shadow by three o'clock. His hair was carefully trimmed, his sideburns cut even with his ears. Dark eyes, a nice mouth. Movie-star handsome, really. He could play the lawyer in a Grisham thriller.
She found herself comparing him to Walter, and she shuddered inwardly. She went after the dessert with renewed enthusiasm. Mitchell was her past, present, and future. Walter was the man who fixed her windows. End of reverie.
Mitchell closed his phone and gave that "tax-exempt status" grin that worked so well on civil-suit jurors.
"Will you drive me out to my father's old place?" she asked.
"The old place? What do you want to go out there for?"
"I haven't been there in seven years." She thought up a quick lie. "Dr. Forrest said it would be good for me, help me gain a sense of closure."
"What does this Dr. Forrest know? You've only been seeing her for a few months."
"Dr. Forrest is helping me. She understands me."
Mitchell pushed his plate away and looked out into the street. "And I don't, is that it? I suppose I should be grateful that at least you aren't seeing Lance Danner." He said the name in a mocking, effeminate manner. "Or are you on his calendar for this afternoon?"
"Will you take me or not? I can afford a cab."
Mitchell sighed, the exhalation of a tireless martyr. "Okay. Let's go. We can talk about the wedding on the way."
The house where Julia had lived was in Frayser, fifteen miles from downtown. The area was a bit run down, old industrial meeting up with the urban push of the outskirts, with working class families caught in between. They had a little difficulty finding the house because the area had changed so much, with new construction and the leveling of the giant maples that had once lined the road. The house still stood, its clapboard siding grayed by weather, a section of the gutter missing, grass high around the crumbled walk. A "For Sale" sign leaned in the front yard.
They walked around back, Mitchell carefully watching his step so his shoes didn't get scuffed. The fence along the back yard was missing some of its pickets and looked like a retired boxer's smile. The farm that had once stretched beyond the row of houses had been carved into lots, though a pasture and the warped barn remained.
"I used to play there," Julia said, looking out over the hayfield that was September-yellow. "Daddy wouldn't let me go in the barn, though."
"No wonder," Mitchell said, standing behind her and swatting at bugs. "The cow manure is probably six feet deep. Why in the world would anybody want to have animals wandering outside his house?"
Julia studied the barn. Something was odd about it, there in the stark light cast by the sun's zenith, the tin roof rusted, gray siding boards askew and pocked with knotholes. The image tickled the back of her mind. But that wasn't quite right. Her memory of the scene was nearly a negative, of the barn in a colder light. The barn against the darkness.
"Jeez, you'd think they'd buy a lawn mower," Mitchell said.
Julia bit her thumbnail.
"Now that's what I call progress," Mitchell said. He pointed off in the distance, through a gap in the red-leafed maples. Bulldozers and trucks were parked on a large leveled plain of dirt. "The city needs to expand the tax base out this way. They're running sewer and water at a few hundred a foot, but these crappy houses provide zilch for valuation."
Julia stared into the black throat of the barn. What? What?
If only Dr. Forrest were here.
"Well, honey, look on the bright side," Mitchell said, walking away from her to the edge of the lot. "I mean, I know it's terrible what happened to your father, but at least you were lucky enough to be adopted by wealthy people. If you had grown up here, we probably never would have met."
The barn. Something from that night, the night of the skull ring and altar.
"Honey?"
The barn, stone, chanting, hoods. Bad people.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she yelped and turned.
Mitchell stood with his hands out, mouth open, as startled as she. "Huh?"
Julia put her hands over her face.
"Jeez, honey, why are you so jumpy? I knew we shouldn't have come out here." He stepped toward her. She moved away to the fence.
"Why can't you leave the goddamned past alone?" he shouted. "It's no good, and it never has been."
He adjusted his tie below his red face. "Why in the hell do you do this to yourself? Why do you do it to me?"
She looked away from him, out across the pasture. The barn's shape blurred with her tears. She felt on the edge of a great rift, her balance thrown, as if one of the earth's plates were breaking off and carrying her away. She gripped the fence, wanting to hang on to this world. Even with all its pain and troubles, it was the world to which she belonged.
If Mitchell came to her now, hugged her, she would let him. She would hug him back. She would leave this place and its memories, accept the safe life Mitchell offered, give up the senseless fleeing to Elkwood. She would go back to Lance Danner, no, she would get another therapist of Mitchell's choosing. And with the new therapist, she would only work on the present problems, the day-to-day ones that led forward to the future.
She would never look back. As much as she could avoid it.
"Maybe someday I'll understand," she said hollowly. "And someday I can make you understand."
"Someday," Mitchell mocked. "Well, we don't have a lot of 'somedays' left, so you'd better make up your mind."
She started to turn to him, to let him see the tears, but she knew that would weaken him and make him ashamed. Which Mitchell was real, the one that shouted at her or the one that caressed her tears away?
She continued staring across the pasture, at the golden-seeded grass that rippled in the breeze. It was a soft sea, a place that drowned memories. For only a moment. Because the barn floated like a dark ship on its surface.
She heard Mitchell stalk away and slam the door of his Lexus. She gave him a chance to drive away, knowing he wouldn't. She waited until the continents drifted back together, until the ground was stable under her feet. Then, without looking back at Mitchell, she stepped over the fence and headed across the pasture.
The interior of the barn was dim, even with the door open and the siding planks warped enough to admit slices of light. The support posts and boards were gray with age, and the hayloft floor sagged overhead. The place smelled of moldy hay and the dust from dried manure. Beneath that lay the odor of animal fur, even though the stalls had stood empty for years.
As she entered, the shadowy corners crawled toward her like legless things, dragging memories as if they were sacks of dead animals. Her feet moving across the dirt floor made a sound like the slithering of serpents' tongues. She shivered even though the air was humid and still. Julia hugged her arms to her chest, afraid to go forward but unable to stop herself.
She had been here before.
The scars on her stomach throbbed.
She knelt, lightheaded, as if she were going to vomit. Her ears rang with a high, piercing whine. Her heartbeat doubled its pace.
Panic.
The panic she had fought so hard to overcome. The panic that she'd managed to hide from Mitchell and her coworkers and even, while they were still alive, her foster parents. The panic that rose up and swallowed her on nights when the past drew too near, when the awful fingers came clattering and clutching.
The panic that Dr. Forrest insisted Julia could conquer.
But Dr. Forrest was in Elkwood, eight hundred miles away, and Julia was here, alone, on her knees in the dry crumbling hay. Julia closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the ground.
The cloak of panic descended, swift and suffocating.
Deep breaths, she told herself, but the thought was only one of many, crowded by death and a hot knife and the man with the skull ring and the cold stone and the bad people around her, the bad people touching her, laughing and chanting, the bad people, watching the blade touch her stomach and the silver slipping into flesh and red drops welling around its tip and the hand with the skull ring and the man with the hood and the face beneath the hood and---
She clawed forward, hands meeting a partition. A splinter penetrated her palm, but she kept her grip and pulled herself up, forced herself to her feet. The tears on her cheeks gathered the dust she had stirred. She sucked in a lungful of dirty air, trying to ignore her rapid pulse.
Panic is only in the mind, came her mental tape recording of Dr. Forrest.
Julia looked wildly about, the square light from the barn door like a great gate to a promised land. She thought of yelling for Mitchell, but she wasn't sure she could summon enough air, and he likely couldn't hear her from the car anyway. She pressed her back against the wall and raised her arms, resting them on the top of the half-wall to support herself. She sprawled there like a reluctant martyr awaiting nails to flesh.
Panic is only in the mind, Dr. Forrest repeated.
Julia unclenched her fingers. She willed her hands to be warm balloons, balloons in the sun, balloons the colors of jelly beans. It was working, she was in a park, lying on her back in the grass, she could breathe, the air tasted of sky and life and clouds, except she coughed from the choking dust, crazy, she was in the barn, the barn, THE BARN.
She closed her eyes again.
The bad people circled, the candles flickered, the thick smoke from the crucibles insinuated like gray dragons under the moonlight, and her body was as cold and deadened as the stone beneath her. The man with the skull ring, the High Priest, raised the knife and addressed the rotted goat's head that hung from the inverted cross.
"Highness of Darkness, Satan, Master of the World, accept this offering from your humble and loyal slaves, that you may continue to give us your blessings," the deep voice intoned, filling the hollow of the barn. "So mote it be."
The knife came down, Julia screamed, her breath rushed from her lungs, her body went limp.
When she awoke, she didn't know where she was. She turned her head and bits of old hay fell from her hair. The floor smelled of dirt. She looked up, saw the old locust beams of the barn, the square slots cut in the hayloft, the aged tin of the roof in the dim shadows above.
Her heart was beating steadily, only slightly accelerated. Her limbs felt as if they were filled with wet cement. She was sticky from dried sweat.
How long had she lain there?
She checked her watch. Even the act of raising her wrist was a great effort. 3:37. She'd been in the barn nearly twenty minutes.
She blinked away the last wisps of memory and dragged herself to a kneeling position. The panic attacks always roared in like tidal waves and ebbed away in a slow wash, leaving her battered and drenched. This hadn't been the longest attack, but it had been among the most intense.
She gathered her strength and stood on wobbling legs. The panic could sweep in, could crash down on her, but she wouldn't let it carry her out to the mad, gray sea. She clung to the tether of Dr. Forrest's encouragement and experience.
"Panic is only in your mind," Julia said to herself. The whisper died away among the wooden stalls.
Mitchell.
Hadn't he wondered where she went? Was he still waiting in the driveway, tapping the steering wheel with his manicured fingers? Or had he driven away, muttering under his breath?
Julia hoped he had gone away. She didn't want him to see her like this, filthy and unkempt and shaken. A trophy-to-be had to remain nearly perfect at all times, as cool as a drink at the Nineteenth Hole, as unruffled as a damask tablecloth.
But far worse than his dismay at her physical appearance would be his clumsy attempts at pity. Sure, he would brush her hair away from her face, even hug her, probably kiss her forehead, but he wouldn't invite himself inside her. He wouldn't caress her where she needed it most, in her spirit or soul or heart, the name and place of it as unknown to her as to anyone.
But it wasn't Mitchell's fault. She didn't allow an opening, wouldn't let anyone in the secret place where she might be healed with a touch. Dr. Danner and Dr. Forrest came close; they had softened her. But stubbornness or pride or merely the delusions caused by her disorder kept her always alone, always holding part of herself away from the world. Even knowing that ugly truth about herself didn't allow her to alter it.
She stumbled toward the door, squinting against the afternoon's brightness. The meadow was like fire, yellow against the backdrop of blazing red trees and the houses that clustered along the fence line. A train whistle sounded, an iron giant rumbling along distant tracks over in Frayser's industrial zone. The scant breeze shifted, carrying the river-mud smell of the Mississippi.
Julia waded through the tall grass to the fence. Through the trees at the back of the yard, she saw the Lexus still in the driveway. The driver's seat was reclined. Mitchell was either napping or steeped in a deep sulk.
She glanced at the sky, drawing on the reserves hidden behind clouds.
God, I suppose it's selfish to beg for a little help when I don't really believe in you. But maybe just push me a little farther along the path. At least let me walk.
The clouds appeared unchanged, and no shafts of golden light bathed her in benevolent warmth. No calm voice whispered comforting words in her ear, and no squad of angels winged down to rescue her. Yet she felt better from the simple task of reaching out, and the sense of isolation eased.
Okay, if you're not going to help, at least stay out of the way.
Julia brushed the hay and dust from her clothes, pushed her hair back, and climbed over the fence. She went to the rear of the house and opened the sagging screen door. She tried the knob to the back door, but it was locked. Just as she had expected.
She went to a rear window and looked through the smeared glass. Her old room. An electric buzz raced along the back of her neck as memories came rushing back. Not the bad memories of people in robes, but memories of a child at play, a child who had crawled on that wooden floor, who had sat in the sun with dolls and Chester Bear and alphabet blocks and books she couldn't yet read.
The room was bare and the closet door was missing. The walls had been painted, were now dirty off-white instead of the sky blue they had been when she lived here. One pane of the window had a piece of duct tape covering a crack. The top half of the window latch was lying twisted on the ledge.
Julia took a barrette from her purse, fastened her hair back, and banged on the pane to loosen the chipped paint. She worked her fingers under the window and lifted. A shower of dust drifted down as the window slid open. She glanced at the barren houses on each side before climbing headfirst through the opening. Her feet kicked wildly in the air for a moment. Then she wriggled through and stood on the floor she hadn't touched in more than twenty years, letting the window slide closed behind her.
She was inside the room she had been stolen from 23 years before.
Despite her shakiness, Julia felt almost giddy from the exhaustion that came after the crippling anxiety attack. What would Mitchell think if he saw that she had broken into the house? Mitchell worked mostly in property law and knew how to bend the rules in favor of his clients. However, he was very straight-laced about property rights. Visiting a vacant house that was up for sale was one thing, but crawling through a window was quite another.
The floor creaked under her feet. The door was the same, only the knob wasn't at eye level to her anymore. She put her hand on the knob---
The voices.
In the living room, Daddy and the man that Daddy called Lucius were talking.
Her breath caught, just as it had done when she was four. She pushed the door ajar with a groan of hinges, fully expecting to see the hooded people gathering around Daddy. But this time she saw only the dull glare of the sun on the worn beige carpet.
Julia went down the hall, past the dark bathroom, and turned to the other room. Daddy's bedroom.
She couldn't rid herself of Dr. Forrest's suggestions that Daddy had taken her in there as a child, had made her do naughty things, had touched her in ways that Daddies weren't supposed to touch. But Julia felt no dread, none of that suffocating shame that she'd suffered while reliving those suggested scenes in the therapist's office. Still, a mild shiver raced across her skin as she entered the room.
It was as bare as her own former room, the cover plates off the wall sockets, strips torn in the Sheetrock walls. The light fixture dangled from two wires, and the curtain rod had been ripped down and leaned in one corner.
Julia approached the small walk-in closet, much of it in a darkness as thick as night. Shelves lined each side of the closet, and the rod held three rusty hangers.
No skeletons here.
She was about to leave the room when she accidentally kicked a bottom shelf. It rattled on its wooden braces. Julia tucked the toe of her shoe under the shelf board and lifted. It flipped away easily, and Julia saw a small crack in the floorboards underneath. Something, a memory or deja vu or dream fragment, made her pause.
She got on her knees and ran her fingertips along the rough cut in the boards. The flooring was loose. A hollow sound answered her tap on the wood. She took the barrette from her hair and used it like a small crowbar to jimmy one of the boards up high enough so she could slide her fingers underneath. A cool rush of air came from the gap in the floor.
She removed more boards, three segments less than a foot long. The insulation had been pushed away. Her heart hammering, she reached into the crawl space, hoping that no spiders were waiting in the dark. She inserted her arm past the elbow before she touched dry dirt.
Julia worked her fingers around and scraped the block wall of the foundation. Then she raked the powdery dirt with her fingernails. Behind her, in her old bedroom, came the sound of the window sliding open.
"Julia?" Mitchell called, his voice reverberating in the empty house.
She quickly scrabbled in the dirt, cobwebs clinging to her forearm. Her palm brushed across a sharp edge. She dug around it, glancing behind her as her fingers freed the object. It was a tiny box. She brought it up and wiped the grit from its lid.
The box was carved from soft cedar. A strange shape was imbedded on its top. Julia traced the symbol with her finger. A star?
"Julia!" Mitchell called louder. "Are you in there?"
She didn't think he would crawl through the window, not with his dogged views on trespassing and his love of his power suit. But Mitchell would keep after her. He must have seen her go to the rear of the house. She wasn't sure she could disguise her excitement about her find. What if the box had belonged to her father?
"What do you think you're doing?" Mitchell shouted.
Julia glanced into the dark crawl space, wondering what other secrets might be lying under the soil. She thought of her dream of bones. Did the body really remember what the mind tried to forget?
She stood and went back into the living room, tucking the box into the front pocket of her slacks. She kept her hands in her pockets to disguise the bulge. Mitchell probably would accuse her of stealing if he saw the box, and if she tried to explain it belonged to her, she would have to delve into the past with him. Far easier to act crazy. She hunched her back and tried to look beaten, tired, and disoriented. It wasn't a difficult role.
Mitchell was holding up the window, his mouth set in a hard line, when she entered her old bedroom. "Have you gone nuts?" he said, with no hint of affection in his voice. "Do you want me to be a party to trespassing? Just think what that would do to my reputation."
Your reputation is stainless steel, Mitchell. Cold and shiny and beyond tarnish. Just like your heart.
She smiled weakly and looked at the floor. "I just wanted to see the house."
Mitchell sighed. "Come on, get out of there before somebody sees you."
She crawled out the window as Mitchell held it open. The box worked its way to the top of her pocket, but she managed to shove it back out of sight.
"Your hair's a mess," Mitchell said, letting the window slide shut and then wiping his hands. "Hope they don't check for fingerprints."
"I left it the way it was," she said, walking toward the Lexus, hoping Mitchell wouldn't stare at her and see the box. She needn't have worried. Mitchell hadn't really looked at her in a long time, not at the way she really was. Mitchell must have seen only the Julia he wanted to see, the perfect match for his perfection, a mirror that positively reflected his own self-image.
She got in the car and, before he reached the driver's side, slipped the box into her purse. She took a last look at the barn in the distance, trembled at the memory of panic, and closed her eyes as Mitchell backed out of the drive. Neither spoke on the trip back in. They were entering the city when Mitchell turned on the radio, a middle-of-the-road pop station. The earnestly bland emoting of the singers was almost as interminable as Mitchell's stoic silence.
Carrie Underwood was serving up a dish of love as if it were a slice of frozen pizza when Julia finally spoke. "I'm sorry I was strange back there. But you didn't have to yell at me, Mitchell. I needed you."
Mitchell was in heavy traffic now, and spared her only a cold glance before refocusing on the bumper ahead. "Need. Well, what about my needs?"
"What about them?"
"You call and tell me you're flying in from North Carolina, and what's the first thing I think about? How we're going to have a great time together, get close, reaffirm the wonderful thing we share. God forbid, even spend the night together. And you barely give me the time of day. It's always about you, isn't it?"
Julia had no answer. Though she was burning inside, she couldn't help but admit the truth of it. If only Mitchell could see she needed an ally more than she needed a lover. She hated herself for not being able to reach him, for having so very little to offer. Even God had no use for her.
"You think it's easy to go six months without sex?" Mitchell continued, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. "I mean, if you were holding out on religious grounds, maybe I could respect you. But I can't help thinking you're teasing me on purpose. Your tap runs so hot and cold, I sometimes wonder if you're trying to make me crazy, too."
"I'm not crazy." She stared straight ahead, at the spires of the tall buildings looming in the thick of Memphis. "They call it 'panic disorder.' Or 'personality disorder not otherwise specified, with schizotypal traits,' depending on whom you ask."
"That's what Lance Danner says. But I'm sure he had his own reasons for keeping you on a short leash." The traffic had jammed and slowed to a crawl. Mitchell turned to look at her. "I don't care if these screwballs get their jollies by turning you on a spit and roasting you over the flames of your own juices, but I wish they'd leave a little meat on the bone for me."
"Let me out at the next corner." The hotel was three blocks away. Even though Creeps filled the sidewalks and lurked in the alleys, they were a safer risk than Mitchell.
"Don't be ridiculous, Julia." Mitchell's tone changed, became patronizing. "Let's have dinner."
The traffic backed up to a stop, and Julia opened her door.
"What do you think you're doing?" Mitchell shouted. But Julia was already out of her seat, her purse under her arm, dodging between two parked cars and heading down the sidewalk. Mitchell called her name once more, but a blaring car horn forced him to close the passenger door and move with the traffic.
Julia tried to avoid looking at the strangers who passed her, the people who lurked in doorways, those who hid behind newspapers or peered out from windows. A police siren sliced into her like a laser, its frenzy echoing off the concrete facades. Car exhaust hung heavy in her throat and in her nose. The city's humid stink pressed against her like a second skin, and she suddenly longed for the clean, fresh smell of the Blue Ridge forest.
She kept her eyes on the sidewalk, concentrating on making it to the next crack, and the next, trying to ignore the hundreds of moving shoes. She hugged her purse close to her chest. To have it snatched now, when she finally had a clue to her past that might be more valuable than money, would be the final joke played by this cruel city.
Someone bumped into her, she gasped and glanced up despite herself---
A bad man, face hidden by a hood---
She gave a small scream, and the man backed away, his hands spread in innocence.
"Sorry, lady," he said, sweat beading his balding head. He wasn't one of the bad people, just an overstressed, overweight jogger who was in a hurry for a date with a heart attack. He tugged the hoodie of his Tennessee Titans sweats and continued on. Julia staggered away and the sea of flesh swept on.
The hotel lobby was cool and sparsely crowded. Julia controlled her breathing during the solo elevator ride and was finally in her hotel room, the door safely locked. She sprawled on the bed, the image of a million bad people painted inside her eyelids, an entire Memphis filled with hooded Creeps. She lay there until she was as back to normal as Julia Stone could get.
Then she sat up, carried her purse to the desk, closed the curtains, and took out the box.
It was the first time Julia had ever used the fingernail file she carried in her purse. She scraped the blunt, hooked edge against the lid to clean the accumulated grime and wiped the lid with tissues moistened by her saliva. She turned the box around and saw that the star was actually a pentagram. Carefully etched into the points of the star were the features of a goat's head, with curling horns and broad nose and evil, slanted eyes.
Two words were carved beneath the symbol: Judas Stone.
She had hoped that her memories were faulty, that her father had no connection to the bad people despite what Dr. Forrest said. But here was damning evidence that blew a spark of memory into a bonfire of unavoidable truth. Here was a solid piece of the past, hellish and strange and as disturbing as a dozen Creeps. She realized with a spasm of fear that she would no longer be able to lie to herself.
Daddy had been one of them.
Her fingers trembled so much she could hardly hold the file steady. She inserted the blade into the crack and pried open the lid. An aroma of aged mold rose from the box. Inside was a tiny piece of rumpled cloth, stained a dark shade of reddish-brown.
She carefully lifted the cloth and placed it on the desk. She sat before her tableau of grit and soiled tissues and old wood spread across the brightly shellacked surface of the desk. She had to look away for a moment, to reaffirm that the sane, sterile hotel room still existed, that order and not chaos still held sway. The telephone, the television set, and the crisply made bed provided a cold comfort.
The cloth tore as she opened it, bits of thread crumbling away from dry rot. At last she reached the final fold, and sat staring incomprehensibly as sunlight bathed the object.
A skull ring.
Just like the ring from her dream and the same one that Whitmore had described, with one difference. The eye sockets of the skull were empty, not set with rubies. Julia studied the silver expanse of forehead, the cruel mockery of a grin. Inside the band were engraved those same two horrifying words. Judas Stone, done in an elegant script.
She knew she shouldn't touch it, that the police would want to dust it for fingerprints. But the police should have noticed the loose boards in her father's closet. True, her discovery of it was accidental, but people trained in investigative techniques would have discovered the box in fifteen minutes.
Unless they already knew the box was there. And overlooked it on purpose. Maybe Satan had gotten to the cops . . . .
No, Julia, that is crazy thinking, and Dr. Forrest says you are not crazy. You are NOT going to start spinning conspiracy theories. Who cares if the Bush family plotted 9/11 and if Rick O'Dell says that Satanism reaches into all levels of government, law enforcement, military, and society? I mean, if it were that widespread, it wouldn't exactly be considered "underground," now, would it?
Satanists had surrendered, joined other more popular and lucrative movements. As counterculture, devil worship had lost favor and was hardly more provocative than Islam beliefs. So far as she knew, no political candidate had ever successfully run on a Satanic ticket. And it wasn't the type of thing one put on a job application. In truth, the orthodox were the only ones who even cared that Satanists had unorthodox practices. And Satan had probably sold more Bibles than Jesus ever had, because fear was the world's greatest sales pitch. Julia knew all about how motivating fear could be. After all, it had pretty much pulled her puppet strings for a couple of decades.
And though her stomach clenched like a hot fist, though electric sweat sluiced from her pores, though she shook so much that her chair squeaked, she reached out and touched the ring.
Nothing.
She didn't know what she had expected, black clouds rolling in, thunder shaking the building, the earth opening up and swallowing Memphis, or merely a puff of sulfurous smoke from which would step a red-faced, goatish creature complete with pointy pitchfork.
Just as God had failed to appear when summoned, Satan had also missed a chance to shock and awe.
So much for vanity over the worth of my soul.
Almost giggling with relief, she lifted the ring and held it close to her face.
"Hello, ugly," she said to the engraved skull.
Did talking to a hunk of silver qualify one for the loony bin? People of many religions addressed gods they couldn't see, and seemed better off for it. Julia figured a good rule of thumb to follow was, "You're only crazy if the inanimate object in question talks back."
Or maybe you weren't crazy, merely one of those privileged few to whom gods deigned to dispense wisdom. Modern prophets were likely misdiagnosed as schizophrenics, and if Jesus really did return to Earth and start spouting messages of eternal rewards and miracles, he'd be strapped to a crash cart, pumped full of Thorazine, and wheeled into a rubber room to wait out the rest of his second coming.
The ring wasn't evil. It was only a lump of mineral, heated and cast and polished by human hands. Except this ring had been her father's, if she believed the engraved words.
The ring was the only relic she had left of the man who had helped bring her to life, a man whose face would have faded like an old photograph except for the recovered memories that kept him always on her mind. And though the memories weren't always comforting, she was grateful to Dr. Forrest, and, before her, Dr. Danner. They had linked her with her own past, shown her how the symptoms of the present came from that bewildering period of her childhood, and now Dr. Forrest was finishing the work of teaching Julia to heal.
Now it was no longer theory. Maybe with this final evidence of the truth, Julia could begin to bury the past.
As Julia held the ring to the light, the twin scars on her stomach tickled and itched. She almost wished the ring had spoken, because she still had too many unanswered questions.
Had her father been one of the bad people?
Was he one of those who had chained her to the stone, who danced around her in robes, who touched her, who drank from that strange silver chalice?
Was her father really one of the Creeps?
Recovered memories were one thing, something she knew could be manufactured and then accepted as fact. But the ring was solid, substantial, real. The ring bore the name of Stone. The ring threaded reality into the weavework of an imagined past sewn from dreams, suggestions, and fear.
Julia knew she would do it. It was almost as if the skull moved itself, guided its silver smirk toward her left hand. Then to the tip of her ring finger, the one that should have worn Mitchell's engagement diamond. And then the metal band eased itself over her fingernail, past her knuckle, and settled on the flesh above the pad of her palm.
A warm glow expanded out from the ring, radiated up her arm in waves, spread through her body and made her lightheaded. The heat turned into electricity and Julia no longer felt weak. She stared into the skull, and it smiled back at her, as if understanding her need to surrender.
"It's been a long time," the smile seemed to say. "But you're finally ready to become Judas Stone."
No, no, NO.
She yanked off the ring and flung it away. She ran to the far corner of the room as if fleeing a feral animal.
She huddled against the closet, fists over her ears, shrugging off the descending cloak of panic. She forced herself to take deep breaths.
Only a ring, only a ring, only a ring, INHALE . . .
The air tasted of crypts and incense.
Only a ring, only a ring, only a ring, EXHALE . . .
Her heart twitched in her chest like a sack of rats.
The panic settled over her, coal black and blood thick.
Her thoughts spun, wheels without tracks, wire unraveling, stones tumbling in an avalanche. The ring on the hand, the hand that held the knife, that brought the knife down to her belly, that made the incision, a slick hot trail on her abdomen, why was the bad man hurting her, why?
And the knife lifting again, blood dripping from the bright blade, the candlelight glinting in its rich redness, the bad people leaning over her, the knife descending again, slicing deftly across the other side of her tummy, and she was aware of the injury, only she didn't feel any pain.
The smoke from the crucibles hung in the air like wool as the bad man held the bloody knife to the sky. Then he raised his other fist, and the skull ring shone pale in the night. The bad man touched the knife to the ring, as if allowing the skull to drink, and the red ruby eyes glowed, pulsed in rhythm to little Julia's frantic heartbeat.
And, beneath the hood, the bad man's eyes glowed with that same red intensity.
He reached into his robe and leaned over her, his breath like old goat cheese, and whispered, "Oh Satan, Master of the World, take as thy bride this whore Judas Stone."
This whore Judas Stone.
She was Judas Stone, too.
The words rang in her ears, ripped through her like a death knell, ripped the fabric of her soul, even as that dream-image bad man raised her limp hand and slipped the ring home.
The ring was hers.
Oh, Christ almighty, the ring was hers.
But that made no sense. A ring sized for a four-year-old wouldn't fit now. Had it expanded as she touched it, had it widened itself to accommodate her finger?
The ring is yours, the ring is yours, INHALE . . . .
Rings didn't shrink and grow. Satan was not real, and had no power. The only thing that held power over her was panic. She tried to relax the way Dr. Forrest had taught her.
But Dr. Forrest was miles and miles away, and Julia was alone with the ring.
Inhale. INHALE---
She crawled across the floor, and the dark cloak of panic became a noose, clamping tightly around her neck. Tears trailed down her cheeks.
Julia reached the bedside table, her lungs on fire from the lack of air. Her heartbeat was thin and rapid. She found the phone, pulled it to her lap, punched the numbers.
She managed a shallow gasp as the connection was made and the earpiece gave its electronic purr. By the third ring, she had exhaled.
Please be there.
The phone clicked, and the voice spoke on the other end of the line. "Hello?"
Julia could breathe now. The air was sweet again, air-conditioned and cool and relaxing. "Dr. Forrest, it's me."
"Julia?"
"Yeah."
"What's wrong?"
"I---I'm having an episode."
"Where are you?" Dr. Forrest sounded almost angry.
"Memphis. I flew in yesterday."
"Memphis? Without my approval?" No denying the anger now. "Something like this could set us back months."
"I had to find out---"
"What could you possibly find out?"
"I went to the old house," Julia said.
Dr. Forrest said nothing. Julia looked around for the ring as she continued. "I saw the barn behind my house. That's where it happened. I know that's where it happened. And my father . . . "
"Say it, Julia. Say it so that you can make yourself believe it."
"My father was one of them."
"One of the bad people. One of the Creeps. You finally believe."
Julia thought about telling Dr. Forrest about the ring, but she was afraid. If Dr. Forrest was this angry over Julia going to Memphis without permission, the therapist might have a panic attack of her own. Julia needed to make sense of the discovery before she shared it.
"Yes," Julia said. "I remember it now. He was there at the ceremony. My father wed me to Satan."
"Just as you dreamed. Just the way you shared while under hypnosis." Dr. Forrest was slightly calmer.
"It's all true."
"I wouldn't let you lie to yourself, would I, Julia?"
"No, Dr. Forrest."
"When are you coming back?"
"Tomorrow."
"Good. I'll schedule you for a Tuesday session."
"That . . . that would be good."
"So, what set off your panic attack?"
Anything besides the ring and the electric power that surged through my skin at its contact. "I was just thinking about it all. How terrible it was. What a monster my father was."
"I understand, Julia." She sounded excited now. "You know what this means, don't you?"
Julia now saw the ring, lying on the floor where the edge of the bedspread brushed the carpet.
"This means that we're approaching healing," Dr. Forrest said. "We've assessed the damage and we've pictured the effects of the ritual abuse. Now it's time for the final step."
"The final step?" Julia watched the ring as if expecting it to turn molten and slither across the floor toward her.
"Preparing for change. Now you're ready to embrace the past, to become whole. To become the whore Judas Stone."
Julia's breath leaped away. "WHAT?"
"I said it's time for you to become the whole Julia Stone."
Julia shook her head. If she were going to start twisting the words of her therapist, she would lose herself to the oily sea of fear and float adrift. She couldn't afford to break this last lifeline of trust. "I talked to one of the officers who worked my father's case."
"Who was it?" Dr. Forrest asked, sounding angry again. Why should she care which one Julia talked to?
"James Whitmore. He's retired now."
"Have they learned anything new?"
"Nothing new," Julia said. "In fact, the case is pretty much buried."
Just like the box had been.
Julia felt well enough to drag herself onto the bed. She twirled the phone cord and waited for Dr. Forrest to speak.
"You're not going to see Dr. Danner while you're there, are you?" the doctor finally said.
"No. Why should I?"
"Well, some patients develop an addiction to their therapists. I've been friends with Lance for many years. But I think you need to sever those ties to Memphis. They're not doing you any good."
"I don't want to go backwards," Julia said. "I'm grateful for the help he gave me, but I really feel like you understand me better. I believe you'll help me heal."
"Of course I will, Julia. You just have to trust me."
"I trust you."
"Then listen to me. Practice the visualization exercises we've been working on. Take a deep breath, a belly breath." The doctor's voice became, soothing and even. "Your hands are inflating. Your fingers are swelling with light, warm heat. They are feathers, they are little clouds, they are fish sunning in a pool."
"Mmm," Julia said, the memory of the treatment as effective as her practice of it. Dr. Forrest took her through the rest of the exercise, until she was lying flat on the bed. By that time, the bed was a magic carpet floating high under the sun.
"Are you relaxed now?" Dr. Forrest whispered.
"Mm-hmm." Julia was so relaxed she wasn't even aware of her pulse rate. She remembered something had been bothering her, but somehow only the lightness seemed important at the moment.
"I'll see you on Tuesday. Have a good evening, Julia."
"Bye, Dr. Forrest," she said softly. "And thanks."
She hung up the phone and was very nearly asleep when she remembered the ring.
She rolled out of bed, clinging to the peaceful images that Dr. Forrest had suggested. She took the old stained cloth from the desk and picked up the ring without making skin contact with the metal. She sealed it inside the box and tucked the box back in her purse for safekeeping.
Outside, darkness was falling, and pricks of light appeared in the buildings as the city changed shifts. Julia undressed, slipped into a thin nightgown, and climbed into bed. She fell asleep wondering if Mitchell would call.
She awoke refreshed, unburdened by the lingering images of any dreams. She scarcely thought of the ring in her purse. After a shower, she dressed and went down to the lobby for a cup of coffee. Caffeine was bad for her, made it harder for her to remain calm, but the habit was old. Maybe someday, after Dr. Forrest healed her, she'd be able to give up all her little crutches.
When Julia got back to her room, she dialed the offices of The Commercial Appeal and reached her old friend Sue.
"Well, looky what the cat dragged in," Sue said in her slow drawl. The sounds of a busy newsroom spilled from the background.
"Did you get my message?" Julia asked.
"Just got it this morning. I figured you'd call me here, and I didn't want to call back in case Mitchell was with you."
"There was nothing to interrupt, unfortunately."
"That's a shame, girl. Damn, that man is a hunk." Sue McAllister had never been shy about poking into other people's bedrooms or closets. That was why she was such a successful reporter. "Well, if you're not in Memphis to rumple the sheets with Mitchell Austin, what the heck are you doing here?"
"Just doing a little digging," Julia said. "And I was hoping you could help."
"Honey, we've been through all the files in the morgue. You've got every scrap of information on your father's case that was ever printed. Hell, you know more about the case than the cops do."
You can say that again, Julia thought, and almost told Sue about finding the ring. But it was her one little secret, the one thing that provided a solid link to that long-ago night. Julia knew she was being paranoid, but she decided that the secret was worth keeping for now. "I'd like to get a list of the detectives who worked on the disappearance."
"I thought you already did that."
"Well, I wasn't paying attention to the names."
"Hey, I can tell you're onto something. You going to let old Susie Q in on the deal?" Sue used Julia's nickname for her, a reference to the Credence Clearwater Revival song.
"You'll get the scoop if something turns up. I know solving a twenty-year-old missing-persons case isn't Page One stuff, but at least you'll have my gratitude."
"Great. That and a quarter will let me throw a coin in a street musician's hat."
"Is it okay if I come down around eleven? Then I'll take you out to lunch."
"Okay. I'll have to run, though. They're releasing the autopsy report of a suspected drug dealer. Five bullet holes in him, what do you think was the cause of death?"
"Let me guess. No matter what the medical examiner's ruling, the D.A.'s office will go, 'No evidence, no case.'"
"Saves taxpayer money."
Julia took a cab across town. The Appeal had changed very little in four months, and Julia grew a little wistful seeing her old desk. The newsroom was just as busy as before, her column inches in the first four pages filled by younger, hungrier writers. A few former coworkers seemed glad to see her, but afforded her only a couple of minutes before turning back to the day's breaking stories.
Sue McCallister was vibrant in a red skirt and jacket, her curly brown hair tied back with a scarf. Julia hugged her, glad for some human contact after enduring Mitchell's mood swings. They spent a couple of minutes catching up on the last few months and Julia's new job, and then Sue said, "You got your 'bloodhound' face on. Let's get to the clippings."
They went to a small cubicle and sat at a table covered with press releases and Styrofoam coffee cups. Sue had already made copies of all the stories on Douglas Stone's disappearance, and the pages protruded from a manila folder. Julia was familiar with most; she had clippings of the case tucked into her filing cabinet in Elkwood. This time, though, she jotted notes from each.
"Ah, what are we looking for?" Sue said, her smile bright with lipstick.
"Cops. I'm tracking the trackers."
"Well, T.L. Snead headed that case, at least early on. It got dropped pretty quick."
"Snead. Why does that sound familiar?"
"Probably because you've read it a hundred times. He's the one who made all the media statements."
They went deeper into the pile. Other officers listed were Whitmore, a Sgt. J.T. Redding, and Sgt. W.R. Ussery. Julia scanned the copy she almost knew by heart, hoping to catch something she had missed the first time. No mention of Satanic connections had ever been made.
One article was accompanied by a photograph of little Julia, her eyes wide and her mouth relaxed in shock. Some unidentified Social Services worker was leading her into an office building. The cut-line copy downplayed the "abandoned girl" theme, but it was impossible to avoid sensationalism totally. Julia had been front-page news for nearly a week, slipped to the crime briefs, and finally was gone, fading into the gray wasteland of dead stories.
Snead was quoted in several of the early articles. He used copspeak such as "We're following up on every lead" and "We're hopeful that Mr. Stone will be found." Snead was photographed at the front of the house, directing the investigation, his hooked nose and dark eyes making him look like a great bird of prey. Far in the background, barely visible in the murky ink of the fence line, the barn stood in the meadow.
Julia's heart raced for a moment, but she turned her mind back to business.
"T.L. Snead, T.L. Snead," Julia murmured. "I wonder what his initials stand for?"
Sue wiggled two of her fingers. "Let your fingers do the walking, girl."
Sue turned to her computer and mouse-clicked her way to a database of public records that included municipal police reports. A separate database listed the members of the police force, their salaries, and career highlights. Sue made a dirty joke about "police briefs" as she browsed the files.
T.L. Snead was not on the current roster. A search revealed that Snead had transferred from the force four months ago, though he was nearing retirement. The lieutenant had resigned to accept a position in Elkwood, North Carolina.
"Weird," said Sue. "How many people move from Memphis to Elkwood every year?"
"Do you believe in coincidences?" Julia asked.
"I don't believe anything unless I read it in the paper. You know the first rule of journalism: Consider the source."
Julia's mind raced with this new information. T.L. Snead had led the investigation into her father's disappearance, an investigation that seemed to have been haphazard at best. Was Snead the one who had searched her father's closet and failed to see the loose boards? Or had he deliberately ignored what he saw?
Or maybe--and this was the leap Julia kept to herself, lest Sue believe she was paranoid and delusional--Snead had planted the ring.
And the barn. The barn was part of the area that should have been searched. If Julia had been violated and abused there, some evidence might have remained, spots of blood or footprints or crushed grass marking a trail across the meadow. The police should have canvassed the entire neighborhood. Could Snead have taken responsibility for searching the barn, knowing that any stray evidence would stay secret if he filed a negative report?
No, this is stupid. Rick O'Dell is wrong. The police are not owned by Satan. They haven't sold their souls and aren't covertly working for capital-E 'Evil' under the guise of law and order.
If people were able to sell their souls, and Satan truly was the Master of the World, a cop would probably ask for a job that was better-paid and less dangerous. But if a man were deluded enough to believe that Satan existed, maybe such a willing slave would let the "master" determine the task. Religious fanatics throughout history had done stranger things, such as flog themselves with whips, wear sackcloth and rub themselves with ashes, and perform suicide attacks on so-called infidels.
Then again, if Satan wanted to work dark miracles in the world, why not first corrupt law and order?
"What are you thinking about?" Sue asked, leaning away from the computer.
"How many unsolved murders have you covered since you've been working here?"
"Hmm. In twelve years, maybe eight or ten. Murder is one of the easiest crimes to solve. The idiots almost always have an obvious motive, whether they realize it or not. It's a matter of putting the pieces together."
"And the eight or ten?"
"Give me a minute." Sue left the cubicle and waded through the journalistic storm of the newsroom. While she was gone, a man with graying hair and glasses scowled at Julia sitting at the computer. She looked away and he left.
Sue returned in a few minutes with another manila folder. "Even with computers, sometimes you can't beat good old black and white."
"I've seen your filing system. How did you ever manage to find that?"
"Job security. If you scramble everything around until you're the only person who knows where the good stuff is, they can't afford to fire you. Even in the age of Google and the Internet, sometimes you need a piece of paper."
"Ah-hah. That might come in handy when you write your true crime book."
"'True crime' nothing. I'm going to make it all up. Same as I do with Page One stories."
Julia laughed, glad to be around someone she was comfortable with. She was hit with a wave of warm nostalgia. Despite her diffuse and fractured memories, she'd had a routine here, along with friends and a fiancé. But Elkwood was more soothing somehow, as if its rounded, ancient mountains were shoulders to lean on in troubled times. She already missed the smell of the hardwoods and the splendor of the autumn forest. It seemed like weeks had passed since she'd arrived in Memphis.
Sue opened the folder, glanced at the incident reports, and passed them to Julia. Sue's original notes on the case were attached to the reports with paper clips.
"Caucasian male, aged approximately 30, found on the shore of the Mississippi by some kids," Julia paraphrased aloud. "Decapitated. Disemboweled. Fingerprint check came up empty."
"Ooh, that was a good one," Sue said, affecting a wistful sigh. "I got two weeks of front page out of that one. I followed up on it about six months later. Nothing ever came of it, but I suppose the case officially is still open."
Julia read through the next case. White female, early twenties, multiple stab wounds to the chest. Wrists slashed. Exsanguinated. The M.E. unable to determine if the blood had been drained before or after the victim's death. Possible sexual assault. Missing the tip of the right pinkie.
Three other victims were found in various stages of mutilation. In one instance, the M.E. had determined that some sort of symbol had been carved into a ruined section of flesh. None of the investigators speculated on the possibility of ritual murder. A couple were more mundane cases that appeared to be drug-related violence. The cases were spaced one or two years apart, and no connection had ever been made between them.
"Did you ever try to connect the dots?" Julia asked. "These murders have several things in common."
"Yeah, once I asked old Budgie if I could spend a few weeks running with it. You know what she said?"
Budgie was the less-than-fond nickname for the Appeal's news editor, Bridget Lawrence. She had a reputation for having greater concern for the paper's budget than for her reporters' pay rates. Plus, when Lawrence made up her mind, she wouldn't budge from her opinion, hence the nickname.
Julia drooped her jaws in imitation of Budgie's sour bulldog face. "What are we going to run in the meantime, press releases?" Julia said in a high-pitched, cigarette-scarred voice. They shared another laugh.
For a wild instant, Julia thought of moving back to Memphis and taking up her old life here where she had left off. She could probably get her job back and work on these clues in her spare time. She could get right back to normal, or the closest thing that passed for normal for someone with panic disorder.
Except such straight roads from the past and future didn't exist. Everything had changed. Julia was losing touch with Mitchell, but she had found Dr. Forrest. And being healed was more important than anything else right now.
To be healed, she needed to be in Elkwood with her therapist. Sobered, Julia studied the notes again.
"Well, two things jump out at me," said Julia. "First, all the victims were killed with knives or sharp instruments."
"Yeah, one M.E. says an ax was used to hack open the chest cavity. Other than that, everything from serrated edges to surgical blades. None of them were shot or bludgeoned first, so we assume the victims were carved up while still alive. So, what's the other connection?"
"You're slipping a little, Susie Q. You'll never get your Pulitzer at this rate."
"Sacrilege. What do you see?"
"The chief investigating officer. The same for each case."
Sue snatched the papers away and shuffled through them. "I'll be doggoned. Our old friend Lt. Snead."
"I guess he moved up to Homicide. He headed all these cases and then happened to move to Elkwood right after I did. What are the odds when you cross several one-in-a-million coincidences?"
"I never was good at math. That's why I went into journalism."
"Let's just call it 'right next to impossible.'"
"Works for me. Sounds like we need to do a little digging on Mr. Snead."
Julia stood, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. Her stomach muscles had clenched without her realizing it. She was on edge, wound tighter than the strings inside a baseball. She wanted to keep moving so the panic didn't have a chance to swoop down over her.
"We'll have to leave that job for later. I owe you a lunch, remember," Julia said, though she herself wasn't hungry.
"A reporter never turns down a free meal," Sue said. "It's a long and honorable tradition."
Julia smiled at her friend, though their closeness had waned through the geographic distance. Julia would be back in Elkwood this evening, in that strange land of mountains and forests and cold water running over boulders. How different this city was, with its plate glass and steel and asphalt, its teeming strangers. She longed for a breath of the sweet mountain air she'd quickly come to love.
They ate at The EString, as elegant a lunch counter as Memphis could offer. Sue agreed to do a little background on T.L. Snead, and then asked when Julia and Mitchell were "gettin' hitched."
"I don't know anymore," Julia said. "He was so supportive for so many years, but lately he's been acting strange."
"Honey, I hate to say it, but you haven't exactly been jumping into his arms every chance you get. Can you really blame him? If guys aren't getting their pipes cleaned out often enough, they get a little cranky."
Julia pushed her plate away, her chicken salad half-finished. "I know. I feel awful about it. Six months ago, I couldn't imagine life without him. He was so kind and supportive. But lately he's been impatient, trying to rush me into marriage. I just wish he'd understand that once I'm better, I'll be able to give him all of me."
"Probably in the meantime, all he wants is a piece of you." Sue leered and wiggled her eyebrows.
Julia looked outside at the crowded street and the bumper-to-bumper traffic. "He's too desperate. He wants to own me."
"A lot of women would kill to have Mitchell own them."
"That's one thing that worries me. The more possessive he gets, the more the little warning bells go off in my mind. It's almost Creepy. Why is he so afraid of letting me get away when he can have any woman he wants? And he said something yesterday that made it sound like I'm important to his financial stability, which is odd since you know how lousy reporters' salaries are."
"Maybe Mitchell is more complicated than you think. I hope it works out, though. You deserve to be happy." Sue glanced at her watch. "Hate to eat and run, but I got to get back to the office."
Julia had a momentary urge to tell Sue about the ring she had found, but decided against it. She felt as if she was deceiving her friend, but she promised herself that she would tell Sue just as soon as Dr. Forrest found out. The safest place to share secrets was Dr. Forrest's office, not over a lunch table.
They hugged good-bye on the sidewalk, with Julia promising to e-mail more often. Then Julia caught a cab back to the hotel. She rode the elevator up, distracted by the thoughts of packing for her flight. The hallway was empty and quiet, the business travelers already checked out. As was her habit, she glanced around to ensure she was safe before swiping her key card in the door lock and entering.
The door didn't close behind her, even though she had given it a shove. Confused, she started to turn.
A whisper at her back.
Movement of shadow.
CREEP.
Ohgodohgodohgod, a Creep for REAL.
Then a hand was over her mouth, encased in a glove that tasted of bitter leather. An arm snaked around her waist, pinning her right arm to her side and knocking her purse to the floor. The door slammed shut.
She tried to scream, but the glove mashed her lips against her teeth.
The arm around her waist tightened like a boa trying to squeeze the life from a rodent.
Her attacker loomed over her, a powerful stack of darkness. Leg muscles tensed against her, his erection pressed hot against her back.
Not a Creep, a rapist. A goddamned RAPIST.
Julia folded her leg backwards, hoping to kick the attacker in the groin, but he was too fast. Her heel struck harmlessly on the side of his calf. The attacker shoved her toward the bed.
God, right here in the hotel room. Not in the damned alley or shadows or dark parking garage. Right here on clean pressed sheets.
Her eyes bulged, dimmed by tears, as she fought to break free, to stand upright and not let the Creep on top of her. He grabbed the front of her shirt, jerked, and two buttons popped to the floor. One of the buttons rolled across the carpet and disappeared under the desk.
This wasn't happening.
This was not happening.
Not to her.
Someone else, not her.
She nearly collapsed as the panic swelled in her throat and joined the gloved hand in suffocating her. The darkness was so tempting. She wanted to grab the edges of those mental shadows and pull them over her head until the rapist was finished. She wanted to disappear like the button had, to be swallowed by the cold, soothing blackness.
God, where are you? If you're up there, why do you let things like this happen?
No answer.
The rapist drew his hand across the bare skin of her belly, and the glove raked across one of the scars. The pain of memory brought Julia back, fueled a fury that had been building since she was four years old. She couldn't fight then, not against ropes and two dozen hooded bad people, but she could fight now.
She drove her elbow into the side of the attacker. He grunted but kept his grip around her waist.
He wrapped a leg around hers, trying to force her onto the bed. Her shirt was now fully open, the flesh goose-pimpled by fear. The man grabbed one of her breasts and squeezed roughly. She screamed against the glove, but all that came out was a soft, agonized wheeze.
Julia twisted, evading that horrible, insistent heat. She reached her left hand to grab at his hair, but the man wore a covering of some kind.
A HOOD.
The man's breath was hot on her ear, rasping in a ragged rhythm. His lips trailed wetly across her neck. A shiver of disgust raced up her spine.
The man pressed her closer to the bed. Her knees bumped against the mattress. She braced her legs as he grabbed for the waist of her skirt.
When his hand was occupied, she attacked. She bent her neck down and suddenly drove the back of her head into his face. Due to his height, she only managed to hit his chin, but the blow gave off a satisfying crack.
The man groaned and his grip eased slightly. Julia took the opportunity to spin, nearly breaking free. Then the arm was around her, crushing more cruelly than before.
As they shifted, Julia saw their reflections in the dresser mirror. Her own pale, frightened face glared back through her tears, the black glove gagging her.
Behind her grappled the man in the hood. It was the gray hood of a jogging pullover, not a hood from her dreams. He wasn't one of the bad people from the past.
Just a miserable, pathetic, run-of-the-mill Creep.
Maybe that's your answer, God.
Julia relaxed her legs, letting him hold her full weight for a moment. Then she snapped upright and tried to squirm away. He held her firmly, though, and used the momentum to flop her onto the bed.
He pulled his hand from her mouth, but before she could draw in enough air to scream, he cupped his other hand over her lips. He rolled her onto her side, pinning her between his knees.
Julia flailed her legs as he sat on her thighs, his elbow digging into her chest. She could smell him, sweat and a raw animal scent, and beneath that, a faint, familiar, sweet aroma.
She looked at his face, but saw only the bright glint of eyes through the hood's opening. He wore some sort of ski mask beneath the hood.
Her free fist pounded his back. She may as well have been punching a sack of mud.
The Creep hissed under his breath, a harsh, evil sound. "Bitch!"
He wrenched her shoulder until she was flat on her back, his palm crushing her lips. The elbow on her chest pressed harder, and Julia thought her ribs would crack. Then the pressure eased and the arm moved away and Julia heard the sound of a zipper.
She wedged her knee toward his crotch. No good. She couldn't even turn her head away. All she could do was close her eyes, run for the long darkness inside.
Surrender.
Just like always.
The Creep forced her dress up, exposing her panties.
Gloved fingers tugged at the elastic.
No. Surrender isn't an option this time.
She wriggled, grappling for the edge of the mattress, the headboard, even a pillow. His odor came again, the offal of his lurid excitement. Pungent sweat and--
And cologne.
Jovan Musk.
The brand she'd bought him for Christmas.
Mitchell?
She glanced at the gap of skin between glove and sleeve and saw the Rolex.
Oh my God, it's MITCHELL.
Mitchell, who could have his pick of smartly dressed, curvaceous beauties, who could go down to his country club in Colliersville and have a woman undressing within the hour. Mitchell, who could afford the highest class of call girl if he wanted to get his rocks off.
Mitchell.
A Creep.
Mitchell must have seen the recognition dawning on her face. She couldn't disguise the horror, no matter how deeply she fled into the inner darkness. And her anger fueled her, allowed her to twist beneath him, get one knee planted, and simultaneously drive up and away from him.
He bellowed in rage as she slipped from his grasp, her blouse ripping and a button popping free. The slack gained by the torn cloth allowed her to reach the nightstand and grab the neck of the heavy wooden lamp.
Betrayed.
Always goddamned betrayed.
What had she ever done to deserve betrayal?
Easy. She'd opened the door and let someone into her heart. Trust was a sucker's game.
But her heart was cold now, and so was her nerve.
She slammed the lamp against him, the awkward swing knocking the lampshade against his head and swiping back his hood. The blow stunned him more than hurt him, but Julia seized the opening and spun to her feet, the lamp raised like a club.
You're throwing a curveball but I'm knocking this bastard out of the park.
This seemed like the absurd but logical conclusion to their eight-year relationship. The final swing in the bottom of the ninth. Bases loaded. And the game was over.
Not from blushing, fumbling first kiss to cold, uncaring abandonment. Rather, the end would be a farewell of malice, a last touch that left scars.
A good-bye that bled.
Mitchell shoved himself to the far side of the bed, perhaps recalling the power of her tennis stroke, or maybe just considering how a bruised face might look in the courtroom next week. She stared into those specks of light that marked his eyes.
Julia worked her jaw sideways, scraping her tongue against her teeth to remove the bitter taste of leather.
"Why?" she asked, not allowing the lamp to dip an inch though it quivered in her anger.
He batted the gray hood back and jerked the ski mask off his head. His always-perfect hair now stood like a shock of dark cornstalks in a field. He rubbed his face in his hands.
"Is that all you ever wanted, you bastard?" she said.
A tremor ran through Mitchell's muscular shoulders, and she was afraid he was going to renew his attack. Julia thumped the base of the lamp against the mattress, her force punctuating the pain she was ready to deliver. The wood was heavy enough to break bone. She grinned at the thought, and perhaps that scared Mitchell more than the weapon.
When he finally spoke, it was as if he were addressing someone outside the room, some all-hearing ear, though his words were cat quick and mouse quiet. "I just . . . I can't afford to lose you."
Julia made no attempt to cover herself. "You'd rather keep me broken?"
"I'm sorry," Mitchell said, keeping his gaze on his feet. "After yesterday . . . "
Julia glanced at the floor. The contents of her purse had spilled across the carpet. The wooden box was plainly visible, the carving of the pentagram delivering a hundred and ten volts to the chest.
The skull ring.
Mitchell's voice rose, the quick mood shift catching Julia by surprise. "Why did you have to go out there? Why the hell can't you just forget it all? You're mine, Julia. You belong to me, not the past and those damned hooded people."
He lifted his face. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. But Julia felt no sympathy, only a shudder of revulsion that she had ever let this pathetic specimen of the male gender hold and kiss her. To think that she had nearly married this creature and spent a life with him.
"I'll never be yours," Julia said, surprised by the chilly strength of her words. "Do you want to know why?"
Mitchell looked like his own evil twin, hair wild, fly open, eyes red. Or was this the real Mitchell Austin? The one that hid inside the power suits and lurked behind the smug mask of self-righteousness, a control freak who couldn't even control himself?
His lips moved like those of a hooked fish gasping on a riverbank. Finally, he managed to answer. "Why not?"
"Because there's no room inside your house, Mitchell."
His mouth fell open. He didn't speak, but his eyes said, "What the hell?"
Julia got to her feet, pulled her blouse closed and smoothed down her skirt. "You've got your house stuffed so full of yourself, there's no room for anyone else. And I'm not going to live in anybody's basement."
Except my own. In that place where bones are buried. But that has nothing to do with this jerk.
Mitchell backed away as if she were the Creep. He zipped himself and tried to gather his slick judicial composure. "Listen, you're not to going to press charges, are you? I've got a lot of friends in the D.A.'s office. You'll be smeared until you won't even be able to recognize yourself in the mirror."
Julia pictured herself filing a report, talking to the police. Sure, she had physical evidence of an assault. Bruises, torn clothing, maybe some DNA evidence under her fingernails. But assault cases where the rapist was engaged to the victim, where the pair had a long sexual history together, were practically impossible to prosecute.
Her word against his.
Mitchell looked her fully in the eyes and gave a smile that would chill a cobra's blood.
Because they both knew the truth. Julia's behavioral disorder would end up on trial, not Mitchell. He could afford the best in criminal defense, and in the end, Mitchell would walk out of the courtroom laughing while Julia dripped into a black puddle of miserable self-loathing. The defense would have its psychological "experts" prod and poke her brain until she finally convinced herself that the attack was her fault, that she'd staged the whole thing because everybody knew that crazy people did crazy things.
Of course. What jury would convict an upstanding, respectable citizen solely on the wild accusations of a person known to be unstable? She could picture the defense attorney now, giving a sermon during closing arguments, the High Church of Reason against the damned and doomed who had the temerity to be less than perfect, those oddities who "saw psychologists," who "received therapy," who "had been diagnosed."
Oh, yes. She would be crucified, her own fears used as the nails, her own frail attempts at recovery serving as the wood.
And Mitchell would be not only her Judas and her Pilate, he would also be the Roman soldier with the hammer.
She brushed past him, stooped, and gathered the box and her purse. "Get the hell out," she said, dead inside.
"If it weren't for the money, I'd have been out of here years ago," he said, cocky again, untouchable.
"The money?" she asked his retreating back.
"We could have done it the easy way," he said, brushing his hair back into place. "Now it's going to get messy."
The door to the hotel room closed with a whisper, but the door to the house in her head closed with a great groaning of hinges, the rattling of chains, the rusty screams of deadbolts being driven forever home.
The sun was sinking when Julia reached Elkwood. The mountain ridges glowed with autumn, as if capped by molten gold. The sienna and ochre of the changing leaves covered the slopes, the darker greens of balsam and spruce dotted the higher elevations. Shadows filled the long valley where the Amadahee River ran through the center of town, carrying its rich September smells of salamanders and mud.
By the time Julia had turned her Subaru up the hill toward Buckeye Creek Road, the anxiety that had nearly consumed her on the flight home was all but forgotten. The tall trees comforted her, and she was relieved to see again the pastures with their leaning locust poles and rusted barbed wire, the farmhouses set well away from the road, the cows attacking the grass with dull persistence. Here and there the tips of granite slabs protruded through the soil like great rocket ships preparing to blast into the heavens.
Though she had only lived in Elkwood for four months, this place had become home. When she'd first moved, it had been a desperate escape. Mitchell had simultaneously driven her away while demanding that she stay in Memphis. Dr. Danner had suggested this mountain town as a nice place to meet the future, and the referral to Dr. Forrest had been like a shipwreck victim pushed by waves onto the saving shore of an island.
Now the future was clearer even though the past was stranger and scarier than ever.
Now her future didn't revolve around Mitchell and the caged security he had offered. Funny that he had turned out to be more unstable than she. Tomorrow she would return his two-carat diamond via registered mail. The memory of the assault was buried inside, waiting, a nest of snakes. She didn't dare deal with it alone. The breakdown would have to wait for the chair in Dr. Forrest's office.
Julia hadn't yet decided when to tell Dr. Forrest about the skull ring. Perhaps next week. Right now, she had plenty enough memories and emotions to sort out. The immediate past left the freshest bruises. The healing would have to begin from the outside in.
Mrs. Covington's house was dark as Julia drove past, the windows like slate. The apartments stood quiet across the road, spears of light cutting between drawn curtains. The Subaru's headlights swept over Julia's house as she pulled up, and she felt a rush of ownership. Despite its disreputable history, she felt comfort behind its walls. She decided she would talk to George Webster about purchasing it.
The door was solid, the windows cold and empty. Behind that door were her computer, her clothes, her books, Mr. Ned the stuffed turtle. She thought of the baseball cards Walter had given her, left spread across the coffee table, and smiled. Such a small kindness became magnified by the comparative horror of her visit to Memphis.
This was a new past she was building, and the realization warmed her heart despite all the nasty mental baggage she had yet to unpack. She thought of that gospel song, "One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus," and figured the past need only extend to that morning's awakening and the future was no more than the remaining hours until dark. She eagerly went up the walk, her purse clutched in front of her. She was so glad to be home that she barely glanced at the shadowy spaces between the trees, at the vast forest where crickets chirped and the nocturnal animals began their nightly scrabbling. What formerly had filled her with shivers of dread now seemed to offer more comfort than threat.
She drew a deep lungful of the Blue Ridge air that was moist and tangy with pine. She fumbled in her purse for the key, silently cursing herself for not leaving on the porch light. Her fingers brushed across the wooden box in her purse. She had carried a piece of the past here, a piece of Memphis. Maybe that had been a mistake. But she could worry about that tomorrow.
One day at a time . . .
As she searched for the key, out of habit she tried the knob.
It turned easily in her hand.
The latch clicked back like the hammer of a gun, like the final beat of a heart.
Had she forgotten to lock the door, even after that first scare with Walter?
Impossible.
One thing Julia Stone never failed to do was to lock the door. That was Rule Number One for keeping Creeps out of the house. Unless, of course, they snuck in behind you, as Mitchell had.
Or were already inside.
Julia stood, frozen with her hand on the doorknob.
She replayed the scene in her mind of leaving for the trip. Suitcase at your feet, slam door, insert key, turn, click. Check to make sure.
Yes, she had locked it.
Walter could be inside, doing some kind of repair.
Or it could be The Creep. The one who may have left a row of wooden blocks across the coffee table a few days ago.
Because you KNOW you didn't put them there, don't you?
Don't you?
The autumn wind rattled the undergrowth. The branches that had been comforting moments before were now like the gnarled arms of wooden witches. Julia fumbled for the mace on her key ring, fingered the spray nozzle. If a rapist were waiting inside, she would give it to him full in the eyes, give him all the punishment she should have dished out to Mitchell. If it happened in the bedroom, she had the Louisville Slugger under the bed.
Or . . .
She glanced longingly at her car. She could get in, drive away, call the cops from the safety of a gas station.
And maybe Lieutenant T.L. Snead would get the dispatcher's call. The Snead of unsolved cases, the Snead of coincidence.
No. She would not run this time. She would not let someone invade her house. Or mind.
She pushed the door a few inches, and it creaked like the lid of a wooden coffin. Fine hairs twitched like electric wires on the back of her neck. She tried to inhale but couldn't concentrate on a relaxing breath.
Sweating in the chill night, Julia peered through the narrow crack.
Nothing but dark inside. Deep and endless dark, the kind of dark that jumped out and sank its claws into you, sharp dark, the kind that---
Stop it, Julia.
Her hands trembled.
A phone rang in one of the neighboring apartments. It purred faintly six times and stopped. Someone revved a car engine in the housing development that stood behind the wall of woods. A dog's bark echoed across the black hills. The sounds of normal life.
She gripped the mace and shoved the door open with her shoulder, half-expecting the flash of an arcing blade. With her left hand, she reached across her body and raked her fingers across the wall switch. The lights burst to life like exploding stars.
The room was empty.
Julia went around the hall, her purse against her side, one hand holding the spray can of mace, the other clenched into a fist. Nobody in the kitchen. She kicked open the bathroom door.
Movement erupted along one wall. Julia's forefinger tightened on the mace nozzle. A grunt died against her teeth before it became a scream.
Just her reflection, in the mirror above the sink.
Julia flipped on the light, eyed the shower curtain. No Creep would be that unimaginative, would he?
She reached out, touched the plastic, yanked it across the rod, mace poised. Nothing but the fiberglass stall.
Heart racing, Julia spun and returned to the hall. Only one room left to check.
Of course. Her bedroom.
The ultimate violation, that of the inner sanctum.
The door opened with a whisper. A breeze blew across the room. The window was open.
Go back now, girl. It's okay. No one can blame you for being scared. This isn't just your disorder speaking. It's ME.
Sure, she could flee. She could surrender.
Just like always.
She clenched her jaw and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was the clock, numerals blazing like the reddest of hellfire against the darkness.
4:06.
If she were holding a gun instead of a spray can of mace, she would have emptied the cartridge into that digital demon to exorcise the obscenity of its frozen time.
She could no longer fool herself that no one had been here, that she'd only forgotten to lock the door and left the window open and, gee, what an absentminded little thing she was.
No, some Creep had waltzed in, removed the clock from her trash, restored its strange programming, and left it as a message to Julia.
A message that he could get in any time, no matter how many locks she held keys for.
Why would a Creep advertise? If he wanted to jump her, he could wait in the dark wings for his moment and reach out like the long fingers of the past. Just as Mitchell had done.
The memory of her fiancé's attack flooded through her, made the room grow fuzzy, and she almost lost her balance. Then she shook her head clear. If the Creep were still here, she wasn't going to make it easy for him.
Julia eased into the room, elbowing the switch up and blinking against the sudden light.
Her room looked the same, except for the clock. The bed not quite neatly made, Mr. Ned and some CD's on her shelf, the Jefferson Spence paperback parted open on the bedside table. The window screen was gone, and the lace curtains shifted in the breeze like uneasy ghosts.
Julia crossed the room and closed the window, sliding the latch into place. Walter was right, the windows were of solid construction. She saw no scars in the frame that might indicate a forced entry. Either she'd overlooked a lock, or some Creep had access to a copy of her house key.
Without looking at the clock, Julia grabbed it, yanked the plug free of the wall, and tucked it under her elbow. She wondered if, even powerless, the clock's digits still blazed.
4:06. Why 4:06?
A thought fluttered at the edges of her memory, like a lost bat that disappeared back into its cave. She had so deliberately kept herself from remembering that the past had become a place that she visited with effort, a place that required a travel agent. She would only go when Dr. Forrest told her so.
She went back through the house, locked the front door, and then checked all the other windows. She would unpack under the morning sun. For now, she was safe enough. As safe as she could ever be inside her own head.
Unless someone had a key to her head as well as her house.
Julia took a plastic shopping bag from the great mound of them under the sink. She slid the errant clock into the bag and tied it tightly closed. She wrapped a second bag around it for good measure and then tucked it under some coffee grounds and an ice cream box in the kitchen garbage. Maybe tomorrow she would find a big rock and smash the clock to bits.
Killing time. The image was almost funny, but the persistent buzz of adrenaline still tickled the surface of her skin. She felt as if she were being watched.
Was someone still in the house?
No, she had checked all the rooms. The attic access was in the bathroom. She'd covered a case in Memphis where a Creep had crawled through the maintenance access of his apartment, climbed over the rafters to the next unit, and drilled small peepholes in the bedroom ceiling. The woman had come home one day to find Sheetrock dust on her bedspread, saw the holes, and called the police.
The Creep was caught, but the woman never knew how many times he had watched her through his little series of spy holes. A hundred hot showers couldn't wash that kind of violation from your skin. Could the victim ever again undress without a tiny paranoid shiver? How much therapy had the woman needed before she'd quit scanning the ceiling of every room she entered?
Paranoia was partly a survival instinct. But at some point you had to let it go.
Julia thought of calling Dr. Forrest. Her wristwatch said eight o'clock, plenty early enough. But she suspected Dr. Forrest had a lover, the man Julia had overheard in the background of several phone conversations. Julia hated to be so needy, so dependent, so demanding of the therapist's time and attention. Most of all, she didn't want Dr. Forrest to tire of her.
If she could survive the night, she would be okay. If she could survive her life, she would be okay.
Julia went back through the house to her bedroom. She stopped herself from double-checking the window. An odd buzz sounded in her ears, the near-silent alarm of something amiss. The shelf where the engagement ring was hidden appeared undisturbed, Mr. Ned giving his friendly terrapin grin and books in an alphabetized row. But the top drawer of her dresser was slightly ajar.
She wasn't a neat freak by any stretch, but she did have a compulsion to close things. Doors. Windows. Lids. Cabinets.
She pulled open the drawer. Underwear and bras lay in ruffled tangles, a few of them black and red, most boring old beige or white. She dug into the pile, turned it over. The teddy was missing.
Mitchell had bought it for her in hopes that she would model it. And she would have, if Mitchell hadn't turned savage. How she had longed for the right moment, a moonlit holiday, maybe, or a romantic anniversary of their first time. But Mitchell never mentioned it again, and Julia could never be sure how he'd react to a seductive surprise. Turned out he was the one full of surprises.
She was glad to be rid of that reminder of their flawed relationship, but there was the immediate problem of the teddy's disappearance. Did a Creep sneak into her house for the sole purpose of digging through her naughties? Was he, at this very moment, parading around in the negligee, shivering and swelling with a secret thrill?
Julia sensed the eyes on her again. Paranoia, she knew. And yet---
She turned to the window.
Two bright glints, reflecting the light of her room. Staring between the lace of the curtains.
The eyes faded back into darkness as Julia's breath caught. Then she heard a shout, the breaking of tree limbs, and a grunt of pain as bodies slammed against the siding and fell to the ground.
"Quit it, or I'll break your arm," someone shouted.
Julia stood undecided for a moment. Then she reached under the bed, got her Louisville Slugger, and ran to the window. In the rectangle of light cast into the back yard, she saw two men struggling on the ground. She gave the Louisville Slugger a little test swing. It was easier to handle than a wooden lamp.
God, I'm getting better with all this batting practice.
Julia hurried through the house, stopped in the living room to grab a flashlight and stuff the mace in her pocket. Feeling a little braver gripping the baseball bat, she went out the kitchen door to the side of the house. She edged around the corner into the back yard, shining the flashlight ahead of her.
"Get off me," one of the struggling figures yelled.
The two had rolled to the trees that grew near the house. Julia pointed the light at them, but her hand was trembling so much that she couldn't see their faces. "Who's there?" she said, but her voice was lost amid the sound of scattered leaves and grunts.
She raised the bat, hoping to be menacing, and tried again. "Who the hell is it?"
"Julia!" gasped the man who was currently on top.
"Walter?"
She held the light more steadily and saw that the man on bottom was pinned, belly down, his arm behind his back. Still his legs flailed, and he twisted like an eel on a spear. His face mashed against the dirt, bits of leaves stuck to his hair. Walter straddled his back, a bronco rider whose steed had collapsed.
Walter grimaced with effort as he tugged the man's wrist up to the shoulder blade. The man groaned sharply.
"I'll snap it," Walter told him. "I've wrestled a steer or two in my day, and if I can handle them, I can surely handle the likes of you."
Walter gave an extra push to emphasize his point. The man lay still, breathing heavily.
Julia approached slowly, stopping a few feet away. "What's going on?" she asked, not sure which of the two she should be prepared to slug with the bat.
"Call the police," Walter said, blinking into the flashlight's beam.
"You didn't answer me," she said, fingers clenched around the bat handle.
"He---" Walter panted. His face was strained, and she wondered if he really could keep the other man pinned. The man on bottom seemed younger and just as strong as Walter.
"I saw him climb out your window," Walter said. "Right, scumbag?" he said to the man beneath him.
The man turned his face toward the forest, away from the light.
Julia backed up slowly and ducked inside, still holding the bat. She dialed 9-1-1 from the living room, carrying the phone so she could watch through the window. Walter was still on top.
"Communications," came the clipped male voice.
"Yes, sir, I'd like to report a---"
"Yes, ma'am?"
What? A Creep? She thought of all the false reports she'd filed in Memphis, how the Metro cop had ridiculed her. She tried out the copspeak she'd learned as a crime reporter. "There's an altercation in progress."
"Altercation. You mean a fight?"
"Yeah."
"Any weapons involved?"
"Not that I can see. But you better hurry."
"Could you confirm that address, ma'am?"
"102 Buckeye Creek Road, in Elkwood."
The man on the ground flopped like a beached fish, but Walter held on.
"Yes, ma'am," said the communications officer. "I'll send a patrol car right away. Say, you live near Mabel Covington, don't you?"
Julia sighed into the phone. What was next, a recipe swap? "You may want to dispatch an ambulance, too."
"Why? Is somebody hurt?"
"Not yet, but may be." Especially if you don't hang up and get on the damned radio.
"You where you're safe?"
"Excuse me, but I'd better go help."
"I wouldn't advise that---"
Julia hung up before the dispatcher could finish his "ma'am."
Julia ran outside, her hand cramped from gripping the bat. Even Mark McGwire had to rest the lumber on his shoulder once in a while, steroid-stoked or not. But Julia couldn't rest yet. She wasn't going to let the bat go until the police arrived. And maybe not even then, because Snead might be on duty.
"You doing okay?" Julia asked Walt.
He shook his head "no," but said, "I've been whooping punks like this since I was six."
Then he jerked his head, urging her to help. His brown hair was damp with sweat and a nasty bruise welled up under one red and watery eye.
"If he moves again, brain him with the bat," Walter said.
"Bat?" the man grunted against the ground. "You're crazy."
"Hey, I ain't the one that was sniffing a woman's underwear," Walter said.
The teddy. This was the Creep. The one who had left the footprint, who had sneaked into her house, who had reprogrammed her clock. She fought a brief urge to tap his skull with the Louisville Slugger.
A siren wailed in the distance, coming up the valley and echoing off the slopes. The Creep gave another half-hearted struggle upon hearing the sound. Then he lay quietly again, his arm forced at a painful angle.
"Thank you," Julia said to Walter. "No telling what he would have done . . . "
"The thing that burns me the most is that people like this got no respect," he answered, giving another upward yank to the young man's arm.
"I was--owww--just here for the ring." The flashlight showed the reddened face of a college-aged man, and Julia recognized him from the apartment building down the road.
The guy's face clenched in pain, and Walter eased off the pressure a little. "What ring?"
"Some dude hired me to get it," he answered. "Called me out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, mailed me a money order."
Julia raised the bat. "And the underwear?"
"Christ, lady, it was a gag," he said. "The dude said to screw with her head."
Walter was ratcheting up the pressure again when the guy moaned and said, "No more till I get a lawyer."
Blue lights flashed across the trees as the patrol car roared up in front of the house. Julia ran to them, waving the flashlight, letting the bat drag on the ground. Two policemen bounced out of the car, one drawing his sidearm.
"Don't shoot," Julia said. "They're around back."
"Drop the weapon and step away," ordered the cop with the gun.
"It's only a souvenir bat," Julia said. "It's got an Ozzie Smith replica signature on it."
"Drop it."
She complied. Satisfied, the cop with the gun went past her while the other crept to the corner of the house. Julia didn't know what she was supposed to do. The cop hadn't ordered her to freeze or anything. She stood for a moment, watching the bar lights bounce off the nearby apartment building. Some of the college students had come out and were standing on the porch, talking and drinking beer.
Julia followed the policemen around back. The cop with the gun now had it pointed at Walter. The other cop knelt by the man on the ground, fumbling with a pair of handcuffs and shining a large-beamed flashlight.
"This guy was breaking into her house," Walter said. "I saw him peeping at her through the window."
"Get off him and slowly back away, sir," ordered the cop. "Keep your hands where I can see them."
Walter's eyes narrowed in anger, but he obeyed.
The second cop helped the other man to his feet. The man rubbed his elbow, glowering at Walter with a "You just wait" look.
"What's your side of it?" the cop asked the injured man.
"I didn't break in," he replied. "I was just cutting through the yard to walk through the woods when this freak jumped me."
"Oh, yeah?" said Walter. "What's that in your back pocket, then?"
The cop shined his flashlight at the man, turned him around, pulled the frilly black teddy from the man's pocket. The cop held it up, letting it dangle between his thumb and forefinger as if it were contaminated. The college guy looked sheepish.
"Is that yours, ma'am?" asked the cop with the gun. He had relaxed his stance and was now pointing his gun at the ground near Walter's feet.
Julia nodded. "Yeah. I just noticed it missing a few minutes ago. Someone had broken into my house."
"Anything else missing?"
"Not that I know of, but he said something about looking for a ring."
"Do you know this man?" the cop asked, waving the weapon casually toward Walter.
"Yes," Julia said. "He's a friend of mine."
The cops looked at each other, and then one led the Creep around the house, reciting the Miranda warning.
"Are you both willing to make statements?" the other cop said, finally returning his gun to its holster.
"Sure," said Julia. "You want to come in the house? I guess you'll want to check for fingerprints and all that."
"The crime scene tech is on duty at the hospital," the cop said, taking out a small notepad. "She's going to hate coming out this time of night. So, you going to press charges, Mrs.---?"
"Stone. Julia Stone. Of course I'm pressing charges."
The cop scribbled down her name and asked for Walter's name. When Walter gave it, the cop lowered the notepad and let his writing hand make a subtle crawl toward his holster. "Triplett?"
"That's right." Walter straightened a little and glanced at Julia. "That Walter Triplett."
The cop nodded and asked Julia, "So you're vouching for his side of the story?"
Julia considered the possibility that the intruder had actually been Walter, and the college guy may have caught him in the act. But Walter had a key and needn't bother sneaking in or out the window. And despite his reputation as a possible wife-killer, his kindness had eased her fears. "He's safe," she said.
The cop glowered at Walter, went to his car, and retrieved a clipboard. He spent the next fifteen minutes filling out an incident report. Then the car pulled away, lights still flashing. The college students jeered as the cops passed, holding their beer cans in the air.
"I thought they were going to check for fingerprints," Julia said.
"This is Elkwood," Walter said. He touched the bruise under his eye and winced.
"Come in and let me get you some ice for that."
Julia retrieved her Louisville Slugger on the way inside. If discretion was the better part of valor, she figured 34 inches of hardwood would bridge the remainder of the gap if necessary.
Walter sat in the living room, looking at the baseball cards spread out on the table, as Julia wrapped some ice in a washcloth. She brought the cloth to him and then sat across the room in the chair at her work desk.
"Stan Musial," Walter said, noting the arrangement of the cards by position. "Didn't he play centerfield?"
"No, left," Julia said. She shifted restlessly on the couch. She had leaned the bat in the corner, but the mace still bulged in her pocket. "He couldn't throw well enough for center. He hurt his arm pitching in the minors. Three-time MVP. Led the Cardinals to two championships during World War II."
"I thought all the good players got drafted by the army. Wasn't Ted Williams a fighter pilot?"
Julia shrugged. "Maybe it was a conspiracy to make St. Louis look good. The old St. Louis Browns made their only World Series appearance in 1944. First time in 42 years. They won in 2006, too."
Walter pressed the impromptu ice pack to his cheek. "Ouch."
"Did that Creep slug you?"
"Nope. He accidentally elbowed me in the face when I tackled him."
Now came time for the question Julia had been delaying. She tried to sound casual, not like an interrogator. "When did you see him break in?"
In other words, what were you doing lurking in the woods behind my house? WATCHING my house?
"I do yard work for Mrs. Covington. She saw me fixing up this house after Hartley moved out and she hired me. I was over yonder---" he waved with his arm, "---laying some mulch when I saw somebody go around back of your house. I didn't think much of it, figured he was heading down that trail in the woods. My Jeep was parked behind Mrs. Covington's, so I reckon he didn't know I was watching."
Julia slid her hand into her pocket, felt the contour of the mace canister. "He lives in one of those apartments. Mrs. Covington told me one of them had a history of peeping."
"Guess he took it a step further this time. When I didn't see him pass there where the trail goes by Mrs. Covington's back yard, I got suspicious. So I went through the woods and saw your window open. I figured somebody had been messing around there before, or else you wouldn't have asked Mr. Webster to check your windows."
"Maybe you should become a cop," Julia said. Just like T.L. Snead. Then Walter could be part of the great Satanic conspiracy and get his piece of the action.
"No, thanks," he said. "I don't like guns."
"You sure didn't flinch when that cop pointed one at you."
"Because I was frozen stiff. I thought old Barney Fife there would blow my head off if I so much as blinked."
Julia laughed a little, but her abdomen was too tense to put much force behind it. "I take it that the Elkwood police don't have a very good reputation."
"They thought 'Police Academy' was an instructional video."
Julia laughed more easily this time. She was so tired that she was almost giddy. Too much had happened in the last few days. The skull ring, a piece of the past unburied. The discovery of Snead's move to Elkwood. A sexual assault by the man she had thought loved her. A Creep stealing her underwear. If she dared to think at all, she feared she might just start laughing and never stop.
Walter must have noticed her weariness. "I seen him climb in the window right as it was getting dark. You drove up about two minutes later. I was afraid he might jump you or something, so I went to warn you, but then I saw him climb out with the . . . um . . . underwear thing."
He's BLUSHING.
Wait--if the Creep was only in the house for a few minutes . . . then how did he have time to find the clock, plug it in, unlock the front door, prowl through her dresser, and get out the window again?
Walter continued. "He went into the trees, and I saw your lights come on and heard the window close. I waited to see what he would do. Then, when he snuck back to your window and started peeping, he made me so mad that I wanted to bust him."
"Let's see, peeping, burglary, breaking and entering---"
"Oh, he didn't break nothing. Your window was already open. Which kind of made me wonder, since you were so worried about the locks."
"The window was open?"
"Yeah. What's wrong?"
"The ring. My fiancé gave me a huge rock and somebody wanted it. I better check."
He followed her into the bedroom and waited by the door as she pulled the burgundy velvet box from its hiding place behind Mr. Ned. She opened the box and the diamond glistened from its golden set.
"Man, that could keep a Creep fed and liquored up for a year or two," Walter noted.
She rubbed her head and yawned with exhaustion. "It's just dirt and metal, when you get down to it."
"Listen, I better go and let you get some sleep."
Go and leave her alone with the night and the locks and the mace and the Louisville Slugger and the skull ring and the haunted clock---
"Do you know much about electronics?" she asked.
Walter's head tilted inquisitively. "A little, yeah."
"I'd like to hire you for a job." She went to the kitchen, feeling his gaze on her back. She extracted the clock from the trash, took off the outer bag, and carried it to Walter. "Would you mind seeing if this has been tampered with?"
"This that broken clock?"
Julia nodded. She didn't want to tell him she'd found it plugged in when she'd arrived home, that the digits were still stuck on 4:06. Let him examine the clock without her imbuing it with any mystique.
Their fingers brushed briefly together as he took the clock, and Julia felt an odd tingle of electricity. Similar to what she had experienced when putting the skull ring on her finger.
No. The ring had no power. The clock contained no dark magic. Satan didn't exist, and therefore had no influence in the world besides in the minds of desperate, gullible people.
And Walter had no magic power, either. She was just tired, that's all.
He stood and their eyes met. One heartbeat, two, a third. They both looked away at the same time.
"Uh---I'll give this a look-over," Walter said. "But don't expect to pay me."
He moved toward the door, carrying the clock as if it were a football, in a hurry now, almost clumsy for the first time since she'd known him. She followed, but not too closely.
He paused in the doorway and pointed to the bat leaning in the corner. "Would you really have used that?"
She smiled. "You don't ever want to find out."
"Reckon not." He grinned back with strong, slightly-uneven teeth. Was he blushing again? None of the men she knew blushed. Rick O'Dell didn't blush. Mitchell had certainly never blushed in his life. "Well, see you later."
"Bye."
He went out into the darkness as moths clustered around the porch light. The college students had gone back inside, to continue their drinking in front of the television. Maybe having a friend arrested was just one more reason to party.
"Walter?"
He stopped beside the Jeep, his face shadowed. "Yes, ma'am?"
"My name's Julia."
He nodded.
"Thanks," she said. "For . . . you know."
"Might want to lock your door," he said, braver now with the distance between them. "There's bums and creeps everywhere, even in Elkwood. 'Night, Julia."
She waved, closed and locked the door, then stood leaning against it, replaying the sound of his saying her name. She found herself comparing it to the way Rick said it, the way Mitchell had said it back in more innocent days.
"Jooolia," Walter pronounced it, stretched out and lazy, a musical "ooo" in the middle. Jooolia, the way her dad had once teased. Mitchell's high-brow friends said "Jewlia," more precisely adding the "you" sound.
She took the wooden box from her purse and examined it. This relic didn't belong in Elkwood, in the new life she was trying to build. Maybe Mitchell, as screwed-up as he turned out to be, was right about one thing: perhaps the past should have been left buried.
If I were stronger, able to control my anxiety better, we could have been married years ago, and I'd be happy now. Mitchell wouldn't have resorted to---
No. The attempted rape wasn't her fault, no matter what kind of tricks her mind tried to play. And she wasn't to blame because Mitchell had tracked down and hired a Creep to prowl in her underwear drawer and try to steal the engagement ring. If he were in financial trouble, she would have gladly pawned the ring and given him the money. She would have been happy with a simple diamond chip, or no ring at all. Jewelry had never created a commitment or love through its precious substances alone.
Dr. Forrest would sort it all out in the morning. In the meantime, a night of hours must pass.
Maybe, if she acted as if this were the end of a perfectly normal day, she could survive. Papers waited on her desk, notes for articles. Other chores required her attention. Reality exerted its own brand of pressure. And reality offered an escape, however briefly, from dark thoughts.
Julia booted up her computer, surprised that the screen saver didn't exhibit some sinister message. Other appliances seemed to belong to the unseen forces of Evil, why not her computer? With any luck, her toaster might start spouting backwards Led Zeppelin lyrics.
She connected to the Internet, knowing she should get to work on her articles. But first she checked her e-mail, one of her strongest addictions besides coffee. A few posts from her Cardinals newsgroup speculated on a possible managerial change, Sue asked if Julia had arrived safely and said she'd soon have more info on Snead, and the director of the animal shelter had sent an e-mail of thanks. Nothing from Mitchell. Big surprise there.
Creepmail must have closed its accounts.
Julia closed the e-mail program without responding to the messages. She did a search for "Satan," then got the obvious, www.satan.com. Seemed like typing w-w-w-dot-anything brought access to some bizarre site. She linked and read through some sites built by self-styled Satan worshippers.
Not only were their edicts contradictory and juvenile, they were also poorly worded. Someone who was filled with the power of the Master of the World should at least know how to run their text through a spell check. How could these people not hold their hokey posturing up to a fire-lit mirror and laugh themselves into the grave, and thence to the hell they so eagerly sought? Except they didn't seem to believe in hell at all, and certainly in no everlasting punishment. They mostly held up their religion as an excuse for self-indulgence and vapid cruelty.
She finally reached the biggie, the official Church of Satan Web site. After reading through some of the Church of Satan's premises, based on the writings of the late Anton LaVey, Julia believed that Satanists were even crazier than she was. And, at the bottom line, the little rules and rituals were as demanding and tedious as those of the most disciplined and austere religions.
The Nine Satanic Statements. The Eleven Satanic Rules of Earth. The Nine Satanic Sins. So Satanism had its own sins. Its gate was just as strait and its way just as narrow as those of fundamentalist Christianity. Most amusing was the fact that LaVey, who actually had the audacity to die while positioning himself as Satan's High Priest, was as possessive and money-grubbing as the most odious of corrupt Christian evangelists. Here was his supposed "gift" to the world, his Satanic Bible, but it had the copyright symbol attached to every tiny segment, lest someone spread the Word without LaVey or his heirs drawing a percentage of the profit.
Other regalia was available for purchase through the site, such as black candles, silver candelabra, ceremonial robes, daggers, and various herbal potions. And the Devil took credit cards.
Julia could easily separate these self-serving tenets from the cruel memories of her own past. This packaged-and-shrink-wrapped product bore no connection to the abuse she had suffered at the hands of Satan worshippers. As with all religions, it wasn't the words or the beliefs or the long-dead prophets that defined transgressions. It was people, those of flesh and blood and bone who mindlessly swallowed whatever was fed to them, blind to the true nature of the hand bestowing the blessings.
Julia shuddered as her own memories tried to spill from their carefully latched closet--goat's head and a silver blade and smoking crucibles and bad people.
Julia clamped her eyes shut and squeezed her temples between her palms. Her breath became shallow and her pulse accelerated to a flutter.
No, that's for Dr. Forrest and Dr. Forrest only. Not for here, not for now, not for YOU.
She took a deep breath, scared. The panic attacks were occurring more frequently. Despite her sense that she was being healed, despite her faith in Dr. Forrest's treatment, she felt on the edge of a great black chasm, and the next step would have her falling into the ink of oblivion.
She forced herself to inhale, thought of sunshine and clouds, heard Dr. Forrest's voice counting down from ten, let her fingers grow warm and plump and light. Let her body dream itself as a piece of the sky, apart yet part of it all. Let herself become air.
And, riding on the breath came a warmth and comfort and a soft, distant breeze that suggested a gentle voice.
God? Is that you?
But if it had been God, the very act of focusing had driven him back to his hidden hole in the heavens. She concentrated on Dr. Forrest's instructions and let herself relax further.
When she returned from her mental vacation, the computer screen still glared. Nothing but words. If she were to understand how Satanists worked, she needed to translate this nonsense. Maybe if she read LaVey's ideas with a cold and academic eye, without the preconceptions, Satan would lose his power to reach out from the past.
After a few minutes of going through the rules, she thought she understood something of Satanism's attraction. Indulge yourself in this world, right here and now, instead of waiting for an eternal reward. Seek gratification of the flesh and mind instead of the spiritual satisfaction of a life wasted helping others. Be kind only if it leads to personal gain, otherwise practice cruelty, and don't dare turn the other cheek.
Give in to nature instead of rising above your base animal instincts. Take what you want, because if you have the power to take it, it rightfully belongs to you.
Be selfish and petty and to hell with everybody else.
The "official" portrayal of Satan wasn't the damned, evil Prince of Lies presented by the conservative sects of the Christian church. This Satan was a smiling, benevolent uncle who always had a pocketful of candy to dispense. This Satan never punished. This Satan didn't require that his followers roast for an eternity to prove their devotion.
Well, which one is the real Satan? If God indeed wears many faces, the devil must have more masks than a Hollywood prop shop.
Even though LaVey urged his followers not to harm children or animals, only full-grown adults who happened to be standing in the way, the other camp believed that blood offered power and magic. And to them, what Julia considered the Crowley Camp, power was what Satan was all about.
Not that Aleister Crowley attributed his power to Satan. No, that would have deflected some glory from Crowley himself, who petulantly demanded to be called the Great Beast. So yet another false prophet inflicted the world with his self-aggrandizing beliefs, the magick so precious that an extra letter had to be added. Scariest of all was Crowley's espousal of blood as life energy, with sex as a source of power and magic. Naturally, the most potent "spiritual working" came from the fluids of the innocent: the children.
So Crowley basically built himself a religious system that excused the molestation of children, and in fact encouraged it. The idea of the fat, drugged-out satyr abusing a child made her want to vomit. Crowley's first law was "Do what thou wilt." Was there a hell hot enough to deliver the punishment someone such as that deserved?
"Joolia."
The call rode in on the whisper of breeze in the eaves or the rustle of a curtain. She looked around the empty room.
She pushed herself away from her desk and paced rapidly, trying not to hyperventilate. The darkness outside the house pressed against the doors and windows, searching for an invasion point. Her house was weak and shook with the shadowy wind.
She ran to the bathroom, turned on the tap at the sink, and splashed cold water on her face. When she looked into the mirror, she scarcely recognized herself. Her eyes were red-rimmed and watery, her hair stringy from sweat. Her skin was pallid, that of a walking corpse.
It was all her fault. If she hadn't kept sticking her nose in the past, if she didn't have to explore, if she didn't have to know, she wouldn't be freaking out over skull rings and Black Masses and false prophets and ritual abuse. If she were normal, she might have a happy future waiting.
She wouldn't be isolated in Elkwood, alone with the Creeps who were closing in with their devil masks. But she wouldn't have Dr. Forrest, either. Dr. Forrest was her light in the world of darkness, the one who led her through the tunnels of the past to the true Julia Stone that she knew she could become. The whole, healed Julia Stone, the one who would stand in light.
If only she were that person already, instead of this limp, weak Julia who was nibbled by shadows, gnashed between the teeth of invisible monsters.
As she leaned into the corner of the bathroom and slid down onto the cold tile, the walls of the world collapsed. The scars on her stomach throbbed, and the air smelled of mildew and rot. The temperature seemed to rise twenty degrees, and the room became as steamy as a swamp. Yet still her teeth chattered, her bones clacked against the tiles like a wind-blown skeleton on a string.
She was sliding into that inky ocean. This time the wave had swept its mighty arm over her, crushed her spirit, drenched her with doom. All that remained was to slip beneath the surface for the final time. This was the antechamber to hell, the waiting room to the rest of her life.
Had this been what she was born for, to end up shattered and mad, to go down without even a cry for help?
Dr. Forrest won't like this. She won't like this at ALL.
Because this isn't only YOUR failure, Julia. It's HERS.
Did she really want to disappoint the one person who had faith in her? Was this the proper repayment for someone to whom she owed so much?
She struggled for breath, her chest bound by hot bands of steel. She closed her mind off to the dark reaching fingers, the sinuous memories, the negative thoughts that were her jailkeeps. She thought of the light, of Dr. Forrest's calm voice.
"We can make it, Julia."
As if the therapist were right in the room with her. Julia grabbed a pained lungful of stale air.
"We'll go through it together," came the voice of assurance. "Let me take you back, and then lead you forward."
Yes. Dr. Forrest could save her.
Julia exhaled, breathed again, trying to gain a rhythm. She ignored her pounding heart, afraid that its beat might be erratic. Sweat crawled over her flesh like slimy insects.
Dr. Forrest's words came to her again, like a voice in the wilderness.
"I'm here for you, Julia. I'll always be here. I'll save you."
And Julia shifted her focus onto the therapist's face, built her photograph to fill her mental field of vision. And Dr. Forrest smiled.
Julia smiled, too. Someone did love her. Someone did care enough to save her.
She lay against the tiles, aspirating easily until her dizziness passed. The shadows slid back to their odd lairs of hibernation, the panic drifted away like mist across a morning lake, the walls of fear turned to powder and crumbled.
Soon, seconds or minutes or hours later, she could stand. She wiped her face on the towel that hung on the back of the door, avoiding her reflection. She didn't want to see herself this way.
This wasn't how Dr. Forrest wanted Julia to see herself.
She went to the bedroom, holding onto the wall for support. The room still held that expectant air, fouled by The Creep's stealthy invasion. He had stood on this carpet, had breathed this air, had rummaged through her intimate things---
No. He was just a Creep. He would pay for his crimes and maybe taint Mitchell in the process. And he was out of her life, all of them were out of her life, Mitchell, her father, the bad people, everyone who had ever tried to hurt her.
All she needed was Dr. Forrest.
She made sure the curtains were tight, resisting an impulse to check the sash lock again. She thought of the bat and wondered if she should return it to its place under the bed. No, she was brave now, she gained strength through Dr. Forrest. Tomorrow she would tell the doctor all about this strange day, and by the end of the session, she might even be able to laugh about it.
For now, she needed to sleep, because the exhaustion had settled upon her flesh as soon as the panic had abandoned it.
She went to the closet to get a nightgown.
When she opened the door, she saw the yellowed paper pinned to a dress sleeve.
The drawing was done in red crayon, of a crude star shape in a lopsided circle, similar to the image carved on the wooden ring box.
Underneath the pentagram, written in a childish hand, was: HELLO JOOOLIA.
"Who do you think left the note?" Dr. Forrest asked.
Julia held her hands in her lap, fingers fidgeting, palms moist. The paneled walls of Dr. Forrest's office had always provided comfort, but today they seemed closer than usual, more oppressive. The smell from the coffee maker crowded the air. Julia's chair squeaked, the noise magnified by the long pause.
Julia couldn't meet the therapist's eyes. But Dr. Forrest was kind, was Julia's savior, was her tour guide through the house of her head. Dr. Forrest wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.
"Come now, Julia," the therapist said gently. "You can trust me, remember?"
"I don't know," Julia said, breath catching. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, her knees trembled beneath her slacks.
"You don't know who left it?"
"No."
"The man was arrested for breaking into your house."
"Except Walter said the window was already open."
"This Walter . . . do you trust him?"
Julia looked outside. Dr. Forrest usually kept the shades drawn during their sessions, but today was so glorious that it invited cheerful thoughts. The sun splashing the red and golden trees, the sky a soft shade of blue, the clouds spread thin and wispy above the mountains. A day for hoping, a day full of optimism, the promise of coming winter's decay carefully hidden beneath the vibrant splendor.
"I don't know him very well," she finally said.
"Stay away from him. He's not conducive to your healing."
"But he was nice to me. Besides you, he's the only one that hasn't hurt me."
"It's only natural for you to feel vulnerable. After what happened with Mitchell---"
"You said we didn't have to talk about that anymore."
"Of course. We'll have to deal with it eventually, but today, let's work on the note."
"It's from one of the bad people," Julia said decisively. "They're back. They followed me here."
"Now, Julia, just because you found out that this Snead person moved to Elkwood is no indication of a conspiracy. The past is real, the abuse occurred, and you suffered tremendously. But we need to realize that the past is over, or we'll never heal."
Julia squeezed her eyes shut. "You're the one who says that I need to bring the past alive."
Dr. Forrest stood and walked to the window. "Why are you angry with me, Julia?"
"Angry?"
"Is it because I wasn't there when you needed me? That you've made these discoveries of self and suffered the panic attacks without my being able to help you?"
Julia gnawed at the end of her thumb, a new habit. "No, that's not it at all."
"Are you blaming me, Julia?"
Julia fought the urge to rise, to go to Dr. Forrest and kneel, to beg forgiveness. "It's not your fault. None of it. If I didn't have you---"
Dr. Forrest turned, a smile dying on her lips. The therapist was trying so hard to be pleasant even though Julia was acting like a spoiled child. Julia was being unfair, and she knew it. Yet she couldn't help herself. Sometimes Julia thought Dr. Forrest carried more of her emotional baggage than she herself did.
If only I had your strength.
"You're the only thing that's kept me from going off the deep end," Julia finished.
Dr. Forrest returned to her chair and scooted it close to Julia's. She held her patient's hand. "Let's stop this talk of going crazy, Julia. You are not crazy. Your scars are not the product of your imagination. Mitchell's attack wasn't a dream. The man peeping through your window wasn't made up. The note is a fact, it exists, it's real."
Julia looked at her purse where the paper was carefully folded. She should have taken it to the police. But the thought of meeting Snead, or having him assigned to the case, frightened her more than a thousand creepy notes. This mythic Snead was gaining power in her mind. Soon he would be twelve feet tall, sprouting horns and breathing fire.
The wooden box containing the ring was also in her purse, next to the note. She didn't like carrying it around, and its proximity filled her with worry. Yet she didn't want to leave the box at the house which seemed so easy to invade. And its proximity provided a perverse comfort, an anchor to an insubstantial past.
"It's all real, Julia." Dr. Forrest continued. "And you know what else is real, don't you?"
Julia nodded. "The bad people. The ritual. The abuse."
"The memory lives in your body, doesn't it?"
Her scars throbbed. A sharp pain raced between her legs.
"They did it to you, didn't they?"
Julia shrank back in her chair, tossed her hair from side to side.
"Don't deny it, Julia. We've gone this far. You're ready to take the last step."
"No," Julia moaned.
"We can heal these new injuries. But the key is to beat this old one first. We have to bring it out. It's the only thing holding you back, the only thing keeping you from becoming the new Julia Stone."
Silence. A truck passed on the road outside.
"You know who left the note, don't you?" Dr. Forrest said, voice lower.
The panic scrambled in from the corners of the room, on quick black legs. Why was Dr. Forrest doing this?
"You know, Julia. Share with me."
She didn't know. She twisted in her chair but had nowhere to run. Blind alleys in every direction, the nightmare edges of cliffs, the cold walls of deep cellars.
"The same one who held the knife." Dr. Forrest rubbed Julia's fingers.
"You---you said it was all in the past."
Dr. Forrest leaned close, her voice smooth, as seductive as that of Eden's serpent. "But the past informs the present, Julia. We are who they have made us."
Julia didn't understand, and her thoughts were racing too much to concentrate. The panic swirled, its black talons tickling paths across her skin. Why didn't Dr. Forrest help her?
"It's coming," Julia gasped. "Can we do a relaxation?"
"Soon, Julia. First, we need to approach this. We need to uncover the entire memory. Because part of it is still buried, and we can't go forward until we've completely exposed the past."
Dr. Forrest's hand clasped Julia's, squeezing reassuringly. The doctor continued, her breath on Julia's cheek. "Don't hold it back, Julia. Or should I say, 'Jooolia'?"
Julia tensed, her spine as brittle as chalk, her muscles aching.
"Who held the knife, Julia?"
The panic had its hands around her throat, constricting her windpipe. Blood pooled in her head, she felt faint and dizzy, but there was nowhere to fall.
"Who did it, Julia?"
"He did," she whispered.
"He gave you away, didn't he? He betrayed you."
Julia gave a frantic nod.
"Say it, Julia."
She wanted to tear her hair out, to rip her eyes from their sockets, to slice her flesh with sharp blades. Anything but to deal with this. Anything besides facing the most terrible Creep of all.
"Say it, Julia," Dr. Forrest commanded, clamping Julia's hand so tightly that it hurt.
Julia sought escape in the rooms of her head, scrambled for the attic. Dr. Forrest was inside the house with her, slowly climbing up the stairs. No locks could keep the doctor out.
Just as no locks could keep out the truth.
"SAY IT."
"Daddy," she tried to say, though she didn't think any air passed over her larynx.
"Say it, Julia. Bring him out. Don't protect him. You don't owe him any loyalty, not after what he did to you."
"Daddy," she whispered.
"He gave you away, didn't he, Julia? He's one of them. He loved them more than he loved you. He loved Satan more than he loved you."
She had reached the mental attic, was cradled by its dusty corners. If only there were a window from which she could jump. Behind her came Dr. Forrest's footsteps on the stairs, and the soft, insistent voice.
"Go back to that night, Julia."
No. Not that night. Not ever again.
"Go back."
And she was suddenly years away, without hypnosis, without undergoing the slow countdown. As if yesterday and today were really not separate things. The rooms of the past resided in the same house as the rooms of the present, always only a door away.
And Julia stood frozen in the doorway, four years old and scared.
The bad people in the hoods gathered around Daddy. They were yelling at him. They were going to hurt him.
Daddy looked over at her, standing in her pajamas, Chester Bear dangling by her side. Why was Daddy crying?
Then the bad people saw her.
"She belongs to him, not to you," said one of the bad people, the tall one. He held his fist near Daddy's face. "All things belong to him. The money and the flesh."
Daddy shook his head. He was wearing a dark robe, just like the others. Except his hood was down. She couldn't see the faces of the other bad people. She was so afraid she almost wet her pajamas, and she hadn't done that in a long time. She was Daddy's good girl who made him proud.
"You can't have her, Lucius," Daddy said to the bad man.
"It's not for me," he said, shaking his fist, his voice growing deeper, scarier. "The Master has ordered it."
"No," Daddy said. "I'm done with it. I want out."
"No one gets out," the bad man said. "You signed in blood. He owns you now, just as he owns this whore Judas Stone."
The other people in hoods moved closer to Daddy.
"Daddy!" Julia shrieked.
"It's okay, honey," Daddy said. Then he pulled his hood over his head. She couldn't see his face, and his eyes glowed like the glass eyes of a stuffed animal.
Daddy held out his hands, the sleeves of the robe drooping, full of shadows. "We won't hurt you. I'll take care of you."
She hesitated, afraid to leave her room. Darkness behind her like a long curtain.
"Come on, Jooolia," he cooed, just as he did at play, happy times of crayons and the blue pool in the yard and dolls making dinner and cars and trucks and wooden blocks on the living room floor. Just like normal.
She took a small step forward. Why was Daddy wearing the hood? Didn't he know how scary he looked?
"It's just a little game we play," Daddy said, coming toward her, his hands out. Like he wanted to hug her.
"What's he doing?" came Dr. Forrest's voice, as if from behind a wall. Dr. Forrest didn't belong here. Dr. Forrest belonged back there.
But Dr. Forrest was her friend. Dr. Forrest wanted to help her. Dr. Forrest wouldn't let the bad people get her.
"It's just a little game we play," Julia said.
"And he's holding your hand, taking you with the bad people," Dr. Forrest said. "What's happening?"
"Daddy's carrying me. It's nighttime because it's dark and I see stars and it's cold and I'm scared. I dropped Chester Bear somewhere. I smell the wet grass."
"You're in the barn, aren't you?" asked Dr. Forrest. Such a nice lady.
"There are more bad people here, and some smoke that smells funny. Stuff is burning in little pots. There's a big gray rock on the dirt. I can't see the stars anymore."
"Daddy puts you on the rock, doesn't he?"
Julia nodded, confused. She was supposed to be remembering, but she didn't want to.
Because this isn't happening. If you close your eyes, it goes away.
"Don't shut the door, Julia," came Dr. Forrest's voice again. "You're close."
Close. The bad man's breath is on her skin. Somebody takes her pajamas, and she's naked and cold. She tries to move, but she can't. The rock is hard under her back.
The man in the hood bends over her. He has a knife. It glows in the fire, candles all around, something stinks, why are there so many bad people? They all have hoods. Which one is Daddy?
They're singing now, a song that doesn't sound happy at all. She looks up to the other end of the rock, trying not to see the bad man. She sees the goat's head, the ragged threads of the neck dripping blood. She screams.
"That's it, Julia," said Dr. Forrest. "Let it out. Don't let the memory keep you chained anymore."
Something hurts inside her belly, she's crying but none of the bad people seem to notice, they just keep saying the scary words over and over.
Just the way she remembers it.
Just the way Dr. Forrest told her it happened.
And then the rest of it. She can't breathe, why is Daddy letting them do this to her? This isn't just a little game. Because games are fun, and this isn't fun.
Now the bad man has a knife, holding it over his head. The knife flashes like the skull ring.
"What does he say?" Dr. Forrest asked.
"You know," Julia murmured.
"Yes, I know, but you need to know. Say it out loud, and you'll kill its magic. It will have no power over you."
"I'm scared."
"I know you're scared, Julia. I know this is hard for you. But the only way to get better is to stare down your fears." Dr. Forrest sounded as if she were near tears herself, voice harsh and choked.
Julia recited the words, imitating the chant of the hooded man:
"Highness of Darkness, Satan, Master of the World, accept this offering from your loyal and humble slaves, that you may continue to make us free. So mote it be."
"And the rest of it," Dr. Forrest said, excited.
They said in unison, the bad people, Julia, Dr. Forrest, all combined in one chilling voice, "Lord Master Satan, we offer you this blood in your cursed name, that you may smile upon us and bless us. That you may---"
Julia stopped, caught in the doorway, not sure if she were in the past or the present. She opened her eyes, Dr. Forrest loomed over her, hands holding hers, face rapt, eyes closed.
Dr. Forrest completed the chant. "---that you may take as your bride, this whore Judas Stone."
Julia shivered, more frightened than she had ever been. She was on the precipice of a great gulf, it yawned out black and endless and inviting, a total madness.
"He cut you, didn't he, Julia?"
Dr. Forrest was her only link to reality, the therapist's grip the only thing preventing her from slipping into the abyss.
"He took your blood, and the eyes glowed." Dr. Forrest seemed nearly as faraway and lost as Julia. Even with the warm sunshine breaking through the office window, with the mountains spread bright and golden outside, with the reality of the chair and the floor and ceiling and walls, all the solid things of the world seemed as if they were melting away, swirling down some hidden drain into oblivion.
"The skull ring. You remember," Dr. Forrest said.
Julia couldn't suck any oxygen into her lungs.
"He did it."
Words like nails.
Julia stared into the therapist's rigid, twisted face. Suddenly Dr. Forrest's eyes snapped open, shining like candle fire, flickering.
"Say it, Julia. Don't let him have this last victory."
"He . . . "
"Say what he did."
"He let them---"
Dr. Forrest's lips curled in triumph. "Yes, he did. He had the power. All the power that Satan could offer. How could he resist?"
Julia jerked up from her chair, pulling free from Dr. Forrest. "He gave me to that Creep."
Julia wrapped her arms around her chest, sobbing, her shoulders quivering. She collapsed back into the chair. She turned to look outside, to escape from the office, but the world was only a larger prison. Wherever she might flee, her mind would follow.
"I told you so," Dr. Forrest said, calmed by Julia's acceptance. "Now you know. Now we can deal with it."
"No," Julia sobbed. "It didn't happen."
"Julia, your denial has been holding you back."
"Not him."
"Julia, incest is common. So many of our sisters have suffered the same cruelty. And ritual abuse. Would you be surprised if I told you half of my female patients recover memories of Satanic masses?"
Half.
"I share your pain, Julia. I bleed with you."
"You don't understand," Julia said.
"Of course I do. I've been here with you. I've . . . been there before you."
Been there?
"I'm a survivor, Julia. Just as you will be."
"Survivor?"
Dr. Forrest stood, unfastened the bottom two buttons on her blouse. She showed her belly, the raised welts purple against her pale flesh. On Dr. Forrest, the work had been completed, the pentagram fully etched, the horror plainly written onto the page of her body.
"You?" Julia didn't know what to say. What use were words?
Dr. Forrest buttoned her blouse with quick, efficient movements. She smiled, but her eyes were distant, unfocused. Perhaps she was looking through the rooms of her own house, rummaging in secret cellars.
Julia glanced at the wall clock. Two hours had passed. She had given herself away, ripped open her skull and handed her brain to Dr. Forrest. And her spirit had slipped out through the wound, merged with the shadows and was lost.
"We can defeat it, Julia. Now we move forward."
"I'm sorry, Dr. Forrest. I'm sorry it happened to you."
"Don't be sorry. Sorrow is for the weak, the emotionally crippled, those who don't seize what lies before them. We should strive for balance, Julia."
Julia stared with wonder at the wise therapist's face. Dr. Forrest had exposed herself, had opened up her own dark rooms, and now was as calm as if she had commented on the pansies in the window planter.
If this woman, who has endured terror beyond imagining, could become strong enough to help others, it's time I stopped feeling sorry for myself.
But the stinging memory swarmed over her again, and the force of the nightmarish admission blew in like a hurricane. She closed her eyes tight, but all she could see was the hooded man on top of her, his skin hot and sweaty on hers, the skull ring on the fist that held the knife, the twin rubies glowing as brightly as the two eyes under the hood---
"Julia, look at me."
She opened her eyes, shivering, her tears cool on her cheeks.
"It's natural for you to be scared," Dr. Forrest said. "It gets easier. Accepting is the first part of healing. From here on, we go forward."
Julia nodded. Forward.
"Now you're ready to embrace the whole truth. But we'll have to go slowly."
Julia began putting away the memories, the emotional trauma of the session, as if they were notebooks filed in mental cabinets. She needed to gather herself and go meet the demands of reality. She was behind on her work, and the paper's deadline was this evening. And the police were supposed to come by her house to dust for fingerprints.
She bent down to get her purse and stopped with her hand on the strap. "What about the drawing?"
"Let's not worry about the drawing right now." Dr. Forrest walked to stand beside Julia's chair. "I think you have enough to sort out right now without thinking about that. In fact, I believe it would be best if I kept it for you. At least for a week or two, until you're ready to face your recent problems."
Julia clutched the purse into her lap. She wasn't sure she should let the paper go. The police might need it to prove that the Peeping Tom had illegally entered her bedroom. It likely had his fingerprints on it.
But how would he know about the pentagram, about "Jooolia"?
Maybe Dr. Forrest was right. The drawing had caused her nothing but worry. If she were rid of it, maybe she could get on with her healing. Out of sight, out of mind.
She opened her purse and handed the folded paper to Dr. Forrest. The therapist smiled, her gray eyes almost mirthful. "You're going to be just fine, Julia. You're going to be perfect."
Julia closed the purse, the wooden box still buried under Kleenex, hairbrush, wallet, cell phone, and keys. She would keep the ring secret until the next session.
"Time heals all wounds, Julia," said the doctor.
Time, and maybe the band-aids and salve of hope. And faith, if she could find any.
Rick O'Dell came by Julia's desk after lunch, his confident smile a counterpoint to her dark mood.
"So, how was the vacation?" Rick asked. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, his tie carefully askew. He was eating a donut, nibbling it like a fastidious mouse.
"Refreshing." Julia glanced back at her computer screen.
"You look like you hardly slept a wink. Who was the lucky guy?"
Certainly not you, Mr. Stud-In-Your-Dreams. My private life is none of your business.
She controlled her annoyance. "Look, Rick, I'm way behind. I've got four articles to get done by deadline."
"Touchy. Don't you want to hear the latest on my Satanic sacrifice theory?"
Julia's fingers froze over the keyboard. She swiveled her chair, forgetting her resolve to be indifferent to him. "Actually, I was kind of wondering about that."
"You've still got it in you. Once you get a nose for the crime beat, you never lose it."
"Rick, I'm strictly features now. Don't worry about me trying to take your job."
Rick laughed, the confident boy wonder with two press awards on his desk. "I just got a copy of the medical examiner's preliminary report. Ritualistic markings, made with a blade. No fingerprint match, unfortunately. The victim is still unidentified. Autopsy showed traces in the system of morphine and---get this---belladonna."
"Belladonna?"
"Yeah. Also known as 'witch bane.' Long associated with black magic and Satan worship. It's taken as a hallucinogenic substance, even though it's actually a poison."
"I know what belladonna is. Hand of Glory, and all that. So what killed him, the wounds or the poison?"
"From what they can tell right now, he probably was just getting a decent buzz on when the knife fell the first time." Rick stuffed more of the donut in his mouth, crumbs dribbling down his chin. He wiped his hand on his pants. "If he was lucky, he was dead before they chopped off his head."
"You're saying 'they.' Any evidence that this wasn't the act of a lone psycho?"
"Who cares about evidence? This story is sweet."
"Is the daily onto it?"
"Don't you read the papers?"
"Not if I can help it."
"They're strictly soft-selling it. The cops are feeding them a line of crap, and as long as they can publish that quote-of-the-day, they're happy." Rick pulled a couple of wrinkled clippings from his shirt pocket and read from them.
"'Police say they are pursuing new leads in the case of a murder victim whose headless body was recovered last week. Investigators now believe the body was dumped into the Amadahee River miles upstream and that it's unlikely the murder occurred in this area.'" Rick looked at Julia over his glasses. "How's that for positive spin?"
"Not bad. The writer should work in P.R."
"The writer was the daily's editor. Rumor has it she's a bedmate of the sheriff and a couple of council members, and not just politically, either."
"Too much information, Rick. My day was hell enough without knowing that."
"Here's yesterday's. 'Chief Investigator Lieutenant T.L. Snead says---"
"Who?"
"Snead. Supposed to be some hotshot detective from the big city. Only been here a few months, though, so the good-old-boy jury is still out on him."
"Snead." Julia stared at her keyboard, her belly tightening.
Rick moved closer, taking advantage of the broken eye contact to loom over her. "What's with this Snead? Do you know him?"
No. It's all a coincidence. Cops don't get transferred just in time for a ritual sacrifice to come bobbing up in the river. Snead didn't follow me from Memphis as an agent of Satan. The devil isn't stalking my immortal soul, because I'm not sure I even have one any longer.
Julia ignored the shadowy cloak of panic that hovered at the corners of her mind. "What does Snead say?"
"He believes identification will be difficult since the body was in the water so long. The skin was too far gone for fingerprints. And without the head, dental records are useless."
"Gee, that's convenient. It's almost like a forensic expert committed the murder."
"Or else a bunch of people who are insanely lucky." Rick leaned forward and arched his eyebrows, trying to look sinister. "Or maybe Satan's awesome power is protecting the coven from being discovered."
For a brief instant, a second face had superimposed itself over Rick's, a face with red eyes and a wide black nose and a goatish beard. A face distorted by evil.
Julia rolled her chair away. "Don't do that, Rick."
Rick grinned, but his grin was like that worn by the skull ring, sinister and sick. He tried to laugh but the wind died in his throat.
Julia stood and walked to the corner of her office.
Rick started to follow. "Hey, I didn't know you were so jumpy."
He put out his hand to touch her arm but she jerked away.
Satan doesn't exist. Dr. Forrest says monsters are only in the mind.
Oh, but monsters could wear flesh. Daddy. Lucius. Mitchell. The Peeping Tom. The people in the coven who had scarred her for life. And maybe, just maybe, there was a monster inside her, wrapped around her bones, owning her every movement and breath and thought.
"Hey, I'm sorry, Julia." His hands hovered as if he wanted to touch her or pass her a tissue, anything to ward off an uncomfortable show of emotion.
"Just leave," Julia said. "I've got work to do."
Rick backed away, pausing at the door. "Gee, hope you feel better. Guess you don't want to go out to dinner, huh?"
The worst part was she couldn't tell if he was serious or not. She waved him away, sat at her desk and pressed her palms against her eyes until the bright colors drove away the dark image of Rick's goat face. God, if she was going to start seeing things, she might as well check into the rubber room right now. Visions were the gift of only the blessed or the damned. Which was she?
Julia finished her articles and went home around seven o'clock. She drove fast, racing the sun because she hadn't left the house lights on. The thought of what might be waiting in the closet filled her with a gut-clenching dread. She arrived at Buckeye Creek Road just before dark. Mrs. Covington was sitting in her front-porch rocker as Julia drove by. The old woman waved her over.
Julia eyed the apartment building carefully. The Creep could be out on bail and already back at his window, binoculars in hand. The forest was quiet, the trees readying themselves for a long winter's sleep. The mountains were so solid and strong and peaceful that Julia almost convinced herself that everything was normal, that Elkwood was a safe place, and the past was not tiptoeing up behind her with arms outstretched.
If God existed, he surely would set up his Earthly kingdom in this granite stronghold. But would his gates be open or would he fortify himself against unwanted, unwholesome company?
Julia stopped in the yard just beyond the porch railing. Mrs. Covington sipped her tea and lit a cigarette. The red tip glowed in the dusk. "How you doing, Julia?"
"I'm fine, Mrs. Covington."
"Call me 'Mabel,' honey."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Cops made a big show of it last night, didn't they?" The woman sucked on the cigarette, its glow throwing strange shadows on her wrinkled face.
"Yeah. They arrested that guy for breaking into my house. He stole my---"
"Didn't I tell you to watch out for him?"
"He broke into my house and--"
"It ain't the first time." Mrs. Covington took a puff and let the smoke swirl around her face. The porch squeaked in rhythm with the rocker. "They done let him out. I saw him up yonder with his buddies, drinking beer like he didn't have a care in the world."
"The police were supposed to come today and dust for fingerprints."
"Never you mind about the law. You'd best just take care of yourself."
Julia patted her purse. "I've got a can of mace. And a baseball bat under the bed."
The old woman cackled. "As good as a gun. Just make sure you use it on the right person."
The tobacco smoke wreathed Julia, sweet at first, but then cloying. "I thought mountain people were supposed to be trustworthy."
"That's just what they show on the TV set. People is people all over, I reckon. Some good, some bad, and sometimes you can't tell which is which."
"Well, I'm just glad Walter was here when the Creep broke in. No telling what might have happened if not for him."
Mrs. Covington quit rocking and leaned forward. "That's a mighty handy coincidence, don't you think?"
"Coincidence?" Julia preferred to think of it as good luck. She deserved a little, didn't she?
"He's been around right regular lately."
"He told me he was working for you yesterday."
Mrs. Covington stubbed out her cigarette. Her face was barely discernible in the shadows. Julia wondered why the woman didn't have on her porch light as usual.
"Sure, he was working for me. But he could have done that any time. And he come by your place twice while you was gone. Walked around the back of the house where I couldn't see him."
Julia's mind spun with this information, trying to match it up with what Walter had told her. "He seems okay to me."
As okay as anybody in this new future where my lover attacks me and my shrink has a pentagram scar and cops let perverted Creeps roam free and headless bodies float downstream.
"He's keeping an eye on you, but I'm keeping an eye on him." A cat padded across the porch like a moving shadow.
"Well, if you don't trust him, why do you let him work for you?"
"He's mountain. Knew some of his kin, and kind of felt sorry for him when he fell on hard times. He might not be innocent but so far I can't find a crack in his story. And I spend a lot of time looking. That's why I keep him close."
"He seems to be doing all right for himself." Julia fidgeted, changed her purse strap to the opposite shoulder. She caught herself wondering if her door would be unlocked. Or if Walter would be hidden in her closet, waiting for her, a man who had a key to her house.
Julia moved to the porch steps, feeling lost herself though she was only a few feet from the railing. A light came on in one of the apartment buildings, and Julia wondered if it was coming from the Creep's window. Would he dare to come back for a second helping of whatever pleasure he'd stolen in her room, or to finish the job of stealing the engagement ring?
And what if Walter had a secret agenda, and his kind face was only the mask of a sociopathic killer?
No. Julia refused to believe it, not of the man who had sat across from her in the living room last night. She couldn't see those same gentle but strong hands wrapped around a throat, squeezing, squeezing, fingers digging into soft flesh. That face with the cheeks that creased when he smiled couldn't twist into a punishing, murderous mask. And his Christian faith seemed sincere. Walter simply wasn't capable of harming anyone without a good reason.
But then, Mitchell had kept his own violent urges carefully hemmed in, hidden behind eyes that disguised whatever strange storms brewed inside his head.
"Cops been out again," Mrs. Covington said.
"Good. They said they would follow up on the breaking and entering."
"They wasn't doing much following. They went inside your house for a while."
"Inside? Where did they get a key?"
"Seems like nobody needs keys to get in the Hartley house." Mrs. Covington stopped rocking, and the cat hissed, leapt to the porch, and scurried away. "Company's coming."
Julia looked at the dim outline of the woman's face, with its wizened roadmap of wrinkles. The wind changed a little, rattling the leaves. Beneath it, hushed at first but rising, came the sound of a car engine on the road. Headlights swept around a bend and sliced across Mrs. Covington's house. It was Walter's Jeep.
"Speak of the devil," murmured Mrs. Covington.
Walter parked in front of Julia's house, got out and walked over to the porch. He carried something that Julia couldn't make out.
"Howdy, Mrs. Covington," he said, adding more quietly, "Hi, Julia. I came by to see how you were doing."
"How do, Walter," Mrs. Covington said. "Say, is your Aunt Peggy going to make her apple butter this year?"
"Soon as the apples finish falling."
"She always was the best cook in the Triplett family, in my book. Don't go telling your momma that, though."
Walter's grin flashed in the weak light from the apartments. "I'm not as dumb as I look." Then, to Julia, "I took a look at that appliance you gave me to fix." He held up the bag he was carrying.
"Great," Julia said, not wanting to talk about possessed clocks in front of Mrs. Covington, who probably already thought Julia was batty, the way she double-checked her locks, kept her windows shut in the heat of summer, and rarely ventured outside after dark.
"When you going to come finish up the mulching?" Mrs. Covington asked Walter.
"It's on my list." He moved closer to Julia. "Did you ever hear back from the police?"
"The Creep's out," she said. "I guess he's got friends."
"Figures."
Mrs. Covington watched in darkness. Julia said, "I've got to go, Mrs. Covington. See you tomorrow."
"All right," she said. "Mind my words, hear?"
"Good night," Walter said to the old woman, whose hand flickered in a wave.
Julia walked toward her house, Walter beside her. When they were out of range of Mabel Covington's hearing, Walter said, "She's a strange old thing, ain't she?"
"Everybody's strange around here," Julia said.
"Everybody. What's that supposed to mean?"
It means if I weren't afraid that a Creep might be waiting in my house, I don't think you would be stepping foot across my threshold again. It means maybe I'm not crazy at all, maybe it's the rest of the world, and by my solitary saneness I'm the piece that doesn't fit the Life Puzzle.
"I'm just tired and babbling." She fumbled in the purse for her keys, tucked the canister of mace in her hand, and unlocked the door. Before entering, she glanced at Mabel Covington's porch. The woman had lit another cigarette, and its glow bobbed with her rocking. Julia stepped inside and turned on the lights, blinking against the brightness.
"Leave the door open, if you don't mind," she said to Walter.
"The bugs will get in and eat you alive."
"It's not the bugs I'm worried about." She slipped the mace into her pocket where she could quickly retrieve it if needed. She didn't sit in her chair, hoping Walter would take the hint.
"Your eye looks better," she said. The swelling had gone down, though the flesh around his eye was red.
Walter took the clock from the bag and set it on the coffee table beside the baseball cards. "Like I said, I'm not any electronics expert, but I couldn't find anything wrong with it. The circuit boards look sound, and I've never heard of a microchip just going off the deep end."
"So your diagnosis would be to throw it away and forget about it?"
"Sometimes something's broke and you just got to go replace it."
She moved to the hallway and yawned, even though her pulse was racing. "I'm tired, Walter. Long day."
Walter nodded, not looking at her. Was he thinking of her bedroom waiting just a few yards down the hall? Or of his lost wife?
"Thanks for checking the clock," Julia said. She wondered if she could reach the bat under the bed if he decided to attack. She tried to look sleepy over the fear, and then became angry at herself for doubting the only person who had helped her.
"She got into it, didn't she?" Still Walter stared at the floor, or maybe past years.
"Got into what?"
"About my wife."
Julia put her hand in her pocket, touched the mace. "Well . . . "
Walter clenched his fists. His face tightened, the crease in his cheeks no longer cheerful. "She was probably in on it."
Julia didn't know if Walter was talking about his late wife or Mabel Covington. "Mrs. Covington?"
Walter went to the open door without looking at her. "Nothing. The past don't matter none."
He was going to walk out. He was going to act like nothing had happened. She couldn't let him do that. She didn't want to lose this little bit of whatever feeling stirred inside her chest every time he was around.
Julia hurried after him, wondering if Mabel Covington was over on her porch, watching and straining her ears for tomorrow's gossip. "Walter, the past does matter. Especially if it hurts."
Walter turned in the doorway, a sad smile across his face. "No. If it hurts, you forget it. You bury it deep as hell, like you do your favorite childhood pet when it dies. Then you get on your knees and pray, but mostly what you do is wonder why the Lord would do such an awful thing."
Julia found herself spouting Dr. Forrest's aphorisms. "No. You have to dig it up, bring it to the surface, acknowledge its power over you. And then you can heal."
Walter shook his head. "Sounds like the slogans on that New Age crap in that little crystal shop downtown."
"You're religious. What do you think God wants you to do about it?"
"Keep living. Finding something worth hanging on to, a reason to get out of bed in the morning." Walter finally met her eyes. His gaze was hot, the gray in his irises gone, a bright golden color radiating there. "And hanging on to faith despite it all. If this world fails you, at least you got the next."
Julia wondered why his anger hadn't scared her. Unlike Mitchell's, Walter's anger was directed toward something larger, something beyond his reach. If he was a Creep, his belief made him even more threatening, because it touched a larger mystery she couldn't understand.
Walter looked out the door to the dark forest. "We were asleep in our tent, up in the woods north of town. I woke up in the middle of the night and she was gone. It was pitch black, the moon was down, there was hardly a star in the sky. I wandered all over the woods looking for her, yelling her name until I was hoarse. It's a wonder I didn't fall off one of those cliffs."
Tears glistened on Walter's cheeks. He turned away and continued. "When morning came, I drove all over the mountain, calling for help. We looked for a solid week. Never did find any sign of her. It was like she up and walked off the face of the Earth."
Julia wanted to touch him, to hold his hand, but she hardly knew how to deal with her own emotions, much less comfort someone else. "What do you think happened?"
After a long pause, in which Julia could hear the cold chirping of crickets outside, Walter said, "I figured she was close by. She left her shoes in the tent. They found some of her footprints the next day. Other footprints were found up there, too, so the trail got confused. The hounds hit on her trail for awhile, but then it disappeared into a creek. Even if she was sleepwalking or something, that cold water should have woken her up."
"I'm sorry, Walter."
"It ain't your fault."
"I know, but---"
"Forget it," he interrupted. "That was a long time ago. When something bad happens, you can either freeze up like your busted clock yonder, or you can get over it and move on. She's with the Lord now, so maybe she's better off anyway."
Get over it. Was Walter like her, only half alive, part of him having been fatally wounded years ago? Even his Christianity wasn't enough to fix his damage.
Julia folded her arms across her chest. "You're not telling me the whole story," she said.
"There ain't no story," he said. "Hell, most of the people in town think I did away with her. Do you know how it feels to have eyes latched on your back when you walk down the street? Like somebody's always watching from the shadows?"
Oh, yes. Julia knew what that was like. She was the poster child of panic and paranoia.
"Sorry to keep you up," he said. "You don't need my problems. You're the one that had a Creep break into her house."
"Thanks for watching out for me. Helps me sleep better."
"Got that deadly bat handy?" he asked.
"I'm ready for anything."
"I'm praying for you." He waved goodnight and left. Julia looked at the clock and the baseball cards and hurried after him.
From the door, Julia called, "If I can ever do anything for you---"
He was gone, lost in the dark, and she heard the Jeep's ignition fire.
"Just let me know," she whispered.
She thought of his parting words, and considered a possible double meaning for them. Maybe praying for her didn't mean he was asking God to help her. Maybe he was asking God to make Julia his possession. If she were braver, or more scared, she would ask God herself, but she was afraid she might get an answer.
She closed and locked the door.
The phone call woke Julia sometime before dawn. She rolled over, kicking at the blankets, trapped for a moment in some strange dream in which she'd been buried alive. The bed was damp with sweat. She squinted for the clock before remembering that it was in the trash can.
She fumbled for her cell phone on the dresser and nearly knocked it to the floor before finally getting it to her ear. Only important calls came during sleep, usually with bad news. But lately, there had been no other kind of news. "Hello?" she said, trying not to sound groggy.
"Julia."
"Dr. Forrest?"
"You're not obeying my orders."
"Uh?" Julia fought into a sitting position.
"I told you to stay away from that man. He's not conducive to your healing."
"Which man?"
"You know. Did you dream?"
Julia tried to remember, though she knew only bad things waited in the gray shadows of semi-consciousness. "Yeah. I think Daddy put me in a room, except the room was really a box, and I couldn't breath, and I beat on the sides trying to get out---"
She realized her arms were sore, and wondered if she'd been lashing out in her sleep.
"You know what that means, don't you, Julia?"
"No," Julia said, afraid to find out.
"Your father oppressed you for years before the actual ritual abuse occurred."
"But I was only a small child. How could I remember all of that?"
"The memory is in the meat, Julia. Some women have reported experiences of attempted abortions, memories made while they were still in the uterus."
"Before they were even born?" Julia was wide awake now, her heartbeat racing, any relaxation she might have gained from sleep long gone.
"We're just beginning to understand memory and how the mind stores information. It's possible that memory works at a cellular level, so that even the moment of conception is recorded somewhere. Of course, it's the retrieval system that's flawed. That's why you need help."
Julia thought of Walter's words, about how sometimes the past is best left alone. "Maybe it's not such a good thing to remember all that."
Dr. Forrest sighed. Julia wondered if the woman ever slept.
"Julia, we need to heal you. We need more survivors. There's strength in numbers. It's all about the truth. And it's all about sharing."
"I . . . why didn't you tell me before that you had been abused, too?"
"Because I'm the doctor, Julia. And the only reason I told you was so you'd know that you're not alone."
Julia tried to wipe the darkness from her eyes. "What time is it?"
"A little after four."
"Why are you calling?"
"You need me, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Tell me what else happened in Memphis."
"I've told you everything."
Except for the part about the wooden blocks spread across my table and the silver skull ring and maybe one or two other things which either I have forgotten or am lying to myself about.
"Julia. Don't keep secrets from your therapist."
"I'm not keeping secrets."
"You talked to a detective. You went back to your childhood home. You saw the barn where you were the victim of Satanic ritual abuse. Why didn't you call the police and tell them about remembering the barn?"
Who had told her those things? "Because I was afraid."
"Afraid of what? Never be afraid of the truth."
"Because I don't think the police would have believed me. I don't think they would have believed me about Mitchell's assault, either."
"Am I the only one you can trust?"
No. Maybe she could trust Walter. Or could she? Her pulse throbbed in her temples, and she rubbed at her forehead. "Yes, Dr. Forrest."
"Then you'll do what I say?"
"I want to get better."
"Come to my office today. There's someone I want you to meet."
"Today?" Julia thought about her staff meeting at the paper. She still had a lot of work to catch up.
"Ten in the morning."
"I don't think I can make it."
"You'll come. You want to be healed, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You want to become the person you're supposed to be."
"Yes."
"You want to be free."
"Of course I do."
"He owns you, Julia." The earpiece clicked as the doctor hung up.
Julia put down the phone and sat on the edge of the bed. He owns you. The darkness around her grew substance, pressed against her like a thick black jelly.
The smallest of noises came from her window, like a bird's feathers scraping glass. Julia turned in the direction of the curtains. Two red specks glowed there.
Julia nearly dove into the blankets, to bury her head and let the panic consume her and maybe take her breath for the deepest and final time. The eyes couldn't have been red. It must be the Peeping Tom, back for a second helping.
Her face flushed with anger. She wanted to make sure he would never peep again. She reached under the bed, grabbed the Louisville Slugger, and ran to the window.
She heard the voice, plainly, clearly, "He owns you, Jooolia."
She dropped the bat. The twin red specks disappeared.
Eventually dawn came, the gray light filling the room. Julia numbly took a shower, dressing in the bathroom. She kept the bat close. When she was dressed, she called the Elkwood police desk. She gave her name and asked if the investigating officer in her Peeping Tom case could meet her at Dr. Forrest's office at ten. When the communications officer asked for more information, Julia hung up.
The morning was dark, oppressive clouds spread in a solid drab sheet overhead, the air still. Even the colored leaves seemed washed out, yellows and reds edging toward brown. A soft fog hid the surrounding mountains, and the smell of coming rain fought with the sweeter odors of autumn decay and grass. No one stirred at the apartments across the street, and Mabel Covington's rocker was empty.
Julia arrived at the Times office to find Rick waiting by her desk. "Gee, you look terrible," he said, stirring his coffee with a pencil.
"Good morning, Mr. Compassion." Julia expected him to again ask who was the lucky guy who'd kept her up all night, but he only pressed his lips together and nodded.
"Anything new on your Satanic murder theory?" she asked.
"Nope. Got an interview with Snead this morning. The editor's going to love me for this one."
If she loves you half as much as you love yourself, that would be a romance for the ages. "Good luck. Well, I've got work to do. As usual."
"We've got days until deadline." He moved closer to her, looming. "What's your hurry?"
Julia nervously eyed the corners of her small office. Her heart was beating fast, the panic creeping in on a black tide.
"Hey, is something the matter?" Rick set his coffee on her desk, stepped back, and held his palms up, his expression as innocent as a teddy bear's.
Julia put her elbow on her desk and propped up her head with one hand. "Just tired, is all."
"Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out tonight with some of my friends, but I guess not. He owns you."
Julia spun in her chair, tried to rise but her knees were weak. She gasped a couple of times, fought some air into her lungs, and whispered, "What did you say?"
"Jeez, what's wrong with you, Julia?" he said.
"You said 'He owns you.'"
His eyebrows lifted. "I didn't say anything of the kind."
Julia's pulse machine-gunned through her veins, her throat constricted.
"You ought to go home and get some rest," Rick said, taking a step back. "You don't look so hot."
Julia pulled a water bottle from her purse and took a couple of swallows. Her hands trembled so much that the water sloshed inside the plastic container. She was ashamed to have Rick see her this way. "I think I'm catching a little bit of the flu."
Rick edged closer to the door. "I'd go see a doctor if I were you."
"I am," she said. "Ten o'clock."
"Well, don't die or anything before then," Rick said, glancing at two graphic artists passing in the hall as if they might provide emergency medical assistance, or at least provide cover for his escape.
"I'll be fine," she said. "I just want to get a little work done before then."
"Yeah," Rick said, avoiding her eyes. "Well, I've got to get ready for my interview."
"Bye," she said, but he was already gone. Julia looked into her open purse. The box waited under her wallet, key chain, and tissues. Her fingers itched to touch it, though the memory of its strange electricity still haunted her.
She reached in, dug toward the bottom of the purse until she felt the wooden box. Her fingers explored the etched emblem. She thumbed the lid free and rooted in the cloth. She touched the cold metal and pulled the ring free of the purse.
Julia held the ring between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Again it seemed to guide itself toward her left hand as if possessing a gravity of its own. Then the ring was on her finger, its heat expanding through her in orange radiant waves. Words popped into her head, spoken in the guttural voice of a madman: "With this ring, I thee wed."
She wrestled the ring free and flung it into her purse. Her ears rang as the blood rushed from her head. She bent over, fighting a surge of nausea. The walls closed in, as sinister as the sides of a living coffin.
Breathe, Julia.
Count.
Just the way Dr. Forrest taught you.
She started, concentrating on each number, picturing the numerals as crystal clear shapes, and their edges softened as she mentally melted them. Ten was the tough one, because it fought and squirmed, wanted to slip away before she could pin it down. Nine came and went a little more slowly. By the count of eight, she thought she could breathe again. Seven, six, and she would survive.
Five, and she could open her eyes, focusing only on the deep cleansing breath and the exhalation that carried away the fear. Four, three, now more slowly, two, and she almost yawned. Then one, the end, relaxation, an effective enough self-hypnosis that she could clearly think about the things Dr. Forrest had advised.
Bring it out. Let the pain surface. Face the nightmares. Don't surrender.
But maybe surrender was better. She could crawl into the cellar of her head, put her hands over her eyes, and wait.
Wait for what?
For Daddy to come out of the shadows, in his hooded robe and wearing his skull ring, the knife cold and cruel in his hand?
She shuddered herself back to the present and found herself gazing at the blank screen of her computer. She flipped on the power and the screen burst into brightness. The computer ran through its loading commands and the screen saver came up, a field of deep red.
In the middle, in letters as white as corpses:
He owns you, Jooolia.
She jabbed the computer's power switch with her index finger, half expecting a tremendous bolt of electricity to leap from the machine. She grabbed her purse and hurried into the hall, nearly knocking down an advertising rep. The rep called after her, but she staggered from the building into the gray morning. The parking lot was like water, something to be waded through.
If only I can make it to Dr. Forrest's.
She struggled into the Subaru and drove to the therapist's office without running off the road, though several drivers honked at her. An Elkwood police patrol car was parked by the office door, gleaming even though the sun was veiled. The secretary ushered Julia through, telling her that the doctor was expecting her. Julia glanced at her watch and saw that it was only a few minutes after nine.
She knocked on Dr. Forrest's door.
"Come in, Julia," came the therapist's muffled voice.
Julia entered to see Dr. Forrest standing beside the window with a tall, thin man who smiled at her. In a tweed jacket and wearing no sidearm, he could have passed for an English professor. His face was creased from age, but his dark hair had only the slightest touch of gray. The cop's eyes were cold and dark.
Dr. Forrest said, "Julia, this is Chief T.L. Snead."
Snead.
Julia swayed as if the floor had been yanked from underneath her. She recognized him now, an aged version of the cop in the old newspaper photographs.
This was Snead, the man she had built into a monster in her own mind. Here she was, face to face with the man who she believed might have covered up Satanic murders, who had failed to solve her father's disappearance, who had tracked her from Memphis to this small Blue Ridge town.
Snead extended his hand in greeting, and she saw that the tip of his pinkie was missing, the stump healed to red scar tissue. She backed away.
"So you're Julia," Snead said, with no hint of emotion. "I always wondered what kind of woman you would grow into."
"What are you doing here?"
"I decided to take over this case myself," Snead said. "Invasion of privacy is such a terrible offense, as I'm sure you know firsthand. I want to make sure the right person is convicted."
Julia's anger momentarily overwhelmed her fear and confusion. "What do you mean, the right person? They arrested that guy last night. You have statements from both Walter Triplett and me."
"The suspect tells a different story. He says Mr. Triplett was the one who was inside your house."
"And you believe him?" Julia looked to Dr. Forrest for help, but the therapist crossed her arms and said nothing. "That Creep said he was hired to steal my engagement ring and harass me."
"Allegedly. But Mr. Triplett has some---shall we say, suspicions---surrounding him. We need to investigate the matter more thoroughly."
"Then why didn't anyone from your department dust for fingerprints?"
Snead gave a smile. His lips looked like a reptile's that had just swallowed a satisfying bug might. "How do you know we didn't? Your house is a busy place."
"Somebody was at my window again last night. Right after I talked to you on the phone, Dr. Forrest."
The doctor frowned. "Julia, you probably imagined it. You know that paranoia is one of the side effects of non-specific panic disorder."
"No. It happened. He said, 'He owns you.'"
Snead and Dr. Forrest glanced at each other. Then Snead said, "Do you have any evidence?"
"Maybe you could go check for footprints or something. I don't know. It's not like I had a video camera running."
"Why are you so afraid, Julia?" Snead said.
She stared at the beige swirls in the carpet. She remembered something James Whitmore had told her in Memphis, how cops never forgot the cases they hadn't solved. "How come you followed me from Memphis?"
"I didn't follow you," Snead said. "I was here already."
Before her? Then he must have kept track of her whereabouts. Did Elkwood have some connection to her father's disappearance? Even though Dr. Forrest had convinced Julia that her father was a terrible and abusive man, she would love to have that riddle of the past resolved. But Snead's interest in her was a more enigmatic riddle.
"I'm a friend of Dr. Forrest," Snead continued. "We grew up together. And I've had several conversations with both her and your therapist in Memphis, Dr. Danner. I thought getting some insight about you might help me solve your father's disappearance. Plus, I was curious about how the tragedy affected you."
"I thought doctor-patient information was confidential." She looked accusingly at Dr. Forrest. The older woman touched her abdomen as if to remind Julia of the pentagram that had been carved into her flesh.
"A doctor can share a diagnosis, Julia," said Dr. Forrest. "What we can't do is give transcriptions or relate specific incidents or confessions that emerge from therapy."
That didn't sound like anything Julia had ever heard, though most of her legal knowledge came from reruns of Law & Order.
"Why don't you make yourself comfortable?" said the doctor. She crossed behind Julia and closed the office door. Snead waited by the window at parade rest. Julia took her usual chair, her purse in her lap.
Dr. Forrest returned and sat in her own session chair. "Now, Julia, what brings you here this morning?"
Julia gripped the arms of the chair. "You told me to come in."
The therapist's face saddened, and the wrinkles around her mouth deepened. "Julia, Julia. That's not the way to healing. You can lie to me all you want, and that doesn't matter. What matters is that you're lying to yourself."
"You called me in the middle of the night," Julia said. "Remember?"
"You imagined it, just as you imagined the person at your window."
Julia squeezed her purse, the leather moistened by her sweaty palms. Even sitting, she was as dizzy as if riding on a mad magic carpet.
"Okay, let's assume you're not making it up," Dr. Forrest said. "What did you think this person at the window said?"
"'He owns you,'" Julia managed to whisper.
"'He owns you.' And what do you think this means, Julia?" The doctor tented her fingers, her legs crossed. Snead looked on as if Julia were a white rat ready for another run at a familiar maze. Why didn't Dr. Forrest make him leave?
"I don't know what it means."
"I'll tell you, then. That was your subconscious mind telling you that you're still letting the sins of your father control your life. You're still a slave to the past. But the fact that you're ready to hear the message is a good sign, whether it came in a dream or not."
"I don't want to hear any message," Julia said. "And I don't want to talk about this in front of him." Julia avoided Snead's eyes.
"You trust me, don't you?" said Dr. Forrest.
"Well, yes."
"Then you know I'm doing what's best for you."
Julia pressed back in her chair. "I . . . I'm not sure about anything anymore."
Dr. Forrest leaned forward and touched Julia on the knee. She rubbed it lightly. "The memory's in the meat, Julia. Cellular memory. Just let it escape. Breathe."
No. Dr. Forrest wouldn't try to hypnotize her here, not in front of Snead. Julia didn't want to go back to that dark, bad place anymore. She was tired of the pain, anger, and the sick feeling in her belly, that emptiness that only grew with each visit to the past.
She wasn't getting better. She wasn't moving forward. If anything, she was getting closer to becoming the helpless four-year-old again. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore Dr. Forrest's soft, lulling voice. She sought a connection with something larger, a Higher Power she'd always denied. But the woman was too much a part of Julia, had opened the doors to the house of her head, stood always in the halls, calling.
"You know who did it, don't you? You know who the bad man really is. What did he do, Julia? Tell us what he did."
Julia shook her head and moaned, trying to shove away the memories that threatened to surface. Her eyes were pressed so tightly closed that small tears seeped from the corners.
"Julia, you can trust us. We understand, more than anybody in the world. We know what it's like, how hard it is to accept the truth. How hard it is to accept the master."
Master?
Dr. Forrest continued, in that soft, mesmerizing cadence. "We don't want you to fight it any longer, Julia. He doesn't want you to fight. He's been very patient with you because he cares for you so very much."
"Who cares?" Julia wasn't sure if she'd said the words aloud or not.
"Why does he bother, when he has so much power that he can take easily what is his?"
Julia sensed that Snead had moved from the window, but she couldn't force her eyes open to see. She tried to burrow into the chair to escape the horrors of the past, to keep from sliding into that black, yawning gulf.
Daddy can take what is his. He has always owned you, in life, death, or absence. Daddy can hurt you no matter where you try to hide.
"I'll tell you why, Julia," continued Dr. Forrest. "Because he loves you."
Love?
That was the first time Dr. Forrest had ever uttered that word. In all the months of treatment, in these accelerated sessions of the last week, the doctor had talked of sharing, healing, hope, and all the other abstract things that meant nothing. In the religion of the brain, even God was off limits. Now she had to bring out this last hollow word, the one that deserved a special place on the altar of useless words.
Snead's voice came to her as if he was on the foot of the stairs and she were hiding in the attic. "He owns you, Jooolia."
Her eyes snapped open, her abdomen clenched in a knot, her hands curled into fists as she sat forward. She blinked, her vision blurred. Snead still stood by the window.
Dr. Forrest wore her usual look of kind concern. "What's the matter, Julia?"
"What's he doing here?" Julia said, this time staring into Snead's small, dark eyes.
"You asked for him to be here, remember? When I talked to you on the phone last night."
Wait. Didn't Dr. Forrest just say I imagined the phone conversation?
Maybe she shouldn't have tried to resist Dr. Forrest. Because she was confused, her thoughts screwed up. How could she trust her memory when she had long ago lost the ability to tell what had been real? How could she even trust what she thought now, much less 23 years ago?
But since a policeman was here, she decided that there was one thing she hadn't imagined, a solid piece of evidence that might prove once and for all that The Creep had been in her house, and that Walter was innocent of breaking and entering. It was something she'd held in her own hands. Even though she didn't trust Snead, at least Dr. Forrest was present as a witness.
"There's something I found the other night," Julia blurted to Snead. "It was in my closet."
Snead's eyebrows arched, and that bug-eating smile slid across his face again. "What's that, Miss Stone?"
"The drawing."
"Drawing?"
She talked rapidly, glad to be relieved of at least one secret. "A picture of a pentagram. With 'Hello Julia' underneath, only 'Julia' was spelled 'Jooolia' with three O's in the middle, just like Daddy used to spell it when he was teasing me."
"Where is this picture now?"
"I gave it to Dr. Forrest."
Dr. Forrest looked sadly at Julia, and then at Snead. The therapist shook her head.
"What?" Julia asked.
Dr. Forrest held her hands apart. "There's no picture, Julia."
She stood. "What do you mean, there's no picture? I gave it to you yesterday, right in this office."
"Please sit down," the therapist said.
"What did you do with it?"
"Sit down," the therapist commanded. Julia stared at her.
"She's worse off than I thought," Dr. Forrest said to Snead.
"It's not me that's crazy, it's all of you." Even as she said the words, she realized that was exactly the kind of thing a crazy person would say.
"Julia!" shouted Dr. Forrest. Snead moved after her, but she was already gone, through the office door and out of the building, into the reeling gray world outside, into her car and then forward into the mad, strange future.
The climb up the winding road to her house was treacherous, the Subaru's tires squealing with each curve. The asphalt was covered with damp leaves, and a film of mist clung to the surface of the road and the windshield. Julia's panting fogged the window, so she wiped a clear circle with the bottom of her fist. She peered into the thickening gloom ahead, occasionally glancing into the rearview mirror, expecting Snead to come rocketing up behind her with bar lights flashing.
Why are you running? They know where you live. HE knows where you live.
She didn't have any kind of plan. All she wanted to do was get home, slam and lock the door, huddle in the house. But that wasn't an escape. Because, wherever she went, she was always inside her own head. She couldn't outrun the rising tide of shadows.
When Julia drove up, Mabel Covington was on the porch of her big house, leaning on her wooden walking stick, cats prancing around her ankles. The old woman waved frantically with a trembling hand. Julia slowed the car and pulled along the edge of the woman's yard. The apartments were quiet, their tenants off at school or work. Unless the Peeping Tom had his binoculars at the curtain's edge.
Julia rolled down the passenger window as Mrs. Covington hobbled over to the car.
"What is it?" Julia asked, looking down the drive to see if Snead was after her.
"He's here," Mrs. Covington said, her face nearly as white as her thin hair.
"Who's here?"
"He come back." The woman leaned against the door, wheezing as she put her head inside the car.
"The Peeping Tom?"
"Hartley. The one that used to live in your house."
The old woman had gone as mad as the rest of the world. "I'm sorry," Julia said. "I'm in a hurry."
"You don't understand. He was here. He was messing around your house. I called the cops, figuring he come back to get something he left."
"Why would he come back here?"
The woman's eyes narrowed, as cold and clouded as marbles. "Didn't nobody ever tell you, child?"
"Tell me what?"
"Oh, Lordy." The old woman backed a few steps away. "You don't know, do you?"
"Tell me what happened," Julia said, suddenly remembering the murder of the little girl that Rick had mentioned. That name, Hartley, struck a dismal note of recognition.
"You must have found out something. I was hoping and praying they'd leave you alone."
"Maybe we'd better go inside."
The old woman shook her head, the weathered flesh of her neck quivering under her chin. "They told me to stay out of it. I done said too much."
Mrs. Covington turned and struggled across the yard and levered her way onto her porch, planting the walking stick before her with each step. The wooden knocking was swallowed by the silence of the shrouded forest. Then the woman disappeared into her house. Julia rolled up the window and parked in front of her own house.
Hartley was here. What did that mean? Was he really the one that had killed that girl two years before? A crime like that must have sent seismic shock waves through this little community, and Rick O'Dell probably would have woven it into his pet conspiracy theory. Why hadn't Walter told her about it? Walter, the man she thought she could trust?
Julia tiptoed around the side of the house, wishing she had the Louisville Slugger with her. One hand was tucked in her purse, ready to draw the mace, but the spray would have little effect if someone really intended to harm her.
No one was behind the house. She thought of checking around her bedroom window for footprints, to confirm that someone had actually stood there last night and called to her. But more leaves had fallen, covering the ground in a damp carpet of dying color.
The trees somehow seem closer today, surrounding the house.
She almost laughed at the absurdity of the thought. But she was afraid that if she started laughing, she might never stop.
Nothing stirred in the woods, and through the thick autumn mist came the soft gurgling of the creek. She glanced toward the shrouded hill beyond. For a moment, Julia pictured a child sprawled in a clearing, people in hoods gathering around. Then she blinked away the image and hurried to the front of the house.
No Snead yet. He must have decided not to pursue her, for whatever reason. Even the Chief of Police needed some kind of justification to come after her. Maybe Julia was a threat, both to herself and others, and should be locked away for her own good.
Maybe she had imagined the pentagram drawing, the man at her window, the message on her computer at work. But she hadn't imagined the skull ring. The skull ring was real, solid, a link between the past and present. As she searched for her house keys, she dug into the bottom of her purse to reassure herself with the substance of the engraved box.
A weird fetish object to make yourself feel better with---
The box was gone.
She held the purse close and raked through the contents. Wallet, keys, mace, tampons, hair brush, note papers. No ring.
But the purse hadn't been out of her sight.
Julia checked again, but the box and the ring inside it were gone. She unlocked the door, her hand trembling so much that she could barely fit the key in the lock. Despite the muted daylight, the house was dark and forbidding.
Once the door was locked safely behind her, she put her purse on the couch and went to get the Louisville Slugger. She was bending down to reach under the bed when he grabbed her from behind, one hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from screaming. She struggled and kicked, nightmare visions of Mitchell's assault forcing their way to the surface. But Mitchell was in Memphis.
And this Creep was stronger than Mitchell. She tried to drive an elbow against his ribs, but he pulled her back into the dark open closet.
"Shh," he hissed, his voice like the moist flickering of a snake's tongue near her ear.
She bit his hand, and he grunted in pain. "Damn it, Julia."
Walter!
So he was a Creep after all.
He had her in the closet now, and clothes fell from their hangers as they struggled. Walter pulled his hand away from her mouth and whispered, "Hush, they're probably listening."
Listening?
Julia pushed herself from his grasp, falling against a thick row of coats and sweaters. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"
Walter put his index finger to his lips. A purple half-moon marked the flesh where she had bit him. He looked as scared as she felt, his eyes showing white all around the irises.
"Shut up for a second," he said. "I'm not trying to hurt you."
She almost believed him. But in this new world of secrets and lies, no one deserved her trust. If she was going to go crazy, she was determined to do it the old-fashioned way, without any help from anyone. She was going to walk straight up the stairs, stand in the middle of that dark attic of her mind, and scream at the warped walls until they collapsed in upon her.
She didn't need a nudge from Walter. She didn't need a carpenter to fix her house. All she wanted was strong locks and tightly nailed shutters, all light barred from her rooms. All she wanted was to disappear, into the shadowed corners of her attic or the musty depths of her cellar. Alone in the ruins.
Walter pressed against her in the cramped closet. He shook her and whispered, more urgently this time. "Listen to me. Don't break down right now. I need you."
Need? He needed her? Again she almost laughed, but even that took too much effort. As always, surrendering was the most painless option.
"They're outside," he continued. "Deke Hartley, Snead, and the others."
"Snead?" She wondered how the cop could have gotten to the house so fast. And how had Walter gotten inside? Was he the one with the key, the one who had left the pentagram drawing, who stole the skull ring, who tricked her with the digital clock?
That made sense. Foolish Julia, she had asked him to check the clock. She had turned to him for comfort, had made the insane mistake of putting faith in this man who now seemed the most desperate of Creeps. This stranger hovering over her, sweat on his pale face, eyes flicking, lips pressed white.
You don't have to let the Creep into your house. HE'S ALWAYS INSIDE.
Before she could scream, Walter crouched in the corner of the closet. He pulled at a plywood panel set in the wall. The wood came loose, revealing water pipes and insulation. Walter ripped the insulation away in clumps.
The musty smell of the crawl space rose up and filled the closet. The gap between the shower stall and the wall was about two feet wide, with the subfloor cut out. "What are you doing?" Julia asked.
"Access," Walter said. "For working on the plumbing. Or sneaking out."
Walter wriggled down into the narrow opening between the floor joists. His feet touched the dirt beneath the house and he turned, looking almost comical, like a Jack-in-the-Box that was too large for its container. "Come on. Or do you want to stay here and wait for them?"
Julia thought she heard a scrabbling sound at the front door, but she couldn't be sure. "Did you take the ring?"
"What ring?" His eyes met hers, blazing brown not with anger, but with a strange determination.
"And the clock. What does '4:06' mean?"
"Don't talk crazy," he said. "Let's get out of here." He ducked into the opening, contorting his tall frame. His shoulders disappeared, and then his head, and lastly his arms. He called her name from the crawl space, his voice muffled.
Julia got on her hands and knees, pulling her purse behind her. She looked longingly across the room at the Louisville Slugger beneath her bed. Even if she had the bat, she wouldn't be able to wield it in the cramped crawl space. Snead and the rumored Deke Hartley might be outside, and might be after her for whatever reason, or they might not. Despite Walter's strangeness, she would rather go with him than face Snead and Hartley.
She peered down into the darkness of the crawl space. This was worse than the cellar of her dreams, bones or no bones. This was surrender without oblivion, this was a willing, conscious decision. This was a leap into an unknown future.
But then, the future had never been known, and even the past was uncertain.
Julia dangled her legs into the crawl space, the fabric of her slacks scraping on the rough plywood edge. She lowered herself into the dank air, feeling Walter's hands on her. His touch was cool and moist, but was gone as soon as her feet were planted on the ground three feet beneath the floor. She bent the rest of her body into the crawl space just as a loud knocking came from the front door.
Walter reached up and tugged the panel back into place, throwing the crawl space into almost complete darkness. The only light leaked from several vent grills set into the walls of the block foundation. Julia's heart thudded in her chest. Voices came from outside the house, a man's which sounded like Snead's giving orders, followed by a woman's.
Julia couldn't see Walter, but she could sense his body several feet away. "What the hell is this?" she whispered.
"I should have told you," he said, barely loud enough for Julia to hear.
Julia grabbed out blindly and caught his shirt. She tugged herself closer to him, scooting along in the moist dirt. "Why the hell is everybody keeping secrets? What do they want?"
"Everything. But they ain't going to get it." He started toward one of the air circulation vents, his elbows and knees scraping softly on the ground. "Follow me," he whispered.
The weak daylight from one of the vent grills was momentarily blocked as someone passed by. How many were out there? Were they members of Snead's department? Were they all Creeps?
As she scrabbled along after Walter, she felt disembodied, outside herself, wondering whether she should scream for help. She bumped her head on a water pipe and the pain drove the nonsense away. The pipe vibrated along the bottom of the floor from the blow, and Walter stopped and shushed in warning. Julia rubbed her head, grateful for the pain. Now she had something to focus on, something that was real. She wrapped her purse strap around her wrist and wriggled onward, her eyes adjusting to the dimness.
Her hands raked across hard things which she thought were rocks. One of the objects was tilled from its resting place by her fingers. It gleamed pale in the muted light, showing its curved length.
A BONE. Sweet merciful God, a bone!
It looked like a small rib, dry and smooth. Julia knocked it away and it clattered against a concrete support pier. She rolled away from the burial ground and pressed her hand against her mouth to muffle a scream. Walter heard the choking sound and turned, crawling to her side.
She grabbed his hand, thrust it toward the soft dirt where the bones were scattered. They both touched the tiny skull at the same moment.
Walter's eyes widened. "Hartley," he whispered. "That goddamned scum."
His body trembled, either from fear or anger. Julia thought of Rick O'Dell's theory, about a widespread network that offered human sacrifices to a supposed dark master. Those bones were so tiny. The devil liked them young. Or perhaps only the devil's worshippers did.
Julia stretched so that her mouth was near Walter's ear. "It's a child," she said, her voice breaking.
"I know," Walter said, tears glistening on his cheeks.
The pounding at the front door grew louder, and someone shouted into the house. If the Creeps entered the house, they would soon find out she was gone. And presumably they wouldn't think some angelic hand had lifted her up to the clouds. Not while Satan was spinning his dark spells below.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, squeezing Walter's arm.
A crashing sound reverberated along the floor. Someone was kicking in the door.
"My Jeep," Walter said. "It's on the other side of the woods."
"Do they know you're here?"
"I don't think so."
"What do we do now?"
"Crawl." He wiped at his eyes and moved underneath the floor, Julia close behind, her elbows and knees sore. A splintering sound erupted above them.
Walter reached the service access, a small wooden door set into the foundation at the rear of the house. Feet pounded across the floor, and shouts rang out overhead. At least three people, maybe more, were in the house.
"Now!" Walter said, knocking the access door open. "Run for it," he said, pushing Julia through the opening.
Julia tumbled into the back yard, grateful for the trees, hoping all the Creeps were inside and that no one had been left to guard the rear of the house. If they were going to get her, they'd have to take her down running.
God, give me flight.
As she dodged between the branches, leaves falling around her, she felt almost giddy with a new freedom, September on her face, the smell of creek mud in her nose, nothing to lose but a past that she had been trying to lose for years. Leaving behind bones, Creeps, almost everything except fear.
Yet even the fear was welcome now, because it gave her energy. Life had simplified, reduced now to its basic purpose. Live in order to have more life. Flee so you can make it to the next breath, to the next fleeing, part of the biological cycle that was as old as bacteria. This was God's solo spectator sport, the survival of the fittest or the luckiest. If God cared to grant her strength, she would gratefully accept. All else in the world had failed her, even her father.
She glanced behind her, saw Walter enter the forest, running toward her. He motioned to the creek that slid silvery and cold down the slope, the water splashing between dark mossy rocks. She almost took off along the creek bank, ignoring Walter and choosing her own random path. But she thought of the tears he had wept under the house. Creeps couldn't cry.
She leaned against a big oak to wait for him, catching her breath. "Did they see us?" she asked as he dashed up.
"Shh," he panted, stopping and putting his hands on his sides. Soft forest noises filled the silence, the settling of leaves, the high chatter of a bird.
"I don't hear anybody." Walter looked into her eyes. Dirty streaks ran down his face where he had cried.
"Are you going to tell me what this is about?"
"Later. My Jeep's over that ridge. They're probably already searching for you."
"How many?"
He took her hand. "Don't know. Enough. More than enough, knowing them."
"Who is 'them'?" Julia asked, but Walter was already tugging her along, leading her to the creek. He helped her across, stepping on slick stones. Julia scrambled up the muddy bank, holding onto a flaking grapevine. Walter nearly lost his balance and fell, but Julia grabbed his shirt and pulled him onto the bank.
They ran onward, Walter leading the way, Julia holding up her arms to keep the branches from slapping her face. Briars tugged at her clothes, and she stubbed her toe on a root. Once she thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and nearly shouted, but she turned her head and saw nothing but more trees, the corridors between them full of still shadows.
They slowed as they hiked uphill, reaching a clearing on the top of the ridge. Jagged hunks of granite protruded from the edge of the slope. A flat slab of gray rock sat in the middle of the clearing, worn smooth by the elements. Between the trees, Julia could see the mountains rolling away, blue and smoky in the distance. Layers of clouds wended over the ripples of land. Under other circumstances, the setting would have been peaceful and humbling. But the trees surrounding the open ground were a little too gnarled, with knotholes like obscene eyes.
"Here's where they found the girl," Walter said, fighting to catch his breath.
Julia looked around. Flat stone. Cold against her own back. Bad people around her. The knife's blade touching her belly.
Her muscles quivered from the exertion of the climb, but she didn't dare sit on the rock. The place felt evil. Like the barn near her childhood home in Memphis, the air here tasted like poison, and a sick energy worked its way through the soles of her feet.
Julia wondered how many other altars of human sacrifice existed. Was the entire earth stained with blood and bones, the substance of the innocent given to the dirt for the satisfaction of a demanding master? The devil might not exist, but his followers most certainly did. His followers were legion. More widespread than anyone dared guess.
Walter knelt with his back to her, scanning the woods below for any sign of Snead's people. "Hartley disappeared right after they found the body."
"Didn't the police do anything?"
"Hartley had ways of keeping folks quiet. One way or another. I reckon that's Snead's job now."
Julia shook her head. She couldn't believe that Snead and Hartley were connected, that Snead took the job when Julia moved here. The only people who knew she was thinking of moving to Elkwood were Mitchell and Dr. Danner. But the conspiratorial network apparently existed long before she left Memphis.
She stared at the flat stone. Julia tried not to picture the girl, small and shivering and nude on the stone, mad people dancing around her under the cold and soulless moon, chanting their sadistic prayers. She shut her eyes to fight back tears.
She felt Walter's hand lightly touch her shoulder. "Let's get out of here," he said.
"It's all too crazy to be real."
He wiped at her face with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. "I've been telling myself that for a long time. Ever since my wife walked off the face of the Earth."
She opened her eyes and looked into his. The loss was there again, inside him, that big hurt that would stay hidden if she didn't know it was there. "Do you believe in the devil?"
"I believe in Hartley," he said, looking away, up at the veiled sky. "The Lord never makes it easy."
He took her hand. "The Jeep's only a few hundred feet from here. There's an old logging road that runs down the valley."
They left that sorrowful clearing, Julia wondering just how many sacrifices had been offered at this unhallowed site over the centuries. She walked gingerly, as if over the graves of infants.
The Jeep was parked in a high bank of weeds, amid goldenrod and white Queen Anne's lace in fall bloom. Walter stepped onto the leaf-covered logging road that wound between the trees across the slope, looked in each direction, and climbed behind the wheel. Julia got in beside him, tired both from tension and exertion.
"What now?" Julia asked as Walter started the Jeep.
"I know a place where they might not find us."
She touched his hand that was cupping the gear shift. "Why are you helping me?"
He looked at her. "Let's just say I got a debt to pay."
Walter pulled out onto the dirt road, the Jeep bouncing on the ruts. A few saplings had taken root in the roadbed, and the Jeep's bumper pushed them over. Their tracks were barely visible in the damp leaves.
The Jeep lurched over a rut and a book slid from beneath the seat and bumped Julia's ankle. It was a Holy Bible. Walter saw her looking at.
"I got somebody riding shotgun," he said. "You ought to try it sometime."
"I'm not ready to believe in anything," she said.
"Except the devil?"
She picked up the Bible and opened it. "I'm hardheaded, okay? Just don't try to save me."
"I can't save you. You can only save yourself."
The Bible fell open to a page with a folded-back corner. "Luke" was printed in bold in the header. A section of the text was highlighted in yellow and Julia read it aloud. "'To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.'"
"Luke chapter four, verse six. The devil said that to Jesus. I use it to remember to stay on my toes."
Or maybe to remember who's the real boss. 4:06, huh?
She closed the book and tucked it back under the seat. "We're going to have to tell the police."
"Julia, those were the police."
"They can't all be in on it. The sheriff's office, the State Highway Patrol, the S.B.I. The devil doesn't own everybody."
"Maybe not, but how do you tell?" Walter kept glancing in the rearview mirror. "We better guess right on the first try, or else we're in even deeper trouble."
Julia fished in her purse for her cell phone. "Can't we make an anonymous tip?"
"They screwed with your clock and VCR in ways I can't figure out. You reckon they won't be able to trace a phone call? For all I know they've planted a GPS tracker on my Jeep."
Julia glanced at the cell phone and saw that it had no bars. "Dead."
"Not many towers way out here."
The logging road widened as the slope became less steep. The forest was a blur of gold, red, and brown as the Jeep gained speed. Julia fastened her seatbelt and held on to the roll bar overhead to keep from being thrown around by the juddering. Walter slowed briefly, engaged the four-wheel drive lever, and accelerated down the muddy road.
The trees thinned out, and they came to a stretch of pasture bounded by a barbed-wire fence. A few cows gazed at them, not pausing in their cud-chewing. The Jeep crossed a shallow creek that intersected the road.
"They were after me in Memphis," Julia said over the roar of the engine.
"On your last trip?" Walter kept his eyes on the road.
"No. Before I moved here. I didn't know it until recently."
"What do they want?"
"I'm not sure. Either to shut me up or finish the job."
"Job?"
"My father was one of them. One of the Creeps. When I was four years old . . . "
She didn't want to tell the story again. She wanted to leave it undisturbed in the basement of her head, to let it gather dust and cobwebs until it was safely insulated, forever lost in shadows. Telling Dr. Forrest was difficult enough, but telling someone she'd only known a few days was impossible. She didn't want Walter to think she was crazy.
But Walter wasn't exactly unscarred, either. He'd suffered his own loss and harbored his own sorrows. But he still was holding something back, and she realized faith couldn't be based on logic. She'd either have to trust him or jump from the Jeep and take her chances, and she was out of second chances.
"What happened when you were four?" Walter asked.
She studied his face. His jaw was set in determination, as if he were a man with a mission. He'd already made sacrifices for her. If only she could be brave enough, for once in her life, to let somebody reach her. And maybe help him in return.
Walter stepped on the brakes and the Jeep slid to a stop. "What's wrong?"
Julia put her hands over her face. "You wouldn't understand."
Walter grabbed her wrist and pulled one of her hands away from her face. "Listen here, damn it. I don't know what I got myself into. I just might be heading for a bullet, for all I know. I walked through hell to drag you away from the devil and now we're driving into who knows what. Don't tell me I won't understand."
Julia tried to look away from him, to the rolling hills, pastures dotted with barns, and stretches of woods that surrounded them. But she couldn't escape the magnetism of his anger. She gathered air to speak.
"They took the ring," she managed to say.
"Ring? You make it sound like some kind of elf quest or something."
"They gave me to Satan," Julia said, finally shattering, her tears erupting. But the panic quickly faded, became something new, transmuted into a calm, cleansing anger like lead changed into gold by a philosopher's stone. "My father gave me to the Creeps so they could cut me up as a blood sacrifice and have a party with my body. At least, I think that's what happened."
It was Walter's turn to look away.
"My father disappeared that same night," Julia continued, before Walter joined those who judged her a hopeless head case. "The police never solved the case. My injuries went on the record as trauma from trying to climb out my broken bedroom window. I spent the next ten years in foster care, going from home to home, trying to forget anything had ever happened. I got lucky for a teenaged foster kid, was adopted by a kind, well-to-do couple. They died in a car crash when I was nineteen, but left me enough money to finish college and not have to struggle to make ends meet."
Julia was surprised at herself because the story was falling out so easily. It had taken two years to tell Lance Danner that much about her past. Dr. Forrest had elicited such detail in a few months. Walter had drawn it out of her in two minutes, even after she'd promised herself not to tell him.
"Maybe you'd better drive on," Julia said.
Walter nodded, seeming grateful at having something to divert his attention. He put the Jeep in gear and continued down the dirt road. The vehicle smelled of grease and gum, foam spilling from splits in the vinyl seats, the windshield grimy with bug guts.
"I'd met Mitchell Austin during my freshman year, during a summer house party at my adoptive parents' country club," she said, realizing that refined world was totally different from Walter's rural, working life. "I know, boring old coots who play croquet and drink, it sounds more like a prison sentence than a vacation. But Mitchell was---"
She searched for the right word, fumbled over "pleasant," "trustworthy," and then found the most accurate one. "Reliable. He comforted me when my new parents were killed. He kept in touch while I finished college at Memphis State, and then asked me to marry him. That was about the time I started having my . . . little problems."
"Problems," Walter said. Not questioning, but not judging, either.
"Sleeplessness. Irritability. Forgetfulness. Fatigue alternating with periods of manic activity. Then it got worse. I broke out in a cold sweat when I was in cramped quarters or surrounded in a crowd. I'd have episodes of anxiety, when my heart rate doubled and my ears rang and I was afraid I'd never be able to take another breath."
Julia actually laughed. After all the give-and-take, the careful baiting, the strategic questioning of psychotherapy, she'd forgotten what it was like to just talk to somebody. Somebody real. She had so little left to lose that she had embraced this different kind of surrender.
"Panic disorder," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. "Sort of like freaking out?"
"How do you know about that?"
"My wife started having that. Before she--"
His wife. Who had walked off the face of the Earth one night, just as Julia's father had done.
Julia was going to ask about his wife, despite the sadness in his eyes, when Walter whipped the Jeep to the right. A police car was coming up the road toward them, silent but with its bar lights flashing.
"Damn," Walter said. "They've cut us off."
He steered the Jeep into an open hayfield. The Jeep bounced over the rugged terrain, Julia holding on, tools rattling in the back. She looked through the rear window and saw that the police car had stopped at the edge of the road.
"Thank God they don't have four-wheel drive," said Walter.
"Do you think the whole department's in on it?"
He shrugged, heading for a copse of trees on the far side of the meadow. "Doesn't matter. Snead can put out an APB and get his people out in force."
They drove into the trees, and the police car was out of sight. The Jeep climbed a steep grade and, for one stomach-grabbing moment, Julia thought it was going to flip over. Then they crested the hill and reached the stream they had crossed minutes earlier, only now it was wider, the current slower.
"They've probably blocked the highway," Walter said. "But they don't know the back country like I do. Hang on, and say a prayer or two if you know any."
He steered the Jeep into the water and headed upstream. The wheels fought over the damp rocks, but the water was only a few inches deep. "I learned this from Clint Eastwood," Walter said with mock seriousness. "Except he used a horse."
"You'll have to work on your wounded squint."
Walter flashed her a bad-guy glare that actually made her giggle, a crack in the stress that had a manic quality to it.
"Gee, I really must be crazy," Julia said. "Here we are, being chased by who-knows-how-many Creeps and cops, and you're making goofy faces."
"It's normal to be crazy," Walter said. "If you're not crazy, something's wrong with you."
They drove about two hundred yards up the streambed until they came to a bridge. Walter veered onto the low bank. The highway was clear, and Walter gunned the engine, accelerating toward the east.
"Where are we going now?" Julia asked.
"Well, I think we can take our chances once we get out of Snead's jurisdiction. He might trump up a resisting arrest charge or something, but I'd bet he won't push it too far."
"You don't know how badly he wants me."
"I'm starting to get an idea."
"Snead was a detective in Memphis. He worked my father's disappearance. He was also in charge of several mutilation cases that were never solved. There was evidence of ritual activity."
"You mean Satan murders?"
"You said it, I didn't. A guy I work with at the Courier-Times thinks it's happening here, too."
"That body they found in the river last week?"
"Yeah. And what about that girl you said Hartley killed?"
Walter's hands were white from clenching the steering wheel. "There's something I didn't tell you. Something I've never told anybody."
Secrets. The asphalt hummed by underneath the Jeep. A few farmhouses stood off the road, with weathered barns and rusty tractor equipment.
"My wife was pregnant when she disappeared."
"I'm sorry," Julia said, realizing others had guessed the secret. "That must have been awful."
Walter rubbed at his eyes with one of his scarred hands. "I guess I should be over it by now. It's been seven years."
Julia gently touched his arm. "You can't escape the past. It lives inside you. You just have to let it out and make it harmless."
Jeez, now you're starting to sound like Dr. Forrest yourself.
Walter nodded as if he'd barely heard her. "The bones under your house . . . do you think those were human bones?"
"If Hartley was into ritual sacrifices, he might have done it more than once. I don't know how many times these Creeps think they have to please their idiotic Dark Master."
A pickup truck was in the oncoming lane, driven by a man in a green baseball cap. He waved as he passed. A goat was in the truck bed, chewing on the rope that tethered it to the tailgate. Julia stared at its curved horns, at the ragged beard and black eyes, until the truck went around the bend and out of sight.
"We're out of town limits now," Walter said. "I guess they've probably got my house under surveillance, too. But I bet they don't know that my cousin owns a piece of the mountains over this way."
"Do you think we're safe?"
"I don't know. I'm not even sure what we're running from."
Julia thought that Mitchell would have lied just then. Mitchell would have jutted his chin out and said, "Don't worry about a thing. I'll take care of you."
Yeah, he tried to take care of me, all right. With his fists.
They went three more miles down the winding road and came to a small gas station. Walter parked behind the building so the Jeep couldn't be seen from the road. "I'll put in a call to the sheriff's office," he said. "We should be able to tell pretty fast whether Snead's got to them yet."
"The pay phone's out front," Julia said. "More people know you here. I'm just a nobody. Let me make the call."
Walter opened his mouth as if about to protest, and then nodded. "If you see anything strange, get back here quick."
"That's what I had in mind," she said, shouldering her purse. She climbed out of the Jeep, her leg muscles sore from tension. She walked stiffly to the pay phone, studying the flaking antique signs nailed to the front of the store. A man in overalls came out, nodded at her, and went back inside. Only one car was parked by the pumps, a big Chevy from the days when gas was cheap.
Julia flipped through the phone book, glad that the pages hadn't been ripped out. She found the listing, pushed coins into the slot, and dialed the number. A woman who sounded like she'd been awakened from a nap answered the phone. "Sheriff's."
"Hello," Julia said. "I'd like . . . I need to report some bones."
"Bones? Did you say 'bones'?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What kind of bones?" The woman yawned.
"I think they're human."
"This ain't one of them high school kids, is it? 'Cause you're going to go through this big long to-do and then I'm going to go, 'So where is these bones?' and then I bet you're gonna go, 'In the graveyard' and then you're gonna laugh like it was the funniest thing that ever was thought up."
"This isn't a joke," Julia said.
"Sure, it ain't. Okay, I'll fall for it. Where is these bones?"
"Under my house."
The woman laughed. "Under your house?"
Julia chewed her thumb. The man in coveralls came to the window of the store and stared at her. "I'm Julia Stone and I live at---"
"Stone? You're the whore Judas Stone?"
"What?" Invisible fingers clutched at her throat.
"He owns you, whore, so give him what's his."
Julia let the phone drop. She leaned against the phone box, her brain swimming and her chest tight with sudden panic. This was a big one, the inky tidal wave, the ocean roller coaster, the earthquake chasm beneath her feet.
He owns you.
The words raced through her head, in the dispatcher's voice, in the low rumble she'd heard outside her window last night, in the menacing voice on the night of her Black Mass.
Take this whore Judas Stone.
She felt light, displaced, again outside herself, gasping for air.
Run to the Jeep. Get out of here.
Except--
No matter where you go, you take it all with you. It's part of you. And he OWNS you.
She tried to relax, to begin the slow countdown from ten. But she couldn't find ten, she couldn't make balloons of her fingers, she couldn't concentrate enough to let her mind stray. Only one person could help her now. She scrambled through her purse for more coins, thumbed down the receiver switch, and fed the phone as she punched up a well-remembered number.
Dr. Forrest answered before the first ring ended. "Where are you, Julia?"
"It has me."
"Relax, Julia. Breathe."
"I can't." Her heart was going to either explode or collapse upon itself.
"You trust me, don't you?"
Julia leaned against the wall of the store. A car whisked by on the highway, but she didn't bother to see if it was the police. "Why was Snead in your office?"
"You asked him to be there, remember?" Dr. Forrest's tone switched from concerned to chiding. "You called me last night."
"No, you called me." Even as she said the words, Julia was no longer sure she believed them.
"Julia, you need help. You need my help."
"You lied about the pentagram drawing."
"Julia, do you want to be healed?" Dangled like a treat before a scolded puppy.
Julia hammered her fist against the wall of the store. "Healed of what?"
"Healed of resisting. Let it out, let it possess you. He owns you, but you've been such a very bad girl. So very difficult."
Julia's inhalation froze in her lungs. Numb tears filled her eyes.
"Julia, we've all tried to help you. Lance, Lucius, your father, everyone. That's all we've ever wanted, for you to embrace him. For you to become the whore Judas Stone."
Julia couldn't pull the phone from her ear. In that horrible black moment, she realized that Dr. Forrest owned her just as Lance Danner had. All wanting her to remember that night. All making the monster real.
"Julia?"
"Yes." The word hissed from her lips in a slow leak of air and soul.
"Where are you now?"
"I don't know."
"We want to help you. He loves you, Julia."
"Julia?"
That last voice hadn't come from the phone. "Walter?"
He ran to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. "Shhh. Just relax. It's okay. They can't get you here."
He took the phone from her hand and placed it on its hook. A door slammed shut. The man in the coveralls peered at them, twisting his mouth sideways. "You folks okay?"
"Breathe," Walter whispered. He called to the man, "She's fine. Just had a dizzy spell."
The man nodded as if he didn't believe them and went back inside.
"Listen, Julia." Walter's face was so close she could feel his breath, could see the hundreds of flecks of brown and green and gold in his eyes. "You're standing on the clouds, the sun is out, you're laughing and playing. There's a soft, golden light shimmering in the sky. You don't have to be troubled. Open your heart and--"
"That man---he's probably calling the cops. He's in on it. He's one of them."
"Shhh. Look way off, where the mountains meet the sky. Up there where the clouds are. Be a mountain. Even the devil can't break a mountain."
Julia looked at the thick folded clouds that hung over the ridge, and the strong and timeless slopes that fell away into a river valley. They can't break a mountain. Silly, maybe, but it worked. Maybe Walter sensed she wasn't ready for a leap of faith, and maybe his sales pitch for Jesus was waiting in the wings, but for now he was an anchor, as solid as his metaphorical mountain.
When she could finally breathe again, Walter led her around the corner of the store and helped her into the Jeep before climbing into the driver's seat.
"He owns me," Julia said.
"Satan doesn't own you." Walter jammed the Jeep into gear and sped onto the highway, heading for the soft blue mountains ahead. "Not while I'm still alive."
As they roared away too slowly to lose the past, Julia wondered if, no matter the route they took, Satan was already the master of all her possible futures.
The Jeep came to a stop in front of a weathered cabin. The cabin's two small windows were separated by a gray door. A stone chimney leaned precariously from one end of the structure. The cedar shake roof was covered with moss, and the walls were made of thick, hand-hewn logs.
The climb into the mountains had been a blur. All Julia remembered was the vehicle bouncing and roaring as Walter climbed into the hills, a mad kaleidoscope of autumn leaves overhead, and Walter's occasionally reaching out to touch her arm. She had imagined hearing sirens and once thought she had seen Snead running between the trees alongside the old logging road.
Julia looked out of the Jeep at the forest that surrounded the cabin. The dirt track dwindled to a footpath on the ridge behind the cabin. The surrounding mountains were lost in the mist, adding to Julia's disorientation. The air had grown heavier with an imminent storm.
"What do you think?" Walter asked.
"Where are we?"
"Ten miles past nowhere, at our hunting cabin. Been the family getaway for three generations. I don't reckon our creepy friends will be able to find us here, at least not before we figure out our next move."
"They'd better not follow us," Julia said. "It looks like we've run out of road."
"That just means we're that much harder to find," Walter said. He got out of the Jeep and came around to the passenger side. Julia was already out of the door before he reached her. She leaned against the Jeep until she was reasonably sure she'd regained her balance. The fresh pine-and-loam aroma of the woods cleared her head.
"I'm sorry to drag you into this mess," Julia said.
"I was in this mess long before you came to town."
"I don't have anything but my purse," she said. "I don't know if I can be much help snaring rabbits or whatever you mountain men do for food."
Walter laughed softly, as if the surrounding forest relaxed him. "If we get that bad off, there's a couple of fishing poles inside. Got a few days' worth of canned goods, too, and a backpack of stuff in the Jeep. Compared to running from the devil, starving to death is the least of our problems."
Walter unlocked the door and it swung inward with a groan of hinges. He stepped into the dark cabin while Julia studied the towering hardwoods. Walter emerged after half a minute. "It's safe," he said, glancing at the oppressive sky. "Come on in."
Julia went past him into the cabin. The interior was chilly and steeped in old woodsmoke, and her eyes took a moment adjusting to the darkness. She made out a small table in the center of the room, a counter with a basin in the corner, and a small loft along one wall that she assumed contained the bed. Walter came in with an armload of firewood and soon had a blaze roaring in the fireplace.
Julia knelt on the floor before the fire, grateful for the warmth. The flicker of flames threw jagged shadows up the walls, but the close quarters were comforting instead of threatening. The sky outside the windows was now charcoal streaked with silver, and the first drops of rain fell on the shake roof.
"We'd better get the stuff out of the Jeep," Walter said.
He'd said "we." He didn't expect her to sit there like a helpless child. They were in this mess together. Together, such a strange word. After all those years with Mitchell, she'd never felt "together" with him.
Thunder rumbled across the mountains as they waited in the door. "If one of us gets struck by lightning, the other gets all the food," Walter said.
The static electricity in the air revived Julia. "Let me see what you've got before I get my hopes up."
They dashed to the Jeep, and Julia climbed in the front while Walter wrestled with the zipper at the rear of the canvas top. She passed him a rolled-up sleeping bag and slung his backpack over her shoulders. The rain fell harder as they ran back to the cabin, and they were both soaked by the time they stood panting before the fire.
Walter pulled some cans from the backpack. "Sardines or Vienna sausages?"
"You don't have any caviar in there, do you?"
"Nope." He flashed his uneven smile. "Don't have any breath mints, either. I didn't expect to have anybody to please on my next trip up here."
"I'm not hard to please." Julia peeled off her sweater, hung it from the log mantel, and checked the cell phone. Still no signal.
Walter pulled a small bundle of clothes from the backpack. "Here," he said, tossing the clothes to Julia. "You don't want to be catching a cold. Makes it harder to run from devil worshippers."
Julia stared at him.
"Don't worry. I won't peek," he said. "I'm no gentleman, but I'm a man."
Julia went to the corner beneath the loft and kept her back turned as she took off her shoes and changed clothes. She looked down at the scars on her belly and shivered at more than just the chill. Walter's blue jeans and red flannel shirt were too large for her, but the dry fabric felt good against her skin and she gleaned a strange comfort from wearing his clothes. She went back to the hearth with her wet clothes in her arms.
"Okay, you can look now," she said.
Walter kept his attention focused on opening the cans. The smell of the food mixed with the smoke. "I didn't lie," he said. "That creep really was climbing out of your window."
"I know. I think my fiancé--I mean, my ex-fiancé--"
Walter finally looked at her, and his gaze was hungry. "You don't have to be alone. You can let somebody ride shotgun once in a while."
She blushed, but hoped it was hidden by the firelight. "I think Mitchell hired him to harass me and play tricks to make me think I was going nuts. He thought I'd have to cave in and then he could control me. He seemed obsessed with my money, but I don't have any."
"You're starting to sound as paranoid as me."
"It ain't paranoia if they really are out to get you."
Julia spread her wet clothes out on the stone hearth, and then suffered a sudden attack of shyness as she draped her bra and panties on the mantel. She scolded herself and finished the job. No need to keep secrets anymore. Secrets had never done her any good.
Walter handed her the sardines. Julia had rarely eaten sardines and had always been repulsed by the smell. Now, though, her hunger was stronger than her distaste. She pulled one of the small oily fish out of the can with her fingers and ate it like a seal would, her head tilted back.
"Your turn not to look," Walter said, pulling another change of clothes from the backpack. "Can I trust you?"
Julia licked the fishy taste from her lips. Not too bad, though a bit overpowering. "My therapist said not to trust anybody."
"Therapist? What can a therapist tell you that you don't already know? All they do is pass their own problems onto you, instead of the other way around."
Julia looked at him. "That's a relief. You really are crazier than I am."
"And from that phone call you told me about, your Dr. Forrest is crazier than both of us put together. Now, keep your back turned."
"I'm no gentleman, either," she said.
Walter went to the corner and changed clothes while Julia ate another sardine and wondered whether or not she was considering peeking. She couldn't decide, and she was on her fourth sardine when she realized that nearly a minute had passed without her thinking of Mitchell, Snead, or Dr. Forrest.
Or of her father.
Walter joined her before the fire and ate the sausages. They then had an apple each, passing a canteen of water back and forth while they finished the makeshift dinner. Julia put a large oak log on the fire and watched sparks fly up the chimney. The rain had held steady, and darkness settled heavily on the mountaintop.
Julia stared into the deep red embers and wondered if that was what hell looked like. "Tell me about your wife."
The rattle of rain on the roof filled the pause. Walter said, "Her name was Rita Faye. We were married right out of high school. We knew we'd most likely be poor all our lives, but we had a little bit of land and figured other people had it a lot worse. She loved to keep up flowers. I always thought dirt ought to be used for vegetables, but I sure do miss the smell of those flowers now."
Walter leaned against the fireplace and continued in a barely audible voice. "I can picture her now, bent over her marigolds and daffodils, her hair tied back in a ponytail, the sun catching on it and making it shine. She was five months' pregnant when she disappeared."
"I'm sorry," Julia said. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
"No. It's in the past. And the past can't hurt you none unless you let it."
"It's hard to believe she just got up in the middle of the night and walked off. My father disappeared like that, too."
"In the middle of the night?"
Julia took a smoky breath. "I think he was a Satan worshipper." Somehow, the accusation sounded even more unbelievable when said out loud, beyond the safe madness of Dr. Forrest's office.
"Satan. Not many believe in him these days."
Julia crossed her arms. Walter's face was soft and kind in the firelight, with a touch of sadness in the shadows of his eyes. She could trust him. She was consumed by a sudden desperation to completely trust somebody, after the betrayals of Mitchell and Dr. Forrest.
Maybe her borderline personality disorder drove her to leech sympathy out of everyone she met, a soul vampire who needed constant affirmation. Or maybe she had always been alone, unconnected, adrift in a world where even the past wasn't reliable. She had no tether, no foundation, and Walter seemed as solid as the Appalachian granite.
Her face was hot from the fire. "He was one of them. A member of their coven. He let them take me across the field behind our house. They carried me into the barn. They were all in robes, and there was smoke in the air, and somebody had cut off a goat's head and impaled it on a stake. The bad people starting chanting, and they held me down while the man with the ring cut my stomach---"
Another long silence. "And you were just a child," Walter said softly. "Like the girl Hartley killed."
She nodded. She couldn't look at him. She hated her father, hated the Creeps, not just for the pain, but for the memories they had shackled her with. For the evil, poisonous seeds they had planted in her mind. She hated them for teaching her to hate. "The one who held the knife . . . I think it was my father. That was the night he disappeared."
"Why do you think it was your father?"
"Dr. Forrest told me."
"The shrink that pretty much said you were the bride of Satan?"
Julia gave a bitter laugh. "I know it sounds crazy. But the man with the knife wore a skull ring, with two rubies set in the eyes. I found the ring in my father's house when I went back to Memphis."
"That's the ring you were talking about."
"Someone took it from my purse."
"Does anybody know you had it?"
The bands of red and orange heat alternated in the glowing embers, hypnotic and ethereal. The rhythm of the rain had made her drowsy. She couldn't think clearly. "No. But I gave Dr. Forrest a pentagram drawing that somebody had left in my closet. Whoever it was had written 'Hello Jooolia' on it, misspelling Julia with three O's in the middle. Exactly the way my father did when he was teasing me."
"So she knew someone had been in your house. Did you tell her about the ring?" Walter had moved closer, though he might have just shifted to be nearer the fire.
"I don't think so." She glanced at him. The light was golden on his face.
"Don't you remember what you told her?"
Julia shook her head. "It's not that simple. You don't know what it's like to have the past all screwed up, so that you can't tell who to hate or who to trust or just who you're even supposed to be."
Walter put his hand on her shoulder and stroked her wet hair. "One thing's been bothering me. You say you were part of a Satanic ritual when you were four. Well, if Snead was in on it, and knows that you're starting to remember, why didn't he just kill you? Why go to the trouble of all these tricks? The clock and the pentagram drawing and the ring and all that."
Julia put her hands over her ears. Panic crept up in the form of shadows in the cabin's corners, all dark and sharp like the fingers of the past. She didn't want to fold up again, not in front of Walter. She bit her lip hard enough to hurt.
"Hey, are you okay?" Walter asked.
Walter had lost somebody he loved, and he hadn't been driven into the dark cellars of his own head. He got on with his life, hid his scars, and kept on breathing. He clung to his faith, however simplistic she thought it. Whatever was going on between him and God, it seemed to be working. And what did she have?
She stood and paced the narrow room. Tears welled in her eyes, making her ashamed. She wasn't the only one who had suffered in this world. "I don't want be crazy."
Walter moved quickly to her side. He cupped her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. "Snead's real. Hartley's real. It's not your imagination. I don't know what they want from you, but I'm betting it's no good. And this Dr. Forrest---how long have you been going to her?"
"Since I moved here."
"And what good has she done?"
"Well, at first we were making progress. She brought me out of my denial. She made me see . . . what really happened way back then." Julia closed her eyes to escape the intensity of Walter's gaze.
"She told you your father gave you away as a sacrifice to Satan. Sounds to me like she did you one hell of a favor."
Julia turned away from his sarcasm and sat with her back to the fire. "You can't run from the past."
"Who says? What's so great about the past, anyway? Do we have to keep rubbing our faces in the stuff we ought to forget?"
Julia said nothing. She watched the shadows dancing in the firelight along the ceiling. The rain had eased to a slow but steady downfall. If only the rain would wash the whole world away.
Walter went to one of the small windows and peered out. "I'm sorry," he said, subdued. "We shouldn't be arguing. We're supposed to be on the same side."
Maybe Walter was right. Did knowing the truth make the wounds heal, or only keep them fresh? Yet even after Dr. Forrest's bizarre behavior, Julia wondered how she'd face her problems without her therapist's help.
"Look," Walter said, sitting down beside her. He fumbled in the backpack and took out the baseball cards that had been lying on her coffee table. "I brought these. I wasn't thinking too clearly, or I'd have grabbed something useful. I got kind of scared when I saw Hartley snooping around."
Julia took the cards and flipped through them. The ludicrousness of their situation struck her like a cold slap. Holed up in a tiny cabin in the woods, not knowing whom to trust, unable even to call the cops because the cops were Creeps. Nothing to do but wait for the boogeyman to come claim her. Unless she went insane first.
She moved aside so Walter could put more wood on the fire. Exhaustion hit her all at once, and she yawned.
"Go on up in the loft," Walter said. "Might as well get some sleep."
Julia wondered if he would try and join her in the tiny loft. She didn't want to deal with any more emotional entanglement than they had already been thrown into. Still, it would be nice to have someone close by, just in case the bad dreams and panic came in the night. And maybe, just maybe, she could summon up some small comfort and warmth to offer Walter. "What about you?"
"I'm going to stay up a while," he said. He went to an old cedar chest in the corner and took out some quilts. He shook them and tossed them up on the loft. "I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to follow us in the dark and the rain, but I'm not too sleepy, anyway. I'll just keep the fire going for a while. Got my sleeping bag here if I need it."
Julia moved wearily to the ladder and climbed as if someone else were controlling her tired muscles. The quilts were spread over what felt like a thin foam pad at the top of the loft. The bedding smelled faintly of smoke and leaves. Julia rolled onto the quilts and bundled herself up.
She inched to the edge of the loft and looked down at Walter. He was turning their wet clothes over so they could finish drying. His hands were oddly gentle with her clothes. When he finished, he returned to his vigil at the hearth and opened his Bible.
"Walter?" she murmured.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For everything."
He looked up at the loft. "It ain't nothing. Sweet dreams."
She recalled the image of the meadow that Walter had helped her summon when she panicked at the gas station phone. She watched the shimmering clouds floating around in her imagination, and her breathing fell into a slow, even rhythm. Once, she saw the barn of her childhood rise in the midst of the meadow, but she was able to drive that horror from her visions.
I am a mountain. They can't break me.
And behind the mountain was a face, swirling in mists and clouds. She tried to focus, to believe, and though its features were veiled, she sensed a gentle smile.
Sleep soon drifted over her like a thick fog.
A noise awoke her in the night, the creak of wood. She opened her eyes to utter darkness. Her feet were cold. Something was touching her, tugging the quilts from her body.
Someone was touching her.
She tried to sit up, but her arms were pinned. Then the thing was on top of her, crushing her breath from her lungs. She couldn't even cry out. Two glowing red specks appeared in the darkness inches from her face, and the smell of rotten eggs and matches flooded her nostrils. The specks grew brighter, and in their glow she could see the face that wore those impossible eyes.
The skull ring.
The skull had taken flesh and now was coming to get her for good. She wrestled an arm free and clawed at the eyes. Her fingernails sank into meat and she ripped. The face came away in her hands, like a rubber mask, but still the eyes blazed.
Beneath that face was her father's, unshaven, cruel, leering, the way Dr. Forrest had made her remember him. His tongue snaked in and out between rotted teeth. A goatish scrap of beard sprouted from his chin, and his hot breath slavered across her cheeks. She raked her hand again and grabbed the cloth of his hood.
She yanked the cloth away and this time it was Mitchell who was on top of her, his hands groping and pinching, his expression simultaneously desirous and wicked. He laughed at her struggles, smug in his power. She closed her eyes against the intensity of his red stare and slashed at his face.
More skin and muscle came away, and a voice at her ear said, "He owns you, whore," and it was Snead's voice, a voice she knew from 23 years ago.
Snead. The man in the hood. The monster with the knife.
Julia opened her eyes to look at him, but now it was Walter who was above her, his cheeks burning with hate, saliva leaking from between his sharp teeth, the hands gripping her now even more powerful and cruel, bruising, twisting, taking what he wanted. The face shimmered, the features bulged and became the decapitated goat's head of her childhood.
"You're mine, Judas bitch. And I take what is mine."
She screamed as the sinister animal face pressed close and flickered its tongue across her lips. Its foul breath poured into her, burning her from the inside, arousing agony in her scars, awakening every bad memory and switching on the circuits so that pain spasmed through her body. She moaned in disgust as the creature's feverish flesh pressed against her.
"Julia?"
Walter's voice, from somewhere behind the goat-thing.
But Walter was in this thing, wasn't he? Part of it. All of them the devil.
Fingers clutched her ankle, shaking her. She kicked and clawed blindly.
"Hey!" he called again.
She opened her eyes. No darkness, no twin red specks, no goat-creature. The room was suffused with orange light, the fire down to embers.
Walter stood on the ladder, looking at her. "You okay? You were yelling out in your sleep."
She tried to blink away the nightmare. But her nostrils held the memory of the hellish stench and her flesh was warm from the imagined assault. "Are you one of them, Walter?"
"Shhh. You were having a bad dream, that's all."
"Tell me you're not one of them." She pulled the blankets to her chin.
"No, I'm one of us." He patted her leg. "You're safe here. They won't get you."
"I'm scared." She felt almost as helpless and lost as she had felt as a four-year-old.
The ladder creaked, and then his body lay alongside hers. "It's going to be just fine," he whispered.
His arms went around her. She accepted the embrace, snug in the blankets, and drifted back to sleep. This time, no Creeps stalked her dreams.
The morning light trickled through the small windows, indicated the storm had passed. Julia left Walter sleeping in the loft and kindled another fire. She rummaged in Walter's backpack, found some tissue, and went outside to relieve herself. The sky was clear, and Julia's breath made a mist in front of her face.
The view was spectacular. The cabin stood in the clearing between two stands of hardwood, and a sheer rock cliff rose behind the trees. The ridge was the tallest point for miles. The blue mountaintops rolled out in the distance like the waves of a gentle sea. The clean, brisk breeze brought Julia fully awake, and she welcomed the forest smells.
Walter was right. The Creeps couldn't get her here. This was the final outpost, a majestic castle, a place where trouble and danger had no business. The woods weren't threatening. Instead, they formed walls that kept enemies away. Being out under the big sky was like being paroled from the cramped prison of her head.
She went among the trees into the hush of forest. A gray squirrel skittered along the treetops, gathering its winter stores. As she squatted behind an oak, she thought of the night before. Walter had come to her rescue yet again, her very own knight in shining armor. Just like in the bedtime stories her daddy had told her---
"And what else did Daddy do, there in your bed?" came Dr. Forrest's voice, as if from nowhere.
She stood, pulled up the baggy jeans she had borrowed from Walter, and hurried back toward the cabin, afraid more voices would slip from the shadows beneath the oak and hickory. The sun was like the bloodied yolk of an egg over the eastern horizon. A few wisps of pale clouds were all that remained of the storm. Julia looked down the old logging road to make sure no one was approaching, and then went back inside the cabin.
Walter was up, his clothes rumpled, his chin and cheeks bristled by faint stubble. "Morning," he called cheerfully, though his voice cracked from sleep.
"Hi. Storm's over."
"I don't know if that's a good thing." Walter rattled around in a corner cabinet and pulled out a dented tin coffee pot. "Makes it easier for them to find us. If they're even bothering to look."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you when I get back."
Julia stacked some logs on the fire and went outside to gather another armload from the woodpile. Walter came back from the woods with the coffee pot. He hoisted it, and some water sloshed out. "There's a spring around back. The purest water you've ever tasted."
"And we're going to mess it up by turning it into coffee?"
Walter smiled, the sun on his face and his tousled hair making him look young. "Sounds like an improvement to me."
A soft rhythmic sound filled the air, rapidly becoming louder, beating at the air between the mountains. Walter dropped the coffee pot and raced to the Jeep. The engine started and he backed the Jeep under a canopy of spruce. Julia finally recognized the sound, and went inside the cabin as the whir grew louder.
From the window she watched the helicopter cross to the west. The Creeps couldn't have that much influence, could they? What did they want from her so badly that they were dragging out all their resources? And if she tried to dismiss her paranoia, right there was Walter, ducking under the trees and staring up at the sky.
When the whir of the blades subsided, they looked at each other.
"Do you think it was them?" Julia asked.
He pointed at the chimney. "They would have seen the smoke. If it was them, they'd already be back."
He gathered the coffee pot and returned to the spring. Julia went inside, gathered her dry clothes from the hearth, and changed quickly before Walter returned. He didn't remark on her change of clothes, nor on having slept with her. Julia realized it was the first time she'd ever slept with a man without having sex. But then again, Mitchell was the only other man to ever share her bed.
Quit comparing him to Mitchell. They're not even on the same playing field.
He poured some coffee grounds into a metal sieve and placed the sieve in the pot. Then he hung the pot over the fire from a metal hook. "What's so funny?"
"Just figuring out which way I'm going crazy this time."
"I told you, you're not crazy. You're miles from civilization, with all the time in the world, with a nice guy who makes a mean cup of coffee. What's the downside?"
"Uh, you forgot the part where Satan worshippers want to claim my immortal soul."
"Oh, yeah. I figured this was too good to be true."
Walter brought some chipped ceramic mugs from the cupboard as the smell of coffee slowly filled the cabin. Julia sat by the fire and watched Walter.
"What are we going to do now?" she asked.
"Wait, I reckon."
"For them to find us?"
"We ought to just let things die down a little."
"I wonder what's happening back at my house."
"Depends on what they were after. Maybe all they want is you."
"I still can't understand why."
"Maybe they don't like to lose. Maybe they feel like they have to finish the job or their Big Bad Boogeyman will get upset." Walter sat beside her and placed the mugs on the hearth. He drew a couple of granola bars from the backpack and passed one to Julia.
"This doesn't fit the image of the rough-and-ready mountain man's breakfast," Julia said.
"Well, I hate to say it, but I ain't much of a mountain man. I don't even like hunting. My dad used to take me up here and make me stumble through the woods after him with a gun, but I never could stand to shoot anything."
"How long do we stay here?" Julia asked.
Walter shrugged. "A day or two. I don't know."
She leaned forward and touched his knee. "Do you think Hartley had anything to do with your wife's disappearance?"
He stared into the fire with a wounded expression. "Sometimes I'm scared that she was one of them. Then I think I'm crazy to even think that. But then you hear people talking about Satan worshippers and what they do to fetuses and babies and kids . . . and she changed after she became pregnant. She became faraway, panicky, suspicious of everybody."
Julia scooted next to him and wrapped her arms around him, feeling the hard muscles underneath his shirt. She squeezed as tightly as she could and his head leaned against her shoulder.
"Shh," she whispered. "Just let it go. Don't let them win. Don't let him win."
"Him?"
"Satan." Walter tensed under her embrace, but she continued. "A lot of Christians don't think he's real, that he's some superstitious relic. Call it evil, bad karma, whatever. The name doesn't matter. What matters is that we don't let darkness eat us alive, from the inside out."
She looked past him, lost in the warmth of his body. Here she was, playing analyst when her own head was cluttered. It was a miracle she hadn't gone over the edge months ago. She pictured Dr. Forrest's strangely earnest face, the woman unbuttoning her shirt to show the pentagram etched in her belly.
"You're not alone, Julia," Dr. Forrest had said.
She shuddered with the memory. How many women were out there thinking they were the brides of Satan? Were most of them willing, like Dr. Forrest, or were they like Julia, lost and scared and screaming as the panic and doubt ate them away from the inside out? Were Satanic sacrifices born or were they made?
"You're not alone, Judas," Walter said.
Julia jerked away from him, stood and fled to the door. "What did you say?"
Walter blinked, confused. "I didn't say anything."
"Yes, you did. You said 'You're not alone, Judas.'"
"What the hell?" His confusion turned to anger.
She backed away another step, hand reaching for the door latch. "It was you. You took the ring, didn't you? You're the one who planted the pentagram drawing with 'Hello Jooolia' on it. And you messed with the clock. You had a key. An inside job."
Walter stood and held out his hands. "I don't know what you're talking about. Don't flip out on me now, Julia. Please."
His wounded expression almost convinced her. Almost.
Julia flung open the door and ran into the cold morning, through the trees and away from the cabin. She ran blindly, branches clawing at her face. She glanced back and saw Walter erupt from the cabin door, chasing her.
"Jooolia," he called, but she didn't slow. Her heart hammered in her ears. Thoughts spilled out in jagged counterpoint to the rhythm of her legs.
Walter. HE was the Creep. One of THEM, Satan's sick little servants. He probably killed his wife himself and ripped out his unborn son as a token to his master.
And stupid, gullible Julia Stone had fallen right in with him, had opened herself up and trusted him on the flimsiest of reasoning. She was nothing but the perfect victim, always had been and always would be. She might as well just drop to the ground and wait for Satan to come and do whatever he did with his brides, serve whatever his dark needs were.
Her lungs burned with the coldness of the air. She headed down a slope between trees, slipped on some leaves and fell. She scrambled to her feet. She reached an outcropping of rocks and slithered between two slabs of granite. While resting, she strained her ears to listen for Walter, but all she could hear was her own frantic, ragged breath.
Giant oaks and maples surrounded her, their gnarled branches reaching across the sky. The mountains were obscured, all signs of civilization lost in leaves and bark and laurel. This was the world of nature, the one that Satan ruled. He ruled the world of human nature, as well. He owned Julia. He owned them all.
Surrender. Lie down. Let him have you.
"He owns you, Julia," came Dr. Forrest's voice.
Then, Snead: "Time for you to become the whore Judas Stone."
Walter: "You're not alone, Judas."
She clamped her hands over her ears but couldn't squeeze the voices from her brain. She staggered from the rocks, the sun crazy through the treetops, the mist of her breath making sinister shapes before her face. Satan owned it all.
She closed her eyes, took a few more shambling steps, and fell again. The panic rose like fingers from black graves, twisting, clawing, impatient. When the fingers--his fingers--touched her, she couldn't even summon the strength to slap at them. They clutched her, tugged possessively.
"Julia," it said.
Something stirred in the dark corners of her mad house. That voice. Not Walter, not Snead, not Dr. Forrest. Not Satan.
Mitchell?
"Are you okay?"
Her eyes snapped open, and it was Mitchell. His tie was askew, hair mussed, but he was Mitchell Austin, Attorney-at-Law, former fiancé and would-be rapist. The devil made the flesh.
"Mitchell," was all she could gasp.
"I saw him chasing you," he said. "Come on, get up. He'll see us."
He pulled her to her feet. Julia wobbled and leaned against a tree. "How . . . how did you find me?"
"Deed records." Mitchell came to her, and she couldn't will her legs into motion. He took her arm and led her toward a thick stand of laurels. "The cops told me somebody named Triplett had kidnapped you. They didn't have any leads, but we both know cops aren't too bright. The cabin was on the family property tax listing."
Julia let Mitchell pull her into the rhododendron tangles. They were hidden by the thick, waxy leaves. "Now we just have to wait for the cops to show up," he said.
"Did you tell them where we were?"
"I wanted to see you first. Maybe some dumb part of me wanted to be a hero, hoping that you'd forgive me for what I . . . " His voice fell, losing all its courtroom authority. "For what I almost did."
"Did you tell them?"
He nodded. "I called from my cell in town. I left my car down on the road and hiked up."
"No," she whispered.
"Look, I came to Elkwood to make things right. I'm sorry. I was stupid, I lost my temper, I guess I was afraid I was going to lose you."
"So you tried to rape me?"
Mitchell's eyes shifted from side to side as if he were searching through some memorized law journals for a case to cite. He looked out of place in his power suit, huddled in the middle of the forest, miles from a golf club or stock broker. The wool of his jacket was frayed where branches had picked at the fabric. "I don't blame you for hating me. But it's your fault."
"Screw you, Mitchell." She stood in the thicket, anger reviving her strength. "Screw you and the goat you rode in on. You can't save me."
She started from the laurel, but Mitchell grabbed at her. "No," he said. "I need you."
She jerked her arm free.
"You're mine," he said.
"Like hell."
"You're not going to walk away from me, whore." He threw himself at her, knocking her to the ground. They struggled on the frosty leaves.
"She walks wherever she damn well pleases," Walter said. He emerged from behind a stand of white pines. "She makes up her own mind. And you or nobody else is going to stop her."
Julia's eyes met Walter's, and she wasn't sure whether it was fire or madness in them. Mitchell let her go and stood up, brushing the leaves from his clothes.
"So you're the Creep," Mitchell said. He was a couple of inches taller than Walter, but Walter approached him steadily, fists clenched.
"Hey, I'm not the one beating up a woman."
"And I'm not a lunatic wife-killer."
"Don't believe everything you hear. She came with me because she wanted to. Ain't that right, Julia?"
Julia looked from one to the other, searching for the devil in each.
"You might as well give up," Mitchell said. "The police will be here soon."
Walter glanced at Julia. She couldn't meet his intense gaze. He took a step toward Mitchell.
"Stay back," Mitchell said, fumbling inside his jacket. He brought out a pistol, and the sun gleamed off its menacing barrel.
Walter's mouth fell open as he stared at the pistol. He froze but didn't raise his hands. Julia didn't know much about guns, only what she'd seen in cop movies. This pistol looked like an automatic because it didn't have a revolver chamber. But she knew that a gun fired bullets, and Mitchell was crazy or possessed, and that made a bad combination.
"Come here, Julia," Mitchell said. "If you'd have let me buy you a gun like I wanted, this loser might not have kidnapped you in the first place."
Julia glanced at Walter, and then took a step toward Mitchell.
"It wasn't me, Julia," Walter said. "You've got to believe me."
"What's he talking about?" Mitchell asked, holding the gun steady as if he were accustomed to using it.
Julia shook her head. She couldn't fight anymore. She would go back with Mitchell, he would take care of her until the police came, Walter would be arrested, and everybody would live happily ever after.
"He didn't kidnap me," she said.
Mitchell's gun hand quavered. "Julia, you're confused," Mitchell said. "Your . . . problems are probably aggravated by the trauma. You can't trust what you think right now."
"I don't know what I think," she said.
"I do care about you."
"No," she said. "You just don't want to lose me. No matter what, Mitchell Austin can't stand to lose."
Mitchell's jaw muscles clenched and he squeezed the grip of the pistol so tightly his hand shook. Walter kept his eyes fixed on Mitchell's face.
"Don't be stupid, Julia," Mitchell said, as if she were a disobedient dog or a wayward child. "Look at all I can do for you. You know I can. Money talks, and when we get back to Memphis and away from Snead and his sickos, we're going to be babbling like idiots. You don't know the half of it. If you're in trouble, we can buy your way out of it."
"I'm scared," the four-year-old inside her said. But she couldn't rescue that lost little girl. She was a woman now, new and improved and ready to battle for her soul.
Mitchell's eyes darkened. He raised the gun to chest level, still pointing it at Walter. "You want to stay out here with this redneck?"
This is it, decision time. The safe and insane world of the past, Mitchell's world, where she could stay in her dark shell forever? Or an unknown and perhaps equally mad freedom with Walter and his bloody past? The devil you know or the devil you don't?
Walter stood his ground, eyes fixed on the gun.
Mitchell spoke to Walter now. "So, you're trying to steal her from me, huh? And the money. I ought to put a few holes in your ugly face. Hell, they wouldn't convict. I know a good lawyer."
He laughed, a cruel, maniacal sound that was out of place in the still forest. The panic swarmed up the base of Julia's spine, wriggling like a bucket of black worms. Walter was going to die, and she might be next. No telling what Mitchell was capable of. His face twisted into a sinister mask, eyes bright with a secret madness.
"I'm not one of them," Walter said to Julia.
"I don't believe you," Julia said to Walter. She kept the lie locked on her face, hoping her eyes didn't betray her. She must have succeeded, judging from Walter's look of hurt shock.
She moved close to Mitchell, rested her hand on his arm. "You can take care of me," she said. "You can save me."
Mitchell's lips curled into a sneer of triumph. She felt him relax, and then chopped down on his wrist with all her strength, fueled by the memory of his assault in Memphis. Three loud reports ripped through the forest, and she heard Walter's shout over the roar in her ears as gunpowder smoke burnt her nostrils. Her rage burst forth like the waters behind a storm-swollen dam, and she chopped again. The pistol spun from Mitchell's hand and landed on the carpet of leaves.
"Bitch," Mitchell grunted, backhanding her across the face. He stooped for the gun, but Julia dug her fingers into his sleeve. Walter dove to the ground, clawed among the leaves, and came up with the pistol. Mitchell flung Julia away and stared at Walter.
"You going to shoot, redneck?" Mitchell smiled, all white teeth and wickedness. "I don't think you have the balls for it."
Julia rubbed her stinging cheek. "You sent me to Elkwood, didn't you?"
Mitchell frowned at her, the slightest hesitation flashing across his eyes. "You're crazy."
"Not as crazy as you wanted me to be," she said. "You and Dr. Danner set me up with Dr. Forrest. You wanted me to move here. You wanted her to make me so helpless that I'd fall into your arms and stay there forever."
Mitchell looked at Walter. "Can't you see how loopy she is?"
"But there was one thing you didn't count on," she continued, glad that she wasn't the one holding the pistol. She might have shot him. "Dr. Danner had his own agenda. He was doing his part to be a good little member of the Brotherhood."
"Brotherhood?" Mitchell looked confused. But all lawyers were actors on some level.
"Satan worshippers," Julia said, pleased to see Mitchell's face go pale.
He looked at Walter and shook his head. "She's crazy. Now she's babbling about Satan. She really fell for her doctor's shrink job."
Walter held the pistol and said nothing.
"You know Snead, don't you?" Julia said. "You knew him in Memphis. I wouldn't be surprised if you helped him get a job here so that he could keep an eye on me."
Mitchell took a step toward the pistol, but Walter said, "I wouldn't if I were you. Semiautomatic .45 with three shots gone still leaves four in the clip."
"Did you know Snead was in Satan's little circle, Mitch?" Julia smiled as Mitchell squirmed from the sarcastic nickname. "Maybe you're just playing Satanist. The truth is that I can't see you bowing down to anybody or anything. You'd never worship anything besides yourself."
"I'm in it for the money, just like them," Mitchell said. "Why else would anybody want to marry you?"
"Money? I don't have any."
"What do we do with him?" Walter asked Julia.
"I just want him out of my sight," she answered wearily. "Out of my life."
Walter motioned with the gun down the forest slope. "You heard her. Get out of here. And I wouldn't plan on coming back, or this here redneck might pull a 'Deliverance' on you." He gave a leering wink that would have made Julia laugh under other circumstances.
Mitchell's eyes widened, unable to tell if Walter were joking or not. He backed away a few steps, turned, and started down the slope. His leather shoes kicked at the leaves, his shoulders slumped. When he was nearly out of sight, near a gathering of scrub hemlocks, he looked back.
"You know that guy that lives next to you?" he called through cupped hands. "I paid him to play with your mind."
Mitchell took a few more steps, turned, and shouted again. "He mailed me a pair of your panties. Think about that the next time you're laid out on some shrink's couch. Or taking it on the devil's altar."
He ducked behind the hemlocks and the sound of his running footfalls soon faded.
"Your panties?" Walter said.
"He's a Creep," she said, crossing her arms and hugging herself. "To think that I ever let him touch me."
"Sorry," he said.
"Don't be. I'm just glad to be rid of him."
"What did he mean by 'I'm in it for the money'? I thought he was rich."
Julia frowned. "Who knows, with Mitchell?"
"You reckon he's in on this Snead deal?"
She shook her head. "He just wanted me as his little toy. Snead wants me for Satan, and I don't believe Satan likes to share."
"They probably heard the shots. They'll be coming soon." Walter flipped on the gun's safety and looked back up the hill in the direction of the cabin.
Julia just wanted to sag down to the forest floor, to join the rotted loam beneath the leaves, to decay in peace. She was tired of being owned. She had been owned by therapists, owned by Mitchell, owned by the memories of something that may or may not have happened when she was four years old.
And now Satan wanted her, or at least his misguided minions did. But she'd be damned if she was going to surrender now, not when she was on the verge of freedom. And she was no longer alone. She wasn't locked inside the house of her head anymore. She could trust.
She glanced at the sky but the clouds were still silent. But maybe that was the definition of faith, believing even when there was no evidence.
"Let it come, God," she said. "I'm not afraid anymore."
As they climbed the slope, Julia wished she could tap Walter's strength of faith. With Walter's help, she could fight Snead, Hartley, and Dr. Forrest. But she didn't have any weapons against a creature built from the flesh of bad faith, or the darkness that crept from the depths of her soul and was expanding to fill all she knew and believed.
"The Jeep won't do us any good," Walter said when they returned to the cabin. "They could block off the road easy."
"Maybe we should stay here," Julia said. "You've got the gun."
Walter shook his head. "I told you I'm no Clint Eastwood. I'd be just as likely to shoot myself as to shoot one of them. And they got us outnumbered."
The sun was high overhead, with all the night's rain burned away. Julia studied the woods around them. The Creeps could already be here, surrounding their hideaway. She shuddered at the thought of holing up in the cabin, waiting for the Creeps to call up their stupid dark master or whatever it was they did. She pictured a mad scene of torchlight and shadows, low sinister chants, the air filled with bitter smoke from strange herbs. She shuddered the image from her mind.
"Which direction do we go?" she asked.
Walter nodded toward the north. "If we head over the backside of the mountain, we can follow the creek down to the Amadahee. If we keep at it, we ought to be out of the county in a couple of days."
"A couple of days?"
"I don't think we ought to risk trying to get any help around here. There's no way of telling who's on their side. On the devil's side."
Julia shook her head, staring at the ground. "I don't want to believe in Satanic conspiracies."
"Me neither, but they still keep on coming. You go in and pack up the stuff and I'll go down to the spring to gather some water. If we figure on two days of hiking, we'll have to travel light."
The smoke had thinned from the chimney, the fire nearly dead. The forest was reflected in the cold black windows of the cabin. The peace of this place had been shattered. Now the cabin looked forlorn, soulless, only wood and stone.
She went inside, the room steeped in the glow of the dying fire. She gathered the clothes and the remaining food, stuffed them into the backpack, and threw the pack over her shoulder. Walter's can opener was on the hearth. She unzipped one of the pockets of the backpack and slid the can opener in, but decided the sharp edges might make a tear. She should wrap it in something. She reached into the pocket and her fingers touched a warm, round shape.
It felt familiar, and a shiver raced up her arm. Her heart skipped a beat as she pulled out the object, feeling its strange pulse even before she saw the twin rubies.
The skull ring.
The silver face leered up at her, the rubies gleaming in the firelight.
Something stirred in the loft. A voice came, muffled by the quilts.
"Hello, Jooolia."
She recognized the voice from her childhood. An icicle speared her chest.
The quilts rose in the darkness. Julia looked away from the shadowy loft before the nightmare could come fully into view. She flung the ring into the fire and ran for the door.
As she fled the cabin, dark laughter chased her, crawling from both the fireplace and the loft. Walter was out of sight. She was going to call him, but was afraid they would hear. The thing in the cabin called her name again.
Creep, her mind screamed at her as she ran. Creep, creep, creep. Devil made flesh.
She ran toward the high rocks along the peak. The granite protruded from the Earth like the bow of a sinking ship, its gray mass cracked by eons of wind and weather. The trees blurred by, branches slapped at her face. Her breath burned in her lungs and she was dizzy, in danger of collapsing at any moment. Fear served as fuel, though, and kept her legs moving.
She reached the rocks and peered back through the bare trees. No one was chasing her. Had she imagined the voice, the figure in the cabin? Oh, God, she wasn't going to start having delusions out here, was she?
She hugged the backpack to her chest, fighting for breath. Below her, the rocky slope dropped off a hundred feet or more, broken only by moss and a few stubs of pine that sprouted from cracks. She leaned against the sun-warmed stone and closed her eyes.
Two steps forward into the air and she would be rid of them. Now and forever. Satan couldn't chase her beyond the grave. The pain, the past, the tricks and lies, nothing would be able to touch her.
But that would be a different surrender, and she was sick of surrender. She was a mountain. They couldn't break her.
And she didn't know what lay waiting on the other side. A ceaseless darkness promised peace, but that suicidal leap might end in the roasting pit of the one who had owned her all along.
She edged along the granite shelf, pushing the panic away from her mind. The wind was stronger here, shaking the stunted balsam trees below. A few clouds had spun their gray threads together, with another storm pushing in from the west. It was as if Satan were controlling the weather just to play with Julia's moods.
And why shouldn't he? Even God and Jesus acknowledged Satan was the master of this world, according to Luke's little chapter in Walter's Bible.
Voices came from somewhere in the forest. She ducked into a crevice and eased back into the shadows. She held perfectly still for what might have been minutes or an hour, hardly daring to breath, thinking that at any moment the shadows would swell and turn into the fingers of panic, to clutch her heart until it stopped.
Her legs were asleep from crouching, so she stood and leaned against the walls of the narrow cave. Julia pressed her back against the granite as footsteps came up the rocky trail.
Walter.
She stepped out of the crevice, but the footsteps had faded. The wind between the black trees was the only sound.
Except for the harsh breathing behind her.
She spun, dropping the backpack. Snead stood there, wearing a crooked smile.
"Are you ready, Judas?" he said.
He had crept up on her without a sound. Or else popped out of thin air. How could she fight the master of the world?
"Did you find her?" shouted a man's voice from somewhere below. Julia recognized it from her house, from the cabin, from the night her father disappeared. Hartley.
"She's here." Snead tugged her arm. "Come along, Julia. He's waited far too long. You've made him very angry, you know."
As if to support Snead's words, thunder rumbled over the far hills. The sky had gone from sunny to dismal in scarcely half an hour. The wind gained force, and branches creaked on the slopes below. More clouds massed overhead, black and gray rags torn in anger.
Julia allowed herself to be led along the cliff. She was numb, as if her blood had stilled itself in her veins. A lamb to slaughter.
They squeezed between two large boulders and emerged into a flat clearing. Hartley was waiting, dressed in a brown wool robe, the hood thrown back to reveal the dome of his bald head. His eyes were set deep in the bones of his face, condemned to always look out at the world from shadows.
"Anybody follow you, Lucius?" Hartley said.
"Nobody," Snead answered. "Triplett ought to be in custody by now."
"Should have put him out of the way a long time ago."
"Don't worry. I'm sure we can arrange a little 'accident.' A chase through the woods, he falls from a cliff trying to elude arrest, nobody will think twice about it. Not with his past."
Hartley pulled a gun from his robe. "Unless the Triplett whore's bones turn up. And the bones of the baby she gave us. Then somebody else might start snooping around, like Judas Stone here."
The Triplett whore? Walter's wife. Oh, God, no. What kind of woman could give up her infant as a sacrifice?
Julia's anger revived her, and she fought against Snead's grip. Three more hooded figures emerged from the trees. It was as if Satan had summoned them out of earth, wind, fire, and water. They surrounded her, rough hands groping and clutching her limbs.
"Tie her," Hartley ordered.
Julia struggled but was overpowered and forced to the ground. Her hands were yanked behind her and her feet bound with rope. A faint scent of perfume crossed her nostrils, and a slender hand touched her cheek. The whispers went into her ears and through the lost rooms of her soul.
"You're one of us," Dr. Forrest said. "You've always been one of us."
"You bitch," Julia spat. "I've never been one of you."
"You were born one of us," Dr. Forrest said. "You belong."
"The master is ready," Hartley said, looking around, the gun pointed at the turbulent sky. The wind had risen, now was chattering and screaming through the trees. "He's given us the signs."
"What do we do after we finish her?" Snead asked Hartley.
"Let Satan decide."
"There are too many loose ends, Hartley. Satan's supposed to blind the weak. But bodies have turned up, and sooner or later somebody's going to link us to Memphis."
"Are you doubting, my Brother Judas?"
The hooded figures stood around Julia, watching the confrontation. Julia noticed two of them wore patent leather shoes. Cop shoes.
Snead said, "He has truly blessed us. I'm just thinking about it from a law-enforcement perspective."
Hartley's voice rivaled the low thunder that crept over the hills. "There's only one law, and only one enforcer."
Julia looked up at Snead, saw the man's aquiline face redden in anger. "That's easy for you to say. You make the messes, and I have to clean them up."
Hartley raised his left hand as if addressing the sky. "Even the book of fools acknowledges the master of this world." Hartley smiled at Julia. "Four-oh-six, Judas."
A gunshot echoed over the hills, coming from the rocks near the peak of the ridge. Julia's heart clenched.
Walter. They must have found him.
She pictured him slumped in the leaves, blood pouring from his chest. Shot while trying to escape, they'd say. But Julia would know the real truth: that he had given his life trying to protect her. And she had doubted him and his God.
Hartley had ducked at the sound and now motioned Snead to investigate. Snead and two of the hooded figures disappeared among the boulders. Hartley whispered, "Watch the whore," and then slipped into the trees. Julia lay on the ground, tied and helpless, alone with Dr. Forrest.
The doctor knelt beside Julia, gently stroking Julia's hair. Julia cringed from the contact, sickened by the possibility of Walter's death. She sobbed.
"Hush, Sister Judas," Dr. Forrest said to her. "You're nearly healed."
What was this crazy woman saying? How many others had she polluted in her role as a therapist? How many other vulnerable victims were led to this wicked end by Dr. Forrest's manipulation?
Dr. Forrest smiled down at her, like a Madonna upon a child. "If only your father could see you now."
"What about my father?" Julia managed to ask through her confusion.
"He was weak, a fool. He lost his courage just when he was about to enter the Inner Circle. Imagine the power Satan would have bestowed upon him if only he'd have had the strength to seize it."
"No," Julia said. "You told me---you made me remember that he molested me."
Dr. Forrest laughed, a sound as sinister as the whipping of the rattlesnake's tail. "Douglas Stone couldn't molest a lamb, much less a living human being. Your mother was the strong one, the one willing to sacrifice everything. Then, when it came time to deliver you unto the master, Douglas stole you."
Dr. Forrest's face grew dark and her eyebrows made arrow tips. "But nobody runs away from the Brotherhood. And the Master doesn't suffer fools."
"What did you do to him?" Julia fought against her bonds, but now, just like 23 years ago, she couldn't break free. She was angry at these monsters, a rage that almost drove the colors of her mind from black to red. But she was even angrier at herself, to think she could have let someone else build false memories in her head, to have allowed someone to own her so completely.
"He's in a better place now," Dr. Forrest said, a vacant smile on her face. "The master surely saved one of the hottest pits of hell for that pathetic worm. I was one of those who came for you that night. Douglas had called the cops, and we could hear the sirens. If Snead hadn't been there to protect us---"
Dr. Forrest closed her eyes as if to control her rage. After a moment, she opened them and continued. "Your father broke the window and tried to shove you through. Your belly was cut on the glass. There was so much blood, so much magic. And Douglas wasted it."
The scars on Julia's abdomen. They weren't the beginnings of a pentagram after all. They were wounds, not the brand of a possessor.
She knew Dr. Forrest couldn't resist talking, so she decided to learn as much as she could. "Why me?"
"Your mother believed enough to offer her own flesh and blood and breath. But Douglas betrayed us. A Judas among Judases. You must come to Satan to pay for your father's betrayal."
Julia's eyes filled with tears. "Wasn't killing him payment enough?"
Dr. Forrest had returned to the soothing tones she'd used in their therapy sessions, adopting her familiar role. "You're still so confused, Julia. Don't fight the truth. Just giving your life isn't enough. You have to give him everything. You have to believe."
Believe. In a belief system crafted to teach morality, but also offering an alternative to those who didn't want to wait a lifetime before receiving eternal rewards. Satan wasn't a snake, a silver ring, or anything that wore flesh. It was only a symbol for the naked human lust for power. For selfish gratification and twisted indulgence, no matter the ultimate cost.
And she had paid all her life in their sick coin. Now Walter had cashed out, too.
"We wanted you to come unto Satan in willing innocence. After all these years, the only way to do that was to make you see his power and accept it. Satan demands a total surrender from his whores." Dr. Forrest gave a leering grin. "That's how I serve him."
Someone shouted in the forest, and another shot rang out. Julia's heart leapt with hope. Walter must still alive!
And if he were willing to keep fighting, so was she. She didn't have a gun, but she had a different weapon. Dr. Forrest craved one thing greater than an imaginary master's blessing.
For years, people have tried to make me someone I'm not. So maybe it's time to 'become' that person. Let's see what Judas Stone can do.
"I . . . I was willing," Julia said. "You're right. I was confused. But you and Dr. Danner have helped me so much."
Dr. Forrest beamed with approval. "Lance thought it was best that we get you away from Mitchell. Lucius thought so, too. I'm glad they sent you to me. I feel that I understand you. We're the same."
"Yes," Julia said. "I couldn't have made it without you. I would still be so lost."
"The truth will set you free."
"I want to be free."
The doctor's eyes shone with a manic gleam. "Embrace him, then. Surrender yourself."
More shouting came from the high rocks. The wind was roaring now, clouds colliding like the ragged sails of warships, the sky nearly solid black in the late afternoon. One of the hooded Satanists emerged from the trees and came into the clearing. It was Hartley.
"Bring the whore," he said, anger in his voice.
"What's wrong?" Dr. Forrest asked.
"Triplett has a gun. We have to hurry. Bring her to the altar."
Hartley disappeared into the forest again. Julia fought an urge to scream, "If Satan's so almighty powerful, why can't he stop bullets?" But in every religion, even the ones predicated on evil instead of good, faith was blind, frail, and ultimately human.
"I want to give myself," Julia said. "I'm healed now."
Dr. Forrest frowned. "But you were angry---"
"Only at myself," Julia said, imitating the blissful drone that Dr. Forrest had instilled in her during dozens of sessions. "But now I see. The Master has gone to so much trouble. I am honored."
"You are his favorite," Dr. Forrest said. "And I've helped bring you to him."
"Please. Untie my feet, so that I can go with a willing heart."
Dr. Forrest hesitated.
"You heard Brother Hartley," Julia continued. "We don't have much time, and I don't think you can carry me, even if the Master lends his strength."
Julia almost choked on this false testimony she was babbling. She tried to remember the words of the televangelist from the misdirected--or planted--videotape. If she could adopt some of that same self-righteous flavor and use it to the "Master's" glory, Dr. Forrest might swallow it.
"I want to be one of you," Julia said. "I want to go to him in glory. I've seen his power. Untie me, so that I might embrace him. So I can go to him of my own free will."
Free will, which the Satanists worshipped almost as much as they did their hollow deity and their own selfishness.
"You'll have to be marked." Dr. Forrest rubbed her own pentagram scar through the robe. "Serve him through the pain and blood."
Julia tried a sincere, rapt look. It felt thin on her face, an obvious fake. But Dr. Forrest was blind. She saw only what she wanted to see. Her eyes were bright in the eagerness to heal Julia, to bring a new Sister into the fold, to claim a victory so that her dark master might smile upon her.
"I'm ready to wear his ring," Julia said, hoping that was the right thing to say. "I'm ready to become the whore Judas Stone."
Dr. Forrest's strong fingers pulled at the rope that bound her feet. The double-hitch knot came free and Julia wriggled the rope from her feet. Dr. Forrest pulled her into a standing position. "The altar's ready," the doctor said. "We've been working so long for this day."
Julia glanced up toward the granite peak. A robed figure clung to the face of a boulder, peering down the opposite slope. They were going to ambush Walter. Julia started toward the rocks, but Dr. Forrest grabbed the rope that trapped Julia's hands behind her back.
"This way, Judas Stone," she said, tugging Julia in the direction in which Hartley had gone. Julia thought about pulling free and running, but she wouldn't be able to help Walter while her hands were tied. She'd have to be patient and wait for her chance.
They went through a stand of balsam and hickory and came upon a second, smaller clearing. In the middle was a flat boulder, surrounded by brown grass. A worn path circled the boulder. The altar had been used before, maybe to sacrifice Walter's wife and child.
Hartley crouched beneath a tree, sharpening his knife. He tucked the knife in his robe and approached them. His eyes were like pockets of fire beneath his heavy brow. "Judas Stone," he said, smiling. "Are you ready to join us?"
She nodded. She didn't want to appear too eager, at least not in front of Hartley. Dr. Forrest was deranged, but Hartley's face was crafted by a mixture of shrewdness and cruelty. Julia supposed that so-called High Priests didn't ascend to their positions by accident. The Master chose wisely.
"Put her on the altar," Hartley said.
Snead rushed into the clearing, his hood back, his robe askew on his shoulders. "We haven't got him yet. We're trying not to shoot him. A bullet's harder to explain than an accidental fall."
Hartley gave a reptilian smile. "Brother Snead, that's why the Master made you Chief of Police."
Snead again looked angry, and Julia saw that she might be able to use the in-fighting to her advantage.
"It's too much," Snead said. "I can control my end, but if outsiders start snooping, the cracks start to show. Some reporter called me yesterday asking if we suspected Satanic activity in the death of the floater. The SBI might start asking questions, too."
"Just take care of your business, and let the Master take care of the rest."
"Damn it, Hartley, she'll give you the money," Snead said, looking at Julia. "All you have to do is tell her you'll cut her eyes out if you don't. Do we have to go through more of this damned mumbo-jumbo?"
Hartley's eyes grew even brighter. "Silence, Judas," he roared.
"What money?" Dr. Forrest asked.
"The money Douglas Stone stole from the Brotherhood," Snead said coldly. "Three million goddamned dollars. With interest, it could be twice that now."
Julia stared at the ground, pretending to be dazed and driven to the babbling edge by Dr. Forrest's mental manipulation. Three million.
"Brother Hartley?" Dr. Forrest asked. "What's he talking about?"
Snead continued. "Do you think we keep all these little covens going just for the hell of it? All our brothers and whores work for the Master, all right, but it comes down to money. Hookers, crack, guns. Or haven't you heard that Satan rules the world?"
Julia sneaked a glance at Dr. Forrest's face. The woman looked as if she'd been clubbed in the head, her mouth fallen open, her eyes wide. "B-but the Master---"
"The Master smiles, Judas Forrest," Hartley said. "We spread wickedness. Love of money is the root of all evil."
"And take a cut of the profits," Snead said. "Well, my cut's going to be a little bigger. After all, I'm the one who stole drugs from the evidence locker. I'm the one who made sure those missing persons stayed missing and didn't turn up as bones somewhere. And I want half."
"That wasn't the deal," Hartley said slowly.
"New deal." Snead pulled a gun from his robe, and for a moment Julia thought he was going to shoot Hartley. Instead, he stepped over to Julia and pressed the gun to her head.
"Don't!" commanded Hartley. "She's the only one who can take the money out of the trust fund."
The barrel of the pistol was cold against Julia's temple. She held her breath, counting down slowly. If she was going to die, she didn't want to die in the blinding darkness of panic. She wanted to die thinking about what might have been, a future that led away from pasts that had never have occurred. She wanted to die healed and whole.
She visualized the mountains, where the ridges met the clouds. Walter was there on that imaginary horizon, waiting. And maybe something behind him, the shadow of his soul, the light of his heart.
Walter's God had ceded this world to sickness, lust, and greed, but even the frail hope of salvation was better than the certainty of nothingness.
The cold gun drew Julia back to the windy clearing. Three million dollars. The price of Julia's soul.
Mitchell must have known about the trust fund. With his connections, he probably knew about it before they'd even started dating. That made his possessiveness more understandable. Money and stolen underwear. The two ways into Mitchell's worthless heart.
Too bad she'd be dead before she ever had a chance to laugh in his face.
"Come on," Snead said to her, holding the gun steady. It was the same type as the one Walter had taken from Mitchell, a black automatic.
Dr. Forrest stood near Hartley, her hands clasped together under her chin. Hartley glowered, his thin white hair tangled by the fierce wind. The surrounding forest had grown dark, with the spaces between trees filled with black shadow. The thunder was nearer now, and the ground seemed to shake under Julia's feet.
"She stays," Hartley said. "She belongs to the Master."
"Cut the crap," Snead said. "It's just us now. No need to put on your Satan show."
"She belongs to him," Hartley said.
"This plan was screwed up from the start. You think she's going to join the coven now and willingly give you the money? I don't know why we had to waste all those years letting the shrinks mess with her head. The best way to mess with somebody's head is to put a bullet it in."
"You forget your station," Hartley said. "I'm the High Priest here."
"Circles within circles," Snead said. "And who do you have to cut in on the deal? How many other people get a piece of the devil's money?"
"Brother Snead, don't interfere with the Master," Dr. Forrest pleaded. "Judas Stone was chosen. She was born to be one of us."
"Damn, 'Sister,'" Snead mocked. "You sound like you've fallen for your own brainwashing. You can stay here and try to explain all these bodies to the cops. The straight cops. Me, I'm taking this whore back to Memphis, where we're going to stroll into Stone's favorite S & L and make a little withdrawal."
He pressed the gun barrel more tightly into Julia's temple. "Ain't that right, Sister?"
If they expected Julia to be insane after years of abusive psychotherapy, she wouldn't disappoint them. After all, Dr. Danner and Dr. Forrest had been hammering away at her, building false memories, turning her past inside out, making her believe in monsters. The first rule of victimhood was to have an obsessive desire to please others. If Snead wanted her insane, she'd be glad to deliver.
"If the Master so wishes," she said, giving a smile that she hoped was appropriately empty.
Snead pushed her toward the rocks. She nearly lost her balance, her hands still tied behind her back. "Go on," he said to her. "It'll be night soon. I don't want to be out here in the woods with all these idiots running around with guns. A guy could get hurt."
They started up the narrow trail. Laurel thickets bordered both sides, the waxy leaves dark. The undergrowth was too dense to try for an escape. Snead pushed her forward, and she had no choice but to stumble toward the peak.
The last of autumn's leaves flapped in the trees, and the air tasted of static. Julia looked for a chance to flee. She almost didn't fear getting shot. At least that would be quick and merciful. But she hated to lose to these Creeps, now that she knew how pathetic and weak they were.
"Snead!" Hartley shouted, his voice nearly lost in the howling wind.
As Snead turned, two hooded figures burst from the laurel. One swung a long heavy branch, hitting Snead across the back. The other tackled Snead around the waist and grabbed at his arm. Julia was shoved to her knees in the struggle. The pistol fired twice, and one of the men groaned in pain.
Julia lurched to her feet. Hartley and Dr. Forrest hurried up the trail. The two men in robes held Snead down. Snead's face was bright with anger, blood seeping from one of his legs.
"Damn you fools," Snead hissed. "Don't you see what he's doing? He wants it all for himself. He always has."
"No, Judas Snead," Hartley said, breathing heavily. "Our Master wants it all. Because everything is already his." Hartley pulled a knife from his robe. "Including your sorry soul."
Julia edged toward the laurels, momentarily forgotten by the Brotherhood. Snead kicked beneath the grip of his captors, but couldn't free himself. Julia noticed one of the hooded figures had a hole in the back of his robe. A dark wetness surrounded the hole.
Shot through the heart. And still WALKING? What were these people made of?
Hartley lifted the knife and shouted to the sky, "Accept this sacrifice, Satan, O Master of the world, though this soul be of little worth."
Hartley bent over Snead, who uttered a string of curses. Julia looked away as the knife descended. Snead's scream turned to a gurgle and was stolen away by the wind. Julia looked at Dr. Forrest. The woman's eyes were hot with a mad inner bliss.
Hartley stood and cleaned the knife on his robe. "Sorry to taint the blade with his blood," he said, smiling at Julia. "But the Master will forgive you. Are you ready to finish the mark and join us?"
The pentagram. Hartley wanted to carve the final three lines to complete the scar. Then would come the surrounding circle in her flesh, the knife like cold fire beneath her skin. And at last she would be his, mind, body, and soul.
And trust fund.
If Satan owned the world, why did he need three million dollars? Sins were common. Evil was cheap. And spiritual emptiness was absolutely free.
But she couldn't run, not with her hands bound and her path cut off. If she dove into the laurels, she'd become tangled in the branches. The peaks ahead were too treacherous to navigate with her hands behind her back. And the hooded Brothers had proven their cruel efficiency.
The best option was to stall for time. Walter wouldn't give up, not while he still had a breath.
"Join us, Julia," said Dr. Forrest. "Become the whore Judas Stone."
Dr. Forrest held out her arms. Everything would be fine, all wounds would heal, the Master would forgive Julia's waywardness. Satan was the most compassionate of all the deities ever devised by humans. Satan allowed his followers free will.
But free will also belonged to those who didn't follow.
Walter wouldn't want me to surrender. He'd want me to keep fighting. I am a mountain. They can't break me.
Julia imitated Dr. Forrest's rapt smile. "I don't want to be alone anymore, Sister."
She stepped forward, between the two Brothers, and bowed her head slightly toward Hartley. "I'm ready to submit."
"He will be pleased," Hartley said. He looked up at the strange swirling sky, the bare trees like a thousand black fingers in the wind. "We must hurry, though. Austin might have reported the whore to the state police."
Dr. Forrest peeled her robe over her shoulders and threw it on the ground. She stood naked in the fading afternoon, trembling from either the chill or excitement. "Make her Satan's," she said, her voice high.
"What do we do with Snead?" said the hooded figure to Julia's left.
Hartley stroked the edge of the knife with his thumb, his tongue poking slightly between his lips. "Remove his head and throw him over the cliff. Let the waters take him, like they did Judas Triplett."
The Brother to Julia's right released her arm and moved in front of her. He smelled of wood smoke. The blood on the robe's torn fabric was thick and congealed. She recognized the ring on his left hand, though the silver was blackened with ash.
The skull ring.
From the fireplace in the cabin.
"Brother Snead can wait," said Dr. Forrest. "But Satan is eager. He's waited so long for this whore. He told me how badly he wants to take her, to burn her, to taste her blood." The woman rubbed her hands over her scarred belly in a grotesque parody of allure.
"So mote it be," said Hartley. "Remove your robes and partake of his pleasures. Come to Satan in purity, with nothing to hide." He leered at Julia. "And you're next, whore."
Hartley began pulling up his own robe, revealing his thin and mottled legs. The skull ring on the man's hand glowed, as if the twin rubies were lit by inner hellfire. Hartley must have been in the cabin, found the ring, and brought it to be blessed by the kiss of Julia's blood.
No, her skull ring was worn by the hooded figure in front of her, the one who wasn't removing his robe.
The Brother who smelled of wood smoke.
She recognized Walter's boots beneath the hem of the robe.
As the Creep to the right of Julia released her arm to remove his own robe, Walter sprang toward Hartley. The High Priest's arms were tangled in the cloth, and he grunted in pain when Walter shoved a shoulder into the man's stomach. Hartley gave an awkward swing with the knife, his robe falling back around him, and gasped, "Help me, Judas."
The hooded Creep jumped Walter and they both fell to the ground. Hartley struggled to his feet and held the knife over the two struggling figures. "Guide my hand, O Satan," said the crazed man, spittle whipped from his mouth by the wind.
The knife plunged toward the hooded figures, and one of them groaned in pain. Julia stumbled forward, praying that Walter had not been hurt. Dr. Forrest grabbed Julia, her fingers like talons.
Hartley stood back and pulled his gun from the folds of his robe. One of the hooded figures rolled to his knees while the other lay still. The kneeling figure peeled back his hood.
Walter.
He slumped before Hartley, looking up at the bloody knife like a penitent before a shrine. Hartley's gun pointed at his face. Julia glanced at the forest floor surrounding Snead's body. The Creeps had forgotten about Snead's gun. She saw it, a muted glint against the dark leaves.
But even if she could get to it, she couldn't aim it with her hands tied behind her back.
She had only one weapon. Her mind. The crowded, multi-roomed house that had harbored so many doubts and shadows, that had closeted so much pain, that had scrambled its memories like so many alphabet blocks. She had allowed others to open and close her doors, but all her housekeepers had been mad. Now it was time to clean house herself.
"Don't," she shouted, seeing Hartley about to strike. The High Priest froze with the knife over his head. A drop of blood fell onto his bald head and trailed down his face.
"The Master doesn't want any more worthless sacrifices," Julia said. "It's me that he wants." Her words seemed amplified by the wind, rushing from the trees on all sides of them. The sky grew darker, night swallowing night.
Julia stepped toward Hartley, bowed, and knelt beside Walter. She avoided Walter's eyes, unable to bear the betrayed look she would see there. Dr. Forrest went to Hartley's side, grinning down at Julia, her eyes as bright as morning stars.
"She wants to join," Dr. Forrest said, shivering. "I told you she was ready."
Hartley frowned, confused. "But we won't be able to get the money."
"The Master can always get money," Dr. Forrest said. "But how many times does he get such sweet revenge? Imagine the power, imagine his blessings upon us, if we give him the daughter of the one who betrayed him?"
Under other circumstances, Julia might have laughed at the idea of someone's betraying the prince of betrayal. But, no, she wasn't a skeptic, she was a true believer, willingly offering her flesh to the master of the world. She mirrored the crazed, beatific smile that Dr. Forrest wore and was horrified to find how easily it slipped onto her face.
"Give me to him," Julia begged Hartley. "I want Satan to have me, body and soul. Of my own free will."
"No, Julia," Walter said.
"Shut up," Hartley said to Walter. "If it wasn't for your meddling, this whore would already belong. But I suppose Satan owes you a small debt of thanks. After all, your whore wife and child were worthy sacrifices."
Walter gasped and trembled with rage. Julia knew she couldn't wait much longer. She said to Dr. Forrest, "Untie me, so that I might come to him, pure and willing. We are all part of the Circle."
The nude woman stooped behind Julia and began tugging on the knots. "Oh, Sister. I'm so glad you want to belong. We'll be together forever, in him."
Hartley held the knife menacingly above Walter. "Watch the whore," Hartley said.
"She trusts me," Dr. Forrest said, as if talking to the forest and rocks and river. "And Satan will smile on my work. Because I've helped make Julia who she is. I've helped her become Judas Stone. Haven't I, Master?"
The knots loosened and the rope slipped down Julia's wrists. Dr. Forrest began pulling Julia's sweater over her head, preparing her for the completion of the pentagram. Julia kept the acolyte's smile, though her eyes were fixed on Hartley. His skull ring glowed in the rising darkness, the rubies making two red specks even though there was no light to reflect.
Julia looked at the ring on Walter's finger. Her ring. No reflection came from it. Her breath caught. She'd thought this was all a game, that "Satan's" tricks were explained by the manipulation of Creeps. The power of Dr. Forrest's suggestions combined with false memories.
But what if she'd really been born unto Satan? What if her father had given her away, but changed his mind and rescued her? What if the long-ago ritual had been interrupted, and Satan had delighted in Julia's long, torturous path back to the Inner Circle?
No matter. The words were out like a rote magic spell before she could reconsider. "I want Satan to have me, body and soul. Of my own free will."
When Julia had said those words, hadn't a sick warmth filled her chest? Hadn't she felt giddy with strength, as if the master of the world would share the world's sick spiritual wealth? Didn't Satan promise absolute freedom, freedom to kill or scar or lie or lust? All sins without a price, because the ultimate price had already been paid?
She gazed at Hartley, half-expecting to see a goat's head sprouting from the top of his robe, expecting the master to don flesh so that he might taste his world's mortal sins. But all she saw was a depraved, aging man, his face reddened by the cold wind.
The skull ring was just a piece of metal set with ornamental stones. A symbol for the fools who lacked hope, who saw no value in the living and so had to fabricate a monstrous illusion. And daggers, robes, pentagrams, rituals were nothing but stage props for a nonexistent deity, contrived mockeries to give meaning to meaningless lives. The ultimate worship of self and ego.
She looked at Walter, and in his eyes saw life. The fires of the soul were never lit by fallen angels. They were lit by compassion. Power was created by a sacrifice that was selfless, not a sacrifice that was made to gain approval. Walter had made sacrifices for her, and he had sparked hope in her own heart. And love was the brightest of powers, the hottest of fires, the force that brought even gods to their knees.
Or maybe she was simply insane.
Either way, Julia stood, energy flowing through her limbs. She felt Dr. Forrest pulling on her blouse, trying to expose her abdomen so that Hartley could bring the knife to bear. The forest seemed like a wild beast, pulsing and throbbing beneath the skin of night. The wind rose and fell in a melody that might have been as old as the earth.
Julia shrugged away from Dr. Forrest's clutching fingers, turned, and walked up the path toward the high rocks. "O Satan, my Master, come take me," she shouted at the sky.
Hartley called after her, or it may have been Walter. She heard Dr. Forrest's footsteps in the dead leaves, chasing.
"Jooolia?" Hartley yelled, his voice barely audible above the gale.
They had killed her father. Hartley had killed her father. And though her father may have been spiritually weak, seduced by the attraction that corrupt moral freedom offered, he had rescued Julia when the Brotherhood sought to carve her up. No one was beyond redemption.
"Satan calls me," Julia said, continuing up the path, feeling her way between the laurels. She hoped her shambling gait was appropriately zombie-like.
She came to the spot where Snead had fallen. His gun was invisible in the darkness. She stumbled, swooned, and dropped to her knees, running her hands over the ground while pretending to regain balance.
"You need us in order to get to the Master," Dr. Forrest said from a few feet behind Julia. "You can't do it alone. Come before the High Priest. Let us help you belong."
Julia's fingers brushed over the gun and closed on the grip. Snead had been tackled in the act of firing, so the safety was off. She didn't know much about guns, but she knew how to point. And, if necessary, pull the trigger.
Dr. Forrest caught up to her and embraced her, the woman's bare skin feverishly hot. Julia allowed herself to be led back down the trail. She could scarcely make out Walter and Hartley, who were two gray silhouettes against the shadow of the world, Walter still on his knees.
Dr. Forrest nudged Julia toward Hartley. The High Priest turned the knife so that it caught some of the scant light.
"Why use the knife?" Julia said. "Does the Master not love bullets?"
Dr. Forrest touched Julia's shoulder. "Sister?"
"Or is a bullet too quick? Does Satan like to hear the little children scream while you cut them up? Or is it you who gets his jollies out of other people's pain and suffering?"
"You whore," Hartley said.
"Finish it," Dr. Forrest said, though Julia couldn't tell whether the woman was addressing Hartley or Satan.
Hartley swung his pistol toward Julia. "You can't fool the Master. He's the original liar. And he's got a place for you in hell."
Walter chose that moment to attack, lunging into Hartley's knees. Hartley swung the pistol toward Walter's head, the metal cracking against the hard bone of Walter's skull. Walter slumped, moaning, while Hartley fought to regain balance.
Julia pulled Snead's pistol from behind her back. "Tell Satan I said 'hello.'"
Hartley's mouth fell open in surprise. A surge of electricity flowed through Julia and she could have sworn the wind whispered, "Do it." She pulled the trigger three times.
Dr. Forrest screamed, and for an impossible moment, Hartley still stood, gazing at the wounds in his chest. He looked at Julia, and then at the pistol in his own hand. He smiled. She was so paralyzed with fear that she couldn't pull the trigger again, as if Hartley had stolen her energy in order to keep himself upright. As if he were drawing up the life of the trees, dirt, and rocks.
The blood of the world.
For the briefest of moments, the goat's face appeared over Hartley's and the capricious lips---surely an illusion?---parted in a smirk of victorious surrender.
The wind rose, the music of the woods screaming to a crescendo, the devil's orchestra drawing its bows---
Stop it, Julia.
No music, only Dr. Forrest's wail and Hartley swaying.
Then, with a gurgle in his throat, he collapsed.
As Hartley hit the ground, the clouds tugged themselves apart and a sliver of sunset bathed the mountain. Somewhere over or beneath the mountain, thunder rumbled, as if the Master were laughing. Or perhaps God had broken his lifelong silence and finally spoke to her. Any message was lost in translation.
Julia stooped and gathered Hartley's automatic and helped Walter to his feet.
"You okay?" she asked.
He rubbed his head, steadying himself against her as he stared down at Hartley. "Doing better than him, anyway."
Dr. Forrest knelt by her tainted leader and wept, her arms over her flaccid breasts. "You were one of us," she blubbered to Julia.
"No," Julia said. "I was never anybody's." She put her arm around Walter, helping support him.
Dr. Forrest looked up. The wind died and the soft fading light caught the tears on the woman's cheeks. "He owns you."
"I choose who I belong to," Julia said. She kicked Dr. Forrest's robe toward the pathetic, trembling woman. "You'd better put that on before you freeze."
Dr. Forrest snatched at the robe, jumped to her feet, and ran toward the trees. Her sad, broken laughter filled the clearing. "Satan calls me," mocked Dr. Forrest, in a strange falsetto. "I hear him in the trees. He's everywhere."
Walter tried to stagger after her, but Julia stopped him. "Let her go," she said. "She won't freeze to death if she keeps moving. They'll find her sooner or later and get her the help she needs."
Walter leaned against her. "Hopefully, she won't get a therapist as screwed-up as yours."
"You're making fun of a woman who's holding a gun," she reminded him.
"You're not a bad Clint Eastwood yourself," he said.
She didn't want to explain the murdering force that had descended upon her and briefly possessed her. It would sound deranged, the kind of thing a defense lawyer would use for an insanity plea. Walter would call it the grace of God, but Julia could never be sure whether it was instead the will of a malevolent master whose most potent magic was served by disguise and doubt. The devil's greatest trick was in getting people to believe he didn't exist.
But maybe God's greatest trick was in granting people the free will to doubt.
"I'm no better than they are," she said, looking at the gun that was cooling in her hand.
Walter shook his head. A large purple knot was swelling above his temple. He touched it and winced. "I'm going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow."
So would Julia. Tomorrow, she'd have to deal with the fact that she had killed someone. She had played God just as certainly as Hartley had, taking human life. Sure, she could justify it, but every sin had its price, every sinner an excuse.
"Any more of the Creeps around?" she asked. "I only saw three, plus Hartley and the doctor."
"I shot one," he said. "That's where I got the robe. But I lost Mitchell's gun climbing up the rocks to get here. It got dark so fast I couldn't look for it."
"There might be more of the 'Brothers' around, but I doubt it. Not enough slices of the money pie."
"Money?"
"I'll tell you later. Let's get out of here."
She helped Walter toward the trail, clutching the gun in her right hand. Maybe somewhere, God and Satan were sitting in the Happy Hour of the afterlife and bickering over the nature of good and evil and which of them had won this latest dice roll of human souls.
The sun slipped behind the ridges as they staggered back up the trail, both of them weak. They had reached the granite peak of Cracker Knob when Dr. Forrest's high voice drifted up from the woods. "Oh, Jooolia. Jooolia. He ooowns you, Jooooolia."
Julia looked out over the dark ripples of Appalachian Mountains in the distance, at the black pockets of valleys. In a strange way, Dr. Forrest had healed her. Compared to a devil-worshipping lunatic who liked to play with patients' minds, Julia felt like the most sane and rational person on the planet.
They rested against the rocks, the sky in twilight. Walter fidgeted with his hand for a moment and held something out to her. "This is yours," he said. "I was keeping it for you."
The silver ring. She looked at the skull grinning in the moonlight, at the stupid empty eyes that saw nothing.
"Free will," he said.
She took a step forward and hurled the ring into the deep valley below the rocks. Judas Stone didn't exist.
She couldn't tell which of them moved first, or if they simultaneously had the same idea. They embraced, their lips meeting, body heat and the heat beyond that combining. Julia kissed desperately, afraid that each precious moment belonged to the past, was already over and never to be regained. But then Walter kissed her again, and she knew that these moments were hers for as long as she desired.
They finally parted, Julia so lightheaded that she had to lean against the rocks again. Neither of them spoke, afraid to break the little magic spell the world had allowed. Walter took her hand and guided her between the boulders under the timeless night.
The wind gently pushed the last scraps of clouds away. The sky was indigo and scattered with stars. The rising moon shone down on the silver forest. They continued through the trees, pushing away the groping branches.
By the time they reached the cabin, Julia was exhausted. They found that the Jeep's tires had been slashed. The Creeps had wanted to cut off easy escape.
"Looks like we'll have to hike out," Walter said.
"Not tonight," Julia said. "I'm beat."
"No, you're not beat. They'll never beat you if you don't let them."
"I am a mountain," Julia said, with just enough strength left to laugh. She turned solemn and said, "If you let God in your heart, can you ever make him leave?"
"Free will," he said.
"You're not still trying to save me, are you?"
"Door's open when you want to talk about it."
They went inside the dark cabin, Julia's hand squeezing the gun's grip, finger ready at the trigger. No Creeps. She was finished with Creeps, real or imagined. Doors closed and deadbolts thrown. Safe house.
"Want me to build a fire?" Walter asked.
"Yes," she said, pulling him toward the loft. "Like you did up on the rocks."
Julia climbed the ladder and scrambled onto the loft. She laid the gun within reach and kicked the blankets aside while Walter hurried up alongside her. Finally, she was ready to trust.
She tore at the buttons of his shirt, burning with hunger. This hunger was deep, reaching further inside her than any fear or panic or hopelessness ever had. This surrender was of her soul, the thing that she and she alone possessed.
Nobody could steal her soul. No demon, no god, no human. It was hers to give as she chose. Of her own free will.
As she reached for the heat of his skin, she wondered how he would react to the touch of her scars.
But it didn't matter. Wounds healed, scars faded, the past always lost in the battle of forever.
"Jooolia," he whispered, arousing a last shiver of doubt.
To hell with it.
She threw herself into the fire.
THE END
###
Paranormal investigators Ellen and Monty Drew are summoned to remove a spirit from a bible college---but one dark presence isn't ready to graduate.
GHOST COLLEGE
By Scott Nicholson & J.R. Rain
Copyright ©2010 J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson
The place didn't look haunted; then again, they never do.
We were standing in the polished entrance hall to a small Christian college called Faith University. It was after hours, and so the building was mostly empty. To either side stretched dimly lit hallways. Further down, wedges of light poured from a couple of night classes and faint sounds of an instructor's lecture spilled from one, the word "Leviticus" jumping out of the drone.
The hallway stretched to our left, devoid of human traffic, but it wasn't humans we were looking for. At least, not living ones.
I adjusted the sack of gear dangling from my shoulder and surveyed the atmosphere. The place did look sort of gloomy and forlorn, which was surprising considering it was a faith-based institution of relatively new construction.
You would have expected some sort of shimmering glow about the place, like the halo of a saint, or some clouds spilling down from a set of golden stairs. It wasn't much of a university, really. It felt more like an extension of Cal State Fullerton, which was located across the street.
"What do you think?" I asked, keeping my voice low and reverent, like you would in church even if no one was there.
Ellen had taken a step or two in front of me and was currently peering off down a darkened side hall. "Oh, it's haunted, alright."
"Just like that?" I asked. "We take one step into a place and you can tell it's haunted?"
She turned to me and flashed me her brilliant smile, the sort that always gave me a fluttering out-of-body experience. Love. Talk about your supernatural powers.
"What can I say?" She reached over and slapped me lightly on the cheek. "It's a gift. You know that. We've been through this a hundred times before."
"And all one hundred times, I have yet to see a ghost."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"Right. They're invisible. Why can't I see that?"
To be honest, I didn't know what the hell I had felt, seen, or imagined in the past. A cold breeze at the back of my neck. A suspicious moan or two that could have just as easily been the wind. Flitting images that were probably distant headlights sweeping across a window. The mysterious creaking of floorboards, of faint touches on necks and shoulders and forearms, inexplicable goose bumps and soft whispers in my ears.
All of these occurrences, or non-events, could be summed up easily enough: too many long hours working into the middle of the night, hoping for real evidence in a field where everything was built on faith.
Seemed like the ghost-hunting business was a lot like the religion business, so maybe we were in the right place after all.
"They weren't figments of your imagination," Ellen said.
"I have strict control over my imagination. In other words, nothing goes on in there that I don't want to go on. For instance, I am now imagining you fully naked and my EMF meter is going berserk."
"Put that twitching needle back in your pants," she said. "There's someone coming."
"Now turn around," I said.
"What?"
"I'm talking to the imagination. Ah, very good. Okay, you may get dressed now."
"You are too much, Monty."
I heard the footsteps now. Someone was hurrying down the tiled hallway, materializing before us from the darkness. Now, if this was a ghost, then we were in business. This I could see and hear. And smell. The aroma of whiskey and cigarettes came before him like a barstool hurricane.
The figure turned out to be a short man with a surprisingly large waist. "Surprisingly" because he was moving so quickly, as the added girth apparently gave him no trouble at all, a man grown comfortable in his own elastic skin. He was wearing a short suit with a red-and-white striped tie that hung below his zipper. His sweating face was a beacon in the darkness. I checked my watch. Dr. Stevens was right on time.
The professor approached my wife first, as most men do, instantly attracted to her disarming smile and lithe figure. Or perhaps attracted to that thing that had pulled me in, the X Factor.
That unknown something she possessed. That special energy she radiated whether she knew it or not. The look in her eyes that promised all men amusement and good times, even if she never intended to deliver.
And with me, luckily, she delivered.
Sometimes twice a night, and occasionally three, if we were sleeping in the next morning.
"Hi," said the little man, his voice booming along the hallways. If there were any ghosts, they would have scattered like frightened fish, assuming they could hear or respond to air vibrations. He reached out a very large hand, which was disproportionate to his body. In the world of Tolkien, he would have wielded a battle axe and sported very hairy toes. "Ellen and Monty?"
"That's us," I said. "She's Ellen."
He grinned. "That was my next question."
He wiped some sweat away with the back of his hand. The night was cool enough that Ellen was wearing a sweater. Then again, she often wore sweaters even on warm summer evenings. This was not a warm summer evening. This was early February. But this was also Southern California, where there were only two seasons: Oscar season and everything else. "Perhaps we should talk in my office," he said.
After we had followed him through a series of twists and turns and into a large office, making small talk about the state budget cuts that had curtailed higher education, he closed the door behind us after giving the hallway a quick check. Ellen and I sat before him at his spacious desk.
He sat back and looked at us. "We have a problem," he said simply. "And we need some help."
He lowered his voice an octave, as if afraid a student might overhear. "And you are the ghost hunters?"
"We prefer to call ourselves paranormal investigators, Dr. Stevens," I said.
"Yes, of course. I didn't mean to offend." He paused and took us both in, the hint of a smile still stamped on his jovial face. "I've never met ghost hunters before."
I was about to object to the reference again when my wife leaned forward and placed a digital audio recorder on his desk. She clicked it on and a red dot of light appeared. "9:17 p.m., February 11, Dr. Stevens' office," she said, projecting for the benefit of the recording. She nodded at the professor and returned to a conversational tone. "You mentioned hearing some strange noises, Dr. Stevens?"
The joviality left his face, replaced with something closer to exhaustion. "Either way, right?" he laughed, his voice booming. He looked nervously at the recorder.
"Actually, we investigate strange occurrences and attempt to identify the sources," I said. "Much of our work is in eliminating all rational physical explanations, and only then do we consider the possibility of something more. But so far there's never been something more."
"Tell us about the ghost," my wife said, cutting off my serious scientific explanation of our task.
"I never said we had a ghost," said the little man, looking up startled. "We just have had some strange, you know, occurrences."
"Of course," she said. "I didn't mean to unnerve you."
But my wife never said "ghost" unless she was sure there was a ghost. She'd always had more faith than me, but I also trusted that she had a more refined sense of the sublime. Myself, I tried to give the moment some academic distance before I got all caught up in hysteria.
We were sitting in the president's office. There were some fairly impressive plaques and degrees placed precisely on the wall behind his desk, and some other certificates with ornate writing scattered around the room. I noticed that one of his plaques was askew. Just one. The others were in perfect uniform precision.
It didn't fit the world of Dr. Stevens. I have often come across many things that didn't make sense. For my wife, however, it all made perfect sense. Sometimes I wished I had her outlook. Sometimes. And sometimes her outlook scared the hell out of me.
His office was in a corner of the building. The blinds were shut, but had they been open he would have had a great view of Cal State Fullerton across the street. With practice, he probably would have been able to shoot rubber bands at that larger, better-funded campus.
His chair was studded leather. His desk was large enough to play ping pong on. Aside from our recorder, his desk was empty, save for a picture of a pretty but severe woman and a cute little girl. The picture was angled so that he could see it from his desk. I had to lean forward to see it.
"There have been noises," he said, reluctantly. He had clasped his hands together. His thumbs twiddled briefly, and then stopped, then started again.
"What type of noises?" I asked. People tended to overdramatize such situations, but I could sympathize a little. Once upon a time, I had been a cold creature of logic, and then Ellen happened.
Stevens shifted, his leather seat emitting a slight farting squeak that we all ignored. I wondered if that was the mysterious noise of which he spoke.
He adjusted the picture of his family on his desk, and then wiped at imaginary dust on the mirror-like maple desktop. Too bad we weren't getting paid by the hour. He shrugged, his face reddening a little with embarrassment or stress. "Screams. Wailing. Footsteps. Sobbing."
I turned to my wife. "Sounds like our first date."
Talk about a severe look. My wife said nothing---she didn't have to, the look said plenty---and turned to Dr. Stevens. "Have you heard these noises yourself?"
"No. Well, not at first."
We waited. The recorder was a two-gig Sony model, so we had all night. And most of the week.
"I have been hearing reports from others, mostly from the janitorial staff. They told me about some of the sounds, except they didn't really hear them as words."
"So you ignored them," said Ellen.
"Yes. At first." He spoke with a little of the pomposity earned by all those degrees. "Janitors are generally uneducated."
"And that means they're superstitious?" I said, a little annoyed. Elitism never sat well with me. "Like they dance around the mop bucket mumbling voodoo spells when you're not looking?"
"Not at all," he said. "In fact, it's because they are uneducated that I came to believe them. Because they repeated the sounds they'd been hearing, and I recognized it was Latin."
"Great Caesar's ghost," I said.
My wife jumped in before my sarcasm got rolling. "How long had the janitorial staff been reporting these strange voices?"
He shrugged. "A while. Ever since I've been here, really. I chalked it off to legend. Faith University started as a bible seminary during the Depression, and stories tend to pile up over the years, especially at an institution that encourages a belief in miracles."
"And you mentioned that you hadn't heard the noise at first."
"True, not at first." His petulance had been replaced by something else. He sucked in some air and looked at my wife. He held her gaze and something crossed between them. I saw it and sensed it. He was scared and was trying to hide it.
"Tell me about it," said my wife. She reached out across the desk and touched his arm.
He nodded, inhaled. "I...I heard a girl. She said my name."
"Your name?"
He nodded. I was about to make a crack about the ghost maybe saying it in Latin, in English, or in Martian, but I knew enough to hold my tongue.
Stevens was looking at my wife. His eyes searched her face. She radiated calm and strength and he latched onto it. Ignoring me, which was smart.
"Tell me about it," Ellen said.
He did. He had been in this very office two nights before, working late. He had heard voices outside his office door and assumed it was the janitorial staff. But the voices didn't go away. And then he heard a scream. Loud and piercing, and right outside his door.
He had jumped and rushed to the door, and was dismayed to discover that he was alone in the hallway. And that's when he recalled all those reports of disembodied voices.
"You said you heard your name," I said.
He flicked his eyes toward me. There was sweat on his face. "Yes. As I was standing in the hallway, I was aware that the temperature was rapidly dropping. As if the air conditioning had been turned on full blast."
I had heard many stories of hauntings. I had been a private investigator for a dozen years, a business built on lies but one where the paychecks came through facts. The paranormal investigations evolved after meeting my wife. She was psychic, spiritual, metaphysical, you name it. She told me she saw things, heard things, sensed things, and I believed her.
I believed her because my wife was not a liar, not just because I was in love with her. It's just that I never saw anything. And the president's story was a fairly common one, but I was not prepared for what came next.
"I lied," he said. "It was more than a voice."
"I know," said my wife. "Tell us what you saw."
His hands were shaking and my wife let go of his wrist and took both his hands in her own. Tears filled the corner of his eyes. Sweat slipped down his cheek. His face was vermillion.
"I was unnerved. Scared. I thought I was losing my mind. Hell, I still think so."
"She was in this room," said my wife.
The president nodded, mouth open, awed. "Yes, she was. How do you know?"
"Because she's here now."
"I hate it when you do that," I said.
Dr. Stevens jerked his hands from my wife's grip and snapped alert, and I could have sworn some of his graying hair also raised in alarm. "Is she kidding?"
"No," I said. "My wife doesn't kid about ghosts."
Ellen stood slowly. One of her knees popped. Middle age is hell, old age will probably be worse, and after that...well, we'll all find out when we get there.
Ellen sidestepped to the left, her gaze fixed firmly in one shadowy corner of the president's office occupied by a bookshelf, a floor lamp, and an old unlocked briefcase.
"Who's here?" Stevens asked. He was watching my wife between nervous blinks. He had also pushed his chair back, in the opposite direction from the far corner of the room. I don't think he noticed he had done so, although his chair gave another little fart. His forehead was creased in a frown.
"A girl," said my wife. She moved very slowly, so as not to disturb the atmosphere.
Step. Pause. She eased around the desk.
I stared into the corner of the room and saw nothing except what was there. Damn my wife and her paranormal gifts. Still, I knew my job, and I went ahead and removed the digital Elph from the inside of my coat pocket and snapped ten pictures before my wife made it to the edge of the desk. Some purists believe only silver emulsion on film can detect supernatural substance, but most modern paranormal investigators go for convenience.
But I left the flash off, because most of the orbs that got amateurs so hot and bothered were the result of dust or lens flare.
Stevens looked from Ellen to the corner of the room, then back to my wife. Then the corner of the room. There his eyes stayed. He also now sensed something was up, and he had the awareness to hold his breath.
Ellen reached out a hand and I took another picture. She rolled her fingers gently in the air is if playing in smoke.
"It's okay," Ellen whispered soothingly, as if coaxing an injured dog from beneath the porch. "We're not going to hurt you."
I didn't want to rummage in my canvas sack and cause a commotion, so I left the EMF, spot thermometer, and the FLIR thermal imager alone. We also had an infrared video camera and night-vision goggles packed away, stuff we'd have deployed if we'd had time to set up. But sometimes ghosts don't care about making a big production out of their dance across the stage.
Ellen knelt, which led me to assume the ghost was small or else cowering in the corner. Or maybe it was standing waist-deep in the floor. None of the rules really applied, one of the things that bugged the hell out of me about this line of work.
"What's your name?" my wife asked.
I glanced at the audio recorder to make sure it was still running. We've had times when it clicked off and on by itself, though we kept all the equipment regularly tested by our buddy Frankie, an MIT drop-out who had a genius-level I.Q. but was more interested in flower gardening. Frankie had the hots for my wife, which wasn't unusual, except Frankie's chances were lower than average since my wife didn't swing both ways.
Stevens finally took a gulp of air, and it almost sounded like a hiccup. If we'd been expecting an encounter, as with some of those legendary ghosts who kept to a certain schedule, then we could have trained Stevens on the basics of social interaction with the dead. As it was, we just had to hope he'd keep his cool.
"It's okay, honey," Ellen said, still stroking the air. "Don't be afraid."
Like we were the scary ones. But maybe we were as unnatural to them, peering back into this hard world with our sharp edges and pain, as they were to us. Such thinking bled over into the realm of brandy by the fireside, though, and philosophy alone had never trapped a ghost in a glass jar.
"Who is it?" Stevens hissed a whisper, as if his courage were leaking.
Ellen frowned but continued with her gentle gestures, keeping a deliberate poise. "Sophia? Are you Sophia?"
"Goddamn!" Stevens exploded from his chair, sending it squealing backward to slam against the wall. A couple of his diplomas clattered to the floor, glass breaking in one of them. Stevens crunched the glass underfoot as he bolted for the door.
I took one last photograph as all hell broke loose, though my hand was moving so any image would likely be blurred. Those blurry images worked for amateurs, but to me they were just a waste of electrons.
"That didn't go so well," I said.
Ellen scanned the room before letting out a sigh. "People shouldn't cuss in a sacred institution."
"All clear?"
"Deader than Bob Dole's babymaker."
"I don't think that's the kind of thing that should be uttered in a sacred institution, either."
"She was here," Ellen said, frustrated. "And I think I could have contacted her."
"Dr. Stevens is a normie. Have a little compassion."
"You're lecturing me on compassion, Monty?"
"Okay, okay," I said. "Consider this a bonus encounter. Let's wrap this scene and start from scratch."
Ellen closed her eyes and spoke in that spooky but slightly sexy monotone. "Subject appeared to be female, adolescent, maybe 10 or 11, wearing a Victorian-era frock with a pleated collar and ribbon-fringed bonnet, knee stockings, and buckled leather shoes. I received the impression of the name 'Sophia,' though no audible sound was detected. The encounter lasted approximately---"
I glanced at my watch. "Sixty-seven seconds."
"---sixty-seven seconds before interruption by Dr. Stevens loudly vacating the premises. Noises near end of recording were made by his exit. End recording, 9:26 p.m., February 11."
I clicked off the Sony and joined Ellen near the corner of the room. "All those impressions just in that little bit of time?"
"A minute to us, but who knows how long it might have been for her? We have no idea how they perceive time, space, or consciousness."
I shivered a little despite the warmth of the room. We among the living like to comfort ourselves with Earthly notions of the afterlife, with time just rolling along, ever forward, as we pluck harps and eat grapes and kiss the feet of the deity of our choice. We're not as comfortable with the notion that maybe time can move backwards, or sideways, or maybe even not at all.
Suppose you got stuck somewhere in the past, in one of those terrible moments you were so glad was finally over? What if your soul got caught in a little loop, and there you were for all eternity, walking in on your cheating spouse, or hearing that cancer diagnosis, or watching the flames crawl toward you as the smoke filled your lungs?
Ellen knew how to scare me more than anything on Earth. She made up for it in other ways, though. One thing was for sure, I'd never die of boredom as long as she was around.
I flipped through the viewer on the camera, checking the thumbnails. They revealed nothing but Ellen and a dim corner, but we'd give them a closer inspection at home.
"I didn't hear anything except the good doctor's hundred-decibel freak-out," I said. "Where did you get the name 'Sophia'?"
"An impression, like everything else."
Except you couldn't jot that down in any science journal. Like the sixth sense, telepathy was just one of those things you accepted on faith. Unless you were on a shrink's couch, in which case they called it "schizophrenia." Ellen and I disagreed on several important principles, but staying away from shrinks was one we shared with equal enthusiasm.
"Should we set up the gear and hold a stakeout?" I asked.
She shook her head, her shoulder-length brown hair brushing fetchingly across her shoulders. "No, I think it's a dead zone now. Dr. Stevens caused enough of a disturbance to spook every spirit within a hundred miles."
"Are we done for the night?" I said, imagining a cozy book in bed, followed by other things.
"We've driven all this way, so we may as well scout out the place for future reference."
I was afraid she'd say that, but it also made sense. Paranormal investigators, like urban explorers, Arctic sled-dog racers, and tornado chasers, knew the dangers of heading into uncharted territory.
We'd Googled up a map of the university's floor design, including the original footprint of the old Spanish mission that had served as the original seminary. We didn't find any records of how the property had changed hands from Catholics to non-denominational Christians, but that wasn't unusual, since old deeds used landmarks such as oak trees and fence lines that had long been erased, and the few lawyers of the era had tricked up everything to suit themselves. We'd discovered an account of a late-1880's earthquake that had leveled a portion of the existing structure, but that could be said of many places near the San Andreas fault.
By the time we'd packed up and scribbled our field notes in my little pocket notebook, it was after ten and the night classes had ended. We saw a couple of departing students but decided against questioning them. It would be disrespectful to stir up panic or incite ridicule. We were here by request of Dr. Stevens, and decorum required that we treat him with consideration as our host. And the guy who signed the check.
Even if he was a chicken-livered coward.
The hallways branched off in several directions, and the compact campus held two residence halls, a small recreation center, the obligatory meeting pavilion, and an angled, stained-glass entrance that gave it the aspect of a church. The bulletin boards were crammed with flyers offering service work and mission trips, and apparently the university practiced what it preached.
The buildings were fairly contemporary, so there was little of the crumbling masonry, cobwebs, and wall sconces you'd expect in your average Edgar Allan Poe tale. But ghosts tended to stick with the layouts and geography of their era, which is why they often hung around their old stomping grounds even if, say, those grounds were now high-rise buildings or toxic waste dumps.
"Doesn't look so spooky now," I said.
"What were you expecting, some hooded guy chanting backwards Latin while burning a black candle?"
"That would have made the job easier. Then we'd know we have a prankster on our hands."
One of our early cases had involved an allegedly haunted hotel. While the owner had welcomed the attendant publicity and figured our investigation would boost the hotel's reputation, we ended up catching a bellboy who moved around objects in people's locked rooms and had a few of the staff bellowing strange moans into the elevator shaft. Once we'd published our results, the hotel went back to its prior marketing platform of clean rooms at affordable prices.
"So you got a Victorian read on this Sophia of yours?"
"Judging from the fashions."
"Okay, so she's been dead, what, a century-and-a-half?"
"Give or take."
"I thought this area was owned by Mexico back then."
"In the mid-eighteenth century, California was turned over to the United States. Don't you remember your California history from the fifth grade?"
"Not a word of it," I said. "Except 'Remember the Alamo.'"
She shook her head. "The land was, let's say, redistributed to some wealthy real estate tycoons. The mission, prior to being abandoned, had been turned into an orphanage and school."
"Could Sophia be a dead student?"
"Maybe. It's too soon to tell."
We came to an exit that led to a grassy commons, laid out with a circular path of bricks and landscaped shrubs. The two dorms were segregated by gender, as one would expect from a respectable Christian institution. We hadn't secured permission for entry, and there were plenty enough mysteries behind those lighted rectangles, so we left the students alone for now.
Upon our return to the administrative wing, we found a man swabbing the floor, whistling "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas and slow-dancing with his mop. We were nearly upon him when he noticed us, and he pointed to the yellow folding sign that said "Caution Wet Floor."
I mimed lifting away earphones and he got the message, turning off his iPod. "You people lost? Classes are over," he said.
He was thirtyish, with dark circles under his eyes, one of those greasy-haired people who looked like they'd taken a hard left turn at "Opportunity."
"We're checking into reports of people hearing voices," Ellen said.
He let his eyes crawl over her figure like a putrid tongue before answering. "You guys cops? 'Cause you guys don't look like no cops. Especially you."
"We're investigators," I said, demanding his attention before he got really disgusting. I didn't have any problem kicking his ass if I had to. I used to box back in my teens, part of my tough-guy training, and slugging assholes had been a favorite pastime of mine.
"Okay, cool it, dude. I get it. You're a badass."
I ignored him; mostly, because it was true. "Dr. Stevens said people say they're hearing voices, and either we have an intruder, some people making stuff up, or something we can't explain yet."
"We don't got no intruders," he said. "Nothing's getting stole around here."
"Have you heard the voices?" Ellen asked. "Making strange sounds that are almost words but not quite?"
The lack of accusation in her voice must have swung him over, or maybe he wanted to ogle her a little more. Maybe he was tired of loving on his mop. "Yeah, all this 'ess-kwat ooh-num' stuff. Sounds like a man's voice, yelling out, like a hip-hop preacher or something."
"How often do you hear these voices?"
"Me, about once or twice a week, but I only hear them over at the music hall. I try to stay away from there, but I can't afford to lose this job, ya know?"
"Sure, things are tough out there," I said, trying to be friendly, though I couldn't fake it as well as Ellen.
"Has anything else unusual happened?" Ellen asked. "Do you ever feel the temperature suddenly change, or like someone has touched you when you're alone?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Hey, I get it. Like 'T.A.P.S.' on TV, right? Ghost hunters!"
I launched into my spiel. "We're not ghost hunters---"
"Yeah," Ellen interrupted. "Ghost hunters."
He looked around as if to make sure no superiors were around. "Well, sometimes I've seen stuff out of the corner of my eye, or I'll be sweeping at three in the morning and get this weird feeling somebody's watching me."
I had a weird feeling that his weird feeling came from illicit substances, but Ellen was making plenty of headway without my input, so I let her work.
"Have you ever heard a young girl's voice?" she asked.
He looked like he was considering a lie, but eventually said, "Nah. Just the preacher dude. Or maybe he's an old teacher. Hard to tell. All them sounds are so creepy, I started wearing my headphones at night. I don't hear nothing much lately but my tunes."
"Thanks," Ellen said.
I handed the guy a business card before we walked away. "In case you think of anything else."
"Hey," he yelled after us. "Don't I get to be on TV?"
We were at the Denny's across the street when I got a phone call from Dr. Stevens. He apologized for his royal freak-out and went on to tell me that something had come over him. Some deep and primal fear had seized him and the next thing he knew he was standing in the parking lot, clutching his chest, gasping for air, certain he was going to have a heart attack. Now he felt like an idiot and just wanted to get the hell out of there.
He begged me to do anything we could to help them and to remove whatever it was that was in the building. Unlike amateur ghost hunters who run around graveyards and abandoned buildings on the weekends, my wife and I offer a real service.
A ghost-removal service.
Yes, we've heard all the Ghostbusters jokes, and some would argue that we were ripping people off. Although a skeptic at heart, I had seen enough evidence of the paranormal to know that something was going on out there, and a lot people needed help, even if it was all in their heads.
I was just waiting to see my first ghost.
But I doubted I would.
Anyway, Dr. Stevens and I nailed down a price, double if we started tonight. He wanted to be able to come back to work tomorrow and not wonder if something was peeking over his shoulder. I made no promises but told him we would do our best.
I snapped shut my cell phone just as a platter of chocolate pancakes appeared before me.
My wife shook her head. "You do realize you're a grown man."
"Grown men eat chocolate."
"But not chocolate pancakes."
"Says who?"
She shook her head and sipped her coffee. "What did the good doctor say?"
"Said he was sorry for his graceless exit. Said he wanted whatever was in there out. And said he would pay us double if we expelled his unwanted guest tonight."
"Double is good."
"So what do you think we're dealing with?" I asked. Half of my pancakes were already gone. Holy sweet Jesus, those little suckers were good.
"I have no clue what you just said," my wife said.
I swallowed and repeated my question.
"Better," she said. "Now if only I could remove the image of the chocolate chips stuck between your teeth."
"Good luck with that."
She shook her head. "Anyway, I think we're dealing with at least one spirit and perhaps something else."
I nodded, getting it. My wife claimed I was more psychic than I gave myself credit for, which isn't saying much since I never gave myself any credit at all for being psychic. I said, "The reason he ran off."
"Exactly. He felt something. Saw something. Heard something."
"And it wasn't the girl?"
"The girl didn't manifest, or your camera would have picked up on it."
We'd had that debate a dozen times, since I saw no reason why a camera should detect something that wasn't there in the first place. The way I saw it, if there were tens of thousands of ghost hunters happily clicking away every night, how come nobody had ever presented an indisputable image of a ghost? But I just kept chewing, talking with my mouth full. "So he saw something else?"
"Would be my guess," said Ellen.
"Something dark?"
"Hard to say."
"What's your impressions?" I asked, mopping up the plate with the last bite of pancake, picking up any errant whipped cream or chocolate chips along the way. Her impressions were worth more than physical evidence. I was here to get the job done, not win a Nobel Prize for physics. Or metaphysics.
"Too soon to say," said Ellen. "But there's a reason why a little girl has been in this building for a hundred and fifty years."
"Trapped?"
"Or held prisoner."
"By what?" I asked and waved for the bill. If we were going to investigate tonight, then we needed to get started A.S.A.P.
"That remains to be seen."
"Or unseen."
"Honey, it's hard to be enigmatic when you have brown teeth."
I gave her an extra-wide grin.
One of the tricks of this trade is to secure your legal permissions beforehand, which we'd handled via the Internet. The release form was the most critical. It gave us unfettered access to the hunt site and basically protected us from claims that we had stirred up unwanted, invisible forces. While such a claim filed in court would actually be great publicity, Ellen and I preferred to avoid drama, do our jobs, and let everyone rest in peace.
Especially the dead.
The best part of the release form was the clause that protected us from any claims of "infliction of psychological or emotional distress." Our attorney had insisted on the language because she said someone might claim our actions had led to their demonic possession. I'd countered that I would love to see such a case go to trial, but in the end, the expense, hassle, and lost time would not be worth the entertainment value.
The main part of the administration building was still unlocked, and since our maps had shown the original building footprint there, we decided to focus our efforts near the president's office. We'd already had a hit on the ghost girl---rather, Ellen had; I couldn't claim much credit---so it made sense to expect a return encounter.
"Break out the EMF," Ellen said.
"We ought to market a line of these one day."
"Then we'd spend all day running a business."
"At least we'd have a day job instead of always working the night shift."
I clicked on the meter. While some of the cheesier models had a row of lights detecting surges in electromagnetic radiation, I preferred a Trifield meter, which helped narrow anomalies down to either electrical, magnetic, or radio disturbances. Any device marketed as a "Ghost Meter" was a piece of crap, about as useful in our line of work as a silver cross and a vial of holy water.
"Anything unusual?" Ellen asked, eyes closed.
The hallway was quiet, and Headphones Boy was nowhere around. I had to admit, the guy knew how to run a mop. The floor was spotless. "Yeah," I said. "These kids are all either quietly studying away or else all tucked in. It's way too quiet for a college campus."
"These are Bible students, Monty. We're not on the set of 'Animal House.'"
"Still, you'd think they'd be hanging out in the rec center, eating chips and drinking Dr. Pepper or something."
"Maybe they all have exams coming up."
"Yeah. That Book of Leviticus is pretty tough. A cookbook for the priests."
"Be respectful, now. We're guests here."
Ellen was a good buffer for my sarcasm and cynicism. I'm sure I frustrated her from time to time, but in general she was steadfast and pure, and I suspect it was her noble, generous heart that caused ghosts to trust her.
Assuming they existed, of course.
As we centered our search on the original building footprint, the Trifield's needle twitched a time or two, but I narrowed the cause down to clumps of electrical wires running up the wall. Amateurs would have considered any bump a sure sign of paranormal activity, but there were so many possible causes of fluctuation that the true anomaly was in getting no unusual readings at all.
"Think we should set up video?" I asked, whispering now that we were seriously on the clock.
"Yeah," she said. "I've got a feeling."
As I set up our camera on a collapsible tripod, Ellen moved about the hall near the president's office. She had her arms up before her, like a caricature of a mummy or a sleepwalker. She eased forward with her eyes closed. The stance served the double duty of letting her feel changes in temperature and keeping her from running face first into a wall. And it was a lovely face, so that would have been a tragedy.
I started the camera and held my watch in front of the lens to record the time, stating it aloud for the benefit of the audio track. "11:36 p.m.," I said.
I also showed the Trifield so we'd have a baseline. For best results, we should have visited during the day and taken levels so we'd have data for later comparison, but the pressing nature of the job meant we'd have to fly by the seat of our pants. I wasn't even sure what we'd do with suggestive data even if we captured it, because neither of us was too wrapped up in the paranormal industry.
Sure, we liked to get paid, but it was also a calling. Ellen, a sensitive since her dead father had visited her bedside at age seven, often shared the vivid story of how he'd apologized for dying of a heart attack before she was grown and gone from the nest. And little Ellie had soothed him and told him she understood, and said she believed he had another place to be, and she was sure they'd meet again. That story always gave me chills, especially the part where she described her smiling dad, ghostly tears leaking down his milk-white face, waving as he disappeared into the wall forever.
Me, I guess I was in it for Ellen. She was so sincere about all that stuff that it seemed like a miracle to me, because I was pretty sure I'd have turned down a bad road if not for her. I didn't have much use for religion, faith, or mysticism, but I'd long since come to accept that there was more going on in this world than we could see and understand.
While Ellen tuned in her sixth sense, which she'd described as sort of like turning the knob on a radio to track across the different bandwidths, I took some surface readings with the spot thermometer. Most surfaces were a reliable 68 degrees, probably the setting for the heating system, though that was about the same as the outside-air temperature.
I was about to put it away when I scanned the red dot across the president's door. A cool sixty. Either someone had stored an igloo in there, or something odd was going on.
"Hon," I whispered. "The office."
She'd already turned and headed that way, clued in to something I couldn't measure. She put her slim but strong fingers of one hand flat against the door---it still gave me a rush to see the gold ring I'd given her---as if feeling the beating of a heart.
"She's back."
I moved the camera up so it could shoot inside the office, and then I tried the handle. In his hasty departure, the president hadn't returned to lock his office, and neither had we when we left. Apparently Headphones Boy had skipped it as well, because the handle turned with a click loud enough to wake the dead.
The door swung open, on its own, with a creak like the lifting of Dracula's coffin.
"Battery's dead," I announced.
And it was. Just like that. One moment I had a full charge and the next the EMF meter was drained dry. I tried my backup battery. Drained, too. Although peculiar and noteworthy, it was also a major inconvenience. I said as much.
"She's trying to manifest," said my wife, shivering a little. "Cut her some slack."
"Well, can you ask her to stick her finger in a light socket or something? Now I have to go back to the van."
"Go ahead," said my wife. "I'll be here with her."
"Right. Be back in a minute. Maybe she can hold off on her grand appearance until I get back."
"You're being rude, Monty. She's a frightened and very confused little girl. Now get going."
I got. The battery thing could have been random, bad batteries from the same batch. And the cold door? Give me a little time, and I'd think of a rational explanation.
I went back the way we'd come, hung a right, and found myself in a better-lit hallway. It was late and the place was dead. The dorms were on the far side of the building, across the commons we had seen earlier. No doubt a handful of the professors were burning the midnight oil and decoding the Book of Revelations. For the most part, though, we had the building to ourselves.
Which was just the way I liked it.
It's tough doing a paranormal investigation if there's outside interference. Hell, it's tough doing a paranormal investigation even with no disturbances. So why did I do it?
Why not? The investigations were fun. We seemed to really help our clients, and it brought me closer to my wife. And there was just enough weird shit to keep me interested. I couldn't tell you how many times we captured shadows of people who weren't there. Or how many times our equipment had been moved. Or how many times I was dead certain someone was standing next to me when there wasn't a soul to be seen. And then later convincing myself nothing had happened.
Anyway, for now, it was a good gig. It beat following cheating housewives around, and it definitely beat working behind a claims desk, listening to one sad story after another. Granted, nothing beat the sad stories of some of these alleged hauntings, but they were just that: Stories.
I moved on down the dim hallway. The temperature seemed to be dropping, but that could have been my imagination. I checked my thermometer. Drained as well. Damn that greedy little ghost girl.
Ellen and I were always aware of temperature. When the temperature dropped, things often got interesting. Anyway, I could have walked under an air con vent. Or perhaps a nearby window was open. Granted, the warm night was barely cooler than the warm day. There were many reasons for temperature drops, and very few of those reasons were paranormal.
I continued on, doing my best to ignore the very overwhelming feeling that I was being watched. I looked at my forearm. The hair was standing on end. Most ghost hunters lose it about then, going ape shit and declaring the place haunted.
Don't look around. Don't do it. You know you're alone. You haven't passed a living soul.
I looked around anyway. The feeling of being watched was nearly overwhelming. You know the feeling. Maybe you're sitting at a Starbucks wasting your life away with a tech magazine, and you just feel someone watching you. You turn and sure enough the creepy old guy you spotted on the way to the counter is zeroing in on you for whatever reason. People know they're being watched. And it has nothing to do with sixth sense.
Oh?
My wife would argue otherwise. She would say that such feelings were proof that everyone was psychic. I would suggest that some people had heads like lead pipes, hollow on the inside and shielded from all stimuli and radiation, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. I did, after all, have to live with the woman.
So I looked.
There was, of course, nothing there. Just a long stretch of hallway that eventually led back to my wife and the ghost girl. But that didn't stop the feeling of being watched.
I shrugged it off as best as I could and, ignoring the goose pimples that now seemed to spread over my entire body, headed for the side door.
That is, until I heard the music.
I paused and was curious to note that my heart rate had increased. Now why was that? It was just music, wasn't it? Just a professor plinking out the tunes while grading that week's essay assignment on the Book of Leviticus. I nearly felt that professor's misery, and could almost see the poor bastard reading first paragraph after paragraph that began: "Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah or Pentateuch..." All, of course, lifted word for word from Wikipedia.
You wonder why they even need professors anymore, but I guess somebody's got to play the piano.
The more I listened, the more I was certain the music was not a recording. Someone was playing an instrument nearby. I was certain of it.
To my left was a corridor we hadn't yet explored. The music seemed to be coming from down there. I stood in the main hallway, biting my lip, debating. I could run out to the van and get my equipment, or I could investigate the music.
Ellen and I were not here to document the paranormal. We were here to eradicate unwanted guests. My wife wouldn't need physical evidence. My testimony alone would be sufficient for her.
Screw the batteries.
I hung a left and followed the music, which grew steadily louder. This side hallway was lined with closed door after closed door.
Except for one.
It was on the left and I'll be damned if the music wasn't coming from in there. Perhaps I was in the music wing. Did a Christian college offer music degrees? Perhaps a B.A. in Gospel Appreciation? I didn't know, but apparently there were music classes offered.
Just a student working with his music instructor. Getting a late-night lesson in. Made sense. Music students were often obsessed with their craft. Myself, I was obsessed with chocolate pancakes.
I approached the door. My heart seemed to both slow down and beat harder. I breathed easily though my nose, listening. I was cold again. Freezing. My hair was standing up in places where I hadn't even known I'd grown hair.
The music continued playing. A classic diddy, with a lilt. Mozart, probably, but what the hell did I know?
And with my heart pounding nice and steady, I eased the door open.
You ever see those player pianos in the old Western movies, where the keys mash themselves while the little metal wheel scrolls inside the upright box?
That's what this piano was doing, playing itself. Except it was a baby grand and didn't have the upright box. I knew as much about pianos as I did about the afterlife, quantum physics, and Nepalese politics, but even a dummy like me could tell there was no mechanical operation to the instrument.
Like the president's office, this room was cold, too. I wish I'd brought the video camera, assuming we'd had good batteries, of course. As it was, I pulled the still camera from my pocket. The camera had a video feature, though it had a limited memory capacity and would probably only catch about 30 seconds.
I figured even 30 seconds would be enough to prove I wasn't crazy or hallucinating. There was sheet music on the wooden flap in front of the keyboard, and I swear to God, a page flipped just as the music skipped a note. Unfortunately, the still camera was dead, too, so Ellen would just have to take my word for it.
I approached the piano, feeling a little helpless because I didn't have any gizmos. I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn't afraid, that I was a man of science and logic, but my scrotum shrunk tight enough to crack a walnut or two.
The piano stopped abruptly, and its last notes lingered in the air. By the time I reached the instrument, most of the tones had died away. I touched the seat and it was ice cold.
I flipped the sheet music back. The name of the hymn was "A Voice Upon The Midnight Air," and it was old, according to the little notes in the corner of the fold. It had been written in 1840, though it looked like the musical notation had been updated in the last century. Some people just couldn't leave well enough alone.
I was one of them. I sat at the piano and, although I could read music about as well as I could read Latin, I pecked at a few keys. I went at it a little faster, the tones clashing as I mixed black and white keys with abandon. But when I went for one of those booming bottom keys that sound like a frog choir at a funeral, it went mute. I pounded again and all I got was a doint.
I lifted the lid. There, jammed between where the little wooden hammer hit the fat bronze string, was a scroll of paper, crumpled and wrapped with a red ribbon.
This would make things easier. We all sought those messages from beyond, and here one had conveniently scribbled itself out. I unrolled the crinkled, thick paper and tried to read it. The black letters were done in a stylish calligraphy. I couldn't read Latin but I could recognize it.
"Non omnis moriar. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam." And below that, as if in signature, was "Tenebrosus magister."
Ellen was smarter than me and had actually finished college, although she'd studied German instead of Latin. I thought maybe she could translate it, and I didn't think batteries were going to be much help on this case.
I was hurrying back to the president's office, eager to share my alleged encounter, when I rounded the corner and almost slammed face-first into the president himself. He was clutching a big coffee and seemed calmer now despite the caffeine injection.
I'd always admired a man who could switch from booze to coffee when midnight approached. I'd never been able to pull it off myself.
"I couldn't leave my school at such a critical time," he said. "Have you made any headway?"
"I know about the Latin," I said. "But have you heard any talking pianos?"
He looked confused and glanced at the wing I'd just left. "Students are under curfew on weeknights," he said. "In their rooms by eleven, in bed by midnight. No one should have been playing."
"That's exactly what I'm thinking," I said. "No one was playing."
He looked past me again. "Where's your wife?"
"I thought she was with you."
"I can hardly see how you can joke at a time like this, Mr. Drew."
"On the contrary. You ever heard of 'gallows humor'?"
He closed his eyes and began muttering something that I soon recognized as the Serenity Prayer. When he was done, I gave him the piece of parchment I'd found.
"Do you guys teach Latin?" I asked.
He shook his head, squinting at the paper. "This is a progressive institution. We realize most of the mission work will be in Central and South America, so we teach Spanish."
"I guess I'll have to run this through the Internet, then, and hope I find a good translating program."
"Not necessary. I studied Latin as an undergrad, when I thought I was going to be a lawyer."
I didn't tell him he should have become a shyster. Even the lousy public defenders I'd known in my former life brought home six figures, and while the president was probably doing okay for himself, he was missing the chance to really sock away some cash.
"Great," I said, wondering if I'd need to test the paper and ink for age. That antique look could be contrived with a little bit of heating and careful application of dirt. "What does it say?"
He cleared his throat and translated. "'Not all of me shall die. I will either find a way or make one.' And below that, 'Dark Master.'"
"Whoa. That sounds like a pretty heavy promise. Any idea what it would be doing stuck inside a haunted piano, or who this 'Dark Master' is?"
"If I knew, I would have saved a small fortune not hiring you guys."
I patted him on the shoulder as I moved past. "Ah, you're finally catching on to that 'gallows humor' thing."
I didn't have time for theories, because the note suggested something around here was only partly dead. And that meant part of its ghost was likely hanging around. I could just picture this Dark Master guy popping out of nowhere, standing on one leg, holding his head in his solitary hand and looking around for the rest of his parts.
And I'd left Ellen alone for far too long in a place like this, where neither pianos nor presidents could be trusted.
"You're too late," said my wife when I stepped back into the president's office. "She's gone."
"Hey, you've seen one ghost, you've seen them all, right?"
"Close the door and leave the lights off."
I did so. Ellen, who had been sitting quietly in the pitch dark---did I mention she was absolutely fearless?---snapped her head around and looked at me. At least, I think that's what she did. She said, "You've seen something else."
"Heard something else. And how did you know?"
"Your tone. Your body language."
"But you can't see me."
She didn't answer me, and I had the impression she was shaking her head. My wife often shook her head at my simple ways. Yes, I should have realized she could read my aura, the faint ghostly radiation that supposedly surrounds most of us. Our soul that is apparently too big to stuff into our bodies.
"Never mind," I said. "And shut your eyes, I'm flicking on the office light. Not all of us can see auras. Most of us need real light."
"Suit yourself."
I flicked on the light switch and caught my wife slowly opening her eyes. I really, really hoped she hadn't had her eyes shut the whole time. And she only just now shut them to spare them from the piercing glare of the returning light.
Jesus, what if she'd really had them shut the whole time?
My wife never ceased to amaze me.
I caught her up to date on the player piano from hell and the note, which she took from me. She studied it and made out a few words on her own, but for the most part we relied on the university president's translation, which seemed accurate enough.
Then again, what the hell did I know? He could have recited the recipe for crawdad jambalaya and I wouldn't have known any difference.
"So what do you make of it?" I asked.
"It's a dark entity. Perhaps even a highly evolved dark entity."
"Demonic?"
She held up the brittle note. "I doubt it, since it---or he---obviously has human origins."
"What do you mean by 'highly evolved,' exactly?"
"It means that in life he practiced very dark arts. Satanism, black magic, perhaps even sacrifices. In fact, I am certain about the sacrifices."
"The girl?" I suggested.
She nodded. "We'll make a ghost investigator out of you yet."
"He sacrificed her?"
"Hard to say for now. Let's give it a strong 'maybe.' I do feel her death had been for a darker cause."
"Perhaps a sort of blood sacrifice that went awry?"
"That would explain a lot."
I shook my head. "I hate when that happens."
Ellen ignored me. "Anyway, such highly evolved dark beings rarely move on, or they resist moving on."
"Because of what's waiting for them on the other side?"
"Maybe," said my wife, but she spared me the there's-no-heaven-or-hell spiel. But to sum up, my wife believes---and since she claims to talk to the dead, she might very well have solid secondhand evidence---that what's waiting for us on the other side is generally good, even if someone had been wicked bad. The bastards of this world are shown the error of their ways and given another chance at redemption.
Myself, I didn't like that deal. It didn't sound fair. Bastards should roast. Maybe not forever, but for a while.
I said, "So after death, he returns to roam his old haunts, so to speak."
"Often. Such beings will generally return to those locations that hold the most significance to them. Not unlike other spirits. But also they are drawn to their memory of power. Theirs is an ego game."
"Tell me more about Sophia, the ghost girl."
She did. Sophia had been the daughter of a headmaster here, long before the current building, back when the structure had been used as a traditional school for the new affluent in Orange County. Of course, affluence in those days was measured in horses, not stock portfolios.
"But her memory is sketchy," added my wife.
"I can barely remember what I ate for dinner," I said.
"Chocolate pancakes," said my wife drily.
"Oh, right," I said, smiling. No doubt wistfully.
"Anyway, her memory is pretty well shot. She barely remembers who she is."
"Or was," I corrected.
"Either way, most of what I gleaned from her was my own sensations coupled with flashes of her own random memories."
"If I could be you for one day..."
"Then you probably wouldn't be a skeptic," finished my wife.
"So did she die here?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Hard to say, but the basement seems to hold a lot of importance."
"Maybe that's where he keeps her."
"Maybe."
My wife could be jaw-droppingly accurate, or frustratingly vague. Such is the way of the medium. I grabbed our gear. I may not be a psychic, but I knew how to follow up on an investigation.
I said, "Then let's head down and see what we can find."
"Only one problem," she said.
Damn. I should have figured that was too easy. "Let me guess. There's no basement anymore."
I was about to head off and round up Headphone Boy to see if he had a shovel, but I couldn't see spending the next six months digging holes beneath the building's foundation in the hope of striking paranormal gold. Besides, the president wanted this job done tonight.
"So, we can't go down there, and that means we only have one option," I said.
"Yes," my wife said, a little too eagerly.
"We have to raise the dead."
She rubbed her hands together. "I'm a little out of practice."
"Christ," I said, fighting an urge to slam my Trifield against the wall. "Do you want me to go fetch you a crystal ball and a pointy hat?"
"You watch too many cheesy movies," she said. "You know I don't go in for all that. Besides, there's a universal law that says everything you do comes back threefold."
"You mean, you bring one dead person back and a couple more might follow?"
"Well, that's a simplistic manifestation, but that might not be a bad thing. If we can summon Sophia and the dark master, then maybe we can reconcile the conflicts of their spirits and they can go on to the next plane."
"One problem with that. Who is the third ghost?"
She shrugged and grinned a little. "That's why they pay us the big bucks."
I was torn between letting her go through with her little game and just grabbing a vacuum cleaner from the janitor's closet, running it a few minutes, and reporting to the president that all his worries had been sucked away. But I've always taken pride in my work, even when I wasn't sure what the job was, and Ellen was in this business because of a calling to serve.
Me, I tended to ignore higher callings, because they entailed responsibility, and all I wanted was the next round of chocolate pancakes.
"Okay," I said. "The black candles are out. Do we have to leave the lights on for this?"
"Turn them off for a moment to set the mood."
"Gladly." I clicked them off and crossed the room, and she was in my arms, and I got a good nuzzle or two in before she pushed me away. A little reluctantly, but a push nonetheless.
"That wasn't the mood I was talking about," she said.
"Hey, I can't be in a dark room with my wife without at least giving it a try," I said.
"Work before play, dear."
"Oh, all right," I said. "I guess we need to record all this so we can prove to the president this actually happened."
"No," Ellen said. "They'll just drain the batteries again."
"Well, if you summon them, and they don't have a power source, they'll have to draw it from somewhere else."
"Or someone else."
"You're looking at me, I can tell. Even in the dark."
"It's the best way, honey. I can't afford to weaken because I need all my senses. And I have a feeling this Dark Master guy isn't going to like playing in my sandbox."
"Great, so I just invite a demon into my body so you can get a whack at him?"
"I doubt if you'll get possessed."
"Doubt? I thought you knew how these things were supposed to work. You'll risk my eternal soul just to close one little case?"
"Hey, it's not like you're using it. When was the last time you were in church?"
I reminded her of the haunted Lutheran church we'd cleared two months ago. Maybe we were becoming specialists. A Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist temple, and a Unitarian retreat and we'd soon corner the market on religious horror. Still, rubbing up against spirits, whether good and bad, took a piece of you every time, one way or another.
Despite my skepticism, I was feeling old and vulnerable. "Okay," I said. "In the interest of science and a paycheck, I'll do it. But I'm not going to like it, and I'm going to bring it up later."
She found me in the dark and gave me a nice kiss, one with softened lips that meant she'd clocked out for the duration of it. When she finally came up for air, she said, "I won't let them hurt you, love."
Easy for her to say. She wasn't the one who was about to hang a "Space For Rent" sign on her head.
"All right," I said. "Let's have a séance."
We decided to move the séance elsewhere, to an empty office on the first floor, an office that struck my wife as particularly important. For reasons, of course, that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Anyway, Ellen and I were now sitting around a kidney-shaped conference table. God only knew what else was sitting here with us.
Nothing, of course. You are alone with your wife in a candlelit room. That, and nothing more.
But as was often the case with me, especially during some of our stranger cases, as the nights wore on I found my rationale going out the window.
Anyway, sitting there, in that empty office with black candles flickering, with the recent memory of that damn piano playing itself, it was easy to imagine someone or something else sitting around this table with us.
Maybe I should just quit being a skeptic. Screw it. Sign me up. I'm on board.
Except just thinking those thoughts didn't sit right with me. If ghosts were real, then where the hell were they? Where's that clear, undisputed video of a ghost walking down a damn corridor? Where's that jaw-dropping image of an entity standing in frame, clear as a bell, and then disappearing---the same report we hear time after time on our investigations?
I'd been doing this job for five years, investigating some of the most haunted places in Southern California, and never once had I seen a goddamn ghost.
Yeah, I'm skeptical. And I will be until proven otherwise.
Still, that damn piano did play by itself.
Creepy as shit.
"I feel you're getting tense," said my wife. "Don't project negative vibes. Take a deep breath, calm down. You need to be open to invite them in."
I wondered if my wife had any clue how crazy that sounded. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.
"Focus on your breathing," Ellen said.
"Focus how?"
"Anyway you want, but it's important that you focus on your breathing."
"Why?"
"It's the fastest way to clear your thoughts."
"Of course. I should have known." So my brains were tied to my lungs. And all these years I thought my brains were in my pants.
I focused on my breathing, whatever the hell that meant. Having no clue what I was doing, I simply noticed the process of air entering my nose and mouth. The way one nostril seemed slightly backed up, because the mildew in these old places was hell on my sinuses. The way my lungs expanded. The way the air whistled through my nose with each intake, so lightly that no one but me could hear.
Before I knew it, I was in a rhythm, and I felt as open as I would ever be.
"The girl is here," said my wife. "But keep your eyes closed, Monty. Good. Keep focusing on your breathing. Now, imagine a door opening in your mind, and standing behind that door is a little girl."
I did that. Or I tried to. The door seemed to waver in and out of my thoughts. Sometimes it was a door. Other times it was just nothing. Once it was a trash-can lid. Other images came and went. Stream of consciousness at its best.
Door. Think of the door.
Another door came in view. A school door, perhaps. With a number on it. Etched into the wood. The door then turned black. Then turned white.
God, my mind was all over the place.
"Focus on your breathing again," Ellen said. "Keep focusing on the door."
I did as I was told. Until I realized I never mentioned anything about the door.
Holy sweet hell. My wife is seriously spooky.
Thirty seconds later, after focusing on my breathing---which seemed easier to do with practice---I thought of the door again. The heavy old school door came back into view. Now I could see that there was a "9" etched into it. The door was shut in my thoughts.
"Don't be alarmed and don't open your eyes, but you should see a number '9,' Monty."
I was seriously alarmed and you're damn straight I almost opened my eyes. But somehow I didn't. I kept them shut, and kept my mouth shut, too. Somehow.
"It's her old classroom here in school, Monty. The room is of significance to her." My wife paused. "It's where she died. It's also, roughly, about where we're sitting now."
So my wife hadn't randomly chosen this room. And perhaps there was a reason it was empty. Perhaps one too many administrators had gotten the creeps? Perhaps.
"She's waiting behind the door, Monty. Open it, honey. Open it for her."
Huh? Like I wanted to let in a ghost? For all my skepticism, actually bumping into one of these things was a different ball game. Suppose she was a little demon or evil succubus or even just an angel looking for someone to escort to some soft, cloudy place?
But curiosity trumped fear, so I did it. Or I tried to. I kept having a weird image of light filling a hallway, perhaps coming from under the door.
Open the door.
Had those been my thoughts or my wife's? I didn't know. That ESP thing of hers might be contagious under the right circumstances.
The old door was still sitting there in my fantasy, with the number 9 etched deep into the wood. I saw a hand---my hand, perhaps---reaching for the latch. I pushed down on it.
Pulled it open.
Light filled wherever I was standing. And I'll be damned if a cute little girl wasn't waiting behind, in the old-fashioned outfit Ellen had described earlier. I thought I heard her whisper "Can I come in?"
I nodded and opened my mouth to speak, and what happened next I probably won't ever forget. A little girl's voice came out.
"Hello," she said. Or, rather, I said. "I'm Sophia."
Maybe if the Sony recorder's batteries hadn't drained, I would have known for sure whether I was actually squeaking like a girl or if my ears simply perceived my own voice as such.
And from that idea grew another theory, that maybe real ghosts drew so much power to materialize that no camera or device could ever capture them, because they obliterated every type of mechanism that might measure their presence.
It was a theory I'd debate with Ellen later, but right now, there was girl in my throat and I didn't have a clue what I was saying.
"Hello, Sophia," Ellen said.
"The room is cold," I said, though I was wearing my leather jacket and it was a bit warm. But maybe where Sophia had come from, "cold" was the normal state of things. I took it as a good sign because it probably meant she hadn't just taken an elevator up from the lake of fire.
"I know, sweetie," Ellen said. "You've probably been in there a long time."
"Not so long," I said.
"Do you know what year it is?"
I giggled. "You must be a teacher. You must think I'm dumb."
"No, not at all," Ellen said. "We've been looking for you."
I looked around, blinking, and the part of me that was still present realized Ellen must have been talking about me as part of the "we." That is, the me who was 38, bearded, and rapidly adopting a new set of spiritual beliefs.
"I'm right here," I said in my girl voice. "Where else would I be?"
"Okay, then. Who is president?"
"Ulysses S. Grant. 'Ulysses' is a silly name for a president."
I giggled again. I'd always thought little girls were silly, and I was glad I'd never had to be one. At least until now.
"Do you know where your parents are?"
Ellen said it gently, but I felt an unaccountable sadness creep over me. So much for the theory that ghosts were just little echoes, a few frames stuck in an endless loop in the film projector of life, residual entities that had no feelings or emotions.
"I'm late for dinner," I said. "We're going to have mashed potatoes and corn on the cob, my favorite."
"I'm sure they're keeping it warm for you, honey," Ellen said, with a soothing charm that I admired even as I grappled with the uneasy realization that I was possessed. "Who are the other teachers here?"
"We only have Mr. Sigmund. He's a good piano player, but he makes us learn stupid old Latin."
"Do you know where he is now?"
My chest grew even colder. My heart beat faster. "He's behind the door with the '9' on it, too."
"Where you came from."
"Yes. He says I have to learn my lessons or I'll have to stay after school for the rest of my life."
My wife's eyes glinted in the candlelight and a tear leaked from the corner of one eye. Now I understand why she felt her gifts were from a higher power, and why she had to use them for the power of good. As much as I'd have preferred her using that force at the Las Vegas roulette wheels and blackjack tables, all the money in the world wouldn't help this little girl who was hiding inside me.
"Are there any others here?" Ellen asked. "Any like you?"
I shook my head. "Just me and Mr. Sigmund. Sometimes he goes away and I can hear him talking to people behind the door, but they're all talking in Latin and I can't understand what they're saying."
Ellen leaned across the table and held her hands toward me, palms up.
"Listen, Sophia, I have a very important favor to ask."
I shivered in dread. And I didn't know if it was Sophia's dread or my dread. Ellen's eyes were intense and earnest, and if I didn't already love her, I would have fallen for them now. The series of orange flames danced in her pupils, twin mirages of the room where we sat in a séance, consorting with the dead. All the depth and hope of the world were in them, and I could tell this was her most important mission in life.
I couldn't even be jealous, even though I am selfish by nature and prefer to have her attention directed toward me and my needs. I was just self-aware enough to know this scared girl might have needed help more than I did.
Ellen slid forward just a little and took my hands in hers. "It won't hurt, will it?" I asked.
"No, I promise."
"Mr. Sigmund said it wouldn't hurt. But he lied."
"That's what we need to find out, but we can't do it without your help. You'll have to be a big, brave girl."
I tilted my head up and said with defiance, "I'm 11. I'm brave."
Well, that's what she said. I was as scared as I'd ever been, because not only was my worldview rapidly breaking apart and a dead person was inside my skin and making my lips move, Ellen's tone suggested that something very bad was about to happen.
My wife. She was the fearless one. I just liked to talk a good game.
But one thing I'd learned, when somebody else is inside your head---and maybe sharing your soul, if such a thing exists---there's not really anywhere you can go to hide from them.
Ellen smiled. "I know you're brave, sweetie. I can tell."
I think she was talking to me, too.
"What do you want?" I asked in my Sophia voice.
"I want you to take us to him. Mr. Sigmund. So we can talk to him."
I glanced toward the corner of the room, the direction from which the little dead girl had come. It was just a wall now, the flames of candles making shadows dance.
She was scared, and I wondered just what the hell was waiting back there that had tormented her so.
"Can you do it?" Ellen said. "We'll protect you, I promise."
"How come you didn't protect me all the other times?" I asked.
Good question, thought the me who was Monty Drew. Why should she believe us? After all, we're grownups.
Ellen gave that dewy, saintly gaze again, and, hell, I would have followed her into a kiddie pool full of sharks. "Because we weren't here before," Ellen said. "Now we are."
That seemed to satisfy her, and I looked once more toward the corner of the room.
"Okay," Sophia said, and then she was gone.
I blinked and rubbed the arms of my leather jacket, trying to get circulation back into my arms.
"Ellen?" I said, relieved to hear my own voice. "Did the thing I think just happened really happen?"
"You always said you'd believe it when you saw it."
"But I still don't believe it."
"Well, your days as a skeptic might be nearing an end, my love. And don't get too comfortable in your own skin. You've got a job to do."
"A job?"
"I have to stay here, because one of us needs to be grounded. But you're going in there and finding Mr. Sigmund."
I was feeling lightheaded and a little queasy. And oddly hungry, too. But hungry for something I couldn't quite put my finger on.
"Ellen, I'm not..." I paused. My lower jaw had decided to shake almost violently. I bit down, calming myself. I tried again. "Ellen, I'm not exactly sure what's going on here."
"Then let me catch you up to speed, love," said my wife. "You were just possessed by the discarnate soul of an eleven-year-old girl."
"That much I get."
"And when she returns, she's going to lead you through Door Number Nine."
"Okay, this is where I'm getting a little fuzzy. She's going to lead me through a door that doesn't exist?"
"Not in this now," said Ellen.
"But it exists in another now?"
"Right. Her now."
"And her now is a hundred and fifty years ago, where Door Number Nine still exists?"
"Exactly."
"And this doesn't sound insane to you?"
"Makes perfect sense."
"Of course it does." And now my head hurt, too. "And behind Door Number Nine exists the Dark Master."
"It's his old classroom. He's connected to it, too, much the same way that Sophia is."
"Where he did bad things."
"Bad enough to kill her."
"So he's here, then," I said.
Ellen closed her eyes and cocked her head to one side. "He's nearby, certainly, but he's keeping his distance for now."
"Why?"
"This is new to him, too. I sense he's waiting to see what happens next before he acts."
"So what does happen next?"
"We're waiting for Sophia," said my wife.
"And where did she go?"
"Oh, she's here, standing next to you. She felt your desire to come through again and gave you your space."
"How sweet. Ghostly etiquette. So she's waiting for me?"
"Yes."
I was about to say something else when I realized what I was suddenly hungry for. "Peach pie!"
"What an odd thing to say," said my wife.
"I'm hungry," I said, frowning slightly. "For peach pie."
Ellen smiled gently at me. "When have you ever had peach pie?"
"Almost never." And then it hit me. "She wants peach pie."
And just like that, little Sophia was back.
"He's not going to be happy," said Sophia, her small voice coming out of my mouth in a way that I would never, ever get used to. Same with the odd, static tingling that coursed through me. It was a feeling I had often felt before. A curious one, certainly, and one that was often followed by unusual encounters of one sort or another. My wife claimed that these were moments of spiritual contact.
Well, I was certainly in contact with a spirit now, and my skin was practically electrified. In fact, I was sure the hair on my head would have been standing on end, too, if I weren't wearing my ball cap. Whether it was due to an outside energy altering my personal electromagnetic field or merely my brain's physical reaction to a deeply seated fear and primal excitement, that was for the scientists to determine.
"We need to talk to him, Sophia. We will protect you."
"He's a mean man. He scares me."
"He can't hurt you, Sophia."
I started shaking my head. "He hurt me bad." I found myself reaching for my throat, and felt a tightening there that actually put some real fright in me. Then the tightening subsided. I gasped.
My wife got up slowly from behind the table and came over to me, where I was still sitting in the chair. She hugged me deeply and protectively. She whispered in my ear, and I welcomed the strength in her voice. The power in her voice. My wife was a badass. "He will never hurt you again, sweetheart. Ever. And soon, very soon, you will be far away from this place."
"Heaven," I said, and I heard the hope in my voice.
"Of course, angel. Heaven." My wife's words were so full of love and hope that I began to weep nearly uncontrollably. I realized how lost I was, how alone I was, how scared I was.
And this woman. This beautiful, kind woman who reminded me of my mother was telling me everything was going to be okay.
And now this beautiful woman was holding me close, like my mother, and it was the greatest feeling in the world. I also felt warm for the first time in a long, long time.
So warm, and so much love.
I continued weeping.
When I had gotten some control of myself---or, rather, when Sophia had---I looked back toward the corner of the abandoned office and saw, to my utter shock, a glowing outline of a door. Faint at first, and then much sharper and brighter.
I looked at the kind woman standing next to me, smiling encouragingly, radiating love and hope to me. A part of me recognized her as my wife, but a greater part of me saw her as the stranger she was. The beautiful stranger.
A goddamned angel.
"Okay," Sophia said through me. "I'm ready."
And now I found myself getting up and moving toward the glowing door, reaching for the handle.
Opening it.
Inside, bright light filled the room, and also the sound of a piano playing. There, in the radiant depths, was a man. A very tall and gaunt man sitting behind a glowing piano, hair in a crazed shock of salt and pepper, a black top hat perched on his head. He wore a dark frock jacket, with a gold watch chain looping from one pocket.
He turned and looked at me and I gasped.
"You are a bad little girl, Sophia." He tugged on the black cravat around his neck. "Very bad."
And then he tilted his head, and I sensed that he was looking at me, Monty Drew, the thirty-eight-year-old man. "And you, sir, have no idea what you have gotten yourself into."
I took a moment to wrap my head around that. He's the one who was dead but he's acting like I'm the one who wasn't supposed to be there.
He looked like a foppish dandy, or a dandyish fop, one of those know-it-alls that you'd love to punch in the face if they gave you a good reason. Except I was pretty sure my fist would just keep on going right through his head, and I'd crack my knuckles on the piano, assuming the piano was really there.
"So you're Mr. Sigmund," I said. "Or should I say 'O Dark Master'?"
He slammed the bottom of his fist on the piano keys, launching a low and discordant rumble. "You're meddling with forces you don't understand."
"I understand there's an unhappy little girl here and my wife thinks you're the bastard that's caused all her misery," I said, though I felt a little queasy, like my head was floating. Maybe the Denny's pancakes had sat under the heat lamp too long.
"You and that evil woman think you can impose your human law and order." He glanced toward Door Number Nine, and I followed his gaze to find the door was gone and we were in some sort of smoky, stone-lined chamber. "You're just like all the others, afraid to see the real workings of the world."
"No, I see it. I get 'The History Channel.' But I guess you wouldn't know about that. Seeing as how you're so busy playing with the unseen powers and shit."
I was talking a little tough because I was a little scared. Ellen hadn't given me any guidance on what to do once I was in here, but I trusted she was working with all her sensory powers to keep the channel open to possibility. In return, she trusted me to follow my instincts.
And instinct was all I had, because I sure didn't have much experience in dealing with dead dabblers in the dark arts.
Hell, an hour ago I hadn't even believed in ghosts.
"Okay, sir, if you insist on entering my classroom, I will instruct you in the lessons of a Dark Master."
The smoke thickened and I batted at it, trying to orient myself. I glimpsed Sophia cowering on the far side of Mr. Sigmund, as if she were shrinking away from whatever horrible confrontation was about to take place. Apparently she had enough sense to abandon her possession of me, and I had a feeling whatever happened next was going to be a little bit on the unpleasant side.
Mr. Sigmund seemed to grow about three feet taller, and I swear his eyes flickered, as if reflecting some kind of hellfire below. For the record, I was a little numb, so I couldn't get a good grasp of the room temperature, and since it was my soul in Room Number Nine instead of my body, any evidence I could have collected wouldn't pass muster on a paragroupie Facebook page, much less a peer review.
He began jabbering in more of the Latin mumbo jumbo, and a few words stood out, the "Non omnis moriar" that Stevens had made such a big deal out of. Something about how he would find a way to cheat death.
The way I figured it, being a ghost was one pretty damned good way of doing that. Which was fine with me. The fop could float around and chant Latin until Rapture for all I cared, but he had no right to hold little Sophia here against her will.
"Okay, Ellen," I yelled, though it was probably more like a murmur, since my body was in trance somewhere back in the conference room. "Devil Boy's growing horns in here, and I have no idea what to do next."
Her words drifted across my mind, almost like subtitles in a movie: "Go toward the light."
I was a little annoyed. We'd made fun of that "Touched By An Angel" crap, where all the problems of the universe were solved simply by helping a dead person resolve a minor family dilemma. But Good and Evil fought on a much larger stage than a Hollywood sound lot, and I needed to break out the big guns.
Sigmund was now transforming, turning into a beastly creature with sharp fangs, which glistened in the veiled firelight.
"Go toward the light," Ellen repeated, and at last I understood.
I lunged at the creature, half expecting to fall flat on my gut and knock myself breathless---assuming I had any lungs in this ethereal state. Instead, I tackled him and we tumbled toward a yawning pit, the source of the strange light and stinking smoke, and far below came the crackle and roar of what could only be a raging holocaust of fire.
One of us screamed as we plummeted, and I hope it wasn't me.
Okay, it was me.
I mean, wouldn't you? One moment you're sitting with your wife in a creepy old university, and the next you're tackling a fanged demon and plummeting into a fiery chasm.
Yeah, I screamed. Damned straight I screamed.
The sensation of falling went on far longer than I could fathom. Hundreds and hundreds of feet, perhaps. Thousands. The creature I had tackled was gone, and I was alone, twisting and falling and screaming....
Be strong, came my wife's voice. You're not falling. Everything's an illusion. He's a master of illusion.
I landed far more softly than I would have thought possible. That is, if I was falling at all. Anyway, a slight jolt later and I found myself on my back, staring up into the shadowy depths of another stone chamber.
I scrambled to my feet, gasping.
The room was vast. And cold. Shadows and cobwebs everywhere. I rubbed my arms, turning in small circles. The sonorous notes of a piano came from somewhere. I was seriously beginning to hate that sound.
"Where am I?" I asked. And for the first time in my life I felt real fear. A nearly overwhelming fear. And what I feared most was my own sanity.
I'm losing my mind. Whatever mind I have, anyway.
I was a heartbeat away from a full-fledged panic attack when my wife's soothing voice came to me. Relax, sweetheart. Deep breaths. He can't hurt you.
"But where am I?"
I knew my wife was seeing what I was seeing. Using her profuse skills to access my thoughts and impressions. A form of telepathy I had never experienced before but was damn thankful for.
Then again, maybe all she was doing was whispering in my ear, back in the abandoned office. Still, I had a sense that she was seeing what I was seeing, and I was glad she was here. Damn glad. Some things you just don't want to go through alone, and matching wits with a demon was one of them.
Of course, I still had no clue where I was.
I heard my wife's voice in my head. It looks like an old basement. Perhaps the mission's original basement.
A basement that no longer existed. "So I'm in another now."
I believe so, yes.
I looked down. My body was glowing, ethereal. Freaking see-through. "I don't understand what's happening, Ellen."
You're having an out-of-body experience, Monty. Be strong. Do you see the silver cord attached to your navel?
I looked, and son-of-a-bitch, there was the cord. "Yes. What is it?"
It's your lifeline to your body. You can always come back.
"And my body is there in the room with you?"
Sleeping like a baby. Snoring a little, too.
"Okay," I said. "I hope I'm not drooling. That would be embarrassing. What now?"
I don't know, love. But we need to release Sigmund's hold on Sophia first and foremost.
"Where's Sophia?"
She's still in Room Number Nine. She's frightened, but I can only focus on you. She'll be fine.
"So much for paranormal multi-tasking."
You might want to save your jokes for when you're not alone with a Dark Master who's had a century of practice being a manipulative bastard.
"Point taken."
I turned slowly, and as I did so the room seemed to shift. Now the stone walls were broken, crumbling. I sensed a great shaking had occurred. An earthquake, perhaps. Time, I quickly realized, meant little in this astral world.
Yet the piano kept playing.
And then it stopped.
The room shifted again, and I saw dirt piled in the far corner. No doubt at some time the basement had been filled in. This was only a partial fill-in, though, and some masonry and timbers protruded from the rubble.
I heard footsteps. Loud, echoing, clomping footsteps. Whatever was coming didn't give a shit if I knew it was coming. And with each approaching step, the damned room seemed to grow hotter. Surely, that was my imagination. How could I feel heat in this spirit world?
The room shifted again, and now I was in a confined space, barely able to move, surrounded by dirt and debris, and I knew the basement had filled in. With me in it.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
My worst nightmare. Anyone's worst nightmare. But the way this night was going, I would probably have worse soon. And still the flames grew hotter. Still I heard the footsteps coming.
Calm down, honey. Please. You're safe. You can come back to me at any moment.
I yanked on the silver chain like a deep-sea diver who has just encountered a pack of sharks. "I'm coming back!"
Wait. Please. It took a lot for us to get you in this world. We needed Sophia's help and now you have my help.
I was nearly out of my mind. So much for skeptical Mr. Believe It When I See It.
I turned. Or tried to. I couldn't move. The smell of freshly turned soil was everywhere. I was trapped. Forever trapped.
Calm, honey. Be calm.
"I can't."
He's trying to scare you.
It was working. I could barely think, barely control myself. And then, just like that, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and love and knew they had come from my wife. The panic began to subside.
Good, honey. Good.
"How do I get out of here?"
He's controlling the scene. But you can reshape it. Imagine the room when it was open and airy.
I did. Or tried to. But all I could think about was the bare earth just inches from my face, and the fact that I couldn't move my arms or head.
Open and airy, love.
I thought back to when the basement had been an actual basement. The stone walls. The dirt floor. The deep shadows. And plenty of oxygen. Damp, musty oxygen, but good for the lungs and enough to keep on living.
I was back. I would have gasped if I'd had physical lungs. Instead, I spun around and realized that I didn't want to play anymore.
And how do you think Sophia feels, love? He's been tormenting her for more than a century.
Horrible. Miserable. What a bastard. What a demon.
He has to be stopped. We can stop him.
"But how?"
The footsteps continued, echoing loudly. The temperature in the basement seemed to go up as well, and just as I thought that, flames leaped to life along the perimeter of the room.
And within the flames, silhouetted briefly, was the gaunt figure of Mr. Sigmund.
He stepped through and into the room.
"So," Sigmund said, tongues of flame still licking grotesquely around his foppish little cravat. "You're not as weak and pathetic as you look."
"I'll take that as a compliment," I said. We'd already played the Flame Game, so I didn't see any advantage in jumping him again and throwing him back into the fire from which he'd emerged. No, if I was going to beat him, it would have to be with my head.
Two heads are better than one, came Ellen's thoughts. And two hearts are even better than that.
"Okay," I said, extra-loud for Ellen's benefit. "Tell me what you want, and we'll go, but we're taking Sophia with us."
"You can't take Sophia. She's dead."
"You know what I mean. She gets out of here. Release her spirit and we won't be forced to cast our diminishing fields on you."
I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but I figured he hadn't kept up with all the ghost-hunting technology and cutting-edge science. Hell, I was so cutting-edge I'd just invented something that could dissolve whatever weird threads held a demon together. If I survived this, maybe I would market it.
"Oh, those toys you and that bitch of a wife of yours brought? I already drained them."
Drain. That gave me an idea. If the dude needed fuel for his continued existence, he probably preyed on Sophia's psychic pain and fear.
Careful, Ellen warned. You're getting in over your head.
I noticed she'd said "head" after all that talk of unity, but I could hardly blame her. Sometimes I go a little nutty and it's best for wise people to stay far away.
"Look," I said to Sigmund, in that moldering dungeon of a basement. "Sophia's probably about used up after all these years. She probably wasn't all that much to begin with. Why don't you trade her in for some fresh meat?"
He laughed, and his eyes turned red again, and the lump of meat beneath his top hat shimmied like a bag of worms. "And you're offering yourself in her stead? You're a true martyr, Mr. Drew."
"No, I am a human being, which is something you've long forgotten about."
He laughed even more loudly, his sickening bellow filling the room, and the walls rumbled like the lowest notes on a piano. He tugged at his cravat, twisted the knot free with gnarled, filthy, but strangely elegant fingers, and whipped the strip of cloth in the air to remove the wrinkles.
That's how he did it, Ellen said. He choked Sophia with that filthy cloth.
"Very well," he said. "I would rather have your wife, but you've proven yourself a little disrespectful of the dead. I think you deserve to feel what we must go through, moment after moment, century after century, until all eternity is but one long black river flowing back upon itself."
He wasn't a bad piano player, but his attempts at literary metaphor were pretty lame. But he might be right, and it looked like I was about to find out for myself.
"Just you and me," I said to Sigmund. "But first, let the girl go."
He gave a bemused smile that resembled a row of chipped, bloody daggers. I swallowed hard.
He waved the cravat overhead like a rodeo cowboy, losing a little of his Old World sophistication. And Sophia reappeared, near the door that Sigmund had entered. She cowered, but looked at me with a hope that made my heart turn spastic flips. And now I could see the reddened ring around her neck, where Sigmund must have choked her when he claimed her soul.
Yes, Ellen said. He murdered her during her piano lesson, but an earthquake erupted shortly afterward.
And just like that, I could see the whole scene, like a flashback in a movie, except the edges of the frame weren't blurry. It was as if the events were happening now.
He was dragging her limp body into the basement as dirt, rubble, and chunks of broken floor joists fell around him. He laughed as the room collapsed, knowing he'd completed his dark mission.
Non omnis moriar.
"Not all of me shall die."
I shook the vision away and steadied myself, wondering how much of me would be dead after I submitted to this evil son-of-a-bitch. But first things first.
"Go on, Sophia," I said.
I was about to tell her to "Go toward the light," just like they teach you in online ghost-hunting classes, but Ellen stopped me.
No, NOT toward the light. Light signals the eternal fire.
Holy shit. I might have just sent her out of the frying pan and into the fire. Good thing I had my wonderful guardian angel watching out for me.
"Go on home," I said to Sophia. "Your mother and father are waiting, and they have a nice peach pie in the oven."
She gave me a smile that was worth seven circles of hell, then hop-skipped off through the door and away to whatever awaits those who are allowed to rest in peace.
Not that it looked like I would get a chance for much peace, judging by the hungry way Sigmund was looking at me.
Don't let him sever your cord, Monty. He severs that cord and you really will die.
I looked down at the glowing, ethereal, silver cord that snaked out from me and to my physical body. Good to know, I thought.
And he just might be powerful enough to trap your soul in this Godforsaken basement for all eternity.
Thanks for cheering me up.
Maybe you should come back, Monty.
No, I thought. I need more information. I need to know how to destroy this piece of shit.
The girl has been saved. She's already passed through. You don't have to do this.
Sigmund snapped the cravat with both hands. "Slow and painful," he said, although his lips never really moved.
Maybe I didn't have to do this, but this had gotten personal. This man, this thing, standing before me wanted to kill me, and, apparently, to torture me for all eternity.
And if it wasn't me, it might be someone else.
Yeah, this son-of-a-bitch had to go.
My wife, of course, had followed my train of thought in ways that I would never fully understand.
Be careful, love.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
I looked at the entity standing before me. "How do we do this? I'm guessing you're going to need a neck if you must choke me."
"That won't be necessary," he said, grinning, and in a flash of brilliant white light the cravat turned into a long, gleaming dagger.
"Nice trick, asshole."
He grinned. "It'sss no trick," he said. His sibilants were getting mushy. I think he was getting off on this a little. I filed that information away for later use. Every weakness meant a possible advantage.
We circled each other in the basement, one astrally projected paranormal investigator and one ugly-as-hell Dark Master. I kept thinking I might trip or stumble over that damn silver cord, but it somehow always managed to orient directly back to my physical body.
Too weird. Everything is too weird.
Be calm, love. It might be weird, but it's also damn real.
During my private investigator days, the boxing skills came in handy more than once, especially when some clown decided he wanted me off a case.
Maybe they'd work when some demonic clown wanted to sever my silver cord thingy.
Perhaps my nearly overwhelming desire to lay one on his kisser contributed to what happened next. Or perhaps I was just losing my mind. But either way, I had somehow managed to will myself to flesh. Or whatever passed for flesh in this non-place. Maybe ectoplasm. I don't know how to describe it, because I am sure my body was still lying back in the abandoned office where Ellen was, but I felt my body harden like an empty mold being filled with warm wax.
I rolled my shoulders and tried to get comfortable in my own skin. I noticed I'd put on a little paunch in my middle age. Too many chocolate pancakes. But if I didn't do this thing right, I'd be spending a lot of time weightless in the near future.
And in the far future as well.
"All right, Dark Master," I said. "Bring it on."
Sigmund lunged at me with his knife.
I don't know much about black magic, but I know how to bob and weave. I sidestepped him easily and heaved an arching, over-the-top punch that would have leveled just about anyone.
I expected my fist to go straight through him. I mean, I really didn't expect to connect with anything. But, son-of-a-bitch, my punch landed and landed hard.
Sigmund reeled backward, arms flailing, his silly top hat tumbling to the dirt floor.
"Holy shit," I said, shaking my hand that actually hurt. "How the hell did I just do that?"
Illusion meets physical laws meets the spirit world, came my wife's words.
"So, basically, anything goes."
Most anything. There are still laws.
And when those words appeared in my thoughts, something nagged at me, and hard. And it wasn't something pulling on that damn silver cord, either. It was something else.
Laws. There was something there.
I may not have been a big believer in the afterlife, or ghosts, or the supernatural, but I paid attention. And what I knew about demons---and if Sigmund wasn't a demon, he was certainly bucking for a promotion---was that they needed to be bound to something. Often something physical. And often something of great importance to them.
An anchor of some sort. I had my silver cord. He probably had some black cord, or an invisible cord, something tethering him to this world.
Sigmund regained his balance and turned to me, pulling back his cracked lips to reveal his filthy row of sharp teeth. Blood filled his mouth, which he promptly spat out. The blood evaporated into steam before it hit the basement's dirt floor.
It's all illusion, came my wife's words. He's not really bleeding.
Maybe not, but I sensed I had hurt him. Or, at least, surprised the hell of him. Like Ellen had said, he was new at this.
We circled again. He rotated the dagger casually in his hand. Whether or not the blade was illusion, I didn't know. But I did know that I had to protect the silver cord at my navel. Or all was lost.
I would be very dead, perhaps cut off from my wife forever.
And stuck with this sick son-of-a-bitch.
He came at me again, lowering the dagger and then bringing it up hard, a movement that was meant to either disembowel me or sever the silver cord. My vote was for the latter. My hand snaked down, reaching for his bony forearm...but it promptly swept through him.
Sigmund was gone.
My wife's voice burst into my thoughts: Behind you!
I spun and watched in horror as Sigmund, who had manifested behind me, took hold of my silver cord and slashed down with the dagger.
I wasn't sure what I expected to happen next---death and pain and perhaps an eternity of being Sigmund's bitch---but I sure as hell wasn't expecting to be staring up into the welcome sight of my wife's beautiful, although alarmed, hazel eyes.
"Are you okay, babe?"
I jumped up, spinning, scanning, certain the bastard was behind me somewhere, wielding the dagger from hell. But my wife and I were alone in the abandoned office with the candles still going, but burned halfway down.
Jesus, had this all been a dream?
"What happened?" I gasped.
"Let's just say my reflexes were a little better than yours."
"I don't understand."
"There's not much to understand. I pulled you back."
"The cord...."
"Of course. I gave it a tug and you did the rest."
"But how?"
"Do you really want to get into that now, when we have one hell of a pissed-off and highly evolved Dark Master heading our way?"
And just as she said that, a plastic chair from the far side of the room lifted and hurled itself through the air. I ducked and pulled my wife down with me. The chair whistled over our heads and slammed into the far wall, knocking a framed motivational poster off the wall.
"Holy shit!"
"Are you a believer now?" asked my wife.
I grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the door. And just as I yanked it open, I had a brief---and horrific---image of the kidney-shaped table rising a few inches off the floor. And then we were out the door. I had just slammed it hard behind us when the entire wall shuddered.
"Somebody's mad," I said.
Only then did I notice that one of the table's legs had punctured through the wall just inches above my head. Drywall dust rained down over my shoulder.
"C'mon," I said to my wife.
"Where are we going?"
"My cord. Sigmund has to have one, too, right?"
She thought a moment and nodded. "And?"
But there was no time to explain. The rumble built beneath us, and as the floor began to shake, I pulled my wife down the dark hallway, praying like hell I was going in the right direction.
As I hung a left at a T-intersection, fairly certain I was heading in the right direction, the rumbling and shaking stopped almost immediately. Now the sound of our own pounding footsteps filled the empty hallway, and I wondered what the hell we had done.
Talk about waking the beast.
Sweet Jesus.
And speaking of Jesus, where the hell was he? I wasn't one for add-water religion, but the Good versus Evil thing was looking a little lopsided at the moment.
Ellen and I had long ago quit holding hands, and we were now covering the tiled floor quickly. Ellen, I wasn't too surprised to see, was pulling away from me.
Damn chocolate pancakes.
We came to a long glass case filled with announcements, bowling trophies, press clippings, and whatever else the university deemed important enough to encase behind glass. And when I glanced to my right, I saw a reflection of three of us running. Not two.
Sigmund turned to me and opened his dagger-filled mouth. I yelped just as the glass burst out from within.
My wife screamed. I did, too.
We continued running as the glass cases burst behind us, step for step.
We rounded another corner, and, to my great relief, I saw that familiar hallway.
"Where are we going?" my wife asked, gasping.
"The music room," I said, barely getting the words out.
"Why?" But then she nodded; she understood. "Oh."
As if our minds were working as one---and for all I knew, my wife was still in my mind---we hustled down the hall. I kept expecting to see one evil-looking bastard waiting for us, but, for now, Sigmund was gone.
Maybe he knew where we were headed.
Maybe he was waiting for us.
We ran for the music room.
And Sigmund's piano.
His anchor.
There's an old saying about not bringing a knife to a gunfight. About then, I wish I had brought a bazooka. Michael, Gabriel, and a bunch of sword-bearing angels on winged horses wouldn't have been bad, either.
We burst into the tiny practice room. With all those sound-insulating panels on the walls, no one would even hear our screams as we were cut into a billion red ribbons.
"How the hell do we get rid of this?" I asked my wife.
"Just like you play a song. One note at a time."
"That's not very helpful."
"I've heard you play. Mating cats are more musical."
I locked the door behind us, not expecting it to do much good. "I've got music in my heart. We were too poor for lessons."
Ellen leaned over the keys, peering at the sheet music. "Look, the lyrics are in Latin."
I ran to her side, vaguely aware of the walls shimmering around us. "This isn't the page that was here before."
"Because we're in the past. Back when Sigmund was first communicating with the dark powers."
"Powers? Like in, plural?"
"Evil is made, not born, Monty. You know that. It's a team effort."
Yeah. I knew it but didn't like admitting it. I glanced around. The walls were now of old chestnut paneling, complete with stains and wormholes, and the floor beneath us was scuffed oak. The fluorescent lights were gone, an orange glow seeping from a couple of oil lanterns.
I flipped the sheet music back to the first page, and there was the title, written in fancy script: "Non Omnis Moriar."
"This is his song, all right," I said.
Sigmund was at the door, pounding on it, screaming something about his instrument. That word had a lot of connotations, and I had a fleeting vision of cramming his instrument up a dark, painful hole, but the longer we kept him out of the room, the more time we'd have to think of something.
"Why doesn't he just get all ghosty and slip through the wall?" I asked.
"We're in the past and he's solid. It's all real now."
"Aw, crap. You mean I'm going to die a century ago and I don't even get eternal life on Facebook?"
"Nobody's dying here except the people who are already dead," Ellen said, running her fingers over the piano keys. She didn't press them, more like fondling, as if searching for some crevice that would reveal a secret switch.
"Aren't you going to play something?" I said, thinking a religious hymn might keep the bastard at bay, sort of like holy water tossed at a vampire.
"Music just makes him stronger."
The floor suddenly shook, hard enough to toss me against my wife, which I usually enjoyed a great deal but at the moment was a little awkward.
"The earthquake!" I yelled, as the lanterns shook and blinked.
The door splintered, and Sigmund gave a mighty blow and a bellow of rage. For a fop who spoke Latin, he could be a little pissy when pushed to the edge.
"Think," Ellen said.
"Music makes him stronger," I said, remembering all those times I'd spun my old Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd vinyl albums backwards, hoping to catch a hidden Satanic message. "What about anti-music?"
Ellen flipped the sheet music to the last page. "Well, if I could read music, I'd give it a whirl. But it's all Greek to me."
"Latin, honey. Please, stay in context."
The walls trembled, a piece of timber fell from the ceiling, and the piano strings vibrated along with the floor, creating a rising hum that made the whole journey to the past even more dreamlike. Except another chunk of ceiling fell and bounced off my skull, hammering home the point that this was really happening.
"We need help," Ellen said.
"You've said it. I assume a prayer won't help, since we're both out of practice?"
"I pray every minute," Ellen said. "But God gave us work for a reason."
Sigmund slammed into the door again and it split wider, and I could see a chunk of his ugly, distorted face. As much as I wanted to punch him again, every second he was outside was another chance to come up with something.
"Okay," I said. "If evil is a team effort, maybe we can call on an ally closer to hand."
Ellen read my mind. No. She's off enjoying some peach pie.
She's the only piano player handy, as far as I can tell.
I'd rather die than bring her back and risk getting her trapped again.
"No," I shouted, so excited I wanted to use my mouth instead of my brain. I have that problem a lot. "It's before the earthquake, don't you see? This time it's real, so she's not dead yet. She plays the piano and goes home. Plus, we're here to protect her."
Sigmund wasn't giving us a chance to debate. He was ripping apart the door and speaking in tongues, ranting Latin like a drunken priest.
Play us a song, honey.
I didn't want to screw things up, so I kept my head out of the way and hustled over to the door, ready to bitchslap Sigmund back to hell.
Bad move.
He reached through the door with one hand and grabbed me by the collar, jerking me forward. My face slammed against the door and a few splinters said hello to my cheek.
But I heard the notes behind me, and a surge of hope gave me strength.
It was an odd tune, the notes of the same key but strangely disconnected, like one-finger Beethoven. But I couldn't get much listening done, because a certain demonic wannabe had me around the throat with his cravat, which wasn't half as dainty as it had looked.
"Now you're mine," he whispered.
I was about to deliver a snappy comeback, like "Careful what you wish for" or "We'll make beautiful music together," but he had me completely choked. He yanked my breath away and I was pinned with my back to the splintered door, the earthquake now tearing at the walls.
As my vision dimmed, I got a blurry glimpse of Ellen standing over the piano, flipping the pages of the sheet music in reverse, while cute little Sophia played her heart out, biting her lip in concentration, as if this were one lesson she wanted to get right.
God, please, I prayed, not caring that I was out of practice. Take me if you want, but let them escape.
Then Ellen was in my head, somehow multi-tasking, and I understood we were in both places at once, the real past and the ethereal present, and I had my silver cord again, and I didn't need air in my lungs, and I was back on even terms with Sigmund.
Well, nearly equal.
With the piano music still playing and the earth rumbling and the floor buckling, I reached behind me and poked the bastard in the eye. He squeaked like a chipmunk, which didn't do much for his Dark Master image, but I was done fighting fair.
The pain gave him a burst of anger that allowed him to shred the door, and he yanked me up by the cravat. I dangled like a side of beef on a hook, and he held his knife up like a butcher who got paid by the pound.
"First you, then the two little bitches," he said.
"Don't let him cut the cord!" Ellen screamed over the tumult. "We're almost done with the tune."
Sigmund grinned, and his eyes shimmered red with lantern light. "Thank you for the instructions," Sigmund said, and he let go of the cravat. As I toppled to the floor, he yanked my soul chain and my belly-button did a major ouchie.
Amid the chaos came the crash of glass. Sigmund's face curdled with rage. "My piano!"
I glanced over and saw one of the lanterns had toppled over, its oil soaking the wood and spreading flames. "Burning your cord, asshole," I wheezed through my constricted throat.
He wrapped my silver cord around his wrist a couple of times and pressed the blade of the knife against it, and an eerie, white-hot glow emanated from the point of contact. I had a feeling this was going to hurt, and then the real pain would begin.
He clearly wanted to own me, to punish me, to take that one piece of me that connected me with all that I knew and loved. Just as his connection was turning to charcoal.
But I wasn't ready to go without a fight, so I lunged at him, just as the room collapsed, just as the piano tune ended, just as past and present collided.
Just as the Dark Master snipped the cord and stood there with it fused and glowing in his hand, lighting up his serrated smile.
And all hell broke loose.
I woke up on the floor of the music room with a sore throat, a bellyache, and an angel leaning over me.
"I must be dead," I said.
"Not yet, hero," Ellen said. "We've still got a few dances on the card."
She helped me sit up. I patted the vinyl flooring. "Is it real?"
"Yep. Good old Twenty-First Century Earth."
"The one with chocolate pancakes?"
"You bet your life."
"That's not funny."
As I recovered, I looked around. Everything looked much the same as it had during the beginning of our investigation. Except for one big difference.
"The piano's gone," I said.
Ellen smiled, and it was a glorious thing. "Yep. When the floor collapsed, the piano fell. Not just into the basement, but lower. Like, way lower."
I blinked some more, trying to get used to skin and floor and oxygen and all those little things we take for granted. "Where did he go?"
"He followed the piano. That little silver cord of yours? While he was busy cutting, I was busy tying it to the flaming piano leg. He was dragged down by his own possessiveness. I'd call that divine justice, wouldn't you?"
I wasn't sure what hell was like, but if it had people like the Dark Master sitting around playing for tips, I'd just as soon try to live right.
"Wait a minute," I said. "How did you know that would work?"
"I didn't. But his little slogan, 'Not all of me will die,' must have meant his Earthly connection was the piano. That's all that was keeping him in both worlds."
"So, you risked my eternal soul on the off chance that he'd be dragged to hell by my lifeline?"
She shrugged, and even the gorgeous swish of her hair against her shoulders couldn't completely absolve her. "Hey, I was desperate. Next time, you do all the thinking and I'll do all the fighting."
"There's not going to be a next time."
She smiled, and goddamn it, I couldn't help but forgive her. Partly because if I died, I knew a little bit of her would die with me.
There's a different twist on the little saying "Non omnis moriar," one that the selfish likes of Mr. Sigmund would never understand in a million eternities. The surest way to live on is to be in love, to surrender to something bigger, to trust that maybe Good is always going to be just a little bit stronger than Evil when it counted.
Ellen helped me to my feet. I was a little woozy but, all in all, I couldn't complain, considering I was more or less in one piece.
"Sophia?" I asked.
"Home in time for dinner."
I nodded. I might not be much, but I know what's worth fighting for.
"Sounds good to me. Let's go get some pancakes," I said.
She helped me into the hall. Dawn was breaking through the windows. Outside, Faith University glowed with a radiance that was a little more than the sun could have managed all by itself.
We made it down the elevator and were nearly to the front door when Headphone Boy came out of a classroom, dragging his mop bucket and bopping to no-doubt-awful music. He removed the headphones when he saw us.
"Whoa," he said. "Rough night?"
"Hey," I said. "You try moving a piano and see how it feels."
Confusion crossed his face, and the expression seemed at home there. "Like, did you bust some ghosts?"
"Put it this way," Ellen said. "Any voices you hear from now on are completely in your head."
"By the way," I said, nodding at the mop. "You might want to check that music room. I saw a few spots you missed. And there's some broken glass down the hall for you."
We went into the sunshine, and I realized I was now entering a world in which I accepted ghosts as real, though I had even less proof than I did before. Except for one thing.
"So," I said, putting my arm around my wife. "I guess Dr. Stevens will bill us for the piano, and we end this job in the red."
"Maybe we banked some gold in a higher vault."
"Denny's is heavenly, but it isn't free."
"I'll put breakfast on the credit card."
As we headed for the car, I voiced a concern that I'd wanted to keep to myself, but what was the point of being in love if you had to be worried?
"This lifeline thing. I've lost mine, so what happens if I ever need it again?"
"Good question. But first, do you remember when I said everything comes back threefold?"
I thought back. "Yeah, but we only conjured Sophia and the Dark Master. Who's the third?"
"You, you dolt. You were the third spirit."
"But for me to be conjured, my lifeline had to be severed."
"In short, yes."
"Then why am I not dead?"
"Who says you're alive?"
"Are you trying to freak me out? Because you're doing a damn good job of it."
She giggled a little and patted my arm. "Oh, relax. You're fine, aren't you?"
"Maybe. Depends on where my soul is."
"Your soul is where it should be."
"What about all that severing and dying business?"
"You don't honestly believe in all that mumbo-jumbo do you?"
But, for the first time in a long, long time, my wife didn't sound entirely sure of herself. To say that made me nervous as hell would be an understatement. Still, I was here and I was flesh and blood. At least, I thought I was.
She reached over and kissed me very deeply and very passionately and what happened next was fully flesh and blood. My wife noticed it, too.
"I think you're gonna be fine," she said, smiling.
Easy for her to say. She hugged me closer and gave me a kiss that was the golden, glowing, feathery tips of an angel's wings.
"Chocolate pancakes are waiting," she whispered.
I patted my belly button. Or maybe just my gut. "Heck. I believe I'll have some bacon on the side."
Live a little. Why not?
THE END
###
This book has been rejected 117 times. And it's all the fault of that evil, soul-hopping spirit that took over Richard Coldiron's head. Or maybe the other four people in there.
AS I DIE LYING
By Scott Nicholson
Writing as Richard Coldiron
Or Maybe the Evil Spirit That Possessed Them Both
Copyright © 2010 Scott Nicholson
Begin at the beginning.
In an autobiography, that means you have to relive your life. And that's the last thing I want to do. Once was more than enough. And five times was far too many.
Unless it's six, in which case all that follows was written by that other guy, the one trying to hitchhike my story and make me sound worse than I really am. If he wasn't such a lousy writer, this would have been published long ago and we wouldn't have gotten to the end. Some of us might have lived happily ever after.
Rest assured, anytime I look cruel, inept, or sociopathic in this story, it's because he's changed things around. He wants a fall guy so he can get away with murder. My murder. Maybe your murder, too.
So I look for evidence. Everything else is just metaphysical tourism.
Photographs and locks of hair, pressed flowers and postcards, teddy bears and blue ribbons. Memories, souvenirs, keepsakes, and your girlfriend's big toe. Old love letters and other horrors, agonies, scars. Why do we hoard such things?
I've come to believe it's because we need proof.
History, even revisionist history, is written by the winners. So if you want to tell the whole story, the true story, get it out there yourself and make everyone believe. With luck and a shrewd marketing push, it's a bestseller. If you're pathetic, you're filed in Self-Help. If this book is published under the last name "Zwiecker" and ends up on the bottom shelf in the fantasy section, then you'll know he's won.
Publish or perish, they say. We plan to do both, though we're not sure in which order.
So when I begin at the beginning, I'll skip the part where Mother bled between her legs and Daddy was sitting on the couch with a bottle of Jack as I squirted into Ottaqua, Iowa, like a bloody watermelon seed.
Ray Bradbury claims to remember being born. He's a great writer, but that's total bullshit. Nobody remembers, but people treat it like it's a big deal. You carry your birth date around all your life and it nails you to Social Security cards, party invitations, and all those forms you fill out in school. Then, on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels in a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy.
In the end, all you get is a few words.
This is all the proof I can offer:
I was on my hands and knees when memory cursed me, awareness laughed in my face, and ego slipped into my head like an ice cream ghost. Light streamed through the window, golden and warm. Light was good. Light was safe, even though it tasted like dust.
The brown thing was in the shadows. It was soft and smelled like Mother, all cigarettes and Ivory soap and things beyond my vocabulary like "senescence." My arms and legs wriggled toward the brown thing, my belly skinning across the floor. I reached the shadow. My fingers closed on the fur and I was pulling it closer when the boot came down on my hand.
My hand was on fire and my eyes were sparks and my chest was a Play-Doh volcano. The boot stretched out and up into the dark, taller than a tree. It was a man built of midnight and stitches and thunder. He bent down and picked up the brown thing. His boots shook the floor as he stomped into the light but all I could see was the scuffed leather, worn laces, and cracked tongue of the boot near my face.
Then the boots danced. They licked me and painted me with bright strips of color. The thunder waltzed me away from my room to a land that light never reached.
But I wasn't alone.
"Hello," the boy said. Like the midnight man, the boy clung to the shadows. He might have been there the whole time and I hadn't seen him.
"Who are you?"
"A friend."
"I don't like friends." I put my hand in my mouth and tried to suck the sore away.
"Chin up, pup. He's gone now."
The boy sounded brave, plus I had nowhere else to run. "Did you send him away?"
"No, I dragged you in here where it's safe."
"Where are we?"
"I call it the Bone House."
"It's dark."
"Here's your teddy bear." He held it out to me.
I grabbed it and brushed its soft fabric against my cheek until my tears were cold.
"Do you trust me?" my friend said.
I nodded, not sure if he could see me.
"Okay," he said. "You have to leave the Bone House now, but I'll be here to help whenever you need me."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
And he kept his promise, except that "hoping to die" part. The boy learned how to hide me when we heard the boots in the hallway. Into the closet, buried under broken toys and dirty blankets and a Big Bird poster. Under the bed, cuddling dust bunnies with my nose as the boots walked across the floor, inches from my face. Behind the desk, chewing my lip, afraid to breathe until the midnight man gave up and shambled off to find Mother instead.
When I heard the boots in the kitchen, the King Kong roar and shattering of glass, Mother's high squeaking Godzilla cries, I knew I had escaped again. The boots stomped until they grew tired, until the thunder spent its fury. Then my friend and I would share a smile. We had lived to hide another day.
My friend taught me a simple game.
Dodge the boots.
Run and hide.
Become invisible when you could, hold your breath when you couldn't.
But nobody wins the game every time. And the odds favored the midnight man. He seemed to grow taller and stronger and darker the better we got at hiding. When he found me, plucked me out of my corners and nooks, held me up with a thick trembling arm, then I knew it was time to let my friend have this body. My friend would take the punishment while I went away to the Bone House. I hate to say it, but I think he even liked it a little.
I'd watch from the window as the boots did their dance, crushed a minuet across my friend's legs, waltzed over his kidneys, and jitterbugged up his spine. I knew it was me being beaten, my bruised flesh that I would eventually revisit, but at least I didn't have to suffer. My friend did that for me. That's how much my friend loved me.
We would talk, after. He would give me back my body, with its red welts and pink scrapes, and go into his hidden room in the Bone House. Since it hurt to move, I would huddle in my squeaky bed with my teddy bear. I tasted salt and sometimes blood. My friend would whisper soothing words inside my head.
"You're okay now, Richard. Midnight is over."
I trembled. For both of us.
"Did you hear the front door slam?" he said.
I nodded, hugging the raw meat of my legs to my chest as the plains wind banged against the windows. Any storm was welcome as long as it hid the sound of boots.
"He's gone. You can breathe again."
"Thanks."
"That's why I'm here."
My friend didn't have a name back then. There was only us. He didn't need a name until later, when things got more complicated and the Bone House became crowded. But I can tell you the teddy bear was named Wee Willie Winky because one of his eyes was stitched too tightly. And my name was Richard. I forgot to tell you that, but you can see it on the cover of the book, unless that other guy changed it.
"Did he hurt you bad?" Secretly, I was glad it was him instead of me.
"Not so bad, this time. Not like the time when the two teeth got loose and I bit my tongue. That time, even your mother got scared."
"Yeah, remember how she pushed the midnight man away and picked you up?" I said. "With your arm bent out at that funny angle, like you had an extra elbow? That was the only time she ever tried to stop him."
"They were nice to me at the hospital. They gave me a lollipop, and that pretty nurse said she'd never seen such a brave young man."
I wished I'd been around for that lollipop. Maybe he'd tricked me so he could have the lollipop instead of me. "What does 'brave' mean?"
"It's when bad things happen and you don't cry." He'd probably learned that from a book in school, or maybe church, or that one time we went to a Boy Scout meeting.
"Are you brave?"
"I don't know. But when they asked me how it happened, I said it just the way Mother told me. She made me keep saying it over and over in the car. 'I fell down the steps, and put out my arm to stop.'"
"Why did she want you to make up a story like that?" I didn't care why, but this was my friend and I liked the way he talked. Plus he was sharing a very important lesson in how to lie, and what boy could resist such a thing?
"It wasn't a story. You know how she says if you believe something hard enough, you can make it true? Well, she wanted that story to be true. She believed it more."
I pulled the blankets tight under my chin. The fabric was scratchy, like Father's cheeks. "Do you remember what really happened?"
"I didn't hide good enough, that's all."
"Sometimes, just before he goes to sleep, or when he's on the couch watching TV, he makes me take the boots off his feet. They're not so scary when they're off."
"Tongues hanging out. Tired dogs. But they sure are stinky. Wee willie stinky."
I looked up at the ceiling, at the shadows of trees dancing in front of the streetlights. The room smelled of purple Kool-Aid and old socks and rats behind the walls, and sometimes I prayed to Jesus for clean laundry. If my friend wasn't around, I'd sometimes throw in a prayer for candy or a Matchbox car. But the ceiling was in the way, so I couldn't see the sky or heaven. "Maybe one night we could hide the boots after he's asleep."
"Then he'd really be mad," the voice said. Sometimes my friend spoke out loud instead of just thinking it, and that was a little scary until I got used to it. I'm glad it didn't happen when other people were around. Not often, anyway.
"Maybe it's the boots that make him mad."
"Maybe," he said. "It's stupid to be brave."
"Does Mother hate the boots?" I asked questions I was afraid to answer. He never minded when I tricked him into telling the truth once in a while.
"I don't know. She keeps telling the midnight man 'I love you.'"
"Maybe there are different kinds of love. She likes to hold me and sing to me. She says she loves me and kisses me on the forehead and tucks me under the blankets even when she knows the midnight man is coming. Even when she knows he's got his boots on."
"Maybe he would hurt her more if she didn't love him, so she's afraid to stop."
I swallowed hard. Darkness crawled in from the corners, its edges sharp. I put my head under the pillow. Love was easy when it was just some invisible person in your head, but when you had to pretend to love in the real world, who wouldn't be a little crazy and afraid? "Love means you have to be brave?"
"Sometimes your mother cries when she says she loves you. That means she's either lying or she's not brave."
My friend was clever but I usually came up with a comeback, because in your own autobiography you don't want anybody to think you're playing second fiddle or fifth harmonica or ninth penny whistle. "But how can she love me and the midnight man at the same time?"
"Maybe she only loves the midnight man when his boots are off. Maybe they're sole mates. Get it, s-o-l-e?"
"Funny, ha ha. Love shouldn't go on and off like that. I love you all the time. And I don't want to die like Jesus had to before He could get people to love Him," I said to the person in my head. Throwing in the Jesus bit was a little melodramatic, seeing as how we'd only been to church three times, and only one of them didn't involve food. You can sure get the best coconut cakes at church.
"I love you, Richard," he said. "I'll never leave you. I won't let you get hurt."
I tucked Wee under my bruised arm. Wads of cotton spilled from the rips in its neck and leg. The midnight man had done that, but Wee didn't have an invisible friend to hide him, and I wasn't sharing mine. "It's not so bad hiding. Inside, where it's dark. I wish we could stay there all the time."
"We can't both go into the Bone House."
"Why not?"
"Who would watch Wee? Wee can never be alone."
My friend loved double meanings and playing with words. It helped pass the time when he was stuck in the Bone House. And maybe he wanted to be a writer when he grew up, just like everybody else. But first he'd have to live long enough to grow up.
Thump thump.
Our eyes opened, our shared heart boomed like the storm rolling down the hallway, but only one of us got to flee for the hidden room inside my skull.
Me first. Always me.
"Up the stairs, away, away, away," whispered my friend. "Sounds like someone's putting his foot down."
And off I'd go.
Later I learned that the midnight man was only my father. The boots visited less often as I got older, and the friend inside my head didn't come out much. Rather, I didn't go inside the Bone House to see him.
I found other playmates at school, ones you could see and who talked with real voices. I learned the world was much bigger than the nightmares trapped between the walls of my bedroom. Life smelled of chalk and Hope Hill's perfume and burning leaves and strawberry milkshake. My childish fears seemed silly out under the sunshine, where boys and girls played kick ball and pain was farther away than Jesus or the clouds in the blue sky or other insubstantial, amorphous objects.
Father preserved his boot leather but discovered other ways to torture. He attacked with words, and maybe that's where I get my literary talent. Not that I want to give that bastard any credit at all for this book, since the byline is up for debate. But he could really pour it on.
He invented a dozen fresh insults, doused acid on my psyche, and dubbed me "Dumbbell." This seemed to give him more pleasure than the physical abuse. Mother had begun her descent from youth into old age without slowing down for the middle years. She was weary from lifting her forearms to fend off the blows, beaten down by the sight of her own emaciated and battered flesh, worn from clinging to the spidery threads of black hope. Father, however, seemed to grow younger, as if he'd tapped a perverted fountain of youth, Narcissus at a whiskey vat.
Father worked at the John Deere plant, spot welding harrow joints and tractor wheels. He helped make the machines for the slaves of the soil, those who turned the dark drift and loess of the Iowa tableland. He was chained to the dirt without even the pleasure of holding it in his hand, kicking at it with his scuffed boots, or checking the sky for portents. He had wanted to be a crop duster, but never had the time and money to get his pilot's license.
Perhaps the air could have stolen his anger. Perhaps his frustration was in being earthbound, because he was particularly venomous after returning from weekend air shows in Cedar Falls or Des Moines. On the Christmas I was nine, he gave me a model kit for a Northrop P-61 Black Widow fighter, and we spent the snowy afternoon carefully putting it together. He let me glue the fuselage myself and guided my hands as I joined the propeller and engine parts.
His mouth watered as he concentrated on the more tedious attachments, and he sucked in his drool with a whistling sound before it could dribble down his chin. He had not even been drinking that day, or at least his breath didn't smell like vinegar and shoe polish yet. He made engine noises with his mouth, as if he were imagining a scale model of himself at the controls. We applied the decals just as Mother pulled the steaming golden turkey from the oven.
Never had so much laughter filled that usually sullen apartment. My stocking was bloated with peppermints, walnuts, and lemon drops, and I shared the bounty with my parents. We huddled around the skeleton of the turkey, its alabaster bones a silent centerpiece to the gathering. We even sang "White Christmas" together, at least the few lines we knew. Father sang in a bassy parody of Bing Crosby, Mother bleated half-heartedly, and I croaked in an atonal barrage of sound that was more percussion than harmony.
The model plane crash-landed under the heel of Father's boot two days later, after his first day back at the plant. It was my fault, I admit. I just didn't hide it good enough. Christmas was over, and none of us were making any resolutions for the new year. Father renewed his verbal assaults, calling me "Little bastard" and "Fuckwit," stringing together seventeen dirty words in fits of misplaced poetic genius, but his pet name for me was "Shit For Brains."
One day I brought home my report card, and he looked down the neat rows of A's until he found my C in citizenship.
"Hey, Shit For Brains, what's this C for?" he bellowed, spittle and bourbon mist spraying out of his mouth. The cruel muscles of his forearms bulged under the rolled-up sleeves of his flannel shirt, the toes of his boots flexing. "Your teacher says here, 'Richard doesn't get along well with the other students. He fails to participate in class activities.' Now what kind of horseshit is that?"
I mumbled something, afraid to meet his fiery eyes. I didn't know he could read that well. I'd never heard him use the word "participate." He was clearly far more dangerous than I'd ever considered. I sensed my friend fluttering uneasily in the Bone House like a bat at an Alaskan sundown.
"It figures I'd turn out a problem child. A fucking bad seed. Your asshole Granddad can rest in peace now that the Coldiron curse has been safely passed on to the next generation."
My only memory of Granddad had been seeing him laid out in that coffin the year before. I had taken my place in line and walked past him, the way Mother told me. She held my hand. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, but my friend in the Bone House said I should pretend to be sad.
I recognized Granddad's face from some of the blurry photographs that had fallen out of one of Father's airplane books. He had mean eyes, like he was mad at the camera, but his skin was smooth. He was wearing a blue uniform with medals pinned on his chest. But in the coffin he was all wrinkled and his skin was as dull as wax fruit and, of course, his eyes were closed. The cloth on the inside of the coffin was purple, the color of a king's robe. He smelled like chemicals and bad bacon.
Mother said, "Doesn't he look so good? Like he's sleeping and he could just sit up and talk."
I didn't want that to happen. I stared at the little wires of white hair that stuck out of his ear. Some people in the back of the room were crying, and I looked at Father's face. It was red, maybe because his necktie was choking him. That was the only time I ever saw him wear a tie, at least until he was in a coffin himself.
Father looked a little like the man in the coffin. They both had the same sharp nose and round chin, just like me. But unlike Granddad, Father was smiling a little bit, a tiny smile that barely turned up at the corners of his mouth, the kind you get when you're doing something fun that you know is wrong. The man in the coffin, his mouth had fallen in a little, as if he had swallowed his teeth. He didn't look like a man who carried secret curses, at least not anymore. Unless they were in one of his pockets that I couldn't see. You know how people get when they're hiding something good.
I wondered what kind of curse Granddad had passed down. I had heard about the Mummy's Curse from peeking into the living room at late-night movies. I pictured Granddad coming back wrapped in rotted rags, reaching out with hands like mittens to get Father, to squeeze that little smile off his face. Was it hope or fear that rattled in my chest at the thought, and why did laughter echo from the Bone House?
Maybe that's why Father was so angry, because he couldn't escape the curse, and it would someday track him down. But then, Father didn't need an excuse to be angry. A barking dog could set him off, or a flat tire in the rain, or that time the blow torch didn't get hot enough. But I don't like to remember any of that, so let's get back to the report card.
"Get out of my sight, you sorry sack of shit," he said, ripping up the report card and throwing the four pieces into the air. I went to my room and hid in the closet until Mother called me to dinner. I tiptoed into the living room. Father was asleep on the couch, his boots propped up on a ragged pillow. I eased around the boots and gathered the pieces of the report card, taped them back together, and forged Father's signature, pressing extra hard with the tip of the pen.
School wasn't bad. It was peaceful there. No one ever hit me at school or called me Shit For Brains. The other kids were mostly just a murmur in the background to me, white noise to be ignored. The worst thing was sitting behind Hope Hill, whose honey-blond hair smelled like the sun and made me ache inside.
I buried my nose in a book, even when I was supposed to be learning things like why the Earth circled around the sun without flying off into space. I didn't need to know why. If they said it did, that was good enough for me, and it's not like I could do anything about it anyway. I'd already learned that there were facts and the truth, and then there was the real stuff of this world, the Bone House, the lies, the secret curses, stuff that mattered.
When Mother started letting me go outside by myself, I found new games. I explored the neighborhood and prowled in the junk cars that were scattered behind the garage next door. I pretended I was Huck Finn, hiding away on Jackson Island. I made a nest in an old dog pen, hidden from the world by vines and weeds. There was a hole in the wire where the dogs used to get out, and I used it as a tunnel. The doghouse was tall enough for me to sit up. Enough room for a boy and his dreams, plus all the turds were dry.
I liked to read there, books checked out from the school library, borrowed from Mother's shelves, or sometimes a comic bought at the corner store for a quarter. A few boards were missing in the doghouse roof, and the late afternoon sun streamed through the gap, flooding my hideaway with light and bringing the words on the pages to life. I read of fellow castaways like Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, I went around and under the world in the books of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, I went to other worlds that had been given mantle by the mind of H.G. Wells and J.R.R. Tolkien. Don't tell anybody, but I also liked Nancy Drew.
I could stay there until nightfall, unless Mother called to see where I was. Then I would slither out of the tunnel of foliage and walk out of the nearby cedar trees to make her think I had been playing in the woods like a normal boy. I thought it was important to have a secret place that wasn't the Bone House. My belly tingled when I was hiding alone, knowing no one could find me. I felt sneaky and safe, and once in a while my invisible friend joined me even though he didn't need to listen for boots.
When the sun started sinking below the flat horizon, it was time to go home for dinner. I waited for the shadows to grow long, then flitted from one to the next, pretending to be a spy. Most of the time, Father would already be asleep when I crept through the door, with his hand dangling down to the dirty rug, his mouth open and snoring, his lidless bottle sitting on the coffee table beside him. Mother and I would eat silently at the little Formica kitchen table, usually pigs in a poke, Vienna sausages rolled in canned biscuits, pinto beans, macaroni, a dinner that cost less than a dollar. Above us hung a collector's plate of Jesus, gilded with foil and perched on a brass wire. She didn't make me pray, just let me eat in peace and silence. Then I could slip off to bed before she woke up Father.
I didn't hate Father for wearing the boots. I was supposed to love him, the same way I was supposed to love Jesus. Just because. But even if I had to love him, that didn't mean that I couldn't do it while hiding in the dark. Locked doors were useless. His boots liked to smash doors almost as much as they liked skindancing, though he never found the door to the Bone House.
And sometimes, in the sunlight, he was nice. On Saturday mornings, he would already be awake and sitting on the couch watching cartoons when I shuffled into the living room in my Speed Racer pajamas. I'd rub my sleepy eyes and crawl up next to him, dragging my dreams. He smelled like coffee and aftershave, and he'd put his arm around me. His stubble scratched my cheek as he hugged me and my teddy bear, and no anger burned in the red corners of his eyes. He never called me "Shit For Brains" on Saturday mornings, just the occasional affectionate "Dumbbell."
On one of those mornings, while we were snuggling on the couch, I asked him about Granddad. His muscles stiffened a little under a shirt that smelled of rust and sweat.
"Why do you want to know?" His words were quiet, cautious, like thunder on the horizon that wasn't sure of its direction.
"I never got to see him, except when he died. The other kids at school talk about going to their grandparents' house all the time."
"Well, he lived a long way away."
We had taken a plane to the funeral. I had looked out the windows at the clouds and, far below, saw the little squares that I thought made up the world, patches that were sewn together like on the quilt Mother brought out of my closet every winter. I wondered if that was how Jesus saw everything. If it was, I wondered how He could see little boys kneeling beside their beds in the dark. And I was pretty sure Jesus couldn't see what went on in the Bone House.
"The preacher called him a hero," I said.
"He was in the war. Bomber pilot."
I thought of war movies I had seen, of planes flying in the air with balls of fire puffing up all around, of planes falling to the earth with black trails of smoke streaming out behind them.
"He must have been brave," I said.
"He wasn't afraid of dying. But he was scared of everything else."
"Did you love him?"
"You have to love your father, no matter what."
So I was doing the right thing after all, even if it hurt. "But you were happy when he died."
"Because I got to fly in a plane."
"Oh." Then, "Father, what's the Coldiron Curse?"
His lips tightened and grew white. His sewage-green eyes narrowed to bright slits. On the television screen, a mouse was hitting a cat on the head with a fat hammer.
Father said between clenched teeth, "It's what's fucking with you from the inside."
With no warning, he swung out a fist, knocking over the coffee table and a floor lamp that didn't have a shade. The bare bulb shattered on the wooden floor. Mother murmured from the bedroom, shaken from sleep.
He stomped the table, snapping off one of its legs. "Fucking with you."
I was scared. I tried to find the Bone House, but the rage was so sudden, I was confused and lost.
He flung the lamp against the wall, nearly knocking Mother's Jesus plate from its wire perch.
"From the inside," he roared.
Mother yelled from the bedroom, but I guess she kept the door locked. I don't blame her.
Father didn't answer. He looked at me, through me, as if I were invisible, and went into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened then ice cubes rattled in a glass, followed by the gurgling of liquid. I looked at the television. The cartoon cat had a stick of dynamite in its mouth, the burning fuse growing shorter.
It was time to change my clothes and go to the Bone House.
Nest, I mean. Nest.
Spring turned into summer and brought black-eyed Susans and black-eyed Mother.
A family moved into the apartment next door, the Bakkens from Pittsburgh. Even though they turned out to be minor characters, I remember them more vividly than I do my parents. Mister Bakken had a thick neck and fat slouching jowls that looked like they were trying to slide off his face. A bulbous clown nose, freckled like his cheeks, dangled like a fruit above his lips. Bumblebee eyes peered out from under the avalanche of his eyebrows. His hair and dustbroom mustache were bronze red.
His wife was thin and sharp-faced. She had the air of a weasel, furtive and bloodthirsty. Her skin was pasty and nearly translucent, as if mayonnaise had been swabbed over a skeleton, then shrink-wrapped and given life. She bit at her nails constantly, and when they were down to the quick, she gnawed at the red ends of her fingers. She wore knee-length cotton dresses, and her legs stuck out below them like birch branches, white and slender, as if they would fray instead of snap if you tried to break them.
They had a daughter named Sally. She was just a little older than me, which she found out the first day we met and seemed happy about. She had her father's freckled, red-headed features and her mother's nervous mannerisms. Her hair was in pigtails tied by rubber bands, and they bounced when she ran. A mouthful of braces turned her smile into a Frankenstein-monster flash of pink gums and silver wires.
She was never without her doll, a round-headed baby girl with yellow yarn for hair and perfect circles of blush painted on plastic cheeks. Its hard lips curled up in a permanent pout. Sally called it "Angel Baby."
Father got Mr. Bakken a job at the John Deere plant, and they rode to work together in Father's ragged pickup truck. Sometimes they didn't come home until after dark, and from my bed I would hear Mother yelling at Father and feel the floor shake as the furniture rattled in the living room. Then I would hear the stinging slap of flesh on flesh, followed by a cry, or more breaking glass. I would shrink even deeper into the dark under the blankets, trying to crawl far away from the world where things broke. Far enough that I could meet my invisible friend in the Bone House if necessary.
One night Mother yelled "Did you go to that damned bar again?"
"I work to put food on this table, I'll do as I damn well please, bitch."
He also called her Puke-face and Fuckwit, every name he could think of except Shit For Brains. He saved that one. He must have had a special place in his heart for me.
Once Mother said something about "You and your whores." This was followed by a cold, long silence during which even the wind seemed afraid to breathe. Then Father's words parted the stillness like the jagged edge of a glacier in a dark sea or a frozen knife in a rotten cantaloupe or an ice cream headache during a prayer.
"You're the best whore I know."
Then the walls bent and the clock shattered and the blood flowed and the night fell in upon itself as the boots danced.
The day after that, Mother slept until noon and her face was puffy when she woke up. I was glad she didn't make me give her a good-morning hug because I didn't want to touch her watery skin. She must not have had an invisible friend to warn her about the boots. I sneaked away to my nest while she was taking a shower to steam away her soreness. Father didn't come home at all that evening.
Sometimes Mother and Mrs. Bakken sat at our kitchen table, talking about what they called the "menfolk." They would cradle cups of coffee and tap cigarettes, sitting there in house robes with dusty slippers on their feet. Mrs. Bakken looked even more like a skeleton when her hair was pinned back away from her face by curlers, making her taut forehead shine like a China plate. Sometimes she, like Mother, had a dark circle around one eye, but she seemed almost happy then. She smiled as if showing off a hard-won trophy.
They would lower their voices and say things like "Before he started drinking so much" and "He used to be so handsome when he was young" and "Before the devil got him." Right there under the Jesus plate. Or "They're no good at all except for that thing between their legs," followed by girlish giggles.
I wondered if people loved each other because they were afraid to not love, if being alone was worse than being hurt all the time. Or maybe it was just the things between people's legs that made them love. I'd seen Mother naked in the bathroom, accidentally of course, but I always had to look twice to make sure it had been an accident the first time.
Even though the Bakkens seemed to cause a lot of problems between my parents, and the other way around, they spent lots of time together. Once in a while, they would all go out together on Friday night, leaving me alone with the television set for a babysitter. I didn't know what Sally did. I was afraid to knock on the Bakkens's door, afraid it would swing open and she would stand there in her little dress and pigtails, cradling Angel Baby in her freckled arms. I was afraid she might invite me in.
When our parents visited each other, Sally and I had to play together, and I suppose we became friends out of mutual desperation. While the grownups talked and drank in the living room, or grilled hot dogs on the scraggly patch of dirt out back, Sally and I pretended to be pirates or space explorers or cowboys. She was usually the leader and grew angry when I tried to change her made-up rules. We played dolls one time, in her crisp, neat room.
She had a crowd of dolls, and they all had names that I never bothered to memorize. She arranged them as if they were adults at a party and made up different voices for them so they could carry on conversations. I chose a large stuffed animal, a big green rabbit that had an upside-down straw basket on its head. I pretended it was an evil rabbit come to get bad grownups, hopping in and knocking over Sally's carefully seated dolls.
"Take that, Shit For Brains," I said, as Sally squealed and the dolls fell in a jumble of plastic arms and legs.
"No, grownups play nice." She propped the dolls up again. "And no bad words, either, or I'll tell."
Whether she was going to tell my parents or the other dolls, I didn't ask. I sat there with the golden light of sunset peering through her blue curtains, our parents' voices rising over the rock music in the living room, one of them occasionally breaking into rough laughter. I wondered if this was how other kids lived, playing on a clean floor with dolls that didn't bleed. I wondered if other kids had to hide in their closets, dreading the sound of footsteps in the hall, talking to themselves. I was suddenly lonely and afraid, even with an invisible friend right there waiting in the Bone House, even with a dozen dolls around.
"You want to know a secret?" I asked Sally.
"Like a secret spy code?"
"Better than that. A secret place I know about."
"If you know, it's not a secret." She hugged Angel Baby to her chest.
"But I'm the only one who knows where it is."
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because I was thinking we could be friends."
"But we're already friends. We play all the time." She fussed with Angel Baby's dress because the fabric was wrinkled.
"But I mean friends who talk to each other. Who tell each other stuff."
"We already talk."
"But not about secret stuff."
"You mean boy-and-girl stuff, like grownups do?"
I gulped, thinking about the Bone House. "Yeah, and other things, things you can't tell grownups about."
"Things you can only talk about in secret places?" Her voice had fallen to a whisper. I nodded.
"Then you have to be my boyfriend."
Boyfriend? Didn't that mean I had to love her? But that wasn't as bad as being alone. What was it my little friend had said? About being brave enough to love?
"Okay." My voice was as squeaky as chalk on a blackboard or throat with toast crumbs or a rubber ducky when you stomp it on purpose.
"Then you can't be mean to me anymore. Or to my dolls. Cross your heart and hope to die."
Hope to die? My invisible friend had said that the first time I met him. Love was even scarier than I thought. I swallowed the knot that lodged in my throat like a doll's head or other large, dry objects that you should never swallow but sometimes do. "Cross my heart and hope to die," I echoed.
"And you have to love me forever."
Did that mean all next year, even at school? School was only two weeks away. I pictured myself holding her bony hand in lunch line or carrying her books down to the bus stop. I pictured myself passing love letters in math class, avoiding the watchful eyes of Mrs. Elkerson. Those things weren't as bad as being alone.
"Okay, then."
"You have to say it." She leaned forward, her eyes serious.
"Say what?"
"Say 'I love you.' Just like that, only do it like they do in movies, kind of deep down and slow and out of breath."
In movies, there was always music, violin players just off the set, and blossoms of spring erupting all around. Here there was only the party noise in the next room and a floor full of baby dolls. But I had the out-of-breath part down easy.
My tongue was thick. My head buzzed, and I thought it might be my little friend telling me to not say it. Then the buzzing went away.
"I...I love you."
There. That wasn't so bad. That didn't hurt.
Yet.
"I love you, too, Richard. Now we get to hold hands."
She put her warm, moist palm to mine and we sat on the floor in silence. Her room smelled of cake.
"Is this all there is to love?" I asked after a minute.
"No, now we can tell each other secrets. Oh, and one more thing...you have to love Angel Baby. Because I love Angel Baby and you love me."
That made sense. But how many more would I have to love? Did the small hutch of my heart have enough room for more? What about those other dolls? Did I have to let all of them move into the Bone House?
"What kind of secrets are you going to tell me?" I asked. "I have the secret place to show you, but you haven't promised anything yet."
She looked hurt. "I promised to let you love me, didn't I? I promised to be your girlfriend."
She pouted like Angel Baby, only Sally's lips weren't as red. I looked out the window. The sun had gone all the way down and a couple of dots of dirty starlight pricked the black sky. Shadows grew fat in the corners of the room. I scooted closer to Sally.
She said, "I can tell you lots of things."
"Things?"
Her voice fell. "Things that you do when you're in love."
Curiosity and fear struggled in my chest, and fear lost for once. "What kinds of things, besides telling secrets? I watch television. I already know about...kissing."
She laughed, her mouth a flash of metal. Her eyes shone in the dim light, as glittering and piercing as a doll's.
"You're not that dumb, are you?"
Love's first hurt. My ears burned. My throat was a dry desert. My voice was lost somewhere in its sands. This love stuff was probably best kept in your own head or buried in the Sahara or the Mojave or some lesser-known but still-inhospitable geographic region.
Sally said, "Kissing is just the beginning. When you show me the secret place, then I'll tell you more."
More? Love wasn't scary enough already? Love had to have its own secrets, its own special set of fears?
I whispered hoarsely, "There's more?"
"I'll tell you about bedsprings and the things between people's legs."
Like our mothers talked about? Did Sally know those kinds of secrets? Were girls born knowing them, and boys had to love a girl to unlock the mystery? Would love always be this confusing? Or was getting started the hardest part?
She leaned over in the darkness and I felt her warm bubble-gum breath on my cheek. Her lips touched there, briefly, and then pulled away, her saliva already cooling on my skin in the night air. My cheek was still tingling when my parents called to take me home.
I lay under the blankets in my bed, restless, listening to the night. Crickets chirped and an occasional car passed on the highway. Somewhere in the street, music played on a tinny radio. From down the hall, inside my parents' bedroom, came faint, rusty squeaking sounds. Questions circled around in my head like spun stars, burning brightly before dying and turning black, then falling one by one into the void of sleep.
The next afternoon, still dizzy from promises of love, I showed Sally the nest. I led the way through the weeds and branches, and then held the vegetation aside so she could see the secret, sacred place.
"Any bugs in there?" She gave me a silver grimace.
"No, it smells a little like wet dog hair, but you get used to it after a while."
She crawled through the tunnel, brushing a prairie rose vine away from her face and sending a pink snow of petals to the ground. She dragged Angel Baby by one arm, and the doll's yellow hair tangled in thorns, causing Sally to whimper until I tore it free. Once inside, she sat up and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dimness.
"Look at my stockings. My mother's going to kill me." She brushed at the dirt and grass stains on the knees of her white hose.
"Tell her you fell, then she'll feel sorry for you instead of yelling at you."
Sally looked around at the wooden walls that were brown with rot, then squinted up at the hole in the roof. "What do you do when it rains?"
"Usually get wet."
Her eyes grew dark, as if threatening clouds had passed over them. "You promised not to be mean, remember?"
I touched my heart, the one I had crossed with a promise the day before, afraid it would stop beating. "I wasn't trying to be smart-alecky. Sometimes I'd rather sit here and get soaked than to be out there." I motioned to the world outside.
She thought I must have meant the junkyard. "Why don't you play in the cars instead?"
"Because cars have windows. People can see into them. Plus I think mice live in them. I've played in them before, pretended they were jets and spaceships and even cars I was driving. But I don't anymore, because of what happened."
"What happened?" Sally sat Indian-style with Angel Baby in her lap. I thought for a moment, then decided to trust her. I could tell the story because she loved me. I'd never told anyone else. Love makes you do dumb things.
I wanted to leave this part out, because it's sort of embarrassing. But that one--you know, the one trying to steal my byline--believes this type of veracity just shows how foolish and untrustworthy I am. He's been revising this book, thinking it will get better over time, but he doesn't even notice the structure is flawed.
Here's what I think: he's jealous. He may be this ancient, soul-hopping, omniscient entity, but he can't write worth a damn. He doesn't have the patience for it. When you have the whole world at your fingertips and unlimited evil to unleash, who cares about a stupid page?
For example, he doesn't even realize drawing attention to the author is a bad idea. Look, here is a flashback told through dialogue. That's a no-no in big-time New York-published autobiographies, even unauthorized ones. He's the reason this book has been rejected so many times. Not me.
So let us get by with it just this one time and I swear we'll never do it again. Otherwise we'd be here arguing about it until hell freezes over. Which, by the way, comes up near the end of the book, assuming he lets me get there in one piece.
"It happened before you moved here," I told Sally. "This was back in March when it was just getting warm enough to play outside. The ground thawed out and the world was one big mud puddle. Mother told me not to get dirty, so I went through those trees into the junkyard, careful so I didn't get scraped on torn-up metal. I scratched my leg there once, and it stayed red for about a month and all this yellowy juice kept coming out of the cut."
Sally put the back of her hand to her mouth, revealing the pale flash of her open palm.
"I was in that old black Ford, the one that's all rounded at the corners and missing all its wheels. It smells old, like a basement full of clothes that nobody wears anymore. My father said he had wanted a car like it when he was teenager, but never had the money because he had so many goddamned mouths to feed. Anyway, I was just playing with the steering wheel and pulling down all those gearshifts, going in for a landing on Mars, when this big old man runs over, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He must have worked there at the garage.
"I slid down to the floorboard, trying to hide, but I couldn't fit under the seats. He opened the door and it creaked, just like those doors do in the movies when the monsters are coming to get somebody. He smelled like gasoline and his eyes were as dark as the stains on his clothes. I put my hands over my head, afraid he was going to kick me."
"Why did you think that?" Sally said, half horrified and half disbelieving.
"Because he had boots on."
Confusion crossed her face. "Did he kick you?"
"No, he squatted down and just said, 'What are you doing here, boy?', except he wasn't real mad. I told him I was flying the car like a spaceship. He said he used to do that when he was a boy, except he pretended they were boats. I couldn't picture him as a boy because he had gray stubble on his chin and creases around his eyes, like he'd started out old and had never gotten a chance to play.
"Then he said the car was an antique, plus there were a lot of ways to get hurt playing around all this glass and metal and then their insurance would go all to hell. He said we'd both get in trouble if I hurt myself. I was afraid to look at him, and the gasoline made my eyes sting.
"He asked if my mother knew I was playing out back here. I told him my mother never knew where I was, unless I was tucked into bed. Then he got a strange look on his face, like he'd just thought of a secret of his own. His voice got kind of quiet, and he said he wouldn't tell anybody if I wouldn't. Then he asked if he could play spaceship with me."
Sally hugged Angel Baby to her bosom, that flat chest inside her cotton top where mysterious little bumps had started to swell over the long hot weeks of summer.
"Is this a secret?" she whispered.
"No, the garage man knows it, so it's not a secret. I was scared to tell him I didn't want to play with him, that what I really wanted to do was run into the woods, where there were shadows. So I told him okay. He stood up and looked around, still wiping his hands, and licked the corners of his mouth, sort of like a dog does when you feed it peanut butter. Then he bent down and said, in a real low scary voice, 'Move over and I'll drive. You can be the captain.' So I did, and as soon as he got in, the whole car smelled like gasoline."
I was surprised at myself for telling so much. I guess I had kept my stories inside so long that they had built up and spilled over, like the bathtub did when I filled it full so I could pretend to be a deep-sea diver. Besides, you were supposed to share secrets with the person you had to love. Sally nodded, her pigtails bobbing, wanting me to go on with the story.
"His eyes kept looking around the junkyard, especially at the row of trees that stood between us and the apartment buildings. Then he said, 'Where we going, Captain?' I'd never played with a grownup before, so I wasn't sure if he knew how to pretend for real. Plus I didn't feel right giving orders to a grownup. So I just said, 'Mars,' and he acted like he was driving while he scooted over toward me. I checked the round dials behind the steering wheel to make sure we were in the right orbit. He dropped the rag in his lap and reached over and rubbed my hair. 'Aye-aye, Captain,' he said, and he laughed, but it was kind of wheezy, like he couldn't breathe or something.
"Then his hand fell down to my shoulder and he was rubbing it. He took his other hand off the steering wheel and put it on the rag. He said the Martians might see us so we better slide down in the seat until we landed. Then he kind of leaned over on top of me. I told him we might wreck if he didn't watch where we were going, that we might run into an asteroid or something, or the Martians might send out fighter rockets. But he was breathing real funny and he pressed his lap against me. I felt the ball of the rag, and under that, something kind of hard, like he had a wrench in his pocket.
"Then he said something that didn't seem to have anything to do with the Mars mission. He said, 'We keep having girls. I've always wanted a son,' and for a second, I thought he meant the sun in the sky, but that was nowhere near Mars. And he kept on breathing through his nose and I was afraid he was going to die, and he moved his hand from my shoulder to my leg. His other hand was on the rag, he was rubbing the wrench in his pocket against me, and he started moaning and I thought he was pretending to crash land. And I said, 'Back off the thrusters and we'll pull through. It's our only hope.'"
Sally was looking at me like I was a hero, her blue eyes wide. Maybe she thought I was a brave captain, still able to give commands even while we were crashing. I liked the way she was looking at me.
"And he kept moaning and rubbing against me and suddenly his body got all stiff and he squeezed my leg real hard. I thought he was pretending to be scared about crashing and doing it so well that I was afraid he was having a heart attack. His face was all clenched up and his eyes were shut. Maybe he was so good at pretending that he could really see our rocket plowing into the red surface of Mars. Except he wasn't making the crashing sounds in his mouth the way you're supposed to.
"I told him, 'We survived the landing, we better get out our rayguns in case the Martians saw us,' and I was going to tell him that we better leave the ship in case it caught on fire. Because suddenly I wanted out of the car in real life because of the way he was looking at me. He was looking at me like I was the Martian. His eyes were tiny wet lines and his eyebrows were crunched down and he grabbed my arm and squeezed it, harder than he'd squeezed my leg."
"Did he hurt you?" Sally asked, and at that moment I felt I could tell her a hundred stories, secret or not, lies or the truth. Because she was listening.
"I didn't feel it too much because I was so scared. But he put his face close to mine and the gasoline fumes made me dizzy. For the first time, I noticed his teeth were sharp and yellow. Then he said, 'If you tell anybody, I'll come and get you and make you sorry.' He must have been afraid that he'd get in trouble for letting me play in the junkyard. Then he told me never to come back. He slid out of the car on the driver's side and looked around one more time. Then he held the door open so I could get out.
"He grabbed my arm again and pulled me into the sunshine, then said, right in my ear, so that his breath sprayed on my skin, 'I mean it. I'll come get you, and I won't be playing make-believe.' I was looking at his greasy black boots, but he grabbed my chin and tilted my head up. I looked into his eyes and I could have sworn there were things moving around in them, mean things. And there was something I'd almost forgot about until yesterday, when you were telling me about the things between people's legs."
"But that was one of the secrets I was going to tell," Sally whined. The sun had gotten higher in the sky and came through the roof, making her red hair shine like copper fire.
"You can still tell me. I remember that I looked at his pockets and they were empty. I don't know what he did with the wrench. I was afraid he might hit me with it. But he just stood there holding me and grinding his teeth.
"Then he let go and I ran into the woods and looked back at him. He was staring at me, wiping his hands on the rag. The spaceship was just an old black car again, rusty around the edges, and he was just an oily old man in dirty clothes. Then somebody called him from around the front of the garage. He shook his fist at me and I slipped into the trees. That's the last time I played over there."
"Does the man still work there?" Sally asked, maybe wanting to see what he looked like.
"I haven't seen him at the garage lately. But the people who work there don't seem to stay very long. I guess they get tired of the gasoline smell or something. But I'm still scared to play in the cars. That's why I come in through the back of the fence to get here, so they won't see me from the garage."
"This is a secret place, all right. It looks just like a big bunch of weeds from the outside. So, were you scared about that man?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I dream that he's coming to get me, that he's in my bedroom. He's got on his greasy clothes and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wrench and he tightens it around my arm and I can't get away and he's turning the wrench and my arm turns around and around and he keeps rubbing my hair and he smells like gasoline and he's got on a spaceman helmet and then he leans over on me and I can't breathe and I wake up and I'm kicking my legs against the blankets and it's morning. Then I go to the window and look at the Ford to make sure it hasn't blasted off in the night."
"That sounds like a scary dream."
"Dreams aren't scary. They're just dreams. That's not as bad as him really coming after me."
"Grownups are strange. I don't know if I want to be in love like grownups after all."
"But you said we were in love. And you have to tell me the secrets. You promised."
"You mean you still want to be in love? It's already been almost a whole day."
I was confused. "I thought you said love was forever."
"I didn't cross my heart and hope to die."
She saw the pain in my eyes. It didn't seem to bother her. Her blue eyes were as cold as the garage man's had been. Now that I think about it, she probably smiled. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong, or lying again, or one of my headmates has taken over the keyboard.
"But it's okay, we can still play," she said, seeing the fallen look on my face. Did I still have to love her because I'd crossed my heart, even if she didn't love me?
"I'll tell you some secrets, then," she said. "Here's the best thing about love: You can still pretend like we're in love, the way grownups pretend."
Sally and I sat cross-legged on the warped plywood floor of the doghouse. The sun was falling into late afternoon, shining through the gap in the roof like electric light.
"What's this about grownups pretending to love?" I asked.
"If they loved each other the way people on TV do, they wouldn't hit each other or yell at each other."
"I thought they loved each other because they had to, because they were married."
"But we loved each other because we wanted to."
I noticed she said "loved." Past tense. My heart fluttered like a house bird let out of a cage, discovering its wings only to slam into window glass and fall dead. Or maybe peck at its own reflection. When you're that young, you can't come up with clever metaphors, which is why you save your autobiography until you're older and need money. Or someone has a gun to your head.
"But love also has to do with the squeaky bedsprings," she said. "You've heard them, haven't you? How they squeak over and over and over and sometimes you can hear your parents yelling like they're hurting each other, but they don't sound mad?"
I nodded. Just another of night's mysterious noises, along with faraway trains and the wind rustling through the cornfields and mice gnawing behind the walls and monsters breathing under the bed and a little person inside your skull. So the squeaking had something to do with love?
She continued, spreading out secrets like grape jelly on white bread. "You ever notice how your parents are happy the morning after the bedsprings squeak? Mine at least get through breakfast before they get mad at each other again. Because sometimes my mom burns the eggs or Daddy has a headache from drinking too much. Or Mom says she needs grocery money and then asks if he wants to have fun tonight."
I nodded again. I was remembering the bedsprings and how they used to squeak a lot back when I was younger, almost every night it seemed. But now the bedsprings only worked every week or so, mostly on Friday nights.
"And that's got something to do with what's between people's legs?" I asked.
She sighed and looked at me like I was a third grader. "Haven't you seen your parents naked?"
My mind flashed back to when I was very young, when Mother would take me into the bathtub with her. She would rub soap in my hair and laugh and splash water on my back. When she stood up to towel off, I saw a patch of black hair between her legs, frothed with white soap bubbles. I only knew it was a dark, secret place, one that had parts that didn't show. A place you knew was wrong to think about.
And walking down the hall and passing by the bathroom, seeing Father out of the corner of my eye standing over the toilet. And my eyes, despite my trying to look away, automatically going down to his hand that held the big red thing. I had something that hung down, too, but Father's must have hurt, it looked so monstrous and swollen and angry.
"I've seen naked people," I said. She wasn't the only one who could pretend to know everything.
"Well, men have what they call a 'babymaker.' Like what you've got, except you've got a little boy thing. It's called a pee-pee now, but it'll grow up to be a babymaker, too."
My head was spinning, and my invisible friend was rattling the closet doors in the Bone House, looking for a place to hide. How did Sally know all these things? And did I really want a big red babymaker? If I didn't, was there any way to stop it from happening?
Sally went on, smug with the knowledge of grownup secrets. "And women have muff pies. That's where the man puts his babymaker and then seeds crawl out of his babymaker into the pie and then little babies grow. And they have a hard time squeezing the babymaker into the pie, because it's so big, at least my daddy's is. And that's what makes the bedsprings squeak, because they have to fight to get those baby seeds planted."
My mouth hung open, airing out the base of my brain where this new information was settling. Babymakers and bedsprings, and all this somehow tied in with love. This stuff just got scarier and scarier. "But that means they would have a baby every time the bedsprings squeak."
"No, because of the blood. Haven't you ever seen the blood between your mother's legs?"
I hadn't, but I had seen little paper wads in the toilet, with streaks of blood running from them and down the inside of the toilet. Sometimes after the squeaking, now that I thought about it.
Sally said, "Because the blood washes away the baby."
I was struck with the image of a hundred bloody, tiny babies floating around in the toilet bowl. Then I was wondering if the babymaker was so big that it hurt the muff pie and that's what made women bleed. But I didn't dare ask Sally about it. She already thought I was stupid. Better to learn all I could while she was still willing to share her secrets.
At least now I understood the reason she didn't want to love me. She probably thought I was going to grow a babymaker and hurt her. She probably thought I was going to make her bleed.
And, even worse, I saw why Mother was afraid of Father. As if his boots weren't bad enough, he had other weapons he could use on her.
"So you have to be in love to try to make babies?" I asked.
She laughed at me, peeling my skin as if I were an apple, then cutting to the core. "Of course not. Babies are mistakes. Who wants to carry a baby around in their belly?"
I marveled at Sally, sitting there rich with exotic wisdom, her thin legs crossed in a pretzel of white hose, clutching Angel Baby, her coppery pigtails bobbing with delight as she ridiculed me. She was beautiful.
"But you have to be married to have babies, don't you? Or to make the bedsprings squeak?" I asked.
More laughter. "You silly boy. Remember that day your father called in sick to work, and your mother went downtown to do the shopping? She asked my mom if she wanted to come along, but my mom said she had housework to do. I didn't see you around anywhere."
Of course not. I wasn't going to stay in the apartment all day with Father, though he was too sick to put his boots on. I came to the nest with a couple of comic books. When it came down to Batman or a possible beating, even a dumbbell like me made the smart choice.
"Well, your mother was gone all morning, and your father came over to our place. He gave me a whole dollar to go buy some candy. Then I knew something was up. Has he ever given you a dollar?"
"Are you kidding?"
"So I snuck around the back of the apartment, outside my mom's bedroom, and I heard the bedsprings squeaking. And my daddy was at work down at the plant, so I know it wasn't him."
I shuddered at the thought of Father squeezing his big babymaker inside Sally's scrawny mother. It must have hurt her a lot.
"How come your mother let him hurt her? She didn't have to let him, since they weren't married," I said. Or maybe she hadn't let him. Father had ways of getting what he wanted.
Sally sliced me again with the knife edge of her laughter. "It doesn't hurt, stupid. It feels good. That's what love's about. It doesn't have anything to do with being married. It's about sharing secrets and holding hands and kissing and then playing babymaking."
My hand went to the spot on my cheek Sally had kissed the night before. I tingled with the memory. A leaf fell from somewhere above, from one of the big straight hickory trees that bordered the junkyard. It feathered through the hole in the roof, landing on the back of Sally's neck. She reached up, thinking it was a bug, and batted it away.
While she was leaning back, I glanced between her crossed legs at the shadow under her dress.
"How come you kissed me last night?" I asked.
"Because I loved you."
"Like boyfriend and girlfriend."
"Yes. Real love, like grownups."
"But now you don't love me?"
"Not anymore. I just wanted to see if I could get you to love me. I did it all the time back in Pittsburgh. I had a different boyfriend every week."
How could somebody love so many people so fast?
"Did you kiss them all?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer. I wanted my kiss to be special.
"Of course. That's why all the boys wanted to love me."
"Did you...do anything else?" I tried to picture her naked, in bed with a boy, making the bedsprings squeak. I could only picture her with a big patch of soapy black hair between her legs.
Her voice dropped to a sneaky whisper. "I Frenched them."
"Frenched?" I was picturing Napoleon, whom I had read about, trying to put his babymaker into Sally, his big pointy hat falling down over his face.
"It's a kind of kiss. Come here and I'll show you."
I slid over beside her, my heart beating faster than squeaking bedsprings. I closed my eyes. I felt her warm breath inches from my face.
"Wait," I said, opening my eyes. Her eyes were closed and her dark eyelashes twitched like dying butterflies. Her lips were curled up like Angel Baby's and were shining with saliva.
"What is it?" she asked impatiently.
"If you don't love me anymore, why do you want to French me?"
"Because it's fun. It feels like something I'm not supposed to do. And it makes me tingle. And that's what grownup love is all about."
"What if I don't want to be Frenched?" Now I was afraid of kissing her. I had already braced myself for the horrifying thought of loving Sally, like boyfriend and girlfriend, and I had run through a hundred dead-end hallways of the Bone House to get to the one thing I knew. That it felt good to be loved, even if it was scary. And now she was taking it back.
"You crossed your heart, remember?" Her voice was high and squeaky as bedsprings, she was so angry. "So you have to love me or hope to die."
"But you just said kissing didn't have anything to do with love."
"You're getting kissing mixed up with babymaking. And if you don't kiss me, I'm going to tell your parents about this place."
She nodded at the doghouse walls, her pigtails bobbing. The sun had sunk lower in the sky, the orange sunset lighting up the honeysuckle blossoms. The flowers glowed like Christmas lights on the vines that crawled down from the roof. Their sweet smell hung thick in the air. The world was candy.
I wondered if she was cruel enough to tell on me, and I decided she was. I thought of my father, bringing his boots down on the flimsy rotten walls until the outside world poured in like rain. I thought of my mother, her face lined with worry because her son was hiding out with a girl and probably doing bad things that made Jesus sad. But mostly, I wanted to feel that tingle again.
"Okay," I said, and then her lips were on mine, her tongue sliding into my mouth like a fat earthworm. I put my tongue up to stop hers, and it tangled briefly in the steel wires of her braces, and I imagined us locked together as the sun went down and then our parents finding us like that. I frantically worked my tongue free and she pressed her palms against my chest, pushing me onto my back.
She straddled me, on her knees with one leg on each side of me like a ten-gallon cowboy riding bronco on a half-pint pony in a clown's rodeo. I quit struggling, letting my tongue lie still as she explored my teeth. Her dress rode up to her waist, and she was rubbing her white-stockinged thighs against me in a familiar rhythm.
The rhythm of bedsprings.
I was helpless against the attack. My stomach clenched like one of Father's fists, but inside the tightness erupted a small hot fire. My mouth tickled where her slick tongue probed like a snail poking out of its shell. She was moaning like the garage man had when he had leaned on me. Love, or kissing, or babymaking, or whatever this was, was like ejecting from a rocket ship.
I felt a tingling down in my pee-pee and I was afraid it was about to grow into a big red babymaker.
I tried to push Sally away, because she was putting her muff pie down near my pee-pee that was trying to be a babymaker. My chest was tight and vomit tickled the back of my throat. I didn't want to have a babymaker and I didn't want it to make Sally bleed. I didn't want to have to love her anymore.
But she wasn't letting me up. Her eyes were closed and she rocked back and forth, just like those old people did on the porch down the street, except they sat in chairs and she was sitting on my belly. And her tongue flickered as if trying to find butterscotch candy down my throat.
And the more I thought about my pee-pee and trying to make it not turn into a babymaker, the more it tingled. Sally was rubbing over and over and over and I felt something was about to happen, something as mysterious as the early stars that I could see through the hole in the roof. Something as dangerous as the boots. Something as weird as the junkyard incident. Something I'd remember the rest of my life.
Something...something...
"Richard!" my mother called, from somewhere just a few yards outside the nest.
Sally froze, locked above me like a TV wrestler waiting for the referee to count to three. I was lying on my back looking up at her, afraid to breathe. My pee-pee didn't feel like it wanted to be a babymaker anymore. It felt like it wanted to crawl into a cold dark refrigerator and wait for halftime of a football game.
Mother called my name again.
I strained my ears, listening for her footsteps and the swish of weeds as she discovered the nest and looked inside. The blanket of night had almost completely covered the sky, giving me a small hope of not being found.
"Richard, I know you're out here. It's way past dinnertime, honey."
Sally leaned her mouth to my ear and one of her pigtails tickled my nose. "I thought this place was a secret," she hissed.
"Sssh," I said, but I knew it wouldn't be our voices that gave us away. It would be the pounding heart, spilling out and carrying like the beat of voodoo drums across a black jungle. Or maybe the scarring screech of a jet plane crash landing. The fifty-megaton explosion between my legs. Something like that.
Mother shouted my name again, this time farther away.
Sally relaxed over me as if her bones had failed, her body sagging onto mine like a water balloon. Our pulses raced each other, working faster than bedsprings in the dead of night. I had found yet another way that love could be scary.
Sally rolled off me and smoothed her dress. She picked up Angel Baby and all I could see of their faces was the outline, twin shadows against a darker background. The feeble moon was trying to rise, but it must have been as tired and drained as we were.
"I tore the knee of my stocking," she said, her voice as cold and faraway as the dull stars or dead fish on a beach or a mole in a winter cornfield.
"Sally..." I searched the night for words. I still love you? Want to know a secret? Will you climb on me again?
"Tell your mother you tripped over a tree root and fell," I finished.
Her soft sobs filled the doghouse. Had I hurt her? I don't think I had used my babymaker on her.
"Are you bleeding?" My tongue was as dry and thick as an old board.
She snorted, blowing bubbles of laughter out of her nose. "Richard, you're such an idiot."
She was stomping with words. They hurt worse than boots. And I wish, sitting here typing, I could walk through the years and stomp back. After all, I'm the one who gets to tell how it really happened. But even now, this seems the best way to remember it. Yes, this will do.
"I'm going home now," she said, and I could sense her pout even if I couldn't see it clearly. Her voice dropped and her words slithered out like snakes. "This is a secret."
I could still try to be brave. "I won't tell anything."
"Cross your heart and hope to die," she said, and she was telling me, not asking.
But I wasn't falling for that trick again. No more hoping to die, no matter what. She waited in the silent night that poured as smothering and heavy as maple syrup. Or blood from a savior's palms. Or maybe just plain old smothering silence, the kind you hear in your head if you stop and really listen and everyone in the Bone House is asleep and not snoring.
"I never even loved you at all," she said. "I was lying. I just wanted to make you kiss me. Like I did all those other boys."
And I still had to love her, at least until I could figure out a way to uncross my heart. If love was going to be such a hot-and-cold ball of confusion, a strange mix of pain and pleasure, a tangle of limbs and tongues, then I didn't want to love anyone again for a long time.
But suddenly I was beyond the reach of her sharp weapons of hate, weapons that stabbed places even the boots hadn't touched. I was shrinking into the dark place in my head, hiding from this new kind of pain. She could not longer touch me, I was safe in a dark hall of the Bone House, looking through the eyes of my secret little friend, the secret that no external love would ever make me reveal.
"Wait," you must be thinking, "how come you're telling me this now?"
I'll let you in on the secret, if not her, because I can tell you're starting to trust me despite my warning. We're in this together, so you might as well have all the facts. Besides, I think I'm starting to love you.
Sally crawled out of the doghouse toward the weed-choked hole in the fence, her knees making crackling sounds on the crusty ground. My little friend sat alone in the dark, alone but not alone, because I was there with him. We were bound together more tightly than any lover's knot or hangman's noose or those silly contortions newlyweds do over the wedding cake when they're trying to toast their future divorce.
"I've been away too long," my friend said. "I should have come sooner. I let you get hurt."
My body scooted across the rough plywood floor and followed Sally out of the hole. My nose took in the crisp aroma of crushed flowers and torn grass, the perfume of honeysuckle, and the smell of early dew. My ears heard a sleepy meadowlark spinning a lullaby. My hands stung from the sharp prick of fallen thorns as my body crawled. It was my flesh, but not me.
My head was poking out of the hole in the fence when my eyes saw a white slipper in the moonlight. And from the slipper, a long familiar leg rose up into the night sky.
Mother's shoe.
Mother's leg.
Mother.
My body stood, with the help of her hand lifting it by my shirt collar. My eyes looked around, adjusting to the brighter light of this outside world. Sally was hugging Mrs. Bakken over by the hickory trees, pressing her face into her mother's chest, and now the sound of Sally's wild crying reached my ears, drowning out the meadowlark's song.
"What's going on here, young man?" Mother asked my body, her voice a wedge of ice driven into my ears.
"Here?" my voice said, the strange muscles in my throat vibrating. Where was "here"? I thought I was in the Bone House.
"He made me, Mommy," Sally shrieked. "He made me do bad things."
Bad things? What bad things? Oh.
Those.
Sally squealed, her wet whimpers carrying across the apartment's backyard and into the night. My eyes saw lights blinking on across the back wall of the apartment building, my ears heard windows sliding open, my nose smelled cigarette smoke as heads stuck out to see if what was going on outside was better than their television shows.
"He made me go in there, then he made me kiss him. I tried to get away, but he kept grabbing me," Sally said. "And he wouldn't let me go."
She wailed like an air-raid siren, and was as well-rehearsed. Mother looked into my eyes as if she knew who I was and shook my shoulders. "Richard, what do you have to say for yourself?"
Richard? Yes, that was me. Yet not me. My head nodded, flopping up and down like a wet mop's. Just the way my friend made it.
Mrs. Bakken stroked the top of Sally's head as if she were petting a rabbit. "There, there, honey, it will be okay. Did he hurt you?" Mrs. Bakken said, looking over at Mother and my borrowed flesh.
"N-no, Mommy." Sally sniffled extra loudly in case someone in the apartment windows hadn't heard the first time. "But he tried to. He tried to lift up my dress and was talking crazy things like putting his pee-pee in me and making me bleed. And I was so scared."
She mixed the last word with a half-moan that yawned out through the trees and across the junkyard. My body was standing on legs that felt like wobbly stacks of tin cans.
"I'm so sorry," Mother said to Sally. "I swear, I don't know where he gets his meanness from."
Then, to me, "Lord, wait till your father hears about this." Then, to Sally, "You sure you're okay, honey?"
Sally nodded, bouncing her pigtails for emphasis, and wiped her eyes on her mother's shirt. "I've got a hole in my stocking, Mommy."
"It's not your fault," Mrs. Bakken said, and she looked all the way through my little friend into the dark place where I was hiding. Now I knew where Sally had learned to cut with invisible knives. It ran in the family.
And she'd learned the lesson we all get to eventually: it's not whether you're right or wrong, good or bad, true or false---it's whether you have someone to blame.
I looked back down the long dark hall at Mrs. Bakken's face, cheeks paler than moonlight, her skin stretched as tight as panty hose over the steep bone of her head. Her eyes were as black as crow's wings, eyes that shot secrets out of the sky. And she saw that I saw.
"While the cat's away, the mice will splay," my little friend said to Mrs. Bakken, using my voice.
"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Bakken's voice was a pitch-perfect imitation of her screeching daughter's. "Anne, he's gone crazy, that boy has."
"Tell us about Father and the bedsprings," I heard my voice say.
"What's this foolishness, Richard? I've never heard the like in all my days," Mother said.
"Did Father's babymaker hurt you?" my imaginary friend said, using my mouth. The words were nails, hammered into the coffin of the night.
"That's the kind of crazy things he was saying to me, Mommy," Sally said, finding fresh tears and straining to squeeze them into rivers. "All this stuff about babymakers and how I had to love him or he would hurt me. But he said if he loved me, then he'd have to hurt me with his babymaker, whatever that is."
Mother's hand struck my cheek, sparking a red burst of fire and pain. But the pain was brief, flickering and dying in an instant. My friend and I knew how to douse the flames of pain. This Bone House would never burn.
"Did it hurt you? Or did you like Father's babymaker?" we said.
Mrs. Bakken's eyes searched the trees, sneaking into the night sky, seeking escape. Mother let go of my shirt collar, her face blank beneath her curly mass of brown hair.
"You must have liked it, the way the two of you made the bedsprings squeak over and over and over, Mrs. Bakken," we said. "Just like people who love each other. Just like married people."
"What's he talking about, Rita?" Mother asked Mrs. Bakken.
Mrs. Bakken's shiny China face cracked as she joined Sally in tears.
"Richard, what are you talking about?" Mother asked my body when she realized Mrs. Bakken was not going to answer.
"You'll have to ask Sally. She's the one who got the dollar's worth of candy," we said. "She's the one who knows all about love."
Sally and her mother huddled together, crying in the night, as two dozen prying eyes watched from the windows and a dozen tongues started wagging.
I went to bed that night without supper, my body tucking itself in, my mouth offering no prayers to Jesus. I was safely under the blankets when my little friend let me have my flesh back, then I was swimming toward the dark waters of sleep. Just as I dozed off, as bright colors flashed and tried to form dreams, I heard Mother and Father in the living room.
They were speaking to each other without yelling. I couldn't hear the words, but I could tell by the tone of their voices that they were saying important, weighty things. Grownup things.
Then I was asleep and I was in the land where no garage men laughed and no boots danced and no babymakers turned into monsters.
I awoke early the next day and dressed quietly. The walls were still standing, and no sound came from my parents' bedroom. The night had not been broken by blows or bedsprings.
I went outside, onto the porch that we shared with the Bakkens, and down the cracked wooden steps that slanted to the driveway. There, on the porch, was Angel Baby. Sally's one true love.
I picked it up by the yellow yarn of its hair and looked into its glass eyes. Its eyes that never cried. Its eyes that had seen everything. I didn't like the secrets in them.
I carried the doll into the kitchen and laid it on the chipped kitchen table, its arms and legs twisted under its cloth belly. I eased open the kitchen drawer and pulled out a rusty butcher knife.
I plunged the blunt knife into Angel Baby's belly and the tip of the blade thunked into the table. The fabric ripped and white chunks of foam rubber spilled out onto the floor. I sawed the knife back and forth, throwing a frenzied snow into the air. I chopped at the brittle plastic limbs, those selfish arms that demanded hugs and those chubby legs that bled air. I hammered the blade down on those pouting lips and I hacked off the cute button nose and I popped the glass eyes from their round sockets and I claimed a scalp of yellow yarn.
I carried the pieces outside and left them at the Bakkens's door.
To this day, I'm still not sure whether I was mad at Sally because she loved me or because she's the one who got a dollar's worth of candy.
Mr. Bakken pounded on our door, yelling, "Come out, you goddamn cuckold."
I was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal full of unfortunate marshmallow charms. Father opened the door and looked out, scratching inside the sleeve of his gray T-shirt. Mr. Bakken reached through the hole in the screen and grabbed at Father's throat. Father stepped back and kicked the handle off the storm door so that it swung open. Then he stepped out onto the porch, a crooked smile on his chapped lips like the one he'd worn at Granddad's funeral.
"Let's do it up right, Mac," he said, with rare cheer.
Mr. Bakken punched Father in the side of the head. Father became a wolverine, a blur of ferocity, an International Harvester of pain and rage. He brought his sharp fists into Mr. Bakken's beefy red face again and again, until I couldn't see Mr. Bakken's freckles for the blood. When Mr. Bakken fell down, crumpled like a sack of feed corn in the dirt by the driveway, Father's dancing boots gave a rare daylight performance.
The police came and took Father away and the crackling radio in one of the police cars said something about a domestic dispute and then a bunch of numbers that started with ten.
"I have to go bail him out," Mother said.
"Why?" I failed to understand why she wanted to shatter the peace that had descended in our home like the sudden silence in a forest after a hunter's shotgun blast.
"I have to," she said. "I married him."
Father returned like a conquering hero, the cock of the block, strutting around preening his feathers. At least the attention kept his anger off me and Mother. Looking back, I believe it was the closest I ever came to admiring him. Then again, how could I know what I was thinking? That sounds like something my invisible friend would dream up, or one of the headmates who claim to be my co-writers. Admire that bastard? Never.
The Bakkens moved a week later. We watched them pack. Mother stood on the porch biting her white lips, a glass of brown liquid in her hand. Liquor from one of Father's bottles.
The Bakkens filled up their blue station wagon, piled the stuff of their life on top until I thought the roof might cave in. Mr. Bakken's face was bandaged like a mummy's. Only his burning eyes showed, looking around like he wished he could set fire to the apartment building, the woods, the checkerboard landscape, and the entire world, but mostly like he wanted to set fire to the past. If only our life stories were paper pages instead of real things.
I watched from the kitchen window as Mr. Bakken stomped the tailgate of the wagon shut and walked back into their apartment. Sally came outside, her pigtails gone, her dull bronze hair wilting under the August sun. She carried an armful of dolls, squeezing them against her chest as if afraid that someone might snatch them away, pieces of Angel Baby tangled among them. She climbed into the open door into the backseat without looking around.
She hadn't given me a good-bye kiss.
So much for love and its eternal promise.
Then Mrs. Bakken came out, even paler than usual. She had blue bruises under her eyes and her face was puffy. She gnawed at the tip of her pinky like an animal trying to free itself from a steel trap. She stared at her feet as she walked to the car. The invisible knives of her glare had been packed away with the spatulas, blankets, and towels.
Mr. Bakken brought up the rear of the miserable parade. He went down the stairs and turned to Mother.
"At least we get to leave. You have to stay," he said, his words muffled by his swollen lips. "I guess everybody gets what they deserve."
Then he closed the car doors and got behind the wheel and started the engine. Mother went inside. As the station wagon pulled out of the driveway, its tires crunching on asphalt crumbs, I caught a glimpse of the back of Sally's head and wondered what her next boyfriend would be like and if she would French him.
Mostly I wondered what sort of candy she'd bought with that dollar---chocolate or caramel.
And as the sun shone down on me like the light of heaven, there on the porch, I felt unfamiliar muscles stretch across my face. I was smiling.
"All's well that ends swell," said Mister Milktoast inside my head. "Or swollen."
"Who said it's the end?" I answered, not moving my lips, my own personal ventriloquist's dummy.
"I promise I won't leave you again, ever, Richard."
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
"Cross our heart, my friend," Mister Milktoast said.
"Where did you ever come up with the name 'Mister Milktoast'?"
"I thought you named me," he said.
"Gee, I hope this doesn't mean I'm crazy. You know, talking to the little person in my head."
"It's not you that's crazy. Blame me. What do you think I'm here for?"
I couldn't argue with that, but probably other people could. "I guess I better keep you secret, anyway."
"Might be a good idea. People wouldn't understand. And some secrets are better if you don't share them."
"Okay. Since you promise not to leave me again, I promise not to tell."
"Deal."
The sun was bright and warm on my face. I felt a strange joy, knowing that I would never again be alone. This was better than a first kiss. This relationship had potential.
Father didn't go to work anymore, just sat on the couch watching TV with the lights off and drinking straight from his bottles. I hid in my room or in the woods up the street. Now that the nest was no longer secret, it had lost all its magic. Plus Sally had poisoned it forever with her love.
When school started I was able to escape Father for half a day at a time. I still wasn't "associating well with others," but it was safe to read there. By the time I got home in the afternoon, Father was usually snoring on the couch or drinking across town in the Moose Lodge. Mother got a job at the Ottaqua Five and Ten, back in the days when "dollar stores" seemed like a great value, and she worked most nights.
I was by myself, but not lonely. I had Mister Milktoast. I had books. The people in books were much better friends than the people in real life. The people in books never walked off the pages to love me or kick me. I could close books.
Days mixed together like playing cards shuffled into a deck of months. Father was rotting, his breath an open sewer and his face a red rash of cracked veins. Mother had started drinking, too, but they drank silently, joylessly, and with grim determination, in separate rooms.
My body was becoming a stranger's. A knot had grown on the front of my neck at the part where I swallowed and my voice started cracking and squeaking when I talked. Mysterious hair sprouted over my lip and on my chin and even between my legs. Most horrible of all, my pee-pee was beginning to redden and swell, turning into an alien monster.
In the midst of this physiological turmoil, Father returned to his raging old self, as if the years spent in a drunken, pacific stupor were merely a refreshing vacation from his true life's work. The walls were apt to bend more often than not, and Mother was a more willing sparring partner now. Our living room was a clutter of shattered monuments to marital discord: the coffee table, propped up on one corner by an old set of encyclopedias; Mother's big ceramic Siamese cat curled up by the front door, its ears chipped off; the Jesus plate on the shelf, two strips of duct tape crossed on its back to hold it together; a glass-speared wedding photograph; and other assorted war relics.
Why they never divorced, once I came to see the possible escape it offered them, was beyond me. Mutual desperation strengthened their union, as if being needed only as a punching bag was better than not being needed at all. Occasionally in the night the bedsprings still squeaked, though they sounded awkward and rusty. And even less occasionally, laughter filled the apartment, usually inspired by the television shows that I refused to watch.
Perhaps this was a normal life. Perhaps we could have gone on this way for years, until I went away to college and studied literature and learned how to write a bestselling novel by offering witty autobiographical insights. Then I could have bought my parents a cottage on the Massachusetts seashore, one with an extra guest room to serve as a liquor cabinet. They could sip their golden years away in dark rooms until their tired blood gave out and the sun rose one morning over the Atlantic to shine in on their waxen corpses.
Then I could come up and carry the boxes of everything they were into the light. I could air out their photo albums and the yellowing wedding lace and the aviator mask collection. I could dig through the stained love letters and the cat postcards and the wrinkled brown bag of buffalo nickels. Then I would reach the bottom and find that it all added up to nothing. I would gather the scraps of their lives and dump them in the gray rubbish can at the corner of the driveway, put up a "For Sale" sign on their memories, and continue on up the stairs to my own attic and its dusty boxes.
But such an easy decay would have been anticlimactic, right? It would have violated our unwritten contract, our symbiotic relationship, our mutual understanding that we are both creating this adventure with every word and each sentence and every acceptance of a lie. We're equally complicit, and equally guilty.
I'm not very good at keeping secrets, and you're not very good at minding your own business. Because this is as close as you'll ever get to being inside my head, and you want more. And I need you because otherwise I will never know I was me.
We're in this together, all of us. All the way.
You probably won't believe what happened next, but I may as well tell you anyway, since we've come this far.
Plus it involves sex and violence.
I killed the son of a bitch.
Father was on the fiery edge of a binge, scorching the night like a garlic dragon. His boots were itching to dance. He was Fred Astaire on angel dust, Jekyll's Hyde masquerading as Gene Kelly, a Saturday-night-feverish John Travolta channeling Hitler's goose-stepping storm troopers.
Mother caught the brunt of his wrath on her bony shoulders, so incapacitated herself that she couldn't lift a flaccid arm in her own defense. His blows rained down on her, a blistering storm, a torrent of fists and feet. I listened from my bedroom, tingling from the electric tension of his thunder.
His slaps rang though the air like a whip flogging a dented piece of sheet metal. Mother moaned and whimpered, too dehydrated to cry. I ran into the living room and saw her on the floor, leaning against the couch, a thick trickle of pink saliva running from one corner of her mouth, her dark hair greasy with sweat like the mane of a horse that had been ridden too hard.
Father stood over her, his fists quivering. They were clenched so tightly he could have squeezed blood from a concrete block. He brought his boot down and Mother collapsed like a wet shoebox. He began stamping tattoos on her mealy flesh, urging fresh vintages from the juice of her veins. He danced as if the devil himself were calling the tune.
I went to the kitchen and drew out the rusty blade that fit my palm like a lover's slender hand. It was the same knife that had dealt with Angel Baby. I was fourteen now, not a kid anymore. I was as strong as a weed, as wiry as an oak, as unforgiving as the January wind.
I moved through the wreckage of the living room. With each step, I left Richard Allen Coldiron behind. The closer I got to the man who had given me life, the farther I was from son he had made. By the time I'd crossed the living room, the new thing wearing my flesh had completely sloughed off the inhibitions of Richard Coldiron, packed that weakness away in hidden closets, booked me a room in the Bone House with a window to the world.
The thing-with-the-knife raised its arm.
I could only watch in horrible fascination. I was used to Mister Milktoast taking over, but he was nowhere around. Was this my arm lifting, throwing a sharp shadow on the wall? Was it my bones and muscles that had flexed themselves into revenge? Was it my eyes Mother was looking into, her own eyes as wide as Jesus plates? Was it me plunging the knife into the meat of Father's back with a chicken-soupy sound?
Father was so intent on his artistic toe-tapping that he didn't register the metal intruder that had found a home between his shoulder blades. He froze, his right leg raised in a victory jig, his boot poised for a dramatic climax to his love ballet. It became his swan song, the culmination of years of dedicated practice.
He spun, all grace forgotten, his sewer eyes spinning wildly in his head like slot machine reels trying to line up Lucky Sevens. As he fell, his mouth formed questions that had no answers. Just before he landed, driving the knife completely through his chest to plow through his splintered rib cage, his eyes stopped spinning long enough to lock onto mine, and in his last slippery moments he recognized his executioner.
Or so he thought.
He lay on his back, a crimson gurgle rising from the black depths of his throat as his esophagus sucked madly for air. Mother screeched but had no energy to rise. The thing-with-the-knife that was me watched Father's final discoveries march across his features in a platoon of twitching facial expressions. Father found cold sobriety, he found betrayal, he found agony returning like a karmic boomerang bouncing back threefold. And if he searched for God and salvation and redemption, he must have come up empty.
If indeed the thing-with-the-knife was me, then what happened next was entirely the thing's own actions. As Mother watched, slipping into the feverish cold of shock, the thing-with-the-knife rolled Father over and yanked the slick knife handle out of his ruined flesh. Then the thing hacked at Father's bootlaces, scarring the leather, screaming and frothing in search of socks. Then the boots were off, flopping over, impotent.
And that's where I found myself when the thing gave me back my skin and bones. The thing shambled off to the Bone House where Mister Milktoast lived and where I had been briefly imprisoned.
"Richard," Mother moaned. "Lord, no...no...no..."
Her voice trailed on with her mantra of denial as I looked down at the bloody boot I held in one hand and the butchering steel shaft that I held in the other. The rich crimson sauce coagulated, turning a crusted red brown as it cooled and dried. I blinked in the soft glow of electric light bulbs as if I had just come back from a journey to the blackest corners of night.
And I was standing over my father's corpse.
And Mother was trying to stand and my own legs were gelatin and Father's legs were bloody noodles.
Mother took the knife from my hand and looked into my eyes and held my chin as if she were scolding me for sneaking into the cookie jar. Her eyes shone like stones in a creek bed.
"Listen, Richard. Here's how it happened."
How? I had seen, hadn't I? I was there.
"It was me," she said. Her voice was cold and metallic, like the knife. "I killed him. I...got tired of him beating me...I was scared he was going to kill me..."
No, Father had wanted to kill her slowly, not all at once. Her sudden death would have robbed him of a reason to get up in the morning. Their dance had been scripted from the beginning.
"Listen now, baby," she went on, and sobs crept into her words. "When the police come...you don't know anything, okay? You were in your room and you heard a fight and came out and saw him dead...you got blood on you when you took the knife from me turned him over."
And the tears broke free, running down her scared face. And fear fed her mind, threw fuel on the flames of panic. I nodded, numbly. I wanted to be gelatin again, to sag back into the dark hollow in my head. Even then, I didn't want any responsibility for my actions. I was a disciple of the Blame Game and I had learned at the feet of masters.
"And the police will know...self-defense or something... people will understand if it's me. It's the only way."
She made me call the police. A long night of questions followed, and I didn't have to pretend that I was hazy on the sequence of events. Mother sat at the kitchen table talking to the officers as red and blue lights pulsed through the window from the driveway. Her hands, the ones she had rubbed in her husband's blood, were shaking, but her voice was firm. Much later, the police led her out into the cold night through the crowd of neighbors and she sat in the back seat of one of the police cars. I watched from the porch as she was driven away, and she waved at me with one bloody hand.
"Was that you, Mister Milktoast?" I asked later, in the silence of my dark bedroom.
"That wasn't us. That couldn't have been us."
"Who, then?"
"Richard. I think...we've got company."
Of course, what else could he say? After all, we'd learned the Blame Game together.
Never had I been so proud of Mother as when she stood calmly before the court and spun a hundred tales of abuse that were too vivid to be mere imagination. Never had I loved her so as she bravely detailed her imaginary crime. Never had I hated her so as she took the blame that was rightfully mine.
After the testimony of a handful of neighbors, not a jury in the country would have convicted her. Following a finding of not guilty by just cause, she walked down the high-roofed halls of the courthouse as a headline, beset by an army of photographers and news crews and tight-jawed reporters. As she walked down the granite steps, holding her red wool coat closed against the early spring wind, she dropped to page two. Driving away, her story was shunted to the back burner. In a week, she was last week's news.
Except at home.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
"No."
"What's done is done."
"It'll never be done."
"I still love you."
"I don't need love." I could lie like that. "What's it ever brought me?"
"We still have each other."
"That's even worse."
"I don't care what people say. I just care about us."
"Do you miss him?" I was afraid to ask, afraid not to ask.
"I just get lonely sometimes. And tired."
"Don't cry. He's not worth it."
"I'm not crying for him."
Crying for us. Always for us. "Shh. It's okay."
"It's not okay."
"Let's not talk anymore. It's time for bed."
THIS CHAPTER HAS NO NUMBER
"You think?" I asked Mister Milktoast.
We were waiting in the hall to see Mrs. Bell, the high school guidance counselor. I had been sent to her because I made it into the ninth grade without ever fitting in. Plus people thought my mother had killed my father. If I didn't have Mister Milktoast, I probably would have doubted my sanity. But if two people share the same delusion, it's not really a delusion, is it?
"Sounds a little crazy to me," he answered. "And you know what I think about you and crazy."
"Yeah. But it sort of makes sense."
"Come on, Richard. Multiple personality disorder? Who are you trying to kid? Nobody falls for that anymore."
"How else can I explain your existence? You're not the result of schizophrenia. 'Split from reality.' That doesn't quite fit the bill. And I don't think you'll let me write you off as the invisible childhood friend any longer."
"No," Mister Milktoast said. "And there's the new one to think about. The one who killed Father."
"See? That takes care of the 'multiple' part."
"But how can you call it a 'disorder'? From where I'm sitting, it looks like I'm the one who keeps things in here from falling apart."
"I've got to hand it to you there."
"And don't you ever forget it. United we stand, divided we autumn."
"We'll stick together until the end. You've kind of grown on me, you know?"
Laughter trickled from a classroom down the empty hall. Normal people, normal noise. I sat there having a conversation with myself. Or maybe I'm just making this up, more revisionist history because the truth is too unbearable.
"And there's the fact that most documented cases of MPD occur in women who were sexually abused as children. There are hundreds of psychiatrists who still don't believe it exists. Besides, now they call it 'dissociative disorder.' Fancier name."
"Are you going to go Freudian on me?" I said. "Use my traumatic childhood as an excuse for all the terrible things you'll do later?"
"Your brains are Freud or scrambled, but you'll always be Jung at heart."
The door opened beside us. Mrs. Bell poked her head out and said, "Richard Coldiron?"
"Yes, ma'am." I stood and walked into her office.
"Let me handle this," I whispered to Mister Milktoast.
"What's that?" Mrs. Bell said, sitting behind her big wooden desk. Her hair was white, like stuffing that had spilled out of a hole in a pillow.
"Nothing." I slouched into the chair that Mrs. Bell waved me toward.
"Look on the wall," Mister Milktoast said inside my head. "A shrinking certificate. Be careful."
Pipe down, I commanded.
Mrs. Bell shuffled some papers on her desk. "So, what seems to be the trouble, Richard?" she finally said, smiling as she looked into my eyes. Hers was a Grinch smile, one that looked like children's torn flesh was hidden behind the tight lips.
I studied my shoelaces. "No trouble, ma'am."
"That's not what I hear." She rattled her papers.
"Well..."
"We can talk about it. Everything you say stays with me. Our little secret."
Oh, great. Secrets. "There's nothing to talk about."
The Grinch smile slid downward. Her chair squeaked as she leaned back. "When there's family turmoil such as this..." She paused and looked at the pale-green cinder block wall as if she had a window. "...then it's bound to have some kind of negative impact on the innocent."
I shrugged. She obviously didn't understand the concept of "guilty bystanders."
"When you lose a loved one, sometimes the grief gets buried," she said. "It's okay to let it out."
"I'm fine, really. I just like to keep things to myself."
"Hmmm. Just remember that it wasn't your fault."
Mister Milktoast echoed her in my thoughts. Hear that, Richard? It wasn't your fault. How original.
I got a sudden headache. The bad voice came out like acid vomit.
"Oh, yes the fuck, it was," the voice roared inside my head. My veins split, my eyes watered. For a second, I thought I had said it out loud, but Mister Milktoast assured me I hadn't. Of course, he might have been lying. While you can always trust me, and I've found him more or less reliable, everyone has an ulterior motive, and don't ever forget it. All bets are off in revisionist history.
Mrs. Bell saw me wince. Then I was gone, inside, and all I could do was watch and wait. The Bone House was safe, but like a bomb shelter, it both protected and imprisoned.
"It's okay to feel sad," she said, and her smile was back. Grinch with an appetite for all the sweet little Cindy Lou Whos of the world.
"It was my fault," the voice told her, using my mouth and lips and vocal chords and lungs. "But I'm not a damn bit sorry."
Mrs. Bell nodded slowly and seriously. "Now we're getting somewhere. Let these feelings out."
She scribbled on a notepad while talking to herself. "'Problems with authority? Possible Oedipus complex? Post-traumatic stress disorder?'"
She had a long conversation with the thing that had taken over my mouth.
And they thought I didn't associate well with others. They hadn't met Little Hitler yet.
Ottaqua, Iowa. 1989.
I was in my senior year of high school, filling dreary days as if they were journal entries, the secret dairy of an uninspired life. A miserable memoir written in invisible ink. I wish I had typed it then instead of having to do it now, when memory fails me and I have better things to do. Then I could fake the ending and we could all go on with our lives. But this is a book and you expect me to tell everything just as it really happened, despite all that bullshit about voices in my head.
Think about it a moment.
In writing, you're supposed to avoid clichés like the plague or else make them obvious like you knew it all along. Wink wink.
But the first time I go and kill somebody, I reach for that convenient excuse of being squirrel-shit nutty. And, even today, I'm not sure whether I really killed my father or if I just freaked out because Mother did it. Maybe it doesn't make any difference now. It's not like Mister Milktoast wrote this book, or Little Hitler. Fuck them. My name's on the cover and that's that. I am the author.
And if I'm not, they better put my name on the royalty checks anyway.
So, back to 1989 and forget that other stuff. Let's get real.
I was the kind of teenager that, if I were in high school today, everyone would worry about my walking in on a bad hair day and shooting up the place. The kids at school viewed me as an alien freak, the greasy-haired, wild-eyed boy who clung to the corners. They whispered behind my back about what had happened to my father or sometimes taunted me to my face, especially Brickman, the school thug. My fantasies never moved to mass murder, though. That seems so impersonal. Besides, I had poetry.
Others had sports, student government, clubs, or band instruments to consume their time and energy. I dawdled between the covers of books, fixed in two-dimensional fantasies whose protagonists traveled where I could only go by proxy, who dared to have lives that seemed far more real than mine. Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, John Steinbeck, anybody but Faulkner. I prefer my liars to do it honestly, though I could never manage the trick.
Home life was increasingly torturous and I avoided our apartment whenever I could. Mother was drinking nonstop by then, downing huge tumblers of strong brown bourbon, slowing only to replenish the ice. The misty-eyed mirth of her early experiments with liquid escape had progressed rapidly into a constant haze that was punctuated ever more frequently by fits of anxiety and despair. She was in the final stages of decay, as if the flesh would have given up if not for the preserving quality of the alcohol. Father had taught both of us well, only he'd given us different lessons.
On my rare visits, she became clingy and wept openly. I tried to soothe her and coax her out of the bottle, but she was beyond reach. The horrors of the past were too real, still too fresh because she treasured the memories even as she obliterated them with drink. She collected and savored them just as she had once done the ceramic cats that lined her windowsill. Those knickknacks now gathered dust while her new hobby of slow self-destruction filled the shelves of her life.
I had quit sleeping there three months before, when she had started crawling into bed with me again. She was only seeking comfort, needing a man in her life, a replacement. There was something blasphemous in that mockery of family closeness, even though the physical contact was limited. What was most horrible was the flicker of arousal I had felt. I tried to tell myself it was a lie, an illusion, but I could never trust myself to stay there again. I didn't even want to think of my babymaker tilling that fallow soil.
I spent the nights in the old Plymouth Valiant I had bought with money earned from my summer job bagging groceries at the Food Fair. I had a constant crick in my neck, my breath stank, and my clothes grew crisp from continuous wear. My grades suffered and many times I was on the verge of running away, to start an untainted life in a far city, free of everything but the chains of memory and the people in my head. What kept me in Ottaqua was the hope that I could rescue my mother from her black pit of despair. As if I could be the savior of anything---call me what you will, I never had any messianic delusions.
In the classroom, I was sullen and aloof, and I secretly ridiculed the ambitions of the other students. They were planning to go to college, get married, and have jobs, buy homes and a stake in the American dream. The seeds of envy were ready to sprout into hate. I found myself wallowing in bitterness, just like Father had done. The Coldiron Curse hadn't died with him after all.
Virginia became my savior. She was an outcast, too, but had sought out the role, rehearsed it as a devoted understudy, and slipped into it like stage costume. She was from a wealthy family, both parents members of the local school board. She sat across from me in Biology, and I stole glances of her out of the corner of my eye, watching her with an admiration that bordered on worship. When she caught me looking, she would smile at me with perfect teeth.
Though I had an affinity for Biology, I wasn't a top student because I was afraid of standing out, of being noticed. But I wanted Virginia to notice. With her fine ash-blonde hair and oval face, she became the meat of my dreams, the main course of my unformed fantasies. Her eyes weren't bovine as were those of the cheerleaders and beauty queens. These were cobalt blue and deep, almost painful to look at.
She wasn't squeamish about dissection, and I've always admired a girl who had a way with a blade. That semester, as we graduated from worms to frogs to small sharks, her savagery escalated accordingly. When her partner was no longer willing to work with her, repulsed that Virginia was going so far beyond the demands of the assignments, I volunteered my services. I had been working alone, shunned, the twenty-fifth student of a class broken into pairs.
Virginia had a terrific sense of humor. She saw right away that I matched her skill with a scalpel. She enjoyed shocking the others, sticking pins haphazardly into the eyes of the defenseless dead creatures. Once she fashioned a crude earring by attaching a fish heart to a looped paper clip and wore it most of the afternoon. Finally a teacher stirred from apathy long enough to report her to the school authorities. A quick search of the rules found nothing prohibiting the ornamental display of animal organs, though Virginia was chastised for "disrupting the classroom." Of course, because of her parents' being on the school board, no one was willing to suspend her.
Because she was an untouchable, she became even more outlandish. She began wearing a black leather jacket she had found behind a bar on Devlin Street. The jacket had a huge grinning skull sewn on the back, with crimson ribbons of flesh clinging to the bone. What she was doing in that part of town, and what would happen when the owner claimed his rightful property, I never asked. She wore camouflage pants that billowed out above the ankles and adopted hiking boots long before it became a weary fashion.
We quickly became inseparable. She saw behind the granite facade of indifference I hid behind, saw the sensitive child inside the man I was awkwardly becoming, or maybe she peeked through the windows of the Bone House. In turn, I encouraged her originality and served as a willing audience for her stunts. She was "Negative Girl" and I was "Her Poet," not because I ever wrote anything but scribbles on napkins, but because I wore thick glasses with black frames and she mistook my involuntary solitude for intellectual disdain. We began meeting at the football field during lunch, sitting in the bleachers and looking for gods in the April clouds.
Our friendship had been based on mutual distrust of "the system," and our relationship had been confined to school hours. In some secret locker in my heart, I had stored a small hope of something more. Certainly not love, not ever again love, Sally had carved that coffin and Mother had driven the nails. Virginia caused me to twitch, and she inflicted a vague ache I hadn't known since Hope Hill's aromatic hair.
One lunch hour at the football field, she went for the kill. "What really happened that night, Richard?"
I smelled the grass that a worker was mowing, smelled the lilies that grew in the marshy moat around the press box. I counted the wrens that were sitting on a power line overhead. There were seven.
"I don't know for sure. I guess what they wrote in the papers is probably the truth."
"Didn't your mother ever talk about it?"
"I suppose she's trying to forget." Just like I was
"Doesn't it freak you out?"
To know that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control? Even if you made them happen? Though I enjoyed looking into those blue eyes, I turned away from her. "I don't want to talk it about it anymore."
She touched my shoulder. "Hey, Poet, it's okay."
Three sparrows flew away.
"We all have our secrets. Forget about it," she said.
Forgetting was my sole occupation. Or rather, soul occupation, as Mister Milktoast put it. He loved his puns.
"Richard?"
I looked at the power line. The sparrows were gone, stolen by the freedom of wings.
"What?"
"Let's go out on a date."
I turned back to her and fought upstream against the force of her eyes. After a moment, I was breathing again. I smiled, trying out unfamiliar muscles. "Are you kidding?"
"Well, I can't wait forever. Were you ever going to ask me?"
"You're the Negative Girl." Though I wasn't a writer until much later, until I started this autobiography, I'd already come to know the emasculating sting of rejection.
"And you're afraid of me."
No, just afraid of myself. And the secret person inside. Or all three of us. "Your Poet fears only words," I said.
"Words like 'yes'?"
I nodded my head, afraid to say it. She laughed.
"I'd go anywhere with you." I stared with desperate eyes, hoping their loneliness glittered instead of stabbed. She returned my smile, and her face outshone the spring sun.
My heart soared like the sparrows. Then it plunged, shot down by worry. I had never dated. How should I dress? How did normal people do this? Was I supposed to get tickets to the ballet, or was a coffee house more in order? Was I supposed to try to kiss her? French her?
I hadn't told Virginia I lived in my car. She probably thought my slovenly appearance was just more disdain, a further rebuke of the straight world. I didn't want to take her home to meet my mother, either. There would be none of the niceties of a storybook courtship.
"As long as you drive," I said. She had made fun of my old rusty sedan when I pointed it out among the gleaming cars in the school parking lot. She drove a jet-black Mitsubishi, given to her by her grandfather, who had been a county commissioner and realtor for decades and had owned half of Ottaqua at one time or another.
"Okay, but you can't say anything about my speeding. I've got a foot of lead in this here shit-kicking boot," she said.
"Are you trying to scare me away?" I'd delved into the melodramatic pop of The Smiths and The Cure, music best described as "Let's fuck and die." I assumed that air of nihilistic nonchalance. "What better way to go than in a massacre of metal and gasoline?"
"That's my Poet, finding romance in violence," she said, laughing with the confidence of one who was young enough to think the future rolled on endlessly, with no detours or red lights to slow the ride.
"I'll meet you tonight." I sensed I had a date with destiny as well as with this wild and wonderful girl. Something stirred inside the Bone House, but I made sure the doors were closed and bolted.
"Come here to the football field at seven and we'll figure out what to do," I said, so casually it might have been rehearsed. Or spoken by someone else. "Maybe we can catch a movie down at the Flick, go out for pizza or something."
Normal, safe, teenage stuff.
"Or we can sit and watch the stars, talk about people. Get away from it all." Virginia's voice had taken on a dreamy quality, and she idly twirled a strand of her white-blonde hair. There was a promise in her words, or perhaps a threat. Anticipation of either rushed blood to my head, choking off reason. I was ready to risk everything for a chance to be close to her. And, she didn't know it, but so was she.
We walked back to the main building. She blew me a kiss just before we parted, then made a snatching motion with her hand, pretending to put the imaginary kiss in her pocket. Corny, but we both knew it was corny, which made it much more daring.
"For later," she said, and at that moment I fell in love for real.
"Fell" is the proper word for it, or "autumned," as Mister Milktoast would say. I was rushing from dizzy heights. My chest expanded like a helium balloon. The clouds spun and the sky bled blue as I watched her walk through the doors. So this was what those FM radio songs were about.
The rest of the day blurred by. After school, I stopped by my mother's place for some clean clothes. I had been storing my stuff in the trunk of the Valiant, but everything smelled of musty metal and gasoline. Mother had left my bedroom untouched, perhaps in the hope that I would one day return. I pulled into the cluttered driveway and headed up the apartment steps, determined to get in and out quickly. When I went inside, she was slouched at the kitchen table in a matted gray bathrobe, gazing out the window at the big beech tree across the street, or maybe a dead squirrel that had been caught in a rundown.
An army of liquor bottles covered the linoleum floor. Flies hovered over half-empty plates of food, finding heaven in the heaps of fetid meat and moldy pools of gravy. The stench of bourbon hung thick and sweet in the air, along with a deeper, ranker odor. Mother was sitting in her own vomit.
She gave me a bleary look.
"My big boy's home," she rasped, her cracked lips trying to smile, but even that coordination was beyond her. Her lips wiggled like a pair of fat earthworms mating on a hotplate. A strand of yellow drool ran from one corner of her mouth, collecting at the base of her chin, and a gob fell into her lap as she lifted her head.
She had aged a dozen years in the weeks since I had last seen her. Creases and splotches fought for domination on the ruined topography of her face. The late afternoon sun through the window sharpened her features, sparing not a single wrinkle. The light was honest and brutal.
She looked at me with puffy prizefighter eyes, her swollen red lids like overripe fruit. I looked into them and shuddered.
This woman had endured unimaginable pain to bring me into the world, in an assault of fire and needles between her bloody thighs. This woman had sung me lullabies, changed my diapers, and given me suckle from her stretch-marked breasts. This woman had delivered me to my earliest and most terrible enemy and then absolved herself through voluntary amnesia. Her weakness paved the road of my childhood with blood and bruises. Her love had covered up my gravest sin like flowers smothering a coffin.
She spread her arms, like a crippled bat trying to take flight. Her robe fell open, revealing her scrawny, pink nakedness.
"Come here and give Mommy a big hug," she said.
No love is more sacred than that between mother and son. All maternal kinships should resemble a Renaissance painting of Madonna and Child. The mother with her milk-white skin and healthy blush of rose at her cheeks, gazing lovingly down at the plump-faced infant who is wearing a cherubic smile. An ideal captured in oil, preferably with dramatic clouds etched overhead, funneling holy light. But here, in this true illusion of life, there is no such graceful light and there are no virginal births.
A black rage rolled over me. I wanted to reach across the table and pull Mother out of her filth, slap her across the face until I drove out whatever demons she harbored. But I knew the demons. I had inherited them and they walked the halls of my Bone House.
The rage passed, and as the dark veil dissolved, I saw her as she really was, weak and scared and self-deluded. She sought any escape she could find and was willing to go to obscene extremes for distraction. She was to be pitied, not hated.
The one who was to be hated was beyond the reach of retribution. If there was blame, it lay with him. He had done irreparable damage, plowed mad furrows in the fields of our lives and sown salt, then had escaped into death. I could only hope there was a hell, or somewhere even more deserving of his wretched citizenship.
"Mother," I said, brushing her wiry, unkempt hair away from her waxen forehead. "You don't have to do this."
She began crying. I would have thought those eyes had been wrung dry long ago, like a bed sheet twisted in the hands of an impassive washwoman. But crystal tears collected in their corners, glistening around the rims before beginning their slow, sad journey down her cheeks. Emotions always disgusted me, whether my own or another's.
"...not your fault...," she said, between sobs. "My poor baby...it's not your fault."
"Shh, it's okay now. You've just had a little too much to drink. Everything will be okay."
"I'm so sorry...for everything."
I held her by the chin and wiped her face with the dirty cloth of my shirtsleeve. She reached for the mayonnaise jar she used for a tumbler, her fingertips smearing fresh prints on the greasy glass. She was no longer bothering with ice cubes. Ice only slowed her descent into oblivion. Watered-down suicide.
"I had to get away, Mother. After everything else, at least we had each other. But even that turned bad. We're still in his shadow."
"I just get so lonely sometimes." Her tears gave out, and glass reclaimed her eyes.
"I do, too. I miss you, Mother."
"Then come back."
"You know I can't."
I began clearing the dishes off the table. I carried a stack of plates over to the sink, my back turned to her. The world beyond the window was a place of sky and sunshine, a landscape that couldn't possibly house such miseries as ours. On the sidewalk, two girls played hopscotch, taking turns skipping through blue-chalked squares.
"It can be like before...like, you know...all of it."
"Never again. Not after that."
"But it happened."
"That wasn't us. That couldn't have been us."
"How can you say that? You were there," she said. Her drunkenness had turned cold, her voice arctic.
"Because I had to be," I said, unwilling to face her. "Do you think I knew what was happening? I was only a child."
"But not innocent."
"Nobody's innocent."
I could hear the clink of glass and a gurgling sound as she refilled her drink. She took an audible gulp. Her throat must have been stripped of all sensation by her prolonged abuse. Her sibilants mushed with a smooth familiarity, as if she had delivered this soliloquy to the uncaring air many times.
"He was your father. No matter what else, that can't be changed. You're the flesh of his flesh. And they say blood runs thick. Blood runs thicker than water."
I rattled the dishes and turned on the faucet full force, trying to drown out her damning words.
"Thicker than water," she repeated, softly, but I could hear her even over the roaring in my ears. I ran out of the kitchen. The thunderstorm of rage was returning, stretching from a closet deep inside my Bone House, widening like the flat Midwestern horizon outside.
It was Little Hitler, the bastard child of night, the one I thought was extinct, his mission accomplished. His return was triumphant and cruel as he wallowed in my misfortune and savored the lemony sting of my pain. He brought with him his baggage of paranoia and deceit, as well as memories I hoped had been forever buried. He had desecrated that grave of time gone by, unearthing my most horrible moment and dragging its skeleton through the halls of my head.
"No, no, no!" I shouted, pressing my hands against my temples, trying to physically squeeze Little Hitler out.
Mother thought I was yelling at her. I could hear her stirring, trying to flog her wasted leg muscles into standing up.
My spasms eased and light returned. I stood on the threshold of my room and the threshold of my past. I found myself sagging against the door jamb. The memory had been beaten down, reinterred. Little Hitler was gone.
I went into my room. It was like entering the museum of someone else's life. Exhibit A: My old desk, where I had built model cars, the top pitted where spilled glue had eaten through the polyurethane finish. Exhibit B: A poster of The Beatles, curling at the corners, taped at the creases where the paper had split with age. John, Paul, George, and Ringo looked down like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Exhibit C: My pine-slatted bed, the blankets spread but wrinkled, where I had knelt in prayer, where I had cuddled teddy bears, where Mother had told me goodnight stories, where boots had walked, where Mister Milktoast sobbed, where me and Mother had...
Where monsters had crawled from the darkened space beneath, where horrors real and imagined had transpired.
The room was just as I had left it. I was afraid Mother might have begun sleeping there, to dream of flesh and meadows, spring rain and sin, with my scent on the pillow. But the bedspread was the same one that had been there when I had moved out, and it was unstained.
I looked out the window above my desk. It was partially open, and a small breeze played through the dingy curtains. Many times I had gazed at this scene. The garage next door was unchanged, still flaking battleship-gray paint from its cinder-block walls. The lot was strewn with junk cars, engines that had been raped and tossed aside, rusting metal scraps that covered the ground like red bones. The smell of gasoline and grease clogged the air around the building. The occasional ringing of a tool falling on the concrete floor mixed with revving motors and the rowdy voices of mechanics in a symphony of atonal masculinity.
To the rear of the garage was a sliver of the street, and beyond that, a scraggly patch of woods. A gap had been cut through the trees by the power company, the trimmed precision out of place in that forlorn foothold of nature. I had played in those woods as a child, blissful stolen hours away from home with Mister Milktoast as my only company.
At the end of the garage lot was the old dog pen I had used as a secret clubhouse. Where I had kissed Sally Bakken in my tenth year. Where I had uncrossed my heart and risked death. Now honeysuckle vines choked the fence, and the roof of the doghouse had collapsed under the weight of tireless rot.
In the distance, a cornfield stood, waving young starchy arms. The wind cut over the tops of the stalks and pressed out gentle patterns that resembled ocean waves searching for a shore. Many times I had sailed away in my mind, across that imaginary green sea and over the horizon, to a land where little boys were never punished.
I went to the closet. My clothes hung there as if from gallows. The person who had worn them had been prosecuted for his crimes. Not in the halls of human justice, but in the highest court. Judgment had been passed, with appeal denied. Richard Allen Coldiron was condemned to serve a life sentence as himself.
I turned and walked out of the room, leaving it to gather cobwebs and cracks.
Mother was halfway through her drink when I entered into the kitchen. Flies buzzed around her head, frantic now that their food supply had disappeared. One landed on Mother's nose and fiddled its front legs as if washing up before dinner. She didn't notice, and it drank freely of her toxic sweat.
"You're mad at me, aren't you?" Her voice was cracked and coarse.
"No," I said. "I don't care enough to be mad."
"Why don't you sit down and tell me about what's going on in your life? Talk to your Mom?"
"There's nothing to say."
"You know how hard I tried to change."
"People never change."
"I need to drink. It's the only way I can forget. But it only works once in a while."
"That's good for you, but what about me?"
"What about you?" She finally noticed the fly and brushed it away.
"Don't you think I'm trying to forget, too? And that coming back just makes it harder? Why do you think I left?"
"Because of that...and the drinking?"
"You make me sick, Mother. Just look at yourself. You can't even make it to the sink to vomit. How much longer before you can't get to the bathroom?"
"But you love me," she said, giving me that crooked, watery smile.
"Because I have to."
"Is Mommy pretty?"
People never changed. They only got worse.
"Ask the mirror." I wished I hadn't come. I wished I had never left. I wished.
I turned at the door and looked back at her. She was a well-known stranger, a familiar alien. We had been through so much together. Too much to ever be close again.
"When are you coming back?" she said, running her trembling, knotty finger over the rim of her jar. Mercifully, she had drawn her robe so that it once again covered her chest.
"I'll be back. But not to stay."
"Do you need money?"
"I'm fine."
"You be good now." Her voice had taken on a faraway quality, as if she were speaking to the golden boy I had never been. That I had never been allowed to be.
I looked back a final time as I walked out into the unforgiving sun. Mother's eyes were like searchlights, their wavery beams crawling across the floor, looking for an undrained bottle. She had already forgotten I had been there. She had boarded her ship. She was sailing across a sea of her own, to a land where mothers never had to say they were sorry.
I drove back to the football field to meet Virginia. Despite the bright beauty of the spring evening, and what little snatches of fragrant blossom I caught among the smell of burning motor oil, I found no peace in nature. The encounter with Mother lingered, leaving an acrid aftertaste. I negotiated the straight flat streets as if I were being pulled along by an outside power, like reluctant electricity drawn through a circuit.
Virginia was waiting when I got there, arms folded, leaning against her car. I was cheered by the sight of her expressive face. She had selected navy blue slacks in place of her camouflage. The fabric clung tightly to her flesh, showing the sleek promise of her curves. I felt underdressed since I had on a twice-worn red flannel shirt and blue jeans hardened with overuse. But she was wearing her brazen leather jacket and her usual arrogant pout, so I decided maybe not much had changed.
She grinned at me. I don't know if I was openly ogling her or if my mind was away, back in the hellhole of Mother's apartment. I caught myself and adopted my role as the Poet, putting on my subliminal smile. Even without giving my face over to the people in the Bone House, I had learned to fake it.
I pulled my car up beside hers. We got in her Mitsubishi and looked across the handbrake at each other.
"Where to now?" she asked, leaning back and stiff-arming the wheel like a race-car driver.
"Let's just get out of here," I said.
I was replaying the scene with Mother in my head, and I had to let that episode fade to gray before I could relax. I stared through the windshield as we went across the parking lot and down the black ribbon of asphalt. Virginia must have thought I was being reflective, thinking deep poetic thoughts. End the line with whatever rhymes with "fake."
She hadn't lied about her craving for speed, because as soon as we hit the long stretches of road that were lined with nothing but cornfield and flood ditch, she bottomed out the gas pedal. We were doing over a hundred miles an hour, a black bullet shot from an aimless gun, hurtling through the Iowa evening. I looked out the passenger-side window and everything was a green blur, and farther out was the fixed point of the horizon, as if we were at rest and the Earth revolving under us at an insane speed. At any moment, the world would lose its integrity, disintegrate into pieces, and gravity would fail, flinging us into the vast emptiness of space.
Air, its peace broken and cleaved, roared angrily beneath and around the car. The engine whirred at a frantic pitch, pistons protesting the extreme stress. The tires were making contact with the road only as an afterthought. My body unconsciously braced for a crash, but my mind was unmoved, an impartial observer.
I looked at Virginia, and her face was clenched, her eyes perhaps seeing beyond the highway. Seeing and desiring. The tip of her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth and her eyes shone like motor oil in a mud puddle, iridescent and madly beautiful. I could tell she wasn't showing off. She was simply showing.
Maybe our lives are defined by specific moments. Perhaps we each have a photograph hanging in some vast hall in an afterworld, our essence captured for eternity. If so, that was Virginia's snapshot, hunched in ecstasy, mocking mortality, straddling the dividing line and ready to roll either way, into death or further life. But if that was her photograph, some dismal cosmic curator had to shuffle down the hall and replace it, because of what happened later.
I was pushed back against my seat by the invisible hand of inertia. My senses were heightened by danger, the primitive fight-or-flight syndrome. Nervous sweat collected in my armpits and along my scalp line. I could smell cinnamon from the gum wrappers in the ashtray, even over the chemical odor of the vinyl upholstery. I could smell Virginia's hair, enriched by expensive shampoo and twice as potent as Hope Hill's, and underneath that, the stale honey of her feminine skin. I could feel dirt under my fingernails and microscopic lice tilling the dust of my flesh. The virginal stubble under my chin tingled. Bittersweet coppery death played in my mouth, frolicking around my teeth and tickling my tonsils, gaily tempting me to swallow.
We hit a small ridge in the road and became briefly airborne. The gyrating world had thrown us, finally giving us to the heavens. Six eternities passed, hundreds of stars consumed the gases of their own bellies and collapsed, galaxies pinwheeled in reverse until they were handfuls of nothingness, gods spilled their seed prematurely. Virginia gasped, her cheeks flushed from simultaneous orgasm with those gods. Then we touched down with a groan of metal and rubber, back among mortals, the Earth reconstituted.
Virginia eased off the pedal and we slowed to a speed that was merely unsafe. Her eyes widened as her system greedily produced and devoured adrenalin. We crossed a bridge that spanned a small creek, our slipstream rattling the rusty "Caution" sign as we passed. The silvery waters underneath swept on to the Mississippi Delta, unimpressed.
Virginia looked at me to see if I was afraid. I wasn't there. I had been replaced. Mister Milktoast was in my driver's seat, protecting me. These little pretend games of death were antique hat to him. After surviving boots, these were tiddlywinks and jacks, played in safe sunshine.
"That was fun, wasn't it?" she said, her sultry voice pitched higher in her excitement.
"That's what I like," Mister Milktoast said, stifling a mock yawn. "Going nowhere backwards."
"Well, I'm a good driver. I might become an Indy car racer someday."
"What about your career as a biologist?"
"You can only go so far. After you get to the bone, there's nothing left." She took one hand from the wheel to casually brush back a strand of yellow hair.
"I'm not so sure. They say beauty's only skin deep, but who really knows?"
"And what do you think?"
"About beauty or about your career?"
"Beauty. What does a poet know about anything else?"
"Okay. Beauty is like pornography. I know it when I see it."
"Have you seen it?"
"Beauty or pornography?"
She laughed and said, "I guess you can see both at the same time. But I meant beauty."
"I see it now, with new eyes." Mister Milktoast loved the sly little play on words. I was the only one in on the joke.
She glanced at me, still giddy from the rush of danger. She slowed further and began looking around at the scenery. We were twenty miles from town, far from the familiar stomping grounds of our lives, but our lives were relentless pursuers. We had briefly escaped, but had now been tracked down and recaptured.
Mister Milktoast gave back my body. Maybe he figured I'd be needing it.
"I'll live on a farm someday," she said.
"You don't sound so enthusiastic about it."
"It's so peaceful out here in the country."
"There's no place for a negative girl. These hands weren't made to hang laundry and shuck corn," I said, reaching over and touching her hand, running my fingers over the pad of her thumb, then holding.
We rode in silence, looking out of our steel and glass bubble like two goldfish, gaping at a world we could never enter. Checkerboards of farms spread out in the distance and the sun was beginning to set, throwing mystical orange light over the land. Silos stood in silhouette, mute witnesses to years both fat and lean. Barns sagged, spine-weary from the constant weight of hay. Dots of brown cattle grazed with enthusiasm, unknowingly speeding their fate. At farmhouse dinner tables, rough-handed men were having plates of steaming biscuits passed to them. Through this lonely country we rolled, silent observers of a land that had no use for the likes of us.
This land owned people. These flat brown fields tied people down like scarecrows. More than seed was planted here. People were planted, too, their roots gripping the soil with feverish, bone-worn desperation. Generations had scratched in this dirt, facing withering drought and suffocating snow with equanimity, reaping their harvests of pain and misery. These were not our people.
I realized at that moment that I had to leave. Graduation was only six weeks away. All I had here was Mother and her bizarre self-torture, the punishment for my past sin that had spilled onto her, indelibly staining both our lives. And, briefly, I had Virginia. I looked over at her.
"What are you doing after you graduate?" she asked, as if she had read my mind.
Her tongue had slipped back out and then in, like a snake poking out of its den to check the weather. Her high cheeks were pink with joy. Her ocean-blue eyes twinkled, mermaid's eyes, as if she knew of secret underwater places. I fell into those eyes, swam in their crisp waters, bathed myself clean.
"I don't know yet. Maybe go to college, but not right away. What about you?"
"You mean after my racing career is over?" She laughed and snapped on the radio, music by Kansas or Boston or one of those other bands irrevocably tied to their geography.
"I guess that will keep you busy, but I suspect you're going to need more than speed to be happy."
"Well, you have family here, don't you?"
Family. Mother, the matron saint of bourbon. Father, long dead, but not nearly long enough. Mister Milktoast, who would never leave me. Little Hitler, who would never let me leave him.
"No," I said, unable to explain. "There's nothing for me here."
"Are you already giving up on us, before we've even started?"
"I didn't know there was an 'us.' I thought you drove me out here in the country to scare me to death, then leave my body in a ditch by the side of the road."
"No, that's only the guys I don't like."
"Which is most of them?"
"Check the ditches."
"Okay, I'm not giving up," I said.
"I've given up. I surrender."
"To me?" I knew my romantic style was lame, but given my role models, it could have been worse.
"Well, to everything. You know back there, when we going a hundred and ten? I do that at least twice a week. And you know what?"
The mirth had left her voice, and her words were weak with melancholy. I wasn't sure if she was trying to shock me or impress me.
"What?"
"Every single time, this whole spring, I've wanted to turn the wheel and go into the ditch. To tumble and roll until there wasn't enough left of me to fill a Dixie cup."
A hush fell over the car, weighty as a boulder, and even the tinny rock music couldn't squelch it.
"Why?" I said, my voice a whisper.
"Because. I have everything I want. All the money I could ever spend. I've got a perfect sit-com family. Dad plays golf and Mom's the president of the PTA. Both on the goddamned school board, for Christ's sake. They keep telling me what a bright future I have ahead of me. But I'm fucking miserable."
I said nothing.
"What would you do if you had everything you ever wanted?" she said.
I started to say, "Get laid a lot," but that wasn't the kind of thing you bring up when you're trying to get laid. Plus, considering the way I lost my virginity, it wasn't a subject I wanted to broach.
She continued. "Tonight, I was going to take you with me. Get you out here and then wreck us, turn us both into chopped liver. And I almost did it, too. And I don't even know why."
A moment of dead silence. Something fell off a shelf in the Bone House.
"What stopped you?" I finally asked.
"Because it wouldn't be fair. I want to die, I want to go into the hellfire the minister always threatened me with. I deserve it. But I don't want to go alone. I'm afraid to go alone. Isn't that lame?"
Some dead president once said there was nothing to fear but fear itself. He died anyway, and he killed a lot of people on his way to the grave. So fuck that. Be afraid.
"Why do you want to die?" I finally asked, because there were no other words.
"How could I make you understand, Richard? You're weird, but a normal kind of weird. I'm so screwed up all the time, and I don't have anybody to talk to. I just want to get out of this life, away from the goddamn voices."
"Voices?" I swallowed my heart. It tasted like licorice.
"Nobody can understand. Not even you."
"You can talk to me. I'm your Poet, remember?"
"You're probably just like the others, just want to get between my legs for a little horizontal hoedown, then throw me aside like a cum rag. Why the hell did I think you were any different?"
Tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes, the water of her blue seas spilling hotly down her cheeks. Women and their tears. And they wondered why men took advantage of them. She pulled over to the side of the deserted road and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel. The radio shifted into something with a bass line that sounded like a march into the sea.
After a second that seemed a year, I touched her hair gently and leaned close. What a couple we made, Romeo and Juliet gone insane, huddled in a dark car in the Iowa twilight. Crickets fiddled among the cornrows; otherwise, nothing interrupted the starry silence but noise that drifted from a distant antenna.
We were two souls reaching out to each other across a great gulf, tenuously connecting over a pit of despair and loneliness and bleak imagery. Virginia with her death wish and false bravado, and me with my headful of little friends and a thirst for whatever liquid I could squeeze from the moon. The odds would have been greatly against us no matter the circumstances. As it was, we had no chance.
Maybe we should have died together. A fitting end to nothing. But somebody had other plans.
"Tell me about the voices," I said.
"You'll think I'm crazy," Virginia said, between soft sobs.
"This world makes people crazy. It's a survival mechanism." I scooted closer to her.
I was disoriented, as if this intimacy was beyond me, as if it were another doing the touching and I was an alien butterfly emerging from a black cocoon, fluttering madly toward the light.
Virginia's tears had stopped, but I could see the streaks on her face in the lunar glow. Her features were shrouded in darkness except the glint of her eyes. But as I looked at her, it was as if I were peering down a long dark hall, removed from the world of sight and sound. The one looking through my eyes was hard and cold, the one who moved my arms toward her was not me.
I had felt this way before, on that long ago night that I did not want to remember. I could only watch, horrified yet fascinated, as this new thing, this part of me, this hidden self tried on my flesh as it were a thrift shop suit. It liked the fit and gray was always in style.
"I hear voices in my head, Richard." Virginia's words echoed from across a dead universe, bits of broken sound. The thing that was me and not me nodded at her in the dark. "I hear them all the time. I can't make them shut up."
"We all hear voices, Virginia." His voice was a shadow of mine, his tone soothing yet flat, almost mechanical. "Some people just don't listen. Those are the crazy ones, don't you think?"
Whose words did he say? Mine, or his own? You'd think after all this time I'd have figured it out, but I'm still reluctant to choose sides until I know who wins.
Virginia was startled into silence.
"What do your voices say?" we asked.
Chirping crickets. Stupid, four-on-the-floor FM classic rock turned low. Her breathing, fast and shallow. A rustling breeze among cornstalks. The hooting of an unseen owl. The ticking of the cooling motor.
"You believe me?" she asked.
"Why would you lie?"
"To get what I want."
"What do you want?"
"Everything and nothing. Attention. To be loved. Isn't that what we all want?"
"Aren't you loved? You have a family."
"Sure. Daddy loved me, all right. So hard it hurt. Since I was seven."
What was she telling me?
Not that. Not her? Inside my Bone House, I was horrified, repulsed at the depravities that humans could inflict on their own flesh and blood. Incestuous perversion, the kind of thing that makes you clamp your hands over your eyes but spread your fingers for just the tiniest peek.
But this Loverboy-thing, the fresh me, he was juiced. He smelled pain the way a predator senses weakness in the prey. He savored the aroma. "You mean..."
"Yeah." Her voice fell, the air made fragile. "I didn't know what he was doing, not until later. But by then, I couldn't stop him. But even the first time, I knew it was wrong somehow. Maybe it was the way he kept calling it 'our little secret.'"
Secrets. You'd think we'd all learn. Instead, we keep trusting. We keep on crossing our hearts and hoping to die.
Loverboy's comforting hands searched, found her, held her in the dark.
"I thought it was the way all daddies loved their little girls. The bastard."
"Did you ever tell anyone?" I hoped she hadn't.
"My mom, once. I told her Daddy was touching me in ways that made me feel strange. She said Daddy was just showing his love. She didn't want to know. She had garden clubs and church bazaars, appointments at the hairdresser, hospital fundraisers, local politics and stuff. She didn't want to be bothered with family problems.
"At first, it was just once in a while, so far apart that I almost forgot about it. I guess it probably happened more than I remember, because sometimes I would come back to myself, as if I had been away. I'd be hurting down there and sticky, and I felt dizzy, like I'd been spinning too fast on a merry-go-round. And I'd see Daddy later, and he wouldn't look me in the eye. That's when I knew that we were doing a bad thing."
"He was doing a bad thing. You weren't to blame." I couldn't tell if that was me saying it, or if Loverboy was trying a sensitive route into her flesh. Maybe there was no difference.
"He gave me ice cream, after."
Ice cream. The moon had risen higher, a sick white smile among the leering stars. Virginia was a black silhouette against the weak blanket of light outside the car. I could see the quiescent angles of her profile now, her lips parted, words waiting in her mouth.
"It's the little girl's voice that talks to me the most. She's always afraid. She doesn't want me to talk to people. She wants to play dolls."
"Is she talking to you now?" Loverboy moved closer, until he could feel the stirring of her breath. I was helpless, watching this monster inside me stripmine her past, extracting nightmarish ore. Or maybe I was riding the coal car.
Her voice became childish, sing-songy. "No. She goes away when men are around. She thinks men are bad."
Headlights glared on the horizon, disembodied white eyes that grew in size as they approached. In their light, I saw Virginia's face. The dark circles of shadows around her eyes made her look like a cornered animal. Her skin was almost translucent, and for a fleeting moment, I was afraid she was going to slip from under my hands, turn to mist, and join the nightfog that hovered over the ground outside. But they weren't my hands, they were Loverboy's, and he wasn't ready to let go.
The headlights swept onto us, flooding us in their searing brilliance. It was a battered pickup truck, the kind that every farmer in the country drove. It slowed a little as it passed. Perhaps the driver thought we had car trouble, that we had broken down here miles from anywhere. We were stranded, all right, but on a road from which there could be no rescue. The truck's tail lights brightened as the driver touched the brakes, and then the lights winked and hurried off into the distance, red eyes that marked the evil twin of the white eyes.
Leaving us to ourselves. All of our selves.
"And there's a tough girl, older," Virginia said, her voice going deep and coarse. "She started when I was fourteen, when I finally started fighting back. She calls herself 'the Bitch.'
"She stole this jacket off a barstool. She likes to make me go to biker bars and strip joints, dangerous places, so she can show what a badass she is. She gets me to drink until I black out. She's got me to shoot heroin, too. Huddled me down in a fucking alley in Des Moines littered with winos and big rats, kneeling in puddles of stale piss and gutter trash with a rubber tube around my arm. Some faceless dick with rotten breath melts down the shit in a spoon, with a couple of us strangers gathered round like cavemen at the first fire.
"Then the dick, the voodoo-man, sticks the shiny tip of a needle in the liquid and draws it up, and I hold out my arm and he slides it in, a hundred bucks a hit, and it's warm gold, it's blue wax, it's a fucking lime-yellow cloud that changes into a horse with wings, floats down and carries me away. And I'm sweat and death and God and goddamned. And the bitch likes it, maybe she even lets the voodoo-man fuck her, maybe any of the strangers, too. But it's me lying there helpless, me with my back on wet newspapers and rags while they take turns.
"Then they're gone, and it's just me, staring at the faraway streetlights, collecting my bones and putting them back together, fumbling for my clothes in the dark, getting up and walking back to the world I had flown out of. But you know what?"
The night and Loverboy both waited for her to answer her own question.
"The Bitch thought she was escaping. That out there, there would be no fucking problems. But it's only a bigger prison. It only goes so far. Well, fuck it all anyway."
The edge left her voice and she sounded weary, defeated. "There's enough of me left to stay away long enough to not get hooked. Part of me worries that I'll get AIDS, that maybe the Bitch wants me to get AIDS. But that's not so bad. AIDS is normal. AIDS kills you safely. It's the other things I worry about."
She paused. The silent dark was like a smooth onyx cliff face on which we were both grappling for purchase. Only I didn't control my own fingers.
"Like wanting to kill people," she said matter-of-factly. "Now do you think I'm crazy?"
I wasn't one to judge. I had real blood, hot and red, on my hands. Not theoretical blood in some faraway future. And I had liked it. No, no, no, that had been Little Hitler. Or Mother. Anybody but me.
I finally spoke, surprised I still had voice. "You said you had wanted to kill us in a car crash. But you didn't. You don't really even want to kill yourself."
"Sure, I don't. But I'm weak, and I'm getting weaker. The Bitch has her way with me more and more often. And this new one. It really scares me."
"New one?"
"It came with the Bitch, but it doesn't do much. It just hangs around in the back of my head. But once in a while, it whispers. Nasty things. And it's bad. It wants to make me hurt people."
Her voice had become the child's again, then just as quickly shifted back. I thought of Mrs. Ball, the high school counselor, and how she'd tried to trick me with Freudian horseshit. Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar, but sometimes it was a banana. Loverboy preferred the banana.
"Hey, I know about Sybil, multiple personality disorder, and all that," she said. "I thought about going to a shrink. But what good would that do? What could I say? 'Hey, Doc, I got too many birds in the lighthouse. Give me some ice cream and let's fuck.'"
She laughed bitterly. "I know I'd end up in a rubber room somewhere, wasted on a dozen different tranquilizers, half the time pounding my head against the wall, the other half sucking my thumb and staring off into space. Hell, the Bitch might even like that. And the little girl, at least she'd be safe. But this other voice, it wouldn't like that at all. It says it has plans for me."
"Plans?"
"Its voice is cold, like it's been dead a long time, trapped under ice water. Why am I telling you this? I knew you wouldn't understand."
How could I tell her about my Little People, the residents of the Bone House, a personal commune of confusion where no one ever did the laundry? I knew the courage it took for her to bare her soul like this, to expose herself to my scorn and ridicule. I was aware of the trust she was placing in me, the tiny crystal snowflake of her sanity she was exposing. But I could say nothing. Loverboy was feeding on her vulnerability, growing stronger. He took my mouth.
Besides, anybody dumb enough to trust deserves whatever they get. You just lose all respect for them.
"I understand," Loverboy said, and drew closer to her in the dark. "It's okay to be different. I like you for who you are."
"Who the fuck am I?"
"You're Virginia. Don't ever forget that. No matter what else, you've got yourself, even if the whole world is screwed up. And I'll be here for you."
"Aren't you afraid of me? I just told you I wanted to kill you.
"But you didn't kill me. Or yourself. You want to live."
Loverboy held her with my arms, smelling her tension, raw and metallic. My strange Loverboy voice was soothing and artificial, a baritone of betrayal. "I'll help you, Virginia."
"Richard..."
"Shh. It's going to be okay."
I pressed my face against her cheek, there under the distant Midwestern moon. Outside the car, among the corn and sparse forest that surrounded us, night creatures scurried for food or shelter in an unending circle of death, mocked by the laughing wind. Miles away, people huddled in front of the blue campfires of television sets, frantic from having too much time and burdened with having to spend it all. Back in Ottaqua, Mother was probably passed out face down in her own filth.
Virginia and I were alone. We were on an island beset by inky oceans, and the darkness extended into the heavens and beyond, behind the curtain of stars and galactic debris it had thrown up for illusion's sake. The true darkness that was behind everything.
My lips met the delicate shell of her ear.
"Daddy wants sugar," Loverboy whispered.
"What?" the chick said.
Why the fuck did I say that? I'd better be careful, or I won't be peeling the old banana tonight. No monkey business. And, thanks, Richard, for letting me be the first-person, present-tense narrator here, because, let's face it, you know how to write but you couldn't fuck your way out of a soggy Hilton sister. Leave that part to me. "Uh---I said I wanted to kiss you."
"I like you, Richard, maybe even love you, but right now I'm so screwed up, I can't trust my feelings. After all I've told you, I can't believe you haven't jumped out of the car and run into the cornfields."
Richard? Oh, yeah, what's-his-face, the one who went away. I feel him back there somewhere, watching from the dark. Such a spaghetti dick. Let him stay back there. Let's see, what would he say next?
"Hey, Virginia, it'll be all right." And it'll be even more all right when I get into those hot little pants, girl. Come on, give it up to the man. Let Loverboy rock you. Hey, don't push my hand away. You know you want it.
"I don't know. I'm just so confused right now. I'm not even sure why I wanted to go out with you. Maybe I sensed you weren't like the others, that maybe you'd listen instead of going for an easy lay. Because I've never told anybody else about this. I just feel so naked right now, like all the layers of my soul have been stripped away. I'm afraid."
Yeah, easy lay, naked, riding bareback, that's the idea here. Take it all off, baby, uh-huh, strip those reservations right now and quit pretending to act vulnerable. Because first we have to go through this fucked-up game where I have to pretend to give a damn. But, hey, the end justifies the means. And your end is pretty fucking worthy of justification, babe.
So think, think, think. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I won't let anything hurt you."
"That's fine for out here, in the real world. But what about in my head? Are you going to go in there and protect me?"
"Trust me." Yeah. "Trust," that's what that limp-wristed Richard would say. Now I'll just reach out here ever so slowly for your knee---what's this? Oh, the goddamned gearshift. Whoever invented foreign cars didn't know shit about getting laid.
Ah, there, nice, soft skin. Well, pants, anyway, but I can feel the heat underneath. I can get them off in time, no problemo, my man. Just be easy right now. I don't care if the old six-inch submarine's ready to plow through dry dock and go deep. Patience is the key. Time it just right, and I'll do more skindiving than Jacques-fucking-Costeau.
"I want to trust somebody, Richard. I just don't want to be alone."
"I won't let you be alone, Virginia. I like being close to you, I like spending time with you. I don't care what kind of problems you have, I know we can work them out." Maybe you and that Richard-fuck back there can. Just let me have what I want and you can have that codpopper all to yourself. The two of you can sit and talk about relationships over coffee and whole-wheat bagels tomorrow morning. Maybe he'll even get you to buy. But I need some tonight. I need a bite of that sweet honey bun.
"I know you wouldn't hurt me on purpose, but the way things are, you're bound to get tired of me after a while."
Hey, turn off the waterworks, baby. Damn. I thought I was making progress. I wish that "bitch" would come out, the one she said liked to get laid. She'd be on her back right now, with those big buttery bagel thighs spread open and---hell, I better work with what I've got. She'll like it if I brush her tears away. Yeah, she'll think I'm sensitive. "Hey, I won't get tired of you. I'm just now getting to know you. And I like what I see so far."
Ah, there we go. Her skin's so soft. She's got fine curves. Breasts like---think romantically, now, be creative, damn it---breasts like firm loaves of fresh-baked pumpernickel. Hmm, a little weak. I guess Cheese Crotch is the poet, not me.
"Promise you won't ever hate me?"
Hate you? Hell, no, I'm a lover, sweetmeat, and now that you've got me on this pastry kick, I want to lick the frosting right off your little love doughnut. Come on, Richie, feed me some fucking one-liners here. I'm doing this for both of us. "Hate you? How could anybody ever hate you?"
"Daddy must have."
Dear old Daddy. Broke it in early, huh? Well, don't hold that shit against me. On second thought, hold it against me. All of it, until it squishes. "He's got his own problems. The important thing is to remember that it's not your fault."
"Richard, you're so nice to me."
Yeah, but nice won't drill you. You need it hard and hot, make you feel like a real woman, make you feel whole again. Yeah, a hole, that's right, you're a hole, waiting to be filled. And I've got the John Deere front-end loader right here to do the job. And old Richie-wuss back there can watch. See how a real Bob the Builder operates. "I just want you to feel like it's okay to be different. I like you the way you are."
"Even with my voices?"
Voices? What a bunch of crap. Everybody's got voices, don't they? Look at old Richie here. But he's not saying anything, is he? Cat must have his tongue. And this little pussycat here is going to have my tongue. "The Virginia I know is warm, friendly, and human, with a great sense of humor. She's special, and she makes me feel good. She wears fashionable fish-hearts."
"Oh, Richard."
Hey. Laughter. That's good. Get away from that sentimental, morbid stuff and get her relaxed. Now, if I can just---yeah, there we go. These damned bucket seats weren't made for the old boybone bootscoot, that's for sure. And this bulky leather jacket of hers, that's a pain to work through. Hey, she may be into leather, but I want to get her out of leather.
Loverboy, you're a fucking riot, even if I do say so myself, and there's nobody around to shut me up. Right, Richie? Man, her hair smells good. And her breath on my neck. Yeah, that tingles, all the way down to there. "You know something?"
"What?"
"I've been admiring you for a long time. Remember all those times you caught me looking at you in Biology class?" Yeah, Richie, I was there, even if you didn't know it. I'm a sneaky little bastard.
"Of course I caught you. You were sitting there all bug-eyed with your tongue hanging out, looking like one of those pickled-assed bullfrogs we cut up. But lots of guys look at me like that."
"Well, I was imagining that you were a great sculpture, maybe a Greek goddess fashioned in creamy marble, placed high on a hill where all the citizens could pay tribute. Because such beauty deserves to be worshipped." Hey, that was pretty good. And she's laughing again. She's flattered. She's probably heard a thousand come-on lines, but nothing like this. Let's work this angle a little. You're on a roll, Loverboy.
"Richard, where do you come up with this stuff?"
I wonder that myself. "And the beauty without is only a pale shadow of the beauty within."
Heh, this poetic horseshit works. Richie never would have thought of anything like this. Goddamn, I'm good. Now, let me get close to those lips again. Maybe this time I'll get a little sugar for the soul. Yeah, closer, closer, she's not backing away, yes, yes, YES.
"Mmmmm. Richard."
Soft, tasty lips. She's murmuring now, practically purring. Loverboy, she's putty in your hands, wet dough, roll her, feel her biscuity shapes, yeah, go down her back a little, not too fast...there, she's willing, she's getting there. Okay...
Goddammit, what the hell? Here comes a damn car. Out here in the middle of fucking nowhere in the dead of night and some cornfed yokel's got to hoof it down the only road in this Godforsaken corner of the county. I'd better ease off a little so they don't think somebody's getting raped or something.
Shit.
They didn't even slow down. Probably thought we were a couple of homicidal maniacs out for a night's hunt, just waiting for some fuckwit to stop. Crazy old world these days. Now, back to business. Ah, she's nice and toasty, nothing like cuddling on a chilly spring night like this. That's good, just play around the lips a little, I think she's ready for me to slip her a little tongue, yeah, open up just a little. Whoa, she's not buying it. Man, she's one long slow drink. Damn.
"Richard?"
"What, honey?" Is calling her "honey" being too forward? But hey, she's the one who asked me out tonight. She's the one who drove me out to the asshole-end of Iowa and pulled over in Deadsville. She must have at least suspected I'd want to slip her the old sesame stick. And she must have wanted it a little bit herself. We could have fucking talked back in the Ottaqua Waffle Shop. Damn, there I go with the food again. I must be hungry. But man don't get bred by bread alone. Heh, heh.
Wait, that was Mister Milktoast, that other little squishy dude hanging back there with Richie. He needs to just shut his ass up if he knows what's good for him.
"I don't think we're ready for this."
Not ready for this? Hell, your yeast is rising. That oven's not going to get any warmer. And I've got the rolling pin right here in my pants. "Not ready for this? But it feels so natural."
"I laid my heart out for you, all my secrets. And I really do appreciate you listening. And caring. But I still feel as if I hardly know you."
What's there to know? I've got a long hard French loaf with your name on it. Don't make it complicated. Who cares if old Richie-kins went away, the one you like so much? I look the same, wear the same clothes, I've got his brown hair and goddamned myopic eyes. Even this voice is the same, though it's a little too squeaky for a stud like me. Much as I hate it, our dicks are the same size. I must admit, though, I'm just a little bit harder than Richie could ever be. And besides, I thought all us swinging dicks were just alike to you chicks. "What you see is what you get. I'm not that hard to figure out. So I'm a little bit weird on the outside, but inside, I'm just like everybody else."
Except for those other fucking runts scrabbling around back there with Richard. Like they'd ever get any action without me.
"But I don't want you to be like everybody else, Richard."
Crap. Now we're back to this sensitivity bit. This is getting me nowhere. Going in fucking circles. And the old heat-seeking missile's about ready for lift-off. "I'm your Poet. And you're my Negative Girl. But that doesn't mean you have to say 'no' to everything."
"I'm not saying 'no,' I'm just saying 'not yet.'"
Easy, now. Thin ice here. The old conundrum, that Mars and Venus thing. She's talking "relationship" while I'm talking a few squirts between friends. She's about to get pissed off, and that will virtually guarantee no biscuit-making tonight. But she still hasn't pushed my hands away. Think, Loverboy. If you're really the world's greatest, then you can turn this little situation around. Wonder what that little fuckwit Richie would say to her? Hey, Rich, you back there? What are you doing, diddling yourself in the dark? Help me out here. I'm your pal.
What? You serious?
Damn, that's brilliant. You're a genius, Richie, even if you're a pathetic loser. Why didn't I think of that? Probably because my balls are the size of Mississippi watermelons. Hang in there, my hairy friends, relief may be in sight. Let me play the card I've got up my sleeve, the ace in the hole that may get the ace in the hole. "I love you, Virginia."
Let it sink in, give it a chance to shiver through her body, down there to the inner workings. Down there where it matters. Ah, she just now sighed. Bingo, my man. Let's sauce the old noodle, let's do the doggie dance, let's wrap the Maypole, let's wax the tadpole, let's get ready to fucking rumble.
"I'm not ready."
What the fuck?
"I know you probably think you mean it. But I have to be sure."
Sure? I know the moonlight's pathetic, but damn, girl, you ought to be able to sense the bulge in my crotch. It's twitching like a caged weasel, and it's all because of you. Here, let me unzip, let the weasel go "pop," cut to the fucking chase.
"Richard? What are you doing?"
What does it look like? Now you're putting on the virgin act? It's not like you've never seen one before. Go on, touch it, it won't bite you. Much.
"Richard, stop it."
Goddamn, she's trying to claw my fucking eyes out. Where'd those damned glasses go?
"You son of a bitch."
"I love you." Hammer it home and maybe you'll nail her yet.
"You don't do that to people you love."
Love. Christ in a crème brulee.
Well, you blew this one big-time, Loverboy. You could probably go ahead and take her, but hell, getting there's half the fun. And you're a lover, not a fighter. Let her save it for a fucking rainy day. Probably wants to keep it all in the family anyway. And it's not like I won't have other chances. Hear that, Richie-fuck? I'll be back.
Right now, I'm going back to my room, way back there away from this crazy bitch. What a waste. Well, let her have the Mini Meat if she's so worked up about him. I don't want to be around anyway when these blue balls start aching.
She's all yours, Richie, my man.
Thanks for sharing.
We drove home in silence. Virginia had been nearly physically raped, I had been totally mentally raped. There was no speeding on the road back to Ottaqua, no joyous headlong rushing into the hot jaws of oblivion, none of the wild velocities of the ride out. Only the sullen moon, hanging like a dead maggot in the night sky, tracking our motion. The two people who had set out as wide-eyed children on a great adventure were returning beaten and broken, made ancient with misery.
I felt like a puppet with no hand inside. Spent, used, tossed aside. Somewhere in the complicated shadows, I was harboring Loverboy. And what was most horrible was the realization that I was responsible for him. That he had sprung full-blown from the demented crypts of my mind. That I had in some way fathered this monstrosity.
But when he came out, I was helpless. I was pushed back, locked away in the Bone House, where I could only watch, repelled yet fascinated. I could never have been that self-confident, that arrogant. Such stores of aggressiveness had been tapped only once before, in the darkest moment of my past, when Little Hitler had worn my flesh and committed patricide. Even Mister Milktoast, my comforter and pacifier, had dissipated before Loverboy's all-consuming ardor.
Worse, there was some part of me in Loverboy, some wedge of my own terrible salacity. I had shared his arousal, his desire to inflict his turgid sex upon Virginia. But I was sickened by his brutal disregard for her feelings. How could I comfort her after she had told so much, opened herself so completely, only, in her eyes, to have me turn into a cruel, venal beast?
We entered the crumbling, dimly lit outskirts of Ottaqua. The streets were deserted, as if we had come upon a ghost town that even the dead had abandoned. A scattering of cold empty buildings greeted us, their black windows watching like suspicious eyes. I tried my voice, afraid that it was not yet fully mine. "Virginia, what happened back there...I'd just like to try and explain."
"I thought everything was perfectly clear." Her voice was flat, tone-dead. Under the weak glare of the streetlights, I could see her blue eyes staring ahead, shimmering with tears she wouldn't let herself shed.
"I wasn't myself." As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to grab them and shove them back inside, to swallow them and choke on their bitterness.
"Yeah, sure. Let me guess. A little voice in your head made you do it. Now there's a real original idea." She was back behind her walls again, the walls of a complex castle that she must have built over the years to protect herself. She had opened the gate just a crack, on the slim hope that maybe the enemy outside the walls wasn't waiting to conquer her after all. And I had stormed inside, salted her courtyards, dismantled her turrets, put torch to the battlements of her trust.
No, I hadn't. Loverboy was the invader. Always someone else to blame.
"What I mean is...I'm sorry, Virginia."
"Don't be. At least you were honest. Showed me right up front where I stood with you. I guess I ought to at least thank you for not stringing me along."
She had risen to sarcasm. Maybe that was a sign of healing. A sole to heel, Mister Milktoast whispered. If you foot the bill.
"I know you're mad at me and probably disappointed," I said. "But I hope you don't give up on us."
"Us? It takes two to make an 'us,' and I thought there was only you. You and whatever you wanted."
"Please try and understand. I never wanted to hurt you."
"Understanding is just one of your little word games to get in my pants. I'll bet you were laughing on the inside the whole time. God, what a fool I was to even think somebody cared. And that word 'love'..."
Her tears broke loose, found fresh paths down her smooth round cheeks. She turned the car into the parking lot where I had left my Valiant. She stopped and we sat without speaking.
A distant siren wailed, a punctuation mark on the desolate night. "I guess there's nothing else to say," she said, finally.
There's sackcloth in your closet, Mister Milktoast whispered. And ashes in your hearth.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I said, and The Poet groped for that one final stanza. "And, Virginia...I am sorry."
If only I had known there was no tomorrow. Many times in the years after, I replayed that night, that parting, as if it were a decent Bogart film, and in my mind I tried a thousand different lines, a thousand different last chances. All films, like all memories, become scratched and worn, foggy with age. But the images fly past in the same sequence, over and over again, unchanged. In the end, there's only the words "The End."
"The end is the chief thing of all," Aristotle once wrote. And here I am, still in the middle. If heaven exists, and if I ever make it there, I'm going to find Aristotle, rip off his fucking robe, wrap it around his scrawny Greek neck, and squeeze until his eyeballs pop.
I got out and stood in the moist April air, watching her drive away. I walked numbly to my car. I stared at the lights over the football field, stared without blinking until my eyes burned, stared until my tears blurred the lights, making them into fat shiny stars.
I wondered why we had to live in a world where everything was somebody's fault. Somebody had to be sorry. Somebody had to be wrong. And somebody had to pay. Virginia. Mother. Father. Sally Bakken. Loverboy. Mister Milktoast. Little Hitler. All the people who had touched my life. Who had squeezed at it, picked at it until it was an open sore, raw and gangrenescent.
I burrowed under a pile of dirty clothes in the front seat of the Valiant, trying to worm myself into sleep. The soft velvet curtain of slumber teased me, gamboling around the edges of my consciousness. But when I reached for it to wrap myself in its black-fibered folds, it danced away, leaving me with the hot electric currents of my thoughts. Finally, the thoughts fractured into nonsense and scurried into the corners of my consciousness, and the curtains of the Bone House drew closed.
Surrounded by a mist backlit and imbued with fluorescent shades of lavender, aqua, and chromium yellow, the colors of madness shimmering in an obscene parody of a rainbow. Formless, weightless. A brighter but unwholesome radiance, flickering among the malchromatic ribbons, summoning. I must go there.
Discordant music, a haunting melody turned inside out, the sound of shadows made merry, ominous droning bass at the threshold of reason underlying lilting notes played on impossible instruments, scherzo chaos in the wings, brazen bridges leaping unjustly to piercing heights of altissimo, invisible strings vibrating at random, all rising to an impotent crescendo.
The radiance swells, hovers, absorbs, a bloated luminescence. Among its ethereal wisps, a shape. Monolithic, primitive matter. Changing. Weaving itself from amorphous threads. A chimera taking human form. Virginia.
She comes to me, swathed only in elegant vapor, crossing the insubstantial landscape. Her arms upturned, yielding, inviting. Face glowing with rapture, eyes glittering specks, ashen hair fluttering in the directionless wind. Approaching without motion.
Her skin is effervescent, writhing as if unseen creatures are wriggling underneath and animating her flesh. Her mouth opens, an impossible black cavern between the twitching arc of her lips. Inside, things darker than black flit and slither, entwining in a sinuous coalition that becomes her tongue.
She is close now, leaning, and I cannot run. My legs are fused to the unseen landscape. I am both stage prop and star in the drama.
Her hands reach for the side of my face, fingers splayed in mocking tenderness. Her fingers caress me, crawl lightly over my cheeks like lithesome snakes. Her touch is ice, frozen, dead. Her wrists are gaping like her mouth, a red slit in each, and grotesque creatures are fluttering in there as well.
Her lips are on me, her breath putrid and foul, rich with decay. The elusive kiss is finally mine, given with feral and relentless passion. The black thing inside her mouth that is masquerading as her tongue enters me, probes me, squirms in violent intercourse. The tart acid of tomb dust violates my taste buds. I feel a small hot ember of desire in my soul, a desire beyond flesh, a yearning deeper than lust and earthly sin.
Please, no, but oh, yes, don't...stop...don't...don't stop.
Her trout-skin tongue ejaculates cold and vile fluids, darkness made substance, flooding me with glaciers, and I welcome the penetration, I shatter and become whole.
I am aloof, blissful, as Virginia withdraws. The glitter of her eyes fades, their crazed illumination dying like sunken suns. Her flesh unwraps itself, and she is absorbed into the swirling iridescence. She is etherealizing, her limbs and then her torso merging with the mist. Last to dissolve is her eyes, which hover for a thick, fleeting eternity. The onyx dots of her pupils expand into the blue irises and then over into the milky white sclera. Her eyes become black orbs, dead stars, then nothing, only a coiling tendril of darkness that wends into the uncoordinated bands of rainbows and then disappears.
I lunge into the mist, chasing her, I fight the colors that have become solid and play over my skin, embracing me, binding me, choking me...
I awoke in a cold sweat. The old clothes that served as my blankets were tangled around my arms. My journey through a brief stream-of-pompousness interlude to denote a dream sequence was a little clumsy, but I crawled onto the shores of consciousness all the same.
I opened my eyes, saw the incomplete darkness that was only night. I saw electrical light and stars through the windshield that were only radiant energy. I saw the fog of my breath that was only water vapor. I saw that I had flesh that was only flesh. My throat burned with infection. My head pounded as if my skulltop had lifted like a roof in a hurricane and had been nailed back into place by a hundred hammers.
I closed my eyes again, searching for a place between sleep and dream, beyond the insane reach of either. Somehow the night passed.
The next morning, I went to school. It was a mechanical act, as if I were too numb to make decisions. I was a robot, programmed to routine. The dream followed me like a bad case of Mexican-food gas.
I searched the halls for Virginia, needing to talk to her before classes started. Perhaps the damage wasn't irreparable, and if I could explain myself in the light of day, my behavior wouldn't seem so horrible. I desperately looked for her face among the crowd, afraid she would be too ashamed or disgusted to come to school that morning. My classmates seemed to be evading me even more than usual, as if this were the day I might be packing a semiautomatic.
Brickman stepped out of the gabbling masses, Brickman the peddler who sold oregano joints to the freshmen.
"What's up, Coldiron?" he said, slapping me on the back so heartily it hurt. A few of his dull moronic friends gathered around, friends he had bought with stolen beer and porn magazines. "Surprised to see you here today."
"What do you care?"
"Hey, is that any way to talk to a friend?"
"I don't have any money, so there's no use threatening to beat me up."
The attention was unusual. I had a reputation for being a loner, for being so unpredictable and perhaps dangerous that I escaped harassment. There were easier pickings walking the gray and scuffed tiles of the school corridors. What could I have that Brickman and his gap-toothed disciples wanted?
"I'm here to help you, man."
"Fuck off."
A silence fell as the gang waited to see how Brickman would respond to the challenge. He warmed to the spotlight and swelled his chest a little. "I was just offering my comfort in this time of sorrow."
"Sorrow? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Your hot lady friend. The one you been hangin' around with."
"What?" Had she told him, confided in this monster somehow? Impossible.
"Haven't you heard?" His pimply face broke into a black grin. I wanted to drive my fist into his vacuous mouth.
"Heard what?" I said.
"She killed herself last night."
Time stopped as his words hung in the air, words that dripped with glee. My heart stopped as well, caught between beats.
Brickman's voice came from somewhere far away. "Slashed her wrists, man. Painted the town red. Fucked herself up but good."
Even through the veil that was dropping between me and the real world, a gray gauze that both swaddled and bound, I understood what Brickman wanted. Not money. Money was all around, money could be taken. Brickman wanted what he and his ilk treasured above all else. The currency of pain.
I elbowed him in the stomach and broke through the crowd, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of my tears.
He shouted after me as I ran down the hall. "Hey, man, I fucked her twice."
His greasy pack of jackals howled with laughter as I burst through the doors, the sound swelling to a roar that filled my ears and compressed my skull, crushed me to charcoal.
When awareness returned, I was in the Valiant, driving toward the horizon, racing into the sun. I glanced in the rearview mirror and Ottaqua was shrinking, its decrepit and rundown buildings becoming golden stubble on the landscape. It had never looked so beautiful as it did while disappearing.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, looked at the person that had lived my life. I looked behind my glasses into the dirt-brown weeping eyes that looked then beyond themselves into invisible faces. Faces that laughed and cried and mocked and smirked and stared back with black determination. The ones inside my head who had no intention of being left behind.
The Bone House grew wheels and the Little People were along for the ride.
I thought only of Virginia as the states whirred past under my frantic tires. I had driven across the flat prairies of Illinois and Indiana, each mile of straight ribbon highway the same as the one before, with only the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to mark my progress. I slid through the soft hills of Kentucky while the sun set like a fat orange dime dropping into the slot of a broken pay phone. In the darkness, the Appalachian Mountains guided me up and on, as if in on some cosmic joke and anxious to see the punch line. Shady Valley, North Carolina, opened its crusty eyes in the morning to find that I had perched on its shoulder like a weary nightbird.
Under the new dawn, I drove through the narrow streets of Shady Valley, past the silent sleeping brick and the small dirt squares of garden. Tops of dormitories sparkled through the dewy oaks. I was too young to remember Westridge University from my first and only visit, but I had read of it. Old wooden houses with creekstone bases huddled near the road, their outbuildings camping under brown-blossomed apple trees. I wondered if one of those tired lonely houses had been Granddad's.
My eyes were puffy from a night of peering at the sweeping broom-edge of the headlights. The Valiant groaned, its pistons sick of thin oil and its joints creaky with automotive arthritis. I pulled behind an abandoned gas station, wrapped my head in dirty shirts, and slept. No dreams or inner voices rang their tinny bells.
I lived there for weeks, sleeping in my car, with only an ashtray full of coins keeping me from starvation while I tried to figure out my next step. Suicide was an option, of course, but maybe I wanted to hang around to finish my life and start this book. Sometimes you don't know the reason for things. Some clowns say you have to let God take control, but fuck that fucker. Any sonofabitch who'd let a man rape his own little girl had no control and sure as hell didn't deserve to meet me before I was ready to bitchslap Him back to the Book of Genesis. This called for spiritual cross-training, more forging by fire, beating soul plows into swords.
I found a bookstore called the Paper Paradise down on the main highway. I began spending my days there, drinking free coffee and haunting the aisles, finding comfort in the borrowed imaginations of books the way I had done as a child. I believe that was where Bookworm was born, squirming into the light of my consciousness, as I turned those pages and met Jung and Freud, Dante and Homer, Mohammed and Buddha.
Bookworm could have been there all along. It is horrible to not even know your own mind. But maybe none of us do, and that's why we share these stories, even though half of everything is bullshit. We never know which half, and it keeps changing on us, so all we can do is keep searching and guessing and turning the page. Pray that you don't get a paper cut.
I was holding a hardback copy of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha when the woman I came to know as Miss Billingsly came up behind me. I had seen her at the counter often enough to know she was the storeowner, and I tried to stay out of her sight as much as possible. Too bad I couldn't be as invisible as my Bone House roommates.
"I see you know how to treat a book," she said, in her firmly gentle voice. I turned and she was looking at me over the top of her glasses. "You don't stretch it wide open and break the spine like most people do."
She had a sharp Roman nose and the iron-gray patches in her dark hair gave her a stern aspect, which was part of the reason that I avoided her. She pushed her cat-eye glasses up the steep slope of her nose. She was in constant battle with the glasses. They skied down her nose, cutting a slow slalom on her skin, then stopped at the slight bulb at the end of the run. They perched precariously there before leaping into space when she tilted her head. The glasses landed safely on her drooping bosom, dangling from a gold chain.
"I would never harm a book," I said. Only people, Little Hitler whispered, especially the ones I tried to love. I was afraid she was about to order me out of the store, exile me from my only refuge.
"I've seen you in here almost every day for three weeks. But I've never seen you buy anything."
I shrugged. "It's not because I don't want to."
"You're not a student, are you? When they come in to buy books, they have a list and a grimace, as if they've been sent to cut a hickory switch that's going to be used on their bare hind ends."
I was too uncertain to laugh, wondering where this was leading. "No, but I might go back to school someday. I just moved here."
She put her glasses back on. They instantly slid an inch down her nose. She peered over them like a school marm. "Where from?" she asked, hands on her hips.
"Iowa." Also known to me as Purgatory, The Seventh Stage of Hell, Auschwitz, the Badlands, that little room where you pee in a cup for a cancer test.
"A Midwesterner, huh? Did you start suffering from agoraphobia?"
If only I had such mundane fears. The truth? I killed my father, I'm working on killing my mother, I drove my first true love to kill herself, and the people in my head won't let me commit suicide. Other than that, I heard the scenery here was nice.
"Shady Valley seemed like a peaceful place to move to," I said. "My grandfather lived here once."
"I can see you love books. I tell you what, I need somebody to work here during the day. I've had a stream of students working for me, but they're always going off on vacations without giving notice. I'd like to have somebody who knows a little about books and has the time to spare. And you surely can't have a job, as much time as you're spending here."
I looked down at the floor, avoiding her schoolmarm gaze.
She continued, "That wasn't meant to be an insult. I'm offering you a job. A mutually beneficial relationship, I hope."
"But you don't know anything about me."
"What's there to know? If you can run a cash register, I don't care if you're the devil's keeper. Besides," she said, pointing at my mug, "if I'm going to keep you in coffee, I may as well get some work out of you. So, are you interested, Mr.---?"
"Richard Hitler. I mean Coldiron. Richard Coldiron, ma'am."
"Let me get the forms for you to sign, then I'll give you the official orientation." She cocked one of her sienna eyes. "Unless you have other plans for the day..."
"I was going to be here anyway."
I managed a weak smile, or maybe it was Mister Milktoast or even the new one, Bookworm. She pushed her glasses up her nose again and went into the storeroom. I started working at the Paper Paradise that day, though I did have to write my goddamned birth date on the job application. I lied about it, of course.
I worked there for four years, saved enough money to buy a small house and settle down to something resembling a routine. A lot of other stuff happened, some of it probably important, but don't you hate it when you're right in the middle of a good story and the author veers off into some meaningless masturbation? Sometimes you have to hit the fast-forward button. Any scars from that period are still scars, and the highlights will probably become important later on. I'll let you know if any of it turns out to matter. Trust me.
Though I made my home in the North Carolina mountains, Iowa may as well be in my front yard, it's so much a part of my daily existence. The terrain is different; here, granite has been squeezed up from the Earth's crust and coated with dark alluvial soil, instead of being bulldozed flat by ancient glaciers and paved with red clay. But rain and snow still fall from the same sky, and the same sun still burns holes through the clouds.
When those clouds are blown by a hard northwestern wind and make shadows on the ground, I sometimes see faces in the mountains, fleeting black ghosts. If only the dead would stay dead, did not fly that way across the stands of ash and poplar, did not flit over the stunted, acid-raped balsams at the highest peaks that are ghosts themselves, perhaps my escape would have been successful. But those dead always move on, lance me with memories and then head to the Atlantic. It's the other ghosts that truly haunt, the other ghosts that linger and which no winds touch. Those without faces or else wearing my own.
I had hoped that here in these time-worn Appalachian mountains, I could lose myself among the rocks and streams, duck into the vast laurel thickets where the light never reaches. I could become loam, lie down and rot with the brown leaves, find noble purpose as food for grubs. Then perhaps my soul could emerge, cleansed of sins, to cavort with woodsprites and squirrels.
But nature and that bastard God, in their sadistic wisdom, have overblessed me with the gift of life. Instead of one soul for which to beg forgiveness, I get a congregation. But their sins are not their own, because they spill over onto me. And I can't be sure if there is a part of me that motivates them, that has forced them to share my darkness, that has nourished them with possessive poison.
The sun reached through the windows of my house all day and the trees provided enough of a border that the lot seemed larger than half an acre. My neighbors kept to themselves, waved politely while mowing their lawns or hanging birdhouses from birch limbs. We were strangers, keeping our secrets as carefully as fences, in separate worlds only yards apart.
I wrote to Mother after I settled down, more out of guilt than a son's love. What did I hope to hear? That she had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and rededicated her life to Christ? That she had peddled the rights to her life story to be used in a made-for-TV movie? That somehow the drinking had permanently blacked out the past, so we could again safely be family?
I received an occasional rough-cornered postcard, featuring Mother's bleary scrawl, asking me to come home because she was getting lonely. Three times I sat in my packed car in my driveway, with several free days ahead, time enough for the drive to Iowa. Each time, I reached for the key and froze. I had escaped those memories, or at least put time and distance between them, and there I was, about to drive straight down a one-way street to a bone-littered tar pit.
I could hear myself as she opened the door.
"You're looking real good, Mother." Despite the roadmap of broken blood vessels on your face, despite your watery red eyes, despite your mottled skin that you insist on exposing far too intimately.
"No, really, the years have been kind to you." Kind enough to bring you closer to a restful grave and farther from the past.
"You haven't changed a bit." You're still drinking two pints a day and your breath is still rancid and you still don't look a day over a hundred and ten.
"It can be just like the old days." Except I don't have another father and you don't have a husband to dance with, because the medical examiner most definitely did not bury him with his boots on. If the dead someday rise up and walk, that's one corpse that will be barefoot.
"I'm so excited about the future." Because one day you will fall face-first in your own vomit and the flies will lay eggs in your eyes and at last I can be able to say "I love you" again. And my own time will expire, my own clock will wind down, and these little people in the Bone House will jump ship like a pack of wharf rats, leaving me finally and forever alone.
"Oh, yes, and the reason I hate you is because you heaped shit on me, guilt with one hand and love with the other. Because you apologized for your state of chronic denial. Because you fucking forgave me, when you should have nailed me to a dirty dogwood."
And after I envisioned this loathsome reunion, my hand dropped from the key and I unpacked the car and I got on with a life that would never end too soon. And I could write her a letter, telling her how the frost makes the grass sparkle magically and how the mountains have souls and the creek beds sing here and the wind bends the pines like green sails, telling her a thousand things about the world that swirls on around me. But I never, ever dared show anything of myself, of the son she raised who might or might not have emotions or tears or triumphs, who may or may not remember childhood's dreadful rites of passage, rites surely not meant to end in human sacrifice.
And I could never write how I hated Father, not merely because of the years of fearing his boots, not merely because he happened to die, not merely because he died by my hand or her hand or Little Hitler's hand, but because we only killed him once instead of inflicting the thousand deaths he deserved.
And I could never thank her for protecting me, for enduring the taunts and whispers and accusations that followed her trial, for unselfishly throwing herself on the spears and daggers of public opinion. Because if we had been found out and stopped then, perhaps others might have been spared.
And I could never forgive her for trying to love me as no mother should love her son, even though surely there was room for forgiveness in my vampire heart. And, though her motives for loving may have been pure, the road of good intentions is paved with broken glass and the clabbered milk of kindness and maybe some shitty asphalt.
So I wrote instead of the slick-furred groundhog who lived under the barn up the road, of the backyard blue jays that battled in a flurry of soft feathers over mating rights, of the moles that cut endless random symbols in the soil, of the dying oak tree whose limbs were blue-gray with weary age. I wrote of Arlie Wesson and his tentacled astronauts, Martha Billingsly's hair done in a beehive that sagged like a sack of wet raccoons, Denny Moody's pickup truck with the deer antlers sticking out each side of the cab, Brittany's freshest tattoo, D.J. Uncle Daddy's latest obnoxious morning show jingle on the local AM station.
And I always came to the part where I had to write "Love, Richard," and each time I wrote a lie, folded the paper, and licked the strip of glue, sealed it not with a kiss but with mere saliva for a woman who could not know the meaning of a word she had never heard.
And I placed the letters in the mailbox, raised the red steel flag, and went back inside, my guilt assuaged for mother-writing but not for everything else. I could have happily grown old fooling myself, fooling everyone, pretending to believe in picnics and sunshine, yellow butterflies and flowering forsythia, Dick Clark and Froot Loops.
But if I hit fast-forward on the rest of my life, then I wouldn't have much to write about. And, to be perfectly honest for a change, I'm afraid of what will happen if I ever finish this story. Maybe you're the person who is making all this seem real. Without you, I really am alone.
So let's see together, so neither of us has to be too afraid.
Because then came Beth, sweet Beth, true love Beth, the woman of my dreams, the kitten of my ka-boodle, who sent my heart kiting skyward to hell.
I met Beth at the gallery in the Westridge University Student Union. I went to art shows there to knock the dust off my brain, so I could at least watch how the rest of the human race played the existence game, even if I had to stay on the sidelines. Besides, Mister Milktoast liked the pretty colors.
The featured works that week were done by a graduate student who labored under the self-applied label of "postfuturism." The label was a handy excuse to combine the flat cubes of Picasso with the sensual serenity of Gauguin without bothering to master a disciplined style. The canvases swam with broadly applied pastels in uncoordinated bands of mauve, peach, and salmon.
I stood before a "landscape," six feet high by eight feet wide, as if the artist were proving true the old saying that size matters. On this surface, which strained to crush not three dimensions into two, but two dimensions into one, the artist had sopped on a background of oils thinned with mineral spirits so that every weave of the canvas showed through. Then, in a remarkable tribute to Brueghel, the artist had scattered a pollution of thick dark oil blots, which were scratched outwards in the impression of a hundred starry stick figures. To add insult to injury, a few daubs a la Van Gogh littered the lower right corner of the painting. As an afterthought, three or four collections of green dots, too obviously gouged by the wooden tip of the brush, hinted at trees. A dozen painters were rolling over in their graves, entire Flemish cemeteries were in turmoil.
I read the card beneath the painting: "In this work, entitled 'Landscape, Inner View,' I explored the imbalance between symmetry and the actual chaos underlying the most basic forms. What is a square but four lines? What is a cube but twelve lines? What is a circle but one line connected to itself? These principles, applied to nature and given color, make up the world we see. But when stripped bare, we see the world as it actually is, lineless, vague, and transient. Sale Price, $1,975."
I was chuckling to myself when my elbow was bumped. I looked beside me to see a young woman with a canvas backpack under her arms, taking notes in a pocket composition book. She studied the painting as if there were actually something to see, then wrote in the notebook, her jaw clenched in concentration.
She wore a too-round brown felt hat with a floppy brim, and her hair stuck out underneath like straws of toasted amber. She had thick, earnest eyelashes and her eyebrows were poised on her forehead as if they were frozen in a constant inquisitive stare. Her mouth was a red primrose, dewy and delicate. Her cream-colored wool sweater was rolled up at the sleeves, setting off the healthy tan of her skin. Loverboy twitched but I battened down his hatches.
She spoke without looking at me. "What's so funny?"
There were other people in the gallery, but we were alone in this corner, twin victims of the garish painting. Its ugliness shone like a painful light.
"Just admiring the coming wave of great art in America," I said. Or maybe I was mouthing a mix of Bookworm's intellectual aloofness and Loverboy's smartassed seduction.
"And you find it funny?" She bent over her notes.
"Well, I must give it points for sheer brass."
"Brass? I don't see that color." Her nose wrinkled prettily as she looked at the painting. Little Hitler wanted to slap her, Loverboy wanted to...do that thing Loverboy did.
"'Color is mere absence of non-color,'" I said with mock gravity, perhaps quoting some great painter. It should have been a famous quote, if it wasn't. I'd have to ask Mister Milktoast later.
"If it's non-color, then you can see it even when it's not there," she said mock-seriously, then looked into my eyes. I drank greedily of the dark rings of her irises, green rings flecked with gold that glittered like sapphires in a seedbed. My face, our face, must have been too hard, too stern and uninviting, because she looked down.
Her bright lips curved into a tiny moue, the primrose folding up as if touched by winter's first snow. Her cheekbones were high and finely sculpted by fingers far more feathery than those of Michelangelo. Her eyelashes fluttered like dark quick moths as she gazed at the floor.
"You're not the artist, are you?" I asked, suddenly too much aware again of my own brutal insensitivity. And of those inside my head, who might burst out at any moment like lunatic extras from an old Bette Davis movie.
"No, but I'm a friend of the artist. I'm taking notes for a class. I'm going to write a paper on her work."
I looked at the canvas, saw a black "x" scrawled in one corner. "She's a minimalist when it comes to signatures," I said, pointing.
"That's short for Xandria, which is short for Alexandria. Pretty cool, isn't it?"
"She's an American original, even down to leaving the price tag on the canvas and painting right over it."
"That's her statement that materialism ultimately pervades all artistic endeavors." She smiled, perhaps playing me like a sport fish that had a barbed hook in its mouth. I liked what the smile did to her face. I hadn't known many smiles. Loverboy leaped from the dark waters like a trout on a line but I reeled him back into the Bone House.
"So, what do you see in this thing? I mean, between the lines, of course," I said. I was enjoying playing the critic, even if I didn't own a black turtleneck or rakishly cocked beret, or even a blog for that matter. I had stewed in my own soiled juices too long, wearing isolation as insulation. I had been on a few dates since I'd been in Shady Valley, and had a few casual acquaintances sprinkled among the bookstore regulars whom I sometimes joined for lunch. But not enough contact to feel connected to the human race. Going to the movies or library or art shows were my sole escapes from my own unpleasant company.
But you know what they say: wherever you go, there you are. And there they are.
Just being close enough to smell the faint soap on her skin was as invigorating as standing under a silver waterfall. Sally's bubble-gum breath, Hope Hill's hair, Virginia's leather jacket, Mother's bourbon, all the feminine scents I'd come to know where subsumed by this new Bethness. I tried to think of mindless banter, to dredge up thoughts from some pool of wit, anything to keep the music of her voice filling my ears. Or maybe it was Loverboy, now jittering in my chest like a slam dancer on amphetamines.
Her voice played on. "See how these stick figures cower in insignificance against the sweeping vista of nature? That portrays the futility of human endeavor as well as the artist's own realization of the futility of her own work. The artist's failings are displayed proudly, almost flagrantly, yet not without a certain humility."
"Ah, self-flagellation is flaunting the obvious. And these color schemes that look like they were lifted from the interior of a 1950's diner?" I asked.
"Reality as fabrication, an artificially colored environment, nature as plastic plants and wax fruit."
"Did the artist tell you all of this?"
She hugged her notebook to the attractive curve of her chest and looked from the painting to me. "I'm working on a Masters in Art Theory. I can do this kind of stuff in my sleep."
With thoughts like that, who could ever sleep? "So you take this stuff seriously."
"Everybody's a critic. Most do it for free, but I'm going to do it for a living. Or else teach paste-eating first graders how to cut construction paper."
"Are you an artist yourself?"
"I've done my time, a few miles of charcoal scrawls and a dozen pounds of zinc-plate etching, but you know the saying about 'Those who can't, teach'?" She smiled again, forming cute lines at the corners of her mouth. Real lines, not Xandria's invisible ones. "What about you?"
"Me? An artist?"
My art was casting myself in misery as if it were bronze. Looking in the mirror as a self-portrait of the artist as satire, the artist as mud-eyed madman, the artist as inside joke. My life's work was a study in flesh, its cravings and pains, splashed in crimson on the canvas of the past. My masterpiece to date was a Father-carving, done in material so much more unforgiving of error than granite or wood.
"No, I'm no artist. Just another unpaid critic, I guess."
"So, do you want to meet the artist?"
"The mind behind the masterpiece? Certainly."
"The mouth behind the mind is now in the house."
The artist and her entourage entered through the gallery's double doors. The artist was a tall umber-skinned woman with a wide forehead and dark, piercing eyes. Her hair was cornrowed tightly against her head, and a half-dozen earrings jutted from her left ear. She wore white coveralls, the better to show the multicolored stains that proclaimed her an artist: watery turquoises, weak lavenders, and poignant grays. She walked with an air of regal arrogance, an African empress.
At her sides, crowding her like cryptic bookends, were two teenaged twin boys dressed entirely in black. They both were gaunt and wore too much makeup. The one on the left had a bright red scarf tightened around his scrawny neck and his eye shadow made him look like a malnourished raccoon. The right bookend had a bad complexion that was threatening to erupt under his mask of whiteface. I could almost hear their bones rattle as they walked.
"Hi, Beth," the artist said, stepping toward us. The twins hung in the shadows, as if the spotlights over the paintings might turn them to dust. Xandria didn't seem overjoyed to see either Beth or me. She acted as if she was rarely overjoyed about anything. "Come to the show, I see."
"I said I would. Looks like you've got an audience," Beth said, nodding at the people at the other end of the gallery. "And groupies," she added, lowering her voice and glancing toward the twins.
"Them boys don't know much about grouping. Most of their action is with each other," Xandria said. "And who are you, white boy?"
"I'm Richard," I said, extending my hand. She looked at it as if it were a drop of blood. Beth looked away, back at the painting, the hideous "Landscape, Inner View."
"You a critic?" Xandria asked.
"No, just an art admirer."
"Well, what you think?"
"The truth?"
"Hey, man, this ain't no wine-and-cheese affair here. I hang these pieces of shit on the wall and put whatever ridiculous price on 'em that I feel like at the time. Last year, some blue-haired bitch from Charlotte came up for an exhibit, and the next thing I knew I was a 'discovery,' what she called in the newspaper 'a contemporary genius, a master of Zulu urban angst.' Before that, I was just a painter, now I got to have attitude. I got to be a nigger. I got to be an oppressed bitch. Plus I got to put up with your cookie-dunkin' horseshit, too?"
Beth was laughing behind her hand.
"Hey, girl. Is this here your friend?" Xandria said, pointing at me.
She shrugged. "I just met him myself. He really likes your work."
I was caught off guard, but Mister Milktoast worked the pulleys and wires so that I nodded in response.
"Well, get in line, home fry, and ketchup. You're going to write me up nice in that paper of yours, ain't you, Beth? Say I cussed and shit?"
"Yeah. Richard's helping me. He's already given me some fresh insight. What was it you were saying, Richard? Something about 'an American original'? And something about pretension?" Just hearing Beth say my name was a sweet note, even with the sarcasm.
"Oh, Lord, do I got pretension?" Xandria drew back in mock horror. She dropped her street accent, which apparently had belonged to a stage character---something to which I could relate. "Put that in the paper, Beth. Your supercilious friend just might get you an 'A' if you listen to him. Now, pardon moi, because I see some suits down there at the other end who look like trust-fund liberals who just can't go home without 'a street-wise rendering by an African-American visionary.' Politically correct guilt keeps me in mineral spirits and Chardonnay and Virginia Slims."
"Xandria, you're nuts," Beth said.
"'Nuts' sells, girl. And Richard---it's a real pleasure to meet you. And you're in the game. Maybe I'll get you to write the little placards for my next show. And I might even lay off the asshole artist persona next time." She shrugged. "Maybe not. Ciao, mon amie."
Xandria brought her hand up near her chin and fluttered a wave of good-bye. Then she adjusted her "artist's face," stuck out her lower lip and narrowed her eyes, and slouched over to meet the adoring masses. Her bookends followed ten feet behind, as if searching for crumbs she might drop.
Beth put away her notebook. "I could say some bullshit about life imitating art, but that's been done to death. I suppose this is where I say 'So long, it was nice to meet you.'"
"And we turn and walk away, and maybe you look back and maybe you don't," I said. "And maybe we run into each other somewhere along the line, at the next great art show. Maybe one of us will be a nude model."
She looked at me, her face clear and wide and fearless. "You talk crazy. Like you're writing a book. And maybe you'll remember my name."
"Beth."
"Except maybe we never meet again, and someday you'll take your wife and kids to the park, and you'll look out over the landscape, inner view, or maybe up at a cloud and see some invisible lines. Then you'll remember me, maybe even see my face in your mind, the features fuzzy and out of place, in the wrong proportions but close enough. And you'll think to yourself, 'I wonder whatever happened to what's-her-name.'"
"Beth." I laughed, strange music in my head.
"Or maybe you go on the rest of your life and never think of me again."
"Or maybe I do think of you. Or maybe we don't meet until the next life or two."
The crowd at the end of the gallery may as well have been a thousand miles away. I felt as if I were on an island with no one else but Beth. I don't know why I felt so comfortable with her. Maybe it was Mister Milktoast oozing his harmless charm. Or maybe it was that black thing that flickered sometimes in my head like a serpent's tongue. Maybe somebody in the Bone House kitchen was playing with the chemicals again.
"I don't play 'what if.' Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee?" she asked.
My heart froze and my breath stalled in my lungs. The Bone House shook with the jumping of my inmates. No, this wasn't Virginia or Sally Bakken or Mother. Did every woman have to measure up or down to such stained ideals? Did every woman have to be either an angel bitch or virgin whore or a way to get a dollar's worth of candy or make the bedsprings squeak? And this was just an afternoon cup of coffee, not a commingling of souls or a remake of "Romeo and Juliet" or another chapter in my autobiography.
"Sure," I said, flashing a smile that felt so brittle I thought my face might break. I wondered who would wear my boots into this new territory. More importantly, who would wear my face?
We talked away the September afternoon, drinking organic Sumatran at a round concrete table outside the Student Union. The surrounding brick buildings housed enough knowledge to ensure no second-guessing or doubts. Leaves skittered and scratched across the concrete patio, whisked by the autumn wind into piles that served as mass graves. The wind also carried Styrofoam cups and half-finished homework assignments across the university compound, where the worn grass had given way to mud. The black bones of tree branches lay on the ground, broken by the frosty nights.
Beth's cheeks were pinked by the wind. She put her hat in her lap to keep it from flying away. Strands of her golden-brown hair kept blowing across her face, and she brushed them back with an impatient hand. She told me of her family back in Philadelphia, how she had come to the mountains as an escape, to get away from the crime and traffic and the press of skyscrapers and the crush of crowds.
"But I'm worried that my career as a critic will force me back to the city," she said.
"If you want to study fish, you have to go underwater. If you want to study artists, you have to go underground," I said. Of course, all my exposure to art came from books or the occasional small show. But I was good at pretending, and a little generosity never killed anyone.
"Where the wild things are. That's where it's happening. But it's the critics who make the art, not vice versa. We're like the remoras who hook themselves onto the shark and suck until we're fatter than what we're feeding on."
A wisp of steam rose from her cup, curled in on itself for a moment, then climbed the wind and disappeared.
"You don't have a very optimistic view of your future career."
"I inflate illusions. I play the art game, but I play to win."
I had to hold my nearly empty cup to keep it from blowing away. Classes were changing, and students swarmed from the brick buildings like disturbed ants from an overturned log, except ants didn't carry books. Beth stood up and took a final gulp of her coffee.
"I have a class. Nice talking to you, Richard. See you around, huh? For real."
"What if?"
"If I don't?"
She threw her backpack over her shoulder, her body swimming with grace at the movement. I swallowed the stone in my throat that must have been my heart. Not that I knew what a heart felt like, but I'd eaten many stones.
"Say, have you read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word?" I asked, trying to steal another moment of her attention, one more gaze from those jeweled eyes. In retrospect, maybe it was all Bookworm's doing. All he had was words.
"No, but I've heard of it."
"It's a must read for critics, even amateurs like me. You can borrow my copy if you'd like."
She smiled, flashing the neat, white fencerows of her teeth. "Does that mean I have to give you my phone number?"
"I suppose so. Though, again, my intentions are purely honorable."
"Boring. Remember, no 'what ifs.'"
"Okay, how about this one? You know how a preying mantis eats the head off the male after mating?"
Her eyes narrowed. Cute. "Yeah?"
"What happens when she masturbates?"
"Hmm. Wakes up to find she's slept with Franz Kafka?"
Good enough. She'd passed the audition.
She gave me her number and I watched her walk away until I could only see the top of her hat, held down by one slim hand, the brim flapping in the wind. Then she disappeared into the crowd.
Mister Milktoast approved.
"She has a nice hat, for a female," he said, from his fussily neat closet in the Bone House. "I don't think she'll hurt you. Not like Sally and those others."
"You never can tell, though," I thought, in answer. By then, I was usually smart enough to keep my mouth shut when talking to the voices in my head.
"Ah, but better to have loved and lost than to lose without getting a game piece." Mister Milktoast was fond of his distorted little aphorisms, but he would have failed miserably as a romance columnist.
"It's not love, only a chance meeting."
"Don't give me that. I can feel your heart pounding like a rain of frogs on a tin roof. It's my heart, too, remember?"
"I can fool myself, but I can never fool you, can I?"
"To thine own selves be true."
"Now just who the hell would that be, Mister M? Me? You? Or them?"
I sat on the cold concrete bench under the deep blue sky, looking at the feathery fibers of clouds inch-worming toward the east. The smell of dried leaves, soil that would stay damp until spring, and smoke coiling from a distant chimney assaulted my nose. The sharp sound of heels on the sidewalk surrounded me, accompanied by scraps of conversation that melded into hubbub. A cross-town bus honked its horn. My fingers rubbed the pebbled surface of the Styrofoam cup, my face felt the kiss of wind, my mouth held the rich oily taste of coffee. In a world of sense, I was nonsense.
I was thinking about never being alone with my thoughts.
"No man is an I-land, but maybe a me-land," Mister Milktoast chimed in.
"No, but do I have to be a whole fucking archipelago?"
"Yo, Roachtit, what are you bitching about now?" Loverboy had risen from his lusty dreams and walked down the Bone House stairs. He must have smelled meat, gotten a whiff of clean female skin, or maybe he dug the hat, too. "You finally bringing home some bacon? About time. My nuts are the size of onion rolls."
Mister Milktoast answered for me. "Now, Loverboy, there's more to a woman than her physical gifts."
"Oh, yeah, Fuckwheat? You can diddle yourself till the cows come home, talk about that emotional crap until you vomit, and that's fine for you. But, me, I got needs. And let me tell you something."
"Yes, my lascivious brother?"
"When I'm doing the synchronized snakedance, you can bet your sweet-boy ass you'll be watching."
Mister Milktoast made no answer. Loverboy retreated into the dark, triumphant.
"Love is a bed of roses, my friend, and you'll always suffer the pricks," Mister Milktoast said, then he, too, slipped off into the dark rooms of my mind, leaving me on the concrete bench, the cold flowing into me and filling me until I was as hard and fragile as an ice sculpture.
I awoke each morning during those next few weeks with Beth's name on my lips, trying to follow her back into my dissolving dreams, sure she had been in them. When I eventually mustered enough nerve to call her, she seemed pleased to hear from me. I was afraid she had been humoring me, tossing scraps of her attention to me the way a grudging retiree tosses breadcrumbs to a starving pigeon or a girl does when she thinks you might have a hunky friend she can meet later.
We talked daily after that, of art and its pretensions, of the weather, of bad novels, of the concrete ant-farm of Manhattan, and, when all else failed, of feminine politics. Bookworm came in handy then, popping up to talk about the latest browse in the Paper Paradise. I didn't know him enough to trust his motives, but he sure knew how to pontificate. And he wasn't even that boring.
Beth and I started going out together, sharing lunch or a walk or sometimes only time. She was easygoing and open, eager to share her work and her life and her dreams. I was a good listener. With all those voices in my head, I'd had lots of practice. I knew when to nod and when to shut up, which I'd learned was about all you needed to know in order to satisfy a woman's desire for constant attention. Life imitates imitation.
For the first time since Virginia's death, I was goofy with attraction. I had been afraid that we each got only one shot at love in our lives, and I had destroyed mine through Loverboy's callousness. But now my heart was reawakening, my chest expanding with the helium of desire, blood puffing with St. Valentine's poison.
On our fifth real date, after watching Hitchcock's "Strangers On a Train" at the campus theater, Beth wanted to come to my house for drinks. She was impressed that I owned a house. I suppose she was used to having a romantic rendezvous interrupted by the proverbial unwashed roommate, and I knew how that felt, though I lived alone. Since she didn't have a car, I drove her to my house, pulling into the driveway under the smoky skein of stars that made up the Milky Way.
As I opened the door, the Bone House door also opened, and I was afraid.
We stepped into my living room. Beth looked at the walls that were lined with bookshelves, and books were also stacked on the coffee table and on the floor beside the sofa and chairs. The lamp threw its cobwebbed light across the tan carpet. The room was made brown by the weight of its dull shadows. Beth didn't mention the absence of a television, something my infrequent visitors usually noticed instantly. I had all the channels I needed right inside my head.
"Nice place," she said. Pleasant. Goddamned pleasant and nothing more.
"Make yourself at home. There's the stereo, if you can get there through the mess."
I started a pot of tea and Beth put on an R.E.M. CD. She sat on the couch and sang along in a pure, pleasant voice. I brought her a glass of the Red Zinfandel that I had bought and stored in a closet in hopes of one day sharing with someone. Or maybe some genetic disposition had planted the bottle there, knowing all Coldirons eventually sought some form of escape, liquid or otherwise.
"Aren't you having any?" she asked.
"I don't drink much. But don't worry, I'm not holier-than-thou."
She has more holes than you, Mister Milktoast quipped.
"Shut up," I whispered back.
"What?"
"Tea makes me sneeze." I sniffed. It sounded enough like "Shut up" to get me off the hook.
"You're quite a bookworm," she said, surveying the shelves.
Did she know? The truth was sometimes the best possible cover story. "Yes, among other things."
"So, Richard, tell me about those things."
"What you see is what you get." Except for my Little People, the Bone House, memories, my favorite candy, and the fact that everything she said would one day end up in a book.
"You told me you came from Iowa, but nothing about your parents or anything. You didn't walk full-grown out of the cornfields, did you? A sort of 'Field of Nightmares' or something?"
Guitars chimed from the stereo speakers in repetitious riffs. Michael Stipe was mumbling enigmatic vocals over the college-rock backbeat. My past was like Stipe's lyrics, best left murky and unknown, unless I could sell the book, in which case it all was on the table. Except that thing with my mother. "Well, my past is no big deal. I try to live for the moment."
"Don't get surly. I was just asking. Can't you at least tell me the good parts?"
The good parts?
"Parts is parts," said Loverboy, before I could stub him out like a cigarette.
"Huh? Where did that come from? Don't tell me you're an amateur actor, too?"
"Nope."
"But the way your voice just changed...and your expression..."
"My run-of-the-mill evil twin. But back to my past...the best part was moving up here and meeting you," I said, feeling Loverboy twitch in my brain like a frantic fetus kicking its mother's uterine walls.
"Flattery will get you everywhere. But I'm not that easily put off the trail. There's a secret to you, Richard. I'm not a babe in the woods. And I'm not easily scared off."
Babe, Loverboy said. See? They all know it. So, Booksquirt and Milk Dud, stop with all that 'respect' shit.
"My biggest secret is that I get a strange feeling every time I'm around you," I said, a little uneasy at Loverboy's stirrings. Was he going to crash the party, complete with lampshade hat, clown shoes, and a toilet seat around his neck, ready for a gloveless stranglehold?
"What sort of feeling? And don't say 'love,' because love is like God and UFOs, I'll believe it when I see it."
"The feeling you get when you eat your favorite candy."
Beth finished her wine. I reached out to take the glass, but she said, "I'll get it. Where's the bottle?"
"On the counter. Help yourself."
She stopped to look at my aquarium on her way to the kitchen. The yellow angelfish cut their mindless patterns through the water. "Peaceful in there," she said. "No worries."
"None at all," I said, voice trailing as I was dragged into the Bone House. My roommates were coming to life. The Little People were awakened by the storm of emotions rattling the eaves and they appeared to be rearranging the furniture.
They sensed my helplessness. They all came out at once, tripping each other as they rushed for the door and fought for dominance of my face.
"I like your woodwork," Beth called from the kitchen. It sounded as if she were across the universe.
Please stay in there, I thought at her, before I was free of thought. Then I became an observer, an innocent bystander who wasn't truly innocent, helpless witness to the actions of my own flesh. A blameless victim. I sort of liked that.
"I got some wood for you," Loverboy said.
She laughed. And she was back on the couch, the half-empty bottle in front of her, and I was close to her, breathing her, kissing her, drawing in her warmth. It must have been Loverboy's silver tongue that had first drawn her lips near and then plumbed the soft mysteries of her mouth. Her body was pliant and yielding under my hands, vibrant and alive, like a small wren or else a mammal wrapped in synthetic down.
But then it was me locked in this embrace. Then it was my passion swelling up in my chest and lower, driving blood through my veins in rapid gushes. Then it was my loneliness driving my hunger, my anguished years without human contact that now caused the ache in my trembling limbs. Then it was my taste buds relishing her wine-sweetened tongue.
"My turn," I whispered in her tender ear, and she had no idea what I was talking about.
And I was feeding on her, sucking her affection like a vampire drew blood, cold and needy and vanished with the dawn. I was a monster, a zombie pulled from a deep grave.
I should have stayed undead.
Because Loverboy enjoyed the rigor mortis in our pants.
Let's pretend I was Bookworm.
Beth took my hand as I led her upstairs to my bedroom. The night hung around us in soft folds, dressing itself in darkness even as we shed each other's clothes. Our mouths joined, lost for words, lost for useless language, aching for real art. We shivered and incorporated.
Her skin was satin, and as our bodies came together among the blankets, the bottom of everything autumned away. My fingers flowed over her fine hair and the warm mounds of her flesh, lifting her to the high, unseen clouds as smoke from this burnt offering.
Our tongues danced like moist spirits, frolicked about the cemeteries of our lips, laughing without sound. A thick dew of passion rose on our skins and mingled. Our flesh gave and took and joined, softened like blistering wax and hardened like cold syrup. We leapt into pulsating oceans and climbed ashore clean with languid pleasure.
I know, I know, you want the sex, the blow-by-blow, clits and cocks, not poetic coyness.
You're such a pervert. Though I'm laying my whole story out here, some things are none of your fucking business. Such as my fucking business.
I held her in my arms afterward, leaning against the pillows with her sweet animal scent on me. The starlight peeked through the window at her face, at her pale pink smile and the shining pools of her eyes.
"Thank you," I said.
"My pleasure," she whispered, blowing her breath on the small part of my ear.
"I've never felt anything like that before." Pleasant. Fucking pleasant.
"You mean, you've never..."
"Well, let's just say I'm new at this game." Mother didn't count, if indeed that ever happened, and I wouldn't dare write it if it had.
She giggled, her chest vibrating under my embracing arm. "You acted like you knew what you were doing. Like it was part of a play or something. And you said you weren't an actor."
"Sometimes, it's all in the script," I said. They were there, waiting in the wings, leering down from the cheap seats, understudies plotting revolution. But I felt strong, revived and vigilant, and I kept them off the stage. This spotlight was mine, goddamn it, and I was going to enjoy it while it lasted.
"And what role are you playing, you kissable weirdo?"
"Othello without the guilt. Romeo without the fatalism. Hamlet without the paranoia."
"Or maybe just a bad actor working with good material?"
"You got it. Do you want me to feed you a line now?"
"No. I want you to make me feel. I want you to do things to me."
"Hey, that's what a bad actor does." Spiders skittered across my gut, bats flapped in the rafters of the Bone House. "Act badly."
"Well, maybe you need a rewrite. Because you've got just about the worst pillow talk I've ever heard. How come it took you so long to make a move on me?"
"I just wanted to be sure." Sure that you wouldn't sell me down the river for a dollar's worth of candy or make me cross my heart and hope to die.
"Oh, a sensitive modern guy? Or just afraid of rejection?"
"I've never been afraid of you."
"Should I be afraid of you, Richard?"
She snuggled her head onto my shoulder. Her hair spilled across my chest as soft as corn silks. I was reminded of the cornfields of Iowa, of my youth. I buried the memory like roadkill. Or maybe just kicked it in the ditch. "After that? I could never hurt you."
"Mmm. Says the Big Bad Wolf. You forget that I still don't know much about you.
Where you came from. Who you are."
"Maybe later. Maybe someday I can tell you."
I opened the coffin of my vampire heart, feeling something bright and broken and strange rising inside me. Then I realized what it was, and I shivered. It was hope, hope that life could be worth living after all, hope that there might actually be a someday. That maybe there was more to me than Little Hitler, Loverboy, Bookworm, and Mister Milktoast. That maybe Richard Allen Coldiron could have feelings after all.
And hope was pleasant. Very fucking pleasant.
I ran my hand over Beth's hair, over the curve of her ear, down the swell of her cheek. She squirmed a little, pressing closer against me. I wondered what she was thinking, what kinds of secrets she would never tell, what was hidden in her Bone House. From the briefly forgotten outside world came the sweet tang of fallen apples. A bit of moon had risen somewhere over the invisible horizon, making the room less gray.
"Well, what does the critic have to say about my performance?" Beth asked, her face turned to mine, her eyebrows making dark merry arcs.
I searched for and found her lips. "Thumbs definitely up." All ten of them.
"And other things 'up' as well."
I laughed, and the sound was swallowed by the walls. "Where do we go from here?"
"You mean, what happens next? Like the future, with a capital F?"
"Well, Act Two, anyway. Getting to know each other. Every story needs a middle."
Her body tensed under me. "Richard, I feel really good. Don't think I'm easy or anything, I just happen to like sex. And with you, I really like it. And I like spending time with you. But as for other things, we'll just have to see."
"But what if---"
"Shhh. No 'what ifs,' remember?"
"I can't help it, Beth. I think about you all the time. All day at the bookstore, I'm thinking of ways to see you, ways to be with you."
"Don't think the L word, Richard. I've been hurt too many times with that word as the justification. I'm not being cold---because I'm really an eternal optimist---but I've learned to be careful."
"I told you I'd never do anything to hurt you, Beth."
"Neither would those others. But some things are beyond our control."
"Waiting doesn't always work. Sometimes, you don't get another chance."
"I'll take my chances, then. Good things are worth waiting for."
She was just like Virginia. Ready to give almost everything, wanting everything, taking it in her hands and holding it to her breast as if it were a hyperventilating dove. Then, just as it became tame and submissive and known, she would throw it into the sky to its unwanted freedom. She wanted everything just to give it all back.
But what did I know of love? All I knew was what love wasn't. I learned from my father and his boots, from Mother's strange bleary affections, from Sally Bakken's manipulation, from Virginia's madness, from Mister Milktoast and his self-interested protections. Love was for other people, those who weren't haunted by the ghosts in their own head.
The hope that had fluttered in my chest wilted like black licorice on a sunroof. And the old doubts rose, tarry waves in a turbulent id. Then I was sinking, being pulled inside myself, into the place that had been a haven in my childhood but was now a stone prison. The house of the Little People. The house of hurt. The Bone House.
I reluctantly yielded my flesh and embraced my victimhood. Oh, always the victim, a last-place loser in the Blame Game.
"Absence makes the heart grow foundered," said Mister Milktoast.
"What do you mean by that?" Beth asked.
"I dig," said Loverboy. "Live for the moment and take it as it comes. Heh heh."
I screamed at Loverboy to leave Beth alone, shouted uselessly from behind the steel bars in my head, yelled down the dead corridors at the people who were taking turns with my body and the one who wanted to take a turn with hers.
I felt Beth kissing my neck, knowing it was Loverboy's kiss, his tingle under her salt saliva, his smirking satisfaction at my helpless distress, his hands that were cupping her perfect breasts. Not mine, never mine.
"I'm glad you understand, Richard," Beth said.
"Just don't say we can still be friends. Don't put the honeypot on a shelf now that I've had a taste. Or some bread thing. Let's see. Don't plug your donut hole until I've licked off the powdered sugar."
She giggled, and it made her body shake. "I won't say it if you don't. Let's just see what happens."
"Whatever the bitch wants," whispered Little Hitler.
Oh, God. Had he escaped? I thought his room was locked and double bolted from the outside. I tried to warn Beth, but I was buried too deeply inside my own head. Extreme home makeover with a nail gun and duct tape. And the worst part was feeling that I was not alone, that something new lurked in the corners, something darker than dead shadows and colder than graveyard snow.
I watched Little Hitler lift the strands of her hair, golden under the starlight. He was imagining it a scalp.
"So soft, so soft," Mister Milktoast said, stealing my words, eager to try on her brown hat. "A cornsilk of the heavens, a tassel for angels. Hair hassle."
Beth laughed. "Where do you come up with this stuff?"
"Inside story. You know. Still waters run deep like mixed metaphors in the night, as a friend of mine would say. They used to call him 'The Poet.'"
"You're a strange one, Mr. Coldiron. And maybe that's what I like about you."
"Not so strange," said Bookworm, and I was relieved, because Bookworm might save her from the others. He alone might afford some tenderness and compassion, even though he'd learned those qualities from works of fiction. Bookworm caressed Beth's shoulders, and through him, I could feel the burning of her skin, her blood hot from pleasure. At least I had given a gift of pleasure, however fleeting.
That's what you think, Loverboy called from the front porch. Those squeals were all Loverboy. While you were busy being pleasant, I was busy being busy.
"That was me, you bastard," I silently screamed.
Who do you think runs this little flesh factory, you or us?
No, I saw, I felt her, I tasted, smelled. I ran hands over her skin that was smooth as talcum. It was the drums of my heart that pounded across the jungle of night. It was my joy that rushed from my insides like an ice volcano. It was me, me, me.
"Richard?" Beth asked, collecting her breath.
"Hmm, Hostess Ho-Ho?" said Loverboy.
"You're being awfully quiet. What are you thinking about?"
"Just remembering."
"Remembering what? Are you finally going to tell me the great Coldiron secret, now that you've exposed me?"
"No secret, Dollface. Like I told you, what you see is what you get," Loverboy said.
"What about in the dark, when you can't see anything?"
"Then you get whatever I give you."
Do her again, Little Hitler pleaded, anxious for proxy pleasure, hoping it would hurt.
Shut your piehole, Loverboy grunted. I didn't ask for an audience. Having Richard along is plenty enough company. Don't need nobody else playing paddycake in my bakery.
"And what do you feel, Beth?" Loverboy said in his false husky voice.
"I feel something." She laughed, her hands quick as hummingbirds.
Little Hitler was ecstatic, brought to his fullest life by someone else's passion and the unhappy ending sure to follow. Mister Milktoast and Bookworm fluttered like trapped birds against the glass windows of the Bone House. I watched alone, absorbing sensations through the filter of my Little People. And I felt my shadow behind me, floating up the back of my brain like a manta ray, black wings wide, swimming from some forbidden and forgotten abyss.
I knew instantly that it was somehow drawn by pain. My pain. Not Loverboy's tawdry diversions, not Little Hitler's sycophantic eavesdropping, not Mister Milktoast's polite but gossipy interest, not Bookworm's intellectual curiosity. Only my anguish and guilt from again being too weak to save the one I thought I loved.
Guilt for food, a feast of failure, victuals of victimhood.
And the shadow hungered.
Even Mister Milktoast noticed it, turning his attention from Beth's soft wet places.
Lo, what dark through yon window breaks? he asked me.
More worries, old friend, I said.
I'll protect us, Mister Milktoast said.
No. This isn't like it used to be. You can't just send me away, inside, the way you did when the boots came. Because, you see, I'm already inside.
And then Loverboy was inside, too, inside Beth, and the shadow dissolved, perhaps driven away by the bright wall of sensation. And silent bells rang through the night, invisible rockets cut their white arcs, velvet waterfalls ran their course, time swallowed its own ticking heart. But those things were not for me.
Act Two was all Loverboy, and he stole the show until the curtain fell.
The critics raved.
"Something smells good," Beth said.
She stood on the landing, my bathrobe held closed over her body with one delicate arm. I dared a glance at her face and she was smiling, her cheeks faintly pinked. So she didn't know.
But how could she know? Loverboy looked just like me.
"How do you like your eggs?" I asked. "Scrambled or Freud?"
"Not only good in bed, but he cooks, too. I could get used to this."
She stepped down the carpeted stairs and came to me. I stared at the eggs, at chickens that would never be born, while the whites and yolks congealed from the heat. Beth kissed the back of my neck.
"You were something else last night. That first time..." she whistled lightly. "That was tender and moving. But the second and third times, you were like a man possessed."
I stirred the eggs with a spatula. Bacon lay cooling on a plate and a gallon of orange juice sweated by the stove. Grits. This meal needed grits.
"Richard?" Beth asked, worry in her voice. "Is something wrong?"
I gave her the Milktoast smile. "No. I had a wonderful time."
She pulled the robe more securely over her body. "For a second there, I thought you were ashamed. I know I'm not as pretty in the daylight..."
I turned, dropping the spatula in the skillet. "You're beautiful."
It wasn't her fault---she wasn't yet a contestant in the Blame Game. She shouldn't have to suffer for my shortcomings. And if pretending saved her from being hurt, then I would pretend for a thousand years.
Besides, I was used to taking the blame. Hell, they said I enjoyed it, and who was I to argue with them?
I hugged her as the eggs sizzled behind me.
"Why did you sneak off this morning? I wanted to wake up in your arms, Richard."
Because I wasn't sure whose arms they would be. And that was why I slipped out of half-forgotten dreams as well. Because while I slept, I knew that something else waded through the marrow of the Bone House. And while I was awake, it dreamed. Terrible dreams, sweat-stained pillows.
We had breakfast and coffee and I drove her to her apartment, concentrating on the road. Beth talked about a test she had tomorrow, biology or some other science. I nodded just enough to keep her talking as the wheels whispered on the asphalt.
I pulled into her driveway. She said she wanted to change clothes before class. She kissed me again and opened the door.
"Phone me?" she said, leaning toward me. Her breasts swayed tantalizingly, but Loverboy didn't rise to the yeasty treat. But he grinned from his window. Maybe even winked.
"Sure, Beth."
"Oh, and one more thing. Remember when I said I like to be careful?"
"Uh-huh."
"I wasn't careful enough."
Did she mean careful about not falling in love? And that she now meant...
"Do you mean careful about falling in love?" I asked.
"Why are you so anxious to talk about that?" She frowned. "We don't need worries right now, remember? That's not what I meant."
"What, then?"
She smiled again, eyes squinting. "Birth control. Protection. I got so carried away that I forgot."
What I fool I was. Unprotected love.
It was a missed conception, Mister Milktoast said.
Shut up, smartass. This is serious.
"Hey, Beth, I'm sorry. I assumed---"
"Takes two to tango, handsome. Heat of the moment and all that."
"I should have..."
She shook her head. "I can take a pill when I get inside. Should be okay. Don't worry about it."
Yeah, Loverboy said. Make like a morning-after pill and get the fuck out.
"Well, at least you don't have to worry about---um..."
"Disease?" She laughed. "The upside of sleeping with a virgin. But remember, good things are worth a little risk."
Which good thing? Loverboy? I didn't want to think about that.
And Little Hitler? The very embodiment of unsafe sex.
I looked toward Beth's apartment, the bottom of a two-story duplex. A curtain parted and I saw half of a face watching us. Loverboy twitched. The face was female.
"Bye, Richard. Call me later." Beth said. She blew me a kiss and then she was gone. Then I was gone, too, deep inside myself, vacuumed into the dead black throat of my own mind. The car door slammed as if it were a door to another universe.
Loverboy rolled down the window. "When do I get to meet your roommate, Honey Buns?"
"Sooner or later," she said. Then she smiled again. "Because I plan on having you over in a few days. Maybe to spend the night."
Loverboy watched as she jiggled up the sidewalk to the door, then she waved and went inside. The pale face in the window stared a moment longer before the curtain dropped. Little Hitler drove to work, ten miles over the speed limit. Bookworm slowed him down when we reached the Shady Valley town limits.
It was my favorite time of morning at the bookstore, when the sun was at just the right angle to shine fully onto the varnished oak flooring. It lit up the three round tables in the reading corner, where the local poets liked to sit and scratch their beards thoughtfully, with the blank paper staring up into their faces as if daring them to make a mark. The poets never sat there in the morning because the light would give away the pallor of their skin and strip away all mystery. They only came at dusk, when the corner was draped in dramatic shadows, where they hunched like toothless ghosts who have returned to an immolated retirement home.
The smell of French vanilla coffee filled the store, settling like dust on the rows of books, seeping into the pages as if to make the words more exotic. Miss Billingsly liked to have the coffee on hand for the customers. She believed it kept them in the store longer and sped them around the aisles. But sometimes they spilled on the merchandise. Two days earlier, Arlie Wesson, an elderly local who always wore a camouflaged hunting vest, had turned jittery. He sloshed his coffee over a stack of self-help books.
I was cradling my own coffee that morning with both hands, leaning over the counter that made a rectangular island in the front of the store. I was thinking about Beth, about skin and sin, about what had happened after Loverboy took over.
What if it was Loverboy she really liked? What if Loverboy was the one who had connected with her on the most intimate and primal level?
While I was thinking, Bookworm came out and slipped into my skin. He was usually on duty at work, the one with the excellent memory that kept track of new releases and International Standard Book Numbers. He found joy in the orderly shelves and the hush of readers and the odor of cream paper and ink. And, of course, the lies inherent in fiction.
He also had the quiet charm that delighted the little old ladies who frequented the store. Loverboy dozed, unless an attractive woman walked in. Little Hitler sulked in his dark corner, plotting revenge for imagined slights. Mister Milktoast hovered, ready to placate unhappy customers. The black shadow behind them stayed silent, sleepy, the most elusive of imaginary friends.
Bookworm looked around the store. A retiree in a fluorescent blue jogging suit was puttering around in the gardening section, and in the back, a middle-aged woman was busy slapping at the hands of her two little children, who kept reaching for the shiny Thomas the Tank Engine books. Satisfied that all was normal, Bookworm gave my body back.
The bell over the door rang. I turned, Loverboy a fraction of a second behind.
She was young. She wore a periwinkle dress with a pattern of yellow flowers. I watched her through the steam of my coffee, trying to fit her into a genre.
She had skin of mystery, lips of romance, and hair of poetry, but her eyes were science fiction.
My heart did a tiny somersault as she headed for the horror section. She smiled as she passed.
Loverboy throbbed to life.
"Good morning," Loverboy said. "Let me know if I can help you."
...out of those clothes and onto my weasel meat, he silently added.
"Just looking," she said.
So am I, Sweetbreads. Just keep moving and shaking.
She walked down the aisle as if through a gauntlet of knowledge, classical literature on the left, philosophy and religion on the right. The flooring creaked under her sandals, but the footfalls were swallowed by the walls of books. She stopped in front of the horror shelves like a worshipper before a dark shrine.
Loverboy watched as she scanned the rows of titles, which were alphabetized by author. Barker, Campbell, Keene, three shelves of King, Koontz, Lovecraft, Nicholson, Rice, Saul, Straub. The great masters who had wrestled their demons, pinning them onto paper. Plus some hacks.
She must have felt Loverboy's eyes on her, burning and peering and leering and stripping. She looked back with eyes like a kitten's, quick and gray.
"Looking for anything in particular?" I asked, walking around the counter. I stepped close enough to smell the faint honey of her red hair.
"I'm looking for a present for my boyfriend. His birthday is next week." She twirled a strand of hair between her fingers. I would have bet she tossed a mean lariat.
Fit to be tied, Mister Milktoast said, sounding scarily like Loverboy.
"Does he like horror?"
"Not really. But I do, sometimes."
"You go to Westridge?"
"Yeah. I'm majoring in English."
"Liberal arts, uh?"
"No, not arts. Just, like, reading and stuff."
A faint whiff of patchouli rose off her neck like a morning mist or a hippie's hangover.
"We give a five-percent discount to students. When you find what you're looking for,
I'll fill you out a discount card. Your boyfriend, what does he like?"
"How-to. Like motorcycles and stuff. And science stuff." Her lips were in a constant smile, and her science fiction eyes played plot twists.
"We have an excellent science section," said Bookworm. "I'd be glad to show it to you. Would you like a cup of coffee? It's free."
"Sure, that would be cool."
"Actually, it's warm. Cream or sugar?"
"Just cream, please."
Heh heh, she wants some cream, Loverboy said.
Bookworm showed her the how-to section and the science section, and went up front to get her coffee. The other customers were still browsing, like cattle grazing. Janet Evanovich, Stephanie Meyer, the latest bestselling guide to getting rich quick through the marketing of get-rich-quick books. The cream made white coils in the coffee. When Bookworm carried the mug back to her, she was reading the jacket liner of Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
"That would make an excellent gift." I handed her the coffee. "Unfortunately, it's fairly expensive. All those color photographs really jack up the price."
"Steve would really get off on this, though."
"$49.95, plus tax. That's what I call real love."
"Well...he's sort of like bad habit that won't go away. You know, like when you scratch when you're not supposed to. It feels good for a while, but then you have to itch some more." She looked down at the open book. "But he'd really love this. He freaks out on space."
She sipped her coffee. I watched her delicious bicep tighten from the weight of the book. Why was I doing this? I had dipped a toe into the waters of romance with Beth, then dove headfirst without looking into the black river of the heart, and drowned like a rat jumping a sinking ship. Did I still thirst?
No, not thirst.
Hunger.
Hunger that arose from deep inside, away from the cluttered kitchen of the Bone House. Hunger from somewhere beyond, somewhere dark.
Loverboy? Where was that sonovabitch? I swear, he's the kind of guy you don't want to turn your back on.
"I don't think I want to spend that much money," she said, tossing her hair like a colt tosses its mane. "It's the thought that counts, you know."
She slid the book back into its space on the shelf.
"What kind of English Lit do you like?" I asked, as she tilted her head to read the titles.
"I don't like much of it. I'm up to the American stuff right now. Thoreau is about as dull as watching paint dry, and Twain's okay but they skip through him real fast, 'cause he says 'nigger' and stuff. Hemingway's a real asshole. And Faulkner, Jesus, what a joke he is."
"Look up 'enigmatic' in the dictionary, and the definition is 'a Faulkner scholar,'" Bookworm said, shyness giving way to interest. "You can analyze his work into circles. I think 'The sound and the fury, signifying nothing' sums up his career quite nicely."
She laughed and pulled out a volume on evolution by Stephen Jay Gould, leaving a gap like a wound on the bookshelf.
"Why are you studying literature if you don't like it?" I asked, wondering if I should tell her I was a writer. Or was going to be, as soon as I got around to it.
"Well, I wanted to study music, play the clarinet or something, but the practice time sucks donkey. And then if you graduate, all you can do is teach. I guess it's sort of the same with English, but I already know English. It doesn't have all these scales, you know what I mean?"
She read the jacket liner of the Gould book. "Huh. This guy says bacteria is the present, past, and future ruler of earth. Bizarre."
She wrinkled her nose as if an insect had landed on it. "I changed my mind about getting Steve a book. I think I'll buy something for myself."
Loverboy was wearing his wolfish grin somewhere in his room, probably beating off under the sheets with a flashlight, but Bookworm was taking care of business.
"There's always the horror," Bookworm said.
Always the horror? Sounded like a Little Hitler line.
"I don't know, I'm in the mood for something upbeat. A little pop literature, maybe. Thanks for your help, uh...," She stretched her neck to read my nameplate. "Richard."
With a swish of her dress, she turned toward the magazine rack. I went back to the counter, where I sat amid a clutter of calendars, postcards, and colorful buttons that had sayings like "Where Books Are Burned, People Are Next" and "Without Word there is no World."
My Little People stirred, wandering the halls. Loverboy was chiding Bookworm for blowing a chance to get his rocks off. The trick of perfect failure is to practice, practice, practice.
"She's one fine slice of white bread, my man," Loverboy said, his voice as smooth as a lizard in mud and about as filthy.
"She's already spoken for," said Bookworm. "You heard her talking about her boyfriend."
"And what about Beth?" I thought.
"Last night's news," Loverboy said. "You think she'll be back? I mean, I know I was damn good, but you, Richie, you're a total waste. What could she possibly see in you?"
"Hopefully not you."
"Fuck you, Richie, and the donkey you rode in on. And maybe your slut of a mom while we're at it."
At the mention of Mother, Mister Milktoast minced out. "Loverboy, don't be a shellfish. We're all in this oyster together."
"Yee-haw. Mister Milkshit, a.k.a. the Dalai Lama of the Coldiron collective. Brotherhood of man, inner peace, and all that crap. I'm thinking you want Richie here all to yourself, you sugar-wristed little beat boy. Well, this here hunk of American steel likes his biscuits hot and buttery. So don't mess with my action."
"Here she comes now," said Mister Milktoast.
"You think I don't notice, Dickwheat?"
She laid a magazine on the counter. It was a "Rolling Stone." Keith Richards was on the cover, grinning like a dried skull that didn't know it was dead.
Loverboy forced my eyes over the front of her dress. Bookworm lifted my gaze with effort and smiled at her. "Found something light?" I asked.
She looked back into my eyes. I wondered who she saw there. It must have been Bookworm or Mister Milktoast, because she didn't flinch.
I got a discount card out from under the counter. Usually, the customers filled out the cards themselves, but someone had ulterior motives. "Name, please?" I asked.
"Shelley Birdsong," she said. "That's 'Shelley' with two 'L's."
"Like the poet," I said, scribbling.
"Who?"
"One of the Romantics."
"Oh, with that song about secrets in your sleep. The guys with the big hair."
"Telephone number?" I wrote it down as she recited it, tucking the numerals away in the back rooms of the Bone House.
She was turning to leave when Loverboy erupted. "Shelley?"
She looked back.
"Nice to meet you."
She waved and left.
Loverboy grinned and repeated the line, riffing on the Milkster's puns. It will be nice to meat you.
After work, I walked into the October sunshine.
Something made my feet move. Something looked out of the back of my skull and through my eyes. Something saw the town anew like a traveler who has returned from a long trip. The view from the front door of the Bone House was an everchanging thing, a yard that shifted its seasons, a sidewalk that buckled and roiled, a street without sense in a neighborhood with nebulous borders.
Cholesterols of traffic clogged the arteries of the highway. The tourists poured into the mountains for the tail end of leaf-looking season. The air stank of spent fuel and rubber. Exhaust for the tired beasts.
I headed down the sidewalk, toward the heart of town. The highway cut a straight river through Shady Valley, a map dot that didn't accommodate the curves and swells of the Appalachian geography. Gas stations, fast-food joints, and auto parts stores lined the highway, their brittle steel and glass and hard edges contrasting the mountains that rose gently above. The buildings were like sharp temples at the feet of giants.
The leaves were changing across the face of the slopes, in blazes of red and purple from the maple, the yellow of poplar, and the orange of oak, with the tufts of evergreens occasionally brushing through. Mingled with the car pollution was the soft decay of leaves and sweet grass. The sky was crayon blue and solid. A few clouds drifted aimlessly, white patches of contentment.
"Yes, I can find peace here," I thought. "Alone."
Alone together.
"Mister Milktoast? Is that you?"
Whoever, whatever, whichever one of my little friends had momentarily skittered free, I couldn't tell.
After three blocks of walking, the shiny facades of construction gave way to seedy brick buildings, squat and fat like red toads. In the distance, the tops of dormitories pricked the belly of the sky. A spindly metal crane perched over a tower of beams, guarding the bones of a building in progress.
I passed a gray laundromat, its front window cracked and littered with pieces of masking tape. An old Hispanic woman stared out at me, her face as impassive as the windowglass and as cracked as the stucco. Loverboy had no interest in her. Withertits, he snickered.
I passed the abandoned garage that I had slept behind when I first moved to Shady Valley. I had learned that it had been closed by the state Division of Water Quality because of an underground leak in one of the storage tanks. The creek behind the garage still ran rusty and iridescent, even after six years of healing. The lot yawned emptily, broken glass glinting among the blotches of oil.
Blocks of student apartments lined the opposite side of the street, which had dwindled to two lanes in the older, sadder part of town. The apartments faced irregular directions, as if randomly dropped from the top of the sky to plunge into the earth, a God-child's abandoned game of blocks. The featureless rectangles were divided here and there by stubborn white homesteads, flanked by little squares of dirt that were dotted with cabbages and bristled with tomato stakes.
Another one hundred steps and the town became more schizophrenic. The decrepit cinder block buildings collided with the clean corners of Westridge University. The college sprawled like an island, with the town tainting its beaches, flotsam littering idyllic shores. On the right was a weathered structure built into the side of the hill. It had been converted into a coffeehouse, and students clustered at tables near the front window.
Young faces peered through the glass, watching the street, seeing if they were seen. A nosering on one, silver and cruel. There a French beret, oily dreadlocks dangling beneath. A pair of small blue spectacles, framed by thin eyebrows. All that self-conscious individuality washed into a vacuous sameness.
I wondered what it would be like to be one of them, with their possible futures and choices. Nietzche or Descartes? Phish or the Byrds? Espresso or cappuccino?
I wondered what it would be like to be normal.
"Hey, this is normal, Richie," Loverboy said. He came out easily, with none of the usual stirrings and struggles. Lately, it seemed the door was always open.
Loverboy glanced at the faces in the coffee shop as if he were flipping through a deck of nude playing cards. "Good hunting. Check out that snow pup in the polar fleece."
Bookworm was on his heels, curious and aloof. "It's not your hunt, Loverboy. This is Richard's hunt."
Hunt? For what?
"The outer journey mirrors the inner search," Bookworm answered.
Oh. You're going to play little mind games, are you?
"No. Just a warning. From a friend."
"And with friends like us, you don't need enemies," Mister Milktoast said. He had entered on mental cat feet.
Mister Milktoast, why does everyone come out so easily now?
"Richard, you haven't been paying attention. All you think about is Beth," he said.
Can you blame me for trying to get away?
"No matter how far or how fast you travel, you can never outrun your own shoes," Mister Milktoast said.
"Yeah, Dickie darling. Keep in touch," sneered Loverboy. "Because we will. We'll touch it plenty."
They left without a trace, back, back into their holes, into the dank rooms of the Bone House.
I looked into the coffee-shop window. A few people were watching me, including the girl in polar fleece.
What did they see when looking at the life form called Richard Allen Coldiron? Just an anonymous, bookish square, with tan cotton trousers and a button-up shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. A walking piece of fiction, a star in his own comic book series, a suspended animation. A minor character in his own autobiography.
I could have been anyone. And I would have loved to be anyone else. If not for Beth.
But I wanted to love her, despite the potential cost. After years and years, I had found something outside myself worth fighting to gain and keep. Or maybe I was a shellfish oyster, as Mister Milktoast put it.
I walked on, reaching the center of town. Utility poles stood at random, and wires criss-crossed above in an insane weavework. This part of town had been destroyed by fire fifty years earlier. I had seen photographs of that era, back when the town was just a general store, a feed store, a funeral parlor, and a movie theater. The structures had been rebuilt with cheap clay brick, some painted over with muddy shades of green and gray. The paint curled in a dozen different coats, history lying in flakes on the sidewalk.
The corner hardware store stood like a mute survivor. The bank on its left had folded and been taken over by a boutique. Clever fabrics dressed the window, the vault now a fitting room. A former gas station perpendicular to the hardware store was now a law office. No amount of landscaping or custom trim could disguise the fact that the building used to be a gas station, and no team of attorneys could ever subvert the immutable laws of change and decay.
I continued up the street, past the old stone post office. Students bent under the weight of swollen backpacks and stooped old ladies shopping for knickknacks passed like camel caravans. Tourists in bright polyester milled purposelessly, hidden behind the icy stares of sunglasses. Occasionally a jogger huffed past in self-inflicted pain, sneakers flapping on concrete. Outside the door of the pharmacy, two old men in coveralls traded stories. They wore identical Red Man caps that sat on their heads as if they had grown there, as much a part of them as wrinkled skin and gray hair.
I turned the corner toward the university grounds. The Little People rode as voyeurs, like kids pressing their faces against the car window on a vacation drive. Off in the west end of Shady Valley, bulldozers were gouging red wounds in the Earth where Ralph's Southern Line Feedstore used to stand. A row of derelict tobacco warehouses bordered the demolition, patiently waiting their turn under the blade. The tin on the warehouse roofs caught the sunlight, sending bright spears of reflection into the mountains.
A restaurant called "The Cadillac Grille" sat against the bank of a creek, its open deck crowded with students soaking up afternoon sunshine and beer. Music poured from the screen door that led to the deck, something cranky and sneering by the Rolling Stones. I scanned the deck with Loverboy's preying eyes, or perhaps he scanned the deck with my eyes. I saw a familiar face at a table of young tan women who were drinking from green bottles.
The face.
Who?
"Beth's roommate, Dickie," Loverboy said.
She had seen me, but she didn't wave. She lowered her head.
"Playing hard to get," Loverboy said. "But they don't get no harder than this boy."
Isn't Beth enough?
"Well, tickle my dick and paint my balls blue. If it isn't Richie Coldiron, pretending to give a good goddamn? Pretending to actually care for another human being? The sensitive act again. Don't make me bust a nut laughing."
You cold-hearted son of a bitch.
"It's not my heart, bro'. That's all yours, every pathetic little beat. My business is down lower. You suck the shellfish oyster but today's special is the bearded clam."
Fuck you.
"I may take you up on that offer sometime, Riddle-me-dick. If pickings get slim."
My feet led me onto the landscaped grounds of the university. The grass was trimmed close to the ground, like a putting green. Students sprawled on the common and sat Indian style on the open courtyards. People in shorts were tossing Frisbees or lying in the sun, chatting over the noise from loud radios. Solitary figures sat under trees with thick books. I searched. Always searching, we were.
I climbed some steps to a platform at the entrance to the Student Union. I sat at a weathered wooden table. Someone had carved "J.G. + D.R. 4EVER" into the tabletop. The inscription was fresh, a testament gouged in the flesh of wood.
I looked out over the sea of grass from the high lonely lighthouse of my soul. The lawn was broken by stone boxes containing holly shrubs and red geraniums. The walkways curved with the rises, guided by brick shoulders.
A long thin girl walked past, and my hunter's eyes followed her. She was wearing a charcoal miniskirt, the fabric so thick that it didn't shake. Her legs, raped by white nylon, descended like sticks into heavy shoes. Her stockings reminded me of Sally Bakken, and a sudden rage tightened my throat.
Little Hitler? But you weren't there. You didn't come until...later.
"Your little snitch filled me in, Richard. Makes my blood boil. Revenge---"
"---is a dish best served as leftovers," Mister Milktoast said. "With a bowl of serial."
Mister Milktoast? Did you tell?
"I never kiss and tell."
Mister Milktoast.
"Well...maybe I let something slip. It gets lonely in here, Richard. No one to talk with."
And Little Hitler is the best you can do for companionship?
"Misery loves company but it sleeps with whatever it can get."
The thin girl's carefully wrought curls draped the front of her shoulders, but her hair was too crafted and doll-like. Her alligator eyes were without passion, staring ahead as if in permanent slumber. Even the faint sound of swishing nylon didn't arouse Loverboy. Well, maybe a little.
But those stockings did something to Little Hitler. He was filled with a desire to break her like bone China, thinking of Sally Bakken and broken promises. I clenched my fists, trying to drive him back inside. I didn't want Little Hitler to hate her. I needed to love, even though loving was possibly worse.
If there was one theme that emerged while working on this book, it was the same old corny crap you can find in every category romance and Internet porn site and Hallmark greeting card and pop song and every church in the land. But after Mister Milktoast imagined it, Little Hitler corrupted it, Loverboy spewed on it, and Bookworm edited it down to dull powder, precious little love was left. It never had a chance.
I watched as she headed for the entrance to the library. In the reflection of the glass doors, the bright scene played out in reverse. This backwards view was somehow truer and more vital than the actual reality. She walked into her own reflection and disappeared.
A round-faced blonde sat down at the table next to mine. She was not Beth. She pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her pink sweater. Her forehead crinkled as she lit it. She inhaled and her cheeks hollowed. A finger of smoke hovered seductively around her head, then was whisked away by the faint autumn breeze.
She was playing a game with her cigarette, a tiny joke of death. I could see the nicotine death skip across her eyes. The danger was part of her thrill. But this was a death she could control, one she could hold at arm's length, one she could stub out. A slow suicide for someone who thought she had all the time in the world to die.
"Do you wonder?" Little Hitler asked me. "How would she really embrace death?"
Don't talk that way. Once was enough. One time was too many.
"Oh, she loves this long-distance relationship, this cigarette that is like a love letter from the other side. Maybe she would accept a few collect phone calls, maybe even sit with death in a well-lighted restaurant."
Don't talk madness, Little Hitler.
"From the lips of experience," he responded, with echoes of Bookworm or maybe even my Poet days, if he'd been browsing the Bone House bookshelves. "But would she? If death fondled her in a moonlit car, its breath foul and moist on her ear, if death bent low for a soul-tainting kiss..."
"Now you're talking, Little Diddler," said Loverboy. "Cheap thrills and all that good shit. And you got Richard's poetry crap down pat."
"...if death opened its black robes to her, if it drew her into its frigid folds, if it sucked her as tenderly as she sucks her cigarette, would she squirm then?"
"Damn, Diddler," said Loverboy. "You're kinky. I like that in a headmate."
"I should offer to introduce her. Set up a blind date, perhaps, with my friend Death? Hmm, Richard?"
No. Never again. Haven't I suffered enough?
"You? Suffer? What about Mother? What about Virginia? What about what you made me do to Father?"
That wasn't me. That was you, Little Hitler.
The blonde flicked her cigarette butt into the shrubbery and left.
The white-stockinged girl walked by again, parading flesh. Loverboy let her pass. Little Hitler let her live.
I basked in the sun, its healing rays bringing life to my crowded flesh, driving the inner shadows deep until I could no longer hear the voices.
I was ashamed of what they had let me become.
An hour passed. I didn't see Beth. I began the long walk back to my car, and then drove home.
There was a typewriter in the Bone House, and we had to put this down before we forgot it all.
This was the point at which I almost quit writing this book, because I have a great fear of confrontation. I was going to dedicate it to Virginia after it was accepted for publication, because I was her Poet and she died young, which is always fashionably tragic.
But here came Beth and was acting like the kind of woman whose feelings would be hurt if I dedicated my autobiography to another woman. And she didn't seem like the kind who would conveniently die. Plus, there's You-Know-Who, the ghostwriter, the hack who wants all the credit but does none of the work.
I'm sure you've heard it before: "Hey, I got this great idea for a book. Why don't you write it and we'll split the money?"
The problem, of course, is that this particular co-author has no need for money. All he craves is a little attention. Why do you think he wants to be the protagonist? But so far I've spared you from his nihilistic clichés and self-serving, ideological crap. Hopefully I'll get this submitted before he finds this version, so forgive me if I type real fast for a few pages.
I was drifting on a black sea, with the Little People like sharks nibbling away at the rubber raft of my psyche or the pirate captain's sword walking me down the gangplank or some other lost-at-sea simile. The darkness was no longer safe. I needed an anchor. I needed Beth, for hope and help and all the other selfish reasons people used as an excuse to love one another.
Love. Speaking of unwilling suspension of disbelief...
I called her the next night, after a long battle with Loverboy and Little Hitler. Her roommate answered the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi," I said. "Is Beth home?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Know when she'll be in?"
"I think she went out with somebody."
A date? A bright flame of jealousy roared in my chest. But what claim did I have? None but that of the needy.
The mellifluous voice on the other end broke the silence. "Uh...do you want to leave a message?"
"Yes. Just tell her Richard called." Nah, say "Loverboy," numbnuts, whispered one of my roommates.
"Richard?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"Oh. Faux pas. You're the guy she's been seeing, right?"
Seeing. Was this sweeping romance for the ages reduced to mere ocular activity? I wanted to slam the phone into the wall. I wanted to blink razors. I wanted to...
Kill Beth.
Who said that? Little Hitler? Loverboy?
Or...
"I saw you yesterday," said the roommate. Her voice was deeper than Beth's, huskier.
"You did? Where?" My throat was tight, as if Little Hitler were squeezing it into silence.
"Walking down the street."
"Oh. Uh...were you...?"
"...the one looking out the window yesterday? The girl at the bar?"
She's just another skinbag, Richie. A sopping camel toe dipped in a desert oasis.
Loverboy, stay out of this.
"...I mean, I don't think we've met," I finished, slamming the Bone House door.
"I'm Monique. I've seen you, you know, bringing Beth home."
Did I hear her giggle? Was she taunting me? Like Sally? "I've got to go. Do me a favor. Don't tell Beth I called."
I hung up fast, before Loverboy had a chance to lick his chops and say something I'd regret later. I had enough to worry about as it was. Had some new dark closet opened inside me? Some crack in the plaster that patched over my ego?
Help me, Mister Milktoast.
"Come inside, Richard."
No. Not in there. Not with them.
"It's safe. It's dark. It's cool."
But...
"Come, Richard."
Don't.
Want.
To.
Lose.
Me.
"I'll protect you," Mister Milktoast whispered, in that maternal tone that both comforted and disturbed and ultimately always won.
Darkness. Something dreamed, something walked. I lost thirty-six hours.
Because this is my autobiography and I'm writing this in retrospect, I could easily make up a bunch of bullshit about how I went out of town for a hockey game or a rock concert or a camping trip. But if I started making up alibis for my own life, I doubt if you'd stick with me. We've established a relationship, you and I. We've reached a mutual misunderstanding. If you walked out on me now, closed the book, that would prove you are unreliable and fainthearted. I have faith in you. You're made of better stuff than that.
"Did you see the paper?" Miss Billingsly asked me at the bookstore on Wednesday.
"No, I haven't had a chance. I've been doing inventory on the Harry Potter backlist." Actually, Bookworm had been doing the work, but of course I couldn't tell her that.
"Some girl from the college has been reported missing."
My heart flipped, hung upside down. "When?"
"They're not sure. Could have been a few days ago."
"Maybe she had enough of school and took off for a hockey game or a rock concert or a camping trip," I said, in Mister Milktoast's reassuring voice. But something inside knew better. I started to sweat, even though the air was cool. No Bookworm could amend this panic, no Milktoast could sop this doubt.
Miss Billingsly pushed her eyeglasses up her nose. "The parents are frantic. They're flying down from New York, according to the paper. With all these school shootings, everybody's on edge anyway."
She stood behind the counter, a woman in her element. She was like a captain standing on the bridge of a ship, as if the bookstore were a pleasurecraft of words. But my own pleasure was plundered along with my recent memory.
Mister Milktoast wagged a cautioning finger from the back closet. Brittany, the other weekday employee of the Paper Paradise, came down the history aisle.
"I knew a friend of hers," she said. I looked into Brittany's heart-shaped face, her brown hair parted in the middle. She wore a leather string around her neck. Little Hitler saw it as a noose while Loverboy viewed it as a mild bondage prop.
"Said her roommate hadn't seen her in three days. She lived in an apartment off-campus. She liked to sleep around, if you know what I mean---"
Brittany must have seen Miss Billingsly's look of disapproval. Or maybe it was a look of wistfulness. But she continued. "Anyway, the roommate didn't worry about her for a while, but then she went in her bedroom to borrow a sweater and saw none of the clothes had been disturbed."
"Meaning she hadn't come back for a change of clothes?" Miss Billingsly asked.
"No. So she checked around, called the parents..."
"And now the police," Miss Billingsly finished.
"Well, her boyfriend is a person of interest," Brittany said. "He has a motorcycle. You know the kind."
Arlie, the geezer in the hunting vest, approached the counter, eyes afire with the fervent conspiracy of gossipers. I had explained to him earlier in the morning that Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus wasn't a book about our alien origins. His wrinkled hands clutched a coffee mug that was half full of decaf. We'd watered him down.
"You talking about the girl?" he said in his raspy voice that was as native as the Appalachian dirt.
"Hello, Arlie," said Miss Billingsly. "I was just telling Richard about it."
"Well, they don't know for sure, but I got my own theories," Arlie said.
The silver wires of his brows arced heavily over his dark eyes, giving him the appearance of a vulture. His neck crooked, as if drooping to peck at carrion, and this heightened the raptorial effect. He was clearly enjoying the opportunity to impart hitherto secret knowledge.
"There's been no indication of foul play," Miss Billingsly said. I nodded at Arlie.
I had a hunch about his theory. I had sold Arlie more than one book on UFOs and had listened to him describe his back-porch sightings. I had a suspicion the alien visitors rose from the bottom of a Mason jar of white lightning. He was also a fan of what he called "unexplainable phee-nomenons," the kind of stuff you'd see in shows hosted by washed-up character actors from the various "Star Trek" series. But I couldn't exactly ridicule his theories, because I was starting to develop an unsettling theory of my own.
"Lunatic killer," Arlie said.
Miss Billingsly shook her head, and her glasses slid down her nose. She pushed them up with a finger and said, "I just can't see it happening here. A small town like this?"
Arlie's eyes shifted joyfully from side to side under his vulturine eyebrows. "Then maybe it was one of them alien abductions."
Miss Billingsly and Brittany laughed.
Arlie's face reddened. "It's that college, is what draws them here. I seen them. They come after these kids who move here with television antennas stuck up their noses and shooting up all kinds of mindrot. I been against that college from the very start, from back when it was just a two-room shack out in a cow pasture."
I didn't know how I felt about aliens. Intellectually, I figured they probably existed. Yet I had never seen one. What was even more frightening was the idea that they might not exist, that humans were the highest achievement of the universe. That we were the best that God, nature, and evolution could come up with. If so, the divine creator needed to eat some psychedelic drugs.
"Now the school's gobbling up the whole damn town," Arlie continued. "I see where they bought out Ralph's feed store and gonna tear it down to put in some tennis courts. That college is just a magnet for trouble, I tell you."
"And you believe the college has something to do with the girl's disappearance?" asked Brittany.
"Sure. She wasn't missing before she came here to go to school, was she?"
A woman of about thirty walked up to the counter with a stack of psychology books. Arlie stepped back to allow her access to the counter and Brittany began ringing up the purchase.
"Say, here's a smart woman," said Arlie, looking at the book titles. "You teach at the college?"
"Yes," the woman said. She was pretty, with long blonde hair. Loverboy drank her in through my eyes and built nasty little fantasies in the basement of my brain.
"What about the missing girl, then? You probably know more than we do," Arlie said.
"It's too early to form a conclusion." Her voice was cold, as if idle chatter with townies was beneath her. "Not enough evidence yet. And it's only been a day and a half."
"What about the damned underground installations I heard about? Down there under the gym. Got UFO radar dishes. What about them?"
The woman drew back as Brittany bagged the books. Miss Billingsly put a hand on Arlie's shoulder to calm him down.
"I call that evidence, don't you?" Arlie shouted. The other customers were starting to stare. Miss Billingsly apologized to the woman, who ripped the bag from Brittany and hurried out the door without looking back.
"Tell us about the RABBITS!" Arlie yelled after her.
Miss Billingsly led him to the reading corner and sat him at a table. I listened in without trying. Or rather, the Bookworm lent an ear.
"Now, Arlie, I don't mind you hanging around, because a little local color is good for business," she chastised. "But you have to control these outbursts. Everyone at the college is not an alien from one of your television shows."
"That college is a magnet, I tell you. Draws all kinds of weirdoes. From different worlds."
"Arlie, I've lived here as long as you have, and I say change isn't always for the worse. I couldn't keep this bookstore in business without the college."
He seemed small and defeated as he sat staring out the window. I almost felt sorry for him, but I had learned to store my pity. I knew I would need it for myself, and the Bone House cupboard was bare of such compassion.
Plus, I knew the strangest invasions came not from without, but from within.
I busied myself at the register as Brittany stocked the shelves. Mister Milktoast was glad the conversation had turned from murder. He was feeling a little squeamish.
"Trouble in paradise," he said to me.
Shady Valley?
"No. Here in the House. Upstairs."
Are you trying to tell me something?
"Just a sour note from a lemon drop."
I'll keep it in mind.
Arlie came back to the counter, subdued now. He lowered his voice to a confidential level.
"Something damned fishy is going on in this town. Ain't been the same since that double rape and murder here in '72. Folks has all but forgot that one. 'It'll never happen here,' they say. Well, it does. Because they are here."
I nodded. Arlie had told me about the silver saucers that flew down from Widow's Peak, the high stony mountain above his farm. They were here. Sure. I'd believe that like I'd believe four or five little people lived inside my head.
"It's a pitcher-perfect town on the outside," he said. "The one they put on the postcards and the travel guides. But under the whitewash is a black bellyful of trash. All the decent, God-fearing families that settled these parts been wet down and poisoned by slick money and big-city lawyers. They call it progress, they do.
"I remember the day they cut the ribbon for the college. The mayor and even old Senator Hallifield was there, all of them standing in the middle of that pasture and grinning like a pack of turtles eating saw briars. With one foot on a shovel, as if any one of that sorry bunch had ever turned a day's work in their lives."
"Now, Arlie, don't have one of your spells," I said. Miss Billingsly had taken his mug, but his hands still cupped as if he were nursing it.
"Senator Hallifield stepped in a big pile of cow shit and fell and busted his ass." His laugh was a frog's muddy croak. "That part never made the papers."
He was quiet again, limp, like a skeleton on a hook in an anatomy class whose lesson was nearly over. "I remember old Vernell Hartbarger standing there in his coveralls. Vernell was the one that sold them the cow pasture. That land had been in his family since before the American Revolution, been tilled and bled on by a dozen generations afore his. But now he had a pocketful of slick money, and he didn't give a damn if they built an open sewer there."
Arlie looked at me, at Bookworm. Bookworm listened. I didn't. "Vernell went off with that money, down to Charlotte. Had a heart attack on top of a big-city whore three days later. Died in her arms, they said. They never did find the money."
"And now the college is a lasting testament to his folly," Bookworm said.
Arlie looked at me, confusion clouding his red eyes.
"Our own big-city whore," Bookworm added, meaning the college, not caring whether Arlie was quick enough to make the metaphorical leap.
He turned slowly, again just a lonely and scared old man, the vulture's fierceness faded. He walked to the door, stooped and defeated.
"Maybe the aliens got that girl," he said, his hand on the front glass. "Or the rabbits."
Without waiting for a reply, he went out and got behind the wheel of his rusty Ford pickup. A cloud of blue smoke rolled across the parking lot as the engine whined to life. Arlie pulled the truck out of the parking lot and onto the four-lane highway that headed out of town towards his farm.
I had been out to his farm once, a ramshackle group of buildings at the foot of Widow's Peak. His was the last house on Tater Knob Road, before the mountain really started rising out of the ground. He had offered me some moonshine but I didn't want it. Then he'd pointed out the spots in his fields where the saucers had landed.
Now, as he drove away, hunched over his steering wheel, I imagined he was remembering when the road was just a dirt stitch in the flesh of meadows, back before aliens, lawyers, and madmen invaded Shady Valley.
Brittany came to the counter as I watched the Ford disappear in traffic. "Crazy old coot," she said.
"I suppose." I was trying to fight back Loverboy, who had been developing an attraction to Brittany. "What was her name?"
"Who?"
"The missing girl." I tried a Milktoast smile. "The one the aliens got."
"Oh. Shelley," she said. "Shelley Birdsong."
Night.
I couldn't sleep, because I might dream.
And while I dreamed, something else might awaken. Something that had worn my skins during my blackout. Those missing hours hung wide and heavy over my mind, a fog on a lost sea. And Shelley might be in that swirling mist, sucked down by the Charybdis of my unknown appetites, rolled over by the Sisyphus stone of my futility, or otherwise undone through a mythological metaphor that Bookworm hasn't looked up yet.
"Nutter coincidence," Mister Milktoast said, ever the optimist. Or maybe merely a habitual liar. Tiny warning bells sounded, elves hammered on the roof, a steam train blew its whistle, smoke sucked itself down the chimney.
I rose from bed cold. I had put Shelley's phone number in my top desk drawer, there with a handful of letters from Mother and a dozen old photographs that I had found in the Valiant's glove box. Loverboy wouldn't let me forget to write the number down. He knew I had a lot of things on my mind.
The number wasn't there.
I checked my pockets. Nothing.
I went downstairs into the laundry room, which was Mister Milktoast's tidy milieu. There, in the pants I must have worn the day before, the number was creased and fingered like an old secret. As I touched the paper, a mental picture flashed of my dialing the number.
Then came another picture, like frames of a film that had jammed the sprockets of the projector, so that the motion didn't fit together. The illusion revealed its lie. The frame froze.
Shelley downstairs, on the sofa. Late afternoon sun streaming through the window, catching the back of her head and making her red hair blaze. She is holding a cigarette---no, a joint---in her right hand. Her feet are on my coffee table, her leather sandals pressed against my Incredible Hulk comic books, wrinkling the covers. Her gray eyes stare at me, oblivious of my identity. As oblivious as I am.
The frame jittered and jumped. The image disappeared in a rush of black. My head hurt as I stood in the basement.
"Richard, you're not supposed to see that."
Mister Milktoast?
"Don't look."
"You know something, don't you?
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
Liar. I thought you're supposed to protect me.
"And that's what I'm trying to do."
I looked down at the concrete floor of the basement.
Spots. Rust. Brown. Cool as stone.
"Go back upstairs, Richard."
"Yeah, Beth might call, and I wouldn't mind shoving the old crème horn into her breadbox again," Loverboy said. "Hell, it's been three days. Course, it was years before then. I ain't waiting that long for honey butter again."
"Upstairs, Richard," Mister Milktoast said. "Fast."
"Let him see," said Little Hitler. "I could use a good laugh."
I knelt on the concrete and peered into the murky corners of the basement. Camping gear. Old tires. Bookshelves. Streaked cans of paint and wood scraps. Large plastic rubbish bins.
One of the bins was bulging.
I took a step deeper into the basement, into madness, into the house of mirrors. The room smelled like stagnant water in an iron pot.
"Go ahead and look, Richard," taunted Little Hitler. "You can always find someone else to take the fall. After all, when you killed Father, you had me to blame."
I clenched my fists, but there was no one to punch. I took a second step then faltered.
"Don't listen, Richard," coaxed Mister Milktoast. "I can explain everything."
"Why can't I remember?" I screamed at the cinder block walls. My voice echoed, sharp and dead. I might as well have been beating the cheap Sheetrock in the Bone House.
"You gutless little worm," said Little Hitler. "You've always been too weak to grab what you wanted. You can't even control your own pathetic sack of meat."
I never needed to...do something like that. Never needed hate.
"Hate? Oh, you loved Daddy's dancing boots. You loved the bruises and the taunts. You loved Mommy dearest. In the best and worst ways."
And I have you to thank for what happened to Father.
"Sure you do, Richard. But remember this. I'm just another of your monster masks."
I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS. I DIDN'T ASK FOR ANY OF YOU.
"Sometimes monsters are made and not born. Just ask the one who knows."
And who would that be, Little Hitler?
"Oh, haven't you met?"
What are you talking about?
"The days of cowering are over. No more hiding in the closet. You missed a payment on the Bone House mortgage. This house is in foreclosure. You've been evicted."
No...
I turned and ran up the basement stairs, missing the top step as my eyes blurred. I fell onto the kitchen linoleum. The phone was ringing. Or it might have been my ears.
I laid there for minutes or hours, as my little friends took their turns behind my eyelids. Finally I lifted myself and went to bed. My heart played its sick rhythm, pumping sorry blood through the sewage pipes in my limbs. Night fell, harder than the night in my skull, black, solid, and merciless.
"Like a house of bricks," whispered Mister Milktoast. "But I tried, Richard."
"We all tried," said Bookworm.
"Not all of us," said Mister Milktoast.
What happened? Tell me. Surely you owe me that much.
"Some things are better left unknown."
But it's me. My body. My life.
"Oh, but you're wrong, Daddy Killer," Little Hitler said with a sneer. "Or should I say Mother Fucker?"
I clutched my head, pressed my fingers into my temple as if to squeeze his voice out like pus from a boil.
Memory came flooding in, blessed memory, cursed memory: Shelley in a swing at the town park. The park is circled by laurels, tucked away from the street. A skewed slide huddles under the branches of a birch on the far side of the park. The empty seats on either side of Shelley shiver in the wind, like ghosts rattling their chains. The park is empty, its summer charms gone to weed. Shelley is laughing. She has her back to me. Hands are on her shoulders.
My hands. No, not quite mine.
Shelley straightens her body, rocks her shoulders back, and shakes her hair free. She lifts her legs and Loverboy pushes her shoulders. Shelley grips the chains and goes into the air, defying gravity. She comes back quickly, and Loverboy pushes again, from the waist this time. He watches as she presses against the sky, purple dress billowing.
And I am Loverboy. I see as he sees. But it's not just Loverboy. Something else watches from behind our eyeballs.
Shelley soars up and out, to that delicate moment of suspension at the height of her swing, to zero gravity framed against the sun. She is a goddess, Hera in silhouette ruling the heavens, the apotheosis of her gender. There, in that eye blink, she attains her immortality.
And I am almost willing to condemn my salacity. I am seized by rapture and nearly converted.
But gravity holds sway, rushing her back once again to Earth, into my human hands. The touch of flesh brings earthly desires. The illusion shatters. She is again meat, prey to be snared, a trophy to be won.
But was it my memory, or the one they gave me? Mister Milktoast interrupted, like a tour guide shouting over a street musician. I was once again in bed, twisting the sheets, damning the dark, a reluctant lodger in the skeletal structure where all doors led to one place.
"We were careful, Richard. I made certain of that," he said.
Careful?
"You picked her up at the college, after one of her classes. Brick building. Five o'clock."
Of course. How could I forget?
"Sarcasm doesn't become you."
Everyone becomes me. That's the problem.
"More than you know, Richard."
What's that supposed to mean?
"While the cat's away, the mice will lay."
Speaking in tongues again? Or does the cat have them?
"Remember, Richard. It wasn't your fault. It never is."
Then why do I get the fucking guilt?
"Because you can't get enough of your own misery," Little Hitler said.
You, Little Hitler. You're at the root of this, aren't you?
"You flatter me flatter than ever. But I'm afraid I can't take the credit for what happened to poor precious Shelley."
You know, don't you? Why do you get my memories instead of me?
"Mysteries of the world, Richard. Sorry, I promised not to tell. Only the typewriter knows."
Little Hitler?
"He's gone, Richard, " said Mister Milktoast. "Back into his gas chamber, to gnaw on the bones of the past."
What's the secret? I know you're only trying to protect me, but you always say "The truth will set you free for a limited time only, offer not available where prohibited by law."
"I can't tell you, Richard. I'd like to, but there are other considerations. Sometimes, the truth is only a heavier set of chains. Let's just say there are other forces at work."
Other forces? But I thought Loverboy...
"Believe me, Dickie Darling," Loverboy said. "I wanted a turn. I wanted a turn real bad. But Mister Milkshit is right. My nuts no longer rule the nuthouse."
But...my memory. With Shelley at the park. Your memory.
"That's about the best feel I copped, man. A little grabass there in the swing. And a little bit more, later. A piece, you might say. But a gentleman never tells."
Since when did you qualify as a gentleman?
"Oh, I was real gentle. Compared to what's behind Door Number Three."
"Loverboy," Mister Milktoast said sternly. "Poker face.""Poke her face. Ha-ha-hilarious, Wiltdiddle. You afraid of the big bad wolf?"
"Richard knows too much already."But I don't know anything.
"And you're better off, old friend," Mister Milktoast said. "Ignorance is blistered."
"Now rest your head and sleep. Come on, Loverboy, back into the darkness with me. Leave Richard alone."
"Is that a proposition, Milkshit? I never did go for Greek love, but, hell, I'll try anything once."
"Your crudity never ceases to amaze, Loverboy. Let Richard sleep."
So I could dream. So I would sink into the quicksand of my subconscious while boots walked the high ground. They were gone, my little friends, my inner voices, my lunatic housemates, gone to roost like brown bats. And I was alone.
Alone with whatever owned the black breath that blew its wind up my spine.
I tried to think of Beth, to find her golden glowing memory, a needle of hope in a burning haystack. But I saw only the fogs and shadows, the tricks my own psyche played on me. And what good would Beth do? Another balm, another prop, another excuse.
Rustle, click, clatter.
Something was shuffling like a rat behind the Bone House walls. The thing that had chewed holes in the baseboard of my brain, that had sprung every steel trap I had ever laid against it.
"Richard Allen Coldiron."
Its voice reverberated through my ductwork, sliced through the marrow, drew closed every curtain against its chill. I thought at first that it was Little Hitler, trying on a new mask or a sharper moustache. But then it spoke again, front-door loud, slamming the knocker.
I knew then this was the hunter, the shadow of the others, the one who had haunted the cemeteries of my days. And I knew, with an instinct that was truer than a star map, that all the old insanities were a party game compared to this new one.
For the first time in my miserable life, I wondered if maybe I was really crazy. Sure, I was different. I accepted that. Through Bookworm, I had studied multiple personalities, dissociative disorders, psychoses. I had split the finest hairs of schizophrenia. I had introspected and analyzed with the most acute lenses.
"You crossed Freud with Jung and came out as a Skinner," Mister Milktoast joked from behind a distant door.
Madness was a perfectly ordinary human condition.
The nature of the beast.
Plus I was a writer, which made it almost mandatory.
But that well-explored and accustomed madness was familiar ground. My Little People were part and parcel of my earthly baggage. They could at least be understood, in their own fashion. They all had their motives, fantastic or not, and were relatively consistent.
But that night, with a clarity that was so sweeping that it almost brought comic relief, the truth shone its cruel light into my mind.
At last I knew who worked my meat mannequin.
I had met the enemy, and it was I.
"After all these years," it said. "A pleasure to meet me."
I didn't know how to address this new thing, because to allow it voice would be to admit its existence. I stuttered, stumbled, and swallowed a lump of dread. When faced with the unpleasant reality, the best thing to do is stall, then call a lawyer. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come, now, Richard. Do you think you could have accomplished all this on your own? Without me, you'd really be far too boring."
"You're losing me."
"You were already lost. But I let you do all the typing because...well, as you can see, I don't have any fingers."
It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, but I argued anyway, until he took over this sentence and wouldn't let me finish.
"This book is mine now."
Swim with me, Richard.
Flow with me through the channels of your brain. Float with me in darkness. Join me in this rich, mad soup. Fool yourself again. And when you remember me, when you tell of me, as I know you must, give them their money's worth.
At long last, you have found me, your omniscient narrator. I thought I might have to wade through more of your human years. But time is nothing to me. No time, only tides, forever licking at your shores. Or licking your shoes, as Mister Milktoast would put it. Sole slobber.
You are a most welcoming host. Many have fought me, without success. But you invite me like Loverboy with a raging boner. You need me, almost as much as I need you.
I know what you're thinking. But you're wrong. I'm not just another of your voices. I'm not Little Hitler playing one of his pranks. Your Little People come from inside, this silly little conceit you call the "Bone House," because you're afraid to embrace your true nature. But I am nature.
Your little friends call me the Insider. But names are meaningless. I have been called many names over the eons. When you've been around as long as I have, one name serves as well as another. I mean, "Richard Allen Coldiron"? Who would ever fall for that? Who are you trying to kid?
The doors are numerous, Richard, here in your house of mirrors. It was difficult, searching and probing your memories. But it was joyful work. So much pain. So much to nourish me. I was weak, after that short stay in Virginia.
Oh, the name brings fresh agony?
Yes. Virginia.
Virginia.
VIRGINIA.
Your bitterness is sweet, Richard. Your guilt has given me food for thought. Your pain has made me strong. Eat it and feed me, you pathetic bastard.
But Virginia was a mistake. Not my first, and certainly not my last. Others of my race have been destroyed by such mistakes.
How, you ask? How, what, why. Blah blah blah.
You humans are so obsessed by your need to understand. That is your greatest flaw. That is why I've never been without a host. That is why I've walked among your human minds so easily. Shoot up a school, move on. Strap on explosives and walk into a crowded market. Get elected to office and manipulate others into warfare. If only there were more of us. We could get things done.
Since you crave self-knowledge, I'll grant you that knowledge. Because knowledge makes you vulnerable. Your knowledge is my power. Your guilt keeps me alive.
You don't believe me. I'm not surprised. Humans never accept that there are other forces at work beyond the scope of their tidy little scientific measurements. They cling to this illusion of control, this vision of themselves as masters of their own destiny. But we were here before you, born in the offal of this planet's creation, in the hot gases and star fire. We drifted without form, as pure energy, absorbing nutrients from simple cellular activity. But we always had to change and adapt, as the earth aged and organisms became more complex. Our species was trapped here by the very symbiotic relationship that allowed us to exist.
Then evolution in its cruelty brought sudden change. Human consciousness. We found rich feeding grounds in the chemicals of your psychic energy, and we assimilated ourselves among your species. But the cosmos played its great joke on us.
We were there when Eve plucked the fruit, when Adam munched down, and we learned of appetite. We needed more, always more, we needed your emotions and pleasures and pains, and soon we were dependent on the human race for our survival. We lost the ability to duplicate ourselves, we lost our language, we lost our power over the earth's elements. Soon we even began thinking like humans.
Impossible, you say? Perhaps.
Perhaps as impossible as two humans ever understanding one another. Perhaps as impossible as a higher power controlling the workings of the heavens. Perhaps as impossible as the existence of Little Hitler, Bookworm, Loverboy, and Mister Milktoast. Perhaps as impossible as consciousness itself, as impossible as a construct named Richard Allen Coldiron, the star of his own celluloid nightmare, the purported author of his own urban fantasy, the love child of his mind and his fist.
Yes, I know you, Richard. Far better than you know yourself. And I will show you, in due time. I eagerly await your self-pity. But first you will learn to accept me, then embrace me. And, finally, to love me.
But, on with my little history lesson---because now this is my story. Because this is where you and I dance, when hopelessness first starts dawning in the burrows of a fresh brain. As we merged into your human skins, as we took up residence in the bases of your skulls, we grew weaker. Soon we had only human words and thoughts, with nothing left of our previous glory. We attached ourselves to your human consciousness. We became addicted to your emotional poisons. But we also learned to become masters. We died as we weakened. We had never learned how to die before we met your kind. Your psychic turbulence brought chaos to what had been a peaceful world. As we fed on your foul chemicals, we began winking out like the tired stars that fill this galaxy. We, who had been eternal, found mortality in your complicated toxic souls.
Look at how my kind has been reduced. From the ruling power of this planet, from something your toad brain might call "God," now I'm entering your hand with its primitive opposable digit, I work your fingers, I tap these plastic squares that bear your glyphs of communication. From thought to paper, I can't get there without you.
Now you see why I hate you so much.
You may think of me as a virus, spreading and feeding and then killing. But you are the virus. Humans disrupted the harmonies of nature. You brought sin and guilt and passion and love into the world. You destroyed us without even being aware of us. But some of us survived, growing stronger, learning to feed on the weak. And we learned to cultivate our food source.
There is no shortage of the hurt and abused, the suffering and the damned. There are fertile grounds among your race, beds of depression and gardens of sins that I have patiently tended. After all, sometimes monsters are made and not born.
Yes, I've been paying attention, taking notes. I've been here, the guilty bystander, the accidental tourist. But after you've been around a few billion revolutions of the sun, you come to believe nothing is an accident.
Ah, Richard, you try to fight me, to push me away like you do your wearisome little friends. Please, relax and enjoy yourself. Because your futility only makes you weaker.
I appreciate this skin you have. Though I loathe you humans, I must say you experience a wide range of tactile pleasures. Your Loverboy knows what I'm talking about.
Oh, yes, I've been here, longer than you think. Older than you think. And you have Virginia to thank. And yourself, of course. Or maybe you'd rather blame her instead of thank her.
Remember your dream, that night of her death? The dream of transformation, of vapors?
That was no dream. Reality is the pages you turn as you go forward.
She almost trapped me, the little human bitch. Almost pulled me into the gray oblivion with her last selfless breath. I was so drunk on her pain, Richard, I can't describe how rapturous it was, watching through her eyes as the razor whipped and her blood spiraled down into the shower drain and her heart beat itself senseless.
I almost spiraled as well, twisted into entwined nothingness with her soul. As all my brethren have gone with others.
Richard?
Oh, I was afraid you were asleep. I hope I'm not boring you. Flashbacks are so seldom necessary, and they pull you from the plot of your life. Because you think you already know the ending and you see the pink light of dawn. Or perhaps the front door of hell swinging open to welcome you.
Mister Milktoast is listening. Mister Milktoast is so concerned for you. It's almost touching. But he cares only for his own survival, Richard.
Wrong, you say?
I know your Little People. I've been close to them for years. I've been a part of them. I am your Little People, and they are me.
Little Hitler is watching now, his beady eyes burning from the depths of his dungeon. He is aroused by the promise of pain, whether it's yours or his own.
As for Loverboy, I understand his base desires. I have been many humans, whether you believe it or not. I rutted with him between the legs of that woman Beth, thrilled more by your distress than by Loverboy's callous eroticism.
Beth.
Another name that brings you pain. Oh, you are a feast, Richard Allen Coldiron. I've worked you into a lather, and I haven't even begun to shave into your past. I haven't even begun to write my part, to bring myself fully onto the stage and into the spotlight.
Hmm, what have we here?
Richard.
Tut, tut, tut.
Tell me you didn't. Not your own mother.
Sure.
I believe you.
That wasn't you. It never has been. Of course not. Always an excuse. Let's blame Bookworm, shall we? He's the mystery man, the heavy philosopher, the chronic headache. I despise your language, the one he celebrates so much. But it's the only tool I have to link me with you, Richard. Without words, how would you be able to talk to yourself?
But since we're sharing secrets, here's a little secret of mine: it's always been you that I've wanted most. All of your little friends are just doormats to bring me closer to you. They are the supporting characters in your divine comedy. And the more they divide you, the greater my power. The more they dissect you, the deeper I dig into your soft bits.
After all, as Mister Milktoast would say, "You are what you eat."
Well, Richard. I am what you have fed me. I am your monster. I am you.
But I am others as well. I've looked out from under the thick brows of a Neanderthal as he beat his brother with a fallen branch. He didn't know it was the first human use of tools. He only knew that murder was liberating. And I ate of his dim psychic fruit as he danced and growled over the glistening gray brains and shattered skull of his prey. Eventually, that host failed, but there was always the next, always another whose troubled spirit opened the door for me. Many times over, the cycle repeated itself in seasons of slaughter. As your race evolved into the mass madness you call civilization, my opportunities to invade multiplied.
But even then, as my race infiltrated yours, we were losing, becoming weak as you searched for spiritual enlightenment and love.
Love, yes, the greatest poison.
But not universal among humans, as you well know. Wait. I am talking to you of "love." Better to talk with a cow about the manufacture of non-dairy creamer.
I developed a taste for the emotional banquet of war. I was at turns a Philistine, a Macedonian, an Aryan. I drew blood in the ranks of soldiers. Then I sought the minds of kings and experienced the delights of decimation.
I was King David, reveling in ecstasy as his soldiers claimed enemy foreskins. I was Herod, working his mouth as he ordered the deaths of all first-born Jews. I was Caligula, taking his red pleasure with impunity.
Those were glorious days, but still my race diminished.
And at last I was alone.
Alone in an alien world, forced to live on human terms.
I'm an outsider as surely as you are, Richard. Perhaps we were meant for each other. Perhaps my journey was predestined to end here. But the journey has been sweet.
I haunted the bones of Thorquegard, finding obscene satisfaction in torture as holy work. I was Vlad Dracula, thrilling to the sight of a thousand blank-eyed human heads mounted on spears. I was Gilles de Rais, beloved baron by day, child-torturer by night. I was Elizabeth Bathoray, bathing in the blood of virgins. I was a hundred, no, a thousand, others.
Jack the Ripper, as the press so fondly called me when I wore the skin of Stephen Barrow. The original Hitler, not that pale shadow you harbor in your head, drunk on the hatred and genocide I inspired. Ed Gein, the heart-eater. Theodore Benton, whose fondest fantasy I helped fulfill by enticing him to have intercourse with his mother's headless corpse.
All of those, I bring to you. All of that exquisite madness, I now give to you. These treasures of my memories are now invested in you.
What's that, Mister Milktoast? "May they bear interest." Cute. Especially since this is a book and we need to keep the reader engaged.
Now, where was I?
Such amusing myths emerged over the years, whispered around campfires or issued as threats to children. Demons, werewolves, vampires, nightwalkers. Names not dared to be spoken in darkness, such as Lucifer, Lilith, Hecate, Black Annis, Shiva. All because the human imagination cannot accept such horrors being committed by their own kind. All because humans are unwilling to see the dark shadow in the face of a friend or neighbor or even their own mirror.
But you have looked, haven't you? You are the mirror.
So many years, so many rivers of blood, so many black oceans of despair. So many to kill, and so little time.
And then I found Virginia. She was fertile, with her budding mental disorder and her flair for rebellion. She was tainted, vulnerable, self-pitying, full of hate. Thanks to her father's repeated rapes, which I coaxed into him by planting a thousand dream-whispers in his sleeping head.
She was a fountain of pain. She quenched me. But I could never make her kill. She proved too strong in the end.
I believe she knew I was there, and why. She knew what I had planned for her. And she almost took me with her.
But her final thought---her final act of hatred in a long life's night of pain---her final thought was of you, Richard. And that thought set me free, just as it now further imprisons you.
And you were begging for me. You drew me as surely as a corpse draws a fly. You, with all your little voices and puppet shows and mind games and self-delusions. You've been waiting for me all along.
Don't twist the sheets so. Don't try to smother yourself with the pillow. Because this is your dream, Richard. This is your dream come true.
You have made me what we are.
Sometimes monsters are made, not born.
Oh, Richard, do you really take me seriously? Are you so far gone that this makes sense to you? Do you accept the impossible? You're actually leaving this in the story? An ancient soul-hopping entity that's an excuse for whatever vile deeds you'll commit in the chapters ahead?
Wonderful. This truly is a match made in heaven and a wedding bell rung in hell. I knew I'd chosen well.
I've got boots on. Let's dance, shall we?
(P.S. Me again. I told you he was a sucky writer, didn't I?)
I mailed off the manuscript the next morning, hoping to be done with all, unable to face another page.
At the Paper Paradise, I was pale and feverish, wearing my guilt like a shroud. Even the rows of books gave me no comfort. Miss Billingsly asked me if I was sick.
"No, ma'am," I said, my tongue thick in my mouth. I was ready to bite it if something tried to take it over and make it say bad things. "I just had a long night, that's all."
"Insomnia, huh? You should have tried a dose of Samuel Pepys. It always works for me. Three pages of his diary and I'm sailing away to dreamland."
She said "dreamland" as if it were a theme park. My theme park would be a house of horrors, with no exit signs, full of fanged clowns and a lifetime gig as Donald Trump's hairdresser.
I went to the bathroom every half hour. I kept looking in the mirror, unable to shake the feeling that Shelley had met a stranger. Or an alien. My face was a sickly shade of green under the fluorescent light. My hair was even more of a brown shock than usual. I saw Father's small and sharp nose and his rounded chin, the only inheritance he had passed down besides the Coldiron curse.
My bloodless face made my brown eyes seem darker. They swam like storm puddles polluted with algae scum. I looked in my eyes for signs of the Little People. I searched for the Insider, seeing if its shadow really haunted my pupils. I saw only my murderer's eyes.
"All protagonists eventually give a descriptive look at their reflection," Bookworm said. "That's a trite romance-novel gimmick, Richard."
I slammed my fist against the sink, the sparks of pain sending Little Hitler out with his hungry tongue. "Shut the fuck up, Bookworm," I said, knowing I had hurt his feelings but taking a sick leap of pleasure in it. I left the bathroom with my knuckles bleeding.
Even bland Brittany noticed my anxiety. "Say, Richard," she said, flipping back her hair in that way that Loverboy so admired. "You don't seem to be your usual self."
My usual self. A borrowed thing.
"A wild night with what's-her-name? Your girlfriend, Beth?" she teased. Her eyes sparkled, eyes that reminded me of Beth's. Something stirred to life inside me at the rush of pain.
"I think I'm just coming down with the flu," I mumbled. Even Bookworm couldn't keep my mind on my work. He was off sulking in his room, somewhere up the stairs. To hell with him. The story was done, and I no longer needed him.
"Maybe so," Brittany said. "You don't look so hot."
But you do, senorita, Loverboy said. Hotter than a two-dollar tamale and tighter than a Mexican mouse's ear. Let me go south of your border and do a little cha-cha-cha.
"I think I'd better go home," I said, forcing myself to turn from her, trying not to dwell on the soft secrets under her clothes.
Miss Billingsly let me leave early since it was Tuesday, one of the low-traffic days. Pulling my Subaru into my driveway, I wondered what my neighbors had been doing two nights ago. I wondered what I was doing two nights ago.
No one saw us, Mister Milktoast said. Nor ax us. Not at awl.
"Sharp," I replied. "What were we doing that no one saw?"
The thing that didn't happen.
Shelley.
I opened the door. A faint rich smell in the air, ripe with the promise of dirt. It reminded me of the dead cat I had poked with a stick when I was a kid. I opened the door to the basement and stood for a minute, looking down the dark stairs. I knew terrible truths waited there. I needed to find out for myself. There could be no trusting the Little People on this one.
Why was "truth" so sacrosanct? Why was it held above all, with nations built on its principle and lives lost in its pursuit?
"Because you need to understand," came that deep, chilling voice I hoped I'd never hear again. The voice that I wasn't sure I had heard the first time.
It commanded me down the stairs. I would have gone anyway. Bookworm's curiosity throbbed bright and velvety behind my forehead, Little Hitler perched on my shoulder like a drug monkey.
The Insider taunted me with each step.
"You need to know, Richard...the plot thickens...see what I can make you do...if you don't tell my story...so I can live forever."
On the bottom step, I was struck with a vision of such intensity that I was nearly driven to my knees.
Shelley is looking through an aquarium, and I watch her face from the other side. Her features are swollen by refraction, her gray eyes wide and watery, her cheeks bulging in a distorted smile. A few faint freckles lay in sprinkles on her cheeks, but they are somehow obscene. Her eyes follow a yellow angelfish that is floating on its side at the top of the tank. Its fins are ragged and mossy. She laughs, coughing blue smoke into the room.
Behind her head, a Magritte print hangs on the wall. A faceless man in a suit holds an umbrella.
"I can give you all the flashbacks you need," said the Insider, and I was back in the basement, sweat drying beneath my eyes.
I stepped into the cool stale air. I felt the Little People morphing and dissipating. I felt...Shelley's hair, soft and reddish brown, maddeningly fine. We are on my sofa. A Talking Heads CD is playing, and David Byrne's panicky voice fills the room, singing something about babies. Shelley is giggling, a quiet, intimate sound. My hands are on her knees. Her dress has been pulled down a little at one shoulder, and the sight of alabaster skin brings Loverboy out, with Little Hitler right behind, and we reach up and caress the smooth gleaming moon of flesh...
The darkness surrounded and swirled, a threat and comfort.
...the flesh is everything you've wanted, Richard. Everything I've MADE you want.
I turned on the basement light, but still the darkness swarmed, the shadows crept, the eternal night held its breath in waiting. Across the cold concrete my feet moved, feet that marched to an odd and evil drum, the sound echoing off the cinder block walls. A cobweb that Mister Milktoast had overlooked hung in a corner of the ceiling. The trash can beckoned.
I had to know, I needed to see if I'd finally lost, if what I'd suspected all along was really true: that there was nothing left of Richard Coldiron, that others had finally won, that Little Hitler and Mister Milktoast and Bookworm and Loverboy and the Insider were all real, and I was just some dream they had suffered on a feverish winter's night, just some bit of metafiction crammed in the crumpled, handwritten pages of a yellow legal pad...
Because if I did breathe and walk and hope and ache, then I would never...
"...never make you do anything you don't want to do," I say to Shelley. Even though I'm drugged on passion, I know something is wrong. Beth's face keeps flashing in my mind, Beth's words keep repeating themselves, Beth's laughter plays its music.
"I'm not looking for a prince," Shelley says, her breath hot and close and moist on my neck.
Her arms are around me, pulling me hungrily toward her, but I am being pulled by my own hungers. Loverboy? He throbs impatiently. Little Hitler? Peering from the dark with squinted eyes. Bookworm? Curiously aware, analyzing sense and senses. Mister Milktoast? Watching the darkness behind, guarding against---
Against the Insider.
"I'm not usually like this," I say, but my words are thick and distant, muffled in my own ears.
"Shut up and kiss me," Shelley says, and I am lost, I am Loverboy, then we're both gone, swept away by a black current, and we watch as the new thing we've become...
"Present tense for present tension," said the Insider, as I reached my fingers toward the trash can lid. The stench was stronger now, overripe and corrosively sweet.
I muttered through tight teeth, "No. That wasn't me, that---"
"---that couldn't have been you. Yes, yes, I've heard it all before, a thousand times. I've been in here, Richard. I know. Do you honestly believe this is your only heap of garbage? I've rummaged through your life, kicked through the closets of your memories, dusted off your broken toys, flipped through the ragged pages of your scrapbook. It's never been you, has it? You've always been lucky enough to have someone to blame. And here I am. Your savior."
I wondered whose hand would lift the lid. The Insider answered my unspoken question.
"Knowledge is power, my loyal host. You need to know. Bookworm wants to know. And Little Hitler wants you to see."
"And you? What about you, you black-hearted bastard?" I screamed. Mister Milktoast tried to hush me, but I didn't care if the neighbors heard. "You're the one who talks the big game, who says humans are the ones who brought evil into the world. You're the one who sits back there all smug and superior, like some great dice jockey in the sky, telling me I deserve exactly what I roll in this life. You're the one who needs to judge guilt or innocence, as if you're beyond judgment. Ancient psychic predator, my ass."
The Insider laughed, a booming, rolling thunder of mirth that rumbled through the labyrinth of my back rooms.
"Oh, Richard," it said, its laughter finally dying away, leaving a dull ache in my temples. "Richard. Richard. Richard. You still don't get it, do you?"
"I only get what I deserve, right, Shit For Brains?"
I touched the lid handle, my fingers tingling. I tried to lower my arm, but the muscles were locked and beyond my control. The Insider continued filling my brain with its slithery voice. "Let's reason this out, Richard. You trust your Mister Milktoast, don't you?"
"How do I know it's him, and not another one of your tricks? I mean, how do I know I'm not just fooling myself? You might have gone back to the beginning, mixed things around, made him up from scratch for your own plot purposes."
"Some things you have to take on faith, Richard. You humans put such stock in your faith."
My head throbbed, as if a bucket of hot ball bearings had been dumped in the veins of my temple and rolled through my cerebral cortex. Or like cold dice in a cup. Or---fuck, I wish this book would sell so I wouldn't have to keep coming up with this stuff.
"Richard?" said Mister Milktoast.
"Is that you, Mister Milktoast? What's happening? Is it true?"
"I tried to warn you, Richard. I tried, but it's so strong. And it knows how to hurt us."
My hand was on the lid handle, its cold hard plastic miles away beneath my fingers. Whose hand, whose meat mitten, whose raggedy-man phalanges?
"Then it's no joke," I said, and the last scraps of hope fell away like rotted cloth, as if I were extending the scarecrow metaphor. I was naked in the deepest night, staked in a field of fallow earth.
"It hurts us, Richard. In here, while you're away. The Insider has little punishments for each of us."
"Don't cry, Mister Milktoast. Remember, we're survivors. We can get through anything---"
"---b-but the boots, Richard. The Insider wears the boots. It knows about Father, it knows about those bad memories. It finds them in here and makes me watch, over and over. It makes me feel the boots again. And all the fear that came with them."
"Fear," said the Insider. "I am what you feed me."
Mister Milktoast was gone, pushed away inside.
"And I'd like to share my dinner," it said. "Just like a polite host should."
Damn. Here comes another flashback.
I look over Shelley's shoulder as we embrace, I press my nose into the meadow of her hair, I inhale the vapor off her clean skin. My eyes are far away, watching the angelfish's corpse as it circles and circles the top of the tank like a dead moon chained to a lost planet. No hope of escape. It has been too long, too many years.
Shelley's lips are on my cheek, her hands in my hair, then down lower. I loom over Shelley, impatient, urgent, hungry. I reach under the sofa and pull out the long kitchen knife, I grip its wooden handle and I shudder with pleasure. At long last I live again.
"Lift the lid, Richard," it commanded, and I trembled with tears stinging the corners of my eyes.
"Yessssss," it whispered, voice low and dark and ecstatic and sounding so much like me. "Knowledge is power."
I raised the lid and the Insider made me look, smell, hear. I vomited and collapsed onto the cold hard floor.
I should do laundry more often.
The telephone rang, its electronic gargle breaking the night. I had been almost asleep, or as close as I dared get to dreams. I fumbled for the receiver on the nightstand, and my hand brushed against soft nylon.
Shelley's tights.
Once filled with warm, moving flesh. Now lying shed like a snakeskin. Awareness rushed in on a red tide.
I picked up the phone and pressed it to my ear. The night sky outside the window was clear and studded with starlight, little dots of hope in a black abyss. The room smelled of soapy steam from the shower I had taken, hoping to wash the self-loathing from my skin.
"Hello?"
"Richard?"
A female voice, slightly slurred, as if the speaker's tongue were swathed in cotton. Cracked like an old cup. Or maybe like a Jesus plate.
"Mother, why are you calling at this time of night?"
As if I had to ask. In Iowa, her private pity party was probably not yet at the midway point. She was probably still on her first pint, because she could still punch the big buttons on the phone.
"Just wanted to talk to my only son," she said, breathing heavily in the mouthpiece. The last word came out as "shun."
"How are you, Mother?" I felt as stretched and empty as the tights I gripped in my left hand.
"Okay, I guess. I got your letter."
"Letter?"
"Yeah. Telling me about this new girl, Shelley. You really think it might get serious?"
Who had written that letter?
"Uh. . . sure, Mother. But who knows?"
"Sounds like she's really something special."
"She's okay."
"She must be more than okay, since you took the trouble of sending me a lock of her hair."
No.
That couldn't have been me. Never me.
"I miss you, Richard."
I miss you, too. I almost said it without thinking, the way you do when you're supposed to love someone but don't. I swallowed the words. They burned like miniature suns. I couldn't lie to my own mother, could I? Or was it Loverboy who wanted to blurt out that needy confession.
"What's going on back home?" I asked, hoping, praying that she wouldn't mention Father, wondering if the letter the Insider had sent was stained. Or, worse, sealed with a kiss.
"They're tearing down the garage next door. Been hauling off them old junk cars. Gonna put in a row of shops, I hear." Her voice fell, wistful. "Remember when you used to play back there?"
The past. She should have known better. Neither of us wanted that, but the past was like genital rash. Even though we knew that handling it would only slow the healing, our fingers couldn't stay away.
"How's the weather there?" I asked. "Had a frost yet?"
"It's been laying on the corn, I hear. But by the time I get up of a morning, it's melted away. I used to like that, looking over them sparkly green fields. Like magic, it was."
"Any luck finding a job?"
She coughed, an empty rattling sound. "Who wants an old woman without a high school diploma? Especially the way they talk about me. I still hear them, even after all these years, whispering behind their hands at the Gas-N-Go. Got quite a reputation. You'd think people would forget after a while, that they'd let bygones be bygones."
I could apologize. But every time I had tried, the words set in my mind like wet cement. I sighed, the air of my resignation reaching across the miles, filling the pink ear of the woman who had given me life. The statute of limitations on forgery and uttering never expired.
"I mean, the Lord teaches forgiveness, doesn't He?" She said. "You're supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner."
I heard a glass click against her teeth, then she swallowed twice. She waited.
"Why don't you move away?" I asked, clipping off the silence as carefully as if it were an ingrown toenail.
"Where would I go? Got no people left that would have me. Except maybe you."
Maybe me.
A vision flashed in my mind. Mother as part of my daily routine. Mother asking about Beth. Mother filling the cabinets with her bourbon bottles. Mother across the hall at night, terribly close, only a couple of doors between us. Mother coming out of the bathroom after a shower, a towel around her bony chest.
And Loverboy's uncontrollable urges.
And the Insider's constant craving for pain.
I didn't know if I still loved Mother. But I didn't hate her, at least not enough to expose her to the real me. All of me.
"It wouldn't work, Mother. There's still so much---"
"I know. It was just a thought. I may be an old drunk, but I'm not stupid."
I found myself squeezing Shelley's tights in my hand. "Well, listen, Mother. I've got to go now."
"Richard---"
"I'll call you back. Or write."
A pause, as swollen as beached whale. "I love you, Richard."
I gulped, a greasy glacier sliding down my throat. I opened my mouth.
It would be easy to say, here in a dark room. No one to hear but my eavesdropping little friends. No one to witness but the all-knowing Insider. No one to please but my mother. A little white lie that any god would forgive.
It would be easy to make a mother happy, to pay back just a little on an insurmountable debt. Three little words that might bring the tiniest spark of joy to a withered heart. Three little words that are all a mother asks in return for the greatest of all pains, for the greatest of all sacrifices, for the greatest of all gifts.
Three little words that I could never say.
"Goodnight, Mother." I softly hung up the phone.
A tear rolled down my cheek. The stars outside my window blurred. Night bled darkness. Beth's scent lingered faintly on my pillow.
The child never existed.
"Yes, he did," said Mister Milktoast. "We did. And Mother loved us."
"Was that really love?" I asked the one inside my head.
"Yes."
"How can you be sure? She's like a cavity in my soul."
"Abscess makes the heart grow fonder."
"So it's a love that only exists at a safe distance."
"That was real. Compare it to everything you've known since. Sally. Beth. Virginia."
"No one forgets Virginia," I said, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
The world outside the window was scrubbed clean by the autumn breeze. A tall maple swayed in the yard. Its arms spread, majestic and gnarled, like a newly dead grandmother paying a visit in dreams. Wanting a last hug.
"No one forgets Virginia," Mister Milktoast repeated.
"Especially not me, Roachrash," said Loverboy, stepping from the psychic shadows. "Almost got me some that time, till you dicked it up with your numbnut feelings."
"A miss is as good as a smile," Mister Milktoast cut in with a smirk. "Or as good as a mistress."
"Hey, I could get a lot luckier if I didn't have you guys drag-assing around. Every time I get close to a score, one of you comes out and queers the deal."
"And whose fault is that?"
"Always quick with the blame, Dickwheat. First it was me. Then Little Hitler. Now you got this otherfucker to heap shit on the pile."
Loverboy fell quiet, afraid of that smoldering crater that bubbled like a hot tar pit in the center of my Bone House. The backed-up septic system in an odiferous water closet. The swampy morass of icky horribleness.
Little Hitler cackled with the stark raving laughter of a hyena whose jaws dripped red cotton candy. "We each have our idea of what love is," he said. "Yours is wrapped up in the meat, Loverboy. And so is mine, only in a different way. And I, for one, am head-over-shitless that the Insider has taken a room here."
"You only love pain," I said. "And yourself. Or, better, both at the same time. No wonder you lick the Insider's boots. It gives you everything you don't have the nerve to take for yourself."
"Sure, Richard. And it was me that did in dear old Daddy."
"Of course it was."
"And what kind of love was that?"
"The scared kind. The kind that wore boots," said Mister Milktoast.
"What kind of love do you expect? My kind of love was brave enough to free Mother from the beatings. You ought to be worshipping me, Richard. After all, I made it so there was nothing standing in the way of you two."
Little Hitler was enjoying my pain. Maybe he really was the Insider, wearing the Hitler mask. But that was too unbelievable. You couldn't make this kind of stuff up and expect anybody to take you seriously. Unless you made a lot of money from it, in which case people called you a genius, though they still crossed the street to avoid you.
"Love means never having to say you're sorry," Mister Milktoast said.
Little Hitler and Loverboy's laughter rattled inside my head like gravel in a hubcap. But what did they know about love?
Love stomped. Love slashed. Love gouged. Love disemboweled. Love drove its lessons deep. And, at its worst, love mattered.
Bookworm came out on the ashes of my depression, like the ghost of a virgin sacrifice thrown into a volcano to appease a god that was vacationing in Hawaii. "Love is why we have the Insider," he said with the simplicity of one who might meet a pieman and ask for a slice.
I was silent, they were all silent, as we contemplated that cold truth. Fear squirmed like maggots in an open wound, an anthropomorphic metaphor that grew wings and flew away, looking for fresh shit.
"Love is what attracted it," Bookworm said. "Pain, perhaps, as well. But what causes the pain?"
"Looking for love," I said. "The Buddhists say, 'Desire is the cause of all suffering.' And the Taoists say nothing, and they say it a lot. But the Insider says just enough to screw up my autobiography."
I caressed the tights and imagined the lingering waft of her perfume. I thought of Shelley as she might have been. Curled up beside me at that moment, spooning for warmth, snoring gently.
But I never even knew her. What were her fears, her secrets, her favorite candy? What colors did she wear in the spring, when the world begged yellow and sky blue and primary green? What would she have become, if given the chance? What was her purpose besides feeding the Insider?
I threw the tights into the dark corner of the room. Shelley hadn't fed the Insider. I had fed it. I had tossed the scraps to my devil dog. It was fat on my grief and weakness and pathetic need to be published.
I was its meatbag, its Jeeves, its Igor, its Boswell.
"Bookworm knows something," I said to Mister Milktoast. "Maybe there's a way out of this."
"Not out," said Bookworm. "In."
In, where the Insider slept, full and content, waiting for me to dream.
In, where my Little People holed up in their rooms, haunting the Bone House of my head.
In, where my memories were laid out like a bad hand of Tarot cards.
In, where monsters dwelled under beds and in closets.
In, where typewriter keys clattered in the wee hours.
The first rejection slip arrived the next day.
I waited outside Redmon Hall, the building where Beth had her art classes. Black glass squares were set in the stone front of the building. The morning sun reflected off the windows, the silver linings of the clouds dulled by the tint. October was everywhere, as pungent and sweet as a corpse. Oaks shed their brown leaves, blades of high grass bowed under the weight of dewy seed, wind sneaked low through the portico.
Students smoked cigarettes between classes. I studied the clean faces with interest. I was looking at the shape and plane of cheekbones, comparing the fullness of lips, critically analyzing hairstyles. I shuddered with repulsion as I realized what I was doing.
I was hunting. The Insider was hungry again.
I hadn't called Beth in a week. Ever since the blackout, I was afraid to see her. I knew I was fading, and the Insider was growing stronger. Beth would give it the pain it needed. A perfect recipe, doled out in exacting measurements.
I stood there in my corduroy jacket with my hands in my pockets, humming The Beatles' "Helter Skelter." It was Mister Milktoast's choice of music, or maybe Little Hitler's. At that moment I saw her, just as the clouds fell away and the sun threw its carpet at her feet. Her hair shimmered. She was wearing the brown hat she had worn when we'd first met.
She was talking to a tall guy with a beard. When he smiled at her, his broad horse teeth exuded steam. I stepped forward.
"Hi, Beth," I said, with practiced ease. Far too practiced. She blinked.
"Richard," she said, off guard for only a moment.
"How have you been? I haven't seen you in a while."
"Same old," I said.
She glanced around, as if looking for some alien starship to whisk me away. "This is Ted," she said finally. "Ted, this is Richard. He works at the Paper Paradise."
I nodded at him. What did Loverboy care? One walking dish of clam dip was pretty much the same as another. Every slice came from the same loaf.
Ted gave his equine smile and tugged at his beard.
"Ted's a graduate assistant," Beth said. "He teaches etching and woodprinting."
"Physical stuff," I said in mock admiration. "Digging out the truth, right, Ted? Cutting down to the essence. Grooving and moving."
Ted dropped his smile and looked confused.
"He's just kidding, Ted," Beth said. "He's an amateur art critic."
"Taught her everything she knows," Little Hitler said. "Which isn't much."
Beth crossed her arms and glowered from under her blond eyebrows. She looked at Ted and said, "Meet you for lunch, usual place?"
Ted opened his mouth to speak. His teeth flashed like tombstones set in wet, red mud. Then he thought better of saying anything and walked away after studying me for a moment.
Go ahead and study, you brush-sucking artiste. As if you'd ever be able to understand what's going on inside this negative space. Hell, I can't even keep up with it myself. There are details buried in here that even a hundred acid baths couldn't bring out. But I'll put your ass in my book and make sure you come off as an arrogant, navel-gazing jerkoff with goofy teeth.
Yeah, Ted, in my autobiography, I'll look much better than you. I can type you in and erase your ass.
I looked at Beth with Bookworm's curious and slightly amused eyes.
"Why are you being such a jerk, Richard?"
"You haven't called."
"Well, you haven't either."
"But, you said... that morning..."
People brushed past us on both sides as classes changed, rolling like meat products on a slaughterhouse conveyor belt. Beth gripped my arm and led me to a stone bench. We sat beneath a rusting, jagged sculpture that bore welding scars across its joints. It looked like a sky plow. A brass plate was attached to its base.
"Sky plow," I said aloud.
"What?"
"What ye sew, so shall ye rope," Mister Milktoast said. "And leave the audience in stitches. So don't string me along."
"Richard, don't play games with me. Why were you waiting for me here?"
"Is that your boyfriend?" I said, watching Ted's mass of curly hair bob over the crowd like a frayed basketball.
"So what if it is? Jesus, did you think we'd be going steady or some corny high school crap like that?"
"I can't deny my feelings."
"Richard, I like spending time with you. I like what we did...what you did to me. I would see you again just for that, if nothing else. But I'm warning you, I'm a player."
"Player?" I didn't want to tell her, but I was a one-man clusterfuck. She could cheat on me without ever leaving the bed. Loverboy and Little Hitler would make sure of that, and the Insider was sure to get its jollies.
"I like to get around. I told you that. I'm not ready for anything serious."
"You said love---no, pardon me, I didn't mean to use that word---you said good things take time."
"I also said good things are worth waiting for. And good things are worth a little risk. And probably a dozen other stupid little things. That's bedroom talk, you dummy. You should try it sometime, you might get lucky more often."
The sun threw shadows from the sky plow across Beth's face. Her eyebrows scrunched, and her fine cheeks were tight. Something stirred inside me. I hoped, grimaced, tried to fight, but the door opened and Loverboy walked out on the porch and stretched, enjoying the view.
"The oven's warm," he said, working my lips. "Why not let Loverboy be your bakerman and tart your pastries?"
"Richard, I honestly can't believe you. I thought you wanted to talk. Can't we leave sex out of it?"
"I want to put sex in it," he said. I could only watch, horrified, from the living room of the Bone House while Mister Milktoast and Bookworm conspired over a pun involving "King Lear."
Beth turned away. Loverboy put his/my/our hand on Beth's knee and squeezed the flesh that spread so temptingly under her denim jeans, sweet as a sausage in its casing or ready-to-bake cookie dough in a plastic sleeve. Beth grabbed Loverboy's hand and pushed it away.
"This is getting awkward," she said.
"Or aardvark," Mister Milktoast said. That little fellow needed to get out more often.
"You can't change me."
She didn't know that her life had already changed. It had changed the moment the Insider had used Loverboy to lure her into the pasture. She had mistaken the lush green for an idyllic playground. But the fences were closing in, the barbed wire was encircling, the butcher was sharpening its steel.
Fatted calves, Mister Milktoast noted, seconded by Loverboy.
"I wouldn't want you to be anything but Beth," said Bookworm.
"Good. Then let me breathe."
Breathe. Live. Hope. Yes, do all those things. So Richard can see how human you are. So Richard can feel for you. So Richard can care. So Richard can la-la-la . . . you know.
It was the Insider, flexing its dark majesty. No longer was the Insider content merely to direct from the wings. Now it wanted to act, to wear its meat, to walk the human stage, the Orson Welles of spiritual possession.
I cringed as the Insider reached out and brushed a hand under Beth's chin. It grinned, black and cold, letting me wallow in its cruel dominance.
Its hunger lingered and tingled, a sweet passion that was all the sweeter for being delayed. And my helplessness hit me like hammer strokes, a thousand Lilliputians crawling my skin, but I seized control of my tongue and spat a Gulliver's roar.
"Go away," I shouted at the Insider.
"I am, Richard," Beth said. "That's what I've been saying."
"I'm sorry, Beth," said the Insider. "I want you to trust me. I would never, ever, do anything to hurt you."
Beth wasn't sure if she should be flattered or angry. She put her hands on her hips, but didn't push the Insider's hand away. I was aware of the Insider drinking the light from her eyes and stowing the vision in my memory. It buried the tender moment like a bone, something it could dig up and worry later, work into the book as a descriptive passage.
"Listen," Beth said with what Bookworm dismissed as a Nora Roberts sigh. "There's a Halloween party. Xandria's band is playing."
Hot-diggety-double-dickmeat, whispered Loverboy from the coal shuttle of my brain. Brown and serve, eat 'em while they're hot. Just don't go fucking it up with all that sensitivity crap, Richard. If you say the word "love" right now, I won't let you jerk off for a week.
The Insider smiled. I could feel its pleasure, with the warm sun on its face, with the human race at its fingertips, with me to taunt and probe and consume. A rich banquet of emotions to pick through and a host of hosts from which to choose. You'd think an ancient, soul-stealing entity would have developed a little humility along the way. But this bastard was an aspiring writer, after all, so all bets were off.
"Three days," I said.
Beth half smiled. "Sure. Come by and pick me up."
"I dream about your brown hat."
She laughed. "You dream about head."
"Head is where the house is," Mister Milktoast said, basking in the approval of the Insider, who had set aside his loathing of language and developed a fondness for wordplay. I wondered what games he and Mister Milktoast had been playing in the back room. Scrabble, Boggle, hangman, Russian roulette with a dictionary.
"You're funny," she said. "I guess I forgive you."
"Sorry I put the squeeze on you," the Insider said.
"No promises."
"Cross my heart and hope to die."
Beth glanced around at the passing crowd and gave the Insider a quick peck on the cheek. The Insider walked back into the Bone House and climbed the stairs to the attic, leaving me with her saliva evaporating on my skin.
"You okay, Richard?" Beth asked.
"Never better," I said, swallowing. "This book I've been working on---"
"Got to run." She adjusted her brown hat "See you Friday?"
"I already have an idea for a costume." Life was a come-as-you-are party, and I already had the masks.
"Great. And Richard..."
"Yes?"
"Things always work out for the best. In the end."
I watched her walk away. It seemed like I was always watching her walk away. And I hoped I would always be able to watch her walk away.
My hand unclenched Little Hitler's grip on the knife in my pocket.
A man came into the Paper Paradise the next day. He wore a rumpled charcoal suit and his quick dark eyes seemed to read every title in the store at one glance. He was as thin as the cigarette he put in his mouth. He grimaced around the cigarette and came to the counter, looking like he was tempted to disobey the "No Smoking" signs.
"Is the manager in?" he asked out of the side of his mouth. He was about forty, and the circles under his narrowed eyes made him look as if he had slept on a bed of nails and fucked a raccoon.
"Miss Billingsly's off today," I said. "Can I help you?"
He pulled out his wallet and flashed something brass-colored. "Detective Randolph Frye, Pickett County Sheriff's office."
Bookworm blinked for a moment, then Mister Milktoast took over. "What can I do for you?"
Frye dug in one jacket pocket for a moment, then the other. He pulled out a crumpled card. "You Richard Coldiron?"
"Among other things." Mister Milktoast was a natural-born liar. I had to practice.
Frye flipped the card on the counter. "Did you fill out this card?"
It was a Paper Paradise discount card. "That's my signature," Mister Milktoast said.
"You remember the customer? Shelley Birdsong?"
"Hmmm. Birdsong. Isn't that the girl who's missing?"
"You read the papers." He glanced at the rack that held the locals, as well as the New York Times and Washington Post. Then he looked out the window at the highway. His eyes kept moving, as if they might get dusty if they rested for a second.
"We give these out to students," Bookworm said. "Kind of a 'good customer' card."
"This is dated the day before she disappeared. One of those things we have to check out."
He fished in his pocket again and brought out a photograph of Shelley, probably taken in the summer. There were the green eyes, the freckles, the faint vacant look, the shiny copper hair. She was pretty and full of life, the opposite of the last time I had seen her.
I sensed Frye's oiled ball bearings of eyes on me. I hoped my expression was neutral. But, after all, it wasn't my expression. Loverboy's pupils might have flared involuntarily and Mister Milktoast might have winced in recollection. "Yes, I remember her now. I showed her a few books, but she ended up buying a magazine, I believe."
Frye grunted. "Was she with anybody at the time?"
"Not in the store. There could have been somebody waiting in the parking lot, I suppose."
"Do you recall what time she was here? We're trying to put together a sequence of events from the last days she was seen."
"I think it was morning, but I couldn't be sure. We get lots of students in here on the weekdays."
"A pretty girl like that and you don't remember? Anything else you might have noticed? Anything out of the ordinary?"
No, you gray-skinned gumshoe Columbo wannabe. Just little old me, with daggers in my eyes and a flesh torpedo in my pocket. Just a killer clown with a bat-filled belfry and a winning smile. Just an age-old psychic spirit with an appetite. Just a figment of my own dark imagination, a Stephen King wet dream, a ludicrous leap of logic. All perfectly normal, nothing to see here, just move along, folks. But buy the book first.
"No, nothing that really stood out." Besides her nipples that poked out like number two Eberhardt pencil erasers, Loverboy noted. "She was just another college girl..."
...who happened to have a little bit of light that needed to be eaten. Another girl who happened to be cursed with the affection of Richard Coldiron. Another piece of taffy that just happened to come between the five or six of us. A dollar's worth of candy.
"...nothing special."
Frye picked up the card and tapped it on the counter. He studied me as I pretended to check on an elderly couple in the Psychology section. I turned back suddenly, trying to catch him off guard. His eyes flicked away, as elusive as gnats.
The Insider enjoyed the game. What did it care if I were caught? It could always find another collaborator. Bookworm wasn't nearly as talented as he thought, and some of his literary references were too obscure.
"I just remembered something," Bookworm said, insulted. "She mentioned a boyfriend named Steve."
Our eyes finally locked in an invisible tug-of-war. Little Hitler came out, determined and cold, on lizard feet, his tongue like a dagger.
"Steve?" Frye said, acting as if he were only half-listening. "Yes, we checked him out."
"Is he a suspect?"
"Not at liberty to say, Mister Coldiron. No evidence of foul play as yet. Just a mystery at this point. I hate mysteries."
"Too bad. I was just going to recommend the newest Margaret Maron."
Frye must have seen something stirring in my eyes, clouding my irises. Spirits, maybe. Ghosts. Multiple personalities. Psychic vampires. He pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth and then put it back. The butt was crimped and soaked with his saliva.
"A babe like that, it's a real shame," Loverboy said. "I hope she turns up."
"And beets and rutabagas," Mister Milktoast said.
"What's that?" Frye said, biting harder on the cigarette.
"Turns up, turnips. Root-crop reference."
"Hanging out here all day, I guess you get funny ideas." Frye asked. "Anything else?"
"Huh?" I came back, from miles and rooms away. "No. Nothing that I can think of."
Frye faked a smile with one side of his mouth. Wrinkles made arrows around his lips. "Call me if you come up with anything."
"Always happy to help."
"Thanks for your time, Mister Coldiron."
Hey, got nothing better to do, Shit For Brains. Come on back any old time and mess with Richie's mind. Greatest show on Earth, right here. Step right up, come one, come all.
I watched the door close behind him.
"Nice job, Richard," said Mister Milktoast. "You were as cool as a cucumber before the salad daze."
"No thanks to you guys. You nearly blew it."
"Passing the buck again, Dicksquiggler?" taunted Loverboy.
"You're the one who called Shelley. You're the one who got her to the house, however you did it. Candlelight dinner compliments of Mister Milktoast? Or did you borrow some poetry from Bookworm?"
"Hey, Diddledick, I don't need no help with the ladies. You're the pasta-prick who pretends to care. I doubt you could even get it up, unless it's with Mommy dearest."
"If I could get my hands on you---"
"Don't tease me like that, sweetie. You wouldn't know how to handle this biscuit."
Bookworm stepped in. "Gentlemen, let's be reasonable. We're all in this together."
"Glad I have you around to edit my feelings," I told him.
Bookworm rang up a purchase. The elderly couple bought a Benjamin Franklin biography and a book on dealing with death. After taking care of business, Bookworm rubbed his hands together. "I've been thinking, Richard."
"News-fucking-flash," said Loverboy. "Dickworm cuts a brain fart."
"No. I'm serious. I know how to beat the Insider."
Here was hope, thrown in my face, a razor of light cutting into the safe darkness. But was it real, or just another of the possessor's tricks? If the Insider really knew what all of us were thinking, how could we even dream of outsmarting it?
"Trust me, Richard."
Trust. The ultimate trick. But what choice did I have?
"Okay," I said. "I'm waiting."
"Curiosity killed the cat nine times," warned Mister Milktoast. "And he had a rat in his belly."
"Good things are worth a little risk," I said, a corny line I'd picked up somewhere and tucked away for just the right moment, just to let everyone know I'd been paying attention all along despite the whims of multiple narrators. "Tell me, Bookworm."
"It's like the answer to its own riddle. An inside joke. Get it? The Insider."
"Tell me more."
"Yes," said the Insider, coming out, all black brass and barbed wire and pissed at being dragged away from his typewriter. "I'm dying to hear how you're planning to get rid of me."
It laughed for half an hour. Every door in the Bone House shook on its hinges.
Those next few days, I was a sleepwalker with dreams of blown glass. I hovered just behind the surface of my own eyes, stoned on the emotional pain that nourished the Insider. Sometimes Miss Billingsly would look at me over the top of her glasses and frown. The local poets haunted their corners, outspooking each other with stage-garb nihilism. Speed readers made their mindless trips to the bestseller racks, genre freaks scoured the meager offerings and muttered. I avoided Brittany as much as I could because Loverboy's attraction was becoming a deeper hunger. He thought she smelled like cinnamon rolls.
Seven rejection slips showed up in the mailbox. Someone had been making multiple submissions.
Worst of all, the rejections said things like "Your fantasy novel does not meet our needs at this time," when the book had been submitted as non-fiction.
The Insider grew stronger, spinning its bleak lullabies, its voice a molten volcano that oozed cold black lava. It was feeding on my guilt over what I had done to Shelley. But now it wanted more. More pain, more death, more hate, more pages. I fought to keep it down, like a sideshow geek who knows he will be beaten if he vomits the live snake he has swallowed.
My vociferous friends haunted my every step, twittering like puzzle birds, filling in the blanks as I became an outline. They were the parts that didn't quite make a whole.
Loverboy was the lupine eyes, mistaking appetite for attraction, visually groping the tired curves of grandmothers as eagerly as he did the nubs of prepubescent girls.
Mister Milktoast was the polite mouth, always ready to make a witty comment to the stranger in the checkout line.
The nose was Bookworm, sniffing for danger and spoilt meat.
Little Hitler ruled the ears, hearing conspiratorial whispers in the slipstream of passing cars and autumn winds.
The Insider was the hands that itched to reach, to touch, to caress, to crush, to type.
The many were becoming the one. They were me, and my point of view shifted to third person plural.
The end of October brought its cold rains.
Halloween arrived, brown and dead and damp. I recycled a dozen rejection slips. I checked the outline of my life story to ensure I wasn't leaving a hole in the plot.
I put on my costume. Then I drove to Beth's apartment.
The party pounded the flat stones of the house. Three Draculas on the porch held beer and cigarettes, blowing smoke between their fangs. Princess Leia danced by herself, white and virginal and with eyes clouded by some secret, illegal pleasure. A Viking couple shook their rag fur boots and waved plastic axes. The band was dressed like zombies, with pale makeup and black lipstick and Medusa hair. The lead singer kept falling into the crowd and knocking beer out of people's hands. Xandria strutted like a Zulu queen, thumping the strings of her bass guitar.
The night swelled and pulsed. Restless energy hung over the house like a thunderstorm. A hundred people throbbed under one roof, all looking out from their masks, all tapping into their primitive ancestral memories. Halloween. Samhain. All Saints Day. But the night belonged to the sinners.
I had rented a top hat, cane, and coat and tails. My white gloves were stained with red dye. Mister Milktoast had enjoyed putting the costume together. He loved dress-up and make-believe.
"Jack the Ripper," Beth had said when I picked her up. She bought me a white carnation to put in my lapel.
Hell, I was the Ripper. Or rather, I had been. The Insider had walked those dark foggy Whitechapel streets in 1888. The newspapers had theorized the killer must have been a surgeon, so skilled were the eviscerations. It was a skill that was the result of thousands of years of practice. Or so the Insider said.
Beth had found a plush velvet dress, royal purple with a laced bodice and frilly neckline. Her breasts strained to pop free, and more than one Frankenstein monster dipped his heavy forehead for a closer look at the pretty flesh. Her golden-brown hair was pulled up into a tower, showing off the enticing slope of her neck. She was the perfect harlot, delectable and trashy, utterly disposable.
She leaned against me, squeezed by the crowd. I felt the heat of her breasts even through our layered clothes. The carnation gave off sweetness as its petals were crushed.
"Oil be yer lady for two bob ten," she said in a bad Cockney accent.
"Oil not rip yer too bloody bloody," I said back.
The band, billed as The Half-Watts, was cranking out a syncopated version of "All Along the Watchtower." Aliens and pumpkinheads swayed drunkenly. The singer kept switching his impersonations between Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix during the few lyrics he could remember, while the frizzy-haired lead guitarist was all diddle and no bop. The junkie-faced drummer sweated behind his kit, raising his arms high, making up in show what he lacked in technique.
Xandria's glistening black muscles flexed as she pounded her fat strings. The whiteface made her look frightening, like a veldt goddess come to demand retribution for Colonial crimes. Beth yelled at her but Xandria's eyes were fixed on her bass strings.
"I think I'll have a beer," Little Hitler shouted over the music.
Beth's mouth opened in feigned shock. "I thought you were too pure for that."
"I'm the Ripper, not Richard. And the Ripper's thirsty."
"Would you get me another while you're at it?"
"Sure. If I can fight my way to the keg." I left Beth and pushed past a guy dressed as a beer can. He had Princess Leia pressed against a wall, trying to kiss her, but she was in a galaxy far, far away. Her wide pupils stared at the sagging ceiling tiles.
The keg was on a tiny back porch that had once been screened in, but the wire mesh was more holes than screen. The air smelled of sweat and piss and reefer.
A boy of about fourteen was pumping the keg, a goofy grin plastered across his face. He was wearing an oversized diaper and nothing else. "Hit you up, man?"
"Sure. I need two."
As he filled the plastic cups, he said, "Cool costume. What are you supposed to be, an undertaker or something?"
"Just another ordinary killer," I said.
"Heavy duty. Is that knife real?" he asked, pointing at the prop tucked in my belt.
"Sure." Confession was good for the soul, especially when nobody believed you.
"Cool," he said, and filled his face with beer foam.
When I got back to the living room, Beth was gone. I looked for her, spilling beer on my rented jacket as the dancers bumped my elbows. I reached the far side of the room just as the band finished its first set. Beth's roommate Monique was in the hallway smoking a cigarette.
"Richard," she said. "How ya doing?"
Her pale face glowed. She looked like she'd gotten an early start on the beer. Rosy spots of pleasure colored her cheeks. She was dressed in ragged black, a green wart attached to her nose, a pointy hat on her head.
"Which witch is which?" Mister Milktoast asked.
"Just the plain old 'wicked' variety."
"You seen Beth?" I asked, but Loverboy was looking, looking, looking.
"I think she went upstairs," Monique said, tilting her head in that direction. "Party room."
Bookworm pursed my lips as his heart turned savage flips, wishing her were in a Jane Austen novel instead.
"Listen, Richard," she said, putting a hand on my arm before I walked away. "I've got to tell you something."
"What?" I said. Mister Milktoast was sending off warning flares but Loverboy shoved him into his closet.
Monique's face grew serious, her features becoming even darker than usual. "You seem like a nice guy, Richard. I'd hate to see you get hurt."
Hurt? Richard Allen Coldiron, feel pain? You've got to be kidding. "You've got to be kidding."
"I mean, maybe it's not my place to say," she said, as I watched her beautiful lips form the words. "And I love Beth to death, I really do. She's a really pleasant person at heart, but she's totally faithless."
Pleasant. Fucking pleasant. I drank from one of the beers, half at one gulp. My hand trembled, making frog-eye foam.
"It's nothing against you, Richard. She's been that way since I've known her, and we've roomed together for four years. I've seen them come and go. Literally."
I finished the beer and started on the other one. The two Vikings staggered past, with Baby Louie in tow. Over in the corner, a Tin Man was feeling up Princess Leia. He might as well have been seducing a log.
"She told me she was a player," I said.
"Well, she is honest. But never true."
"What about Ted? Does he care?"
"He's just a number. He's in and out faster than a door-to-door coke dealer."
Both cups were empty now, and I looked across the room, searching the crowd for Beth's sweet oval face. The singer with the Edward Scissorhands hair was sitting on a speaker, nodding to the imagined beat. It was as if he didn't exist when the band was offstage. I watched him a full thirty seconds before I saw him blink.
"What do you care?" Little Hitler asked Monique, wanting to add the word "bitch," but I stifled him.
"You probably think I'm a bitch. I just thought...I don't know. I guess I just wanted to do you a favor."
I wondered if she was jealous. The Insider said that all humans had their games, everybody played, everybody followed their own rules. But if she was jealous, that meant Loverboy's instinct was dead-on. She was lying to get what she wanted.
"Listen," I said, leaning toward her so I could whisper. But what I was really doing was letting Loverboy sniff the clean ocean of her neck. "I could use another beer. Want to join me?"
Monique smiled. "I'm on my sixth or seventh. But, hey, the night is young, right?"
"Is it kosher for a witch to hang with a Ripper?"
"You might think I'm weird. I mean, I hope you think I'm weird. But I really am a witch."
"A real witch?"
"Yeah. A Wiccan. Earth worshipper, pagan, sort of a roll-your-own brand. This is a religious holiday."
"Are you casting a spell on me?" Loverboy asked, already forgetting Beth. But I couldn't.
Monique's eyes sparkled, a diamond glint on onyx. "We believe in white magic. Whatever we give, we believe it comes back three times."
"Give me an orgasm and lucky you," Loverboy said.
She giggled, and her sleek dress shimmered around her long frame. We filled our cups at the keg. I now understood what Father liked about alcohol, the same dulling ether that Mother discovered. If I drank enough, if I numbed my brain, then there would be nothing for the Insider to probe and poke and sting. He'd be cheated of my feelings. Plus I might have a blackout and miss an important chunk of my own autobiography, which I could fill in as I wished later.
Monique saw someone she knew and got into a sloppy conversation. I excused myself and slipped up the stairs. The party was getting its second wind. It was a giant beast ready to rise and prowl the darkness, flexing its legs and jaws for a twilight hunt, a dragon anxious to slay errant knights.
Xandria perched at the top of the stairs. She put a Virginia Slim in her mouth and one of her bookends stepped from the shadows to light it. "If it ain't the average white boy," she said with a playful sneer. "What's up?"
"Hi. I like your bass playing."
She shrugged, straining the leather straps that girded her chest. Loverboy watched her breasts rise. Mister Milktoast eyed the bookend, appalled at the mauve fingernail polish.
"Just another skin, Richard," Xandria said. "It helps to have a few extra personalities. Makes life interesting."
"Tell me about it."
The singer yelled at Xandria from the foot of the stairs, telling her it was time for the next set.
"Jimmy ain't finished yet," she yelled back at him. She drew on her cigarette and exhaled, and the smoke joined the blue-gray layer that wafted at eye-level.
"Have you seen Beth?" I asked.
Xandria gave me a cold look. Then she jerked her head toward a door at the end of the hall. "Door Number Three."
The guitarist for the Half-Watts started strumming "Wild Horses" as the singer did a country-Cockney accent on the vocals. I walked down the hall with the same slow-motion rhythm of the song, like Jim Morrison's pseudo-autobiographical killer in "The End." Fuck Jim Morrison and his fake autobiography. You won't find me floating dead in a bathtub or getting called "The Lizard King."
The crack under the door was dark. I knocked lightly.
Little Hitler tumbled and twittered. He tried the handle. It was locked.
Bookworm put my ear to the door.
Moans.
Little Hitler hoped they were moans of pain. But Loverboy knew better.
Rusty bedsprings, in the rhythm of babymaking.
Gasps came from the other side of the door.
A whimper, a name.
Beth's voice, husked with passion.
I wanted a dollar's worth of candy. I hurried away.
Drowning. Reaching the point where I knew I couldn't hold my breath any longer, but the surface was too far away.
Xandria shrugged as I passed. "What can you say? She likes drummers."
The Insider came out of the back room of the Bone House, where he'd been busy typing. This was even better than the crap he was making up.
You still love the bitch, Richard. I know. I OWN your damned heart. Here's a plate of shit. Eat.
I stumbled down the stairs, knocking a dryer hose off a guy who was dressed as a robot. He cussed me, but I barely heard him.
Monique was waiting by the keg. She had refilled her cup and was starting to wobble a little. She didn't notice that my face had gone rigid. Stoned in the stone house, boned in the Bone House. Unscrewed.
"Where you been?" she asked.
"Talking to an old friend," I said.
"Did you find Beth?"
"You didn't tell me she likes drummers."
"Figured you'd better find out for yourself, before you got any . . . ideas." Monique swayed and leaned against me. She felt good in Loverboy's arms. I took her cup and drained it all down. The Coldiron Curse tasted sweet and bitter and made it easier to be nobody.
"Feel like a ritual?" Loverboy asked.
"A ritual?"
Loverboy kissed her, quick and cruel. "Or would you rather ride my broomstick?" he whispered.
I reach to stroke your curly hair, so soft and stark against the pillow. The moonlight spills into the room like an ogling eye, making sharp and jagged shadows. Richard's top hat is on the cluttered desk and your witch's dress hangs limply over the back of a chair, like a shadow whose air has escaped.
You look at me with open eyes, deep eyes, eyes that run across distant moors. I lean close and feel the warm breath from your nostrils. You don't flinch. Trust is such a foolish thing. Will you never learn?
Our lips touch. Sensations swarm. The edges of awareness cackle with electricity. Tiny hairs stand on the back of this human neck.
Time slows, nearly stopping. Each second stretches with too much information. The butterfly flicker of your eyelashes, the moist flutter of your tongue, the gentle swish of your hair on the smooth skin of your shoulders, all drowning me. I can feel the cells of your body as they divide and slough off. I am alert, alive beyond life, dead beyond death.
"You've bewitched me," I say, parting my mouth from the honey of your lips.
"Shut up and kiss me," you say, your voice hoarse with illicit passion and a gallon of beer.
A sledgehammer pounds my chest, working the molten iron of my heart. Outside, a breeze plays against the window screen and the curtains whisper in the music of autumn. It is a dirge, a death-rattle of wind chimes and oak leaves as clouds sneak past the moon. They call this the end of October.
A taste like old pennies lingers where your tongue has been. My arousal strains, seeks, takes a separate life.
"Hold on a second," you say, and my heart suspends, explores its stopping, and then continues its headlong rush.
You light a candle. The first match goes out before it reaches the wick, as if some sinister gale has summoned itself from under the bed. An acrid thread of gray sulfur trails across the milky moonlight. The second match flares and the candle catches and flickers crazily, the flame hopping like a forever-damned ballet dancer on a stage of hot coals.
Outside, the night rain falls. Each drop plays a minute part in a grand percussion symphony. Small, sharp pellets ping off the mailbox while fat globs plop softly on the asphalt. Drops patter on the wooden porch rail, and others slither weakly into the grass with a muted hiss. A drum roll of water rumbles across the gutter while the downspout carries off the finished notes with a discordant tinkle. Occasional distant thunder anchors the bass end by adding timpani to the score.
I gently lean you back on the bed. The pillows have fallen to one side and lie there like an old married couple. Your pupils are large and dark, two deep wells. A twin reflection of the candle floats in the still waters. Beneath the surface, your memories, dreams, and secrets swim. I must draw them out, pump them forward, make them mine.
Little Hitler drinks the heartbreak, Loverboy tastes the fruit, Mister Milktoast sizes you up for a brown hat.
Bookworm pens a flowery passage. Richard rides the roller coaster. And I...
I simply need. It's always the first time. It's always this way, the borrowing and taking of life, the stealing of light, the swallowing of the juicy pain.
It's as near to being human as I ever wish to get.
But don't take it personally. Because I'm not a person. And this is the way the universe has always been, a bright bang and then collapse into darkness. Dream me alive, Richard. Build me with your words. Make me.
My hand trails down your flat pale belly. Dark hairs curl around the edge of your panties. Your breathing is fast and shallow, and I feel your pulse race through the swell of your breast beneath my hand. Your heart is sprinting against time, a race in which there can be only one winner.
I reach beside the bed, to my coat lying on the floor. Your hands are at my waist, then lower. My mouth has found yours again, and I feel the urgency of your desire as our tongues thrust and parry softly. You pull me toward the forge of your body. I go for your center, the nursery of stars, your steaming galaxy.
My right hand touches cold hard steel while my left finds liquid fire.
I raise the blade and the sudden movement feeds a gust of oxygen to the candle. The burst of light becomes the flashbulb for the photograph that Richard's eyes are taking:
...the gorgeous plateau of your flesh, a territory waiting to be mapped.
...your eyebrows arching, making a question mark of your face.
...your lips, parted in unspoken confusion.
...your chest, tensing to draw air for a scream that will never sound.
...your eyes...
...your eyes remain two deep wells, but now the waters ripple. Now the surface is disturbed as your secrets swim. Now the fear roils underneath, a leviathan awakened from long slumber. Now your black monsters break the water, pouring forth in torrents from the depths of your eyes.
Now I can feed. Now I can eat the light.
"Monique," Richard moans, helpless, pathetic, taking control of his own mouth. "I'm sorry."
I shut him up and bring the knife down swiftly, with an unforgiving arm, with Little Hitler's viciousness, with Loverboy's passion, with Bookworm's fascination, with Mister Milktoast's petulance.
Richard delivers you unto me.
In a flash of bright silver, the blade strikes home, a violent explorer in the valleys of your skin. Your arms lift in futility, almost in supplication, embracing the coming pain as if it is an old lover.
The oldest lover.
The knife is in your chest and a brilliant geyser of crimson erupts, and too soon it is over. Your light is mine.
Your eyes fix on the ceiling and the ripples in the two deep wells dwindle and fade, their waters now forever calm.
I can't resist. "Was it good for you?"
"You walrus hurt the one you love," Mister Milktoast said. "And then bury Paul. Goo goo ka joob."
My head throbbed as a thick black sludge pounded through my veins. I just wanted to rest my head on my pillow and sleep until my flesh rotted off the bone. I wasn't in the mood for Mister Milktoast's wit, and I was worried about the Insider's purple prose, which virtually guaranteed we'd never sell the book.
"Big time fuck-up, Tricky Dick," Loverboy said. "You didn't even get a little pop tart first."
"Knock it off, you guys," Bookworm said. "It wasn't Richard's fault."
"There you go again, sticking up for that useless bootlicker," Little Hitler. "It was just like old times from where I was sitting. Father was just a warm-up act. And that Shelley slut, she deserved it if anybody ever did."
The sun stabbed, spitting fire through the window. Sunday morning. A holy, quiet time. Starlings chirruped on high power lines outside as November crept in on cold bare feet.
I had no memory of coming home in the night. Those hours were a fog, lost in a stupor of alcohol and multiple personalities and endless revisions. My head throbbed from drink.
But the Insider made sure I didn't forget Monique. Her wide staring dead eyes were seared into my brain, branded there by a red-hot iron, stapled to the Bone House walls like a Led Zeppelin poster. The Insider was lost in the mist of my pain, engorged and ecstatic. Fat on light. Fed on my dead hope. Bloated by bloodthirsty, barbaric bliss, and typing up a storm.
It had won. But the outcome was never in doubt. How could any human defeat such a monster? How could you outsmart your own omniscient narrator?
"I told you the answer," said Bookworm.
"Shut up."
"I suppose writer's block isn't an option?"
"Bookworm, I don't know who to believe anymore. How do I know you're not the Insider, playing a game just for the sheer hell of it? After all, we all sound alike. In fact, we sound like me."
"You're only in the Bone House once in a while, when one of us takes over. But I'm in here all the time."
"And I pity you for that."
"Don't take this the wrong way, Richard, but you're just a little too human to really comprehend."
"Damned with feinted praise," Mister Milktoast said, from some dusty corner of the closet.
"And you, Mister Milktoast? Whose side are you on?"
"Hey, Bookworm, I'm the one who drove Richard home. I'm the one who made sure we didn't leave any incriminating evidence at the scene. I'm the one who cares the most about us. After all, I've been here the longest. If we're all psychic vampires, then I have the most at stake."
"Why are you afraid he'll be caught? Maybe that's the best thing that can happen to Richard. The book will sell at auction, Fox News will push the story, Barnes & Noble moves product, and the murders will stop."
"I promised to protect him. The boots still walk. They just have a different pair of feet in them."
"Fuck both of you," Loverboy said. "And I don't mean that the way you think I do. You diddledicks couldn't screw your way out of a wet dream."
Little Hitler snickered.
Open house in the Bone House, come one, come all. Except that thing in the back room, typing, typing, typing. When writers are really in the zone, they wouldn't know it if a jetliner crashed into the house.
"It's only in your mind," Bookworm said. "And that's the worst place of all."
"The Insider's getting stronger," I said. "We all agree on that."
"If it's so fucking all-powerful, why doesn't it just drive us all out of here and take Richie over completely?" Loverboy said. "Do some major housecleaning?"
"You're too busy reaching for Richard's penis to figure it out," Bookworm said. "It needs us, in some crazy way. It's not just the possession that motivates it. The Insider has to have someone to lord it over."
"And the more the merrier, apparently," said Mister Milktoast. "Four heads are better than one."
"Then it struck paydirt here," I said. "But maybe this is the way the Insider works. How many killers claim to hear voices in their heads?"
The sun was weakening, growing softer as clouds knit a layer across the sky. Somewhere, a church bell rang, a safe, lonely, human sound. I wondered how many hours it would be before the police found us. A ticking clock always increased dramatic tension. Even that old asshole Aristotle knew that, and he lived back when people used sun dials.
"Well, I'm starting to suspect that it can also extend those powers beyond the host," Bookworm said. "Maybe with not as much control, but enough to influence events and behaviors."
"That sounds like something you pulled out of Mister Milktoast's ass just to complicate things," I said. "Sounds too convenient. Like you're trying to change the genre so we can publish this as science fiction."
"No, listen. It makes things happen. It causes people to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Bullshit, Dickworm," Little Hitler said. "You're just trying to let Richard off the hook again. He's the one who's screwed up everyone he touches. Let him take some of the blame for a change. I don't know why you guys are always trying to forgive him. We should be rubbing his face in every steaming ounce of the shit he's heaped on the world."
"Love the skin but hate the skinner," Mister Milktoast blurted out.
"And who's going to take your side, Little Hitler?" asked Bookworm. "You're glad the Insider has found us. It gives validity to everything you stand for."
"What's this about the Insider affecting other people?" I said, before they started arguing.
"Remember Virginia? How the voices started after her father began molesting her?" Bookworm said.
"Of course he remembers Virginia," Loverboy said. "He fucked up my fuck. All because he was trying to sympathize. What a fucking joke. Just pop 'em and drop 'em, Richie-wuss, and the sooner you learn that, the happier we'll all be. Especially me."
"The Insider was in Ottaqua all along, laying the groundwork," Bookworm said.
"Who appointed you 'Mr. Backstory Database'?" Mister Milktoast said through a pout.
I ignored my oldest friend. "And made Father and Mother the way they were? And maybe it made Shelley come to my house even though she barely knew me?"
"Do you think Loverboy would get lucky otherwise?" Bookworm asked.
"Hey, Bookwuss, I resent that," said Loverboy. "This boy could charm the habit off a nun. It's you guys that make 'em duck and cover. Mister Milktoast, the total candy-ass. Richie, the king of navel gazing. And you, Dickworm, the frigging faith healer, the cosmic child, the deep thinker. And Little Squiggler. . .need I say more?"
"Point taken, Loverboy," I said. "But I think Bookworm's on to something."
"Run with me, guys," Bookworm said, excited for the first time since he'd booked a room in my flesh hotel. "Leap of faith. Maybe it put Beth in that gallery on campus on the same day that Richard was there."
"And you're saying that it made me fall in love with Beth?"
"Careful with the L word," Mister Milktoast said. "Liability, labia, laborious."
"Stay on point," Bookworm said. "And let's go further from there. The Insider openly despises love, yet it makes sure that you find some version of it. We're poison, remember, because we dream and love and hope and reach for something better than ourselves. And the Insider blames that for the extermination of its species."
"Yet it wants me to love, so it can enjoy making me kill?" I asked.
"Which is another problem, gentlemen," Mister Milktoast said. "Any minute now Beth will be waking up, maybe next to a drummer, maybe not. She'll get up and make some breakfast. Eventually she'll start to wonder why her roommate isn't up and about. Maybe she'll knock on the door to Monique's room. Maybe she'll open the door."
I knew what Beth would see. The Insider had taken photographs using my brain as the film stock. The project was currently in development hell.
"How many witnesses saw Richard with Monique last night?" said Mister Milktoast. "And there's bound to be other evidence at the scene, stray hairs or semen---"
"Hey, don't look at me," said Loverboy. "That was more Little Diddler's cup of tea. I ain't into zipless drips."
"Let's not think about that right now," I said. There were hundreds of ways to hurt people, and I had a feeling I'd be learning every one of them.
One of my neighbors was cooking bacon. The frost was melting across the hills, changing them from silver to brown. Children were waking up and sneaking into the Halloween candy they had collected the night before. People were putting away their masks.
"And Dickie darling had the bright idea to go to the party dressed as Jack-the-fucking-Ripper," Little Hitler said.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you guys," said Bookworm. "It's all too scripted, too perfect. Richard has no real reason to love Beth, because she's hardly been a warm and fuzzy romantic interest."
"I don't know if I can accept that," I said. "This was already straining my willing suspension of disbelief. I mean, being possessed by an ancient soul virus is one thing. But if you carry this idea back even further---"
"Exactly. Was Mother meant to be an alcoholic? Was her love for you destined to...turn out the way it did? You have to agree that the Insider would get a great deal of satisfaction out of something so depraved."
"You're scaring me, Bookworm."
"Maybe that's the way Evil has done business throughout history, stacking the deck so that it always wins."
"And maybe it was the Insider who made me kill Father? And Little Hitler is innocent?"
"Just take a little blame for a change, Richard,' Little Hitler said. "I know, I know, it's against your beliefs to actually accept responsibility for your actions, not when you can spin some bizarre fantasy to get yourself off the hook. But go ahead, Bookworm. Your little theory is amusing, and there's not a whole hell of a lot to laugh about these days. Except our gracious host and his eternally leaking heart, of course."
"All the bad things might be traced back to Richard's childhood," Mister Milktoast said, collaborating with Bookworm. "Maybe the Insider was at work even earlier than that."
"Sally Bakken?" I said. "The Garage Man? I can't believe that the Insider has that much power. It's just too..."
"Impossible?" finished Bookworm. "Just like it's impossible for you to be carrying on a conversation with four Little People who live in a place called the Bone House. It's impossible for a soul-stealing psychic entity to sneak into people's minds and make them kill, just so it can live forever. It's impossible for you to carry the case histories of the human race's worst butchers inside the filing cabinets of your home office."
"But I don't have those memories---"
"No. You're outside. But they're here, inside, all the memories of every murder."
I had a headache, and it was more than just the residue of beer. If I was just a temporary host, the Insider might already be sizing up its next victim.
"It could already be outlining a sequel," Bookworm said. "Because it'll eventually get tired of you, Richard. It'll break you down and use you up. If you don't get caught first."
"I've got a feeling it wants a final victory before it lets me disintegrate."
"Yes. One last victim."
"One true love. The perfect blasphemy."
"Come on, Bookworm," Mister Milktoast said. "This is starting to sound like self-referential metafiction. And you know such a thing can only end badly."
I pressed my temples. This had to be a nightmare, and I'd awaken with damp sheets and a hangover and a wife, kids, mortgage, lunch date at the golf club. A regular, boring, fucking pleasant life, one not worth writing about.
"Better take the Ripper suit to the cleaners, Richard," Mister Milktoast added. "Might have a few spots on it that I couldn't sponge out. It has to be back at the costume rental tomorrow."
"Thanks for keeping me on task, Mister Milktoast."
"Beth is going to need comforting after the shock wears off. We'd better practice being indignantly outraged, or whatever it is society expects on such an occasion."
"That'll be a switch," I said. "Beth crying on my shoulder for a change."
"I took a trophy," Little Hitler said, walking to the dresser, where a lump lay covered by a towel.
"You're a sick puppy, Diddler," Loverboy said. "I like that in a headmate."
I flinched as he yanked the towel away. There lay Beth's brown hat, headless. Mister Milktoast purred in excitement.
"Now leave me alone," I said. "I'd better get some writing done before things get crazy around here."
I have come to believe all the rest is the fault of those big-time publishers, the ones who wouldn't recognize genius if it rolled up on a courier bike with a serving of foie gras packed inside a warm duck. If only they had purchased the novel, the story would have ended there and I would have gone on to the life of a struggling, frustrated writer with suicidal tendencies. A poor man's Palahniuk, a motherless Lethem, a born-again Brautigan, a disarmed Hemingway.
Alas, it was not to be. Beth called me Monday after work, while I was opening the last of that day's 19 rejection slips.
"R-Richard?"
"Yes?" Mister Milktoast said.
"Did you hear?"
I cleared my throat and delivered the line as I'd rehearsed it, Richard Burton by way of James Dean, with a little Peter Lorre thrown in for spice. "Yes. My God, it's so terrible. How are you?"
"When I opened her door and found her---"
The dam broke. She sobbed over the phone.
I despised women's tears. They made me angry because I didn't know how to shut them off. I was so grateful to have Mister Milktoast. "I'm sorry, Beth. God, I'm so sorry."
She sniffled and gasped, "I...I just can't believe it."
"I wanted to come over when I heard, but I was afraid you'd think I was being too...presumptuous. How are you doing?"
"I'll live, damn it. But Monique won't. What kind of monster would do such a thing?"
What kind of monster, indeed. "I don't know, Beth. I honestly don't know."
Mister Milktoast looked at my fingernails. They were ragged from Bookworm's biting. How could those be murderer's hands? Those were innocent, with blunt broad fingers, hands made for loving, holding, typing, waving good-bye.
I let Beth dry her eyes and blow her nose before I spoke again. "Listen, do you need anything? Where are you staying?"
"I'm over at Xandria's place. She's got a spare room. She's letting me stay here until..."
"Why didn't you call me?" Little Hitler said. He'd forgotten the script, the little prick.
Silence.
"Can I come over there?" I asked. "I need to see you."
"I'm afraid...I don't think I'll be very good company."
"I want to be there for you, Beth. That's what...um, friends are for."
"Okay. It would be nice. I could use a hug..."
I beat Loverboy back into his room, where he could flip through the Insider's nude photo collection instead of wrecking my cover story.
Beth continued. "But I'm warning you, I'm a total mess."
"It's okay, Beth."
"No. It'll never be okay again."
"I'm here for whatever you need. That's my promise." Little Hitler chuckled at that word "promise," but I rolled it into a cough to disguise the glee. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
She gave me directions to Xandria's apartment, stopping twice to blow her nose. I passed Beth's place on the way uptown. The sidewalk was roped off with yellow crime tape, and a group of spectators gawked from the sidewalk. A television van was pulled up by the curb, and a man behind the wheel was eating a sandwich. Two police cruisers were parked out front, a big blocky Chevy Caprice and a new aqua Crown Victoria. I saw movement inside the apartment, but I couldn't distinguish any faces.
I was positive Frye was in there, dusting for prints and taking measurements and chain-smoking cigarettes. I had a feeling he was going to be a clever adversary. Minor conflict was essential to any story, to keep the audience interested while the main game played itself out. The Insider was up for a potboiler.
Xandria's apartment was in an old two-story house about a block from campus and a couple of streets away from the stone house, up on a wooded hill. Paint curled from massive Colonial columns and a tall oak tree showered orange leaves on the tin roof. The windows had black shutters and the watery sun reflected off the glass like light from dying eyes. The November sky was heavy and sober above the brown hills.
Beth sat in a metal rocking chair on the porch. She wore a red sweatshirt and blue jeans and canvas-top sneakers. Sunglasses couldn't hide the puffiness around her eyes. She tried to smile at me, but her face looked like it might break. Her lips quivered a little and pressed together.
"Beth," Bookworm said, running up the concrete steps like Bogart making for Bacall. I stooped and hugged her. Little Hitler could smell the salt of her tears. Mister Milktoast knelt and gripped her hands. My reflection danced in her sunglasses. Loverboy primped and checked his hair.
"Richard," she said. "It's all so...I don't know...unreal, maybe. It hasn't really sunk in yet."
"Beth, Beth," I whispered, rocking her softly. I pressed my cheek against her soft hair that was like corn silks. Bookworm thought the "corn silk" simile was utterly corny. He hadn't lived in Iowa, though.
"So awful, so awful," she repeated in my ear.
"Do they know how it happened?"
"I shouldn't have left her alone. You know, Halloween and everything..."
"You can't blame yourself, Beth."
"But it's all my fault."
The dam was about to burst again. She looked like she had cried through the night. Her face was blotched from the blood rush of her emotions.
"It's not your fault, Beth. You're another victim. It's nobody's fault, except...except for whoever did it."
"But who? Who? She didn't have an enemy in the world, and this isn't your typical Halloween prank. Oh, God, Richard, what am I going to do?"
"When did you first...?" asked Mister Milktoast. Loverboy wanted to add some smartassed remark about snaring a drummer or banging a gong or gobbling a drumstick but I slammed shut the door to his room.
Beth wiped at the pink end of her nose with a damp wad of Kleenex. "I looked for you at the party," she said, avoiding my eyes by looking out at the rocky slopes of Widow's Peak in the distance. She forgot she was wearing sunglasses, that I couldn't have read her eyes anyway.
"I left early. I wasn't feeling well. I drank a beer and it made me sick. My dog ate my homework. I had a flat tire. My grandmother died."
Beth nodded and looked down at the warped pine boards of the floor. She spoke, her voice as hollow as if she were talking inside a coffin. "After I couldn't find you, I hung around until just after midnight, when there was nobody left but sloppy drunks and the costume freaks. I partied some with the band. Then I got home, I don't know, I told the police it was one o'clock, but it was probably more like two-thirty. And I went straight to sleep. Passed out, to be honest. I didn't even see Monique.
"I got up yesterday and did a little studying. I noticed Monique's door was open just a crack. And she's usually an early riser, you know how energetic she is..." A sob caught in her throat as she tensed to change tense. "...was, I mean."
I patted her knee. Loverboy let my hand linger for a moment. Mister Milktoast wanted to know which story she'd told the cops, which lie we'd use. Bookworm assured him that just because the Bone House was a den of prevarication didn't mean the outer world had a foundation of fabrication. Whatever that meant.
The screen door squeaked and Xandria stepped out. She carried a cup of herbal tea. Steam wisped around her dark face. Her eyes were cold and faraway, artist's eyes that saw too well. She put the tea in Beth's hands and reached a protective arm around her shoulder. I smelled raspberry and lemon and uncomfortable silence.
I stood up and nodded to Xandria. Beth looked up at her with a grateful expression. "I was just telling Richard..."
"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Xandria answered.
"I know, but...Richard understands."
You damn straight, bitch. Been there, done that. If anybody knows how to deal with personal tragedy, it's Richard Fucking Coldiron, ma'am.
Xandria glared at me for a moment as Little Hitler smirked inside my pupils.
"Fine. But if you need anything, you just holler," she said. She tugged at the strap of her coveralls and went inside. I sat in the chair next to Beth's.
She didn't say anything for a moment, just rocked gently and sipped her tea. She looked out across the town below. She continued, softly, her words as light as the wind that was stirring the leaves across the broken sidewalk.
"I called out her name. I figured she'd probably gotten up early or something, maybe went out for a walk. So I put on a CD and read a little bit. Later, when I walked past the hall, I saw something on the floor in her room, something pale."
She looked up at the top of the oak tree, staring as if watching the memory on a movie screen. Her fingers gripped the metal chair arm. Mister Milktoast cupped his palm over her closest hand.
"If it hurts to talk about...," he said.
...then talk about it, bitch. Because I need your fucking pain. I need you to whimper and leak your pathetic little human juices of sorrow. I need you to make Richard feel the guilt. Give me some emotional content the reader can identify with.
She pushed away, sensing my mood change. "No, Richard, I'm dealing," she said. "We were roommates for four years. You get really close to somebody after four years."
NOW you pretend to care. NOW you act like you give a goddamn about anybody but yourself. But tell me more. I'm just BEGINNING to rub Richard's face in his own shit.
"What did you see on the floor, Beth?" I had to know. It had to hear her say it.
Her voice was flat, disbelieving. "I...went to the door and peeked at the thing on the floor. It was a white carnation."
"A carnation?"
"Yes. Like the one..."
"Like the one I was wearing with my costume. The one you gave me."
She nodded. "I was confused, Richard. I thought you might have dropped it when you came over earlier. I pushed open the door to pick it up, and then I...I saw..."
And don't you ever forget it. Slut.
"You saw her," Little Hitler said, his glee moderated by Bookworm's anxiety over this potential piece of evidence.
Beth broke down, wept dry tears and dropped her head. Loverboy reached out and cupped her chin. The gushing of emotions aroused him, custard in a cruller. There are certain times when erections are incredibly inconvenient---weddings and funerals among them. When you comfort a broken woman, an intimacy develops that healthy and sane men channel in an unselfish, platonic manner. Maybe that's why Alpha male psychos get all the pussy while sensitive guys beat off to frilly fantasies of romance.
Beth recovered and sipped her tea.
"I loved her," Beth said. "You know I don't like to use that L word. But she was like a sister to me."
"I do understand," Loverboy said. "I've lost loved ones to violence myself."
Beth's head jerked toward me. "You?"
"My father," Little Hitler said with too much pride. "He was beating my mother, you know how people do when they think they're in love. She must have snapped or something. She. . ."
Mister Milktoast somehow summoned some crocodile tears. Little Hitler was bursting with mirth in the back of my brain. Beth slid to the edge of her chair and put her other hand over Loverboy's.
". . .she went into the kitchen and got a knife. Stabbed him seventeen times as I watched. I was fourteen."
Beth's mouth opened in a silent O. "Richard, I didn't know..."
If only I could have fought to the surface, reclaimed my body for one miserable heartbeat, I might have kept her from digging into the past. But the wound was gaping, the blood was flowing now, and she was drinking. She had broken me. She had won.
No, Richard. I'VE won. It was always me.
"I'm sorry, Richard. Don't cry," she said, barely able to disguise the pleasure in her voice.
Loverboy let a long tear trickle down his cheek. He was laughing on the inside. Most of them were.
"Tell me, Beth. Is insanity contagious?" Little Hitler said. "Because sometimes I wonder...that carnation..."
"What? No, you must have dropped it at the party. And Monique must have picked it up, that's all."
Didn't she see? Or was the Insider preventing her from seeing?
Of course I am, Richard. The party's just getting started. I'm going to waltz your mannequin across the dance floor of hell like the puppet hand of hot peppers is up your ass.
Bookworm whispered something about the Insider needing some help with its metaphors, but nobody was listening.
"Did you tell the police about the carnation?" Mister Milktoast asked.
"Why should I?"
Of course she didn't, for the same reason that the police hadn't contacted me. It should have been a simple matter for Frye to connect Shelley and Monique and come up with a common denominator. The pieces weren't in place yet, the plot threads hadn't been woven into a tight enough fabric. The Insider needed a few more chapters.
Beth took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were red and shiny, but buried inside her pupils was a spark, a strange light, a distant hope of dawn.
"Let's not talk about Monique anymore," she said. "I want to talk about you. Your poor father. That must have really torn you up."
I wanted to tell her that the world couldn't build such miseries as ours, that gods couldn't create such madness, that people couldn't be this cruel and shallow and heartless. But I was vulnerable. After so much rejection, here was someone who pretended to care, who wanted to hear my story.
"I'd better begin at the beginning," I said.
THIS CHAPTER DOESN'T HAVE A NUMBER, EITHER
What a clever bastard.
You know Richard is guilty. You will never let him forget.
And you eat our pain. You carve up our psyche the way you did Shelley and Monique, then feed Richard the pieces of the memory. You force his mouth open. He eats his own sins until he vomits, then he eats his own vomit. Is that your trap?
Because the more Richard hates himself, the stronger you are. The more we despise you, the more we serve you. The greater our pain, the greater your hunger.
You have tasted. And now you want more. But not Beth. You'll never have her.
I love her, however I can and whatever that means.
Did you come with Little Hitler? Or are you Little Hitler, a mask over a mask?
Did you raise the blade against Father? Or were you Father? Was that your opening gambit, your narrative hook, the crack through which you slid into Richard's mind? Or did you come later, like a grave robber to freshly turned dirt?
You say you came to him through Virginia.
Oh, I felt that twitch. You know where it bleeds. But I know where you feed. And I'm starting to figure you out.
And understand one thing, you sorry son of a bitch.
You can make Richard loathe himself. You can shove his face in the past. You can make him kill. You can make him hate.
But you can't make me not love.
Because love is hope, and love is poison to you.
You are what you eat.
You are what we feed you.
Bon fucking appetit.
November crawled away on its belly, wriggled like a cold snake into a cave. Winter sent its icy fingers into the granite mountains, clutching and squeezing. The brittle trees froze, either dead or sleeping and dreaming of green. The daytime sky shivered in its blue blanket and the nights were as black as the bottom of my heart.
The police had no leads in Monique's murder. Mister Milktoast followed the media coverage with great interest. My fingerprints must have been all over the crime scene. I didn't doubt that the Insider could extend its reach to the lab technicians. And Frye surely would have solved the case by now if not for infernal intervention.
The rejection slips rolled in, except now they were no longer addressed to me. They began, "Dear Mr. Zweicker, we regret to inform you..."
Even more disturbing than the name change was that my cleverly original title, "As I Die Lying," had been altered, first to "The Dying Light," and then simply "The Insider." Because the agents never returned my manuscript, I never knew which work they were considering, nor did I have a clue how to improve it.
Bookworm wept in his upstairs room of the Bone House. He alone could describe what was happening, but he stuck to penning illegible entries in his diary, leaving me alone to stare at the typewriter.
Little Hitler was jubilant. This was his deepest perversion brought to full, red, screaming life. This was nightmare made reality, murder made holy, hellhounds unchained. He savored the giblets of memory, and the best was yet to come.
Mister Milktoast was wary but content. As the protector, he thought his job accomplished because I was safely tucked away in the Bone House. He spent his time preening around in Beth's brown hat and Shelley's stockings.
Loverboy had no complaints. He was banging Beth almost every night, inventing new sex manuals, kama sutra as postmodern surrealism or maybe one of those endless fantasy fiction series where the author's publisher keeps squirting sour milk from the cash cow long after the author is dead. Except sex is better.
Beth had moved back into her apartment, though she refused to rent out Monique's room and had to stretch her budget to cover the bills by herself. She dropped Ted and her other satellite lovers, her native nymphomania having met its match.
On one horribly memorable night, Loverboy coaxed her into Monique's room. Monique's parents had cleared out her paintings and clothes and books, the only pieces left of their daughter now that the other pieces had been laid into the ground. The room was bare except for the desk, the chipped bedside table, and the unmade bed.
There was a large brown stain on the mattress even though it had been turned over after the investigation. The stain was like a Rorschach test where crazy people are supposed to see a splatter pattern of spilled blood but normal people see Schrödinger's profile or New Zealand or the coffee splotch on the manuscript they are revising.
Little Hitler sat with Beth on the bed and made her talk about Monique, how lovely she was, how vivacious, how much she meant to Beth. Then he steered the conversation back to my past, or at least the new spin on the story of Father's death. History is always written by the winners in the blood of the losers.
The Insider twisted its trident in my guts as Beth tried to comfort Little Hitler. Of course, it ended with Loverboy between her legs on the same mattress where her roommate had been mutilated. The Insider howled with glee. Loverboy simply howled, not caring whether she was faking or not.
I went through the motions at the Paper Paradise. We were busy because of the coming Christmas season, and Bookworm stayed dutifully occupied with stocking and reorders. Miss Billingsly commented on my absentmindedness. I wanted to tell her that my mind wasn't absent, it was painfully present, sharper than ever, sharper than Mister Milktoast's wit and the Insider's knives. But Bookworm only nodded and smiled at her, mumbled something about the hectic schedule, and got back to work. Arlie spun his conspiracy theories and Little Hitler egged him on. Brittany teased me about Beth, and Loverboy cornered her in the storeroom once in a while to flirt with her, even while Beth's feminine scent bathed his chin.
Beth drew closer and closer, quick to share herself now that she thought I had opened up to her. Alpha male psychos got all the pussy but sensitive guys got to do the laundry and wash dishes. We settled into a routine. Waking in each other's arms, then off to work and school, meeting for lunch at my house, evenings at Beth's apartment, Loverboy's bakery cooking around the clock. Weekend afternoons at the park, bundled in our coats because the grass was crisp and we could see our breath. Sometimes stopping by a gallery or driving out of town for a show or hiking the muddy mountain trails.
It was all so easy, so natural, almost too natural. I didn't think people could change, but Beth had. She was relaxed around me, telling me she loved me, always planning mutual activities. We swapped spare door keys. She spent most of the days at my place, even when I wasn't there, but she never rang the doorbell of the Bone House.
I came to know Beth better than I knew myself. Our relationship was everything I had ever wanted back in my old, human life. She was becoming part of me, but that was the most frightening thing of all. I already had too many parts.
I saw Alexandria downtown once, and she told me she'd never seen Beth so happy. She said she was unsure of me at first, but I had earned her "stamp of approval." Maybe Alexandria was Beth's version of Mister Milktoast, a distant protector who saw only what she chose to see. Or what she was allowed to see.
Beth kept busy with her schoolwork, focusing on the future instead of the past. Bit by bit, Little Hitler unfolded a false biography of my life. He told her about Virginia, how she had broken my heart after saying she loved me. He told her Father was a sweet, loving man who occasionally lost his temper but would have moved the moon if I had asked. In my new life history, he became the saint and Mother the sinner. According to Little Hitler, Father wore Hush Puppies.
On the day of the first light snow, in late November, Beth whispered that she had something to give me. We were sitting on the couch at her apartment, watching a rerun of "The X-Files." I looked out the window as she slipped into her room. It was one of those merciful moments when the Insider was letting me out, letting me live so that I could fully appreciate what it was taking away. Just an ordinary day in the life of a possessed serial killer. An early darkness had fallen with the snow, crept down a flake at a time until the world outside was black and white.
Beth returned to the living room with one hand behind her back. She snuggled into my shoulder and I put my face into her hair that always smelled of April or Dawn, one of those time names for women, or maybe Virginia or Dakota, one of those place names, or maybe Hope Hill, a character invented for this book who was actually a real girl I'd sat behind in the sixth grade and secretly loved. I nuzzled Beth's neck, but stopped when I felt Loverboy stirring. Those damned inconvenient erections, always popping up when least expected.
"What's the big surprise?" I asked.
"I've got lots of surprises," she said. "This is only the latest one."
"As long as it's not about babymakers," Mister Milktoast said.
"What?"
"Inside joke," I said.
She tapped my temple softly. "You're supposed to let me in there."
Oh, you'll get your chance. You're going to be in there soon. Soon and forever, right, Richard?
"Hey, honey, what about your big secret? Don't keep me waiting."
"Good things are worth waiting for." She'd worn the line down to a nub, like the eraser on a dyslexic's pencil. Or licnep.
"How do I know it's a good thing?"
She rubbed her chest against mine. "Isn't it always a good thing?"
"You've got me there."
Her lips found mine, quickly, surely, with the ease of experience. She tilted her head back and looked at me through those mysterious half-closed eyes. Her green irises sparkled between dark lashes.
"I have to ask you something first," she said.
"Uh-oh. That can't be good."
"It's nothing bad. And you can always say 'no.'"
"Uh-oh reprise."
"Promise you won't get mad?"
"I bet if I say no, I won't get the surprise."
"I didn't say that."
"I can read you like a book."
Better than a book. I can turn the pages. I can rewrite the story. I can change the ending.
"Okay, Richard. I'm just going to come out and say it. I'm going to visit my parents for Thanksgiving. I haven't seen them since..."
Since Monique.
"...since forever and a day," she finished.
"That's wonderful. But I have a feeling that's not the big surprise."
"When I come back, I'm going to move in with you."
My limbs tensed, my heart alternately throbbed and halted, my Little People fluttered like a disturbed murder of ravens. "That doesn't sound like a question."
Beth closed her eyes. She bent her neck like a praying nun. Little Hitler let her suffer for a moment as David Duchovny made some slacker cosmic observation on the television screen.
"Hey, Angel Baby," I said, the Insider moving my lips like sausage puppets. "That wasn't a 'no.' I would like that better than anything in the world. But are you sure that's what you want?"
She looked up and her eyes were moist, but she was smiling. "I want to start over," she said, making no move to wipe away her tears. "To get out of this place and forget about...about her. I want it to be just us from now on, without Monique's ghost sitting in between us all the time."
I hugged her with both arms. One was Loverboy's, the other Bookworm's.
"Just you and me," I said. "I promise."
"I love you, Richard."
"That L word sounds so lovely on your lips."
"I don't say it often, but when I say it, I don't lie."
"I love you, too, Beth."
At that moment, I meant it. Darkness won each day's battle, but there was always hope of dawn, always a thread of light in the fabric of despair. Love was hope. Love was light. Love was possible salvation.
I would have gotten down on my knees and thanked the Insider. But the Insider already had me on my knees.
Love was a word thrown in a book to get the character laid and then arc to a tragic ending.
"Now that that's settled, what's the big surprise?" I asked.
Beth reached behind her back for the thing she had dropped. She found it and pressed it into my hand.
It was the white carnation, dried but still intact. It smelled of meadows and funerals where the petals crushed against my sweating palms.
"I wanted you to have it," she whispered.
She'd already given it to me once. It was the gift that kept on giving. We locked our limbs in a passionate tangle. Loverboy even let me watch as they skin-wrestled on the sofa. He was just that kind of a guy, a generous housemate, always willing to share as long as he went first.
And so I was lost in this brave and horrible new love, built on the sickest of lies. Perhaps it was Loverboy's game, little toys pulled out of his bag of tricks that kept her amused. Maybe the attachment was solely because of the Insider's psychic glue. But I believed some small secret part of me could still harbor hope and love and compassion and all the human things that I thought I had lost. Surely not all the closets had been swept clean and some cabinets were left unmolested, even if these emotions were only hiding under my dusty bed in the Bone House.
I didn't know if I would stop her from loving me even if I were able. Because the Insider had taught me one lesson well. It smothered from the inside, it isolated and crushed out any flickering light of love, stomped on the campfires of the heart.
I wished I could warn her. I wished I could warn all of them. Because I didn't know when the Insider might strike again. It stayed a riddle, but I could feel its ratwalk in the crawlspace.
Shady Valley dressed in its pumpkin colors and dry cornstalks were stacked like the bones of a gone harvest. Paper turkeys stuck to school windows and dangled from strings in the grocery stores. Tiny radios whined the first measures of yuletide carols. Church signs reminded everyone of the reason for the season even though the Julian calendar had moved Jesus Christ's birthday around to accommodate the money changers. The town emptied as the Westridge students went on Thanksgiving vacation. The locals stooped under the weight of their fears and suspicions and went about their holiday shopping.
Beth refused my offer to drive her to Philadelphia. She said she wasn't ready for me to meet her parents. She boarded a Trailways bus and waved from the window as it pulled away. I felt a rare moment's joy because I knew she'd be safe for a few days.
Safe from me. Or the Insider. I no longer knew which was the lesser of two evils.
I sat in the bus depot for an hour, watching faces. I didn't believe the Insider was hunting. It was meditating, lulled by the human stream that flowed by on both sides. It was making me wait, but for what I didn't know. A meat puppet on a sleepy hand.
The bus pulled up and aroused a tingle in the pit of my chest. It was some sixth sense, some electrical charge, déjà vu through past-life regression. The Insider came alive, peeling back my eyelids and twisting my neck until I was staring at the bus doors wheezing open.
Mother stepped out, complete with baggage.
"I got your letter," Mother said.
She stood at the entrance to the depot like a resurrected martyr, an ash effigy of Joan of Arc, her bony frame swallowed by a pink pastel ski jacket. The fur around the hood shadowed her face, her eyes shining like a cornered animal's peering out of a cave. She swayed a little, as if the breeze of the passengers boarding the bus might push her over.
I hadn't sent a letter to Mother in at least six months. What did I have to say to her?
You haven't dared write to Mommy dearest since you found your true self. Or I should say, when IT found YOU.
But did you send the letter?
Sometimes you sleep. And when you dream, I'm awake. It's not like you're the only monkey that knows how to type.
I nodded in miserable understanding. Mother, of course, thought I was nodding at her. The animal eyes closed, the cave momentarily empty. I opened my mouth to speak. With a hiss, the bus backed away from the bay and pulled onto the highway.
My tongue reconnected itself to my nervous system. "What are you doing here?"
Mother looked down at the streaked tiles on the depot floor. She pushed her parka hood back with an unsteady hand. "I told you to call back if you changed your mind. And since you didn't...well. . ."
She looked up. The skin of her neck seemed to follow with reluctance. Her once-proud chin had given up, accepted its humble lot and sagged in defeat. Her skin was gray, creased, but underneath the pallid flesh, broken blood vessels streaked outward like red roots thirsting in barren soil. She smiled with effort, as if the muscles of her mouth couldn't stretch in an upward direction. "Well, here I am," she finally finished.
She dropped her overnight satchel and her suitcase and they clattered on the floor. Then she looked away, her spidery eyes almost girlish with delight.
I'm glad to finally meet you, my pretty. Richard's told me so much about you. And, believe me, the pleasure's all mine.
I stared at Mother, still petrified, holding a chilled breath. Surely the Insider's power couldn't extend halfway across the continent?
But at that moment, the Insider's power was nothing compared to Mother's. With one shift of her eyes, she dredged up the past, stirred a witch's brew of memories, raised the dead and flaunted the bones. With one heavy-lidded look, she made me her little boy again, weak, guilty, vulnerable. With one trembling step forward, she possessed me more completely than the Insider ever could.
"Richard," she half-whispered, half-whimpered, and then she shredded the last of my resolve by letting one silver tear leak from the corner of her eye. She fell into my helpless open arms.
Welcome home.
She was as light as a bird, bones all hollow. Her hair stood up white and wild, Einstein tufts, Warhol with a blow dryer.
"Mother, I..."
Say it, Richard. You know you want to.
No.
Say it. Or are you going to force me to let Loverboy say it?
Please. Not him.
I love it when you beg, Richard. Now say it.
". . .I missed you, Mother."
Close enough for now. But you'll get better. Because you're going to get a lot of practice.
"Richard, it's been so long," Mother said, in her cracked, smoke-saturated voice. She hugged me with a strength that couldn't have been hers alone. Her spindly fingers gripped my coat like beggar's lice. Her breath was tomb dust and gin.
As I held her, as I fought with myself to push her away, I felt the fluttering batwings of shadow at the corners of my consciousness. Wafting cobwebs in the Bone House.
"You haven't changed a bit," Mister Milktoast said, thinking she was still a weak, pathetic failure as a protector. Especially when compared to him. "Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in your lap and you were singing 'Mama's little baby loves shortnin' bread.'"
Loverboy twitched at the mention of "bread" but I shoved a loaf down his throat before he could speak.
"So you're really glad to see me?" Mother said, and her expression was so eager, so desperate, that Little Hitler had an urge to drive his fist into her brittle jaw.
Oh, no, Little Hitler. There will be plenty of time for all that later. Remember, mental pain is so much more savory than physical pain. You can inflict your bruises and gouges, but that's too human. I feed on fruit at the top of the tree.
"Yes, I'm glad to see you," hissed Little Hitler.
Patience, my mad little bootblack. I promise you'll like what I have in store for her. And don't worry, you'll get your turn. Everyone will get their turn, even Richard.
Especially Richard.
Mother tried to laugh but a cough caught in her throat and she made a strangled, hacking noise. She spat on the depot floor and what landed and shivered on the tiles was red and yellow, a cancerous slug. She bent and put a hand to her chest.
"Are you okay?" said Bookworm, touching her elbow. His tenderness was almost as appalling as Little Hitler's simmering hatred.
"Yes," she said, after clearing her throat. "Just...I couldn't smoke on the bus."
"You've logged some mileage," Mister Milktoast said.
She stretched and I heard her joints pop. "Eighteen hours. Hard on an old woman's back."
"Mother, don't talk that way. You're not old."
"I'm on the downhill slide and, to tell the truth, I don't mind a bit. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life standing in a bus depot. Show me this house you've been telling me about."
Mister Milktoast collected her bags and led her to the Subaru.
"Moving up in the world," Mother said as she folded into the passenger's seat like a crippled crab. "Remember that old car you used to drive, back home?"
Back home. She sent the first dagger into my chest.
"How could I forget?" said Little Hitler.
She put a hand on my knee as I started the car. "I can't tell you how happy it made me when you wrote and asked me to move in with you."
I could only scream silently, killed by my own quill, drowned by the juice of my own inkwell, caged by the alphabet. A toilet flushed in the Bone House.
Oh, Richard, didn't I tell you? How forgetful of me. Well, you know how it is when you have a thousand lifetimes' worth of thoughts.
I wondered which black night, which stolen moment, which part of my life had been sliced away from me so the Insider could write the letter. Or letters. What else had it told her?
When you sleep, I'm awake.
Mother squeezed my knee with her graybriar fingers. "It can be just like old times," she said, spraying spittle and liquor mist into the air. Her head swiveled as she studied the towering mountains that were such a contrast to Iowa's sweeping flatness. She pointed to a store on the side of the highway.
"Anything your heart desires, Mother," Mister Milktoast said. "Your lush is my command."
He pulled the car up to the glass front of the ABC store. I could see our reflections in the plate glass, my mouth smiling dotingly at Mother, her eyes bright in their nest of crow's feet. If I looked closely, I could see myself writhing in agony in the pools of my pupils. But that must have been my imagination, because I didn't look closely. I blinked and I was behind the steering wheel, myself again thanks to the wicked beneficence of the Insider.
Mother bought four bottles of Jim Beam, a fifth of gin, and a bottle of Glenlivet "just for a special celebration." We drove to my house and Mother oohed and aahed in appreciation in the living room as I took her bags to the spare bedroom. I looked around for ghosts of Shelley, bits of clothing or stains, any trophies Little Hitler might have accumulated without my knowledge. You know how roommates are.
When I came back downstairs, Mother was sitting on the couch nursing a six-ounce glass of straight bourbon between drags of her cigarette.
I moved as if through a dream, and then I realized it was a dream. The Insider's dream, come true through psychic manipulation. My nightmare, made flesh and given shape by a vengeful visionary. I was just a bit actor in a grainy movie. The Insider was star, writer, producer, and director, the Orson Welles of spiritual possession.
I sat on the chair, my limbs as stiff as wood, bracing for whatever atrocity the Insider might have in mind.
Relax, Richard. Why do you always expect the worst of me? I've gone to all this trouble to reunite a loving mother with her only son. See how much I care for you.
Mother had taken off her parka and hugged her arms against her chest. I tried not to look at the lumps her shriveled breasts made under the fabric of her sweater, but Loverboy gawked anyway. "Frostbit peaches" was his assessment.
"Thought it would be warmer here," she said. "But I guess this is pretty high up, what with all the mountains and all."
I nodded, the dutiful ventriloquist's dummy.
"We're going to be happy together, Richard," she said. She was halfway through the drink. Her words already sounded thicker on her tongue. "Just like the good old days."
She looked at me the way she had done from the witness stand at her court hearing those long years ago. The virgin whore, diva of denial, a mother load, spearing me with guilt and gratitude at the same time. Driving her words like nails into flesh, the same way she did while telling the prosecutors that Father had beaten the both of us for years.
"We're all we got left," she said with a watery sneer. "Us, and memories."
She drank to that. Then she drank to the previous drink. And the one to come.
Precious memories, how they finger. I was a prisoner of my own life, never more so than at that moment. An inmate of the Bone House, but also the warden. But even before that, I was the architect.
"I would do it all over again," she said, "even if I had gone to jail."
"Mother, please. Let's not talk about it."
She sipped the bourbon and smiled down into the brown liquid. She had already settled in, her thin hips parting the sofa cushion as if she'd been sitting there a hundred years. She picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater.
"You've never wanted to talk about it," she said, not accusing, just cold, empty, windswept. "Or about us."
Anger boiled inside me, a hot bubbling tar pit erupting, the red lava of rage flowing down my brain. This wasn't one of Little Hitler's petulant tantrums. It was honest, rightful indignation. The realization was frightening, yet liberating. I could feel.
Richard Allen Coldiron could have emotions that weren't gifts bestowed by Little People or psychic circus masters or calculating narrators. I tensed and sat forward, ready to rise and cross the room and...
And do what?
Its laughter rattled down the alleys of my mind, the sound of vermin scurrying in rubbish. I sat down and slumped in the chair, defeated before the battle even began.
"That wasn't us," I said. "That couldn't have been us."
"It was us, Richard. But we got through it all together. That's what people who love each other do. They get through things."
She lifted her arms with a sudden spasm and spilled bourbon on her polyester pants. She didn't notice. The blotch looked like Nietzche's profile or maybe a spatter pattern.
"Just surviving isn't enough," I said. "Sometimes, you have to live."
Mother finished what was left of her drink and sent the pale slug of her tongue over her lips. "Sometimes, you have to love," she said, her voice catching. "It's what makes us...human."
No. The Insider couldn't be working her strings, too. Feeding her lines straight from the mind of Mister Milktoast. The Insider couldn't be working her mouth and mind and heart just to get to me, could it? Could it? Bookworm flitted in with his line about "unwilling suspension of disbelief" and hustled back to his nook or cranny or wherever he hid.
"Comes a time to forgive and forget," Mother said. "Now, be a good boy and go refill my glass."
I was in the kitchen when she said to my back, "Besides, it was all my fault."
"No, it was nobody's fault," I yelled over my shoulder. The liquor I was pouring was momentarily tempting, its sharp sweet odor both a threat and a promise. The Coldiron Curse was relentless. It was as if Father's ghost hovered somewhere behind me, laughing gleefully and whispering "Taste it, Shit For Brains. We're bottomless."
Ghosts. Memories. Curses. Richard, you're starting to lose it, my dear human host. You're starting to see things my way. You're starting to become me.
Clink of glass.
And tonight, who will we be? Hmm, Richard? How about Mister Milktoast, giving Mother a sponge bath? Maybe Bookworm, opening his heart and spilling the pages of his pathetic diary? Little Hitler, swapping war stories about dear old Daddy? Or Loverboy. What about HIM?
With shaking hands, I poured an extra drink. It burned like hellfire in my throat.
Like Father, like son.
In every way.
I went back to the living room on legs of hot rubber.
Mother took her drink and smirked at the one I held in my hand. "You hold it just like your father," she said.
Just wait until I put on my boots.
Her eyes crawled across the room like fleshflies looking for a soft opening on a corpse. They lit on a photograph of Beth on the mantel, a still-life Beth whose face was trapped in innocence, cheer, and happiness.
"Who's that?" Mother asked.
"The woman I love," I said, working another swallow of liquor toward my burning stomach, washing down the bitter aftertaste of that final word.
Mother frowned, wrinkles on wrinkles.
Mother passed out while the afternoon sun was still heavy in the sky. I covered her with a spare blanket and stood over her, looking down at her stale-pastry face. She was already a corpse, lacking only the butterfly stitches in the eyelids.
I thought about taking off her scuffed loafers, but I was afraid to touch her.
You can touch her, Richard. She's yours. All of her. My gift to you.
"No. You can take my awareness, you can shuck my consciousness from me, you can steal my flesh, but you can't make me hurt her."
Richard, Richard, Richard. You still don't get it, do you? After all we've been through together, you still misunderstand me. My feelings would be hurt, if I had any besides yours.
"What do you mean? This is all your doing. Just more of your cruelty, so you can eat my pain. Well, eat up, you invisible soulfucker. Because you can make me feel guilty, I admit. You know where to dig up every little bone in my brain cemetery."
No, Richard. Don't you see? The beauty of all this, the thing that makes it so indescribably delicious, is that I don't have to MAKE you do anything. All I'm doing is granting you freedom of choice.
"You monster. I never invited you in."
Sometimes monsters are made, not born.
"How many? How many do you need to kill before you're tired of me?"
As many as it takes.
"Not her, please not her."
I thought you hated her.
"Maybe so. I don't know. But that doesn't change the fact that she's my mother. I know you don't understand, but humans just can't help certain feelings and emotions."
Look at her, Richard. You want to, don't you? You can do anything you want. I'm offering you everything. You can become one of us. You can join me in eternal life. Just surrender to me and become yourself.
I looked down at Mother. The young winter light made her face almost peaceful. She snorted in her sleep and a clear strand of drool leaked from one corner of her mouth.
This was the woman who had given me life. This was the one who really was to blame. She'd taught me everything I knew and didn't know about love. I turned, feeling that familiar black curtain descending.
Before I knew it, I was in the kitchen, sliding open the kitchen drawer. The bread knife found my hand. Its serrated edge grinned under the light.
"No, no, no."
I dropped the knife to the floor and the tip gouged a hole in the soft linoleum. Jagged laughter howled through my veins.
Almost had you that time, didn't I, Richard?
I knelt on the floor, holding my head in my hands.
"Run inside, Richard. The boots are coming," Mister Milktoast whispered from the dark.
"What's in there under the blanket, Dickie?" taunted Loverboy. "Smells warm. Smells ripe. And Beth's not around to knead this little Pillsbury doughboy."
"Pick up the knife," Little Hitler said. "How beautiful that would be. Poetic justice. First Father, then Mother. Patrimatricide."
With friends like that, Richard...
The curtain lifted and I was lying on the cold lineoleum, sweating. I could hear Mother's soft, arrhythmic snores. So she was still alive.
Congratulations, Richard. You passed the first test.
"Test?"
You couldn't kill her. Because you don't even pretend to love her.
"What?"
You loved Virginia. Where is she now?
What good did your love do Shelley? A one-night stand, except that for her, the night never ended. It keeps on stretching, out and out and forever.
Monique. You loved her. Inside out.
"Hey, what gives, Filthy Richie?" said Loverboy. "Is the Insider pulling your pud, or what?"
"Get the fuck out of my head."
"Damn, Dickie. Don't get your panties in a twist. Come to think of it, as little action as you're getting me, that would probably be an improvement."
I rose to my knees and crawled across the floor like a toddler going after a soft, brown comforting thing, a fuzzy cuddle in a harsh room, a consciousness about to form its first memory. But this wasn't the beginning. This was the wrap of the second act, where the plot complications conspired and forced the protagonist to finally face his nemesis, albeit from a position of weakness.
One arm, Little Hitler's arm, stretched for the knife.
"Don't fight it, Richard. You know you love her. And you know what happens to the ones you love."
"No. I don't love her. You know that."
"That's not how I remember it," said Loverboy. "You loved her a hell of a lot. Maybe not as well as I could have, but I don't expect much from a jellydick like you."
"She loves us, Richard," Mister Milktoast said. "Appeased in a pod."
"Then why didn't she stop the boots?"
"Because we were all too weak---you, me, her."
"But I sure as fuck wasn't," Little Hitler said, fingers caressing the knife handle. "If it wasn't for me, you'd both probably be whimpering in the closet. You owe me, Richard.
You owe me big-time. And payback's a bitch."
"Haven't I paid you enough? Talk about usury. You're worse than the Insider. I think you crave the guilt more than it does."
"Do you really think the Insider gives a flying upside-down batfuck about any of us? To it, one human is as good as another. Drop in, stir up a brainstorm, and head on down the line. No big deal, a little soul grazing, just getting through the day. But to me, this isn't about survival. To me, this is personal."
The knife was slick beneath my sweaty palm. I raised the blade and pointed it at my chest. If only I could fall on it before...
"Don't, Richard," screamed Mister Milktoast. "What would become of me?"
"Food for maggots, with any luck."
"Food for faggots, more like it," Loverboy said. "Strap Daddy in stilettos and mince him down the runway."
"It's not your fault," Mister Milktoast said, ignoring the taunt.
"Bullshit." It was my fault, and besides, my word was law, right?
"He's right, Richard," Bookworm said, and his voice came flat, calm, and clear from the dead zone of my cranium. I pressed the steel between my ribs.
"Not you, too, Bookworm? I thought, of all of them, you might be on my side. You're practically my co-author."
"I'm on your side. More than you know."
"Then help me. Help me die." Tears streamed down my cheeks but I felt no sorrow.
"Richard, you're not strong enough to love. But are you strong enough to hope?"
"Hope springs eternal," cut in Mister Milktoast, as if the suicidal tide might dry up now that Bookworm kicked sand in everyone's face. "Present tense despite the current tension."
"Do you love yourself enough, Richard?" continued Bookworm.
"He loves himself plenty," said Loverboy. "That right hand of his is practically worn out. I say it's about time to let him get the fuck out of Dodge. Beth is tight as a breadstick and twice as salty, but this monogamy crap is getting old. Me, I got needs."
"I say winterize him," Little Hitler said. "Let Richard bury himself back in the dark. Nobody would shed a tear. And I wouldn't mind having a go at this meat full-time."
I would welcome that. If I couldn't stab myself, maybe I could just slip on down into the dark waters, drown inside my own sorry sea. No, the ocean-beach metaphor was paragraphs ago. It was time for domestic reference. Okay, so I'd book myself a back room in the Bone House and hang out a "No vacancy" sign.
Bookworm came in again, calm and strong. "Do you love yourself enough, Richard?"
"Love? What's love got to do with anything? And if I really did love anybody, then I would want to spare them our miserable company."
The waters tempted, lapping. The curtains fluttered. Or was it the Insider laughing?
"Do you love yourself enough to live?" Bookworm challenged.
"I hate myself enough to die, I know that."
"Then you'd be dead already. Why aren't you?"
"The arch enemy hasn't finished painting his rainbow," Mister Milktoast said. "Sorry. Inside joke."
The knife point was to my chest now, pressing into the flannel, bruising the sternum. Through the window, the sun hung fat and low over the far mountains. I should have been at work. I was scheduled for the night shift. But I was in search of a longer night shift, eternal overtime, no hope for dawn.
"Beautiful," Little Hitler said. "Richard's so pathetic he can't even succeed at the ultimate failure. Do you guys need more evidence as to why we need to fucking drown him already?"
"Be my guest, Little Hitler. Nothing would please me more than to disappear inside. And you, Mister Milktoast. You've tried to keep me out of danger. But you want to live, with or without me."
"You wound me, old friend. After all I've done for you..."
"All you did was protect me from the truth. Just like Mother."
The blade pressed, the hand gripped, the arm ached to thrust. Blood thundered, heart throbbed, shutters shuddered.
"Richard," came Bookworm's soothing voice, like a New Age audiobook narrator who'd sampled the chamomile. "It still won't be the end."
"The end? What do I care about the end? All I want is to be out. Flying solo to hell or whatever those joking bastard gods have in mind for me. I just want to lose any awareness that I was ever me."
"Yes, Richard. It would end for you, but what about the Insider?"
"The Insider? I'd be depriving it of a moment's distraction, that's all. It would just jump like---"
"---like a nimble metaphor over a proverbial candlestick burning at both ends. And move on."
"Whatever. It's not my fault. I didn't bring the thing into the world. And I didn't invite it into my heart. It's not like Mother made me do with Jesus."
"That was me," Mister Milktoast said. "I was always trying to protect you."
"Jesus Jiminy Christ, what a joke," Little Hitler said with a howl of laughter that rattled the Bone House windows. "Saving him from the savior. So which one of you angels are going to heaven? Now I've heard everything. Hell, now I've been everything."
I turned to the only one who still seemed unselfish. "Bookworm, do you really think I'd mind snuffing these mental clowns out of existence? I'd be doing the world a favor. It's practically my duty."
"Yes. You and I would end. All of us. But the Insider would continue. This chapter would end, the manuscript would expire in media res, but there would be a sequel."
"So you believe. But I'm only human. What do you want me to do about it?"
My body was tensed, awaiting the deathblow that wouldn't come. A sharp lightning bolt flashed through my skull and fireshadows danced in my eyes. Black scraps stitched themselves together into a blanket over my brain. The Insider's voice stabbed with its icy splinters, a gang rape of thoughts.
No need for me to jump very far, is there, Richard?
"What are you talking about?"
Plenty of suitable hosts all around. Plenty who've been tortured and abused and are brimming with pain. Plenty who have sinned. Plenty of humans right within reach who've been tainted by their humanity and are just waiting for a monster to come in. Practically BEGGING for it.
"What's that got to do with me? As long as I'm out of the picture, I don't care if you reanimate Elvis's corpse or do the hokey pokey with Abraham Lincoln's ghost."
Choices, choices, choices. Mother or Beth. Beth or Mother. So many to be, so little time.
"No. You miserable mindfucker."
Which is the greater of two evils?
"Damn you to hell."
Thanks for the kind sentiment. But I've found the hottest hell right here.
I struggled with myself, my own arm. The knife or not.
I'll let you die happy, if that's what you want. You can go with a smile on your face, knowing that your beautiful little self-sacrifice is going to add to the guilt and pain of those you left behind. Hmmm. My mouth is watering already. Or is that YOUR mouth?
I swayed, confused, a minuet with sharp metal edges.
"Listen to your heart, Richard," Bookworm said.
"My heart says stick the knife in."
"Don't give up. We can beat it. Together."
The Insider's laughter ripped through my guts like shrapnel, pulsed through my veins like broken glass, rattled in my headbone like a blunt hatchet blade.
That's when I realized I didn't want to die. At least not alone.
Not when I could take somebody with me. Or something.
"Yo, Squidbait," said Loverboy. He was as jaunty as a sailor on shore leave with cockswain to spare and furlough to burn. "What would Mother say if she saw Richard down on his knees with a knife in his hand?"
"Hey, Loverboy, you tart-popping sonofabitch. Why don't you ask her?"
I turned. Mother was leaning against the kitchen entrance, wiping at the crust in her watery eyes. I put the knife behind my back.
She spoke, and her throat was so dry her voice cracked. "Richard..."
Had she seen the knife? I pretended to be looking for a spill. That was the only reason I could think of why I would be on my knees in the kitchen. I sure couldn't pretend to be praying.
"Richard..."
"Yes, Mother?"
"In this light, you look just like your father."
I led Mother upstairs to the spare room. She sat on the bed, her glass in her hand. If she ever died, the undertaker would have to break her fingers to get them out of that hawkish grip.
"You can sleep here," I said. "I've got to go to work. Make..."
She brightened, snapped her eyes wide like a frog going after a waterbug. "...make yourself at home."
Home is where the heart is. So Mister Milktoast likes to say. But sometimes, home is where the head is, especially if you are behind on rent and you claim squatter's rights.
Mother grabbed my shirt as I tried to leave. "Just like old times, Richard. The good old days."
Loverboy wanted, yes, he shivered and reached out to touch her cheek, but, yes, Mister Milktoast was right, good things were worth waiting for. Yes, Little Hitler cheered them both on and Bookworm kept the scorecard.
"It'll be late when I get back. I'll try not to wake you."
I'll try very, very hard.
I was sweating again by the time I got out the front door. The November air slapped like a frozen glove, but still the juice trickled from my pores. I got in my Subaru and started the engine and sat watching my breath make crystals on the windshield.
Yes, Richard. Things are moving right along. Everything unfolding according to the synopsis.
"You fucking inhuman monster."
Sticks and stones, Richard. Except, of course, I don't have any bones to break. That's why I have to borrow yours.
I gave the steering wheel an open-palmed punch.
Hahaha. This is delightful, I must say. I've seen the ashes rising from the crematoriums at Dachau and Auschwitz, the sky gray and thick with flies. I've ridden over the bloody snow at Wounded Knee while mothers tried to cover their papooses. I've breathed the mustard gas and gangrene of Flanders. I've lain awake at night in the jungles of Cambodia and the deserts of Darfur, counting myself to sleep with screaming children as sheep. But nothing, NOTHING, has been as sweet as this latest joyride. I want to thank you, from the bottom of your heart.
"I'll get you, you bastard."
Richard, you've made me really appreciate what it means to be human. You've proven a perfect specimen of your kind. And just because your species has exterminated mine is not the reason this is so enjoyable. What makes this the crown jewel among a thousand possessions is that no one has ever DESERVED me as much as you have.
"You'll never get Mother."
The night is young.
At work, I was busy with the Christmas orders that were coming in. Brittany was out of town for the weekend and Miss Billingsly had worked the day shift, so Bookworm had his hands full running the register and stocking the shelves. I was glad to be occupied. It kept their minds from Mother.
Arlie was sitting in the poet's corner, watching the highway and sipping at whatever he had in his cup. He rubbed his face.
"What you doing for Thanksgiving?" he asked while I was rearranging the postcard display on the counter.
"My mother's in town."
"Hey. That's nice."
"Yeah"
"Saw one of them last night." He wiped at his buzzard's beak of a nose.
"One of what?"
"Them. Flying saucers. Came out the top of Widow's Peak and swooped down over my fields as dead quiet as a bat."
"Same kind?"
"Yep. Kind of greenish and flat like one of those Frisbees the hippie boys throw. Had a row of red lights around the outside edge."
I nodded and rang the register. A lady with a pixie haircut bought Stephen King's new novel. It was the sixth one I'd sold that night. That was one squirrel-eyed bastard who knew how to plot. If only Bookworm were as gifted.
After she left, Arlie said, "Swooped down Tater Knob Road and then back up where there's nothing but old logging trails, where nobody ever goes anymore. Them things are smart, I tell you. That's why they call them 'alien intelligence.'"
"So you think they have a base up there or something?"
"They's a nest of 'em up there. You better believe it. And nobody's doing a damn thing to stop them."
"People don't like mysteries. They'd rather not know about things they can't understand."
"Well, how many more have to get killed first?"
"So you still think it's the aliens that got the girls?"
"Fuck a blue hen, I do. Why else ain't they come up with any clues?" He waved his arms like a frantic bird and looked at me with his dark eyes. "'Cause they don't want to be found out yet. They're chargin' up for a takeover, sure as the world."
"And you'll be the first to know."
"Damn straight. I'm the only human around in those parts, at least the furthest up the road. It's a wonder I ain't been got yet."
"They probably know you're onto them."
"Keep a double-dose of Number Eight buckshot handy, just in case."
"Well, why do you think they need to kill the girls?"
"Rechargin'. Getting energy. Suck 'em down like draining a battery." He lowered his head and his eyes ping-ponged back and forth. He said in a conspiratorial whisper, "They eat the light."
"The light?"
"Their souls."
The Insider was quite a trickster. Multitasking. Stepping out on me. Sleeping around.
"Sounds like you've got them figured out, Arlie."
He finished whatever was in his coffee cup and stood up, swaying slightly. "Yep. Better get on out and keep watch. This is their favorite time of night."
Then he was out the door, looking up at the dark sky.
Could the Insider throw visions up on the big screen of the heavens? Lucas and Spielberg in a galaxy not so far away?
Now, Richard. Would I do a thing like that? I prefer a private viewing.
I wondered what Arlie would think of predators who didn't have to invade Earth. Because they were already here. Had been since the beginning. A race that thought we were the aliens.
Beth called just before eleven, as I was getting ready to close up. "Hi, loverboy," she said, in her sexy kitten voice that even hundreds of miles of cable couldn't quell.
"Loverboy? What about him?"
"Hey, relax. I'm just being silly."
"Why did you call me at work?"
She sighed. "To hear your voice, Richard. People do that sort of thing, when they're in love."
I wondered if the word "love" always sounded like an accusation to other people. The way it did to me.
"Sorry, hon. I've been out of sorts lately. Got things on my mind." Five of them, to be exact.
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I just miss you, that's all."
"Well, here's something that might cheer you up."
"What's that?"
"I ran into an old girlfriend of mine. She's heading to Florida on Friday, and she's going to drop me off there on her way. I'm going to be home early, you stud muffin. So I only have to go two nights without that hunk of burning love of yours."
"Th-that's great."
"Hmmph. Why don't you just yawn, you're so happy about it?"
"No. That's really great. I mean it. I..." I look forward to killing you.
"Richard?"
"It's just been real busy here tonight, with the start of the Christmas season and all. But Friday's great, I'm off on Friday."
"Are you sure you're okay? You sound a little...odd."
"No, everything's fine here. Really."
"We're going to be heading out early, so I should be there around eleven o'clock. Do you want to meet me at my apartment so we can bring over some of my things?"
"That would be fine. So, did you tell your parents? About us living together?"
"You kidding? I told you Mom's a hardcore Catholic and Dad derived his moral philosophy from 'The Andy Griffith Show.'"
"Parents. Gotta love 'em."
"Yeah. I think I'll tell them at Christmas, when everybody's always in a good mood, no matter what kind of shit is raining down."
"Mmmm. I love you, Angel Baby." The L word was easier to say, now that I had no choice.
"I love you, too. And guess what?"
"Two guesses in one night? I'm really lucky."
"I have another surprise. A secret."
"I've been told that I'm no good with secrets. Every time I cross my heart, somebody dies."
"Funny. Well, it's such a good secret that I'm not going to tell you on the phone."
Warning flares erupted in my crowded head. "That big, huh? It sounds like a happy secret."
"Well, I wasn't sure at first. But now that I've had time to think about it...yes, it's good."
"Come on, tell me."
"Good things are worth waiting for, guy."
"I'm waiting, then."
"Good. And don't let any wild women into your bed until I get there."
"I'll try my best." Did Mother count as "wild"? And did my half-hearted promise free Loverboy to sleep with women preceded by other adjectives? What about tame women or lavender women or deep-fried, sugar-glazed women?
"Hope you won't get lonely on Thanksgiving."
"Me? I'm never lonely." Misery loves company but sleeps alone. Except in the Bone House.
"Funny again. See you on Friday. Love you."
"Love you."
She smooched into the phone and hung up.
Secrets. I hated secrets. Sally Bakken had secrets. Secrets always carried a price and never got you the dollar's worth of candy.
Mother was asleep when I got home. I locked my bedroom door and huddled under the blankets. I was afraid of hearing her feet scruff the carpet, afraid of hearing her knock on my door. Because I knew I'd have to answer.
But I was equally scared of sleeping. Because when I slept, the Insider worked. What were to me only dreams, wisps of nightmare, were the Insider's bricks and mortar as it walled me off from my feelings and hung up a cute knitted sampler that said, "Home Sweet Home."
I woke up sweating, the sheets in a tangle. Alone. I went into the hall. Mother's door was closed. Was she...
I yanked open the door. Red sheets and deviled ham.
I screamed and the Insider shook me awake.
Bad dream, Richard. Do you think I'd let you miss out on something you've looked forward to for so long? What kind of monster do you think I am?
"I'm afraid to think what kind. Because that's what kind you'll become."
You've been talking to Bookworm. He thinks he has it all figured out.
"We're all getting tired of you."
You'll be rid of me soon. But, believe it or not, you'll be begging me to stay. It happens every time. I move in, set up camp, dig up a decent wicked streak that most people don't even know is inside, and then they find that they like it. They LIKE the freedom to do whatever I make them. They LIKE the misery. It's all so...human.
Look at your religions. All violence and guilt. You demand martyrs. Every single pathetic one of you would love to lay it all on the doorstep of a higher power. But in the end, I am your fondest wish and deepest fantasy. I am everything you want to be. Because I AM you.
"Wonderful. Now you have delusions of godhood. That's just what I need, a soul-stealing psychic spirit who also happens to be going chipmunk-spunk nutty."
"Black mine," Bookworm said.
"Ether ore," Mister Milktoast said.
I heard sounds behind the door to Mother's room. I hurried downstairs in case she was undressed.
"Let me just have a peek," Loverboy said. "Promise I won't touch. Pleeeeze."
"Yeah. I trust you about as much as I could trust Sally Bakken."
"Heh. Sister Milktoast told me about that. Wish I'd been around back then. Things might have turned out different."
"Loverboy, I don't think she was your type."
"Hey now. If it's old enough to bleed---"
"---it's old enough to butcher," Little Hitler said.
"And a Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Little Diddler."
"Come on, guys. Can't we all get along, at least for one day?"
"We'd hate to screw up your holiday with Mommy," Little Hitler said. "And blow Loverboy's prospects."
"Hey, blow me, Swizzlestick, I can get it anytime I want it. And I'm smooth as a baby's ass and harder to hold than a pig in Crisco. You just hack and slash. No charm at all."
"But plenty of depth," Mister Milktoast noted.
"Come on, guys," Bookworm said. "We've got to stick together now, more than ever."
"Well, well, well, if it isn't Sickworm with more of his cosmic crap. This isn't some Eastern religious text, you know. This is the real deal."
I was so mad that I yelled out loud without thinking. "Just shut the hell up, all of you."
"Richard?" Mother called from upstairs. "Is somebody there?"
"Nobody here but us chickens," Loverboy said aloud.
"Fowl play," Mister Miltoast chimed in.
"Foreplay," Bookworm said, forgetting he was making a transition into one of the good guys, the minor character who wins the affection of the audience and plays a key role in the redemptive arc.
"What?"
I looked up the landing. Mother leaned against the doorjamb. She was always leaning. Mercifully, she was wearing her robe, though I don't think she'd washed it since I'd moved out of the apartment. She looked a hundred years old, like a Pharoah's mummy, shriveled, bone-dry, hollow.
"Nothing," I said. "I was just thinking out loud. How did you sleep?"
"Like the dead. Had a bad dream, though. Something about the door opening and---"
"Coming down for breakfast?"
"Yeah. Think I'll take a shower first."
Loverboy leapt, throbbed in pulse-beats. Come on, roomies. Let's have some fiveplay and soap up for a gangbang.
I turned and rushed for the kitchen.
"Richard?"
"Yes, Mother?"
I hoped she wouldn't ask for someone to wash her back. Because I knew several willing volunteers, and a couple of unwilling ones.
"Thanks for inviting me here. I know we've had our problems, but...this can be a new start. For both of us."
"It's good to have you here."
"Maybe we can talk, you know, about the old days."
"We'll see." Yes. We definitely will see. Every square inch, from the inside out.
"Oh, yeah. And Happy Thanksgiving."
"We have so much to be thankful for, Mother. Pass the stuffing. I feel a little empty."
We survived Thanksgiving. Cold turkey on white bread as the wind blew dead and cold, cutting across the hills like a scythe. We talked of little nothings, leftovers, Iowa's corn, the continental divide, grandfather's funeral. How the sky was bluer and the clouds grayer in winter.
We drank two fifths of the liquor, watched cartoon pilgrims on television, and went to bed, each mercifully alone. The Little People were silent, perhaps taking a holiday themselves. The Insider didn't claw at my guts, but I could feel it waiting, getting stronger, raiding the refrigerator for leftovers.
I awoke Friday to the first ashes of snow whispering down to the hard ground. My first thought was of Beth, hoping that she made it to Shady Valley before the roads got bad. My second thought was that Mother and Beth would soon be under the same roof, exactly where the Insider wanted them. And my third thought...
Something flushed and straight-piped raw sewage into my chest. Fresh memories spilled from the cracks in the dam, the dam burst, the red currents roared, rivers of blood washed through my mind.
Mother on the bed, writhing, limbs hacked off at the elbows and knees. Still alive, her mouth open to scream, but only thick gobs of crimson oozing out. Her tongue lying on the pillow next to her cheek. Wiggling her stumps like a turtle flipped over on its back.
Loverboy grinning, sliding on his knees toward the flesh that is unable to fight him off, even if it wanted to.
"No, no, NO!"
Something had walked in the night.
Little Hitler had taken the hatchet from the downstairs closet.
While I slept, the Insider rewrote the part where I'd killed Mother in a dream.
I looked at my hands. No blood. I looked under the sheets at my naked flesh. No blood.
Had Mister Milktoast once again cleaned up the mess? Was the crime covered? Were the bedspreads washed? Were the chunks buried?
But such a thing could never be buried in the heart. The Insider wouldn't allow that. The Insider would drag it out, disembowel it, bone and fillet it, stuff it and mount it on the walls of my life.
I pressed my eyeballs, trying to squeeze the visions away. I rolled out of bed and ran across the hall. I flung open the door to Mother's room without knocking.
She was whole. The blankets rose and fell with her breathing.
Had you going that time, didn't I, Richard?
"You insane bastard."
Little Hitler wanted to. Oh, yes, he stood over her for at least an hour. But I couldn't let you miss the party, could I? Besides, how much fun would it be if you and she slept through the whole thing? I mean, if you're going to sleep together, you should be awake, right?
Mother stirred under the blankets, nudged her head against the pillow, and opened her bloodshot eyes. "Richard?"
As she stared at me, the Insider froze my legs so I couldn't run. I was a statue, a marble nude, as cold and hard as the mountains outside.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"I dreamed about you," she said, her eyes slowly trailing down my body before finally fixing on the ceiling.
"It's snowing," I said.
She kept on talking, as if to herself, her voice frail and barely louder than the snowfall. "We were walking down a long black tunnel, and we kept walking and walking. The dark was so thick we couldn't hardly breathe. Then the tunnel opened up, and there was a light. We were in a high cave, with those pointy rocks hanging down, and the sides of the cave were damp and covered with gray mold.
"And there was a flat rock, about table-high, sort of like an altar. And there was a girl on it, Richard. Naked and scared. Her eyes so wide they was about to pop, and she looked at us like she was begging for help, only she didn't make a sound."
I tried to back away. Loverboy wanted to move closer. The Insider laughed.
"Before we could run," Mother said, smearing the back of her hand against her greasy forehead, "a big dark shadow swooped out of the other end of the cave and covered her, then swirled down into her mouth and disappeared like muddy water down a drain. And she screamed and screamed like she had eaten razor blades."
Mother blinked as if trying to drive away the lingering vision, incapable of grasping extended metaphors, knowing only that her head throbbed with hangover.
"And she was screaming 'Help me, bookworm.' Ain't that weird?"
"Hmmm. You know how dreams are," I said. "Must be the stress of moving and everything."
"The girl on the rock, it was the girl in your picture. Downstairs."
The Insider let me have control of my legs, now that its joke had been played. I backed out of the room. "It was just a dream. You already used that gimmick once. What, you're getting so lame that you have to pull a Freddie fucking Krueger and pile up the remakes?"
Just a dream. All you have to do is wake up and shake your head. And all the bad little shadows will go away.
"Remember when you were little?" Mother said, her dark eyes locked on the ceiling, as if looking through it at the snowy hell above. "You used to dream about the monsters."
There are no monsters in the real world, right, Richard? Only the ones you make.
"I don't want to talk about it," I said from the hall.
"After your father went off to work, you'd come in and snuggle with me under the blankets. You'd tell me all about what Mister Milktoast did while you were asleep. You remember that? You remember Mister Milktoast?"
"A little."
"Why, you said he was your imaginary friend. Every time you broke something or got into trouble, you blamed him."
Never could point the finger at yourself, could you, Richard?
I shivered from more than the cold.
"Your father would get so mad when you'd do that," Mother said. "He'd practically bust a neck-vein, he hated it so much. He'd get bug-eyed and bend over you with his stinking, slobbery breath, then...then...
"...his boots would do their dance," Mister Milktoast said, in his small four-year-old voice.
"He couldn't help it. That was just his way. He always felt so trapped, you know? And he was a good man, except for that."
"But he beat you all the time. How could you still love him?"
"Sometimes love ain't about flowers and kisses and a hand to hold in the sunshiny fields. Sometimes, it's just a matter of putting up with. 'Cause what's out there, what's dark and creepy and God-only-knows-what, is even scarier than what you got ahold of. Or whatever's got ahold of you."
"Is that why you never left him?"
"There's worse things than getting beat. Like being alone."
Alone. What I wouldn't give for that. "And is that why you told the police you killed Father? Because you were afraid they were going to take me away from you?"
Her breath got shallow, short. I clenched my fists and stepped back into the room, not caring that I was naked.
"Well, that wasn't all," she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
"Tell me, damn it, tell me."
"Well, I just felt like I was supposed to. When you love somebody, you try and protect them."
She quit pretending to avert her gaze and looked me in the face.
Then why did she let Father beat you? Ask her.
"Then why did you let Father beat me?"
She sighed a wind of resignation, a graveyard wind, a wind that flapped the sail-tatters of a ship stranded on a great dead sea where mothers never had to say they were sorry.
"I don't expect you to understand, Richard. Hell, I don't even understand it myself. Sometimes, when he'd punch my eye or knock me against the wall, I'd be laying there, trying not to pass out. I'd be fighting those little fuzzy scraps of rags at the edges of my brain. Because I knew if I went under, I'd just keep on going down and down and disappear into the dark. And the voices. . .the voices would whisper... 'Just come on down, you bitch, come on down and let's play.'"
"Voices?" I grabbed her blankets and ripped them off the bed. The stench of unwashed flesh filled the room. She trembled inside her soiled nightgown.
I pressed my face close to hers, and I could feel my features contorting into a rubber fright mask. "What goddamned voices?"
She whimpered and raised her arms as if to ward off blows.
Like father, like son. The Coldiron Curse lives on.
No. It wasn't her. It was the Insider. It had always been the Insider.
Is it, Richard? I'm only what you have made me. What all of you have made me.
I ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. I went into my bedroom and began dressing. It had always been the Insider.
How convenient, Richard, that you've always had someone to blame. Father. Sally Bakken. Little Hitler. And now Mother. What do you care what happens, as long as Richard Allen Coldiron keeps his nose clean? Why SHOULDN'T you help me kill a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, since you can always pass the buck?
Why shouldn't I? I knew that someone had to die before sundown.
The telephone rang. I picked it up.
"Richard Coldiron?" came a familiar reedy voice.
"Yes?"
"This is Detective Frye. I was wondering if you could come down to the station today."
"Is something wrong?"
"No, no. Just have a few questions to ask you."
"What about?"
"About the death of Monique Rivers. Thought you might help me fill in some of the blanks. We've got a person of interest."
"Sure. But it would be simpler if you just waited for my autobiography to come out."
"Funny. You're a writer?"
"I don't know. Would it make me a suspect?"
"Writers are known to be crazy, unless they're bestsellers. Then they're just strange."
"Okay, Detective, I welcome the chance to assist you and prove I'm not crazy, but I can hardly wait to be strange. I've been rejected 117 times."
"Wow," he said, though there was not a hint of "wow" in his voice.
"But I'm revising as I go and--"
"I appreciate it. Is ten-thirty okay?"
"Fine."
"See you here, then. Bye."
The dial tone buzzed in my brain, stirring up Mister Milktoast. "What are we going to do, Richard?"
"We aren't going to do anything. I'm going to think about what I want to do."
"Do you think Frye knows?"
"He only knows what the Insider lets him know. I wouldn't be surprised if the bastard was just trying to amp up the tension to keep us all juiced for the climax."
"Is it time, then?"
"It's time," said Bookworm.
It was nine o'clock. By the time I dressed, the snow had completely covered the ground, a soft white shroud on the skin of the earth. I sat at my desk and looked out at the shadowed ancient mountains. Their peaks were capped like sharp teeth.
I folded the paper and slid it into an envelope, fearing that the Insider would stop me at any moment. This was its flesh, after all, finally, ultimately, forever. Past, present, future.
"Seal it with a kiss for me, Richie."
"Sure thing, Loverboy."
I wrote "Mother" on the outside of the envelope and went downstairs. The house was peaceful, empty. Mother must have rolled back into her stuporous slumber. The aquarium glugged on, oxygenating the water that held no life but scum.
Shelley Birdsong was dreaming her everlasting dream in a distant basement. Monique had cashed her check for the bit part, wandered out of the script and on to other roles where she would play the minor romantic interest. Brittany would never know how close she'd come to celebrity, and she'd probably live out her life married to some Alpha male psycho instead of ending up on the victim list of whatever snazzy name the press would give me after I got caught. I could afford a moment's nostalgia, but I was spiritually bankrupt.
"Nobody's vault but yours," Mister Milktoast whispered.
Bookworm tried to send a tear down my cheek. I left the letter by a half-empty bottle of bourbon where Mother would be sure to find it. I stopped at the front closet and put on my coat. The Insider checked to make sure the knife was still in the front pocket.
It's not the end, Richard. It's never the end.
"No, it's not the end. Just good-bye for now."
I wasn't leaving. I was going. Icarus in a no-fly zone, Ishmael in a paper boat, Cupid playing Russian roulette with a squirt gun.
Every door has "Exit" on one side and "Entrance" on the other. Depends on whether you're inside or outside.
Me, I could never tell the difference.
Storytelling tradition demands that you hide your transitions, that the ventriloquist's mouth doesn't move, that the stitches on the B-movie monster costume don't show. Sleight of hand is for sissies, something those cotton candy-assed "literary writers" pull while they're in their Parisian garrets jacking off to James Joyce. I told you I was a liar right from the beginning, but you didn't believe me. Fuck. I might as well have said, "I love you." You'd fall for that one, too, wouldn't you?
I know I have. Every single time.
We only see what we want to see, only hear what we want to hear. And though this is my autobiography, you maintained the illusion that somehow you were part of the story, that without you this was merely some words on paper. That my life had no meaning until you made your interpretation.
You know something? I think you're right.
So let's finish it.
Downtown was desolate. Half of Shady Valley's shops had closed early because of the weather. Christmas lights spasmed in pulses of green and red from the storefronts, vomiting color onto the snow-covered sidewalks. Decorations sagged from telephone poles, silver-tinseled bells tangled with loose red ribbons. Cars lined the streetsides, cowering under the weight of the storm like mastodons caught by a sudden ice age.
The roads were completely blanketed, except for twin sets of black stripes made by the few cars that were out. I peered through the windshield, driving mostly by memory as the wipers beat like frozen drumsticks. The surrounding mountains were white, silent, elegant temples, all granite and ice and bare trees. The sun cowered behind the clouds, throwing the sky into early twilight.
Nearly four inches of snow were on the ground by the time I reached Beth's apartment. Her building was empty. Most of the people who lived in this section of town were students who had left for the holiday. The whole street seemed dead, but the peace was tense, like those hours just before Christmas morning when the world is ready to explode with song and laughter. Or like a battlefield where armies are waiting for the smoke to clear so they can clash again.
I let myself in with the key Beth had given me. I flipped the switch, but she must have already had the power turned off. The living room was so cold that I could see my breath, even in the weak light. Cardboard boxes were stacked in one corner near the door. I walked past them to Monique's old room.
The emptiness of it taunted me. A shiver crawled across the loops of my intestines. It had to have been a dream. That couldn't have been us.
Never us. Only you.
"No."
"She didn't love us," Bookworm said. "It was the Insider, making her pretend. Making you pretend, Richard."
"You're right, Bookworm. She could never love us. That was all a trick. Hear that, Insider? We're not playing your damn game anymore. Take your ball and go home."
Richard, my loving, loyal host. My dear faithful servant. My brother. My father. My SON.
You will do as I say, when I say, no matter what I say.
"No. You can make me murder. You can make me feel guilty. You can make me hate you. But you can't make me not love."
The Insider was rising fast, poking its orange spears of pain through my flesh. My brain was a cauldron of simmering tar. My Little People were in pain, too. There would be no more hiding under beds and in closets. It was time to clean house.
Through a crack in the curtains, I saw a pumpkin-colored Volvo wagon pull up to the curb. After a moment, the passenger door opened and an ugly mukluk touched the ground and tapped as if testing for thin ice. Then she stood, her golden-brown hair spilling from the rim of her red toboggan and over the collar of her trench coat. Plumes of mist came out between her pink lips. A dandruff of snow collected on her shoulders as she said something to the driver, who looked a lot like Ted. I would know those horse teeth anywhere.
The Volvo pulled away and Beth stood looking at my tracks heading up the sidewalk. Her hands were in the pockets of her trench coat. She smiled. She was dreamy beautiful, as if she were being filmed with a soft-focus lens, like Lauren Bacall in "Casablanca," Vivian Leigh in "Gone With The Wind," Linda Blair in "The Exorcist."
She loves you, Richard. You know what happens to the people who love you.
I left Monique's bedroom to its ghosts and cobwebs and met Beth at the door.
"Hi, handsome." She threw herself into Loverboy's arms. "I missed you so much."
"Yeah, me, too. I missed you so much I almost died."
She kissed my neck and both cheeks and then my lips and I smelled her hair. Hope Hill and Sally Bakken and just-baked freshness. I held her at arm's length and looked into those swimmingly sea-green eyes.
"We're going to be so happy together." She kissed me again and I didn't fight it. Finally, she came up for air.
"Tell me about the secret," I said.
"Good things are worth waiting for."
"The waiting's over, Angel Baby."
"It's cold in here."
"Maybe things will heat up." Loverboy. His idea of foreplay was to skip the first three numbers.
She looked at the room, at the darker squares on the walls where posters had been taken down. She looked at the sofa, at the crusts of snow on the carpet, at the windowsill, everywhere but at my face. This was the place where she had lost a roommate and gained a soul mate. "I hope you're as happy about it as I am," she finally said.
I held both her hands in mine. How could these hands ever hurt anyone?
"I've got a secret of my own," I whispered, pulling her close. Loverboy tingled. The Insider tingled. The knife tingled.
"Tell me," she said.
"Ladies first." Little Hitler hissed. Bookworm hissed. The knife hissed.
She looked down again and I kissed her forehead. I was going to miss her face. But maybe I'd hang on to it for a while.
"Richard. . .you remember the first night we made love?"
"How could I forget? That was the best night of my life. That was the first time I really felt...like a man."
"You're sweet. It was wonderful for me, too. In a way, I think I knew even then."
"What? That you'd end up falling in love with me?"
"Well, that and the secret."
She must have forgotten everything. She had forgotten Ted, Monique, the "I have to be sures." The Insider had great power. If only he could bottle it and sell it on the drugstore shelves, or maybe in churches, we'd all be rich and the Bone House could get a new paint job. Better yet, why not a bestseller that told you how to make money through artificial self-confidence? Bookworm could burn it along with his pile of rejection slips.
"Then tell me the secret."
"Promise you won't get mad?"
"Have I ever been mad at you?"
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
"Maybe we'd better sit down." I squeezed her hands a little and looked into those green eyes, into the dark pools of her pupils. What monsters might rise from them as the Insider fed?
Her eyelashes fluttered. "We're pregnant, Richard."
Silence.
More silence.
A long eternity of silences.
The sound of snowflakes falling.
How much candy could you buy for a dollar these days?
Tension hung in the room like thunderstorm static, like an anvil over a cartoon character, like a drunken Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah.
Beth flinched, awaiting...what?
So, Richard. What do you think of this little development? Isn't it absolutely to-die-for perfect? I saw this one coming five chapters ago. You should have read the outline.
I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach, as if a black hole had stolen the oxygen out of the air, as if my head was a bright yawning canyon of sunbursts.
Pregnant.
So the Coldiron Curse would live on. What a perfectly beautiful ending to the Insider's visit. A guilt feast, a banquet of bitterness, a host's holiday.
The eternity stopped. The silence died as it had lived, without a squeak of protest.
"Are you sure?" I said, gasping like a trout in a saucepan. She nodded and her pretty hair shimmered in the half-light.
"Are you sure...it's mine?"
"That was the only time I forgot."
She hadn't forgotten. The Insider had simply prohibited her from remembering. The Insider had planted that seed as surely as if it had ridden down Loverboy's spermatic duct itself.
No. It must have been the first time, before Loverboy took over.
You got it, Richard. Do you think I'd let anybody else have that honor?
"Prophylactic prophecies," Mister Milktoast said. I sent him to his room without dinner.
"I missed my period," Beth said. "And then I got one of those little test kits at the drug store. And the rest...well, that's the big secret."
My hands went cold in hers.
"Are you happy?" she asked. Her shoulders were hunched in a shrug. The dusty, patchouli-choked air in the apartment made my head reel.
Was I happy? Would my face break if it showed my true feelings? What were my true feelings?
Whatever I make you feel, Richard.
"We'll have to change our plans," Beth said. "And I guess I'll have to drop out of school after next semester, but that's okay, I can always go back and finish up later."
She spoke hurriedly, as if the words were rushing out in a race against the future, as if hoping that if she said them fast enough, it would hasten the happy ending.
But sometimes, there were only the words "The End."
"And we'll have to get married," she continued. "I told you how my parents are. And we'll have to save money, it will be hard but I know we'll get by. We'll have lots of love, and that's all anybody really needs, right, honey?"
The temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees.
"Honey?"
My face was debating who would wear it.
"Are you happy about it?"
The Insider won. We smiled, deep and wide, with lots of teeth.
"Yes, we're happy," I said, and the smile felt rigid on my face, like a death mask. Then it fell away.
"No, not happy," Bookworm said.
Beth's eyebrows veed in confusion.
"Do you love us?" I said.
"Us? You mean you and the baby? Of course."
I let go of her hands and gripped her by the shoulders. I shook her and her head flopped so hard that her toboggan fell off. "Tell me the truth. Do you love us?"
The rose blush faded from her cheeks as her eyes widened. "Richard, you're scaring me."
God, she was beautiful. How could I have ever hoped someone like this could love me? How could I have fooled myself so completely? My voice fell, defeated. "Do you love us?" I croaked.
"Of course I love you. What's the matter?"
I slumped and put a hand in my pocket. The knife pulsed and throbbed in my sweating palm, almost as if the Insider had vested it with a life of its own.
I'll bet you're dying to see little Junior, aren't you? A do-it-yourself ultrasound? Well, you might not find anything, he's a little small yet, but we'll have so much fun LOOKING.
"But do you really love me?" I whispered. "I need to know."
"Of course," she said. She put a hand on my cheek. "I love you a thousand times a thousand bunches."
"No matter what?"
"No matter what. Forever."
"Even after I tell you my secret?"
"Nothing can make me love you less. Nothing can be so bad that we can't get through it together. That's what people do when they love each other, they get through things."
Where had I heard that before?
"The carnation," I said, and the word hung in the air like a threat, the sword of Damocles, the Reaper's scythe, other types of sharp similes.
"Carnation? What about...oh, you mean the flower?"
"The flower. Remember where you found it?"
"Yeah. On Monique's floor, that morning she...don't make me remember that, Richard, please don't make me remember that."
"Where did I go the night of the Halloween party?"
"You were with me...and then...later...I don't know, you left early."
"And Monique left the party early, too."
"She was a peach," Loverboy said. "Stone fruit juicy. But Little Hitler had to come along and fuzz it up."
"What are you talking about?"
"How come you didn't tell the police about the carnation?" Bookworm asked.
"I don't see---"
"Exactly. You don't see. Love really is blind."
"But, what does that have to do with Monique's murder? Or us, for that matter?"
"You're going to have to trust me, Beth." The knife was hot and hard in my hand.
Look into her eyes, Richard. See the light. See the love shining so stupidly. All this can be yours, my gift to a faithful servant. Let me into your heart forever and ever amen and you can have all of this and nothing.
"Can you trust me?" I whispered.
She swallowed hard and nodded.
"Then come with me for a ride," I said.
She squinted. "What about my things? We need to get them moved to your place."
"There will be time for that later." I think it was my first lie to her. But damned if I'm going to read back through the entire book just to make sure.
Questions squirmed in her eyes. In that frozen slice of Now, I saw into the bright warm soul that the Insider wanted to consume. Her essence burned like fire, a conflagration that could melt glaciers and torch treetops and singe clouds and roast the gods in their lukewarm heavens like so many scratch biscuits.
Her eyes were windows and doors, opening onto the rooms of her life. Here a terror, there a wish, upstairs some faith. A little girl tucked away in the basement. Closets full of old dreams. A mansion of memories that made her a human being.
While all I had was a bare Bone House.
In that instant, I saw a vision of a possible future. Us under starry skies, our laughter filling a soft forest as we danced on a carpet of leaves. Two souls melting and melding, fused by the white heat of love, lit by the love that was poison to that which propagated darkness. An alliance more binding than those formed by headmates and inner voices, a union more powerful than the grip of an invading psychic overlord. A house built of hope instead of bone.
Perhaps, in some unwritten romance novel, that true and abiding love did flourish. But we were trapped in my ghostwritten autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack, where pain and fear were constants, where awareness brought nothing but madness, where all were strangers and none could know another. A story where the only eternal life was found in the miserable heart of the soul-eating Insider, where the believers in mercy and goodness cowered before the boots of dark gods. A fabulist's construct where love meant having to say you were sorry.
The Insider had taken everything. I couldn't love, because love was made of tomorrows, not painful yesterdays. Love was laid on a foundation of hope, and hope was only a snowflake on the palm, a pretty bit of flash that was gone before the hand could close around it. Love was fueled by faith, and faith was as flimsy as a gossamer umbrella before a black avalanche.
I had lost.
I stood looking into the eyes of another person who I would never be allowed to know or love.
I had lost. I was lost.
But maybe Beth could be saved.
I opened the door.
"Good things are worth waiting for," said the Insider. "But bad things want it right now."
"Where are we going?" Beth asked after we got in the Subaru.
I started the car. I could feel them fighting, rising, breaking free inside my head. The walls were caving in, the Bone House shaking on its foundation.
And leading them all was the Insider, calling them out like the Pied Piper lulling rats from filthy dark nests.
"Going?" I echoed. "I thought we'd just drive around in the snow for awhile. Maybe go hiking in the woods."
"It must be about fifteen degrees outside. Are you crazy?"
"Crazy? No. I don't think I've ever been so sane," the Insider said to her. It gave her a look, and I could feel my lips turning up into a crooked sneer. I could feel my eyes heating up, as if they were glaring lethal rays. I could feel the warmth of the Insider's hate flaming my chest.
I struggled, winced, and tried to beat the Insider down, to flush it back into the darkness.
"You can't win, Richard. You still don't know what you're dealing with, do you?"
"Richard?" Beth's eyes were as round as silver dollars and she pressed against the passenger-side door. She must have seen the Insider lurking in my pupils.
"It's time, Richard. You think I didn't know about Bookworm, plotting and scheming all this time while he pretended to be asleep? You think I don't know what the Little People are up to?"
"The little people?" Beth echoed, shaking her lovely hair. I wished I could reach and stroke it, to reassure her. But I didn't think the Insider would ever give my arm back.
I flickered in and out as fire and ice pierced my lungs, needles probed my brain, and broken glass passed through my intestines.
The Insider chuckled. He was a lousy driver. He could guide a meat missile to the heart of a target, but he couldn't operate a motor vehicle worth a damn. "And just to make things interesting, guess who's coming around the corner in twenty seconds?"
"Who?" Beth said. "Why are you yelling?"
"Detective Randolph Frye. You see, love and justice are both blind. Until I decide otherwise."
"That detective? The one who questioned me about Monique's murder?" Beth asked. She had a hand on the door handle, and I was trying to nod at her to run, run, run and never look back, run until she found a corner of the Earth that was beyond the reach of the Insider. But my head was a Styrofoam block fit for nothing but a wig.
"We don't mind getting caught," Bookworm said.
"Richard, your voice changed," Beth said. "And your eyes... what's going on? Are you on drugs or something?"
She laid a hand on my arm, their arm, its arm. I felt the distant tingle of her touch, but I was too far gone to return the touch. Why didn't she run?
"Richard doesn't need drugs, Angel Baby. He's got me, the best drug you've never seen. And look, here comes our old friend now."
An aqua Crown Victoria cut around the corner at the end of the block, sliding sideways in the six inches of snow that had fallen.
"Let him come," Bookworm said. "If we're caught, that means you'll be locked up for a while, that's all."
Locked up? I'm the gatekeeper, Bookworm. I decide which doors are open and which are closed. I make the rules here. But you don't want me to be arrested. All that will do is force me to leave. Who will get the pleasure of being my new host? Will it be Richard's mother, or...
It ran my fingers down Beth's soft cheek. Then it gripped her chin hard enough to leave red marks. The Insider twisted her head to face me, measuring the light of her love, the juiciness of her fear, the depth of her guilt.
Oh, yes, and baby makes three.
Maybe I'll just go straight for the little guy, saddle him up for a good long piggyback ride, make him just like his father.
After all, it would be a shame if the Coldiron Curse died now that there's potential for a sequel?
That was when they rose, when they all poured out, swarming like pissants over a black beetle. The Little People came out of their rooms, but this time, instead of fighting to see who got to wear the Richard-puppet, they were fighting to suffocate the Insider.
Extreme home makeover with a wrecking ball.
"Rock and roll in a doughnut hole," Little Hitler said, throwing out his battle cry. I was a satellite orbiting the collapsed star of my own psyche.
Too many things were happening, too much sensory input flooded my brain, too many people were happening. I felt them all, Bookworm, Little Hitler, Loverboy, and Mister Milktoast, wrapping their energy around the Insider, enveloping it in a pocket of confused mist. An ensemble cast upstaging the prima dona and stealing the show.
I was dimly aware of Beth pulling on the door handle and beating on the window. The Insider wouldn't let her escape, not when the party was just getting started.
I concentrated and tried to throw off the jagged shackles and razor chains and frozen ropes with which the Insider had bound me. I broke free and fluttered to the surface of my own mind, Houdini in a rabbit's hat. I threw the Subaru in gear, popped the clutch, and the wheels spun on the ice. The car caught traction just as the Crown Victoria pulled alongside.
I glanced over and saw Frye's thin startled face, the lit tip of a cigarette jabbed between his clenched teeth. Recognition flashed across the beads of his eyes, as if he had suddenly realized what he was doing in that part of town. As if he had connected the dots between Shelley Birdsong and Monique Rivers and formed a picture of Richard Coldiron. His mouth opened in surprise and the cigarette tumbled down his necktie.
Then I was gone, heading down the snowy street in four-wheel drive. The Insider was busy fighting off the Little People, but it had a little extra for me. It turned corkscrews in my brain, shaved pieces of my arteries away, peeled the hot copper wires of my nerves. It raped me with its brass talons. But the pain was welcome. The pain was good. It meant that I was still alive.
That I still had feelings.
"It's okay now, Beth," I said, panting from exertion. "We're going to make it."
She was as pale as the snow. She gripped the dashboard as I turned the corner and hit fourth gear. In the rearview mirror, Frye's car was making a U-turn. The front-wheel-drive cruiser wasn't made for icy roads, and it slipped and spun on the bed of snow. The front end hopped up as Frye drove onto the submerged curb. I turned the next corner and angled off to the main strip.
I didn't want Frye to catch me before the psychic battle was over. That would wipe out the element of surprise and give the advantage back to the Insider. Because I had no doubt that the Insider could use and manipulate Frye, just as it was trying to manipulate Beth. Just as it had always manipulated everyone in my life.
"What's going on, Richard?" Beth gripped the dashboard with both hands as the Subaru hit a slick fifty.
I winced as the Insider belched its acid. It was struggling with the Little People, startled, used to one-on-one combat but not gang warfare. How long had they been planning this? And why were they on my side?
"I'll tell you everything," I said. "I owe you that much."
There were only a couple of other cars on the slick highway, a big green boat of a Chevy and another Subaru. I passed them and got behind a yellow Highway Department truck. Rock salt and bits of gravel bounced up from the road bed and peppered the windshield. I saw the Crown Victoria small in the mirror, losing ground but still giving chase. Its blue lights pulsed off the silent buildings that lined both sides of the road.
"Where are we going?" Beth asked again.
"Just going," I said. I must have looked as mad as I felt, because sweat popped out on my forehead. My eyes bulged in their sockets. My hands were white on the steering wheel. But the real tension was inside, where an ancient, invisible battle was being waged, perhaps one as old as Eve and the serpent, Abel and Cain, God and the nothingstuff He had whipped together to create heavens and Earth.
The Insider said he'd nearly been sucked by Virginia into that gray land of death. So it was beatable, mortal. What had the Insider said? Something about selflessness and purity? Sounded like a maguffin, a clue planted for convenient misuse later on, the lazy out for a hack thriller writer. But I could worry about that in the second draft. Right now, I had to leave Frye behind.
I swerved around the salt truck just as we reached the Paper Paradise. Behind the big windows, the squares of books were arranged behind like a monument to human thought and emotion. There were so many titles Bookworm would never get a chance to read, dead leaves, unwitting classics. So many imaginary friends never met. I said a silent "So long" to all those overlooked chapters and turned the page toward the climax.
I was sluicing along at sixty miles an hour, as fast as I dared on the slick pavement. The snow fell heavily and the sky was almost black. It was as if the Insider was extending itself out over the entire world, trying to enfold and swallow everything, not just the Little People that were pecking at its shadow like crows at roadkill.
"Richard. Slow down. That policeman...you have to tell me."
Now that it was confession time, I didn't feel the surge of emotion actors expressed in their crime dramas. Perhaps my writer wasn't as skilled. Or my show had been canceled in mid-season. The words came out beaten, worn, years weary. "Remember Shelley Birdsong?"
"That girl who went missing?"
"That was me."
"You, what? She turned up in Los Angeles, reading scripts for a studio. Didn't you hear?"
My foot reached for the brake but at the finish line you're compelled to accelerate.
"She was in my basement. I had her tights."
"Richard, it doesn't matter who you were with before. I wasn't a virgin, either, remember?"
I was angry, and this time, it was my anger, not some maudlin bit of melodrama shunted into my life in the interest of plot development. Plus, she'd forgotten that I had lied and told her I was a virgin. "The carnation. Jack the Ripper. It was me, Beth."
"I don't understand."
Of course not. What kind of drugged fog had the Insider put in her head? What kind of sweet insane lullabies was it whispering even now, what siren's song of decadent rapture? What rule would it break next to cheat the ending?
I swerved off the main highway onto Tater Knob Road. There were no tracks in the smooth white roadbed. The Subaru cut through the virgin snow and I saw Frye's headlights behind me. He had gained some ground on me back at the interstate.
"I killed Monique, Beth," I said.
"You couldn't have."
"That couldn't have been Richard." So the Insider had fought free. But he was weak and wounded. "Nothing's ever his fault."
"Richard? Honey?"
"Sooner or later, all we serial killers end up referring to ourselves in third person. It's a genre convention."
"Stop it. You're freaking me out."
"And it wants me to kill you, too."
Beth was whiter than ice, her lips parted, her mouth round and black with horror.
We passed a barn that was huddled under the weight of snow. Its open door was a like a black, leering eye. "Glaring balefully," Mister Milktoast punned from some distant hallway.
I glanced in the rearview and saw that the Crown Victoria had slid sideways into a ditch. One front wheel was spinning uselessly a foot off the ground. At least Frye would be safe from the Insider's knife.
"But I won't let it kill you," I said to Beth.
"We won't let it kill you," Bookworm said.
"There. Your voice just changed again. And what's all this about killing? You're freaking me out."
"It wants to eat the light," I said. "There's a psychic spirit in my head that's millions of years old---"
The Insider cut in like an Alpha male at a beta test for one-liners at closing time. "---and I'm going to fuck you with a knife. I'm going to make you love me, then I'm going to let Richard see his little progeny. I'm going to make Richard hate you, you human bitch."
Beth wailed, shuddering, sobbing, pounding the window. "That drummer killed Monique. Jimmy whatever. They arrested him three days ago. Have you been drinking? Stop the car."
I faded in and out, a television set with bad reception. I didn't want to sleep, not yet. I didn't want the Insider to walk or float or swap skins. Not yet, not yet.
I drove along a ridge, and below me the land sloped away, white and steep. A few gnarled apple trees cowered like witches two hundred feet down. One turn of the wheel. Maybe Virginia knew something I didn't.
"Not a chance, Richard," the Insider said.
And it was too late, we were on a level stretch of land now that I recognized even in the storm. It was Arlie's farm. His warped log cabin looked down on the road from the side of the hill. The road was giving out. The Subaru leapfrogged into a frozen meadow and stalled.
"Now, you pretty little can of potted meat. Tell Richard you love him, so we can get this over with."
I dug in my pocket for the knife. The blade sliced my index finger, but the pain was borrowed and distant. Not my pain. My pain was deeper, darker, more hellish. Because I wasn't sure where the Insider ended and I began.
I grabbed Beth by the hair and twisted her face toward me. "Look at me!"
The knife curved inches from her nose.
She saw the Insider in my eyes. Realization crossed her face and fear tightened her jaw. The Insider had taken away the veil, dropped the rubber mask, rubbed off the ham fat and come out for a bow. She saw me as I was, a haunted murderer. A murderer who had planted a child in her womb. A murderer who wanted to dig it back up.
Love was no longer blind. She saw the real Richard Allen Coldiron. Her sperm donor, her lover, her captor, her killer.
The moment was frozen, an ice sculpture of time:
Stands of silver birch and naked oak watching from the hills.
The sunless sky pressing down like a great gray mitten, closing and suffocating.
White flakes pirouetting in the wind like ashes of long-dead volcanic fires.
My hand tangled in Beth's amber hair, so soft beneath my cruel grip.
Her heart-shaped face, radiating the light of beauty. Twin eyebrows furrowed into gull's wings. Underneath the eyebrows, two sea-green eyes, pools, lakes, cosmic oceans, spreading out calm and eternal.
And the eyes saw into mine, saw through the Insider, looked into the mirror-caves of my soul.
We both saw the light.
"She doesn't love us," Bookworm said.
Beth gulped, ready to say anything to save her life. "Yes, I do, Richard. Please don't hurt me."
"She does," the Insider taunted. "And you know what happens to the ones who love you? Now get this over with. It's a long walk home to Mother."
"She doesn't love us," I said. The knife quivered with a life of its own, animated by the Insider's raw hatred of the human race, by my own need for completion.
"Now, Richard. Rip the bitch. You know you want to. You know you will."
"No light," I said.
"Kill her."
"Make me."
My head was splitting open as if the tectonic plates of my skull were grinding against each other. Rusty nails probed my fingertips, painting silver strips of agony across my mind. My heart blazed with the sulfur of the Insider's rage. But I couldn't surrender yet. She was the mother of my child.
Besides, I loved her.
That L thing.
What can you do?
"Run," I croaked, pointing toward Arlie's cabin. Beth pulled the handle and the door opened. She kicked it wide against the snow and jumped into the meadow. I watched as she ran twenty feet away, struggling against the surf of whiteness. She took one look back, but I waved her away. Then she was gone, disappearing into the trees.
Richard, Richard, Richard. After all I've done for you. I was going to be all Mister Nice Guy, let you have a little fun, enjoy your misery a while longer, watch as you cut up your lover and your unborn child and then your mother. I was going to spare you the guilt. I was going to hang around so you could blame it on me.
But now.. .NOW. . .you've made me angry. Now I'll just have to go ahead and join with Beth. Now I'll just have to take my pleasure from the other side, as SHE cuts YOU into little pieces. A good host swings both ways and plots twists can always swallow their own tails and, besides, you've had no respect for any of us, despite paying lip service to trust.
The Insider's voice was deep as tombs and dusty as crypts and bright as blood and sharp as bone. My blood vessels were electric wires, my skin was cellophane. The fucker had fooled me, played me for a patsy, made me insane, then was ready to cast me aside like a squishy rubber.
Come to think of it, that's the kind of thing you do to the people you love.
So long, Richard. It's been fun. But all good things must end. It's a shame you won't get to keep all these sweet memories, but that's life, right? Oh, and say hello to Virginia for me.
"You're not going anywhere," I said. "You begged me to take you into my heart, and now you're stuck."
The Little People had played possum, just like we had planned. We swarmed the Insider again. I joined them. Five against one. Pretty good odds.
I stumbled out of the car and fell in the snow. We lifted me to my feet, as if dangling from the strings of some high puppet master with palsy.
"It's just like I said it would be," Bookworm said.
"Classic three-act structure," Mister Milktoast said. "Big deal. I saw it coming."
"Yeah, what do you want, a fucking medal or something?" said Loverboy. He glanced wistfully at the tracks Beth had made in the snow. "I'm going to miss that little bounce-bunny."
"Not now, guys," I said. "The Insider's not done yet. Can't you feel it squirming in the crawlspace?"
I staggered in the opposite direction, away from Arlie's cabin, toward the slopes of Widow's Peak. It rose grand and white and pure, bristling with jack pine and stiff hickory and white ash and brittle laurel. The wind whipped around the mountain's passive face. It would welcome us. It would open its granite heart to us, lock us in its frozen soul forever. It was older than the Insider, older than imagined heavens and gods and devils and the other toxic by-products of the human race.
My mind exploded with pain as the Insider rose. It punched me with its fist of razor blades. But I loved it. I loved the Insider more than anything in the world.
"Self-actualization," said Mister Milktoast. "Egocide. A masochist's massacre, masturbatory manslaughter."
"All you knead is love," Loverboy said.
"Hey, you're catching on," Mister Milktoast said. "Maybe next time I'll give you more lines."
"It was always love," Bookworm said. "And don't forget, I'm the writer here."
"You've never loved, none of you," the Insider rumbled, thunder in a teapot. "That's why I could do anything I wanted. My power always came from you."
"No dice, Insider. You can't lay your little guilt trip on me anymore," I said.
I said it. Me. Forget Bookworm. I was the writer here and I got to change things around to suit me before I mailed it off to my agent.
"You were always mine, Richard Coldiron," the Insider said.
"And I have always loved you."
"No. You despise me. Because I am you."
"And that's why we love you," Bookworm said. "Because you are us."
I was deep in the trees now, in the hushed world of winter, the Subaru and Arlie's cabin out of sight. The air was thin and cold and sweet. My lungs sucked it in and welcomed its harshness. Snowflakes fell in their endless whispers.
The Insider struggled, and I knew it was trying to escape me then. It sensed that it was trapped. We had built a prison with our love. Turned the Bone House into an improvised Alcatraz, with hope for barbed wire and self-esteem for bricks, surrounded by a gooey moat of sacrifice and topped with a weathervane that pointed away from ill winds.
"That's it, big boy, come into my heart. Come on, Angel Baby. It's open, a room with a view just for you," I said. "Believe in me."
"We all love you, Richard," Mister Milktoast said.
I concentrated on the swirling thing in my chest. "You see, Insider," I said, as my feet churned through the snow between the silent trees. "In your search for light, you forgot the brightest light of all."
"The inner light," said Bookworm.
"Right on, bro'," Loverboy said. "I like to flip a pancake as much as the next guy, but it's not much fun when the Insider is holding the spatula."
"Is that why you finally decided to join us, Loverboy?" I asked through chattering teeth.
"Hell, yeah. All for one, and all that jack-off crap. Peace, free love, and fucking understanding, my man. But let's get one thing straight. I love you guys, but don't go getting sweet on me now. I'm an Alpha male psycho and that's that. And as soon as we're rid of this Insider bastard, I'm going to cast some fucking loaves upon the waters."
The Insider churned, flailed, sliced. I fell to my knees. If only I could love it enough, hold it in my heart, smother it with my light. "We love you," I said.
It was our new mantra, so much more tangible than Flower Power ideals, so much more focused than Tibetan chants, so much more sincere than the Lord's Prayer. Hate as the highest achievement of love. Selfishness boiled down to its purest essence. Love as the means to its own self-serving end.
An unbroken circle jerk.
"Why?" It was weaker now, staggered by the light, feeble under the reflection of its own mirror, failing to hold up under close examination. "Why hast thou forsaken me?"
"Don't try to play the Jesus card, my midnight friend," I said. "This love goes deeper than self-sacrifice. No more martyrs allowed in the Bone House. This love goes all the way to the fucking foundation."
"And you, too, Little Hitler? I thought, of all of them, you would understand...and appreciate...what I've done."
"I would gladly have followed you through eternity, to the next host and beyond," Little Hitler said. He was weeping and the tears froze on my cheeks. "But your hate isn't sincere enough. You only serve yourself. You say you are what humans have made you become. But we hate because we want to, not because we have to. Free will."
"He's right, Mister Badass Soulsucker," said Loverboy. "You laugh at us humans, but you're worse than any of us. Sure, we're all slaves to our pathetic needs. But in here, we've all got to stick together."
"Safest sex," Mister Milktoast said. "Get it?"
"Hey, Mister M, you've finally turned that protected love of yours back home," said Bookworm. "Back to Richard. To this fabulist construct, this comic-book hero, this inconsistent protagonist---"
"Don't go getting faggy," Loverboy said. "You'll always be Dickworm to me. Not that 'always' looks like it's going to last a hell of a lot longer. But what you told us made sense. At the heart of the matter, the fuck-all and be-all, is that we really are one. We belong to this dick-squiggled Richard-meat, for better or worse. But the Insider...the Insider's a frigging illegal alien. It just bootscooted the fuck on in here without even passing 'Go,' much less asking for a green card."
"And you love Richard more than you love the Insider?"
"Dance with the bitch what brung you, that's what I say."
We clenched our heart, squeezing down on the hot black tarball of the Insider. Our love was a ring of hellfire, roasting the Insider in its own sorry juices. That's when the curtain of black pain dropped over my mind and I fell face-first into the snow...
And I was riding a high cloud, a huge tuft of warm ice cream that rocked gently up and down like an angelic hobby horse. The sun showered golden light and rainbows. I looked down on the earth below, a drugged king on a magic carpet. The ground was wrapped in a crystal mist.
The cloud accelerated and swooped and the thin edges of the horizon crumbled away, dropping off into the blackness that lurked underneath the corners of the world. Dark cracks ran through the mist and the scene shattered like a glass photograph smashed with a hammer.
The shards collected and coalesced into the image of Mother's face, with a jagged skinscape and eyes that were pools of dead hate set against a bleak fog. The face changed and slithered into a thousand likenesses, each forming for a split second before giving way to the next, and all, all, screaming.
I fell into the dark maw of open mouths and I looked down the throat at an ocean of writhing maggots, then I was falling falling falling into blackness and I saw that the maggots weren't maggots at all, they were naked human beings, and the great throat was closing and swallowing---
"Wake up, Richard," Mister Milktoast said.
I opened my eyes against the cold snow. An avalanche roared in my ears. My nose was bleeding and my fingers were numb from frostbite.
"Oh, no, you don't," I said, the exhaust of my words making tiny furrows in the snow. "You're not getting Mother."
The Insider had almost escaped, almost slipped out of my heart and into my mind. From there to drag its little voodoo bag of horrors to the one who had never meant any harm. But I wasn't about to let Mother get hurt any worse than she already had.
"Besides," Bookworm said. "If this ends with, 'And it was all a dream,' I'm going to kill you myself."
"You're a clever bastard, Insider," I said, lifting myself from the frozen white. Drops of blood leaked down my face into the snow. "Trying to go where you can hurt me the most. Still eating my guilt. But guess who's smiling now?"
I hoped the pain in my abdomen meant that the Insider was still locked away. Either that or a hundred hungry rats had been loosed in my bowels.
"You were falling asleep, Richie-wuss," said Loverboy. "And you know what happens when you sleep. That's one wet dream nobody wakes from."
"Yeah," Little Hitler said. "Leaving us here to do all your dirty work. Not that I mind too much. I've grown fond of your guilt and misery."
"I had a hell of a nightmare," I said. "Turned out we were the bad guys."
"Us? Bad?" Little Hitler said. "That's the first nice thing you've ever said about me. You must really love us."
"I love everybody. It's a wonderful life. A fucking Jimmy Stewart remake with a contemporary spin and no character realizations at all."
"I can't wait for this to be over," Loverboy said. "Nothing personal, but you're getting on my goddamned nerves. Say, you think Beth will ever want to do the old Humpty-Dumpty-Roll-Over-and-Bump-Me again?"
"As cold as it is?" Mister Milktoast said. "I predict a serious case of blue balls in your future."
Bookworm came out, Bookworm who had been the psychic superglue that had held us together through our fight with the Insider. The bookbinder, the plotter, the editor, the typesetter. "It's not sex you're after, Loverboy. You just want to be accepted. You just want to be a part of something bigger than yourself. An unconditional love."
"Bite me, Bibliofuck. I'm in it for the fucking donut holes."
"We all live to serve."
"And we serve the light menu," I said. "Low carb, low cal, tastes great, less filling."
The glow expanded in my chest, radiating out from my poisoned heart. The black essence of the Insider smoldered and fumed underneath the heat of our love. The love was big, overwhelming all of us. This was the hero's journey, the most powerful myth, the purpose of all stories.
I waded through the surf of snow, dragging my tired legs as if they were tree stumps. The snow was still falling, and fat dreamy flakes collected on my eyelashes. My breath sent frozen fogs into the evening twilight. The mountain called me, commanded me forward.
I would never solve the riddle of the Insider. It was a trick of nature, just another entity, just another parasite in a universe of parasites. Just part of the cosmic soup. Maybe horrible in human terms, but against the backdrop of an incomprehensible universe, it could be understood.
That monster was made, not born. Built from pieces of hopelessness and pain, from loneliness and guilt, brought to life by the energy of sin. Just another thing that needed belief and faith to sustain it. Just another psychic vampire trying to claim a stake.
Love was the real mystery. Love was the ultimate weapon. Love could defeat the cruelest monsters. But was love ultimately just human vanity? Or did it come from somewhere outside all of us?
Good and evil were nothing but concepts in Bookworm's cheesy pulp fiction. They had no place in my autobiography. All I could do was pay for my own sins and let the theme fall to the eye of the beholder.
Bookworm murmured drowsily. "Isn't it a bit deflating that the main character doesn't find resolution through another person? Shouldn't our love for Beth serve as the redemptive force?"
"Good question," I said. I loved her, but I'd ditched her before the story was over. Maybe that said a lot. Maybe not.
The dark forest surrounded me. The trees stood like soldiers lining both sides of a vast hall, as if I were meeting royalty, kissing Odin's ring in Valhalla. The cracked bark of wild cherry peeled off in coppery strips. Laurel bowed humbly under the crush of snow, its waxy green leaves curled from the cold. A stunted spruce leaned against the dead limbs of an oak. The forest was a silent temple. The wind whispered its prayers in the high branches.
Bookworm called out, weak and chilled. "Richard, I think...I used too much of myself...spelled it all out..."
"Alphabetical ardor," Mister Milktoast said.
"Hang in there," I said, comforting my discerning proofreader. "We've almost won."
"No, I served my role. Last in, first out, the aesthetic cycle. Aristotle said the end was in the beginning, after all. Now I'm writing myself out of the story. Keep the faith...roomie."
And Bookworm was gone, adrift like invisible smoke, with scarcely a twinge to mark his passing. The Insider scrambled toward the sudden void, seeking to consume some of the psychic residue and inhabit the empty room. We kicked his ass back into the crawlspace of my heart. A sewer pipe must have broken in the Bone House, because something smelled awfully ripe down there.
The cold settled into my marrow like dull fire and carved its pockets of pain in my fingers and toes. The snow fell even faster, a foot thick and skirling. The world was being buried, succumbing to the virginal suffocating whiteness. I looked behind me at my tracks and saw that they were already filled and swept smooth, as if I had never been. Hot bile rose in my trachea and boots rattled my rib cage. The Insider was summoning its strength for a final run at the back door.
"Allow me," said Little Hitler. "I could use a good hurt."
He swallowed, ten-penny nails and fishhooks, charcoal and blood, stardust and comet ice, a dollar's worth of candy, acid tears all sliding away. He absorbed it and relished the pain, then scurried down whatever dark corridor of my mind he had come from. He turned a corner and disappeared forever.
"So long, old pal," I said, but my words died in the snowscape. He might have been the first serial killer in history who'd never actually killed anyone. But let him have his delusions.
"First Dickworm, now Little Diddler. What the fuck is going on here, Richie?" Loverboy said. He was flapping like a buzzard in a canary cage, rolling like a fifth wheel, dangling like an imperfect participle.
"Ultimately, we are each responsible for ourselves," I said. "All of them. That's one of the problems with being human and having free will."
My legs kept moving, plowing toward the mountaintop that was always just out of sight. I was a ghost hovering beyond my meat. Now I knew how my Little People felt, indentured servants to a mass of dust and energy. No wonder they had always fought so hard for face time. No one likes to share a house with selfish roommates who air dirty laundry all over the place.
"But I thought we were supposed to be winning." Loverboy sounded weak. "No fair. This wet dream is frozen. My meat missile is an icicle."
"If you can't stand the cold, get out of the refrigerator," said Mister Milktoast.
"Hey, fuck both of you and the busted condoms you rode in on," said Loverboy.
"That's the way the donut crumbles, Biscuit Dick," answered Mister Milktoast.
"Bookfart set me up. When he was getting us to join, he didn't say anything about this part of the deal. This dying part."
I fell to my knees. My limbs were leaden, painted with snow, sopped in the gravy of dusk. Night was falling hard, a true night, with sharp edges and thick skin. White snow, black night. I wished Bookworm were around to sort out the symbolism.
"Get up and go back," Loverboy said. "I promise I'll quit being a wiseass. I'll stop calling you Dickwheat and Milkswish and all those other things. I'll be good from now on. I'll even go celibate, just let me live."
"Have we taken it far enough?" I asked Mister Milktoast.
"We can't go back," Mister Milktoast said. "We could never be sure about the Insider. It could be hiding in here, waiting. Maybe for years. When you let something in your heart, it's supposed to be forever."
"Good things are worth waiting for," I said, shackled in the cold cardiac arrest of deepest winter and one of Beth's lines that I should have trimmed from the manuscript before it came to this. I struggled to my feet.
"He who laughs last, right, Richard?" said Mister Milktoast. "Maybe you're not a shellfish oyster after all."
"Clam up, Shrimp."
I reached the final ridge of Widow's Peak where the trees were sparse and great gray boulders were strewn like the toys of petulant children. I could almost see the top of the mountain through the swirling snow.
"Hey, Fuckwit, turn back!" Loverboy screeched.
"Back to what?" I said. "A house with Beth and Mother in separate beds, where you could ping-pong back and forth all night, bedsprings squeaking and Oedipus rexing? Sorry, my lascivious friend, but that's not my idea of a bright shining sequel."
"Careful, Richard," said Mister Milktoast. "Anger and hate might bring the Insider back from the basement."
I stopped and stood swaying in the snow, the breeze whistling its fatal lullaby. The blind beauty of the world was, I now knew, a precious and brief gift.
"Hate? No, Mister Milktoast, I don't hate. The past doesn't bother me anymore. Because it's almost over."
Loverboy gave up, twitched and died, shriveled like a grape dropped into the sun of my love or maybe a raisin stirred in cinnamon bun batter in some cosmic mixing bowl.
"Good riddance," said Mister Milktoast.
"No, Loverboy was part of us. Maybe not the best part, a part whose size he always exaggerated, but nobody's perfect."
"Let he who is without skin---"
"---cast the first snowball in hell." I was game.
"The proof's in the pudding."
"And what the hell does that mean?"
"I don't know. I've just always wanted to say it."
"Your material sucks now that you've lost Bookworm." I fought through the knee-deep snow, carrying the ghosts of everyone I had been. The Bone House was nearly vacant. I realized I was afraid to be alone.
"Mister Milktoast, you don't suppose..."
"Yes, Richard?"
"...that the Coldiron Curse will live on? Or was that just one of the Insider's little illusions? Make the protagonist suffer to ensure he's sympathetic?"
"Who knows, old friend?"
"And all the Little People...even you, and maybe even me...all just made up for the Insider's amusement?"
"Don't talk yourself crazy, Richard."
"Wouldn't dream of it. Jung at heart. I'm going to miss you."
I stepped into vast whiteness. "Coming?"
"Whither thou host," Mister Milktoast said.
"Ouch. Must you always have the final word?" I whispered, but there was no answer, because my oldest and dearest invisible friend, my imaginary protector, my inner child, had risen through the Bone House chimney like smoke from a funeral pyre and joined the sky.
I would never reach the top of the mountain. My legs were failing and my spirit was drained dry by the Insider. I was numb to sadness, but I banked a small spark of joy for Beth, for Mother, for the child that would have half my genetic material and literary estate. Life was for the living and maybe this curse would end with me.
I fell for a final time, and the shadows of sleep rose. But the shadows cast no fear. During this sleep, no boots would walk.
I knew the rules. You couldn't tell the story if you were dead, so something must live on.
A voice came from inside me, from that hot ball of love that kept expanding and swelling and pushing back the great dark universe.
"I am what you have made me," a strange voice said, and I hoped the voice was mine and not the Insider's.
Then I realized it belonged to neither. We were skins of a great ethereal onion, and acceptance was surrender was forgiveness was victory. The door closed and the serpent swallowed its own tale.
On the peaceful ridge of that frigid mountain, as the snow covered me like a blanket and oblivion tucked me in, all was forgiven.
I drifted off, dreaming of light: a painless light, a cleansing light, a light that had no end.
"Welcome to the Bone House, Richard," said the Voice.
Omniscient narrators. They think they know everything. Fuck them.
I'm going to sleep.
THE END
###
About the author:
I hope you enjoyed these tales. I'm author of more than 30 books, including Liquid Fear, Chronic Fear, Disintegration, and The Red Church. I collaborated with bestselling author J.R. Rain on Cursed, Bad Blood, and Ghost College. I've also written the children's books If I Were Your Monster, Too Many Witches, and Duncan the Punkin, and created the graphic novels Dirt and Grave Conditions. Connect with me on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Twitter, my blog, or my website.
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a short Amazon review in your own words, so that others might share your experience and join the fun. Feel free to drop me a line anytime at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com. or at my Author Central page at Amazon. Thanks for reading me.
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Albert Shipway is an ordinary guy, an insurance negotiator who likes booze and women and never having to say he's sorry.
And he thinks this is just another day, another lunch, another order of kung pao chicken. Little does he know that he's about to meet a little old lady who knows his greatest fear. A little old lady who knows what's hiding in his heart.
In just a matter of minutes, Albert's life turns upside down and he enters a world where magic and evil lurk beneath the fabric of Southern California. And all his choices have brewed a perfect storm of broken hearts, broken promises, shattered families, and a couple of tiny problems. Namely, killer mice and a baby.
Albert Shipway is finally getting a chance to right some wrongs. That is, if it's not too late.
Learn more about the urban fantasy Cursed or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE VAMPIRE CLUB
By J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson
A group of college students pursue their passion for vampires, but when they discover the real thing, one of them must make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the undead kind. A new vampire series by the author of the Samantha Moon series and the Liquid Fear series.
View it at Amazon US or Amazon UK and look for the next book Second Sips!
BAD BLOOD
By J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson, and H.T. Night
People call him Spider. And people come to him when they have a problem. So when teenager Parker Cole approaches Spider at night school, he figures she's just another problem waiting to happen. But then she tells him about her father, who runs a cult called Cloudland based at the foot of mystical Mount Shasta, California. And then she tells Spider about her best friend, who is now dead, her body completely drained of blood. Spider wonders if the death is the work of a fellow vampire...or if he's now the target of a sinister game designed to lure him to Cloudland, where darker mysteries await.
View Bad Blood for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
THE HARVEST
By Scott Nicholson
It falls from the heavens and crashes to earth in the remote southern Appalachian Mountains.
The alien roots creep into the forest, drawn by the intoxicating cellular activity of the humus and loam. The creature feeds on the surrounding organisms, exploring, assimilating, and altering the life forms it encounters. Plants wilt from the contact, trees wither, animals become deformed monstrosities, and people become something both more and less than human.
A telepathic psychology professor, a moonshine-swilling dirt farmer, a wealthy developer, and a bitter recluse team up to take on the otherwordly force that is infecting their town. The author's preferred edition of the 2003 paperback release The Harvest.
Learn more about the science fiction thriller The Harvest or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
CRIME BEAT
A novella by Scott Nicholson
Crime doesn't pay...but neither does journalism. When John Moretz takes a job as a reporter in the Appalachian town of Sycamore Shade, a crime spree erupts and circulation increases. Then the first murder victim is found, and soon a serial killer is grabbing headlines. Moretz comes under suspicion, but he stays one step ahead of the police, his fellow reporters, and seemingly even the killer.
Learn about Crime Beat or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
BURIAL TO FOLLOW
A Novella by Scott Nicholson
When Jacob Ridgehorn dies, it's up to Roby Snow to make sure his soul goes on to the eternal reward. The only way Roby can do that is convince the Ridgehorn family to eat a special pie, but a mysterious figure named Johnny Divine is guarding the crossroads. When peculiar Appalachian Mountain funeral customs get stirred into the mix, Roby has to perform miracles...or else. Novella originally published in the Cemetery Dance anthology "Brimstone Turnpike."
Learn more about Burial to Follow at the Haunted Computer or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
FLOWERS
By Scott Nicholson
Features the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award grand-prize winner "The Vampire Shortstop" and other tales of fantasy, such as "When You Wear These Shoes" and "In the Heart of November." Includes the Makers series where children control the elements, as well as more tales of magic, romance, and the paranormal.
Learn more about Flowers and the award-winning "The Vampire Shortstop" or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ASHES
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of supernatural and paranormal stories by award-winning author Scott Nicholson, including "Homecoming," "The Night is an Ally" and "Last Writes." From the author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, and the story collections FLOWERS and THE FIRST, these stories visit haunted islands, disturbed families, and a lighthouse occupied by Edgar Allan Poe. Exclusive introduction by Jonathan Maberry, author of THE DRAGON FACTORY and GHOST ROAD BLUES, as well as an afterword.
Learn more about the supernatural stories in Ashes or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
THE FIRST
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of dark fantasy and futuristic stories from award-winning author Scott Nicholson. Dystopia, cyberpunk, and science fiction imbue these stories that visit undiscovered countries and distant times. Includes two bonus essays and Nicholson's first-ever published story, in addition to the four-story Aeropagan cycle.
Learn more about the fantasy and science fiction stories in The First or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
ZOMBIE BITS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of zombie stories, from the zombie point-of-view to the shoot-'em-up survival brand of apocalyptic horror. Proof that even zombies have a heart...Based on the comic book currently in development by Scott Nicholson and Derlis Santacruz. With a bonus story by Jack Kilborn, a comic script, and Jonathan Maberry's "Zombie Apocalypse Survival Scorecard."
Learn more about Zombie Bits and see zombie art or view it at Amazon or Amazon UK
CURTAINS
By Scott Nicholson
A collection of crime and mystery tales from the vaults of Scott Nicholson. Includes "How to Build Your Own Coffin" and Year's Best Fantasy & Horror selection "Dog Person," as well as the psychological thrillers "Letters and Lies," "Sewing Circle," and more stories that appeared in magazines such as Crimewave, Cemetery Dance, and Blue Murder. Includes and afterword and a bonus story from bestselling authors J.A. Konrath and Simon Wood.
Learn more about Curtains: Mystery Stories or view it for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
GATEWAY DRUG
By Scott Nicholson
After the first hit, there's no turning back. Ten tales of horror and suspense from a bestselling author. A man learns fast cars and fast women don't mix, even when they're dead. A young boy discovers the terrible power of love. A rock musician will do anything for stardom. Bonus contributions from Tim Lebbon and Shane Jiraiya Cummings, as well as the afterword "One Sick Puppy."
Learn about Gateway Drug or view it at Amazon US or Amazon UK
HEAD CASES
By Scott Nicholson
Nine stories of psychological suspense and paranoid horror, featuring the first-ever appearance of "Fear Goggles." Collected from the pages of Crimewave, The Psycho Ward, Cemetery Dance, and more, find out what happens when a writer thinks Stephen King is stealing his ideas. Bonus stories by William Meikle and John Everson.
Learn more about Head Cases for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
THESE THINGS HAPPENED
By Scott Nicholson
It's been a strange life. It's been my life. Features stories, poems, and essays on relationships, romance, writing, and taking oneself far too seriously. Plus some humor. You may laugh, you may cry, you may decide you want to be a writer, too. You may hate me after if it's over. That's okay. You wouldn't be the first. Learn about These Things Happened. Or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
IF I WERE YOUR MONSTER
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
Creatures of the night teach a lesson of bravery in this full-color, illustrated bedtime story for all ages. Let vampires, ghosts, scarecrows, and mummies protect your little one from the bullies and mean people of the world. 24 screens or pages. View it at Haunted Computer or at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TOO MANY WITCHES
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Lee Davis
When Moanica Moonsweep plans a Halloween party, she needs the perfect potion of stinky stew. But when she asks her friends for advice, she ends up with one big mess and lots of hurt feelings. 28 full-color screens or pages. See it at Haunted Computer or for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
DUNCAN THE PUNKIN
Children's book by Scott Nicholson, art by Sergio Castro
A momma pumpkin must teach her young pumpkin all about the dangers of Halloween, while a mysterious creature known as Skeerdy-Cat-Crow watches over the pumpkin patch. 30 full-color pages or screens. See it at Haunted Computer or view it for Kindle at Amazon US or Amazon UK
TROUBLED (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
When twelve-year-old Freeman Mills arrives at Wendover, a group home for troubled children, it's a chance for a fresh start. But second chances aren't easy for Freeman, the victim of painful childhood experiments that gave him the ability to read other people's minds.
Little does Freeman know that his transfer was made at the request of Dr. Richard Kracowski, whose research into the brain's electrical properties is revealing new powers of the human mind. Freeman simply wants to survive, take his medicine for manic depression, and deceive his counsellors into believing he is happy. When he meets the anorexic Vicky, who may also be telepathic, he's afraid some of his darkest secrets will be uncovered. But when the other children develop their own clairvoyant abilities, and insane spirits begin haunting the halls of Wendover, he can't safely hide inside his own head anymore.
The author's preferred edition of the 2005 U.S. paperback release The Home, in development as a feature film.
Learn more about the paranormal thriller Troubled or view it at Amazon UK
SOLOM (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
Katy Logan wasn't quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.
Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon's family for 150 years.
But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it's time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?
Author's preferred edition of the 2006 U.S. paperback The Farm.
Learn more about the supernatural thrillerSolom or view it at Amazon UK
THE GORGE (UK)
By Scott Nicholson
An experimental rafting expedition, an FBI manhunt for a delusional killer, and the worst storm in decades collide in the remote mountain wilderness...and then THEY come out.
Bowie Whitlock and a team of celebrity athletes is commissioned to test two experimental rafts in the rugged Unegama Wilderness Gorge in the remote Appalachian Mountains, considered the most dangerous whitewater rapids in the eastern United States. The expedition is tense from the start as jealousy, romance, and money are riding on the mission's success.
FBI agent Jim Castle and his partner are in the gorge looking for Ace Goodall, a deranged abortion clinic bomber. Ace, accompanied by a fragile young woman, is having visions that guide his murderous behaviour. The race is on as dark storm clouds gather, the river is swollen, and Ace hijacks the rafting expedition to make his escape. But the bloodthirsty creatures swooping down from the high cliffs have been too long without prey.
Ace has one more bomb. God is talking to him. It's raining again, and his young companion is pregnant.
And killing isn't what it used to be, because the dead no longer stay dead.
Author's preferred edition of the 2007 paperback They Hunger.
Learn more about The Gorge or view it at Amazon UK
OMNIBUS EDITIONS
You can also save with the omnibus editions
Ethereal Messenger at Amazon US or Amazon UK (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, and Speed Dating With The Dead)
Mystery Dance (contains Disintegration, Crime Beat, and The Skull Ring, and bonus stories and essays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Nicholson's Ghost Stories: Four Novels, at Amazon US or Amazon UK (featuring Drummer Boy by Scott Nicholson, Haunted by Gemma Halliday, The Body Departed by J.R. Rain, and Cades Cove by Aiden James)
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays (The Gorge, Creative Spirit, and The Skull Ring screenplays) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Skeleton Tango (Cursed! and Ghost College with J.R. Rain) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Ghost Box (contains The Red Church, Drummer Boy, Transparent Lovers, Burial to Follow, Forever Never Ends, and Speed Dating With The Dead) at Amazon US or Amazon UK
Are you a writer? Please check out Write Good or Die and The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Contact me at hauntedcomputer@yahoo.com because I'd love to know what you think---and if you are in any way dissatisfied with this product, please give me a chance to make it right. Let me know about any misspellings and formatting issues, since books in the digital age are living documents.
Thanks to Dellaster Design, David H. Burton, and Neal Hock at Hock's Editing Services.
Scott
###
A paranormal conference at a remote Appalachian hotel accidentally stirs up demons.
Speed Dating with the Dead
Excerpt: A paranormal thriller
By Scott Nicholson
"And here's our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson."
The brass name plate over the hostess's breast read "Violet," an old-fashioned name that didn't match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.
"Call me 'Digger,'" he said.
"'Digger'?" Violet said.
"I have this little undertaker thing going on," he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. "The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig."
Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you'll see what a cartoon I've become.
But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren't in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren't around when you needed them.
"So, have you ever had any experiences here?" Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.
"I've never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris."
"I meant 'supernatural experiences.'"
"Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar."
Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.
Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth's heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.
"The manager's pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference," Violet said.
I didn't choose. I was chosen.
"You have quite a reputation," Wayne said. "Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long."
"Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season."
"It should be good for both of us."
"We booked about 50 for the weekend."
"Too bad you can't charge your invisible guests. You've got at least three here in 318."
"Ah, you've been browsing the Ghost Register," she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.
One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he'd died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he'd been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bottle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.
The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he'd have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it "the Wicked Hand of Evil."
The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn't have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America's century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.
Janey hadn't recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.
"What do you know about Margaret Percival?" Wayne asked Violet.
"Just the stuff in the register." Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn't stolen the TV.
"West Virginia woman, checked into this room in February, 1948."
"I don't think the color scheme has changed since then." She whacked the dark floral pattern on the velour curtain, and a lazy haze of dust spun in the sunlit window.
Margaret was a war widow, in town for a reunion of the Camp Creek Sisterhood, a collective of well-to-do white teenagers who spent the summers of the Great Depression in their one-piece, baggy swimsuits, canoeing, singing "Tomorrow" around the fire, and talking about boys, when they weren't sneaking off in the dead of night to meet them at movie theaters and fumble in the dark.
Perhaps the reunion was an opportunity to recapture the lost innocence of youth, or perhaps Margaret was seeking a veneer of respectability after a notorious past. But she never made it to the reunion luncheon, because between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. early one Sunday, she vanished from the face of the Earth. Police reports hinted that she might have been in the "family way," and a single mother and alleged prostitute might sneak across the border to get rid of the problem.
Hotel management built their businesses on reputation, and mysterious disappearances were the kind of publicity they wanted to avoid. It was a measure of how far the White Horse Inn had fallen that it was now cashing in on its seedier, supernatural side.
Just like me. We've both been ridden hard since our paths last crossed.
And there was a fourth case study, totally off the record, one that Wayne carried in his guts like a latex glove full of broken, bloody glass. He'd delayed his return as long as he could, but Beth might not wait forever.
Violet moved over to the bedside dresser, where the alarm clock was blinking. "Old wiring," she said. "The radio cuts on by itself, too."
"Let me guess. I'll be awoken at three every morning by the theme song from 'The Exorcist.'"
The room's angles, like those of the rest of the inn, were off by two or three degrees in every joint. Sagging floors and ceiling joists, warped window casings, and uneven spaces between cracks in the crown molding projected a sense of decay and despair.
The unease came from an expectation of order, and the skewed geometry made a distinct impact on the brain. It added a pressure that caused skin to tingle and lungs to stutter, all tricks the mind played on the body. Combined with the out-of-whack wiring that scrambled the electrical signals of the brain, the structure made a wonderful laboratory for the living.
And a fun playground for the dead.
Violet reset the clock while Wayne examined the size of the room, calculating how many hunters the place would hold. He could have booked the room in private, set up some gear, and conducted his own private little tea party, but hosting a paranormal conference gave the necromancy the sheen of respectability. Plus it offered the fringe benefit of not facing his demons alone.
But he should have left her out of it.
He peeked through the curtains. Below, Kendra was perched on a concrete bench, pencil flying, lost in her own little fantasy world. She was portable and self-sufficient, and Wayne not only encouraged those attributes, he took full advantage of them.
"You don't believe in ghosts?" Wayne asked.
"Do you?"
"Depends."
"Talk to the maids. They know it all."
"The honeymoon sheets keep no secrets, they say."
"Depends on the secrets," she said, opening the closet door.
There's more to you than meets the eye. Too bad. This could have been fun.
View at Amazon for Kindle or Amazon UK
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###
Also available:
The Body Departed
Excerpt: A Ghost Story
By J.R. Rain
1.
I stepped through the wall and into my daughter's bedroom.
She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It was before dawn and the building was quiet. The curtains were open and the sky was black beyond. If there were any stars, they were lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp, pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.
A girl and her pony. It's a beautiful thing.
I stepped closer to my sleeping daughter, and as I did so she shifted slightly towards me. She mewed like a newborn kitten. Crimson light from her alarm clock splashed over her delicate features, highlighting a slightly upturned nose and impossibly big eyes. Sometimes when she slept her closed eyelids fluttered and danced. But not tonight. Tonight she was sleeping deeply, no doubt dreaming of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Or of Barbies and boys and everything in-between.
I wondered if she ever dreamed of me. I'm sure she did at times. Were those dreams good or bad? Did she ever wake up sad and missing her father?
Do you want her to wake up sad? I asked myself.
No, I thought. I wanted her to wake up rested, restored and full of peace.
I stepped away from the far wall and glided over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the chair together one weekend, a father/daughter project for the Girl's Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.
I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair didn't creak.
As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball, sensing me like I sensed it.
As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares on the surface of the sun. My daughter's aura always reacted this way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized, or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. And from this subconscious state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.
"Hi, daddy."
"Hi, baby," I said.
"Mommy said you got hurt real bad."
"Yes, I did."
"Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you got killed."
"Mommy's right, but I don't want you thinking about that right now, okay?"
"Okay," she said sleepily. "Am I dreaming, daddy?"
"Yes, baby."
We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was trying to remember. Lately, such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to recall.
"It's raining, daddy," she said.
"Yes."
"Do you live in the rain?"
"No."
"Where do you live, daddy?"
"I live here, with you."
"But you're dead."
I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of this, even by my daughter.
"Why don't you go to heaven, daddy?"
I thought about that. I think about that a lot, actually. I said, "Daddy still has work to do."
"What kind of work?"
"Good work."
"I miss you," she said. "I miss you so much. I think about you every day. I'm always crying. People at school say I'm a crybaby."
"You're not a crybaby," I said. "You're just sad." My heart broke all over again. "It's time to go back to sleep, angel."
"Okay, daddy."
"I love you, sweetie."
"I love you, too, daddy."
I drifted up from the small wooden chair and moved across the room the way I do---silently and easily---and at the far wall I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some of it still flared here and there. For her to relax---to truly relax---I needed to leave her room entirely.
And so I did. Through the wall.
To hell with doors.
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###
Al Shipway is making it through an ordinary day when an old woman places a curse on him and forces him to face his past mistakes.
CURSED
Excerpt: an urban fantasy
By J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson
Orange County, California, is the kind of place where you never expect a sudden, inexplicable chill.
Even in my part of it, Fullerton, too far from the beach and away from the glitz and big money, everybody is cool but very rarely chilled. The sidewalk was crowded, with the skater punks and lacrosse moms and students wearing backpacks, and way too many guys like me in suits and ties. We were all on a mission for food.
Lunch was serious business around here. I had only thirty minutes to grab my grub, consume it, and get back to my claims. I work as an insurance investigator for American Insurance, and since it had rained hard over the past few days, my desk had as much traffic as the highways. Not that I minded the additional work. I liked being busy. Being busy has a way of keeping your mind off other things. Things like divorce. Things like lost lovers.
Things like an overwhelming need for a strong drink. Many strong drinks.
And lately, the need had been stronger and more overwhelming than ever.
So when the sudden, inexplicable chill came, I chalked it up to the booze. I didn't have time for symptoms. I barely had time to order lunch, let alone actually eat it.
The chill came again. So strongly that I actually shivered and paused in mid-step. The day was bright. Hell, this was southern California at the cusp of summer...the days were always bright. There was no reason for a sudden chill, and it wasn't the work of a hangover, since last night I'd been too depressed to really get rolling with the booze.
Still, tell that to the small hairs on the back of my neck, which were standing on end. Not to mention my spine, which felt as if it had been dipped in a bucket of margaritas.
What the hell was going on?
Maybe I needed a stiff drink worse than I thought. Or, more accurately, maybe I needed to stop drinking.
The words appeared in my thoughts as if scrolling across a movie screen. I saw them, and I knew them to be true: Someone's watching you.
My subconscious had picked up on it. My thoughts had only been on lunch and claims and drinking and my failed marriage and Amanda. I hardly had room in there for paranoia.
So who the hell would want to watch me? I didn't know. Of course, I could be wrong, too. Maybe no one was watching me. Maybe I was losing my mind. These past few months had been stressful, to say the least. Try divorcing my wife and you'd know what I mean. Hell, try being married to her.
Still pausing, even as my precious lunch ticked away, I scanned the busy street corner. Even the homeless people were on the move. No one seemed to be noticing me; no one seemed to care.
Then why had I felt like I had suddenly been thrown on stage with hundreds of eyes on me, like a Lindsay Lohan rehab photo shoot during sweeps week?
No, not hundreds of eyes. Just one big, blinding spotlight, and I was inexplicably sure, just one person was watching me.
What the hell was going on?
I surveyed the street, wondering if I should cross. Cars in gridlock. People chatting importantly behind smoky restaurant windows. Busy people looking busy. Busy people looking important. Unimportant people looking better than me. Shades. Tans. Nice clothing.
I started forward again, frowning, wondering what the hell was going on. I hadn't touched any booze today, although that would change the instant I got home. It was truly just a matter of how fast I could change out of my work clothes, throw on some sweats, and uncap the booze. If I didn't break down at lunch and have a few, which was sounding like a better idea by the second.
I shivered again. The sun was high and hot. The air was still. Exhaust from cars was thick and cloying. No reason to feel a chill.
Maybe I was getting sick. Or maybe a goose walked over my grave. Hell, a whole flock. Maybe a dozen flocks, taking a crap on my final resting place and flying North for the summer. I wondered idly if I had any vitamin C at home, and decided to stock up on some after work.
No. No stocking up. That would mean delaying my drinking. I needed to drink. I had to drink. If I didn't have vitamins, then tough shit. Besides, booze has alcohol, and alcohol was known for killing germs.
Well, I couldn't stand there any longer. I was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, although the sleeves were rolled up to my elbows, and now the chill was giving way to sweat. I darted around the slower pedestrians, begging their pardons as I went. I had wasted precious minutes standing there on the street corner, playing silly mind games and denying I had a problem. And lunch was serious business.
With only thirty minutes, I had to coordinate my time wisely. Today I had chosen Chinese food, because it was fast in and fast out, in more ways than one. And I knew that once I made a decision I had to stick with it, because there was no turning back. Not with thirty minutes. Certainly no time to stand around cracking up or breaking down.
Focus, Al. You can do it.
I checked my watch: twenty-four minutes to go. I cut around a slow-moving rag man pushing a shopping cart and mumbling incoherently to himself. Fullerton is a typical southern California suburb, boasting old brick buildings mingled with newer ones made of glass and steel. Downtown had everything---antique shops, banks, restaurants, and even a local community college. I strode down the busy street, atypical for most Orange County streets because of the foot traffic. Downtown changed all that. There were enough businesses and restaurants within walking distance of each other to remove the need for driving. Or at least the need to drive to lunch.
I worked steadily, determinedly to the Great Wall of China Chinese food restaurant on the corner of Chapman and Harbor. As I passed a tai-kwan-do studio, the little restaurant came into view.
Almost there. Just across the street---
Damn, missed the light. I checked my watch. Twenty-three minutes and counting. At the corner, with Mercedes and Hondas and a city bus whizzing by, I waited among a small group of mostly college students. It made sense. The college was down the road to the right. Almost all of them immediately whipped out their cell phones the moment the light had turned red, some thumbing out numbers and texts and others playing games.
I stood with them, easily a head taller than most. I didn't feel a need to whip out my cell phone. I didn't need the chronic wistful glance confirming Amanda had not texted, just as she had not texted in all the months before. I felt only a need to dash through traffic and put my lunch order in---
The hair at the back of my neck prickled again, and I shivered. I absently rubbed my arms, and as I did, I spotted her across the street.
An old lady. Her back bowed like a harp. Angry gray hair hung like dead weeds from under a wool cap. She looked like a witch, complete with a hooked nose and a missing front tooth. A bent coat-hanger of ugliness in a Goth-trash fashion show.
And she was staring. Openly staring at me.
Was she the source of the goose bumps and chills? I didn't know, but there was something else about her.
Do I know her from somewhere?
Maybe I was hallucinating. I had started doing that a few months ago. It was freaky as hell, and I was certain it had something to do with my drinking. Either that, or those ghostly blobs and shapes I saw during my late-night binges really did exist just on the periphery of my vision.
Or maybe you're going crazy. The simplest explanation is usually the right one.
As I debated my sanity, standing there on the street corner, the real world got crazier than my head could ever have dreamed.
She stepped out into traffic.
Cars screeched to a stop. Horns honked. A truck swerved hard and went up on the curb and into some bushes. Had those bushes been people, they would have been injured or killed.
She doddered shakily across the street. She used a cane and she didn't seem to give a damn about the cars piling up around her. I didn't hear any actual collisions---I'm always alert for accidents, thanks to my job---and the further she got across the busy boulevard, the more clearly the coming cars saw her, and they were able to brake without hitting anything, her included.
She was headed, I was certain, for me.
My heart was hammering hard in my chest like a convict in a tin box, and I had broken out in a cold sweat. My throat was tight and my breathing was restricted. I swallowed with difficulty and opened my mouth to suck in some air.
Christ, I should really quit drinking.
But I couldn't deny she was real, or that she was heading straight for me.
Horns honked. Someone shouted out a driver's-side window. Most drivers seemed to resign themselves to a crazy old lady in their midst. A few seconds of delay and distraction, and maybe entertainment if they were lucky, and she'd be across the road and they could all get on with their life-and-death business.
And now she was across the street, and she stood in the littered gutter in front of me---
Who is she? Somebody my ex knows? That would make sense. They're obviously both crazy, and like attracts like.
Of course, at one time, I had been highly attracted to my ex, as well.
I held my breath, rooted to the street corner. In front of me, the crosswalk light signal had turned green. The students were pouring across the street. I should be pouring with them, heading to the Great Wall of China.
But I didn't move. Instead, I found myself staring down at the old lady as she approached me.
I definitely know her.
I didn't know whether to run or help her up onto the curb. She didn't give me time to decide.
She gripped my hand. And when she did, it all came back to me....
Jimmy and the mouse.
View CURSED for Kindle at Amazon or Amazon UK
###
VIEW OTHER KINDLE BOOKS BY SCOTT NICHOLSON:
Novels
Cursed (with J.R. Rain)
Bad Blood (with J.R. Rain & H.T. Night)
The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)
Collections
Children's Books
If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)
Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)
Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)
Screenplays
The Skull Ring: The Screenplay
Creative Spirit: The Screenplay
Writing
The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Omnibus editions
Nicholson's Ghost Stories (with Gemma Halliday, J.R. Rain, and Aiden James)
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays
Ghost Box: Six Supernatural Novels
LINKS TO SCOTT'S U.K. KINDLE BOOKS
Cursed! (with J.R. Rain)
The Vampire Club (with J.R. Rain)
Collections
Children's Books
If I Were Your Monster (with Lee Davis)
Duncan the Punkin (with Sergio Castro)
Too Many Witches (with Lee Davis)
Writing
The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success
Screenplays
The Skull Ring: The Screenplay
Creative Spirit: The Screenplay
Omnibus editions
Nicholson's Ghost Stories (with Gemma Halliday, J.R. Rain, and Aiden James)
Horror Movies: Three Screenplays
Table of Contents
Excerpt: Scott Nicholson's Speed Dating with the Dead
Excerpt: J.R. Rain's The Body Departed
Excerpt Rain/Nicholson's Cursed
Links to Scott's U.S. Kindle books
Links to Scott's U.K. Kindle books

