Succubi

“It’s a big piece, a big old British thing. Used ’em in the Boer War or some fucked up war like that. Got more stopping power than a .44 Mag, .45, l0mm, you name it. Slug’s so big, you hit a guy in the face with one, his whole head’ll explode.”

“And they also got the 870 from the Luntville car.”

“Yeah. Ain’t that grand?”

Byron sucked his wad of Skoal reflectively. “Maybe this means they’re headin’ away now.”

No, Bard thought. They’re coming back here. That’s what Tharp wants. He’s just driving back and forth to keep us off his tail. “Maybe,” was all he said. “And worst thing is we got no idea what they’re driving. They kill everyone who sees ’em, cops included.”

Byron continued to venture. “Maybe Tharp didn’t do the two guys in the pickup. Sounds crazy, shore, but maybe it was someone else.”

“Don’t be a moron,” Bard said. “Who else would do something like that? Burn up two kids, take their brains?”

But that’s not what Bard was thinking at all. As preposterous as the suggestion sounded, he knew too well that Byron was right.

«« — »»

“Any change?” Ann asked.

She stood in the kitchen, morning sunlight pouring in. It shined like glare off Dr. Heyd’s bald head. “No, he’s still the same. He hasn’t gotten any better, but at least he hasn’t gotten any worse.”

That was about as hopeful a prognosis as she could ask. Milly was putting little IV bottles into the refrigerator, medication and intravenous sustenance. “He didn’t stir at all last night.”

“Sometimes he convulses,” Dr. Heyd added.

“Why?” Ann asked.

“Really, Ann, the details would only upset you.”

“Tell me,” she said.

Dr. Heyd sighed. “A massive stroke causes a massive blockage, a clot. Every so often his blood pressure will break up some of the clot and he’ll revive for a short time.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“No, I’m afraid not. All it does is disperse more particles of the clot deeper into the brain, which will cause further clots and microscopic arterial ruptures. I have to be honest with you, Ann. The stroke has occluded the blood supply to a large portion of his brain. Therefore, when he is conscious, he’s completely insensible.”

“But he came to for a moment yesterday when I was in the room,” Ann said. “He seemed to recognize me.”

“Perhaps, but probably not.”

Wishful thinking, she concluded.

Milly put her arm around her. “It’s best not to think about the details, Ann.”

“I know. I’m just worried about Melanie. I haven’t taken her in to see him yet. I don’t know how much of this she’ll understand.”

“She’s almost an adult now. You’d be surprised.”

“I guess I should do it soon,” Ann said more softly.

“Yes,” Dr. Heyd agreed. “I think that’s a good idea.”

Ann thanked them and left the room. It was awkward, thanking people for attending a loved one’s death. Upstairs, she found Melanie’s bedroom empty. She mustn’t have slept well at all, and Ann could easily sympathize. Maybe nightmares are hereditary, she tried to joke to herself. She’d had her own nightmare again too. She knew what it was like to not be able to sleep because of a dream.

Back down the other end of the house, she heard voices. She walked up to her father’s door and stopped.

“…sometimes things seem bad to us, but they’re not really bad,” a voice was saying. The voice was unmistakably her mother’s.

“You mean, like God?” queried Melanie’s voice.

“You can think of it that way, dear. But it’s more than that. Somewhere, yes, there is an overseer, that watches over us and our lives. But everything is part of something else. We are all pieces of a great plan, Melanie.”

“What kind of plan?”

“Well, it’s not an easy thing to define. It’s in the heart. It overrides what we are, or what we may think we are, as individuals, because there really are no individuals. We’re all part of something that is greater than what we can ever be by ourselves. Do you understand, honey?”

“I think so.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“Is that the same as saying that God works in strange ways?”

“It’s more than that, much more. It’s the same as saying we’re all here for a reason that’s so complex, we can’t possibly see it all at once. And everything that happens, happens as part of that reason.”

Ann stood outside the door, infuriated. She did not make herself known, she only listened.

Melanie’s silence reflected her confusion.

“Let me put it this way, dear,” Ann’s mother continued. “It’s like what we were talking about yesterday. We think of death as bad. Your grandfather is dying, and we see that as bad because we love him. But it’s not really bad, we only think it is because we’re not capable of understanding the plan completely.” Her mother’s voice lowered. “People die for a reason. It’s more than just a part of nature. Death isn’t the end, it’s a stepping stone to a better place.”

“Heaven, you mean.”

“Yes, Melanie, heaven.”

Ann stepped back into another room so as not to be seen. She was seething. Her anger pulsed like a headache.

“I hear you’ve met some new friends.” Now they were out in the hall. “You go and see them now. We’ll talk later.”

“Okay, Grandma.”

Melanie went down the stairs.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ann demanded when she stepped out of the room.

“Oh, good morning, Ann,” her mother said. “I’m glad to see you’re in your usual cheery mood.”

“Where do you get off saying things like that to my daughter?”

“The poor thing is confused. Someone has to talk to her about reality, about death.”

“I’m her mother,” Ann reminded. “That’s my job.”

“Indeed it is, and just one of countless aspects of motherhood that you’ve conveniently neglected. Were you ever going to take her in to see him?”

“I wanted to give her some time, for God’s sake!”

“Time, yes.” Her mother chuckled. “You’ve given her seventeen years to wallow in confusion. Isn’t it time you started explaining some things to her?”

“What? About plans? About heaven? Since when do you have the right to influence her spiritually?”

“I have more right than you. What do you know about spirituality? You’re a lawyer, remember? You’re more concerned about litigation and lawsuits than your own daughter’s upbringing.”

Ann stormed off. She fled down the stairs and out into the backyard. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run away.

Yes, it would be nice to run, to run away from everything.

It took her hours to cool off. How could her mother have said such things?

But when the anger wore away, a grayness set in. It always did after a deliberation. Here, or in court—it didn’t matter where. At the end of the confrontation, she was always left to wonder if the opposition was right.

“You’ll always be at odds with her, Ann,” Martin said a little later. They were going for a drive. “I don’t know why, that’s between you and her. The best way to deal with it is to try to understand the reason.”

“She’s a contemptuous bitch! That’s the reason!” Ann yelled.

“Listen to yourself,” Martin said. “You’re going to have to be more reasonable about this than that. You have to come to terms with your mother’s bitterness, and your own.”

“My own!” she objected.

“Ann, you just referred to your mother as a contemptuous bitch. That sounds pretty bitter to me. I don’t understand how you can be so cool and objective about everything, but the minute your mother’s involved, you fly off the handle.”

Ann seethed in the car seat.

“All I mean is that the way you and your mother deal with each other isn’t working. It never has, and never will. You’ll have to find another way to deal with each other.”

“Yeah, how about not dealing with each other? That sounds good to me.”

“I think that’s been the problem all along, Ann.”

“I can’t believe you’re siding with her.”

“I’m not siding with her, Ann. She’s not exactly my favorite person, you know. But it happens every time. You two can’t even be in the same room without going at it like a couple of pit bulls. It’s tearing you up, and it’s not a good thing for Melanie to be exposed to. Someday you’re going to have to resolve this, and the resolution isn’t going to come from her, Ann. It’s going to have to come from you. Your mother’s obstinate and stubborn. She’ll never change the way she perceives you. You’re going to have to adapt to that.”

Good Christ, she thought. How could she adapt to her mother’s contempt? Was everyone against her?

“Just forget it for now,” he suggested. “Let’s go for a walk.” Ann frowned as he parked the Mustang in front of the town hall. It was a pretty day, warm but not humid. At the end of the great court, the white church loomed.

It made her think of what her mother had been telling Melanie. Why should a woman so incognizant of religion put the topic of death in such terms? And that question made her think of Dr. Harold, who’d suggested that the occult trimmings of Ann’s nightmare reflected a subconscious guilt from raising Melanie in a neutral religious atmosphere.

Martin put his arm around her. “Let’s get an ice cream cone.”

“There’s no ice cream parlor in Lockwood.”

“Ah, well, it’s bad for us anyway. What’s that?”

NALE’S, the big sign read. “It’s the general store,” Ann told him.

“They sell generals there?”

“Funny, Martin. Stop trying to cheer me up with bad jokes.”

“Okay, how about a worse joke? How do you sneak up on celery?”

“How, Martin?”

“Stalk.”

“You’re right, that is worse.”

The scent of spices and ginger greeted them when they entered. Nale’s was more like a country gift shop than a general store. Lots of knickknacks, dolls, homemade preserves, and the like. From a long rod hung hand dipped candles. Evidently, everything here was handmade: quilts, pot holders, utensils, even some chairs and tables. Ann remembered Mr. Nale, the nice old man who ran the store. He made his own licorice and would give all the kids a piece on their way to school.

“Would you like some ice cream?”

Ann and Martin turned. A rather short woman smiled at them from behind the counter. She was roughly pretty, sort of rustic-looking, and had thick straight brown hair to her shoulders. “I’m Maedeen,” she said.

Martin laughed. “You must be psychic. We were just wondering where we could get an ice cream cone.”

Maedeen opened a cooler and gave them each a vanilla scoop on sugar cones. “I make it myself,” she said.

“Thank you,” Ann said. “I’m—”

“Ann, and you must be Martin,” Maedeen told them. “And, no, I’m not psychic. Your mother told me you’d be in town.”

“Does Mr. Nale still work here?”

“No, he died several years ago. I run the store now.”

Martin looked the place over. “Quaint,” he remarked. “They sure don’t have stores like this in the city.”

“Everything in the shop is made by yours truly,” Maedeen informed him. “Ann’s mother said you’re a writer?”

“Yeah, or at least I try to be. I have four books out. Out, as in out of print.”

“It must be exciting, to be able to perpetuate yourself so creatively. I’ve always wanted to write but could never seem to get anything down.”

“Don’t let that stop you.” Martin laughed. “It hasn’t stopped me. But you’re right, it is exciting to actually have something you’ve written published and put out into the world.”

Ann felt faintly jealous of this short and rather spacey woman, but then Maedeen addressed Ann directly. “Melanie and my daughter, Wendlyn, seem to be hitting it off very well.”

This took Ann by surprise. “Oh, I didn’t even know—”

“They met yesterday, she and Rena—that’s Milly’s daughter.” Maedeen smiled. “I hope they all get to be good friends.”

«« — »»

“She seems nice,” Martin said when they drove back to the house.

“She seems weird,” Ann elaborated.

“Why do you say that?”

Ann finished her ice cream cone. “I don’t know. It’s just weird how she knew about us.”

“You’re right about that. It was the same way last night at the bar. I’d never met any of those guys before, but they all knew about me and you. It’s like your mother announced our coming to the whole town.”

Ann nodded. “And it’s strange that Melanie didn’t mention anything to me about meeting Maedeen’s and Milly’s daughters.”

“Well, at least it’s good that she’s found some kids her own age.”

“And I didn’t particularly care for the way she was looking at you.”

“Who? Maedeen?”

“Yeah, Maedeen.”

Martin let out a laugh. “It’s not easy being God’s gift to women, Ann. Women can’t resist me, which is understandable, considering my vast intellect, indisputable charm, and obvious good looks.”

“Martin, you’re so full of shit you need a toilet brush to clean your ears.”

“Hey, look.” Martin pointed. “Is that Melanie?”

“It better not be,” Ann said when she looked across. Three girls and a boy were going into a house. The boy wore jeans, combat boots, and a leather jacket with buttons on it. His black hair was very short on the back and sides but so long in front that some strands hung past his nose. And one of the girls looked like Melanie.

The four went into the house and closed the door.

“Jesus Christ,” Ann commented. “Is there no end to it?”

“Here we go—”

“Did you see that guy, Martin? I thought Sid Vicious was dead. Just once I’d like to see her hang out with someone normal.”

“Normal by your standards, you mean.”

“Don’t you start that shit again, Martin. I’m going to get her.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Martin told her.

“Well, pardon me. Need I remind you that she’s my daughter?”

“And need I remind you that she’s capable of choosing her friends herself—”

“That guy looks like a nut!”

“Why? Because he’s not wearing Brooks Brothers? Get with it, Ann. All her friends back in the city dress like that.”

“Yeah, and they’re all nuts too!”

“How do you know? You’ve never even made the effort to meet any of her friends. And did you stop to think that maybe the reason Melanie feels so alienated is because you alienate her?”

Ann sputtered. He’s starting to sound like my mother. Could she help if it she didn’t want her only child hanging around with a guy who looked like he just stepped off the drug train? At least the girls looked normal.

“Trust her, Ann,” Martin went on. “Just because the guy looks different doesn’t mean they’re going in there to smoke dope.”

«« — »»

Zack removed the joint from his jacket pocket. He passed it and a lighter to Wendlyn.

“So how long are you in town?” he asked Melanie.

“Just for the rest of the week, I think,” she said, but she felt so distracted she barely heard her own words. Zack was a dream. Cool blue eyes, great haircut, great body. Under the black leather jacket he wore a NIN T shirt which was tight enough to show off his washboard abdominals. Zack was the last kind of person she’d ever expect to find in a town like Lockwood.

“Rena and Wendlyn said you live at the church.”

“Yeah, I take care of the place. They give me a room in the basement. It’s not a bad deal.”

Wendlyn and Rena huddled together on the couch. They passed the joint back and forth a few times. Then Rena passed it to Melanie.

“You sure this stuff isn’t pot?”

“We told you, it’s leahroot,” Wendlyn said.

“Go ahead,” Rena said.

Melanie looked at the tiny joint. She remembered how it had affected her last night. What the hell, she thought.

One hit, and Melanie felt weightless, giddy. She lazily looked around. Rena’s house was cramped and old but it was neat. It felt lived in, more like a real home than Melanie’s antiseptic condo.

“I had a dream about you last night,” Rena said.

Melanie looked at her. I had a dream about you too, she was tempted to reply but didn’t dare.

Wendlyn, oddly, seemed to be grinning.

“We’ll let you two get better acquainted,” Rena feigned in a floozy accent. Then she and Wendlyn went toward the back of the house.

Melanie wondered why she didn’t feel nervous. Ordinarily, she would be, suddenly sitting here with a near perfect stranger. But there was something about Zack, though he hadn’t said much, that put her at ease.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Kind of all over,” Zack said. “I was on my own for a while, when I was younger. Your grandmother sort of took me in. I owe her a lot.”

She wanted to ask him something commonplace, like about school, but then it occurred to her that he probably hadn’t had much education. Some people were more fortunate than others.

His jacket sported several Goth buttons. One of them read “Killing Joke.”

“Killing Joke?” she enthused. “That’s my favorite group.”

“Yeah? I saw ’em a few years ago when I was passing through D.C., before they broke up. I met ’em after the show—pretty cool bunch of guys.”

This astonished Melanie. “You met Killing Joke?”

“Yeah, backstage after the show. They autographed one of my CD covers. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

Melanie didn’t know if she believed this. To her, meeting Killing Joke was the equivalent of a priest meeting the Apostles.

“Only bad thing about Lockwood is not many people are into good music,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you my music collection.”

Melanie was taken aback. Should she go? She’d like to. But where to exactly? “Where did Wendlyn and Rena go?”

Zack shrugged. “Who cares? We’ll run into them later. Come on.”

“Okay,” she said. Zack stubbed out the joint and pocketed it. Mom would love this, she thought, amused. He led her outside across some yards. More houses like Rena’s could be seen, small but picturesque. Melanie walked along, still high from the joint. Zack walked close behind her; he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. God, she thought. The tight T shirt clung to a well developed back and shoulders. He was lean but well built. His biceps bulged.

“You’re probably bored here already,” he suggested.

“Why do you say that?”

“I mean, a girl like you—in Lockwood.”

“What do you mean, a girl like me?”

“You know. Classy. Educated.”

Melanie felt flattered. “I like Lockwood. It’s different.”

Zack seemed to snort a laugh. “You’re right about that.”

She wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Great ass too, she thought, taking a glance. “Did you really meet Killing Joke?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, I believe you, I just—”

“You’ll see,” he said.

She found his aloofness as attractive as his body. His slow casual gait somehow propelled him so quickly that Melanie nearly had to jog to keep up. She didn’t feel comfortable cutting between houses—someone might call the police; at least, in the city they would. In one window she saw several women sitting around a table; they seemed huddled. Then she saw the same thing in a window of the next house. Another room showed a man sitting alone. He was staring at the wall.

“That was quick,” she said.

The shortcut brought them to the town square in minutes. The sun was going down just over the peaked roof of the church.

That’s where he was taking her: the church.

What a strange place to live, she thought.

“Down here.”

In back, steps descended into a brick walled enclosure in the ground, and a door. A hinge keened.

“Home, sweet home,” Zack remarked. Light from a bare bulb lit a long cinder block walled room. One end was cramped with a small bed, a dresser, and a chair. But then she saw what most of the room was devoted to: rows of shelves which contained hundreds, if not thousands, of records and compact discs.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

“It ain’t Buckingham Palace, but it’s all I need.”

“No, I meant your collection.”

“Yeah, and check out my gear.”

Arranged at the back of the basement was a stereo system the likes of which Melanie could never imagine. Steel racks on floor points housed dual amplifiers the size of televisions, a Nakamichi DAT recorder, an ARCAM CD player, and a line conditioner. Another stand on points supported a turntable with a linear air bearing tone arm. A subwoofer separated two giant electrostatic speakers the size of doors.

“It’s my pride and joy,” Zack said. “Gotta leave the equipment on all the time or else it sounds edgy. A high end turntable blows compact discs away; most people don’t realize that. Of course, most people don’t spend twenty five grand on a stereo system.”

“Twenty five thousand?” Melanie whispered.

“Sure. Music’s my only pleasure. I don’t cut corners.”

“They must pay you pretty well to clean up the church.”

Zack laughed faintly. “They don’t pay me nothing, ’cept they give me the room for free.”

“Then how can you afford…all this?”

“Odd jobs,” Zack replied. He walked over to one of the shelves and removed something. “Check this out.”

Melanie held it as if it were an icon. The CD version of Killing Joke’s Nighttime. It had been autographed by all members of the band, and inside was a Polaroid of Zack standing next to the lead singer.

“Believe me now?”

Melanie nodded. All she could say was: “Wow.”

“You can have it,” he said.

Melanie was shocked. “Oh, no, I could never take—”

“If you want it, take it.” Abruptly, he turned away.

Melanie’s sense of cordiality lapsed. She knew she shouldn’t take it, but she did anyway. An autographed Killing Joke, she thought, awed. She would frame it, hang it in her room. “Thanks,” she said.

She perused his record shelves. He had everything. Everything by Killing Joke, PIL, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magazine, Monochrome Set, Section 25, Strange Boutique—the old stuff that actually predated Goth. Melanie couldn’t believe the coincidence: her and Zack’s musical tastes were identical. He had everything by anyone good.

He played some records and discs for her. The huge speakers threw a soundstage that overwhelmed her. Zack seemed to enjoy playing the music as much as she enjoyed listening to it. He mustn’t get much of a chance to show off his system, not in a town like Lockwood.

They listened for hours. She never got bored, but eventually she grew fidgety. She knew what it was. When her high wore off, it left something like a hot anguish in its place. She felt steamy, tingly.

She’d never done anything so overt before.

She took his hand and led him toward the bed.

“You’re very special,” he said, and turned off the lights.

—

Chapter 16

Providence, Erik thought.

He had to travel in snatches, at night. Several times police had passed him—he’d thought sure that was the end. How much longer would his luck last?

He’d lay low tonight, he couldn’t afford not to. He’d driven past Lockwood on Route 13, to the woodlands. An old trail he remembered took him deep into the forest belt. They’d never find him here. He covered the van with brush and mud, to mask its lacquered white paint.

He knew he still had a few days.

He felt buried in the dark woods, closed in. Buried, he thought. Brygor-wreccan.

I’m a peow, he thought.

The moon shone down. Its light pinkened the dense forest.

Doefolmon, he thought.

Wiffek.

Fulluht Loc.

In the moon’s bleary light, he saw it all again. He saw them. Bathing in glee, in blood. He saw their mad feasts, their supple bodies, and their longing eyes and lust which stripped him of his soul.

They weren’t people. They were monsters.

How many graves did I dig for them?

He’d watched their mad rituals many times. They’d held the hüsls down on the slab, slicing them open like fish and reeling out their entrails, oblivious to the mad, lurching screams. Erik knew that he would hear those screams forever. The more privileged wreccans tended to far worse matters, things which beggared description…

Dohtor, he thought.

Dother.

Dother fo Dother.

He’d seen it once, in the night mirror. That had been many years ago. They’d held his head by his hair and made him look, had pried his eyelids open with their fingers. It had been like being drowned in blood.

Afterward, they’d nearly fucked him to death.

«« — »»

Martin dreamed of Maedeen.

Even within the dream, he knew it was a dream. Because he would never do such things for real. Never.

He loved Ann more than he’d ever loved anyone in his life. Cheating on her would be like cutting her. It was unthinkable.

So what did the dream mean?

He was walking around in the darkness, in the woods. Tinder crunched—the moon’s pink light led him through a labyrinth of trees.

He’d been assigned a task. A cramped clearing formed, bright in moonlight. At his feet lay a pile of bags. They were regular plastic garbage bags, Hefty kitchen size. They’d been tied up and neatly stacked. Martin didn’t know what was in them, and he didn’t care. He only knew he was supposed to do something with them.

He was supposed to bury them.

It hadn’t taken long to dig the hole. Next, he was placing the bags, one at a time, into the hole. Though small, they felt heavy, weighted. He calmly filled the hole with the little bags, then covered them with earth. Plap, plap, plap! came the sound as the dirt landed on the plastic.

When he was done, he leaned against a tree and flinched. There was something wet and slick on the tree trunk. In the moonlight, his palm looked black.

Faint giggling bubbled out of the dark.

Martin wended back into the woods. The giggling sounded a lot like girls, children perhaps. The moonlight was bright and pink.

He stopped, tried to focus.

A slender, naked girl was leaning over. Martin stared fixedly. He looked at her long, slender legs, the sparse cleft of fur where they joined. The fur protruded as she leaned over further, and he could see the bottoms of her beasts jiggling slightly as her arm moved in some arcane task. This sudden sight—this beautiful nude girl pristine in moonlight, her buttocks jutting—aroused Martin at once. But when she turned, he gasped.

It was Melanie.

“Hi, Martin,” she said. She was grinning.

Embarrassment flooded him. Her nakedness faced him without inhibition. This was a seventeen year old—his lover’s daughter. Yet she seemed to sense his unease, she seemed to delight in it.

“You want to fuck me, don’t you?” she queried.

“No,” Martin said, but the reply was roughened, dry.

“Don’t lie to me, you pig. When I was leaning over a minute ago, you wanted to take your cock out, didn’t you? You wanted to walk right up behind me and put it in me. Didn’t you?”

“No,” Martin croaked.

She grinned back at him. She looked just like Ann, the same breasts and nipples, the same legs—just younger. In one hand she held a pail, but it looked old, rusty. It looked like a relic. In her other hand she held a crude brush, like a paintbrush.

That’s what she’d been doing. She’d been painting something on the trees.

Then two more girls emerged from the darkness. They, too, were naked. Their matching grins seemed obscene, their bodies tinted pink. They each held a brush and a pail too.

What was this? Why were they painting trees?

One girl seemed younger, slimmer; she scarcely had any pubic hair at all. The third girl’s bosom jutted. She was more developed, more curvy and plush.

“Get that shit off,” said the youngest.

“What?”

“Your clothes, shithead,” said the third.

“The wifford wants you ready,” Melanie added.

“The what?” Martin asked.

“Just shut up and get your clothes off.”

Strangest of all, Martin obeyed these commands. The pink moon beat down on him, glare in his eyes. Next thing he knew he lay sprawled on the thatchy forest ground. The girls converged. Their hands ran all over him. His erection throbbed as if to burst, pulsing with his heart. All Martin could do was lie back and cringe.

No, no, he thought. This was perverse. These girls were teenagers, he was a thirty eight year old man. And Melanie, for God’s sake…

It’s got to be. It’s got to be a—

“That’s right, asshole,” Melanie said. “It’s a dream.”

But that knowledge did not legitimize the wrongness of this. Lust felt stuffed into his head; his entire body throbbed with it. Without preamble, Melanie straddled his face. “Eat it, peow,” she said. “Stick your tongue in it.” Martin tried, but couldn’t. She was keeping it too far away. She laughed, touching herself. Her thighs clenched against his head.

And the other two girls… What were they doing? Martin couldn’t see, but he felt rough, swirling sensations. They giggled with their work. As Melanie brought herself to orgasm, little daubs touched his penis, his testicles—though the contact was insubstantial, Martin thought he might explode.

“We’re initiating you, peow,” one of them said, giggling.

“We’re making you ours,” said the other.

He realized then what they were doing.

They were painting him. They were painting him with whatever they’d been painting on the trees.

This was crazy. They were just girls. Martin easily had the strength to overpower them, but even the thought of that weighed him down more. He felt as though roots had emerged, had lashed him to the pulpy ground.

“Poor little lamb must be thirsty.”

“Give him a drink, Melanie.”

The three girls shrieked laughter—a mad, clicking, witch-like sound. Then Melanie began to urinate into his face.

The hot stream inundated him. He gagged, eyes squeezed shut as their laughter rose. Is she going to piss forever? he thought.

Martin wasn’t used to this kind of humiliation, even in dreams. He thought how wonderful it would be to lurch up, shrug them off. Yet his hate collided with his paralysis and broke apart, as though any thought of rebellion weakened him further.

“Bet he’s not thirsty now.”

“Look at his cock! Let’s cut it off!”

Martin’s heart raced.

The girls scurried away. Suddenly, a curvy shape blocked out the moonlight. Martin could only move his eyes. They roved up the figure, up sleek white legs, over a bushy pubis, over breasts and nipples. Then to the face: Maedeen’s.

Yes, it was Maedeen, the shopkeeper. She was grinning, looking down at him with her hands on her hips.

She straddled him at once. “Fok, peow. You are wreccan now.”

Martin shuddered. She traced his cheek with a nail that felt inches long and sharp as a pin.

“You belong to us.”

She inserted him into her sex, which seemed inordinately hot. As she rode him, she looked up to the moon, whispering words he’d never heard. Her bare hips pounded him, her breasts bobbed. Despite the sensation, Martin wanted to throw up. The three girls crawled forward to watch, still giggling. The third pressed her palm over his mouth—she pressed down hard. Then Melanie, her pink face floating above him, pinched his nostrils shut.

Martin lay frozen. They were killing him, but he couldn’t budge. Each time he thought his lungs would burst, Melanie released the pinch on his nostrils, gave him a second to breathe, then pinched them closed again.

“You can play, Melanie. Just don’t kill him,” Maedeen said.

“Let’s cut him up while she’s fucking him!” enthused one girl.

“Let’s cut off his balls when he comes!” suggested the third.

Martin felt buried in terror. Melanie continued to pinch and release. The palm pressed harder against his lips. The youngest girl began slapping at his testicles between Maedeen’s colliding strokes. Their laughter smothered him like a tarp.

But something was happening. Martin’s eyes bulged in the pink light. He felt death sliding close. Melanie was giving him less air. The younger girl squeezed his testicles so hard he thought they’d split as Maedeen’s sex gulped his erection. He could see them only in mad glimpses, in blurs. Their nails seemed heinously long, like talons. And their faces… Their faces…

“Every night, peow. Every night we do whatever we want with you.”

But the words seemed sunken now, a black rattle. Maedeen’s voice barely sounded human.

And her face—

My God—

—her face didn’t look human at all.

—

Chapter 17

I can’t, the words seemed to loll in the dark. You’re special.

Melanie awakened, frowning. A slant of sunlight lay across her eyes from the gap in the curtains.

I want to, but I can’t. You’re too special.

She’d slept like a bag of rocks. It only took a moment to remember last night’s embarrassment. Zack must think I’m a slut. She couldn’t believe how forward she’d been. She’d initiated everything—she’d practically dragged him to the bed. It had been great at first. Melanie had made out with a lot of guys in the past, but this had been different. It seemed they were on the bed for hours, just kissing and touching each other. You’re so beautiful, he kept whispering. Then everything had fallen apart as quickly as it had started.

She’d never gone all the way before. She’d had plenty of chances, she’d just never really wanted to. But with Zack… After a while, their petting had wrung her out. She could feel her own wetness seeping, and his own arousal was plain each time she ran her hand across his crotch. The sensations that swelled in her made her feel like a tightly wound wire. A few more twists and she would break. She skimmed off his T-shirt and ran her hands over his muscles, his strong back and chest, his abdomen. She wasn’t afraid, she was ready. She took off her own top. Her breasts felt hot. Then she unsnapped her jeans, began to slide them down, and—

Zack got up. He was putting his T-shirt back on.

“Zack, what’s wrong?”

He stared at her. He looked hurt. “I can’t,” he said.

“Why?”

“You’re special.”

Melanie’s embarrassment flared. He couldn’t have picked a worse moment. She was naked from the waist up and her jeans were halfway down, and now he didn’t want to?

“I want to, but I can’t. You’re too special.”

She pulled her clothes back on. “I’m sorry, Melanie,” he was saying as she fled the little basement. He came up the steps after her. “You don’t understand!”

I understand, all right! She’d almost been crying as she’d scurried off into the woods.

Special. You’re too special.

Hadn’t Wendlyn and Rena said that she was special?

Now she lay in bed, the sun in her eyes. What would she say the next time she saw Zack? And what would he say?

Special. The words kept nipping at her.

You’re too special.

She fingered the tiny stone pendant around her neck. “What’s so special about me?” she muttered to herself. A tear formed in her eye.

«« — »»

The hospital videotaped all preliminary admittance interviews. It was protocol. Dr. Harold pressed the Play button and sat back. Erik Tharp looked quite different back then. He looked scary. Long hair. Beard. Slim but muscular, a physique honed by hard work.

Yes, of course. Digging graves was very hard work.

There was an aura about him on the video tape, a presence that five years of inactivity and starchy psych ward food had drained. Erik Tharp waited at the interview table. Every so often he looked up at the hidden video camera and smiled.

It was Dr. Greene who sat down across from him.

“Good morning, Erik. That’s your name, right? Erik?”

“I’m called brygorwreccan,” Erik Tharp slowly replied. His voice sounded corroded, unearthly.

“Okay. Is that what you’d like me to call you?”

“You can call me Erik. They call me brygorwreccan.”

“Who’s they?”

Erik stared, stone faced, through long strands of hair.

“What happened to your voice, Erik?”

“Doctor said I only got one vocal cord left.” He smiled vaguely. “They always had a hard time controlling me. Said it was because I used to do drugs.”

“What kind of drugs, Erik?”

“Crank, dust. Dust, mostly. Coke sometimes.”

“And they couldn’t control you because you used to use drugs?”,

“That s what they said. The other peows, they could control them easy. Sometimes I got out of hand, though. They thought I was gonna blow the whistle on them. So they’d punish me.”

“How?”

“Sometimes they’d tie me up, burn me.”

“They burned you? How?”

“They’d lay a metal rod in the fire.” Erik stood up and raised his black T shirt. Several long scars could be seen along his abdomen. Self induced, Dr. Harold concluded. He was sure Dr. Greene had made the same conclusion.

Erik sat back down. “I could handle that, though. Sometimes they made me look in the mirror. And they always made me watch the hustig.”

“The what?”

“The rituals. Watching those was worse than torture.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

“Couldn’t. The closer you are to them, the more power they have over you.”

“I see,” Dr. Greene said. “But let’s backtrack a minute, okay? We were talking about your voice. What exactly did they do?”

“Oh, yeah. They stuck an awl in my throat.”

“As punishment for insubordination?”

“Yeah.”

“Erik, the night you were arrested, you told the police that muggers stuck an awl in your throat.”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening. But I know now, so I can tell the truth and it won’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?”

Erik laughed. “Because I’m in a mental hospital now. They don’t care what I say because they know no one will believe me. They’re the ones who got me put here.”

“Erik, the police caught you burying bodies in a field off Route 154. Do you deny that?”

“No,” Erik Tharp said. “That was my job. After a hüsl, I had to bury the bodies. They decided I was too hard to control, so after the last hustig, they told the cops where I’d be. The whole thing was a setup.”

“Okay, Erik. Tell me more about the bodies. Some of them were children, babies. Why did you kill them? For the hüsls?”

“No, no, I didn’t kill any of them, I just buried them, and, yeah, I snatched some people, sure, but I never killed anyone.”

“You snatched people?”

“I abducted people for them, that was my job too. Hitchhikers, runaways, people like that, people who weren’t local.”

“What about the babies, Erik? Did you abduct the babies too?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“No one. They weren’t abductions.”

“Then—”

“I don’t want to talk about the babies anymore.”

Dr. Greene nodded. “All right, Erik. Tell me about the—”

“I don’t want to talk about anything anymore.”

Erik Tharp put his head down on the table and began to cry.

Dr. Harold ejected the tape. Now he knew exactly what Dr. Greene meant. Erik Tharp displayed no signs of story-mixing, referencing, or even lying. Most clinical psychiatrists could spot lying in a matter of minutes by gauging facial inflections via question structure. Only a pathological mind set could repress such inflections, and Erik Tharp clearly was not pathological.

Next were transcripts of a court authorized narcoanalysis, a process in which all conscious mental barriers were dropped with hypnotic drugs. “T” was for Tharp. “G” was for Greene. A light dose of a drug called scopolamine maintained unconsciousness without dropping most brain wave activity. It was even harder to lie under narcoanalysis.

G: How many people did you kill, Erik?

T: None.

G: Why were you burying bodies?

T: Bludcynn.

G: Erik, were you part of a satanic cult?

T: Dohtor.

G: What?

T: Dother fo Dother.

G: Erik, tell me about the cult.

T: Hüsl. Blood. Bludcynn. Dother fo Dother. I am peow. I am wreccan. We are all wreccan for the face in the mirror.

G: What do you see in the mirror, Erik?

T: Hell.

G: You see hell?

T: Her.

G: Who?

(patient begins to convulse. A waves erratic.)

T: They make us wreccan for her. I am wreccan. I have no soul.

G: What happened to your soul, Erik?

T: They gave it to her. They fuck.

(A waves still jumping. Heart rate 121.)

T: They fuck us and make us wreccan. For her.

G: Erik, who is her?

T: Dohtor.

G: Erik, what is dohtor?

T: Dother fo Dother. Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Liiiii

(Patient’s eyes are open, lacrimation evident. Heart rate 148.)

T: I am brygorwreccan, I am digger. Scierors cut, cokkers cook. We are hüslpegns. We work for them. They eat, they fuck, they kill—for her.

G: Who is her, Erik?

T: Liiiiii… Liiiiii… Arrrrrrdaaaaa—

(Patient screams. A waves cessate to REM levels, heart rate drops steadily, Narcoanalysis suspended as patient no longer responds.)

Two weeks later they’d attempted hypnosynthesis: hypnotic vocal commands in conjunction with fluctuating doses of sodium amobarbital, which kept the patient’s subconscious accessible without inducing high autonomic responses. The idea was to solicit the patient in the first or second stage of sleep, which weren’t dream stages.

T: They practiced these rituals.

G: What kind of rituals, Erik?

T: They worshipped this…thing.

G: Yes?

T: This…demon.

G: Tell me about the demon, Erik.

T: They made me watch, they made us all watch.

(Patient’s voice is regulated, monotonal. Heart rate 67.)

G: What did they make you watch, Erik?

T: They cut people up alive. They hate all outsiders.

G: Why do they hate outsiders, Erik?

T: They hate anyone out of the bludcynn, especially men.

G: Because of the demon? They hate men because of the demon?

T: It lives on hate.

G: What lives on hate, Erik? The demon?

T: They like to cause pain, because it likes pain.

G: Who, Erik? The cult? The demon?

T: They like to cut cocks off of guys.

(Interviewer pauses.)

G: What?

T: They eat people after they’re done torturing them. They cut off their heads and make us cook the heads. On feks they’d sacrifice kids. It was all part of the preparation.

G: Preparation for what, Erik?

T: The Fulluht Loc.

G: What’s that, Erik? I don’t know what that is.

T: They love to fuck. They love to fuck and kill people, torture people. That’s their power—fucking. It’s in their eyes. Their eyes are like the mirror. They make you look in their eyes while they’re fucking you. Lots of times they made us fuck corpses, ’cause it gets them off.

(Interviewer pauses. Patient is trembling, perspiring.)

G: Tell me about the fulluht, Erik.

T: I buried the bodies when the feks were over. That was my job. It was also my job to bring in the hüsls.

G: What’s a hüsl, Erik?

T: They cooked heads.

G: What?

T: Girls they pretty much just sacrificed. They’d chain them up downstairs, save them for the important hustigs.

G: What’s a hustig, Erik?

T: They did the worst shit to the guys. Guys were their fun. They hate men because it hates men.

G: Erik, I want you to tell me about the terms you’re using. Tell me about fulluht, wîhan, hüsl. What do these words mean?

T: Fucking is their power. That’s how they worship her.

G: The demon, you mean. What’s the demon’s name?

T: I got a lot of hüsls picking up hitchhikers or drunks. Girls I got mainly hitchhiking.

G: Erik, let’s backtrack a little, okay?

T: I’d bring these guys down, usually at gunpoint. Sometimes I’d have to knock them out. The munucs would take it from there.

G: What’s a munuc, Erik? Is a munuc someone in the cult?

T: They’d fuck these guys, and sometimes they’d kill him while they were fucking him, they really got off on that. The wifmunuc loved it, she’d do it all the time.

G: Is the wifmunuc the leader of the cult?

T: This guy, the wreccans held him down and they cut the guy’s cock off just like that, and then the scierors skinned him right there on the slab, and I swear to God this poor guy was still alive when they tossed him in the fire. They did all kinds of awful shit like that, things you wouldn’t believe, like sometimes the scierors’d cut a guy open while the munucs were fucking him, and a lot of times the wifford would sit on a guy’s face so he couldn’t see what was going on while the other munucs took turns blowing him, and then just like that they’d cut his cock off, he’d never even know it was coming, and he’s shooting blood all over the place running around screaming and then they’d throw the guy right into the fire, and I’ll tell you something, it takes a while for a guy to die in a fire pit, I’ve seen them lashing around in there screaming their heads off while they’re turning black, and a lot of times they’d try to crawl out and the munucs would just laugh it up and order the cokkers to push him back in, it’s a sight I’ll tell you seeing some poor guy sizzling alive in the pit and screaming and screaming and the girls in the pens would be watching this and they’d be screaming too there was so much screaming man screaming and shrieking and the munucs laughing it was so bad you couldn’t think it was so bad sometimes you’d just want to die…

G: How often did this happen, Erik?

T: Usually, a couple times a year they’d have a big hustig, but every hustig was like a preparation for the Fulluht Loc.

G: Tell me more about the Fulluht Loc, Erik.

T: And sometimes they’d punish us, the wreccans, I mean, if we didn’t bring in enough hüsls, or they’d punish us just for kicks, ’cause they got off on that. I remember one time I was supposed to bring in a hüsl but I couldn’t find any so the wifmunuc had all the wreccans fuck me, and other times they’d order us to fuck one of the corpses before they cooked—

G: Tell me more about the demon, Erik.

T: —all kinds of awful shit, stuff like you never heard, like you could never imagine, but they’ve been doing it for eons, man, for her. That’s how they worship her.

G: The demon, you mean? That’s how they worshipped the

T: —and I can’t tell you how many times I went down there and they’re cutting some guy’s head off and bleeding him into a chettle, a chettle’s a big pot they cook in, and a lotta times they’d be sitting on some guy hammering nails into his head or sticking knitting needles in his ears—

G: Erik, Erik—

T: Yeah man the grossest shit you could imagine and it was all a big kick to them like hauling some guy’s guts out while he’s still alive or hanging some girl upside down and cutting off her head and bleeding her into a chettle for a hustig and all kinds of shit yeah man, that’s what the dreams were like…

G: Dreams Erik? These were dreams?

T: No, no, I mean they were like dreams, they seemed like dreams but after a while you knew they weren’t dreams at all. You knew they were real.

(Patient suddenly cessates. Heart rate 72. Hypnosynthesis

suspended as patient no longer responds.)

Dreams, Dr. Harold reflected. Demons. The court would not authorize further hypnosynthesis or narcoanalysis. They were satisfied that Tharp was just a bipolar schizophrenic acting out a dream delusion. The case was closed. But that did not erase the discrepancies. No wonder Greene was never satisfied. Erik Tharp clearly suffered from a hallucinotic delusion, yet his tarsal plate reactivity, his psych test results, and his visual assessment scores did not indicate delusional behavior. These weren’t things a person could fake. He put the transcripts up and dug back into the bag, extracting the notebooks. Tharp’s only real recreation on the ward was drawing. Immediately, Dr. Harold noticed a rudimentary yet detailed artistic skill. The drawings were fascinating; there were hundreds of them. Many of the strange words from Tharp’s monologues had been written between the scenes. Hüsl. Peow. Wreccan. A sketch of a queue of naked women cutting up a man had been underscored with: Wîhan. More women looked up to a full moon with arms outstretched: doefolmon. Many of the sketches depicted orgies, nude women drawn to great detail on top of blank faced men. Sexespelle, they read, and many had subordinate figures standing aside, similarly blank faced. Yet one face in each was obviously Tharp’s artistic rendition of himself: pallid, wide eyed, staring. And here was a full page sketch: he’d drawn himself holding a shovel in some dense forest dell. Byrgorwreccan, it read. Patients, particularly schizophrenics and hallucinotics, frequently created their own vocabularies for their personal dementias. The word Fulluht-Loc appeared frequently, and even more frequently: liloc.

It was all sexual. Tharp’s madness must have been a byproduct of gross sexual fears. He didn’t hate women, like temporal misogynists, he feared them. The male figures in the sketches had been assigned crude facial identities. But the women were different. Their bodies had been drawn to painstaking erotic detail, yet there was one thing they all lacked.

Faces.

None of the women had faces, and that was another clear sign of a delusional sexual phobia. He can’t, Dr. Harold realized. He can’t draw their faces because he’s afraid to.

Dr. Harold turned a random page. He paused.

Here was a face.

God, he thought. Its clarity stunned him. He was looking at a full page drawing of a woman. The moon shone through brambles and streaks of trees; the woman was standing in a dell. Dr. Harold actually shivered. The sketch was more than a sketch—it was a dichotomy, a wedding of extremes. Revulsion clashed with erotic beauty. The perverse clashed with the reverent. What was going on in Tharp’s mind when he penned this? Dr. Harold had seen quite a bit of patient artwork in his time. Art was a catharsis, and a demented person’s catharsis logically reflected demented art. But this…

Dr. Harold had never seen anything like it. It was atrocious… and lovely. Eloquent, and harrowing. He’d never looked at a work of art so beautiful and yet so obscene.

The woman stood beseechingly. Her hands were out, as if to invite embrace, yet the fingers were exceedingly long, and nails protracted like sleek, fine talons. Long legs rose to form a perfect hourglass figure. The breasts had been drawn so scrupulously they seemed three dimensional upon the page. They were high, large, with large dark circles for nipples. The pubis had been drawn similarly: a shining, downy thatch against pure white skin. The woman’s hair was a great dark mane. Twin diminutive nubs seemed to protrude from the forehead, almost like—

Like horns, Dr. Harold realized.

And the face…

The face was nothing more than two slitlike eyes above a black opened maw full of needle teeth.

—

Chapter 18

Something bothered Martin all day. The dream, of course. The naked girls queerly painting trees in the middle of the night. The parcels he’d buried, and then Melanie… And Maedeen…

He tried all day to forget about it. Even Ann, with her own dream traumas, had noticed he wasn’t himself. They’d had lunch and taken a drive. He’d hoped a nice scenic drive would get his thoughts away, but anywhere he looked he saw the woods, and when he saw the woods he saw the dream. They’d driven by the general store and he’d seen Maedeen outside sweeping the walk. She’d turned and waved as if she’d sensed them driving by. Martin subtly shuddered. The momentary glimpse gave him an erection.

All right, I’m attracted to her, he realized. So what? That’s why God made women good looking, isn’t it?

But it was more than that. He knew it was.

That morning, he and Ann had made love. Lately, it seemed something wasn’t right between them, that she wasn’t enjoying it. Male paranoia, he’d always concluded. Was he rationalizing? It was a fact he didn’t want to face: this time, when they’d made love, he hadn’t been thinking of Ann at all. He had been thinking of Maedeen.

Suddenly, Ann shivered.

“What’s wrong?”

She looked distractedly past the windshield, just as Martin pulled the Mustang around the town square, past the church. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel fidgety.” But it seemed that she’d shivered just as they’d passed the church.

“You didn’t sleep well last night. You had the nightmare again, didn’t you?”

Ann nodded. “It keeps getting worse, and there’s more to it now, more details. And lately…” Her words trailed off.

“And?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She seemed confused. “Lately, I’ve been having some kind of vertigo. Like just now. I’ll be wide awake, and all of a sudden I’ll see something.”

Martin slowed through the crossing lights. “What did you see?”

Ann shivered again. “Nothing.”

Martin knew when to lay off. “You’re not getting enough sleep,” he ventured. “This nightmare’s turning you inside out. Maybe you should call Dr. Harold, see what he thinks.”

“No, that would be silly. I will not let my whole life shake apart because of a stupid nightmare.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Martin said. “I had a nightmare last night too.”

Ann looked at him abruptly. “Melanie’s also having nightmares.”

“It must run in the family,” Martin attempted to laugh it off. “Relax, will you? You worry way too much about her.”

“Martin, let’s not get into that again.”

“Okay, okay.” He headed back to the house. But he knew he was right. Ann’s difficulties were compounding. Her father dying, her mother’s adversity, the canceled vacation. Now she had this “vertigo” in conjunction with the nightmare. Too many things were building up at once, weighing her down.

Martin wondered how close she was to breaking.

«« — »»

Ann didn’t know what to tell him. Sooner or later he’s going to think I’m going nuts. Yes, her nightmare just kept getting worse, and now this vertigo. She couldn’t think of any other way to describe it. Was it part of the dream she wasn’t remembering? It was like a gory daydream. Wide awake she’d suddenly shiver—

—and see red.

She’d see hands plunging a knife into someone, a wide silver blade sinking repeatedly into naked flesh. The dead silent backdrop made it even worse; in this vision all she could hear was the steady slup slup slup of the knife. And all she could see: blood flying everywhere, breasts and belly quivering as the blade continued to rise and fall, rise and fall…

Slup slup slup…slup slup slup…

The face of the victim couldn’t be seen, but somehow she felt convinced that the person being butchered was herself.

Martin parked the Mustang on the street; several cars filled the driveway. In the foyer, Ann noticed her mother entertaining several guests in the dining room. Mrs. Gargan was there, and Constance, Dr. Heyd’s wife, plus the widowed Mrs. Virasak, and a few of Lockwood’s other elderwomen. They chatted softly, drinking tea. But when Ann’s mother noticed her, she got up quickly from the table and drew closed the dining room doors.

“She knows how to make a person feel welcome,” Martin joked. “What are they doing in there?”

“Who knows?” Ann said. “Who cares?”

“I’m going to sit out back, try to get some writing done.”

“Okay,” Ann said. Several times now she’d seen him grab his pad and disappear into the spacious backyard. He seemed to find peace here, every poet’s quest, which made Ann slightly jealous. Martin liked it here. At least if he hated it, she wouldn’t feel so alone.

Upstairs she looked around for Melanie. Her room was empty, but she heard water running—the shower. Ann peered out the window and saw Martin sitting in a lawn chair at the edge of the woods. His pad lay in his lap, his hand poised. He seemed to be looking up at the sky with his eyes closed.

“Hi, Mom,” Melanie greeted. She came in wearing her dark robe and had a towel around her head. “Where have you been?”

“Martin and I went for a drive. We were thinking of going to the inn for dinner. Want to come?”

“I won’t be able to make it. I’m meeting some friends.”

Ann sat down on the bed, perturbed. “You haven’t mentioned much about these new friends of yours.”

“Oh, Wendlyn, Rena? They’re pretty cool.”

Pretty cool. Ann smirked. “I saw you with a boy yesterday.”

Melanie smiled. “That’s Zack. He’s cool too.”

“He looks like your friends back home, leather jacket and—”

“Come on, Mom,” Melanie dismissed, drying her light brown hair with the towel. “He’s really nice, and we have a lot in common.”

“Like what?”

“Music. He listens to all the groups I like, even Killing Joke. And you should see his stereo, it’s huge.”

“Melanie.” Ann leaned forward as if concentrating. “Are you telling me you were in this boy’s house? Alone?”

“He doesn’t live in a house. He lives in the church basement.”

This didn’t sound right. “He lives in the church? What about his parents?”

“He doesn’t have any; he’s an orphan. Grandma gave him a job as a custodian or something.”

Grandma, Ann thought sourly. It was one obstruction after the next. Ann’s mother was regarded as the town’s matriarch, loved by all. Melanie was making friends here. Martin wrote better here. Where did all this leave Ann?

On the outside, she answered herself. “I just don’t think I approve of your hanging around with some boy you just met.”

“I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. I’m an adult.”

“Is that so?”

“Let’s not argue.” Very abruptly, Melanie took off her robe. She sat down naked at the antique vanity to comb her hair.

Ann swallowed her shock. Melanie had never disrobed in front of her, at least not down to the skin. But she did so now as if it were natural. Ann felt she should comment on this immodesty, but what could she say? Certainly, there was nothing unnatural about a mother seeing her daughter unclothed.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” Melanie could see Ann’s face in the vanity’s big framed mirror. “You act like you’ve never seen me naked.”

“Well, I haven’t really. Not in years.” But she thought: She is an adult. Melanie’s body had indeed blossomed. She’d been skinny as an adolescent, boyish. Now her breasts had filled out, and the straight lines of her early teens had given over to a nice feminine shapeliness. The firm orbs of her breasts jogged slightly as she combed her hair out in the mirror. Then she stood up, just as abruptly, and turned. Ann couldn’t help but glimpse the fresh young body from head to toe.

“I’m growing up, Mom.”

“I know, honey. Sometimes that’s a hard thing for a mother to realize, that’s all.”

And it was, wasn’t it? Her shock reverted to a dim despair. Melanie had bloomed into womanhood nearly without Ann’s even knowing it. Too busy, she regretted. Too busy trying to make partner to even notice your own daughter growing up.

Melanie quickly slipped into a pair of black acid washed jeans, then pulled on a dark blue “Car Crash Symphony” T shirt. Ann felt like an old curmudgeon sitting on the bed.

Melanie kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be home early.”

“Bye.”

But Ann had wanted to stop her, to ask her something that had been bothering her of late. Are you a virgin? she’d wanted to ask. But how could she ask something like that without sounding even more curmudgeonish?

Melanie left.

Ann felt old, depressed, naive—all at once. A glance out the window showed Martin wandering off into the looming woods, seeking his muse. How much more distanced could Ann feel from the people in her life? She and her mother were constantly at odds. She didn’t understand Martin’s creative joys at all. And her daughter had grown up right under her nose.

She sat back down on the bed. And my father’s dying, and I hardly ever even knew him.

A tear threatened to form in her eye.

Then she shivered…

Slup slup slup, she heard …slup slup slup…

The vertigo returned. The glaring red vision streamed again through her mind: a fisted hand plunging the knife down. Blood spewing. Naked breasts and belly quivering each time the blade buried itself to the hilt…

—

Chapter 19

“Oh, hello, Ann.”

Ann gave a start. The double doors to the den abruptly slid open, and standing there was Mrs. Gargan, redolent with cologne.

“How are you today, Mrs. Gargan?”

“Oh, I’m fine. What are you up to?”

But Mrs. Gargan’s stiff posture and stiff, make-upped face made Ann feel sidetracked. Past her shoulder, Ann could see her mother and several friends looking through a photo album at the table. Mrs. Gargan’s rigid smile and dark eyes seemed fixed on her.

“I’ve just been puttering around,” she said after a pause. “I thought I’d go upstairs and look in on my father.”

“Yes, of course. Feel free to join us later for tea.”

Yeah, right. Ann’s mother and friends flipped through the photo album as if in deep concentration. They commented quietly at each turn of a page. Ann couldn’t hear them.

“I will,” Ann balked. “See you later.”

She went upstairs as Mrs. Gargan headed for the kitchen. Ann could imagine the banality of joining her mother and friends for tea, pooh poohing over the album. Mrs. Gargan, of course, was just being polite. The stiff cordiality told Ann what she already knew: Ann was Lockwood’s prodigal daughter; she would never be fully welcome here.

Upstairs, the grimly familiar beep led her to the room. Her father’s cardiac monitor. Ann hated that sound. Milly was sponging off her father’s chest. The chest looked waxen, pale.

“Hi, Milly.”

The nurse turned, smiled. “Have you seen Dr. Heyd around?”

“No, not in a while. Is anything wrong?”

“Oh, no, no.” Milly fidgeted in a medical bag, hooked up a new IV. “Everything’s fine.” Her smile turned coy. “I’ve heard Melanie has taken a liking to someone.”

“Oh, yeah. Zack. Do you know him?”

Milly laughed, a strange reaction. “You don’t have to worry about him. Actually, he’s a very nice boy, very helpful. You might be put off a little by the way he dresses, but that’s kind of silly nowadays, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is,” Ann said, though reluctantly.

“But you seem bothered by it, or something.”

Did she? I’m bothered by a lot of things. “Motherly concern, I suppose. Do things like that ever bother you?”

Milly laughed again. “My daughter’s a bit too young for Zack; she’s only fifteen. But as mothers we have to realize that eventually our daughters grow up. Didn’t you have a crush on boys when you were a teenager?”

Ann sat down, thinking. It was a revelatory question. “I guess I did,” she said. “But there never seemed to be many boys my age in Lockwood.”

“Well, that’s still pretty much the case, not many children at all, especially Melanie and Rena’s age group. Lockwood’s pretty remote, but I like it better that way. It’s safer. It’s more real, don’t you think?”

Ann shrugged. She remembered how bored she’d been in Lockwood as a child. It must be even worse for an adult. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t remember seeing many kids of any age around town, and not many established men. “What do you do for fun around here?”

“Lockwood may seem like the sticks to you, but actually, there’s a lot for a single woman to do.”

Ann recalled Milly’s rather militant statements about her social life, about men.

“It’s just that Lockwood is so different for you,” Milly went on. “If you’d lived here your whole life, you’d feel different. You’re talking about sex, right?”

The spontaneity of the question surprised her. But she supposed that’s what she meant all along. “I was just curious, that’s all. Your romantic life is none of my business.”

“You can say it,” Milly offered. “I’m no prude. You want to know how a woman in a town like Lockwood finds sexual satisfaction.”

“Really, Milly, I didn’t mean—”

“We’re not that remote, you know. There are men in town, mostly transients, come here to work. It’s out there, it’s easy enough to find if you look.”

This was getting embarrassing. Then Milly added, “But you don’t have to worry about that yourself. You have a man”

Jesus, did everyone around here regard men as property, as prizes? Was that what love was when you got right down to it? Territorial? Nevertheless, now that they’d broken the ice, Ann couldn’t resist asking: “Tell me about Maedeen.”

Milly offered a huge grin. “Let me guess. You and Martin met Maedeen recently, and now you’re jealous.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say jealous. She just seems—”

“A little forward? Well, don’t worry. That’s just the way she is. She’s outgoing, friendly. She likes everybody and everybody likes her. Your mother gave her the store when the old man died. She’s done a wonderful job.”

Is that how I seem? Ann wondered. A jealous city priss?

“She and I go out sometimes. We have a wild time.”

But what could Milly mean? There were no dance clubs or night spots in Lockwood. Where did they have a wild time around here?

“A woman’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.” Milly pushed her hair back and laughed. But, “Oh, damn,” she said next. She rummaged through the medical bag. “It’s time for your father’s B-12 shot. I don’t have any left. Would you mind running to my house and getting me some? It’s just a short walk. I don’t want to leave your father alone between IVs.”

“Sure,” Ann said. Actually, it would be a relief. She liked Milly, but her straightforwardness sometimes got too nettling. Milly gave her instructions for what to get and where. When Ann went back downstairs, she noticed her mother and friends still chatting over the photo albums. Her mother looked up suddenly, frowned, then looked back down. She scarcely even spoke to Ann anymore. I’m the prodigal daughter all right, she thought again. Ann wondered if there was anything she could ever do to win her mother’s approval.

Forget it, she dismissed. Ann cut through the town square to Milly’s house. The town looked idle as usual. Several old men sat on the porch of Maedeen’s general store, bantering and chewing tobacco. A dog lazed in the sun. Not a single car could be seen. Ann felt obstinate; she was always too quick to criticize. Lockwood, however idle, had something the city never had. Peace. But suddenly the thought waned. At the end of the square, she saw the church, its great front door and stained-glass windows staring at her like a looming face.

Milly lived in a little one floor house on Bathory Street. Quaint little shrubs out front. A quaint little yard. It seemed honest somehow. No luxuries, just an honest little house. Milly hadn’t given her the keys; there was no need. No one in Lockwood locked their doors. Inside was just as honest. Sparse but clean. Old but well kept furniture. A bowl of potpourri filled the living room with pleasant herbal scents. Milly had said the B-12 was in the kitchen, above the refrigerator. Ann went down the short hall, but stopped. She thought she heard something…

It sounded like a humming noise, ever faint. But she heard something else enlaced with it. From down the hall.

Was it Rena, Milly’s daughter? The noise bothered Ann. She hesitated, then advanced. The hall was dim. The carpet left her footfalls silent. To the left, a door stood half open.

Ann peeked in.

A bedroom, sparse but comfortable like the rest of the house. The decor, however—bright curtains, brightly painted furniture—couldn’t possibly be an adult’s. It must be Rena’s room.

But what was that humming noise?

She looked in further. Sunlight slanted in, and movement caught her eye. White movement in the glare of sun. What the… Ann blinked, staring. The soft, faint hum persisted.

She gulped when she realized what she was seeing.

A figure squirmed on the little, neat bed. Bright white skin in the glare. It was Rena. Naked. Her back arching. Moans and hot breath escaped her throat. At first Ann thought the girl must be convulsing from some illness. But another moment’s staring showed her that it was not discomfort which sent Rena’s young body into clenching spasms. It was ecstasy.

The hum persisted, wavering. Ann noted its source.

Milly’s daughter manipulated a shiny white vibrator between her legs. The vibrator was huge. Tendons strained at the apex of the girl’s legs as she wielded the device with both hands. The girl’s breasts were tiny on her heaving chest. Her stomach sucked in and out; her toes dug in the sheets. The giant vibrator’s volume rose and fell each time it was inserted and withdrawn. The size of the thing, compared to Rena’s tiny sex, made Ann visibly tremor.

Rena continued to writhe, drawing the device slowly in and out. The sensations contorted her face. Melding murmurs of words escaped her lips.

“Doefolmon, bludmon, all the dothers give lof…”

Each time the humming device plunged, Ann thought she could feel it herself. This disgusted her. Immediately, she felt compelled to barge into the room, to stop this.

But would that really be within her rights? This was another woman’s daughter. What right did Ann have to discipline Milly’s child? And what would she say anyway?

“Give lof, give lof, I give lof…”

Lof? Ann thought. What were these words she was muttering? The vibrator hummed. Rena moaned then, her eyes rolling back in her head, when she next pushed the vibrator so deeply into herself that only the end showed. Ann grew faint.

She retreated back down the hall, not making herself known. Quickly, quietly, she found the vial of O’Neal 50mcg B-12. As she left the house, she could still hear the vibrator’s steady hum and Rena’s anguished voice: “Doefolmon, doefolmon…”

Ann walked briskly away from the house. God! Was she being unrealistic? She didn’t care that it was none of her business, nor did she care how sexually liberal the times had become. Fifteen year olds are not supposed to be masturbating with vibrators, she felt convinced. Did Milly know what her daughter was doing when she was out? The walk back through the town square cooled her down. True, it was none of her business, yet one point wouldn’t let go. This was the same girl who had become friends with Melanie. Ann didn’t want to contemplate her reaction if she ever caught Melanie doing the same thing.

And what were those bizarre words Rena had been muttering?

Ann decided to let it pass. Mentioning it to Milly might cause a misgiving, not to mention embarrassment. What could she possibly say? Hey, Milly, I saw your kid masturbating with a vibrator the size of an ear of corn. No, she couldn’t say that. Let Milly worry about her kid herself, she settled.

Pickman Avenue remained as idle as before. The big steepled church reflected bright white in the sun. Ann crossed at the walk, then stopped. A car was pulling away from Nale’s, the general store.

Ann stood in the street, staring back.

It was a blue Mustang GT. My car, she realized.

Though she couldn’t be positive, there appeared to be two people riding in it. The one on the left appeared to be Martin.

The one on the right appeared to be Maedeen.

«« — »»

The glass tube measured eight inches in length, three eighths of an inch wide. The dother liberally lubricated it with petroleum jelly. She paused, grinning. Then she began to slide the tube into the tiny hole at the end of Zack’s penis.

“Do it slowly, dear,” advised the wifford. “We don’t want it to break…yet.”

Terror gushed in Zack’s mind. The two wreccans had tied him down to the table with thick hemp. One of the wreccans was new, the other was the brëowor. They stood aside now, behind Maedeen and Wendlyn. Zack fought against his restraints, but only abraded himself for his efforts. They’re sticking a glass tube up my cock, came the base fact in thought. And they’re going to break it. This was his punishment.

“You were going to fuck her, weren’t you?” asked Maedeen, the wifford. Her voice was as stony and cold as her face.

“No,” Zack groaned. “I swear. We made out a little, that’s all. I wasn’t gonna do anything more.”

“No?”

“I swear!”

“He’s lying, Mom,” remarked Wendlyn, the dother. She held his flaccid penis gently in one hand, and the end of the glass tube with the other. Very slowly, she slid the tube in another inch.

“Please,” Zack’s voice tremored.

The wifford crossed her arms, appraising him. “If you had fucked her, you would’ve tainted her. You would’ve tainted the holy fulluht, ruined it.”

“But I didn’t!” Zack shouted. “I didn’t!”

“He would’ve, Mom. He’s a pig. He’s a peow.”

“I know, dear.”

Zack felt the hemp burn his wrists as he squirmed.

“Nis woh fo gast be mek a peow?” said the wifford. “Give lof, no? Be folclagu, ur godspellere, iesprece.”

“We should do it, Mom,” the dother persuaded.

“Voelian thus wer, thus peow?”

“Please,” Zack groaned. “I would never disgrace you in the eyes of—”

“Shut your mouth!” the wifford exploded. “Never, never, speak her name, you unworthy piece of shit! Never!”

Zack shuddered, but he better not shudder much, or else he might break the tube himself. The other two wreccans seemed to strain against an inner anguish but remained out of the way. They wouldn’t help, Zack knew. They couldn’t.

Now the wifford smiled. Her gaze moved from Zack’s face to his genitals. The dother pushed the tube in another inch.

“Aw, Mom, let me do it.”

“Well…”

“Mom, pleeeeeease?”

Zack’s body felt coursing with high tension current. The young dother licked her lips in steady concentration as she deftly slid the glass tube still deeper into his urethra.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Zack. But this will make you good.”

Zack’s terror made him feel stretched over a bed of nails. He fought not to shake. The tube had now been inserted over four inches into his penis.

“Zackie, Zackie,” chanted the dother. She was swaying the tube back and forth and spinning it between her fingers. “Can I break it now, Mom? Can I?”

“Put it in a little deeper first, dear.”

The dother did so. How much further could the tube go?

“Please, please don’t,” Zack murmured.

“Now, Mom?”

“All right, dear, but let’s make it suspenseful. On the count of three, break the tube.”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah, Mom.”

Sweat popped out of Zack’s brow. Every joint in his body felt fused.

“One,” said the wifford.

Zack’s teeth ground.

“Zackie, Zackie,” sang the dother.

“Two.”

Aw no holy Christ please…

“Two and a half…”

Zack could feel the tube embedded down the entire length of his limp penis…

“Three!” shouted the wifford.

Zack screamed.

Laughter raced ’round the room like mad animals. In one quick movement, the dother—

Nooooooooooooooo!

—withdrew the tube without breaking it.

Zack turned to putty. The wreccans cut his bonds and pushed him off the table. Zack, wheezing, fumbled to pull up his pants.

“Thank you thank you,” he gibbered.

They were walking away, but the wifford turned at the door. “Melanie is special,” she said. “Very special. Remember that, or next time we’ll break that tube into so many pieces you’ll be pissing glass for a year.”

—

Chapter 20

Ann waited up late. What would she say? And could she be sure that it was Maedeen she’d seen in the car with Martin? But she didn’t worry about such reasonable considerations. Ann was mad, and she let her anger sit up with her.

Furthermore, Melanie hadn’t come home yet either, which made Ann madder. The grandfather clock in the foyer ticked past 10 pm. Where could she be at this hour? What was she doing?

That afternoon she brought the B-12 to Milly and hadn’t mentioned what she’d witnessed Rena doing on the bed, as she’d previously decided. By then she was too mad to care anyway.

She couldn’t imagine Martin’s fascination with Maedeen. The little scrub. Ann had seen how Martin was looking at her the time they went to the store, and was well aware of her tendency to misinterpret certain things. Was she just being paranoid?

I’d still like to drag her little ass down the street.

She sat in the quiet library off the foyer. The silence and dim lamplight made her feel watched. Earlier her mother had been seen going down to the basement with the photo albums. She’d unlocked the basement door, entered and exited, then locked the door and headed back upstairs. She’d said nothing to Ann as she’d crossed the landing, which was typical. But why lock the basement door?

Again, at this moment, Ann didn’t care. All she could think about was how bad she was going to grill Martin’s ass when he had the nerve to come home.

She thought she’d pass time watching TV, then remembered her mother didn’t approve of television. There were no TVs, in other words, in the house. She hadn’t noticed one in Milly’s house either. Did Lockwood consider anything modern to be a corrupt influence? She wandered about the quiet house, each journey bringing her back to the front window where she’d peek outside to see if the car was in the driveway yet. But what was she really thinking? That Martin and Maedeen had something going? Even Ann knew that was ridiculous. She just didn’t like Maedeen, for her own womanly reasons, and she didn’t care what Milly said. Sometimes a woman could just tell, could sense a woman who was trouble. The little flirt, she dismissed. Silly earth-mother-looking hippie. And Martin didn’t have to be so quick to assert that Maedeen was “nice.” I’ll show her nice, Ann mused. Maybe I’ll shove one of her homemade ice cream cones up her scrawny ass. See how nice she is then.

By 11 pm, Martin and Melanie still had not returned. Ann’s mother had long since gone to bed. Bored now in her anger, Ann went upstairs to talk to Milly but instead found Dr. Heyd in her father’s room.

“Ah, hello, Ann. You’re up late, aren’t you?”

“I’m waiting for Martin. He went out a while ago.”

Dr. Heyd made some nameless adjustment to the cardiac monitor. “I think I saw him going into the Crossroads earlier. I understand he’s getting along well with some of Lockwood’s men.”

And some of Lockwood’s women too. But was that where he was? At the bar? “He mentioned some of them yesterday,” she said.

“Fine fellows, all of them. If you’re looking for Milly, she’s asleep in the next room right now. The poor girl hasn’t gotten much rest these past few days. I sent her to bed. I’ll be looking after your father tonight myself.”

The monitor beeped on. Her father looked pallid as a wax dummy in the bed.

“But would you watch him a few minutes?” Dr. Heyd asked. He wore baggy slacks and suspenders, his bald pate shining. “I’d like to go down and fix myself a sandwich.”

“Sure,” Ann said.

Dr. Heyd left her to her own unease. She didn’t like to look at her father, because her mind could not associate the vision she had of him with the sunken form in the bed. She sat down and flipped through one of Milly’s romance novels. A random page revealed a rather explicit sex scene. She remembered when romance fiction was innocuously tame. Not anymore, she thought now. Nothing is. She hadn’t read a complete novel herself, though, in years.

Milly’s purse lay opened on the floor, and inside a large woman’s wallet hung similarly open. Ann noticed pictures. What was the harm? She took the wallet out and looked through it. No credit cards or the like, of course not. But there were several snapshots in the string of clear plastic envelopes, all either of Rena at different ages, or Rena and Milly smiling together. Ann looked closely at one school portrait of Rena, probably at around age six. The picture made Ann clench. It was almost impossible to believe that the adorable little girl in this snapshot was the same girl she’d seen today masturbating with a vibrator.

Toward the end were some baby pictures, even more adorable. But the last picture caused her to stare.

A baby, days old, lying atop a quilt. But the tiny pudenda left no doubt. It was a baby boy.

Milly had never referred to a son. Ann immediately feared why that might be. Did the baby die?

She put the wallet back in the purse. What an awful thing. She could be wrong, of course, but why else would Milly have never mentioned a son? Or perhaps it was a relative’s child.

Ann glanced up. The beeps of the heart monitor seemed to change their rhythm a moment, then increase in pitch. Ann was about to call for Dr. Heyd, but her gaze was quickly overwhelmed.

Her father’s eyes opened.

His mouth was moving, and he was looking at her.

“Dad!” Ann jumped up, raced to the bed. Her father’s own gaze followed her. He’s conscious, she realized in a burst of exuberance. “Dad, it’s me,” she said. “It’s Ann…”

She could see his mouth working. It opened and closed; it was obvious to her that he was trying to say her name. Ann’s heart was racing.

Next, his crabbed hand took hold of her wrist. It felt cool, dry, wriggling in infirmity. The other hand faltered, rising over the bed. It moved around in some cryptic gesture.

“What, Dad? Can you try to talk?”

He clearly couldn’t. It crushed Ann to see the frustration on his infirm face. The mouth moving but giving no voice, the futile concentration in efforts to communicate to the daughter he hadn’t seen in over a year.

“Dad, what…”

His hand moved furiously, not pointing but seeming to mimic an act.

The act of writing. Thumb pressed to fingers, the withered hand made gestures of writing.

“A pen, Dad? Do you want a pen?”

He actually huffed in relief. His tired face nodded.

He couldn’t talk but he wanted to write. He must be much more lucid than they’d thought. Ann took one of Dr. Heyd’s notepads and sat down on the bed. She lay it against her knee. Then she placed a ballpoint pen into her father’s right hand.

“Go on, Dad. Take your time.”

First just scribble. The old man chewed his lip as he struggled to wield the pen. Ann felt tears in her eyes, witnessing her father’s desperation at so simple a task.

He began to whimper, eyes fluttering, then closing. “Dad, Dad?” she cried. He fell unconscious again, and the monitor slowed back to its normal pitch.

“Ann, what’s happened?”

Dr. Heyd came back into the room, rushing over. She excitedly explained what happened. But he only half listened as he quickened to take vital signs. Suddenly, Milly and Ann’s mother were crowded into the room, both in robes and slippers. Ann repeated everything for them in desperate joy.

“He was seeing me,” she went on. “I know he knew it was me.

But Dr. Heyd seemed disapproving, busying with an injection.

“What’s wrong?” Ann asked, dismayed. “Isn’t this good?”

“No, Ann, it’s not,” Dr. Heyd replied. “You should’ve called me at once.”

“But he was writing, he was trying to talk. He recognized me. I’m sure of it.”

“Ann, you’re forgetting what I told you the other day. Undue excitement is the worst thing for him right now. The excitement of suddenly being conscious and of seeing you at the same time made his blood pressure and heart rate skyrocket. You should’ve called for me first, so I could give him something to keep his heart rate at a lower level.”

“Why!” Ann objected. “He was conscious!”

“My God, Ann,” her mother muttered.

“What the hell is wrong?” Ann continued.

“The drastic rise in blood pressure caused a physical strain against the occluded blood vessels in his brain. You shouldn’t have encouraged him to write, because that only increased the strain further. It challenged him to a physical task he’s no longer physically capable of.”

Ann still didn’t understand. All she understood was that her father had been conscious, and now everybody was acting like Ann had done something grievously wrong.

“Before trying to induce him to write, you should’ve called me so I could lower his heart rate to a safe level. All that excitement at once was too much for him. The rise in systolic pulse more than likely forced some of the clot apart, sending pieces further into the brain. He may die now.”

Ann felt paralyzed in turmoil.

“My God, Ann!” her mother yelled.

“It’s my fault,” Dr. Heyd offered. “I should have explained more specifically before I left the room.”

“It’s not your fault, Ashby,” Ann’s mother hotly replied. “The problem is my fine daughter doesn’t realize the fragility of anything! She has no forethought at all!”

“Mom, I—”

“I invited you home to see him, Ann, not kill him!”

Ann’s mother stormed out of the room. Ann stood teary-eyed. Milly put her arm around her shoulder.

“It couldn’t be helped, Ann,” Dr. Heyd said, watching the monitor. “You didn’t know.”

I may have just killed my own father Ann realized.

Ann watched in mute numbness as Milly and Dr. Heyd tended to her father. In a few minutes, Dr. Heyd confirmed, “He seems to be stabilizing for now. We’ll know more by morning.” Then he looked down at Ann’s hand. “Is that what he wrote?”

Ann still held the piece of notepaper her father had scribbled on. She looked at it now, for the first time. Just scrambled letters, nothing coherent. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said, and gave the note to Dr. Heyd.

“To your father, though, it probably does,” the doctor told her after reading the note himself. “Unfortunately, orbital strokes of this magnitude frequently obfuscate the learned memory faculties in the brain. In other words, he was writing without a sequenced memory of the alphabet. It’s quite common in these cases.”

Dr. Heyd, it seemed, had a professional answer for everything. Ann felt disappointed. She would never know what her father, in what may have been his last conscious moment in life, had been trying to communicate to her.

What he’d written was this:

BLUDCYNN HÜSL — DOTHER FO DOTHER

—

Chapter 21

“Secean we,” bid the wifmunuc. Becloaked, she knelt before the blessed nihtmir.

“Eternal mother, bless us!” came the chorus.

Yielding to the rushes of love, of bliss and sanctity, the wifmunuc remained solemn. In silence, then, she prayed before the slab, Her holy sweosters joined her from behind, menteled in black, in the cirice.

“Modor, Druiwif, Dother fo Nisfan,” the wifmunuc bid, raising her arms. “We give lof fom eard, os hüslpegns, in yur soo, we fi wuldor, lar, gliw.”

“O, Blessed One, hear our prayer.”

“Ure heofan yur nisfan.”

“Receive our prayer.”

Each wifhand then dropped their mentels, nude beneath. They bowed in the cirice, sweat shining on their backs. Several wreccans stood to the rear, blank-faced, bearing torches to give light in their conqueror’s eard. Then the wifmunuc rose and stepped out of her own cæppe, which was black as the others’, but sewn of the finest silk. Naked, she pressed a hand to the slab. Untold wonders bloomed on her face, the most holy visions, unspeakable, incalculable. She looked into the slab, staring.

Two more wreccans dragged in a hüsl, who had been properly gagged so as not to disrupt the wifmunuc’s muse. Now the wifhands broke. A second hüsl, a female, was removed from one of the pens. Wreccans gagged her, stripped her, brought her forth.

The male hüsl was held upright. He was typical, a stray drunk picked up hitchhiking. But the wreccans had sought well—this one was young, muscular, handsome. As they stripped him, the terror in his young eyes was beautiful.

Yes, the pig would make a beautiful sacrifice.

More wreccans—the cokwors—stoked the great fire in the cooking pit. Each stoke flooded the cirice in lovely, hot waves. For a time, the wifhands took turns touching the male, reveling in the sensation of flesh. They caressed the chest, buttocks, and genitals, their faces grinning in firelight. Then:

“Wîhan!” ordered the wifford.

The male was laid upon the dolmen, which was encrusted from countless feks. Wreccans tied him down. Pots of leahroot smoked fragrantly about the dolmen, charging them all with the sweet passion of their god. The wifford began to fellate the male, while others stroked his flesh with flaxbalm. They took turns, moving in a watchful circle, each taking the helot unto their mouths. Soon the leahroot and balms had seeped into his blood. Despite his terror, his genitals hardened.

The female was forced to watch. Her tainted features proved her distance from the bludcynn. Stringy white-blond hair, blue eyes, faint pink nipples on large breasts. She shook, sweating, as two wreccans held her up. Urine streamed freely down her tanned legs.

In the nave, though, the wifmunuc continued to supplicate their god, her face peering into the nihtmir. The cold stone against her fingertips filled her with coruscating heat. Her vision delved; it was being led away deep into the stygian field. Deeper, deeper…

Each wifhand took turns straddling the male helot, their faces turned up in bliss, while the others looked on.

…and down. She was in a different realm now, where madness was the only order, darkness the only light. It was beautiful…

The helot shuddered in his own sweat as he lay there to be taken again and again. The wreccans brought the blonde closer still, to see. When she dared to close her eyes, a white-hot stoking rod was lain across her buttocks. Two more wreccans approached the dolmen, with knives.

…so beautiful to be led into their god’s wondrous lair. Her physical body behind her, the wifmunuc seemed to float through the shifting blackness like a feather on the wind. Soon she drifted out of the chasm and onto a strange precipice. It was another time, or, perhaps, another world…

“Soo, soo,” hotly whispered the wifford. It began with her, and it would end with her. She pushed a sweoster off and restraddled the helot, penetrating herself upon his penis. She grunted, thrusting down.

…yes, a precipice backed by the strangest twilight, scarlet and flashing black stars. Two masci guarded the summit, hairless, swollen-faced things, eyes long since healed over. Blindly, they sensed the wifmunuc’s presence, tilting up their heinous, misshapen heads. They let her pass, then went back to their meal of bones, black maws cracking down to expose the succulent marrow. Suddenly, the wifmunuc was reborn. She was a child, naked in twilight, standing amid the highest trees. A sound could be heard beyond the forest, a presence could be felt. The wifmunuc lost her breath…

“Wîhan,” panted the wifford. She leaned back on her hands, to deepen the penetration as her orgasm spasmed. The helot, too, began to tremor, his semen exploding into her sex, and then—

“Wîhan, wîhan!” she shrieked.

—the wreccans sliced his belly open at the same time. The helot convulsed on the slab; the wifford chortled. Blood flew this way and that as the wreccans’ hands delved into the rive to expeditiously extract the more delectable organs. The wifhands rejoiced, in awe of the scarlet spectacle. The blonde was in shock now. Very quickly, her ankles were tied, she was hung upside down against the wall on an iron hook, and her head was cut off with a machete. The body still twitched for a time, as the stump bled like a spigot into a small chettle. The helot’s head, too, was cut off, and both were tossed into the fire, to cook. The blonde was gutted similarly, then all of the organs were thrown into the chettle. Seasonings were added, and the chettle was set on the fire.

The wifmunuc’s eyes widened in wonder, in love. The lambent figure approached, beautiful in its grace and perfection.

Lean, naked, dark hair flowing behind it like an endless mane. The wifmunuc, still a child now, began to sob in this vision of holiness. Moonlight dappled the dell through high branches. The moonlight was pink…

While the festival meats were left to cook, the orgy ensued. Wreccans were taken aside, ordered to perform for the whims of each wifhand. The wifford, sated and bespattered, stood aside to watch. Moans rose palpably into the cirice. The floor became a carpet of moving flesh in firelight. Sweating backs, legs spreading, buttocks plunging. One wreccan was ordered to fornicate with the helot. Meanwhile the cokkers stirred the chettle as the blood began to boil.

…perfection could be the only word—the perfect being in perfect light. The wifmunuc stared up, faced by the radiant, perfect flesh.

“Ure give wynn!” she rejoiced. “Wi give lof bi soo ure folclagu!”

“Joindre mi in me wudu fo nisfan,” the figure whispered back, flesh glowing in the pinkened moonlight. “Give lof, give wîhan, ond joindre mi on doefolmon.”

“Modor!” cried the wifmunuc, reaching out.

The Ardat-Lil gazed down. “Soon my time will come again,” she said. “Until then, fedde me.”

Suddenly, she was back before the nihtmir, in her old body, her old world. Behind her, the hustig rose to revelry. But it took the wifmunuc a moment to get her breath back, to readjust herself. Her flesh shined with sweat in the excitement now, and in the grace of what she’d just witnessed. The wifford came into the nave and kissed her. They rejoiced.

They all ate heartily of the hot meat pulled from the chettle. They filled their bellies. The wifmunuc, enlivened now, chose the newest wreccan and raped him on the dirt floor as the others watched, their eyes full of joy, their mouths smeared red.

Before the hustig was ended, they passed the engraved cuppe. They each took a sip of the blood and sighed.

The wifmunuc gustily swallowed the rest.

«« — »»

Erik hoped his white hair didn’t give him away. He’d left the van covered by brush miles back in the woods. Skirting town was the only way. He felt certain they were expecting him.

He wore dark clothes. He brought a flashlight and carried the shotgun across his back. The pinkened moon followed him; it seemed to harass him as he wended through the dense woods.

Providence, he thought. It was almost funny now. Was it providence that he die here, in their hands? Why am I even doing this? he asked himself. And what am I really doing?

He wasn’t sure how to answer himself, for it was true. He really didn’t know what he was doing, did he? If all his suspicions were real? What would he do? What could he do?

It was well past midnight now. Eventually, the woods broke at a quiet residential street. The street was dark, but several windows were lit. Erik followed close to the shadows.

Headlights flashed around the bend. Erik dove for cover. A car seemed to be slowing. He unshouldered the shotgun and lay still. A spotlight roved the top of the hedges he hid behind. Cops, he realized. The spot moved along the trees, head-level. He could hear a radio squawking. Had they seen him? Was providence so cruel to let him come all this way only to die by the same police who’d sent him away years ago? No, no, he thought. The shotgun grew slick in his hands. I’m going to die right here.

The car idled past. Erik noted the crest and letters on the door: Lockwood Police. The moonlight unveiled the driver’s face. It was Byron, the kid who’d arrested him.

Soon the headlights disappeared around the next bend.

He resumed his advance through the town. He struggled to recall exactly where everything was. Here was Meade Street, and here was Lockhaven. He would have to approach from behind the town square, to avoid the police station. In jest, he pictured himself strolling openly down Pickman Avenue, whistling, waving to Chief Bard.

A block down, through high trees, the white steeple spired.

Home again, Erik thought.

The moonlight painted the church’s white walls pink. He crept around very slowly, eyes peeled. And there they were: the little stone steps which led to the access beneath the church. At the end of the steps, he could see the door.

Erik stood still a moment. Memory flashed in and out of his head like a grueling nightmare. Was this really providence? Or his own horror? It was more than just a door that stood waiting for him. It was his past.

And it was waiting, he knew, with open arms.

«« — »»

Martin awoke in bed, dizzy, nauseous. The darkness was like mud in his face. He’d been dreaming, but all he could recall were streams of repugnant blurs and streaks like images of vivid muck. He felt gritty and he stank. He reached over for Ann, but her side of the bed lay empty, unruffled. Where could she be at this hour? The clock read 1:30 a.m.

Jesus, the thought muttered. He lay back, straining against the force of memory. Where had he been all day? He remembered stopping in at the Crossroads, having a few beers with Andre and some of the other guys. Then…

What?

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t even remember coming home. All that remained were wisps of what could only be nightmare. He remembered odd tastes and smells. Heat. Sweat. Waves of moans and—

Jesus, he thought again. One of the dream’s images surfaced to completion: being straddled, a hot body pinning him to the ground. Sweat dripped onto his face and chest, breasts were joggling as bizarre words seemed to ooze like sooty smoke around his head. And then he remembered the face that looked down at him, between the breasts. Not Maedeen.

It was Ann’s mother’s face.

What the hell is wrong with me? he asked himself in disgust. Not only was he dreaming of infidelities… I dreamed I was fucking Ann’s mother, for God’s sake.

The realization made him feel even dirtier. Part of it he could figure now. He’d come home late, drunk. Ann was pissed, so that’s why she wasn’t here. She was probably downstairs sleeping on the couch.

Can’t say I don’t deserve it. He’d had a problem with alcohol in the past, but he was sure he’d defeated it. He’d never be anything if he let his life’s old demons come back to him. He was a poet, an artist, and he had responsibilities now, to Ann and Melanie. I better get my shit together, he told himself.

He turned on the night-light and got up, grabbed his robe. He couldn’t stand the smell of himself. He padded down the hall but stopped before the bathroom door. He heard water running. Jesus, who could be taking a shower at this hour? He peeked into Melanie’s room and found it empty, the bed unslept in.

She must’ve been out late too. Of course, Martin could not justifiably scold her, given his own state. He sat on the bed to wait for her to finish. The room was plush, full of antiques. He looked around, waiting, but felt distracted. Next, he found himself standing at the window.

Low in twilight, the moon looked back at him. It was nearly full. Its odd, bright-pink light seeped into his eyes, lulling him. The light seemed to show him things—indeterminate, yet absolutely awful things—beyond its fixed glow.

Blood. Flesh. Evil faces.

Words.

Hüsl, hüsl, hüsl.

Give lof…

And: You are wreccan now.

Martin felt lost, staring into the light. His consciousness felt wavering. What am I doing? he heard himself. He heard a distant hissing. The shower? Yes. Something was luring him away, yet the light remained like a ghost in his eyes.

Inexplicably, he turned away from the window and walked into Melanie’s closet. But why? The closet was dark, but toward the back he detected a point of light.

A hole in the wall. A hole of light.

He put his eye to the hole.

Melanie, standing in a suit of white lather. Eyes closed, she turned her face up to the torrent of cool water. Martin’s eye remained open over the hole. Something forced him to watch. Now Melanie was washing the suds off her body, the water sluicing. She shut the water off and stepped out.

What am I…

She towel-dried her fine, light brown hair. Martin stared at her perfectly formed rump as she bent to dry her legs. Then she straightened, patting the towel around her breasts and under her arms. She hadn’t shaved her armpits in several days; Martin found the sparse covering of hair, like fine fur, to be densely erotic. Even more erotic was the contrast of her large, dark brown nipples against the flawless whiteness of her breasts.

What…am…I—

Martin was masturbating as he continued to spy on his lover’s young daughter. It felt obscene, like incest, but he couldn’t refrain. Melanie’s skin was so bright in the bathroom light, so lustrous. Somehow, looking at it was like being on some drug. Her face, too, was beautiful, and her dark brown eyes, the mussed wet hair. Martin felt helpless against the urge to continue to stroke himself. It was this vision that spurred him, the sharp white clarity of Melanie’s beauty, of her flesh. Beads of water nestled in her pubic hair glittered like jewels. Martin considered what his lust had reduced him to at that moment: I’m a pervert, a peeper. I’m a thirty-eight-year-old published author masturbating in a closet.

The images he peeked at began to meld with his imagination; he imagined sliding his penis slowly in and out of Melanie’s fresh sex. He imagined that virginal tightness, and then flooding it with his sperm. The sperm would rush out of her when he withdrew and run down her pretty leg. Next, she’d be sucking him hard again, the hot friction so deft that his knees would wobble. She would suck him off like a practiced whore and at the last moment jerk him off all over those pert, perfect breasts…

No, Martin couldn’t help the unconscionable musings. He could only look on as Melanie continued to tend to herself, oblivious to the voyeur’s eye on the other side of the wall.

Oblivious? came the strange question.

Melanie stood with her front toward the wall. She was looking down, drying the muff of hair and the insides of her thighs. Then, very slowly, she looked up, right at the wall. She grinned directly into Martin’s gaze.

Martin felt locked in rigor. The grin struck him like a fisticuff. He nearly shrieked. The tiny pendant lay between her breasts, and in her eyes—her stark beautiful chocolate-colored eyes—he saw madness, ataxia. He saw death.

“You are wreccan now, Martin,” she said through her grin.

«« — »»

Erik could smell it even before he entered. He could feel it. Hustig, he thought automatically. Hüslfek.

The door to the church basement was unlocked. He stepped into blackness and waited, listening. No one was here, he felt sure of that. He felt sure of something else: people had been murdered in this place very recently.

The hustigs always ended at the high moon. There were no windows, so he felt safe turning on the lights.

Here was the brygorwreccan’s chamber. This was where Erik used to live. He wondered about who had replaced him. There was the bed, the old dresser, the same bare, whitewashed cement walls. In the back was a large stereo system, but that was all.

The trunk.

The trunk had been moved to the side. He opened it and was not surprised to find several shovels and a box of heavy-duty plastic garbage bags, an ax, and a few knives. Erik had kept his money hidden in the trunk’s vinyl lining, but it wasn’t there. There were also a few flashlights and a few pairs of work gloves. Tools of the trade, he thought.

He went to the back of the chamber. The large wooden door faced him like an old nemesis. From under its crack, he could feel the giveaway draft of warm air. Erik didn’t need to open the massive door for the evidence; he could see it in his mind. He could see the fire pit and stoke rods, the blood-crusted dolmen, the chettles and the iron hooks high on the cement walls.

And he could see the nihtmir propped up in the nave.

But the door was locked.

He set down the shotgun and got the small hand-æsc out of the trunk. He began to dig around the bolt. He actually giggled as he worked. I’m gonna trash the entire cirice. See how they like that. Let the fuckers know that Erik Tharp is back in town.

The hard wood around the bolt plate was tough. The sharp æsc-point dug out a splinter at a time. Soon he exposed the edge of the bolt plate. Once he got that out—

“Brygorwreccan,” announced a voice behind him.

Erik turned. A guy in leather and black hair hanging in his face stood before him. He smiled wanly, holding a double-tipped pickax at port arms.

“Welcome home,” Zack said. He lunged, heaving the pickax. Erik yelled and threw his hands up.

The pickax sank into Erik’s left palm, then slammed into the door, nailing him to the wood. He reached for the shotgun, felt a bone break in his hand. Not gonna make it, he thought, grimly frantic. He stretched, but the shotgun remained inches from his grasp.

Meanwhile, Zack came at him with a knife…

—

Chapter 22

“Dooer, dooer,” oozed the voice in the dream.

Ann strained against the turmoil of sleep. The nightmare replayed through her mind. Melanie’s birth seventeen years ago in the fruit cellar while the storm raged outside. The feminine chorus, firelight dancing on naked flesh. Soft hands caressed her, roving the gravid belly, tracing the sweat-slick thighs. Ann twitched in sleep. The emblem hovered, the queer double circle; it seemed to give off the faintest glow, and she thought she could see something in its shape, but what? Mouths sucked warm milk from her swollen breasts. Tongues licked fervidly up and down over her clitoris. Her sex began to spasm as her womb began to contract…

“Dooer, dooer.”

The nightmare’s eye showed it all, never faces, just the naked figures bowed in attendance. A cup was being passed around, engraved with the same emblem on the wall. Then came more words, issuing in liquid softness:

“Dother fo Dother, Dother fo Dother.”

And the final vertiginous image: the bright-bladed knife plunging down—

slup-slup-slup

—time after time to the hilt, into soft flesh…

Ann’s eyes snapped open in the dark. A slice of faint pink light canted in through the window. The clock glowed 4:12 a.m.

She lay on her side in a fetal shape. She watched several minutes pass on the clock, and soon the nightmare began to fade from her mind. She began to feel better. She could hear Martin breathing lightly behind her, and then she felt his hand slide over her breasts. At first she wanted to rebel, slap the hand away. She was still mad at him, she remembered, but his hand on her breasts felt so good, so soothing. The sensation pushed the dream out of her head completely, leaving desire in its place. She moaned as the fingers tended the nipple, gorging it. Next, his hands were pushing her nightgown up over her rump. Ann kept her eyes closed. Suddenly, she felt…lewd. She opened her legs at once, inviting him. His hands lay her out on her back; his penis nudged her once as he moved down in the dark. The glans felt hard as a knob of polished wood. He pushed her knees up to her chin and began to go down on her.

She whined at the initial contact of his tongue, then moaned steadily. Gently, and slowly at first, his tongue traced up and down the groove of her sex. Ann felt a flood of moisture and desire collide; she hugged her knees to her chest as the tongue delved harder and more precisely. Martin was going down on her more deftly than she could remember. He made her feel so good so fast that she forgave him instantly of his drunkenness and his coming home so late. The synchronicity of his mouth and tongue against the rhythmic tremors of her hips drew her horniness out like a tension rod being twisted and twisted. Soon it would have to snap…

She was going to come, but she didn’t want to, not yet. She wanted to come with him inside of her. “Fuck me now,” she panted. She never talked dirty in bed, but tonight she couldn’t restrain herself. She’d never felt like this, so wound up, so primitively horny. “Put your cock in me.”

Martin’s soft poet’s hands turned her over on her belly, then hauled her hips up. The roughness with which he positioned her was almost brutal, but she liked it—the promptness, the immediacy of his desire. He knelt behind her splayed rump; she felt like a bitch in heat waiting to be mounted. One hand came around her hip, the fingers opening her. Ann tensed as the gorged glans nudged into her sex. All she could feel right now was her need, like electricity humming from the swollen points of her nipples to the warm pocket of her sex. It made his penis feel huge and surreally hard. She almost shrieked when he thrust it all into her at once.

He was so deep in her. One hand braced her thigh, the other came around and plied her clitoris as his thrusts drew in and out. The pleasure was excruciating. The potentiality of her orgasm ticked in her loins like a bomb about to go off. She buried her face in the pillow, to increase the angle and depth of the penetration. It was too much, too many sensations waiting to break at once. Her hands twisted the sheets into knots, her teeth bit into the pillow.

“I love you, Martin,” she panted. She couldn’t believe what she said next. “You fuck me so good, I love it when you fuck me like this. Do it harder, honey. Fuck me harder.”

Her request was obliged. His penis pushed into her so deep she thought she’d scream. He grabbed her hand and made her touch herself as he doubled the pace of his thrusts. His hips slapped the back of her thighs. He was pounding her, his penis plunging steadily in and out as she massaged the tip of her sex with her own fingers. Her breath hissed out of her throat, the pillowcase tore against her teeth. Her orgasm exploded.

The first was an abrupt, flexing burst, followed by strings of smaller pulses that didn’t want to end. His penis continued to reel orgasms out of her loins like strings of large pearls. It felt so good, so delicious, that tears squeezed out of her eyes.

Soon she was so sore and sensitive she could bear no more. Martin’s thrusts ebbed, then he stopped fully, his penis still buried in her. She eased forward, felt it slip out. “I want you to come now,” she whispered. Martin remained upright on his knees. She turned around in the dark. She unhesitantly grasped his penis at its base and took the gorged glans into her mouth. She could taste the wet salt of her own musk. But something was strange, something she noticed at once.

“You sure as shit aren’t going to make me come like that,” her bed companion remarked.

My…God, Ann thought. Her movements froze. Her eyes peeled open as she moved her mouth off.

It was not Martin who had made the remark. It was Milly.

The bed lamp flicked on. Ann looked up, aghast. Milly knelt before her on the bed, naked, the set of her mouth part grin, part sneer. But…but…was all Ann could think until she lowered her gaze. Jutting from betwixt Milly’s legs was a heinous parody of the male sex organ, attached to the nurse’s hips with straps. Ann was disgusted. No wonder it felt so huge—it was huge. It looked like a miniature table leg, polished smooth with a rounded knob. It was black, shining. Even veins had been fashioned along the rubber shaft.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Milly said. “You came, didn’t you?”

“How did—what—” Ann stammered. A brief glance showed her Milly’s room, not her and Martin’s. Ann immediately pulled her nightgown down and crawled back. What was she doing here?

“Come on, Ann,” Milly said. “Don’t pretend. You liked it.”

“I thought you were Martin!”

“Don’t hand me that shit. You started it. You came to me.”

Had she? I must have, Ann realized. “I was confused, from earlier, I mean. I must’ve been disoriented.”

“Bullshit. You wanted it, and you got it.”

Milly’s grin terrified her as much as the sight of the heinous black phallus, which the nurse then gave a mocking stroke. Next, she touched her sex beneath the thing’s base. Ann saw, with further outrage, that the rubber penis even came complete with molded testicles. Milly’s breasts were smaller than Ann’s, and somewhat flat, with large oblong brown nipples. The nipple ends stood out like round wall studs.

“Okay, lover,” Milly said. “My turn now.”

“No! I… It was a mistake!”

Milly wouldn’t hear of it. She pushed Ann roughly onto her back, then straddled over her and unstrapped the penis. “Lie back,” she ordered. She actually put her hand to Ann’s throat as she crawled over her. Between her breasts, there was an odd pendant of some kind, a pale stone on a white string. Milly poised her sex over Ann’s face, one knee at Ann’s armpit, and her other foot planted on the pillow.

“Milly… No…”

Milly chuckled. Her pubis was a great, light brown bush. “You can lick my pussy for a while,” she said, “then you’re gonna put that rubber cock on and fuck the daylights out of me. You hear me, sweetheart?”

Ann could no longer speak; Milly’s sex plopped onto her mouth. A hand grasped the front of her hair. Ann’s lips sealed shut. I’m being raped by a woman, she thought, but she could not explain how she felt. She could scream or even bite…but…

“Go on,” Milly said. “Lick it.”

The light flicked off. The slant of pink moonlight was all that lit the room, falling across Ann’s eyes.

“Lick it.”

Ann gulped.

“I said lick it. Don’t pretend you don’t want to.”

What it was exactly that Ann could not explain to herself was that she did want to.

She hesitated. The pink moonlight oozed into her eyes. Milly lowered herself some more, sitting directly on Ann’s face.

“Go on. Do it.”

Ann felt something release in herself, something in her conscience or her spirit. Her hands drifted up and stroked Milly’s buttocks. She sighed. In another moment she was doing exactly as Milly had ordered.

«« — »»

“Holy shit,” Chief Bard slowly muttered.

Zack’s body lay like a broken doll across the floor. A single Remington 12-gauge casing shined at the baseboard. Zack had a rough, meaty hole in his chest the size of an adult fist. A halo of blood encircled the body.

Tharp, Bard realized.

He noted that the door past the gravedigger’s room stood open. Someone had torn the wood out around the bolt seat. Bard, with a knowing reluctance, stepped past the dark threshold.

Aw, shit, goddamn it, shit. His Mag-Lite played across the cirice. Desecrated, he thought. That’s how they would see this. The dolmen had been tipped over, several of the iron chettles had been cracked. The earthen chalice lay smashed. Tharp had even tried to pry the nihtmir off the wall. Thank God he’d failed.

Bard dragged Zack’s body out to the cruiser. The town lay asleep in darkness. The high hedgerow hid him and his efforts. Zack was what police called “skell”: a low-life deadbeat punk, a criminal. Bard could’ve cared less that the boy was dead; that’s not what distressed him now to the point that he felt tremors in his gut. To them, it wasn’t a street punk who had been murdered, it was a brygorwreccan. This fact, and the desecration of their temple, was notice to them. They had been attacked. They had an enemy in the know.

Bard knew well that they would not like this. No, they wouldn’t like this at all.

«« — »»

Next morning, Martin sheepishly entered the kitchen. Ann didn’t look up from her orange juice and muffin.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he offered.

“What do you mean?” she feigned, still not looking at him.

“Coming home late, coming home drunk,” he said. “I met some of the guys at the Crossroads. We were drinking, running our mouths, and next thing I know it’s closing time. You know how it is.”

“No, Martin, I don’t know how it is. So why don’t you tell me?”

“Come on, Ann. Give me a break.”

At last Ann looked up. “That’s not what any of this is about and you know it.”

Martin looked confused. “Why are you so pissed off? It’s not the crime of the century when a guy has a few too many beers and loses track of time.”

Ann huffed. “I know that, Martin, and you know that’s not the reason I’m pissed off. Don’t treat me like a fool.”

“Ann, what are you—”

“Who were you with yesterday!” she snapped.

He looked at her funny. “I told you, the guys from the ’Roads.”

“Right, Martin, right.”

“It’s true,” he countered. “I was with Andre, the guy who runs the place, and Dave Kromer, Bill Eberhart, and some other guys who work in town.”

“Bullshit, Martin. I saw you. Yesterday afternoon, I saw you driving my car away from that silly little general store, and there was a woman sitting next to you.”

“Wha—oh, you mean Melanie.”

“No, Martin, it wasn’t Melanie—”

“Yes, it was, Mom,” Melanie said, coming into the kitchen. She was wearing a sundress Ann didn’t recognize. Casually, she opened the refrigerator and poured some orange juice. “I went into the store to get some sodas to take to Wendlyn’s. Martin saw me coming out so he picked me up and gave me a ride.”

Ann’s brow runneled. “A ride to where?”

“I told you, Mom. To Wendlyn’s. She wanted to show me her dresses. In fact, she gave this one to me. Wasn’t that nice of her?”

“Uh,” Ann stalled. “Yes, it was.” She felt an instant fool, looking at Martin. “I’m sorry, Martin. I thought—”

Martin laughed. He came around and rubbed her shoulders at the table. “What, you thought I was running off with Maedeen the ice cream lady?” He laughed again.

“I guess I’m overreacting to everything these days,” Ann said, as if that were an excuse. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Actually, I can’t blame you for jumping to conclusions,” Martin joked. “As good-looking as I am, what woman wouldn’t be constantly jealous? My expertise as a lover is world-renowned. Before I met you, women had to put themselves on a waiting list to go out with me.”

“Oh, God!” Melanie laughed and left the kitchen. But Ann still felt like a shitheel. She touched Martin’s hand as he continued to massage her shoulder. How long could he remain so forgiving of her quick temper and lack of forethought? She’d practically accused him of cheating on her, which was the laugh of all time, considering what she’d done last night with…

Milly, she remembered.

She felt horrible keeping the truth from him. If it were with another man, he’d be justified to end the relationship right now. But with another woman? What would he do if he knew? What would any man do?

She wanted to tell him, but what on earth could she say?

“I’m going out back for a while,” he said, and picked up his pad and pen. She didn’t have time to say anything. “I’m working on a great poem, my magnum opus,” he went on with his mysterious poet’s enthusiasm. “So far it’s a hundred stanzas.”