I nearly spill my morning coffee when I notice the big, black headlines on the front page of the newspaper. “BODIES FOUND!” it screams, and my eyes shoot to the accompanying photograph of the warehouse where I used to work. I can’t believe this. Reading farther doesn’t help me much either. There’s no mention of Snyder, the little guy I used to work with, or what fiend might have committed the crimes. There’s only the police department’s assurance that the killer will be caught.

I first met Snyder when I applied for a job at a local warehouse and got it. The way the economy is going, getting the job was a great surprise, and I suppose it had something to do with me having prior experience running a forklift. That had to be it because things are tight on the job scene. For two months before I got the job I’d been watching the national news when I got home from job hunting, and Brian the anchorperson would tell me and the world about another company that had just laid off thousands of people as they tried to keep their company afloat. With all these continual layoffs going on, I really never thought I’d find a job so fast. But somehow I did.

The day after being hired, I see Snyder standing there by the time clock when I come in and wonder if he’s checking on me to see if I punch in on time. I suppose he has the right to do that. I don’t know how long he’s been working here, but even if it is a matter of days or even hours, he would still be my superior under the real Big Boss that never comes out into the actual warehouse to check on us. As far as I know, Big Boss has Silvia, his secretary, come out every morning with a new clipboard stuffed with the orders we must find to set out on the loading dock. This seems to work out well, but we never see them, and they never see us. In a way, it’s kind of nice not having someone watching over us. But in another way, it seems strange as all get out.

Even though Snyder may be over me seniority-wise, when we are plucking orders I’m the operator and he’s the laborer. He doesn’t seem to want anything to do with mechanical things, and that’s OK with me. For what small wage I’m getting here, I feel real good just sitting on the machine all day. If, on the other hand, I had to lift all those crates and boxes like Snyder does, then I might feel put upon.

Now, two weeks later, I’m glancing over the list on the clipboard and find the first thing we have to pluck from the shelves is a crate filled with new furniture parts. Hanging the clipboard back on the nail driven into the wall, I look around for Snyder, but he has vanished. Shaking my head, I jump aboard the Hyster-lift and drive off towards isle-C where the crate should be stored, two stories up. Zeroing in on the loading spot I need, I see Snyder sitting on the crate we want, his dark eyes gleaming down upon me from the shadows.

“How the heck did you get way up there?” I ask.

“Climbed.”

“Really? Wasn’t it a tough climb?”

“Not for me,” he says, hopping off the crate.

“OK. Stand off to the side and I’ll slip the tines under it.”

Even as I work, I can’t help wondering if maybe there’s a secret ladder around here that I don’t know about. The climb he made up to the crate would have been tough for a guy my size, let alone for a guy two feet shorter. But then, he’s built like a miniature Schwarzenegger. So, maybe that’s the answer.

Getting the crate down and set on the dock where it will wait for a truck to pick it up, Snyder jumps up onto the metal tines of the Hyster-lift, and we ride back to the time clock for another look at the clipboard to see what our next item will be. While I’m checking the list, Silvia comes out of the door leading from the office and drops a few coins in the pop machine. I don’t think she expected to see either of us warehouse workers when she came out here, because when she finally notices me standing there some six feet away, she freezes. The look on her face says, “Please don’t hurt me!” and I hurry to reassure her with a friendly smile that I have no intension of doing so. Bravely, she tries to return the smile, but it comes off like some bad artist has painted it there between her nose and chin.

“So, how’s your day going?” I ask.

“Fine,” she answers, her eyes shooting to the door and back.

“Good. Ah, you don’t look like you remember me. Do you?”

“Ah, I’m not sure.”

“I’m Steve. Two weeks ago I came into the office to give you the information you needed to employ me.”

“Two weeks ago? Oh, I remember.”

“You look surprised. I must not have a memorable face.”

“It’s not that. I’m just surprised you’re still here. Most of the workers we get here only last a week or so. One day they’re here, and the next gone. Completely disappeared.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Most of the times I come out here there’s nobody around. It’s kind of spooky, ya know? Even more so when I have to work late. That’s when I hear all the little sounds of the place.”

“What kind of sounds do you hear?”

“Oh, tiny, nondescript sounds coming out of the darkness. You know, the kind that could be mice, the wind, or just your imagination.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. But you know, when you’re working, Snyder is probably doing the same. It could be him you’re hearing.”

“Who’s Snyder?” she asks, some fright returning to her face.

“Well,” I say, turning to look around for him and finding him gone. “He was here just a minute ago. I’m sure you know him: small guy; lots of muscles; doesn’t say much.”

She shakes her head.

“But he works here,” I say in frustration.

“No. We don’t have anyone working here by that name. I think we did back when I first started here, but not since.”

“How long ago did you start here?”

“Let me see, it will be five years ago this month.”

“But—“

“Well, I’ve got to get back,” she says, walking briskly towards the door.

Being speechless right then, I just stand there watching her retreat through the doorway. I’m thinking she is either slipping a few cogs behind that pretty face, or she isn’t the one that makes out the checks, and would therefore see Snyder’s name over and over. Jeez. How could she not know Snyder? Who does she think was working out here before I showed up?

Looking around, I wonder where Snyder has gone off to. Sensing movement, I see him up above everything, squatting there among the metal framework of the roof trusses, once again eyeing me with those large, near-black eyes of his. I’m about to ask him if he’s ready to work when he jump-starts my heart by jumping from one truss to the next one like a monkey. As I watch in awe, he continues on swinging from truss to truss until he comes to the wall, where he grabs a hold on a metal electrical conduit and slides down to the floor. I’m so amazed by his gymnastic antics that I’m once again speechless.

“Did you see that lady I was talking to?” I finally ask.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing his belly. “Yummy.”

“Yummy?”

He grins, showing two rows of dirty, ragged-edged teeth. “I like her,” he says.

“Yeah, well, she just told me you don’t work here. What do you think of that?”

“Not much. Why would she say that?”

“I don’t know. Does she make out your check?”

“She could, I guess. Why?”

“Because your name would be on the check she types up.”

His eyes begin to bore into me, and then he says, “She doesn’t make mine out. Big Boss does. Besides, I’m on salary. They don’t pay me by the hour.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t care one way or the other. I just thought it funny she didn’t know you.”

“Maybe someday she will,” he says, raising his eyebrows up and down a couple of times.

“Yeah,” I say, thinking: like that’s going to happen. “We better get back to work, you think?”

For an answer he jumps on the tines, and I start the machine and drive off towards isle-D where the next order lies. When we get there, we find the wooden pallet the order sits upon is crushed on one side, and I get out to help Snyder clear a path beneath the load for the left tine. Struggling with the heavy steel, I don’t notice my little friend has moved around behind me until he steps on the tine and it begins to crush my hand between the steel and the concrete floor. In instant pain, I swing around to see what is happening and unavoidably smack Snyder hard enough to send him rolling and his hammer flying. With his weight off the tine, my left hand becomes free, and I get up to go back and see if I’ve hurt the little fellow. He seems to be all right, and as I help him up I wonder what he was doing with a hammer in his hand.

Deciding I need an explanation, I question him about it.

Again his dark eyes glue onto mine, and he says, “Ah..I..was just going to see if I could pull the wood up so you could slip the tine in.”

He’s not very good at lying, and for weeks afterwards I wonder about his intensions, never guessing correctly until much later. You see, I really couldn’t grill him the next day because when I got home that night, I had a message from my old boss asking me to return the next day. I was really happy about that. Even though my questions about the hammer would go unanswered, there would be no more working with Snyder, and starting on the morrow, I’d be making twice what I had been making at the warehouse.

I suppose there are times, sometimes in life, when we’re just left to think up our own answers to the questions that come along—such as why I felt Snyder was about to hit me with that hammer, and what his motive could have been. I seriously thought this was going to be one of these times, but as it turned out, I just hadn’t waited long enough for the answers. Months later, as I sit there in my recliner with a beer in one hand and a plate of meat and chips near the other, one of those true detective shows comes on, and guess what murders are being featured? You guessed it. The warehouse murders.

According to the show, five bodies had been found stuffed inside the warehouse. Four men and (oh oh) a woman. Yeah. That’s what I was thinking: Silvia. Anyway, the bodies that were found were in such rough shape they had to be sent to the police lab where Forensics could have their way with them, finding out who they were and how they died. After seeing a half-second shot of one of the bodies on the screen, and listening to what the medical examiner had to say, I just couldn’t eat anymore and went in to take another beer from the fridge.

Apparently, and this is the truth according to the show, the victims had been hit in the skull with what the medical examiner called a blunt instrument like a hammer. The victims were also sucked dry through several puncture wounds until they were merely dried sacks of skin containing bones. Later in the show after the medical examiner had left, his assistant said to the camera that, “It was as if a giant spider had sucked them dry.”

About two weeks or so after that show, I picked up a newspaper to find that a body had been found along the railroad tracks between my town and the next. I wouldn’t have paid it much mind had not the larger print stated the body was that of a small, muscular male. The body had no identification on it, and was mangled so badly after several trains had run over it that only DNA could be used to find out who it was.  I really doubt anyone will come forth wanting to pay for that test. But I know who the body belonged to, and what cinched it for me is the hammer, a very large nail, and a box of plastic straws which were found near the bodily remains. With this evidence, and what I knew, it was a sure bet it was Snyder.

Since that horrible discovery, the world has turned and time has, as they say, marched on. Maybe I’m the only one left who knows or cares what has taken place, or that I was so close to a gristly death that I could feel it breathing down the back of my neck. But there is one thing I do know for certain about this mess, and that is, Snyder the spider has claimed his last victim, and now resides in Arachnid heaven with others of his kind. The rest of the facts are just blowing in the westerly wind, my friend. Just left blowing in the wind.

He peeled back the blinds and thought about all the movies and TV shows he’d ever seen in which someone peeled back the blinds only to be spotted by the bad guys and shot thirty-eight times from the deeply-tinted window of a Lincoln Towncar. The street outside spoke in whispers and he could not hear its words. He had been a man for twenty-three years and he had been a fugitive for seven days and he had spent his life in running water and air-cooled homes; he did not speak the language of the new world.

He let go of the blinds and turned to the room. It was gloom-forged in the twilight, and the sun’s last touch came through the edges of the windows in a wash of flat steel.

“There’s nothing,” he said. She nodded. He went to her where she crouched on the mismatched sofa with her arms around her knees. He sat down and she leaned into him: a slow long declination that was not so much an act of will as of gravity and the wayward compression of ancient couch springs. They were awake for a time. They slept for a time.

*

            He peeled back the blinds and watched the street and the buildings across from them. He didn’t think any of them would be in the buildings – they were three stories up – but he wasn’t sure of that or of anything else that had happened in the last eight days. It was very difficult to admit to himself the exact depth of his ignorance, and of his fear… but he did it. It was as though his will was a pair of cold hands and with them he could cradle the head from which his mind’s eye peered and twist that head around to look at something highly unpleasant, nauseatingly unpleasant, but also deeply lethal and therefore worth watching; to proceed with the hubris of assuming that he knew anything at all about the world would be galactically stupid.

On the street, nothing moved. She was still asleep. He hated waking her, bringing her out of whatever dreams there may still be, but he pushed with those cold hands, and he woke her. Neither of them needed to dress. Neither of them had showered ­– they didn’t dare make such noise or waste the water – and the smell of her was like the sour patch of bare earth where a dumpster had once sat. He doubted that he was much different.

They opened the door and descended two flights of creaking steps, steep and boiling with shadows, and stopped on the street-level landing with the row of brass mailboxes on the wall beside them. The glass plates beneath each were fogged and dusty registers of the dead. They crept to the glass door and looked out onto a dawn the color of loss.

He had not seen the sun in five days. He did not ascribe any special significance to this; the idea that the sun had fled with the world they knew was absurd, and to give into such things would be no better than refusing to face their new ignorance. But pragmatism didn’t make it any less eerie.

He opened the door. She moved behind him, close, touching, and he could feel her fear. She was birdlike and pale with pixie-cut hair as dark as her eyes and her constitution had never been strong and eight days of abject terror had burned into her face like decades. He had always thought her beautiful. He thought her beautiful now.

Henry Williams took her east, where Main Street tapered off some three blocks away. Cars parked slantwise on the street beside them glinted in the grey and Henry looked for movement behind their tinted glass. Their footfalls seemed strangely soft as though the new dawn were absorbing instead of magnifying the solitary sound.

The car came into view before either of them heard it. It was a Toyota Camry and dark green. It pulled up to the stoplight – hanging black eyes – at Main and Peters and idled there for a moment as though paying its respect to the intersection and then swept onto Main and slipped into a spot not ten yards in front of them.

Henry and Catherine froze.

For about five seconds, nothing came from the car save the slow susurrus of its idling engine. Then the engine cut, the driver’s door swung open, and in the bare second before the man inside stepped out, Henry heard the urbane little chime that said Hey fucko, we’re your keys and we’re still in the ignition, don’t forget to take us with you. Then Henry saw the driver, and the skin behind his ears crept up the back of his skull.

He felt Catherine’s small hand close over his like a garrote and he thought, If she runs, we are both going to die here. She was holding his left hand, the hand he would need free to pull the old World War II bayonet that he had brought from Jerald’s apartment – it had been Jerald’s grandfather’s, who had lifted it from the broken corpse of a Japan man on an island whose name he never knew – out from under his belt at the back of his shirt, and she was holding it the way a python holds a small goat, but the thought itself brought a strange, high clarity. The cold palms inside his head turned him to face that blank truth and in it he saw the last thing he expected: freedom.

The man who emerged from the Toyota was dressed in a grey wool suit with a pale lilac shirt and a white tie. He stepped back, clapped the door shut, and then advanced to the curb, which was a foot-and-a-half monster all down the length of central Main. He stepped up eighteen inches onto the broad sidewalk, intent on the black glass façade of the Oregon Will and Trust before him, and for one wild airborne moment Henry thought he would stroll right past them. It was possible, he knew – his admission of extreme ignorance was not one of total ignorance, and he had, like everyone else left, seen quite a bit during the last week – but even so, unlikely. He and Catherine were still and their eyes followed Mr. Camry as he advanced upon Oregon Will.

The man ascended the three steps leading to the bank’s double doors and then put out his right hand. Though his left was bare, there was a thick gold ring upon the third finger of the right, and Henry thought the blue stone upon it was roughly the size of a hen’s egg. That ring – eight, maybe nine millimeters of burnished, inlaid gold – tapped against the brushed steel handle of the Oregon Will and Trust… and slid away. The man stopped, one black wingtip in midstride, hand out (but falling), and his head began to turn.

Henry felt the tension in the body beside him, and again he thought she would run, but he gave her hand the lightest and briefest of squeezes and, as though through a relief valve, the terror began to uncoil from her. It ran up his arm in orange waves.

Henry had spent three summers as a carpenter’s apprentice in Maine, four years wrestling in high school, could bench one hundred and fifty percent of his own body weight, and had once punched a man until three strangers pulled him away; he had been unable to make a fist with that hand for three weeks afterwards, and had been told that the man had spent half a year eating through a straw. But the force, the… vibe… he was getting out of her now was something that pushed water into his biceps and made his bowels run. It was sheer, pitch-flight panic, coming out of her like a live current.

The man turned his head slowly, and Henry thought of that fake cop in Terminator 2, the one who was really an evil cyborg from the future, turning his head with the slow, implacable rhythm of a machine. The comparison struck him as funny – Mr. Camry, with his over-forty beergut and flaring shave-rash, didn’t exactly look like the pinnacle of robotic killing technology – and again he felt that bright yellow ribbon brush against his mind: freedom. It blew through him like the first breath of winter, and he felt the cottony, humid pressure of the Midwestern day, that heavy, unwelcome stormcrow, lift from his shoulders.

If Catherine sensed it, she gave no sign. She had not spoken a word while awake in five days and her silence and increasing withdrawal was one of his main reasons for leaving the apartment behind and he was more than certain that they would be found and killed and dismembered long before they reached any safe ground but to stay would have meant her slow transition into vegetation. These thoughts – thoughts of her slipping away, of following Vergil into whatever white abyss lay beyond the red screaming death at the end of the world, and of his helplessness to prevent the near-certainty of her meeting such an end – came on the new wind of his freedom and the scent of them added something else to his rising mind: anger.

Because death was so prevalent and so imminent and so ineluctable and therefore any willful action to stave it off, no matter how inept or temporary, was the right action.

The anger rose, and he put one hand on the thick black fur of its canine head and held it at bay.

The man turned toward them and as he did so his hand fell away from the door and Henry could see that he had been scalped and that someone had removed every other tooth from both the upper and lower rows of his jaw.

*

            He runs and he pushes through door after door and then he is outside and the light is a blind roar and something paws at his side and he looks down and there is blood there is so much fucking blood and it is smeared on his jeans from where the kneeling woman has touched him and she grins through more blood and gibbers at him and he keeps running. Behind him the yammering scripture of Yoggoroth the Worm, Yggrth the Eater of Corpses, tears the air and rolls along the ceilings and up the brick walls like red smoke and the world he knew is blood.

He reaches his car but there is a man in his windshield and the man’s legs are gone and the man is still moving but cannot get free of the oblong ruin of safety glass in which he has been anchored. He spins on his heel and there is the fire escape and he thinks, doesn’t Jerald live in this building and he thinks It is loosed, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, oh Bethlehem oh Sphinx of the sands oh Discordia and the indignant desert birds and he thinks that perhaps he has begun to catch the madness but he slaps himself on the side of his head and takes the fire escape stairs three at a stride.

Just outside, on the second landing, there is a man painting the glass door with what might be feces and Henry doesn’t stop, just wraps one fist around the rusting handrail and puts his momentum into his left foot, which strikes the man in his sternum as he turns and sends him over the rail and onto the pavement seventeen feet below. Henry enters the building and the thread linking him to Catherine spools up and shortens. It is a bright, fine thread, one with the potential for more than redemption, and it ends in death.

*

            “Cobble?” the man said.

Henry put his right hand on Catherine’s hand, the one that had his left in a bloodless crush, and tapped her three times. She blinked, and looked at him, and let him go. He moved his left to the hilt of the old bayonet and crossed in front of her. He took her left hand in his right and, keeping himself between her and Mr. Camry, began to walk east on the sidewalk.

“Cobble? Gibralter keys? I played a game with Martin and schism phylum philtrum fishhook,” the man said.

Henry felt that wind, that golden wind, pushing him onward, and on its sweet breath came an idea.

“You forgot your keys, man.”

Mr. Camry turned his mutilated head the way a dog that hears Treat? will. “Cobble?” he said.

“In your car, man. You forgot your keys,” Henry said. “Better get ‘em.” He did not stop walking east. They were abreast of the man now, between him and his car, and it occurred to Henry that if Scalpy O’Camry chose this exact moment to actually follow his advice, he would head straight towards him and Catherine, but the freedom whispered, and the anger whispered, and his left hand flexed on the ancient, sweatworn wood of the bayonet’s handle, and inside his head, the pale hands arranged his mind’s face into a slow, mirthless smile.

*

            She is squatting naked in the bathroom, and when he sees that she is squatting over Vergil’s body he is certain that she is one of them. He already has the bayonet – it is the first thing he moves for once reaching the third floor and Jerald’s unlocked apartment; many a stupendously drunken night has been spent in this broad room and the artifacts herein are well known to him  – and he thinks he can probably put six or seven inches of the eighteen-inch blade into the junction where the base of her skull meets the top of her spine before she spins and vomits bile at him and tries to press her thumbs into his eyes while reciting the pledge of allegiance or something. At least, this is the kind of thing that people in movies who know what they’re doing do to the bad guys, and she’s all of one hundred and five pounds and facing away from him. Then he notices that she’s not quite naked; he sees a peek of violet cotton and makes out of the gloom the shape of a pair of low-riding thong panties. This is something that he would find quite sexy under circumstances that did not involve the ripening corpse of his best friend and the immediate prospect of plunging a fifty-year-old piece of steel into the back of her neck and watching her flap and thrash on the dirty white tiles like a skewered seafish on a sailboat deck.

The other thing he notices as he’s about to stab her in the spine is that she is weeping. He has never heard any of them weep, or cry, or seen any of them shed tears; sorrow seems to be one of the select few emotions of which they are utterly incapable. She is crying softly over her boyfriend’s body and he realizes that the point of the bayonet is less than two inches from the nape of her neck. Even in the gloom, he can see the tiny, colorless hairs that dot her fair flesh. She is short and small and has never looked at him seriously and her boyish hair is the best thing about her next to her irascible habit of calling his bullshit – something almost no one else on the planet is capable of; Henry, son of Daniel, is a world-class wool-puller – and in his mind, two cold hands grasp his jaw and tug him around and he watches his forearm bulge as though to burst. He watches the steel slip into her neck and feels it catch, once, on a knob of bone that is her third vertebrae and then there is gristle and then there is muscle and then there is a tight slide like the last Friday night of sophomore summer in the hot cool of Jennifer Almsberger’s spare room with the window open on the ice-blue half moon and her runner’s legs around his hips, the sheath of his steel in her flesh and Catherine turns, a blade jutting from her throat, and calls his name.

The pale hands let him go and the world around them whispers in a language where every word means Black and he sees his left hand lower the blade, unused.     Catherine turns. Catherine calls his name.

*

            They were four yards past him when Camry decided to retrieve his keys. He spared them one suspicious, terrifyingly lucid glance, as though they were the ones who duped him into such folly (or perhaps the ones who scalped him and then fed him half his teeth, one after the other) instead of the ones who reminded him otherwise.

He descended the curb and opened the door of the Camry hard enough to put a three-inch dent into the car next to it, a sleek black Volkswagen with blue Maryland plates. As Mr. Camry reached into the cockpit, Henry quickened their pace. He did not take his hand from the hidden bayonet.

As Mr. Camry rummaged, Henry heard one final “Cobble?” and then they were away, stepping into Porter and looking up at the vast ruined tower of the Vista and its skirt of chain-link construction fence. As Henry watched, something moved behind one high window.

He did not lower his eyes from that tower until they were out of sight of its trackless flank.

*

            He bathes her but first he puts her aside on the mismatched sofa and drags Verg’s corpse out of the apartment and down the narrow steps and down the hall and onto the fire escape platform from whence the fecal artist was so recently evicted by virtue of Henry’s size eleven. He goes back inside into the lightless bowel of the building and kicks in doors – they are flimsy and hollow without deadbolts – until he finds some OU student’s pad with seventeen liquor bottles in various stages of dusty depletion all huddled atop a microwave that might have been white around the time dinosaurs ruled the earth. He picks out a fifth of Grey Goose, a two-liter Curaçao, a Crown, a Jim Beam, a gigantic plastic half-gallon bottle of Everclear, and, this last is chosen because it is Verg’s favorite, a near-empty quart of Captain Morgan Tattoo. He cradles this libation harvest back to the fire escape and he sets down the bottles and drapes Verg over one shoulder – the Vergmeister is mostly blood-free; Henry has not seen what killed him and does not particularly care to make a detailed enquiry on the matter – and carries him down the perilously thin stair to the forest-green dumpster behind the building. The man he kicked off the fire escape grins at him from the pavement. Someone has come along in the interval and stove in this worthy’s face, but most of the faceplate, including the bright rictus of well-maintained teeth, is intact. Henry heaves Vergil into the dumpster and pours all the alcohol over him save the Captain which he puts into the crook of Verg’s cold arm and then throws a lit matchbook onto the bed of cardboard and refuse and is nearly decapitated by the resulting mushroom of ethanol flame. His friend burns and the dumpster cracks but it is far enough from the building and the alcohol fire will die soon enough and so he gives Vergil a pyre and then he goes upstairs and he bathes her.

He spends two days feeding her by hand and telling her to go to the bathroom and to get in bed and to get up from bed and she obeys but stops speaking and soon does nothing but list against him when he sits down beside her. On the third night, after she has gone silent, gone dark, she rolls onto him in bed and throws one skinny shapely leg over his lap and puts her hand down the front of his jeans. In the deep, Byronic dark, he can see little, but he thinks her eyes are closed in the grasp of sleep. She finds him already half-prepared and her touch brings him fully erect. He moves to buck her but she puts one hand against his chest and she is strong, stronger than he could possibly have imagined and she pushes him back down and her other hand is moving is squeezing is oh God oh Discordia oh broken cathedral of a lost world ­– he begins to wonder where such a nice girl learned to do things like this and the thought ends in a blinding white flash that sends his hips upward and cramps both his calves and leaves a spike of deep muscular ache in his lower back for two weeks. This time when he bucks, she rides, and she slides off, and some dim serpentine corner of the gunpowder spiral that is his mind registers her lying back down beside him. That corner is infinitesimal, though, and the rest of him is carried off slowly on the rocking tide of his climax’s denouement, carried down into the black moonless waters of exhaustion and of sleep.

By the seventh day, he is sure that the entire world has ended, and equally sure that Catherine is never coming back out of her walking coma.

*

            There was a rending crash behind them, followed by a bang and a cascade of glass. Henry spun, lifting the bayonet, and saw that Mr. Camry had driven his namesake up onto the massive Main Street curb and across eight feet of paneled Main Street sidewalk and into the façade of the Oregon Will and Trust. The plexiglass came down in a watery sheet atop the Toyota’s cowl and windshield and onto the snarled ruin of its fenders. The front wheels had been carried up off the pavement with the impact and now spun in furious, whirring arcs. From fifty yards away, Henry could hear the motor rev as Scalpy held the pedal down.

Darkness down the throat of the world, Henry thought. He frowned; where had that line come from? Before he could think about it, a gullet voice inside his head said A meal was bought with blood, tombless as their flesh, and his chin snapped up as though uppercut.

I’m losing it, he thought. I’m losing it, and I’m going to murder Catherine in my sleep and wake up and then I’m going to scream until I find a way to kill myself.

Movement from his peripheral vision. That high-wire tension pulsing from her hand into his. Catherine was looking at him.

She was on his right, now, and the dark glass storefront of Steppin’ Out was on his left, filled with white iron racks of overpriced pumps and stilettos and slingbacks. He turned to her and felt something that, a week ago – a thousand years ago – might have been hope. She hadn’t made eye contact with him in days.

“Catherine?”

For one second he looked at her and saw her looking at him and he remembered how easy and clear her laughter had been, once upon a world, and how he had always been able to make her laugh. She had been with Verg when he met her, and he had always known she would stay with Verg; Verg was a project, a fixer-upper, and she was a motherer and for that single heartbeat he thought I finally got her away from you, didn’t I, old buddy old pal? and it was not the ironic, sick tragedy of the thought that made one corner of his mouth twist down but the sweet rise of joy that sailed in its shadow.

As he thought this, a pale shape drifted up from the watery shadows inside Steppin’ Out and struck the glass wall behind him. Half a second sooner, Henry realized that Catherine was not looking at him but behind him, at the shape hurtling toward the window wall, and he had just begun to twist around when the woman hit him, bringing a shrapnel wave of shivered glass and a pair of very chic Cesare Paciotti high heel sandals with her. Pieces of thin white iron shoe rack rained around him and clanged to the sidewalk. Henry, half-turned, went down. The bayonet, half-drawn, skittered from his hand, jumped the curb, and came to rest behind the cracked tire of a late-90s BMW 325i.

“Clagg?” the woman said, screaming it into Henry’s face. “Clagg mittenstove clagg?”

Catherine stood beside them. She had been free of the impact zone and had not moved when the woman, who was past fifty, almost completely naked, and weighed well over three hundred, had tackled Henry. She bore down on him, and he felt one doughy, groping hand climbing up his shoulder towards his face.

*

            “I stopped believing in God,” she said. Henry had not until this moment known that Catherine had at any point believed in God (capital G or otherwise).

“I know I’m making myself out to be the victim here,” Henry said, “but the truth is, I cheated on my wife. I’ve never told anyone and I think that’s why this is happening.”

“My father died from lung cancer and Vergil reminds me so much of him,” she said. “I get so mad at him for smoking. Is that unfair?”

Death? Closure? How nice, Henry thought. His relationship with his father consisted of torpid, abortive phone calls placed every ten months or so, and vast, pulsating waves of guilt about not calling sooner and not visiting ever and not knowing his half-sister, who worshipped him.

“She has to know. I know you think she doesn’t know but she has to, on some level,” she said. “You need to tell this to someone who can help you,” she said, and when these words came out of Henry’s iPhone, he recoiled as though slapped. He thought about saying, I called you, not some shrink. I’m telling you. I know we’re not friends, not really, and we don’t even know each other beyond the mutual link of Verg, but that’s what makes this little confessional perfect: we have nothing to lose.

            On the heels of this thought is the realization that telling Catherine of his festering infidelity is both unfair and unproductive, at least directly; she’s not a psychiatrist or a counselor, and to burden her with such secrets is at best a misplacement of emotional baggage and at worst a serious fuckarow. Also on the heels of this thought is the realization that she has just told him what he needs to hear instead of what he wants to hear, and that such a distinction is the kind of thing people usually only get after investing years and decades into friendships.

“I saw a woman through the school’s counseling program for months after my father died, and she really helped me,” she said. It seemed so simple to Henry: counseling. So obvious, but the idea never really found anchor until it was spoken by someone else, someone sane, someone outside the dark circle of his faithless heart.

Strange angels, Henry thought. You send us strange angels, Father, and I thank you.

A week later he was in therapy. A month later he could feel progress, the way he could feel progress in some unnameable but undeniable fiber of his core when he ran longer and faster and easier on the three-mile course behind his complex. It was in the breathing, and that was how it felt with the therapy; he could just… breathe a little more, week by week. He thought of Catherine when he ran, and when he put his hands together in his lap and sat on the couch in the office.

Two months later his wife was dead.

*

            The woman was immense and his breath would not come. He heaved her and felt the tender patch behind his spine, the one he had wrenched coming that night under Catherine’s slow hand, howl in protest. It was pointless.

Every inch he gave compressed him further, and he got nothing back. His right arm was free but his left was pinned beneath her gargantuan bosom; her right hand pawed up his collarbone, questing, no doubt, for the weak jelly of his eyes or the soft crush of his throat. Catherine stood there beneath the grey warpcloud sky and stared ahead and the thought of what might happen to her, what would certainly happen to her, once he was dead filled him with a great and savage strength but still the woman would not yield.

He beat with his free hand against the side of her head, which was encased in a jowly ring of fat as pale and malleable as uncooked bread. She paid him no heed.            She rolled a bit and his right leg erupted in fire. There was a pop somewhere below his thigh; it felt like his kneecap. Black flares began to detonate at the edge of his sight and then began to work their way in, closing him in a night-spangled tunnel through which he watched Catherine recede.

“Gammagan! Avocado door gain Clagg. Clagg!” the woman said. Something viscous and yellow drooped from between her spread jaws and plopped onto Henry’s cheek. Though he could not inhale, he could somehow smell the sour, bilious wind of her breath. Her hand overshot his face and became tangled in his greasy hair, where it wriggled like a fat white spider.

The pair of Paciottis was on the sidewalk before his face. One was upright and the other had fallen onto its side. They were elegant high heel sandals with black Italian leather uppers and dazzling white heels and soles.

There was screaming urgency in his chest, and it burned, and he heaved, and she did not move and Catherine did not move and he fell into the tunnel of black firecracker silence.

Henry began to feel calm, and cold.

The last thing he saw was Catherine. In his final delirium, she seemed to be riding the woman, astraddle her from behind, and it was this impossible delusion that made the last cogent fraction of his consciousness understand that he was really and truly dying.

He thought about the night sky beneath the July stars, on his back in the grass, with girls whose names were long forgotten beside him, their hair like silk and their voices like silk and their breath alcohol and summer rain, and he thought about his father’s voice as he sat in his child’s bed and listened to Frodo and Strider and Sam escape from the evil riders and flee into the wilds of Middle Earth. He tried to recall the name of the chemical that the dying brain dumps into the system to ease passage and erase pain and could not. It wasn’t working anyway; the pain was not erased. There was a three hundred pound madwoman on his chest. The pain was fucking immense.

Blood covered his face in a hot rain. Henry tried to cough and his compressed lungs could not. He sucked in a hitching breath so that he could cough.

He sucked in a hitching breath.

Henry rose through dark water and saw the black tunnel through which he had come. It ran with blood. The blood was on his face and in his mouth and he spat it out and rolled aside and his right knee was aflame and he breathed in a great whooping gasp of blessed pure clear oxygen, drawing clarity the color of a loving God into his throat and chest and then he was rolling instinctively so the acid vomit wouldn’t choke him to death. He emptied the contents of his stomach and heaved again and did not care that his breaths were iron fire hammered on spikes into his airways or that they stank of bile and white puke.

The woman was beside him and she danced in the grip of a huge spasm. There was a World War II bayonet protruding from the place where the back of her skull met her spine and there was a one-hundred-pound girl with dark pixie hair hanging onto the other end of the bayonet the way an eight-second champion will hang onto the pommel of a bull’s saddle. The woman bucked and rolled and through his haze and the bands of red agony in his chest and around his knee Henry rose and fell and rose again and crawled over the flailing mass of flesh and dragged Catherine away. Catherine held onto the bayonet and it came free in a welter of blood and fat and tissue. Henry rolled onto his back and took breath after torturous breath of perfect air. He did not let go of Catherine.

They lay there, side by side, he with one hand on her and she with one hand on the dagger. A few yards away, the woman finished her business of dying. Her smell did not improve.

After a minute, Henry rose and pulled Catherine to her feet. As always, she came willingly and stood beside him. He pulled the blade from her grasp and she let him take it.

Catherine looked at herself.

Henry, who had been wiping the bayonet on the leg of his jeans, grew still.

Catherine said, “You bathed me.”

Henry tried to step back in surprise and his injured knee nearly spilled him onto the sidewalk. Not broken, he thought, knowing that he wasn’t just referring to his knee but to himself entire, to Catherine, to the world, bruised and hurt and sprained and twisted, but not broken. Not beyond repair.

“You fed me,” Catherine said. “And you bathed me. How many days was it?”

“Since I found you with… since I found you? Seven. Eight, now,” he said.

Catherine looked at him, and at Main Street, and at the sky. She put one hand to her face and ran it down her cheek in a gesture of weariness so natural and so human that Henry wanted to cry.

She said, “Shit, I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” he said. There was vomit in his throat and something wet and foul lodged in the back of his nasal passages and a dead whale of a woman four yards away and a dead whale of a world beneath them and he was starving.

“This is… oh, gosh, this is a lot to handle, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean, this is pretty fucked up.” She gave a little laugh that was half nerves and half unwound mind and no part mirth, and Henry liked the sound of it not at all.

And the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air, a bladed voice said, and he pushed it away with cold, shaking hands.

“Catherine,” he said, “that is what we call an accurate appraisal of the situation. Let’s go find something to eat.”

Catherine took his hand and then, seeing him stumble, put her arm around his shoulder so that he could limp beside her. They gave the woman a wide berth and moved down Main, toward Classen and the forests of the east. Henry was hurt and did not think they would make it very far or live very long.

“Thank you for bathing me,” Catherine said.

Henry grinned.

The beer was good, although it was cold. Mr. D knew they both preferred it warm: hot, in fact. It was Guinness, and though D’s personal experiences with the Irish, especially during the 20th century, had not been pleasant, he had to admit that they produced a fine beer.

“How much of it did they believe?” said the man sitting across the booth from him. In the thick, smoky barlight, D’s companion could have been any age, any age at all. His suit was well-tailored and dark. The fingers that curled around the glass before him were very long and somewhat pale. There was a small yellow button pinned to the right lapel of his jacket with the words “How’s your pork?” printed in bold black letters across its shining metal face; Mr. D was sure this was some kind of cultural or literary reference, and equally sure that he had no idea what it meant.

The young these days, Mr. D thought.

“Most of it,” Mr. D said. He took a sip of Guinness, set down his glass, reconsidered. “All of it. None of it.” He shrugged to demonstrate the importance of this answer.

“How much of the truth did you tell them?” asked the man with the yellow button.

“Some,” said Mr. D. “Most of it was bullshit, but then, that’s the part they really want to hear.”

*

            “Mind if we take a break?” Charlie asked. “If you’ll pardon the expression, I’ve gotta make like a racehorse. All this coffee, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” said the plain man. His accent was mild and faintly Germanic. “In fact I think I shall join you. It will save your partner the trouble of monitoring me on that clever little camera you have so professionally attached to the underside of the desk, there.”

If Charlie was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. He smiled, and the plain man thought his smile was genuine: not an effort to cover the small embarrassment of having his little spy game revealed, but an authentic show of mirth.

“It will, at that,” Charlie said. He was sitting caddy-corner on a student desk, one black loafer planted in the blue plastic seat and the other on the floor. He was tall but his guest was taller, and though the files that Interpol had faxed over from Budapest listed the man’s age at 37, he had one of those faces that frustrated Charlie’s attempts to place either his age or his ethnicity.

The plain man rose, adjusted his scarf – it was red silk with an exceedingly-thin gold lining, expensive-looking, and though he had unwound it upon entering the building he had never actually taken it off – and followed Charlie out of Room 213 and into the hallway. His guest moved past him with the same smooth gait that Charlie had observed from the start of their brief relationship. Charlie, whose real name of course was not Charlie, had once dated a senior at Julliard and she had moved with that same grace, even while off the ballet floor; she had been noiseless, something a man in Charlie’s profession could respect, even envy, and she had almost seemed to glide across the floor. The plain man moved that way. Even in the shadowy silence of the hallway, he moved across the waxed tiles without a sound. His tall silhouette was dark against the windows at the hall’s end, which were clouded over with the white breath of the storm. Charlie pulled the door closed behind him and hurried to catch up.

“Why Mr. D?” he asked. Moving abreast, they turned a corner and went down a bald stairwell; the University of Central Iowa, in its endless wisdom, had deemed a second set of restrooms cost-ineffective and thus the only johns were on the ground floor. “Don’t tell me it’s short for Dracula, like in that anime movie or some old Agatha Christie book, because I gotta tell you, that would be pretty lame.”

The plain man looked at him sidelong, adjusting his cufflinks – they were gold, like the lining of his scarf, and Charlie had often thought that D’s habit of touching them was either a nervous tic or some kind of tell – then pushed open the door to the restroom and waved Charlie in. Charlie went, noticing as he did the angle at which D had approached the door; he had put his palm to it less than six inches from the edge, on the side that hinged to the frame – the side upon which he would have to exert much more pressure to open the door than if he had pushed, say, on the shiny metal push plate bolted to the door’s swinging edge. Also, the door was one of those automatic jobs with a thick metal box on top attached to a steel folding arm, made to open when handicapped kids – or lazy fuckall kids – punched the blue wheelchair button set into the wall at hip-height beside the restroom entrance, and those doors were always harder to push open manually than free-swinging doors.

Mr. D pushed open the door at that strange angle with the ease that one might push open a spiderweb. The tendons on the back of his hand did not stand out as he did so.

Charlie noticed all of this in the half-second it took for him to brush by his guest and enter the restroom. He lined up at the farthest urinal and unzipped. Mr. D, instead of choosing any of the three empty urinals at the other end of the line, as any normal human being would have done, picked the one right beside Charlie and reached for his fly.

“You are wondering why I did not give you the courtesy space of choosing a toilet farther away from yours,” the plain man said.

“Actually, I’m wondering why you have to go at all. Aren’t your kind supposed to be above bodily functions? Shouldn’t you be dead?”

Mr. D laughed. “I am on a liquid diet and you ask me why I pass liquid waste? My body, which your comprehensive medical screenings have confirmed is very much alive, is also very old, and very efficient, but even it is not capable of complete digestive efficiency,” he said. “There is always waste.”

Charlie considered this in silence.

“Did you know that when we fought against Vlad Tepes we pissed on the corpses of his soldiers? We stood,” here Mr. D reached a white hand above the little partition between their urinals and moved it back and forth to indicate the smallness of the space between them, “shoulder to shoulder we stood, with blood on our spears and sweat and blood and excrement on our clothing and armor, and hiked our mail skirts and pulled down our trousers and pissed on their bodies in the mass graves. He was called the Impaler, you know? Vlad the third, Vlad the Tepes? I mention him because your reference to… Dracula-” the plain man pronounced it oddly, with an extra syllable at the end – “reminded me of him. Vlad was Stoker’s model for the monster, is this not so?

“We had seen the things he did to his enemies and to his own people: seen the bodies on poles, sliding down the poles, as we marched into his lands, and we thought that the men who fought for such a king must be demons, so after we killed them and rolled them into our latrine pits, we pissed on them to keep their souls from coming out of the earth after us.

“So why, Charlie,” Mr. D said, and his tone was the tone of a man performing a Tuesday deposit transaction at his local bank, “why would a man who stood hip to hip with stinking, bloody soldiers and pissed into a mass grave be less than comfortable sharing a friendly little leak next to an American government agent with a Sears tie and a lovely brunette wife named Laura?”

Charlie shook off and zipped up. He had been a handler for a long time, and had been goaded by his guests before, though none had ever told him his wife’s name. Still, he handled it pretty well, he thought. He turned toward the row of porcelain sinks on legs that suddenly felt a little wooden and said, “Vlad Tepes lived five hundred years ago, D. You really want me to believe you marched into Wallachia with the Ottoman Empire half a millenium ago and stuck Vlad the Impaler with a fucking halberd?”

And how do you know my wife’s name, you stiff son of a bitch? He thought but did not say. Counterintelligence was not Charlie’s ballpark, although after this little shebang was over and done with, was he going to kick in a few doors back at the office and talk this question over with people who did play in that ballpark? Oh yes, friends and neighbors, yes indeed.

Mr. D joined him at the sink and began to wash fastidiously. Charlie noticed that the man waited until the water was hot – steaming, in fact – before putting his hands beneath the tap.

“We did not have halberds,” the plain man said, frowning. “They were new back then – at least it was the first I had ever seen them – and we were too low on what you might call the food chain to be blessed with such modern weaponry. We had simple spears. Also, I did not kill the Impaler. I never even saw the man, for which I am grateful.” He finished washing and moved to the wall to the left of the sinks, where he eschewed the hand dryer and pulled a brown paper towel from the dispenser.

“I would have liked a halberd,” he said.

“You know I can’t DNA test you because of your diplomatic status,” Charlie said. “But that would make this whole charade much simpler.”

“Indeed it would,” agreed his guest. “As to my age, what can I say? You moderns like to say, ‘diet and exercise,’ do you not? Let me assure you most sincerely of the former.”

Charlie looked at him.

“My diet,” said the plain man, “has been most sanguinary.” He smiled, and Charlie saw that his teeth were very clean and very straight.

“Your choppers don’t look abnormal to me, my friend,” Charlie said. “If you are what you told us you are, why not show me?”

Mr. D led them out of the restroom, pushing the door from the usual side this time. “If I met you on the street, and I asked you to show me your cock to prove to me that you are a man, would you do it?”

Charlie followed him into the hall. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.” He sighed. Outside, the wind echoed him. A thick skirt of snow rapped against the hall windows and flew away, ghostly in the falling dark.

“Look, Mr. D,” Charlie said, “it’s thirty till five, and this weather isn’t going to let up. Let’s call it a day and Burks and I will take you back to the hotel on the way to the office. We can pick up tomorrow, same time.”

Mr. D stopped outside room 213. “I must admit that your century is much better at treating prisoners like guests than those previous. My prison even changes my sheets every morning and has free HBO.” He said the last three letters delicately, as though unfamiliar with them and endeavoring not to trip over the acronym.

Charlie sighed again. “You’re not a prisoner, sir. Our office is simply taking advantage of your embassy’s unfortunate delay in expediting your passports to chat with you in the hopes of clearing up some discrepancies in the events of the previous two months – events, I might remind you, in regard to which you signed three separate nondisclosure agreements.”

Charlie ducked into the room to retrieve his voice recorder and both cooling cups of coffee, a process that took perhaps seven seconds. He heard no noise through the open door of the classroom, but when he emerged, the man who called himself Mr. D was fifty yards down the hallway, most of the way to the stairs at the south end of the building.

“Hey,” Charlie said. “Hey, D, wait up!”

Mr. D, who was moving at a brisk but unhurried pace, did not slow. He reached the stairs and as he began to descend, he turned and gave Charlie a single, cold glance. In the dusklight filtering in through the snow-filmed windows, his pale skin shone, and the one eye that regarded Charlie, rich brown like the plain man’s brushed hair, burned in the dark. In that instant, Laura’s husband knew, on some atavistic level, that he was beholding the countenance of something both incalculably old and so far removed from what he thought of as humanity that it might as well have been sleek and reptilian.

Then Mr. D spoke, and his voice was the same as always: mellow, amicable, with just that faint touch of Europe underneath.

“Fare you well, Charles.”

Charlie said nothing else. For a heartbeat, that image of D turning and fixing him with one baleful Poe’s eye held him in thrall.

Then he ran.

Two environmentally-friendly paper Starbucks cups hit the floor behind him; the voice recorder went into his jacket pocket. Charlie tore down the hallway of the music building of the University of Central Iowa at Langford (“Why a university? Why a music building?” Charlie had asked. “Because a school is neutral ground,” Mr. D replied. “And because that is what I have done for the last one hundred and forty years. I teach music. Not such an oddity, really; music speaks to our hearts, to our blood, and the blood makes music of its own, here.” Mr. D had reached forward to touch two fingertips to Charlie’s right wrist, and had his touch been cold? No, surely that had been an effect of the winter storm, or of Charlie’s imagination.) and by the time he had reached the stairwell, Mr. D, though he had not been running or even in a hurry, was gone.

Charlie hurtled the first flight, planting one side of his rump on the smooth handrail and surfing the rest of the way to the landing like a sophomore headed for the first bright blue day of summer freedom. He rebounded palms-first against the wall, spun, and took the second flight four steps at a time. His left ankle creaked as he hit the first floor and threatened to spill him hell over breakfast onto the cold tiles, but he caught himself and turned to the south doors, the leftmost of which was closing slowly in the wake of Mr. D’s passage.

Charlie could see nothing beyond the double wall of glass doors; the foyer between them was darkening and the outer layer of glass was mostly frosted over.  Panting, he took two giant steps, caught the handle of the left door just as it clicked back into its latch and hauled it open. He leaned into the foyer beyond and was slapped back by an icy gust that carried with it great cloudy flakes of snow; the outer left door was open, held agape by the howling wind.

He pushed through the inner door and crossed the foyer, not realizing that his right hand had slipped into his suit jacket and was curled around the grip of the Springfield semiautomatic. With his left, he propped the outer door just as it began to sway shut. More snow blew into his hair and eyes, and a sudden shot of wind pulled the door open again, tearing it from his grasp.

Blinking hard, Charlie stepped through the door and into the storm. A white candy wonderland spread out before his eyes: nothing but snow between him and the high fenceline at the edge of Athens Park across East University Drive, where he could barely make out the great shadowy figures of sleeping oaks and a tall hedge marching away north on a diagonal. The space between East U and Charlie was unspoiled save by the sleek grey outline of his government sedan, parked halfway down the empty student lot – it had grown a fuzzy crown of snow atop its hood and roof and might have looked at home next to the lamp post outside Mr. Tumnus’ burrow – and four deep footprints in the new snow leading away from the door. There was no sign of Mr. D.

Charlie looked around, sure that the man would be hiding in a corner outside the doors. Nothing. There was nowhere to hide, anyway; the plain brick building extended all around him, forming a short box canyon onto which the south doors gave access. His breath steamed away from him in a hot mist and was stolen by the hungry wind. Above him the sky was a frowning sheet of steel.

Nothing. Nothing save those four deep footprints, leading some ten feet out into the eight-inch drift that piled unbroken as far as Charlie could see. Nothing except a pair of golden cufflinks and a red silk scarf, fallen in a shallow S-shape and already half-hidden by the deepening snow.

Oliver stood in the field. He stretched out his hand and brushed his palm against the heads of the wild hay stalks. It was greener and thicker than any hay had a right to be, and it sprang from a clean churn of black spring mud freckled with hayseed and hoofstamp and manure. Oliver smelled the smell of cow dung and thought it fine.

He felt the squish of that dark wet earth between his dark wet toes and looked down but saw only pedestrian black loafers beneath Old Navy cargo pants. Oliver thought, this is a dream.

He looked back up and beheld a blossom of mottled pink that was the sky shot white with cirrocumulus and felt a touch of wind on his dark wet cheek and only then realized that he had been crying. He looked out at the dreamgrass plain and saw the scything ripple of the wind leap towards him across the heads of hay. He felt the true breath of that wind and it was cold.

Oliver touched the first two fingers of his left hand to the tear trail on his cheek and heard the distant whinny of horses. It seemed to him then that there came a groundswell of noise and feeling as though the earth itself were birthing discontent and as he realized it was the crescendo of horse thunder he saw that the stamped prints in the mud at his bare feet had been made thereby.

Horses, of courses, thought Oliver. He knelt to touch his hand to one of those great curves of crusted mud and as he reached for it his fingers came into view. They were dark and wet with blood that looked black in the rosy twilit blast of that harvest sky. He stopped, ignoring the rising drum of the approaching stallions, and held his hand up before his eyes. The flesh on those fingers was uncut and a long moment passed and then Oliver pushed the heel of his palm against the bottom of his cheekbone and watched it come away stained red with the blood of his tears.

He stood that way for long seconds, enrapt, as though the dilemma of this dream’s strange marginalia were more pressing than the need to escape the stampede at his back. By the time his mind registered the shake of the earth at his feet, the sound was no longer a rising wave; it was cannonfire.

Oliver rose and turned to run and that was when the first of the horses rode him down.

*

            Harry watched a bead of sweat slip down the skirt of his beer glass. He plucked a little oblong chip of ice from his waterless water glass and popped it into his mouth, where it crunched like a bone.

Katie leaned across the table. “I can’t believe you told me to do that,” she said. Sting did his level best to drown her out by insisting that Roxanne did not, in fact, have to wear that dress tonight. Harry watched the crushed slice of orange bob from within the dark amber prison of her Blue Moon as she pressed forward, watched the purple line of her bra strap dip beneath her tank top. He said something like, We’re friends, Kat, and friends are honest with one another, and his teacher’s mind was more concerned with the immediate worry of whether or not he should have said ‘each other’ instead of ‘one another’ than if she would follow his advice and then Aaron was coming back to the table, his short black beard cutting the thick bar air like the prow of a privateer; they shrank away from one another, Kat and Harry, moving with the easy speed of nightflowers closing against the sun on a Discovery Channel special where the film speed has been increased fifty-six times.

Harry wondered if Aaron had seen the back of her ring finger brush the back of his as their beers ­– his in glass, hers in bottle ­– passed one another (each other?) in ponderous orbit and wondered if the eyes beneath Aaron’s cadet hat detected the crystal rings of pleasure that danced outward from that point of contact like ripples in the dark waters of men’s hopes and knew that he had not and that they did not.

Aaron slid into the booth and settled against the cracked leather. His hand went around Kat’s pale slim shoulder and fit there; her eyes touched Harry’s once, two luminous russet birds on the wing, and then slipped away. Patterson and Nelsen were ordering at the bar, the first with a wrinkle in his vest and the top button of his shirt apart and his silk checkerboard tie loosened and the second tall and quiet and as absorptive of the bar’s currents and eddies as a magnet of iron shavings. It was Nelsen to whom Harry knew he would turn when the night’s endeavor’s inevitably turned awry and it was Nelsen who slipped into the booth, a glisten of Optimator foam on his dark moustache and all his considerable charisma at play on his winsome face, and said, “I got the house keys today. I have got to show you guys this basement.”

*

            The masks were Oliver’s idea.  Long before he began having the dreams, long before the house, he found them on Amazon and was immediately enthralled, immediately repelled. They were latex, twenty bucks a pop, and the thought of stalking Aaron down the narrow dim-bulb hallway outside his second floor efficiency with the close grasp of the mask about his head and face charged his guts with a high, almost erotic, intensity. The masks were snarling stallions with bulging white-flecked eyes and little holes in the nostrils through which the wearer could see. They were ludicrous and unforgivably silly and immeasurably creepy. From the moment they saw them, Nelsen and Harry were in.

Kat passed them the key to Aaron’s apartment on the condition that they impart to her their plan. Oliver palmed the key and told her a cheerful lie that she detected almost without effort and Harry saw the way her eyes tightened down towards her pursed smile and took her aside after the rest of them had parted ways.

They had stood beneath the shadow of the fire escape and the weird waxen leaves of the banyan tree in the alley behind the furniture shop over which Aaron lived and he had looked at her dark hair as the rich April wind teased it aside from the pale field of her brow. He had told her the truth in hushed tones because he knew that their small brotherhood could trust her with this most practical of jokes… and because he wanted to look at the way the moonlight colored the pixie angle of her jaw, to imagine how it might feel to brush the edge of his thumb back along that soft line and gently press the lobe of her ear between thumb and forefinger. She scolded him and she laughed and he did none of the things that he wanted and two weeks later a man-thing wearing Nelsen’s shape and Nelsen’s heavy sneakers but with the head of a horse crouched in that same shadow beneath the fire escape. Two more such creatures waited just inside the door to Aaron’s efficiency; one bore Oliver’s thick waistline and coffee-cream skin and imposing shoulders and the other held Harry’s wiry frame and both faced the closed apartment door with their long brown noses and rolling white eyes.

The plan was simple and darkly gratifying. Aaron would arrive home, climb the fire escape, and find a horse-head following him in the dim, airless confines of his hallway. His natural recourse would be to hurry – perhaps run – to his room, where he would find two more such unspeakable beings waiting for him with arms and snouts outstretched. It would be stupid and terrifying and hilarious.

The mid-May heat rolled oppressive and still through the little apartment. Neither of the things inside Aaron’s door had turned on his window unit, because they were horses and because they had only expected to wait for a few minutes, but Aaron was running late and beneath the heavy latex shell the sweat coursed in rivulets down Oliver’s skin. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the thing that was Harry in a horse mask. Though they did not move, after some minutes it seemed as though Harry, who stood some six inches shorter than Oliver, had gained some height by donning the mask; the horse head beside him, which he could only see by turning ninety degrees left and peering through the little nostril slits, was of a height with his own. Oliver, at first, did not think this odd, but as the sweltering minutes marched into the dusty corners of the room this discrepancy began to pick at the southern hemisphere of his mind with a voice as small and sharp as a crow’s beak.

The wall clock behind them ticked with a little metallic heartbeat. Oliver’s undershirt cleaved to his chest and to the space between his shoulder blades. The darkness, fragrant with an unease he could neither name nor dispel, closed in around the thin tunnel points of sight granted him by the mask’s nostril holes.

Finally he could bear it no longer and Oliver turned in the narrow, oppressive entryway and looked at the profile standing beside him. He sucked in a damp breath and said, “Harry? Is that still you?”

A long moment of dark heat passed in silence. Oliver swallowed and exhaled heavily in the suffocating prison of the mask. And then, ever so slowly, the thing beside him began to turn its head.

*

            They watched the headlights wash across the house as they made the turn and then they were stopped and slinging seatbelts aside to escape the sweltering confines of Nelsen’s ancient Saturn and tumble into the jungle heat of the Oklahoma night in a mess of sticky cotton T-shirts and white parking gravel. Overhead, the tops of 19th-century pecans caught and smothered the last indigo light of day. The yard around them was flat and green and ran up to the very brim of the black-glassed basement windows, upon which the unshorn blades of summer grass rubbed like deviant lashes against reptilian eyes.

Nelsen produced a set of brown, pitted keys upon a steel hoop with a thick leather fob. He crossed the yard amidst the howling ululation of a thousand cicadas and made for the old oaken door. Above him, two and a half stories loured behind cheerful cornflower paint and grey trim. Behind him followed Aaron and followed Harry and followed Patterson and stood Kat in the yard, looking westward where the slim residential boulevard ended in a spray of dirt alley drives and where gleamed the greedy bronze of dragon’s teeth: northbound Union Pacific tracks glinting in the peeking grapefruit light of the setting sun.

Katie stood and looked west while the bloodglow stain of that sun crept up her thighs and listened to the distant churning moan of the train and the image which leapt to her mind was not of a sleek steel furnaceborne engine but of a monstrous horse, pounding down the beaten ties toward Norman, toward Caster Boulevard where she stood mesmerized by a bloated ball of fire, striking sparks from the rails with its gargantuan hooves and scattering cinders into the witchgrass on either side of the tracks: a nightmare whose gnashing white portcullis teeth threw flecks of foam high to burn away in the whipped fire of its mane.

It was an absurd thought, and one without sensible root… but as it wound across her mind, Kat’s shoulder twisted, hard, in a violent shiver, and she reached up to cross her arms under her breasts and grip the outsides of her elbows. She looked away from the sun, feeling the urge to brush off the places where its lurid eye had touched her, and saw Aaron standing on the stoop looking at her with concern and also a species of vague, unconscious irritation: stupid girls, always taking their time and holding us up. He cut a handsome silhouette in the shadow of the house, framed by unchecked English Ivy and the gathering night, and she felt her heart crest like a wave with the rich, heady love that Harry, five years her senior, might have told her we never really feel after age twenty-three or so and felt the sour familiar undertow of… hate? was it hate, or just a kind of dull, throbbing weariness?… which came on the heels of that love, a bitterness born of Aaron’s endless ability to remain obstinately ungrateful for her.

“Are you coming?” he said, and in his voice she heard a hundred reasons why he would never be right for her. You were right, Harry, she thought. God damn it.

Her sun-touched eyes adjusted just enough to make out Harry himself standing behind Aaron, caught in a tangle of shadow just outside the open front door and looking at her ­– she blinked hard – with concern and… and undisguised care that somehow felt like a punch below the ribs. The wave in her chest obliterated itself against a beach that felt like it was made of glass shells and Kat suddenly wanted to tumble out of that black surf and onto that strand and go running, running barefoot and heedless of her sliced heels up that shelled beach, sprinting into an empty sandscape of salt wind and low stars and the sharp, naked freedom of not having to make the decisions against which we close our eyes every day.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’m coming.” She started forward, and then said, “Where’s Oliver?”

*

            The Suzuki SUV hit the rise beyond the creekbed at something like 45 miles per hour and Oliver, no lightweight, came up a few inches out of his seat. He looked again in his rearview mirror and in both side view glasses for good measure but saw nothing other than the knurled gunplate grey of the rising summer storm as it chased west the setting sun.

He punched the climate controls and the vents whirred but still he felt his shirt gluing him to the vinyl seatback. The cry of the cicadas whipped past, rising in time with the wind-tossed branches of the forest outside and made infinitely eerier by the Doppler effect of his passage.

The SUV crested a final smooth rise and he saw Norman proper spread before him, a sprawling metal crown crusted with sodium-glow jewels and ribboned with red and white lightstreams that pulsed in the gathering dusk. Atop it sank the westering sun. Oliver took one hand off the wheel and held it to the air vent and felt the sweat on his palm cool. Oliver looked in the rearview again.

He came down from the low rise and the forest swallowed the Suzuki. It shot, cobalt and clean, beneath the final outthrust arm of the wild wood and he tilted the wheel with his dry hand to navigate the last curve as he put the other before the air vent and let it dry. On his right, the wood gave way to a cropped pasture enclosed in a tidy homemade barbwire fence. In the distance, a few high dark shapes moved.            Oliver turned his head to glance at them and saw that they were three chestnut mares and that their mouths were open to suck in the cooling evening air as they galloped and that all their teeth were dagger sharp. He sucked in his breath to scream but some atavistic corner of his brain clamped down and not only caught the cry before it was born but reminded him that he was operating a 2400 pound piece of steel and fiberglass moving now at something above the double nickel on a half-blind curve and that it might be prudent to look back to the road.

Oliver looked back to the road.

Standing across it was the biggest horse he had ever seen. It was a stallion and it was red. It cocked its head to regard him and beneath that obliterative gaze even his deepest resolve simpered and melted through the grate at the bottom of his mind. Oliver saw that human eye and this time he did scream.

The Suzuki struck it at sixty-three miles per hour.

*

            Nelsen had opened both of the slim windows that flanked the door and the sound of the cicadas followed them into the bare interior. The entire house was floored in great pale tiles some sixteen inches to a side and their steps clopped like shod hooves in the emptiness. Harry came in behind Aaron and asked when they would begin moving in. The middle of the month, said Nelsen.

Ides, Harry thought. Ides.

Nestled though it was in the triangular corner of Classen and Miller and Caster, the house had a kind of pastoral charm. It was two-and-a-half stories and the first was a split level with parlor and foyer and dining room and salon and two kitchens and one bedroom. The other two beds were up a narrow, enclosed staircase whose top landing sported a delightfully eerie twelve-inch window, a breakneck turn into a low doorway, and a hallway whose natural, unconditioned temperature seemed to be somewhere north of a hundred and five. Nelsen led them to the larger of the two kitchens, where four of the grand tiles sat loose in their grout and bore the small scars of frequent movement, though a scrim of year’s dust lay brown and grey upon them just as upon every other horizontal thing in the place.

The five of them stood in a mute ring. This is the place you told me about, asked Aaron. This is it, said Nelsen, and bent to push his fingers into the edge of one tile.

Outside, the train came bellowing into the dusk, and the cicadas sang the sun down below the chokevine tangle of the forest beyond the tracks.

The tiles slid aside with a grinding that was the sound of old bones on a disused lathe and below them was a heavy wooden trap and this too did Nelsen slide away, revealing a broad square of darkness out of which rose what appeared to be the entrance to a nineteenth-century mineshaft: a short creaking stair buttressed with inbent wooden pilings and a low tunnel burrowing into immediate black but supported at the absolute edge of human vision by ancient square pillars cut from perhaps the same oak that built the Ark.

Upon the top step sat pair upon pair of dusty, deflated shoes.

Harry stood and felt his shoulder blades tighten inward and heard Kat give voice to a little moany spike of sound and heard even Patterson’s intake of breath. Something about shoes, old old Keds and Converses coated with the dust of an underground world and pointing down into darkness, drove winter pitons into the small gaps of his spine. Upon those cold joints he felt the ascent of a dark and unseen courier, borne upward with tidings he did not want to hear.

Afterwards, in the dark, Kat would wonder why she didn’t see it coming, why she didn’t look up and into the chipped and dirt-touched mirror above the double sink sooner or simply sense the change in her old friend. She felt Aaron, the heat of him against her shoulder, the heavy clasp of his hand upon hers, and she felt Harry’s eyes like twin points of slow fire move in the little isosceles hollow above her collarbone. She felt the third rail that ran taut between them, a twist of tunnel dark as a Norman basement save for the cold sparks of light coming off that blind steel beam. She heard Nelsen ask Patterson if he would run out to his car for the lamp and then wait until Patterson was out the front door and ask Harry if he would check the lock on the back door and still her peacetime mind did not awaken to the change in Nelsen’s voice. It was only when the three of them were alone, and only by windblown chance, that she looked up from the wide square of darkness at her feet and saw, in the mirror, Nelsen standing behind her.

His head was the head of a horse.

There was a moment during which she might have turned to see with her own eyes, turned and put a hand up to that long muzzle and perhaps felt a damp, fine fuzz of chestnut hair instead of cheap pliable latex. Then there was a moment during which she might have drawn in a breath and said something, said anything, given some warning to the man at her side. But her mind was distressed by weeks of arguing with Aaron and days of arguing with Harry and the slow Coriolis rise of knowing that there was a decision somewhere in the space between and that only she could make it. Katie fell into the narrowness between the two moments and for the space of one breath did nothing.

Nelsen put both hands into her back and shoved.

In the half second it took for her to tumble forward through the plume of icy air rising from the mouth of the basement, flailing for balance, for purchase, for comprehension, Katie thought of one thing: how the impact on her back had been ringed with a hardness and possessed of a shape that was not like the feel of two human hands at all. It had felt like two round, sharp-edged stones against the thin panes of muscle to either side of her spine. It had felt like hooves.

Then her right forearm cracked against the corner of the top riser and her forehead struck the edge of the gaping trapdoor and the darkness made her its own.

The electric lamp was old and hard used and bore a label of beaten silver which read VARNER in neat, hand-etched capitals just above its activation knob. Patterson turned that knob now and the blue white glow sprang forth to touch the old shoes and the grey wood and make knives of a hundred shadows that jutted down and gathered some six feet into the basement tunnel where the angle of the trap prevented further sight. In the golden dusklight and silver electric wash Harry saw that his face beneath his rusty beard was drawn in lines of despair, almost of pain. They had been five – six, with Oliver – but both of them sensed that Oliver was out of the game somehow, dead or delayed or taken, and there was no Aaron and no Nelsen and no Kat, only a smear and drag of blood on the tile and the black mouth of the night before them.

And Nelsen’s shoes, side by side, on the first riser leading down.

Patterson gazed into that mouth and held the lamp. After a moment, Harry took his hand. It did not feel strange to do so. Patterson looked at him, and then away, and then with a squeeze let him go and started down.

*

            The small windows, like half-lidded eyes, admitted some specter of light and so it was not as dark as Harry had feared it might be. They went down four short cracked steps, nudging aside old shoes and some shapeless cloth bundle at which neither of them looked and ducking beneath a great round air duct buckled to the underside of Nelsen’s kitchen floor like the trophy corpse of some ancient silver wyrm. The windows seemed to transmit more sound than light and the cicada song was eminent in their ears.

They traversed four thin bends in the narrow space before Harry realized that they couldn’t possibly be beneath the house any more; the distance was far too great. Yet the windows were still there, every twenty or thirty feet, wrapped in spider shrouds, greasy and grass-scrimmed ­– but never broken. There was still the belly of the house above their bowed heads, piping and beams and thick corners of shadow and so they were still beneath the house but how that could be Harry could not say. In the darkness he did not ask.

The air was the cool dry of a burrow and at one point they must have been on the house’s west end for the window there shot a beam of fading crimson glare onto a human frame. Patterson, in the lead, held a dust-caked hand against Harry’s chest and with his other held aloft the lamp but it was only some kind of suit of armor with a long snout and bulging skull. Both of them saw what kind of animal the helmet was imitating and neither said it aloud. They moved on, following Varner’s light.

At last they came to a place where every turn led them inward and Harry felt the air cooling, cooling and darkening and becoming subtly more spiderous. With Varner held high and Patterson’s shadow dancing against the old tunnel walls like the memory of madness it was difficult at first to make out what might be ahead, but at length Harry was sure that there was light: the ruddy smokesmear of a campfire or torchlight.

They came to the chamber and it was without window and without time and the light was neither camp nor torch but a tongue of red flame that leapt from the caged iron hoops of two great braziers flanking the rear wall. Patterson went in first – after everything, after the forgetting and the blur of what might have happened and the long, long hours of night like the touch of a knife blade that does not end, Harry remembered that Patterson went in first – and there was one moment where he stopped and leaned back just slightly, a body language undetectable save to Harry who was immediately behind him and thus felt the touch of his flank against his own. Patterson stiffened at that touch and it seemed as though he stood in light that had dimmed but was now again bright, brighter than either the red light of those flames or the white beam of the Varner lamp, and it was only afterwards that Harry realized how close his friend had come to running and that neither of them would have remained or endured if it were not for the other.

There was something standing between the braziers and it had once been Nelsen but Harry did not look at it directly; off to the side was Aaron, prone and unmoving, and at the thing’s feet was Kat and had it not been for Patterson Harry would have either ran or died. The fair skin at the edge of her scalp was framed with blood and she did not move and then the light was rolling, the light was roaring, and before Harry realized there was to be a fight, the fight was over.

Patterson threw the lamp overhand and followed it, bellowing. There was a small square mound of packed earth at the thing’s feet, beside Katie’s slumped form, and upon this earthen alter were two implements made of clay. One of them was a crude bowl and the other was a long knife and though Patterson was between them Harry saw the horse-headed thing move much more quickly than he had believed something so large and ungainly could have and then Patterson was standing before it, his fighter’s frame dancing in the spinning light of the Varner lamp as it rolled, unbroken, across the chamber floor.

Only the hilt protruded from Patterson’s Oxford shirt. There was very little blood. Patterson’s left hand pawed once, twice, at the thing’s front, seeming to reach for its unspeakable face and then seeming to weaken. The thing gave the barest shift and Harry sensed its attention turning toward him like the malevolent scent of compost after a wet night. The thing reached for its knife, perhaps to pluck it from Patterson’s torso and bring it to bear upon Harry, but before it could grasp it Patterson’s right hand came up and hit the hard clay hilt so hard that it snapped, leaving only the irretrievable blade. The being that had once been Nelsen, stymied, hesitated and then turned back to Patterson and bared its teeth at him.

Patterson stared back at it and bared his own. Then he fell to one knee and slid sideways through the air and the clang of his insensate skull against the live hot iron of the brazier made Harry close his eyes. When he opened them he saw the limp form that had been in the thing’s other hand all along.

It was Oliver’s horse head mask. It matched the thing’s own head almost exactly. The thing looked again at Harry and then knelt and with its free hand touched Kat’s cheek. Its forefinger left a crescent-shaped smear of Patterson’s blood at the high edge of her cheekbone just below her right eye.

The truth that had brought Harry down into the basement – that Katie must not be taken, that Katie must be saved – found a cold wall made up of another truth, one which occurred to him when he saw that red arc, that dark war paint on the slack mask of her skin, and the second truth was this: he could not fight it. Patterson had fought it and surely Aaron had fought it and perhaps Oliver had known it for what it was, and they were all gone and so was Nelsen and perhaps it was only blind white chance that had taken them instead of Harry but the collision of those two ineluctable imperatives was like a derailment in his mind and he could only watch as the thing with Nelsen’s body and the head of a black-eyed horse lifted Katie’s head, its touch grotesquely delicate, and began to slip the neck of the mask over her brow.

I cannot fight it, Harry thought. I cannot fight it and if I cannot fight it she is lost and I am lost and we are all of us lost. He felt his mind begin a slow yaw.

I cannot fight it. And then, like a candle: Maybe I don’t have to.

In the corner, Aaron stirred.

Harry looked at the thing with the horse head.

Harry said, “No.”

The thing paused and looked at him, its long head turning to one side so that its eye could regard him. The gesture was birdlike and eerie.

Horses don’t do that, Harry thought, and then: That thing has nothing in common with horses, not beneath. Not below.

            Harry started forward. The thing released Katie and rose halfway up and its great hands came out to its sides, fingers splayed and ready to find the soft places beneath his chin and behind his eyes and under his ribs, but Harry stopped in the room’s center.

“No, he said again. “You don’t want her.”

The thing with the horse head turned to show him its other eye and he was close enough now to see both his own reflection and that of the flames in that luminous black pool.

“She’s weak,” he said. “How easy was it to get her down here? One blow and she’s been senseless this whole time. And him,” he said, and indicated Aaron with a jerk of his chin. “How much resistance did he provide?

“You don’t want them. You want someone brave enough to come down here of their own accord, someone with will but who is wise enough to know that you can’t be fought.” Now he looked at Patterson, and he thought of Patterson laughing with his tie undone and the Guinness dancing in his glass and he thought of the road before him and the night and he felt a door somewhere nearby close with a clap and felt its latch slowly turn. Some beggar’s corner of his brain heard Aaron rising, saw the horse head turn that way, but he ignored these things as best he could so that he might focus on his words, so that he might paint them upon his heart and then give that heart to the darkness.

“You got Oliver, didn’t you, and it didn’t take long. You took Nelsen without even having to go upstairs. They’re weak. They’re all weak, and you don’t want them.”

As he spoke he knelt and retrieved the Varner lamp and though it flickered it was unbroken and a small chime in his head told him that this was good, that somewhere and somewhen and for someone, all might yet be well.

“You want someone better,” he said, and he pressed the lamp into Aaron’s waiting hand, Aaron who was looking about the chamber in a kind shellburst daze and who, Harry’s thinning mind told him, would likely follow simple strong commands as a result of such disorientation.

He turned to Aaron and in an aside he said something like Take her, take her and follow the lamp and go, and his mind bent and again he thought of the lacquered bar in the semidark aquamarine glow of the Blue Moon sign over the beer taps, Fat Tire and Tilburg’s and Pyramid and Leffe, and he saw the spill of yellow afternoon sunlight on the first week of autumn when the freshmen girls brought a spinning flurry of russet leaves in along with their Comp I books and their skirts. Russet leaves like a pair of russet birds on the wing, flitting against him like the touch of one finger, the touch of pale lightning. His mind saw these things and his eyes saw Aaron, as though hypnotized, look away from the awful face of the thing even as he tugged Katie away from its crouched form. The thing, its one eye tilted and transfixed upon Harry, let them go.

It will chase them, he thought, and he heard the laughter of those September girls as they slipped onto bar stools and asked for Bud Lights and Boulevards. If I do not hold its attention, it will run them down before they make it out and drag them back gibbering and screaming. I have to keep it busy. I have to keep it…. engaged.

“You want someone strong,” he said. The thing still held the latex mask in its hand. Far away, he saw the silver glow of the Varner lamp turn the corner and leave the chamber. He was alone, alone with the horse and the fire.

Somewhere there was a sunshaft shot between the mounting shoulders of a panhandle storm. Somewhere there was the first cold drop of rain and a hammock beneath a covered porch.

Harry dropped to his knees.

“You want me,” he said.

Mike couldn’t believe how warm the Florida water felt on his toes.  The rare times he had been in the ocean were on the Western side of the country.  He could get used to the chill of the Pacific, but the water rolling onto the Jacksonville’s McNichols Beach did not need any “getting used to.”  The beach was deserted on this September evening.  The sun was still medium high above the horizon, but Tuesdays did not see many people once school had started.  A voice from his past cautioned him against entering the ocean alone, but he knew his wife would be around shortly.  She took their daughter for a walk looking for shark teeth among the broken shells.  And he would not go out beyond waist-deep.

Besides, Mike was an excellent swimmer.  He had taken lessons when he was nine and learned to love the water, though that love took many years to develop.  Fear had been the original driving force for him to learn his skill.  A few months prior to his first lesson, his best friend Tom Beckhardt had discovered a treasure hoard underneath a bridge that breeched a drainage ditch in the farmlands near his home.

“Come on, Mike, you won’t believe it!”

“I’m coming!  But isn’t that where Bareny’s older brother and his friends go?”

“They won’t see us.”

“But if we take their stuff, they’ll know it’s us.”

“We don’t need to take it.  We’ll just look at it a bit.”

“What good is looking at their stuff?”

“You’ll see!”  When they arrived at the bridge and peered below to the embankment, Mike understood.  The treasure was not money or jewels, but a stack of Playboy issues up to their knees.

“Holy shit, Tom!”

“Tell me about it.”  Mike had never seen a naked woman before.  He knew that women did not have what men had, but could only wonder what was in its place.  He stared at the first centerfold for nearly twenty minutes.  Tom teased him thoroughly for being such a “virgin,” not quite understanding the term himself.  Both boys lost track of time and were having too much fun to hear footsteps on the bridge above them, or the sound of a fly being unzipped.  Tom had been sitting by the water flowing higher and faster than usual in the farmer’s ditch.  Sometimes it would be completely dry, but the rain over the last few weeks had been heavy, and three feet of water in the ditch created a monsoon appearance.  “What the hell?” was all Mike heard before both boys glanced up at Barney’s brother pissing down on Tom’s head.  “You fucker!” Tom threw down his Playboy into the mud next to him and slipped as he tried to get out of the way of the yellow stream that followed his every move.  Three older boys were laughing from road above.  Mike did not wait for Tom.  He threw the Playboy he was reading into the water and cut across the field through the corn.

“Hey, get back here Crabtree!”  Mike did not look back to see which boy called after him.  He heard a splash as he breached the first row of corn, but it was every man for himself when being chased by older boys.  He only found out much later that his best friend never came up from the muddy water.  For several months he would not go anywhere near the water.  It was his father talking to him about facing fears and conquering them that got him to take his first lesson.

The lessons were slow-going at first.  He was afraid to even attempt many of the techniques he was being taught.  But he gained confidence as the techniques he did try took hold.  He later joined the swim team at his school and spent his summers at a cabin his father owned near a major river where he learned to swim outside of the swimming pool.

The ocean was different than rivers and swimming pools, and Mike was wise enough to understand that.  He knew about undertows and riptides.  He knew about jellyfish and sharks.  He knew about waves and currents.  He knew better.

After wading out to where the water splashed against his midriff, he found that the water level changed anywhere from his chest to his knees.  A little further out couldn’t hurt.  I want to get my feet off the sand.  His love for the water had beaten down any fear he once had.  He stepped forward into a larger, approaching wave that nearly knocked him over.  The next wave he decided he would jump over.  But it was bigger than the previous wave, so as he jumped, he felt the pull back towards shore.  At the apex, he twisted his body halfway around and shifted to a horizontal position, allowing him to “fly” into the shallower water.  The journey was short, though, and he found himself lying on his belly in the sand when the water retreated.  Wow, this must be what surfing is like!  Now I get why people are so into that.  But I gotta go out a little further this time and face back this way!  Laura’s gotta try this. Erica, too, but not until she gets older.

When he reached the distance where he caught the last wave, another one was approaching.  This time, he lowered his head and dived into it.  The force of the water still pushed him backwards, but he kept swimming against it.  Eventually, the force let up and helped him along away from the beach.  He swam a little farther for good measure and emerged above the surface to see how far out he reached.  When he stopped, he could only which way the beach lie by the direction the waves moved.  He still couldn’t see the sands until one wave bobbed him higher than those more inland than himself.  Seriously?  I could not have come that far out.  It looked to Mike that he was about 40 yards from shore.  He tried to see if his wife and daughter were back when he saw a dark shape in between some waves for a brief moment before it disappeared.  He froze except for soft movements in his arms to keep him afloat.  The shape was a triangle pointing towards the sky.  Where’d it go?  Did I really see that?  Then again he saw another one, bigger this time, also between him and land.  No!  I am not going to die like this!  He began breathing heavier and swimming further out.  More people die from jellyfish than sharks.  Most sharks are quite harmless.  He read that somewhere and prayed it was true.

Another soft wave bobbed him upwards and then back down, pulling his head briefly below the surface before allowing him to emerge again.  Sharks or not, I can’t stay out here.  What am I doing here?  Waist-level only, remember?  He moved his muscular left arm in front and began kicking his powerful legs.  He swam fast, hoping that he would manage to fit between any sharks that happen to be in his way.  He swam straight and didn’t look up until he was sure he breached most of the distance.  But when he looked up, he was no closer to land.  Shit!  This must be a riptide.  He swam again.  Then he screamed, “Laura!  Laura call for help!  Laura!”

Don’t panic.  You’re not supposed to swim towards land in a riptide.  But what is it I’m supposed to do?  He kept swimming.  I can’t stay where I’m at.  I’ll be pulled out to sea.  Swim along the shoreline?  Is that it?  He tried.  He turned to his right and swam for several minutes.  He was still the same distance out, but was no longer where Laura would be looking for him.  Another dark triangle appeared against a wave, this time almost right in front of him and then disappeared as quickly as it arrived.  Mike stopped and treaded water for a moment.  He did not appear to be moving further out.  He started moving in towards the shore again and was making progress.  Another dark triangle flashed and vanished.  That’s not a shark!  It wasn’t.  Several more flashes revealed that the waves reflected light and shadows that, when combined with the imagination, made monsters appear.  Laura’s gonna laugh at me when I tell her about this.  Though later, Laura would not be laughing.

Mike began to descend from his panic as he moved closer to shore.  He just reached a place where his toes could feel the sand in between waves when his leg brushed what felt like seaweed.  His leg began to sting and itch at the same time.  Jellyfish?  Whether it was jellyfish or just the thought of jellyfish, his leg began to burn and turn numb.  He started to rub it and tread water as a small current started dragging him further from the shore.  Oh no you don’t!  Mike ignored his leg and swam with every muscle that would listen to him.  Once again, he failed to make any progress and turned to his right to swim parallel to the beach.  He swam fast.  He swam straight.  He felt a hand on his ankle and yelled.

He turned to face whoever grabbed him.  No one was there.  The water was calmer here, so he turned and tried to for the beach again.  Ahead of him, he saw another shape in the water.  Another illusion.  It appeared to be a head with long, tangled hair.  The “face” was too dark to see any features.  He swam towards it, but at an angle so that he had a chance to circumvent it if need be.  By the time he was within fifteen feet of the head, he could see the features clearly.  It was looking at him.  The face was pale with dark circles around its eyes.  There was a hole where its nose had been ripped away, and its lips were cracked as if they were over-dried.  Its hair was brownish green.  Mike could not tell if it were male or female.  “Get away!” was all he could think to say as he splashed water towards the being and attempted to swim around it.

“You left me, Mike.”

“I what?”

“You left me.  Left me to drown in that godforsaken ditch!”

“Tom?”  Tom was only nine when he died and had short hair.  This being was an adult.  “I don’t get it.”

“Those boys left me, too.  No one cared.”

“No, this is not happening.  You are not real.”  He arced around the head and left it behind.  But shortly afterwards, he saw the same head bobbing up in front of him, blocking him from the safety of the beach.  “Get outta here, Tom!”

“I never got to go to prom, or college.  You got to do that.  How come?”

Mike’s leg burned hotter than before.  He started feeling nauseous.  “Tom, I can’t change that.  You gotta let me past you.  I may not have stuck around, but I didn’t hold you under the water.  We were kids for Christ’s sake!”

“We both die by water, Mike.  It’s time.  Just let go.”

“No, I don’t give up.  I never will again!  Don’t you know what your death did to me?  I learned to swim.  I failed at first, but I kept going.  I never quit anything…ever.

“I never gave in to another bully.  No matter how big they were, I fought and fought.  I may have gotten beat up more times than I can count, but I never ran.  Don’t you get it?”

“It’s time, Mike.”  Mike noticed that he was being pulled further out to sea once again.  He turned to his right and swam harder than he ever swam in his life.  When he felt the water start to calm, he turned towards the beech.  To his left, he saw the head moving towards him again.

“Mike, stay put!” the head yelled.

“Fuck you!  Get the hell away from me!”  But the head was gaining on him.  Mike stretched his arms and kicked his legs hard.  How is he outswimming me?  But he knew the answer.  Mike was exhausted at this point and adult, dead Tom was a figment of his imagination.  He felt the fingers again on his ankle, though this time they felt stronger, and leathery.  Not like flesh at all.  Imagination or not, he had to face this demon.  He drew in his leg with the hand clamped firmly to his ankle and spun to his right.  His right hand was curled into a fist and he struck the head with the side of his hand like a hammer.  Something hard was knocked off the head and Mike thought he heard a gurgling sound.  There was no time to stop.  He followed with a left roundhouse punch to the same spot.  His ankle was free at this point so Mike let loose with a barrage of kicks and punches.  It occurred to him briefly that he probably looked like a little girl swinging at air, water, and flesh.  After about twenty seconds, he could no longer feel Tom’s body.  He paused.  Then an arm reached around from behind and caught Mike’s throat in the inside of its elbow.  Mike clawed at the arm, but his strength was completely gone.  He finally relaxed and allowed Tom to pull him to wherever dead people took the living.  Then everything went black.

When Mike came to on the beach, the sun was casting colors across the sky.  His wife, daughter, and two men he did not recognize were looking down on him.  He started to smile, but the faces he saw did not smile back.  Laura reached down to touch his face.  “It’s all right, love.  Thank God you are all right.”  Tears were spreading down her cheeks and dripping onto his chest.

He turned his head to look at one of the men.  “Did you save me?”

“I ought to kill you, you piece of shit.”

“Stop it!  He didn’t know!” Laura answered.

“Whatever.”  Both men turned away and walked down the beech.  Mike turned his head to follow their course.  They were walking toward what looked like a duffle bag on the beach.  But it wasn’t a duffle bag.

“Oh my God.  Is that…?  Did I….?”

Laura bent down and embraced him around the neck.  “It wasn’t your fault.  You thought he was something else.”

Erica spoke up, “Daddy, what did you think he was?”

“Honey, stop,” Laura interrupted.

“I don’t…I don’t know what I thought he was.  I was scared.  I…”  He looked at the dead man surrounded by the other rescuers.  “That’s twice now.  Twice my fear cost someone else….”  He couldn’t finish.

The loose gravel crunched beneath the BMW’s rubber.  Elizabeth sat in her car long after she cut the engine, wanting to cry more than anything.  Before her, framed by the windshield, stood the two-story farmhouse where she grew up.  Her childhood was painted white with green shingles that probably needed to be replaced.  Several large trees shaded most of the house and the lush, green grass surrounding it.  Her dad held onto it until his last breath released him.  George, her brother, would not be bothered.  His words to her: “Sell it through a broker…no need to go back to that old place.”  As much as she wanted to be as emotionally detached, the big house did mean something to her.

Her mind wandered briefly back to Bernard in his luxury office as she got out of the car.  That was Bernard’s problem: he cared more about the frills than he did about the business.  No wonder he wanted to sell so badly.  A nice chunk of change up front to him would upgrade his lifestyle.  Elizabeth was the major partner, earning more than Bernard yet taking the smaller office and spending far less on unnecessary items.  Her biggest regret since her company started taking off was selling her trusted Nissan Sentra for the BMW 5-seires.  “Piece of junk,” she said out loud.  It wasn’t junk, but it was a regret, which made it junk in her mind.  She shook her head and wandered around to the back of the house.

An oak’s branch had grown overtop of the remains of a rope that had once held a tire-swing.  A little piece of the rope still hung through the bark as if it had grown out of the branch.  She touched the oak as she walked past it towards her dad’s barn.  She couldn’t think of the barn as hers, though technically it was in her name now.  Her dad always had machinery in various states of assembly in that barn, and she was rarely allowed inside.  His barn.  But it’s my company.  Bernard has no say, really.

“Beth, we’ve taken this company as far as it can go.  A bigger company with more cash can do so much with it.  For what they’re offering, it would take us ten years to earn that kind of dough on our own.”

“Think so?  Did you really believe we would achieve the success we did two years ago?”

“Well, no, not this fast.  But even your forecasts don’t give us that kind of cash flow in the near future.”

“My forecasts are conservative.  That’s why we succeed.”

“Your shipping model is why we succeed.  Now that we’ve had a couple of years to make this happen, we know what we can and can’t do.”

***

That’s not the point.  Elizabeth shook her head and refocused on her house.  On the corner, the paint was still scraped from when she first learned to drive.  She had given the old Ford pickup truck too much gas, then stepped harder on the gas pedal instead of the brake trying to stop it.  Her father left the scar on the house as a reminder of how easy it is to make a mistake that has consequences.  Her mother was not happy with that.

She would be meeting with the realtor on Monday, giving her three nights in her old house before heading back to New York.  Iowa is another world entirely.  She had forgotten what silence sounded like.  Later that night, she would rediscover stars and appreciate what she had taken for granted as a teenager.  She opened up the barn doors.  Her father didn’t even have a lock for it.   No doors in New York are absent locks.  The smells of the oil and straw came back to her in a rush.  Though she had visited her father from time to time, she had not gone into the barn during those visits.  It was weird seeing it void of any machinery, but her father stopped fiddling with mechanics years ago.  Plenty of room for her BMW.  She returned to her car and parked it in the barn before moving on to the house.

She immediately missed the welcoming she used to receive from her father.  She again wished that she could cry, but was somehow unable.  She was surprised at how much she missed her mother, though her mother had passed away more then ten years prior.  “Stop it,” she said.  I’m here to wrap things up.  I love my father, and we said goodbye.  This is time to move forward.  Damn my brother for not coming here to help me through this.  George had never been happy in the middle of corn country and left for the city as soon as he could land a job.  Elizabeth never planned on leaving, but her idea for operational efficiency in managing a port pulled her beyond her comfort zone.  In time, she learned how to make New York comfortable.

She happened to be at the kitchen window when the sun started to paint the sky in the west.  She stopped washing her vegetables and let the muted rays wash over her.  The sunsets out here were another thing she had forgotten while living in New York.  If she did sell her business, she would have enough resources to survive out here for a very long time.  The family house was paid off, and the cost of living was so much cheaper.  I could retire right now if I want.  She had no idea what she wanted, unlike Bernard.  He wanted to sell.  She wished that she could be so comfortable with her desires.

The August evening was only slightly cooler than the day, but she avoided the air conditioner and let the windows shoulder the work of airing out the inside.  She left the TV off and read without absorbing a word.  Her thoughts flipped between Bernard and her father until her eyelids started to block both of them out.  Can I actually sleep tonight?  She hadn’t planned on being able to sleep, but was grateful to feel the sleep monster paying a visit.  Her feet shuffled along the hardwood floor.  The floor had been worn to a smoothness that felt good on her soles.  Before going upstairs, she turned to look at the front door.  Her father never locked the door at night.  But living in the city for eleven years changes one’s habits.  After considering the door for a moment, she slid over to lock it and then cut the lights before ascending to her old bedroom with her overnight bag.  The hand rail heightened her nostalgia.  Her awareness of every smell and touch was stronger than it ever had been.  Her room was to the right of the landing.  The upper floor was stuffy, but with the windows open she believed she could find her sleep.  She was wrong.  Her twin-sized bed was still up against the wall below the window.  She tried to open it, but the paint had dried inside the grooves long ago.  The box springs made the bed taller than she liked as an adult, though she loved the height as a child.  She changed quickly into her pajamas and lay down in her bed.  Her eyes widened and her thoughts returned to her.  She was no longer able to sleep and still unable to cry.

***

“Beth, are you holding on to this company because it is the right thing to do, or because you are emotionally attached to it?”  Bernard had said something similar to her yesterday, but in her imagination, it was her father speaking it.

“Is it wrong to hold onto it because I love it?”

“Depends.  Are you holding others back who would be better off if you sold?”

“I don’t know.  It’s mine, though, Dad.  Everyone working with me believed, or at least said they believed, that this experiment was worthwhile.”

“Has it been?”

“Absolutely!”  She had not a single doubt.

“Is it time to try again with a different idea?”  Is there a different idea?  Her entire business plan was rooted in one idea.  The business ran itself after getting the right people in place.  Even if I do have another idea, do I have to sell my first business to make the second one work?  She was in the process of wording her last thought into more sophisticated language when she heard the first set of clicks from downstairs.

The clicks were followed by more clicks, then by the sound of the front door opening.  “See, no one’s home.”  She heard through her open bedroom door.  All thoughts of Bernard, her business, and her father flew out of her mind.

“How do you know?”  This isn’t happening.  Make them go away.

“The door was locked.  No one locks their door here if they are home.”  She looked around her room to see where she could hide.  The closet?  Under the bed?  “If the door was unlocked, we’d go on to the next house down the road.”  Fuck.

“Okay.  I’ll start upstairs.  But I’m checking the place out good.  Nothin’ here’s worth a bullet in the head.”  She knew the closet and the bed would be the first places someone would check.  Before she could think, she heard the sound of boots on the stairs.  Damned window!  She glanced over at the wall and remembered the box springs.  She rolled over to the edge of the bed and tried to squeeze between the mattress and wall moving the mattress as little as possible.  Her box spring was held in place by the bed frame, keeping her from falling through to the floor.  She then pulled the comforter over her head as high as she could and prayed that the other side of the mattress did not stick out too far.

The second she was in place, the light clicked on.  Did I stop moving in time?  Silence followed her thought.  The double thud of a boot heel followed by an instep against the wooden floor announced every step the intruder made, along with an occasional squeak.  He walked towards her dresser.  Take what you want and get out of here.  More silence.  Then: “Interesting.”  The sound of something sliding off the dresser was followed by quick steps out of her room and down the stairs.

“You done up there already?”

“No one’s here, huh?  Would anyone leave this behind?”  She heard a zipper being pulled almost violently across metal teeth.

“Let’s see what we got here.  Elizabeth Hardin.  New York, New York.  Got us an out-of-towner here!  She’s an organ-donor, how nice.”  Fuck!  Just leave, please, just leave.  Take my car, take everything.  I don’t care.  “What did you see up there?”

“Bed was messed up, but she wasn’t in it.  She’s from New York, think she’s got a gun?”

“Doubt it.  Danny lived in New York.  Says it’s hard to get a gun legally there.  Easier if you’re a crook like us, but I’m guessing she ain’t.”  No, and Dad got rid of his guns.  “Still, probably not worth the risk.”  No, not worth the risk.  Please, leave!

 
The door opened up with the sound of another voice giggling.  “Jeff, guess what!”

“What are you doin’ here?  Get back out in the car and wait.  We’re leaving.”

“But I just been out in the barn and guess what I saw!  A freakin’ BMW!”  A short pause.  “Didn’t you hear me?  There’s a Beamer out in that barn, Jeff!”

“The owner of that Beamer is here in this house.  And you just used my name twice.  Shut up for a second.”

“Sorry, Jeff.”

“Sorry I brought you.”  Another pause.  His voice lowered as if he was talking to a different person.  “Get up there and see if you can find her.  Probably still in her room.  Tear apart that bed and check the closet.”

“Me?  Shit.  Gimme a second.”  No reply.  She did not have much time, but she could not stay in her room.  An outlet in the landing outside her room had always been loose.  When she was in high school, a light bulb from a lamp she plugged into it had exploded and blew a fuse.  She hoped her father had never got around to fixing it.  But she did not have time to plug a lamp into it in any case.  Frantically, she lifted her head and glanced around her room.  The base of a wooden softball bat peeked around the corner of her dresser.  She had to go around the edge of the room anyway to avoid the squeaky parts of the floor.  She threw the comforter off of her and danced along the baseboards, taking as few steps as possible as she negotiated her dresser.  She grabbed the bat and lifted it above her left shoulder.  She darted across the landing swinging down hard to the right, smashing the outlet in an array of sparks without stopping to see if any of her houseguests had started up the stairs.  The lights went out as she spun around in a complete circle and dashed into her father’s room at the end of the hall.

“What the fuck?!”

“Come’on, Jeff.  Let’s get outta here.”

“No, that rich bitch knows my name.  And frankly, I’m a bit turned on.  And don’t think about leavin’ me here.  I’ll find you and tear your nuts off, Frank.  ‘Sides, now she knows your name.”

Elizabeth braced the wall inside her father’s room and tried to control her breathing.  Phone.  I need a phone.  But her cell was in her overnight bag, now downstairs.  And her father never wanted more than the one phone in the kitchen.  She suddenly realized her softball bat was not in her hands.  Did I drop that?!  Her father had a love of pocket knives, so she opened up the top drawer of his dresser and rummaged as quietly as she could.  She came across a small one with a two-inch blade, opened it, and regained her place at the wall inside her father’s bedroom door.  This time, the boot steps came slower up the stairs.

“Hello, Elizabeth.  Or is it Beth?  I guess you’d see right through me if I said we don’t wanna hurtcha.”  Three more steps brought those boots to the landing.  “I reckon you wouldn’t be in your room no more.  But guess what I got.”  A small, white glow flicked on and breeched her father’s bedroom threshold.  “I will find you, Elizabeth.”  She heard more footsteps but could not figure out whether he was going further away or coming closer.  The glow disappeared.  He may have gone in her brother’s old room.  She could not wait by the door.  On a far corner, she saw a coat stand with three of her father’s coats hanging on it.  Not far from that was a wicker trash basket.  As quiet as she could, she maneuvered to the coat stand, picking up the trash basket along the way.  Standing behind a long coat, she placed the trashcan in front of her legs, completing her camouflage.  It seemed like an eternity before the glow of Frank’s penlight entered the bedroom where she waited.

“Last room, Elizabeth.  You must be in here.”  She could not help peeking around the coat.  The first place Frank looked was where she had been standing beside the doorway.  Next he slowly dropped and shined his light underneath the bed.  He shined the light briefly in her direction and she resisted the urge to pull her head back.  But it was the closet door three feet from her that caught his attention.  “Process of elimination, Elizabeth.”  He had the softball bat she had dropped.  He continued to walk slowly, ignoring the coat stand completely.

The side of the closet that opened was closer to her than the hinge side.  Frank took up position in front of the closet door, between it and Elizabeth with his back to her.  This is my chance.  I have one chance.  I need to get him quick, before he can scream.  If I mess this up, he will kill me.  If I let him scream before I get him, Jeff or the other one will kill me.  She moved one step towards Frank.  Exposed.  Her hand started to shake.  The knife was in her right hand.  Frank held the bat over his left shoulder.  The throat.  It has to be the throat.  As he reached for the doorknob with his right hand, she moved.  Frank turned towards her and opened his mouth.  Before he could scream or swing his bat, her legs and arms both straightened, thrusting her body towards Frank and her knife into his right lung.   Frank wheezed once, and Elizabeth retracted and thrusted the knife back into Frank’s midsection over and over.  He fell to the floor.  With an involuntary grunt, Elizabeth slashed across his throat and felt his warm blood on her hand.

***

“Beth, you don’t have that killer instinct.  You’re too soft,” Bernard had told her.  “You need to take the offering for this company and start a new one.  Don’t let your emotion over this get the better of you.”

“Being soft is my asset, Bernard.  And you’re starting to piss me off.  I haven’t made up my mind yet, and you’re acting like I have.”

***

She wiped the blood on her night clothes and folded the knife.  She retrieved the pen knife and shut it off.  Both the knife and the light fit into her pajama pocket.  Then she picked up her softball bat and walked to the bedroom doorway.  From her father’s doorway, she could look straight down the hallway.  Her eyes were adjusting quickly to the small light that penetrated the trees outside the windows from the moon and stars and streetlights at the end of the driveway.  On the left side of the hall was her brother’s room.  On the right was the bathroom.  Further on, across the landing, she could see the darkness peering out of her room.  But before her room, to the right, a figure stood on the top step with one foot on the landing, peering around in her direction.  A statue would not have been as still as she stood.  “’Lizabeth!  Come on out, ’Lizabeth.”  He doesn’t see me.

 
His voice…it’s the other one, not Jeff.  She felt thankful for that.  Jeff was the smartest of the three.  Whether she was right about that or not did not matter.  There was no time to question her assumptions.  He rounded the corner and walked towards her.  His left hand felt the wall.  No night vision, this one.  He stopped when he came to the frame of the bathroom door on his left.  He disappeared into it.  Elizabeth raised her bat and moved towards the bathroom.  She kept an eye on the landing in case Jeff was close behind.  The bathroom would be darker than the hall.  She would not see him unless she used the penlight.  Before she could devise a plan, the figure emerged from the bathroom and looked her way.  “Hey,” he said softly, as if running into a friend unexpectedly.  Before he could form another word, she brought the thick end of the bat down hard on his skull.  “Wait,” he said.  But she swung again, and again, and again.  He fell back into the darkness of the bathroom and she swung again and again.  Sometimes she felt nothing but air.  Other times she made contact with porcelain, drywall, or bone.  He made a few gurgles, but was quiet other than that.  With her last swing, she busted the faucet of the sink, and water started spraying her head and chest.  She turned back towards the door, expecting to see the outline of Jeff.  But the doorframe was empty.

Bat in hand, she peered carefully around the doorframe and into the hall in both directions.  She almost pulled the penlight, but decided against it.  That was how she knew where Frank was.  Jeff did not need any such advantage.  Water was starting to collect at her feet.  Slipping and falling could cost her her life.  Her brother’s room had not been occupied in the last fifteen years, but she knew her father was loathe to get rid of things that belonged to either her or George.  Quickly breaching the hall, she found herself in her brother’s room and went straight to the closet.  At the bottom were nearly a dozen shoes.  She rummaged through until she found a pair of snow boots.  They must have been from his earlier high school years, as they were a little tight, but otherwise fit.  She turned back to the door, positive that Jeff would be there.  But he was not.  Her brother’s boots had a rugged tread and gave her the confidence to walk on the increasingly flooded floor.  With the knife in her left hand and the bat in the other, she left her brother’s room to find and kill Jeff.

All of her senses were on heightened alert.  Each step of stairway sent electricity through her body.  Below the landing, the stairway was exposed on her left, but a wall protected her right.  She put her back to the wall and stepped sideways down the stairs.  She listened both below and above her, as she did not know for sure that Jeff was still downstairs.  But her gut told her that he was.  The living room spread out before her as she descended the stairway.  She could see no trace of Jeff.  Must be on the other side of this wall in the kitchen.  Unless he ran.  No chance of that.  Near the bottom, she paused.  She had no way of seeing what was on the other side of the wall.  If she was going to use the bat, she needed to put away the knife.  But if she wanted to use the knife….

Too late.  In an instant, the bat was pulled out of her hand and thrown across the room through the kitchen window with a lout crash.  Elizabeth screamed as Jeff emerged from the other side of the wall, completely naked with a fully erect cock in his hand.  “God you are such a turn on!” Jeff said.  “A rich bitch with an attitude that kills!”  She held up the knife.

“D-don’t come closer…any closer.  I’ll…I’ll cut your nuts off!”

“I don’t think so.”  He stepped closer to her.  She stepped back a step.  What am I doing?  I just killed two men…at least one of them armed.  Why would I back away from someone who is holding nothing that can hurt me?  She wanted to jump down and thrust the knife into him.  But her body wouldn’t obey.  Is it because I know he isn’t armed?  She really didn’t think that was the problem.  If she didn’t eliminate him, he would rape and kill her, with or without a weapon.  He was looking at her.  He was talking to her differently, more confidently.  The other two were more like soldiers.  Killing machines on orders.  This Jeff was different.  Jeff took another step.  Then another.  She matched every step of his with a backwards step of her own.  Her arm did not shake, but it wouldn’t thrust forward, either.  She waved her knife to the left.  He twitched the other direction.  Then the answer came to her.  He is smart…and aware.  I haven’t struck because I know he can dodge me.  My instincts.  I have to trust my instincts.  She kept the knife up as it did keep him from jumping at her and grabbing her.  She quickened her steps up the stairs.  Now he was following instead of leading.  Water was starting to run down the steps.  She backed up onto the landing and kept moving backwards towards her room.  “Now that’s more like it.  Damn, I’m startin’ to see you better and you are looking fine, Elizabitch!”  One more step backwards for Elizabeth and one more step forward for Jeff.  She was nearly into her room when Jeff froze solid in the puddle of water where he stood.  In the grayness, she could see his eyes open wide and heard a closed-mouth yell squeezing through his throat.  She dropped the knife and grabbed the pen light from her pocket.  Every muscle in Jeff’s body tightened and she thought she smelled smoke.  He shook, and then fell over.  In the glow of the pen light, she could see that the water had penetrated to the wall where she had previously smashed the power outlet.  Wires were hanging down into the water.  But the fuse was blown.  Those wires should be cold.  Later she would understand.  Her father did many of his own wiring.  His fuses sometimes wound up on the neutral side of the load instead of the hot side.

She carefully stepped past Jeff as far away from the power outlet as possible in her brother’s boots, and moved down the stairs.  When she found her bag, she grabbed her cell and called the police first.  Then she made a second call.

“Hello…Beth?  Isn’t this a little late?”

“IT’S MY GODDAMNED COMPANY, BERNARD!!!!”

“Whoa…Beth…what happened?”  Pause.  “Beth?”

“I’ll tell you later.”  Off button.  It’s my company.  And I’m going to trust my instincts.  She sat down on the couch and cried.

There were windows in the flat that looked out onto the street. Women were in the street, a signal of the changing world. They did not cover their hair, and spoke loudly. Sometimes he listened to their simple inflections, their calling each other habibi as they laughed. He thought about Zahra, and felt left behind.

The flat had white walls and almost no furniture. There was a Western fireplace, not that he needed it. There was a very pretty couch, and often he sat there.
Once he had a sister, and he’d loved her very much. Once he’d had a mother, and a father. Now he had an empty flat, and he was alone.

They had left them here, alone to rot, first in the asylum and now in an empty home. While they lay cold somewhere, rotting away while he remained there. Alone. Sometimes it made him angry.
Only at night could he remember.

Something hard and small and cold at his temple. He closed his eyes because he knew it was just a dream, only a very scary, realistic dream. But he also knew that he remembered this. He was shaking so much he couldn’t even control his lips. He wanted to say something, maybe to her, maybe to them, but then, that sound. Black. And he’d fallen.

Upon waking he’d forget everything other than school. Sometimes he still got up in a rush, dressing himself and throwing things into a suitcase, sure that he would miss the boat. Then he would remember, and have to return to being alone.

He didn’t know how long it had been since school, but he remembered that Zahra had not come. He knew only what kind of hospital an asylum was; what kind of shame had trapped him.

At least he could acknowledge it now. For a long time he could not. He had not wanted to. He would ask the nurses to take him to his sister, thinking himself still back in Paris. They were all the same, and they all had the same tight-lipped smile. No, he couldn’t go to see his sister. She wouldn’t see him, and she couldn’t. Sorry.

Sorry? Sorry got to him. They thought he wouldn’t be able to handle it. He was still too fragile. But he had managed alone just fine.

When he’d think about her he remembered the recurring dream and he would try to connect what he could not. Sometimes he had to speak his name out loud, just so that he would not forget. In the heat of the night, he would whisper it again and again. “Mansur. That is my name. Mansur.” If he forgot that, then they would have kept him forever. Even a few moments of silence unraveled him, bit by bit. Now at home, he either left the radio on or played something. Anything, to keep the silence at bay.

***

His neighbors were nice enough. The wife of the abusive husband loved him, and he knew she did. At night, when he didn’t want to dream, he would play the piano. Once he had heard her sighing happily, and opened the door to see her staring in the hallway. She wore a tattered house dress, and he remembered that. She blushed, but stayed where she was. There had been a bruise on her cheek that night. He could forget his name every once in a while, but never the sickening shade of purple the flesh had been.

Sometimes she was also on her verandah, leaning towards his flat. Always in that tattered dress. He would come outside, and all he would have to do was look to the right and there she was. Listening, her hands over her chest.

“Why did you stop?” she once asked him. He shut the door and gone to bed. It was punishment in his own way, for flirting with him while she was married; while she lived a normal life.

But her. He would find her every day listening to his music that he played to keep the silence away. He would be repulsed by the bruise. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her to go away. He didn’t love her, but he didn’t hate her either.

Sometimes the woman had Zahra’s face. Just like his face, but womanish. That is when he got angry, and told her to leave. She would always start at his voice, as if it were too different from his music for her to process.

…And then, one night, she followed him home. He had been outside (why had he been outside?) and she had followed him in.

“My husband is not home tonight,” she said.

“Alright.”

“Who are you? Where are the al-Hamras?”

“I am their son. And you?”

She did not respond for a long time, he remembered that. “Are you hungry?” she asked instead. “I’m sure your cooking is horrible, if you are living alone.” She laughed.

“I don’t remember the last time I ate.” She had been horrified at that.

“How do you live, then?”

“I don’t remember.” He had simply looked at her, but she blushed anyway. He didn’t like that.

***

She spoke like a fellaha, a coarse village peasant. Her hands were rough like one too. In the doorway of the kitchen, he tried to stare only at the stove. “What village do you come from?” he asked.

She blushed at that too. That bothered him more. “Is it obvious that I’m not from here?”

“Yes. I’ve been to Paris. Now I know what real city people look like. I just forget a lot.”

She nodded. “The village is not important. My husband is from there as well. He’s my cousin, and he came to school here. He and I were supposed to marry when I was fourteen. So when I was old enough, they sent me here. Sometimes he beats me, though.”

“I know.” Mansur said.

She looked longingly at the stove, as if wanting to cook for him. “Is there anything I can help you with…”

“Zameena. My name is Zameena.”

“Thank you, Zameena. I’m… Mansur.”

“Mansur.” She repeated it, happy to say his name. Her smile was shy when she left. He was annoyed, especially now that he was conscious that he had no idea what he ate, other than that meal. He wondered if he had eaten beforehand, smelling his coat in hopes of evidence of a smoky tea house. Maybe that was why he had been outside…

***

He found himself in a cemetery, with flowers in his hand. Al-Hamra. He was looking for al-Hamra. What had made him want to visit them?

The stone was dirty, but even when he bent it away it remained. Too fragile, he thought, but that didn’t make any sense. He threw the flowers down and left.

***

The door opened, and he looked up. “Can I go home now?”

Zahra smiled indulgently at him, going to turn on the radio, “You are home now, Mansur.” He sighed. He forgot that too.

“Sorry.”

She also sighed, and came to sit on the armrest of his chair. She put a hand on his shoulder, so that he looked up at her.

“I’m trapped by my own mind,” he said. She nodded. Then he realized that she wasn’t there, because he was at home, and he was alone. The wound from his dreams had taken away his memory, and now he had no one and nothing.

***

Zameena came again.

“I wish you would stop that,” he said. “You surprise me.”

Her smile was sheepish, and she held out something wrapped in brown paper. “I wanted to give you this.” Before he could protest the gift, she was gone. He blinked. Had he already forgotten watching her close the door?

He looked at the package, but didn’t want to open it. He felt it would acknowledge that he still hadn’t turned her away. He pushed the package further away from him on the table, and then looked out the window. Outside, it was still quite early.

He wondered why the apartment was so empty. Had not his parents been wealthy? Where had all of their things gone? Thieves, he thought. Yes, thieves. Family members, probably taking this and that while he was gone. Thieving family members were the worst. If he could remember a phone number, he called them. But for the life of him, other than Zahra, he couldn’t even remember a name.

He lay in bed that night and thought about the flowers he left. He didn’t even remember what color they’d been, or what type. Or when he bought them. If he had someone with him, he was sure that they would tell him.

Before drifting off to sleep, his hand seemed to move up of its own accord. He felt along his hairline till he felt the scar. The line of hard, lumpy tissue extended from the front all the way to the back. His hair had grown around it, but he could never forget that hindrance.

***

“How did you survive such a terrible blow?” Zameena said. “Who did it to you?”

Mansur didn’t like the question. He tried not to look at the cuts on her arms, or her face, which was almost completely swollen.

“I don’t know. But I am here.”

“Where was your family, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“He beat me again, Mansur.”

“I know, Zameena.”

He looked up and saw that her hands were shaking. “What do you want me to do?”

She laughed, and the sound was a bit off. As if she were from the asylum. As if something about her had gone wrong. “It doesn’t matter though. He’ll never hit me again.”

Mansur had to stop. “Zameena. What did you do?”

Her lips trembled, but she looked pleased. “Now we’ll see who’s ruin to the family.”

***

There was a commotion downstairs, and he went out to see. The shoemaker and his wife, his next door neighbors, were smiling from the landing. When Mansur peered down the stairs, he saw Zameena’s husband, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. A thing young woman climbed a couple steps behind him. Her hands were brilliantly hennaed, but she wore day clothes. He looked at the two neighbors. “He has a new wife?”

“It’s about time he remarried. That other woman was no good, I knew right from the beginning. Not that this one is any better.” He spoke to his wife, ignoring Mansur.

“So he’ll have two wives now.” Mansur’s voice raised loud enough for them to hear.

“He was alone for much too long, really. And after what that woman did, it’s time he moved on.” The husband shook his head. The wife nodded her agreement. “She didn’t know her place. Now he’s had to make do with this one.”

“Not even from good parents.”

“Perhaps she’ll mind him more.”

“It’s just too bad… So bad.”

The husband looked up. A savage glare stared at the couple through wire-rimmed lenses. Deep jagged scars lined his cheeks. One went through his left eye, which was closed. The husband reached his landing, unlocked his door, and let his wife in.

“I heard business is bad for him now,” said the shoemaker.

The wife sighed, “I heard she used a razor.”

Mansur slammed the door behind him.

***

He was in the cemetery again. He laid flowers on the grave. He noticed that they were the same as the drooping flowers left last time and was glad.

The gravestone was just as dirty. This time, he worked and worked to wipe off the dust. He got on his knees and took off his jacket. Sweat formed on his forehead from the exertion, but he continued on. He used his sleeve, his hands, even his fingernails. He was desperate. He knew that something would happen if he could just get that dirt off.

A memory came back to him.

I am alone, he thought. She can’t come back to me and she won’t. No one will. I would rather be dead than face her. Furiously, he had begun to tie a knot.

Curious.

He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.

Suddenly the letters in the stone were clear. There were the words, in calligraphy he had picked out: Faruq and Noura al-Hamra. Husband and wife. At least now their memory would be able to see day’s light.

Other characters were hidden. The top of what looked like a Z.

And then, a voice.

“Stop lying to yourself, Mansur.”

He turned around, and there she was. The woman with his face. The only woman he loved enough to want to see. He smiled.

“Zahra. Habibi. Where have you been, my dear one?”

“You know, Mansur.” She sounded cross, but she wrapped her arms around him. “You know, and you left me all alone.”

Mansur pulled her out of his arms, so that he could look at her. She was still beautiful as she had been, and he was proud of her. Now they were reunited, and he could move on with his life. This was what he needed. He could be alone forever now, as long as he had his sister.

“No… No, you know that’s not true. You’re the one who never visited me.”

“You know I couldn’t. I have been here waiting for you.”

Confused, Mansur struggled with a response. “But I’ve been here before.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you come to me?”

Zahra smiled as if embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said.

“I met a woman who is very much like you.” He paused. “Her name was Zameena. The name even reminded me of you.”

Zahra smiled. “I know. She’s here, too. She tried to help you come back to me.

And when Zahra turned around, Mansur saw her as well. He did not smile at her

“But you never looked at her gift, did you?”

He frowned. “What is she doing here?”

“The same thing that I am. That you are.”

Mansur looked at his sister. “No.” Anger. Black, furious anger. “She followed me. She wants me to be her savior, and I can’t. I cannot fix her problems. I have my own. I have my own life to fulfill.”

Zahra’s smile was that of a mother who is trying, and failing, to play along. “Mansur, you know that that is not true.”

“I am not majnoon, Zahra! I’m not crazy. I know what I know. I am no hero. I only want to live my life.”

“You chose to forget because it was too painful, Mansur.” Zahra was wearing a red party dress that showed off her arms. She covered them now, putting her hands on her shoulders. “But you do know. Tell me what happened the night you were shot, Mansur.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. Remember. Remember the thieves.”

Pained, looked away from her, anywhere but at her, “They stole our things.”

“Yes. And you were too fragile to handle it. You survived, but you hated that you did.”

“No… I went to school. School in England. Or. Paris. I mean Paris. I made friends there.”

“The night before the boat was to depart, Mansur, they came. Men with guns. They shot Mama first. You remember, Mansur. You kept staring at the red on your piano.”

“No. That didn’t happen.”

“Baba tried to fight them. You remember, Mansur. Before he died he told us to run away. But we didn’t. We stayed in the closet.”

“No, Zahra. No. It was just me they shot.” His eyes leaking, he looked from his sister to Zameena. Both faces were deathly serious.

“And then after I died, they took you to the asylum. You were healing, but you refused to believe we were dead. For many nights, Mama, Baba, and I sat at your window, and you saw us and spoke to us as if we had not died. But we had, Mansur. We had.”

“Please stop it Zahra.”

“You wanted to leave the asylum, and you kept asking them where I was. But they didn’t want to tell you, because they knew you would spiral again.”

“Stop it!”

But he did remember. He remembered all of it.

The men who had come in the night. Who had come upon them all awake and a little drunk, and with guns taken away his family’s life. Zahra had screamed, and he could not handle Zahra screaming.

The asylum.

The cold white walls and the need to get to the boat and the alone. The clawing at the door, begging them to let him go. They lied to him, and he knew they lied to them. And then he stopped knowing, and believed the lies.

Until it had been too hard to bear.

“Why don’t you open your present, Mansur?” Zameena held out the brown package. He glared at her, but ripped at the paper. He stared at the lone picture, incredulous.

“I took that. When I found you.” Zameena laughed, a bit uncomfortably. “My husband killed me when he saw it.”

Mansur stared at the picture, disbelieving.

Zahra spoke: “You can’t go home, Mansur. This place is your home now.”

But he could not take his eyes off the image. Blurred, black and white. He saw himself. The knot he tied was fitted tightly around his neck. He was hanging, not unlike a portrait.

He was

I first encountered the megalith as a young man, lost and wandering deep in the Greenwood.  I found it standing tall in the center of an open glade. Its black granite was smoothed by countless years of weathering and it had no markings upon it save for a perfect circle on one side, carved into the hard stone about three-quarters of the way up its towering body.  It was regal and majestic then, rising high above the trees with its tiny crystals reflecting the summer sun.  My hand grew warm when I touched it.  It felt safe and welcoming.

I was a newcomer in the woods then.  I was looking for a land to call home, a place to settle down and begin my life; maybe even start a family.  Somehow, I felt invited by the megalith.  It must have been raised there sometime in the unknowable past by a forgotten people.  Maybe they were my wandering ancestors, hoping that their children would visit here in the ages to come.  That night, I camped in its warm shadow.  I did not need to light a fire; the megalith warmed me from within.  It shielded me from the night winds and I found berries growing at its feet.  The high, lonely howl of a pack of forest wolves startled me, but never did they enter the clearing to threaten me.  I could see their gray-brown coats through the trees and their glinting, hungry eyes reflecting the silver light of the moon.  They watched me for some time and stalked about the edges of the clearing, but they never approached out of some primal reverence for that place.  I managed to drift into a dreamless sleep.

“Stay.”

I awoke the next morning invigorated and content, choosing to stay in that land.  I scanned the woods for a place to build my homestead.  I did not wander from the megalith’s clearing, always keeping it in range of my eyes.  It was the spring of the year, and the thin trees had only the barest of bright green sprouts on them, searching the earth for warmth and sustenance.  The thickest grass and the highest trees grew near the megalith, including a copse of massive oaks that ringed it on all sides.  Often I looked back at the stone to keep my bearings, searching its lone marking for some advice.  I eventually found a nice spot close to a spring that issued clear, cool water.  I drank from the spring often, and the fish in the stream it birthed were always plentiful.

In the beginning, my life was hard.  Every day I toiled in the elements to build my new life.  However, I never felt alone out in the wild by myself.  There was always the megalith.  I tended to visit it in the evenings, even to talk to it to offset my loneliness.  I felt always as if it approved of my presence.  During my long days, I hunted in the forest for wild deer and labored to cut wood for my home.  From the highest tree I could see a village on a far green hill, many miles away.  I did not wish to go there at first, fearing that the people might not welcome a stranger in their land.  I had left my own home after a feud with my overbearing father.  We had foolishly fought over the land, him wanting to give the largest and most fertile share to my older brother.  I hated him for the greater love he bore Jakon and for his constant want of control over my life.  I was hard-headed and young then.  I did not wish for any new trouble with my distant neighbors.

After I had been in the woods for many moons, a party of trappers happened upon my camp.  They were simple folk, farmers and hunters.  I felt as though they knew their land well, and lived a life close to nature, in harmony with the earth.  Their clothes were simple leathers and most wore basic linen shirts of brown or white.  The sleeves were long and rolled back away from their hands, much unlike the vest I wore.  A few had boiled leather bracers clasped about their wrists and a quiver of yellow-fletched arrows over their shoulders.  Almost all of them had a deep green tunic over their garments, an attempt to better hide in the colors of the forest.  The men shaved their faces neatly, and the varied colors of their hair stood dramatically apart from their tanned skin.  All were kind to me, unsuspicious of my presence there.  Their leader, a tall man with graying hair and patient eyes, spoke to me.  His words were heavy with a strange dialect, but I understood him well enough.  He reminded me of my grandfather.

“What is your name?  Why do you stay here alone?” he asked.

“I am called Joren.  I am new to your land, and I stay here to build my new home.”

“You should visit our village.  We don’t get visitors often.  Autumn is coming soon and we will have our harvest festival.”

“I think I would enjoy that,” I said smiling at him, sensing his genuine hospitality.

The man’s daughter was with the group.  She was a few years younger than me and beautiful to my eyes.  She said nothing to me then, but I did notice her watching me, taking my measure.  I was struck by her green eyes and perfect skin.  Her auburn hair was a flowing mimicry of the deepening colors of the fall forest.  She never left my mind after that first meeting.

“Go to her.”

            The next month, I walked those short miles to the village and stayed for the festival.  I took along cured venison and many deer horns which I knew were valued almost like gold by the people.  I had more than enough to trade for the supplies I needed for the coming winter and some left over still to negotiate for an ox to plow my fields in the coming spring.  I lingered in town that day awaiting the start of the festivities.  All of the rugged faces I met that day were warm and kind.

The village square was decorated for the harvest festival.  Vegetables of all sorts were stacked high in various places, a towering mix of orange pumpkins, green squash and yellow corn.  Several wooden tables were set out and adorned by red and brown linens.  The square itself had been swept clean, and a small stage was erected there for use by the players. A great bonfire was piled neatly in the exact center of the village and fair-haired children raced around it, anticipating the excitement to come. The place had a rustic charm about it and I was often reminded of the home I had left.

At sunset that evening, the festival began. I saw the trapper’s daughter again and watched her from afar.  I hid my eyes tactfully by raising my cup to my lips and quietly cursed the men, and a few boys, who had the audacity to ask her for a dance.  But, the girl refused them all.  She was wearing a beautiful dress in the colors of the season.  Brown, green and gold mingled with her auburn hair to weaken my knees and steal away my confidence.  For some reason, I stood after a few nervous minutes and looked back to the Greenwood, to where I knew the megalith was standing and watching me, supporting me.  It might have been the tangy spiced cider or the spirit of the festival in me, but I waited until the musicians began another song and then I asked her to dance.  She said her name was Tana, their word for a summer flower that grew in that land. I gently took her white hand and we turned to the dance floor.

“Are you enjoying the festival?” she asked, smiling.

“I am, but I fear I am not much of a dancer,” I confessed.

“You’re doing fine.  You are quick on your feet.”

“Thank you, hunting and working keeps me strong.”  My words sounded stupid to my ears, but she smiled through the awkwardness.  I hoped that the red on my face was disguised by the bright bonfire.

“Why do you stay there, alone in the woods?  Have you no family?”

“I left my father’s home to make my own place in the world.  I hope to have my own family one day.  I will need a wife and children to manage my farm.”

She blushed then and turned her eyes to the ground.  My words were too bold, even though I was not directly thinking of her when I spoke them.  We finished the dance in silence and then I returned to my table to drink some honey wine.  It helped to lighten my mood.  The players kicked up a quicker tune, a reel I knew from my own childhood.  The lead was played by a tall, lanky man with long, thin brown hair.  His skinny fingers flew across his fiddle and his bow moved like a blur.  The bassist thumped right along with him and the six-string and the flute popped in and out to play quick, vibrant solos.  They had the look of travelling professionals, smiling and winking at the locals and enjoying the click of the coins that landed in their open instrument cases.  Their playing had everyone clapping and stamping their feet to the rhythm.  Some folks called out in a yelp in answer to the wild music, and one spry old woman stood on her table to dance a simple step.   Across the village square, I saw the trapper raise his cup to me and I returned his salute.  He then raised his eyebrows and smiled in the direction of his lovely daughter.  She was approaching me again.

“I bet the next tune is an easy one to dance to, if you are up for it.  Nice and slow.”  Her kindness was refreshing, and I hastily accepted.  She smiled again, her face warmed by the firelight.  The flames reveled in her eyes and danced across her glistening lips.  I kissed her.

“She will be yours.”

 The following summer we were hand-fasted in a ceremony in the glade under the approving gaze of the megalith.  I wore my finest, and Tana wore a simple gown of pure white.  A motley array of the summer flowers adorned her long hair.  The base of the megalith was piled high with the gifts of the sweet summer: honey, fruit and bottled red wine.  Our home was expanded and improved with the aid of some of the village men, and I had broken the soil early that spring to plant my first promising field.  The life I had wanted was coming to be.  I almost felt guilty for the treasures that I had received.  Unbeknownst to her father, she was already pregnant with our first son.

He was born that autumn, almost one year after my first festival with the villagers and the timing seemed so fitting.  He was healthy and hale at birth, but we struggled for some time to name him.  It was their custom to name the firstborn after the father’s father, but I did not want that.  He was my son and I would be the one to choose.  I alone.

“Nathen, after your father.”

“Let’s name him Joren.” I said to my wife.

“Yes, let’s.  It’s a fine name, it’s your name.  My father might not approve, though.  It’s not our custom.”

“He’s my son.  I’ll name him as I see fit.”

The winter that year was hard.  A bitter cold lasted for many months and the ground often shook beneath our feet.  The plentiful stream was frozen over too solidly to easily find water, and the beasts of the wood were absent, save for the hunger-maddened wolves who circled much too near my home.  My son was anxious and distracted, refusing my attentions.  He would lie in his bed, tiny head turned to face the glade with a distant stare in his eyes. The villagers grumbled nonsense about the gods being angry, but my small farm had produced well and we had more than enough food stocked away to last until the Sun’s return.

We planted the fields together that spring.  I turned over the soil with much difficulty, the ground still cold and frozen from the harsh winter.  My ox bellowed in complaint, but I urged her onward with the whip.  The men said I was starting too early, but I ignored their advice and toiled hard.  Tana and I both seeded the ground, her eager to help after putting Jorenson to bed.  I noticed that she was placing only two kernels in each hole, unlike my method of placing three.

“Tana!” I called out across the field.  “Place three seeds in each hole.”

“Sorry, I just thought that two would be plenty.”

“Three is best, in case the crows get at them.  Why did you only drop two?”

“I’m not sure; it was just a thought in my head.” She looked back over her shoulder toward the glade, where that black rock stood.  My heart filled with anger, and I retraced Tana’s steps to place an extra seed in each and every hole.  The soil was dead that spring, dry and gray, nothing like the moist, dark peat that I had planted in the previous year.  My corn grew slowly that season, and stood only as high as my chest by harvest time.

My farm was not the only one so afflicted.  All of the villagers’ farms produced much less than the year before, seemingly healthy livestock died, and the harvest celebration was a somber affair.  The women pretended to be merry, and the men sat about whispering about what had gone wrong.  Even the travelling players hadn’t returned this year.  Their jovial music was much needed and much missed.  I went to the festival with my family; it was in many ways also my son’s first birthday party, but we sat alone.  Few of the villagers acknowledged us, and none had a kind word.  Even Tana’s father remained a stranger to us, stealing sly glances but never coming over to join our party.  I could see the hurt in her eyes.

After an uneasy hour, one of the village elders came to us.  The man wore the traditional garb of the towns’ elders.  Over his pure white shirt he had a short coat of the brightest red, embroidered with a crisp yellow and displaying polished brass buttons.  His pants were wool, dyed black; his boots were knee-high and made from fine leather.  A graying mustache was twisted to a point at the ends, but otherwise he was clean shaven.  His sun-browned, rough skin contrasted with his wizened hair, and his eyes shone out a brilliant blue.  He seemed polite and kind at first, but he was clearly uncomfortable.  The other villagers could scarcely hide their fascination with our talk.

“Joren, friend, I am glad that you brought your family in for the occasion,” he said.

“Thank you sir, I only wish the mood were higher, but it was a disappointing growing season.”

“Yes, but we’ve been through this before,” he said, raising his troubled eyes to the woods.   “So, I never met your son, what did you end up naming him?”  He dropped his gaze to look at my boy without lowering his head.  It felt contemptuous, and I sensed that this was his true reason for speaking with me, but I could not understand why.

“We decided to call him, Joren, after his father,” answered Tana.  I smiled at the child and tousled his yellow hair.

“Is that so? Not much for tradition, I guess.”

“I am not from your land, my traditions are different.” My tone was far more hostile than I intended for it to be, and I regretted my words as soon as they were spoken.

“I see.  You are your own man.  But, some of us here are very old-fashioned.  They believe that failure to follow the old ways brings misfortune.  Your ways are strange and foreign to us, friend.  You don’t honor your own father’s name, you plant your crop in an odd fashion, and, if it weren’t for Tana, you’d just live out there all by yourself.  You ought to mind our ways and try to respect what you don’t understand.  Many think you have brought this trouble upon us all”

I lost my head and stood up quickly, forcing the older man to back up suddenly.  He stumbled and fell to the ground, landing with an embarrassing thud on the hard earth.  It wasn’t my intention to tumble him over, but I was seething from his words to me.  And yet I said nothing, but did not offer to help him either.  Two younger men, probably his kin, came over scowling at me and got him to his feet.  They skulked away without another word, only shooting hateful glares over their shoulders in response.  The villagers’ eyes were all on us now, and some even narrowed their gaze at my young son, as if he were somehow to blame.

“Joren, maybe we should go,” my wife quietly whispered at my side.  It felt as if the black of the dying year was pressing in around us; that the spirit in the community was being drawn away.

“Walk back tonight?  It’s late already and the distance is several miles.”

“But, I don’t think we are welcome here.”

We rose from our table.  Tana carried Jorenson on her back, and I carried our packs and the goods we had purchased earlier that day.  It was well after evenfall, but I felt that she was right.  Our walk would be long and dark, the child would fuss, but the sentiment there was blacker than the night and colder than the chilled air.

We trod slowly, my torch our only source of light along the road.  I looked ahead, toward the glade, searching for the megalith looming above the trees.  It was far away yet, and the night was dark, but I caught sight of it.  It was there, among the ancient trees, darker than the sky surrounding it.  I felt as if it were angry, brooding and drawing in the light around it, consuming the energy from the land and even the sky.  I begrudgingly admitted its power to myself, its pull on the land and the simple folk who lived there.  I had felt it myself, right from the very beginning, but I did not know to respect it, fear it, then.

We walked in silence, both of us feeling the gloom around us.  I listened to the erratic fall wind blowing the trees and scattering the myriad leaves.  It was not very cold, but the gentle chill of the harvest season urged us to walk close together.  Often I heard sounds just off the road, irregular movements and unexplained rustlings of the bush.  My hunter’s eye scanned the dark, but I was blinded by the close light of my fire.  The wind kicked up the brown dust of the road and tricked my eye with ghosts of pale dirt and swirling leaves.  Tana looked at me with concern, and we hastened our step.

“Submit.”

 Turning to look behind us, I could make out dark figures following us on the road.  They carried no light, and stayed far enough behind to escape ours.  They seemed to be only following, but for how long and why?  I stopped and turned to face them in defiance.

“Who are you, and what do you mean by following my family?”

“Joren,” spoke one voice as they closed in, “We need you to give us the child.”  He pulled back his hood and I recognized the man from the village.  He was at the festival, one of the many unfriendly faces.

“Tana, run,” I spoke quietly to my wife.  I could see the panic in her eyes, but she turned to go, following my word.  “You’ll have to take him from me,” I called out in challenge to the men.  I had no weapon except for my strong body and my hard, workman’s hands.  Rage filled my mind then, and I recklessly charged at the men.  They broke apart, scattering around me, and moved to my vulnerable flanks.  I managed to lash out and grab one of them.  I smashed his nose into his face with a bloody splatter.  However, there was a hard crack on the back of my head and a quick flash of white light. The road rushed up to meet me.  In the distance, I heard my wife screaming and my baby wailing.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in the clearing, on the ground before the hateful stone.  I was bound by course, thick ropes about my chest, hands, knees and feet.  It stood there, triumphant above me, the light of dozens of torches licking its black body.  A sanguine harvest moon languished in the gray sky.  My head was thick with pain, my vision red with the blood in my eyes.  My mouth tasted of iron.  Time crept.  Tana was there too, but she was a madwoman, writhing on the grass and howling for them to stop in an unnatural, visceral voice.  She often called out for her father’s help, but I saw him nowhere in a crowd of people from the village.

On the ground before the megalith a pile of wood had been collected, and the elders stood around it, speaking in a lost tongue.  They had my son.  I tried to speak, but my mouth was swollen shut, my throat crushed.  I tried to stand, but my bindings were too strict.  One of the men noticed me then, and shoved me back down each time I tried to rise.  I caught his eyes with mine and pleaded, wordlessly, for his aid.  But his face was cold; dead to me and my plight.

“Sacrifice.”

 I was forced to watch as they placed my only child on the pyre.  He lay there naked against the cruel wood, but did not cry.  He never cried out, neither in fear nor pain.  The elder who had spoken to me just hours before now took a torch from his attendant and set it to the wood.  Fire crackled to life as he said a few more arcane words, face gazing upward to the eye of the megalith.  All around the megalith, the chant was repeated in low tones until it rose up in a great crescendo, louder than Tana’s wailing and the thundering of my own heart.  I could not remove my eyes from the macabre scene.  As the flames stretched up to consume my son, the ground beneath us trembled and the villagers gathered there cheered in relief.  Tears ran down my dumb face.  The wolves sang deep in the dark forest around us.

They enjoyed a very mild winter that year.

Tana and I had been allowed to go, and she assured me, over and over, that she had no idea what her people were capable of.  There had never been a failed crop in her lifetime, and most thought that the old ways were lost.  She had fleeting memories from her childhood of her father and others leaving the village to visit the woods, but she was always told that they were hunting, or simply “walking.”  I believed her and we left that place together.  We traveled back to my home country, and meekly lived in my father’s house for a time.  We never spoke again of our ordeal in her country, not even to one another.  It was hard to return to my father’s house and admit my failures.  I only gave him vague, ambiguous details.  I was afraid of the megalith’s power, even here.  I did not want it to find a way to hurt the rest of my family.  I remember our first words after those quiet years well.

“Father, I am sorry and ashamed of my actions when I left.  It wasn’t my place to question your decisions with your own land.  I should have been thankful for anything that I received.”  The words were easier to say than it was to look into his hard, gray eyes.  But in them I saw love and immediate forgiveness.

“Son, those days and those words are gone like a cloudburst of cold rain.  I am happy to see you and your beautiful wife.  You are welcome here, and I and Jakon will help you in whatever way you need.  I know of an abandoned old farm not far from here.  Maybe you can make a new start there.”

“My brother and his family are well?”

“Yes, but you have been missed.  You look so much like your mother, and when you left, I felt like I had lost a great part of her again.  Welcome home, son.”  At that, he embraced me and I felt the hasty deeds of the past being erased.

I did start up a farm not far from my father’s, and he helped me with some land and the use of some tools.  With his guidance, my land prospered and Tana and I found some measure of happiness together again, but we were never able to have another child.  Jakon encouraged us to visit and to care for his two little ones often, but it wasn’t the same; perhaps it made things worse.  It broke Tana’s heart.  She died some years later and all of the hope was gone again from my life.  I buried her next to my mother, and visit their namestones every nineday.

I still feel the megalith sometimes.  I’ve seen it in my dark dreams at night.  It’s still standing there, watching me from afar, somewhere over those blue hills and through the wide green valley on the other side.  Mile upon mile separates us now, but I am still cursed by its ugly power.  If I were a better man, I’d return in secret and bash upon it with my bare fists until I reduced it to rubble, but I have nothing left but my hate and the bitter memory of my failure.

“Despair.”

Mist shrouded the forest, blown in by the cold winds of November. Crows called to one another through the sounds of rain dripping from branches to the dead leaves that lay in shades of brown, maroon, tan and burnt orange on the ground. The gray clouds in the sky seemed to enhance the stubborn gold leaves that clung to the beech saplings making them stand out as one glimmer of brightness and hope amid the utterly miserable weather conditions. The rain was light, but it was cold. A wind was picking up making my journey through the forest all the more miserable.

I leaned against a tree and winced in pain. The reason that I was wandering through this forest was because I had seen the distant light of a lantern shining from someone’s house. My car had tumbled when a strange creature, like a bloated horse with boar’s tusks, had charged out in front of my car. The car had flipped, rolled and landed in a ditch badly jarring me. My shoulder had been rather badly lashed and banged by some saplings growing in the ditch. I had thought them to be willow saplings, but the saplings were harder than willow, harder than oak even. I had given them little thought at the time since I was rather disturbed by the sight of the strange beast that had run out in front of my car—not to mention the fact that I had fallen out from the broken side window of the car to land in the ditch where the wounded animal might retaliate against what it probably considered to be an unprovoked attack!

Fortunately, the animal was nowhere in sight when I had reoriented myself and climbed painfully from the ditch. It was then that I had spotted the distant warm light that seemed to be lantern light shining from someone’s window. I had followed after the light but had eventually lost sight of the light in the gloom of the forest.

I had thought this to be most peculiar, and wondered why someone would douse the light so quickly. It seemed like the person would surely keep their lantern on for awhile longer what with evening setting in. Perhaps the person went to bed early…

I froze suddenly. What was that peculiar crunching? The sound seemed to build around me coming from nowhere in particular. I heard a huffing sound, like the laboring breath of a draft horse, add itself to the ominous crunching. I suddenly heard a footfall very near me, and I ducked around behind a tree gritting my teeth against the pain of my injured shoulder. I peered around the tree feeling my heart hammering. I felt my heart leap into my throat as I saw what was making the noise.

The same odd creature that I had struck with my car was walking with a shaky gait stomping its forefeet down while dragging its hind legs a bit. The beast’s back was covered with odd tumors and lumps, some of which were oozing a sickly black pus that had a yellowish sheen to it. The stench didn’t hit me at once, but I nearly gagged when it did. The creature was emitting a foul odor like the smell of rotten fish mixed with a snake’s musk.

I quickly covered my mouth with one hand not wanting to gag and alert the strange creature to my presence. What if it attacked? To be sure, the beast didn’t look as though it could run fast with its disproportionately short and thin legs that carried around its heavily muscled back. The creature had a horse’s mane, which had been cut. I wondered what the owner was playing at letting a diseased animal wander around. Had the animal escaped on account of the disease driving it mad?

The beast suddenly stopped and turned its head toward me. I ducked back behind the tree I was hiding behind feeling tension pull my innards taught. The beast did indeed have tusks, and its eyes glowed like red hot coals! I shook a little as I remained silent behind the tree. This was no earthly beast. This was some devilish monstrosity. I nearly ran as a panic suddenly gripped me, and it was all I could do to keep hiding behind the tree.

The sound of the creature’s footsteps had completely stopped from the moment it had turned to look at me, and its breath was no longer audibly huffing out. I had the feeling that it knew exactly where I was and was debating over whether or not I was worth chasing down or not. I shivered and not just from the cold. My cold fingers were digging into the flesh of my face as I determinedly covered my mouth to prevent my breath from hissing out ragged and sharp. My legs twitched a bit wanting badly to run, and every moment that I waited to feel the creature’s teeth and hooves strike me drained more and more of my self control. I finally started to lean forward preparing myself for the inevitable loss of self control when the creature’s footfalls sounded once more.

My nerves leaped, and I was running before I knew what had happened. I heard heavy footfalls as I sprinted away, and my legs moved faster and more furiously than ever. I expected the creature to bear down upon me at any moment, braced myself for the pain of the attack…

It was not until I had sprinted quite some distance in a maddened state of fear that I was able to muster the courage to glance over my shoulder. There was nothing behind me, and I swiftly stopped and stared around. The creature was nowhere in sight, and I could hear nothing but the drip of the light rain and my own ragged breathing. To my right was a group of cedar trees, and I stumbled over to sit beneath the trees as my muscles burned and my throat ached with every breath I drew in. My exertions had warmed me a bit, but I would soon be colder than ever. The wind was still blowing and the rain didn’t appear to be likely to let up.

I suddenly turned and stared behind me. Had I really seen…? Yes, there it was! There was a light not far away. Light meant that there was another person in this forest. I could get out of this strange, dismal place at long last!

I pulled myself to my feet and hurried through a thicket of thorn bushes emerging to find myself in a small clearing. The clearing was almost entirely occupied by a log house. The light of a lantern was burning, shining out from one of the windows. I hurried over to the window. I didn’t see anyone inside, but I knew there surely must be. I ran around the house until I found the door. I knocked on the door earnestly. I thought I heard a soft sigh behind me, but I didn’t see anything when I turned to stare over my shoulder. Thinking it to be a trick of the wind, I pounded on the door again and begged admittance.

There was no sound from within the house. I began kicking at the door shouting very insistently that I needed to enter, for I thought myself soon to die of the cold. The door swung open very suddenly, and I was nearly knocked over by the edge of the door brushing against my unwounded shoulder. No one stood at the door, and peering in, I didn’t see anyone. I shifted nervously, but the warmth coming from the house finally made me hurry in. The door snapped shut behind me, and turning, I didn’t see anyone behind me.

“Hello?” I called out.

My voice echoed slightly down the hall, which looked rather larger than it ought to be based on what I had seen from the outside. There was no answer, and I hesitantly walked down the hall to the living room. There was the lantern burning on the table. No one was in sight, and I called out again. No answer came to me, and I spotted a hearth almost hidden behind several tall chairs. I hurried over there and squatted by the hearth barely taking note of the two teacups set on a small coffee table. The fire was burning low, but there were a few pieces of dry wood sitting at the edge of the hearth. I hastily added these to the fire. Flames licked up from the coals, and I held my hands over the fire.

Warmth gradually spread through my hands. The warmth was almost too intense for me at first, but it gradually soothed my chilled hands. I shivered as the warmth started to spread through my body. I turned around to warm my back as well, and I gave a start of fright when I realized that the room was no as empty as I had once thought. A large black dog was sitting in a basket across from me. It was watching me with an eager expression on its face, and I worried for a moment that it intended to attack me. It had the attentive look of a hound about to chase after prey it has sighted. The dog wagged its tail after a moment, and I relaxed.

The dog looked like a cross between a Doberman and a Great Dane although I wasn’t sure if a dog born from such breeds would likely be completely black or not. The animal’s eyes were crimson in color, and I felt rather nervous to gaze into those eyes. The dog’s eyes seemed to betray a greater intelligence as though it had a human consciousness.

I turned back to the fire again not wanting to dwell on such disturbing thoughts. The dog’s eyes must have just looked red because of the lighting. They couldn’t really be red. Animals sometimes had reddish hues in their eyes, so the fire must have just been enhancing those hues. Yes, that must have been it.

When I had warmed myself, I turned back to examine the room again. The heads of several different species of animals were on the walls, and all of them looked deformed. The mounted head of a bear had huge tumors rising from the back of its head that gave the appearance of swollen horns. A boar head looked unnaturally warty, and its tusks were covered by thick, warty material. Two deer heads were on the wall as well, and both had long tusks growing from their mouths like fangs. Their antlers grew every which way, and their faces were disfigured by tumors. I shivered slightly and turned my attention away from the ghastly trophies.

The two tea cups were on the coffee table, and now that I wasn’t focused on warming myself, I saw that a sugar bowl, a plate of biscuits and a jar of cream sat on the table along with the tea. I wondered what the owner must be doing leaving his lantern and his dog in the house. I doubted that there were any nearby houses and couldn’t fathom why the owner would be away from his house in this weather.

As the owner was away letting his tea grow cold, I helped myself to a cup, for I was thirsty. The tea was rather strong, so I added some cream and sugar. Once I had emptied my cup, I moved over to the table the lantern sat on. There were papers spread around on the table, and I gazed down curiously at the papers.

The first couple of papers were drawings depicting animals of the like that were mounted on the walls of the hearth room. I looked over at a piece of paper that was closer to the lantern and felt my blood run cold at the sight of it. I was looking at the plan to a machine that ripped bones from living humans. Glancing at another plan, I saw a similar machine that pumped blood from a human’s veins. There was another piece of paper that depicted some sort of strange altar made of human bones.

I backed away from the table in horror. I had come into the home of some practitioner of a dark cult! Perhaps the owner was out hunting for more diseased animals. I had to leave and leave quickly.

“Funny how people come in, make themselves at home then rush to leave,” a voice hissed behind me.

I felt my muscles jerk involuntarily, and I dropped the teacup I had been holding, which shattered as it hit the floor. I spun and found myself facing a severe looking woman holding a curved knife. Although the point of the knife was facing the ground, the stance the woman had taken suggested that she could easily lifted the knife and slit my throat before I knew what had happened.

“Who are you? Why did you invade my domicile?” the woman hissed.

Her dark eyes glittered dangerously in the light of the lantern, and I hastened to explain myself.

“Please, Miss, I was in a car wreck. I hit some strange animal, and I saw the lantern’s light and came for help. I wandered through the forest and became frightened by the same strange animal. I ran and found this place. I was cold and begged admittance… The door opened for me, and I came in,” I said hastily.

The woman raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, really? In that case, I shall forgive you for breaking my teacup.”

I nodded and suppressed a shiver. The woman was eyeing me hungrily, and I wondered if she intended to use me as a sacrifice in some diabolical rite to the devil. Her eyes were like pitiless voids, and something about them made me want to run screaming from the house.

“What is your name?” the woman demanded.

“Earnest Duray, Miss. I inspect steam engines over in Dunlay,” I replied trying to mask the nervousness in my voice.

“I see. An interesting profession…”

She suddenly leaned forward and sniffed at me. I took a step backward in alarm.

“Yes, you’ll do just nicely,” the woman murmured.

“I beg your pardon, Miss, but would you give me directions back to the road? I really ought to be getting home,” I said.

The woman didn’t seem to be paying attention to me. She moved around me in a strange, sinuous fashion almost as though she were dancing to some unheard music. She lifted her knife, and I shifted away from her toward the door. The woman took a slow step after me, and her eyes suddenly were alight with murderous intention. I felt a strange tingling sensation ripple up my spine as the woman’s already sallow skin paled so much that it seemed to shine. Her lips curled up into a feral snarl although no sound passed from her lips. I saw her teeth elongate and thicken so that she could not close her mouth.

I turned and ran to the door. The door would not open though I turned the handle, pounded upon the door and kicked at the door fiercely. Panic rose in me, but even the increased strength that my panic gave me was not sufficient enough to open the door. I turned to see that the woman was taking slow, purposeful strides down the hall toward me. Her teeth had shrunk somewhat, and the feral snarl was replaced by a knowing smile. I know that you can’t escape me, the smile told me.

I suddenly realized that the was a door between the woman and I, and I lunged toward the door hoping, praying that I would be able to open it and escape without getting my throat slit by the woman’s curved knife, which had begun to glow with a dull red light. I yanked the door open with a cry and fled down the stairs on the other side of the door. The stairs went down for a long time, but I was too terrified to take note of that. I kept glancing back expecting to see the woman bearing down on me, but she wasn’t pursuing. I finally reached a large, metal door at the end of the long flight of stairs and wrenched it open. A large metal machine dominated the center of the room, and I hurried into the room and hid behind the brass plated tubes that snaked out from the machine. My heart hammered in fear as I crouched behind the machine.

It took a few moments for me to be able to look around the room, and when I did, I cursed myself for not looking around earlier. On one end of the room, there was a series of surgical tables, to which figures were strapped. One of the figures was twitching convulsively in the arms of a machine that was digging long needles into the figure’s veins. I realized after a few moments, that the figure was a small woman but not a human woman. The features of the woman’s face were different. She had slanted, almost squinting eyes that were pure black. Her face was long an angular, her skull longer than a human skull. Her limbs seemed long and spindly, and her body seemed short by comparison. I thought that I saw the outline of wings every now and then.

Turning my eyes from the unearthly woman being sucked dry by the machine, I saw that the other figures were still alive but had been gagged and strapped so securely to the tables that there were neither able to move nor make any sound. I could not see them as clearly as I could see the woman being drained by the strange machine, but none of them looked like they were human.

Looking over at the other side of the room, I saw that there was a strange altar made of bones, which sat inside of a strange cross between a furnace and a bizarre machine that looked like some sort of steam engine. The metal that made the strange furnace/engine was blackened and corroded in color, but the metal was still smooth lacking the texture of a corroded machine. I felt a surge of fear as I looked at the strange machine and altar combination, and the desire to run was overpowering. I stared around looking for an escape when I heard the sound of movement beyond the door. I ducked down as the door opened, and the woman that had been pursuing me came in. Her teeth had resumed a normal appearance, but I knew that she was still dangerous. The ominous glow coming from her curved knife spoke of that very clearly.

My panic grew as I saw another figure walk in behind the woman. The thing was human shaped, but horns extended up from its brow, wings like giant bat wings sprouted from its shoulders and a long tail with a barbed end stretched out from its tailbone. Its skin was the color of coal and occasionally flashed with a metallic sheen even though the dim lighting in the room was constant. Talons tipped its fingers and toes, and its facial features were devilishly handsome. It was completely naked revealing powerful muscles covering a fairly slender frame and that it was somewhere between a male and a female.

Some of the poor beings strapped to the tables struggled feebly against their bonds as the woman and the devil entered the room, and I surely thought that I would faint away from fright. Even though I was hiding, I felt sure that the devil and the woman knew where I was. Indeed, it only took a few moments for the women and the devil to look over in my direction.

“Stop hiding. Come out,” the woman said.

I shook with fear, but defiance and a sense of dignity rose up. I wouldn’t die cowering here, I thought fiercely, I would die on my feet!

I got up and walked out in the open. The woman and devil both smiled revealing pointed teeth, and I felt another thrill of fear race through my body. I wanted to run, but the desire to run was rapidly turning to the need to fight. I pulled out the switchblade knife that had been forgotten in my pocket until then. Now that my fear was telling me to fight, I finally remembered that I had it. The woman and the devil both laughed at me when I pulled out the small blade, and I cursed myself for leaving my revolver at home under my pillow. How much easier it would be if I only had my revolver instead of this switchblade knife!

I suddenly let lose a howl and charged right in at the woman and the devil. I turned at the last moment hoping to use the woman as an optical barrier making the devil hesitate even if only for an instant. My hopes were dashed before I even could slash at the woman as I ran by her. The woman hadn’t even moved, and I quickly discovered why. Something struck me hard and slammed me against one of the machines. I let out a strangled cry as a hand tightened around my throat.

I realized that the devil had shot at me, grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the very machine I had been hiding behind earlier. The metal was hot against my back, and as I gagged and clawed at the devil with my fingernails (I had dropped the knife when I had been unexpectedly slammed against the machine), my eyes began to lose their focus. The devil continued to squeeze and press me against the machine until black spots ate away at my vision. I grew lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, and I wasn’t aware of my surroundings for a few moments.

I suddenly felt my back slam against a cold metal surface, and I felt the air get pushed out of my lungs. It took me a moment to recover, and I quickly realized that I had been strapped down like the other unfortunates around me. The devil had turned away from me after securing me, and I lay there gasping. The wind had been knocked out of my lungs, and I couldn’t even scream in protest though the terror bubbled up inside of me, stretched my nerves taught.

I heard the woman muttering in a strange language behind me, and I shivered as a chill raced up and down my spine. I felt heat wash over me, and I felt panic constrict my throat. They were going to throw me in the furnace and burn me to death in some diabolical ritual!

I struggled against my bonds in vain. A voluptuous, green skinned woman on a table next to mine growled deep in her throat. She looked human except for her green skin, but I had no time to wonder about her. Soon we would all be fried to a crisp as sacrifices in some evil ritual, so it didn’t matter how we were different anymore. We would all die together soon enough.

The woman’s face appeared above me, and she touched her knife to me skin. A terrible cold sensation like the hand of the grave grabbing my soul made me flinch and squirm trying in vain to get away from the terrible blade. The woman laughed aggressively and played the edge of the blade across my throat relishing the terror in my eyes.

“So, Earnest, why don’t you tell me your real name before I kill you?” she said.

“I already told you my name. If you’re going to kill me get it over with,” I said flatly.

“You are a woman. Earnest is a male name,” said a deep voice.

The devil returned in my line of vision, and I felt cold terror gnaw at my stomach as his eyes and skin flared briefly.

“There’s no need to hide it. We can smell your scent, and your scent is that of a woman. Not many women can pull off the act as well as you can, Earnest. Your curves are modest allowing you to pass as a young male that hasn’t started shaving yet. Your shoulders are broad enough for you to pass as a man. Your jaw is a bit square for a woman. I can see why you did this. You wanted to escape the inconsistencies of your government. The wonderful idea of freedom made this country, but it has shamefully been trodden over, made a mockery of. Women aren’t really free, are they? Come now. Tell me your name so that I can honor your memory properly,” the woman coaxed.

I shivered. My instincts screamed at me not to reveal my name. Perhaps my name would be used against me. I couldn’t tell them that my real first name was Eugene. I shook my head.

“Pity,” said the woman, “I guess you’ll only be remembered as Earnest.”

She moved over to the table furthest to my left. I heard her pick something up off the floor as she moved over to the stout figure strapped to the table. I jerked as the most horrific scream I had ever heard in my life sounded only a few feet from me. The scream ended in a macabre gurgle, and the sound of blood pouring into a metal bucket.

The next figure strapped to a table started screaming too, and the scream of terror turned into a scream so horrific that I felt my soul shrivel into a small corner of my mind. Cold sweat broke out over my body, and I struggled futilely against my bonds. Frantic screams sounded from the table next to me, and I started to whimper in panic. A scream sounded again not as horrific as the previous two, but still terrifying enough to make me start babbling out prayers, begging for my soul to be spared if my life could not be saved. Then the woman was at the side of my table staring down at me. I let out a hoarse scream.

The woman smiled then released the straps keeping my left arm strapped down. I tried to jerk my arm away, but the devil reached over and yanked my arm out so hard that I thought it had been ripped from its socket. I began to scream more frantically than ever, denying, begging, praying. The woman’s curved knife plunged down into my forearm.

A horrible chill raced through my entire being followed by a painful fire. I opened my mouth and let out a scream that tore at my throat. The knife felt as though it was letting more than just my blood flow into the bucket the woman held under my bleeding arm. It almost felt as though my soul was leaking out as well.

Three more screams sounded as the woman and the devil completed their bloodletting. I was twitching and sobbing barely coherent. It took me awhile to realize that my arm had not been strapped back down, and I reached over to fumble with the straps holding my other arm down. Blood streamed and dripped onto my body and the table as I fumbled with the straps. Ignoring my attempts to free myself, the woman and the devil moved over to the furnace where the woman began chanting in a language I had never heard before. I fumbled more terribly than ever as the flickering flames dyed the room a deep red.

I started as the flames suddenly hissed and bubbled. I realized that the blood had been thrown on the fire, and the sickly odor that wafted over me nearly made me sick. I started again as a clatter sounded near me. The green skinned woman had freed herself except for the last bond on her right ankle. The woman and devil never turned away from their ritual as the green skinned woman untied the last bond with shaking fingers.

The green skinned woman sprinted over to where I had dropped my switch blade knife leaving a trail of blood as she went and tossed it in my direction. A slender, pale hand reached out and grabbed it as the green skinned woman sprinted over to me. The slender, elfin woman that had grabbed my switchblade knife disappeared from my vision, and I heard the chanting suddenly break as a scream erupted from behind me. The green skinned woman was rapidly untying the straps that held my legs down, and she had nearly gotten me loose when something crashed into the table I was partially strapped to sending the green skinned woman flying backward along with me.

I gave a last tug at my bonds and yanked my right arm free. I slumped forward, and felt something soft bump against me. Turning my head, I saw the elfin woman bleeding out next to me. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop, and I turned to see the devil advancing on us. Its face was twisted into a mask of rage. Behind it, I saw the witch bleeding and burning in the furnace. The elfin woman had not died in vain. She had eliminated one of the enemies.

I was suddenly being dragged from the room, and it took me a moment to realize that the green skinned woman had grabbed me by the ankle and was dragging me out of the room. The devil snarled and leaped at us, and I threw my hands up over my head and screamed. The sound of flesh hitting flesh sounded, and growls and snarls erupted from behind me. I turned and saw that the green skinned woman was punching, kicking and biting at the devil, which was fighting back. The devil was faster than the green-skinned woman, and he was also stronger than she was albeit only by a little. It was clear that the green skinned woman would soon lose even if she could take a few hits from the devil.

I cast about frantically for something to use against the devil. There was no sign of my knife or the knife the evil woman had been using. I turned instead to the table I had been strapped to and yanked one of the straps from it. I rushed over to where the green skinned woman and the devil fought and began lashing at the devil with the strap trying not to hit the green skinned woman in the process. The devil snarled a few times, and the green skinned woman finally slugged it good under the jaw. She kicked it a few more times then turned and sprinted up the stairs.

I let out a shriek of fright, for I had to jump over the enraged devil to get to the stairs. I managed to leap over the devil, and I immediately sprinted up the stairs after the green skinned woman. I heard the devil roar in rage behind me, and heard wings flap after a few moments. I let out another hoarse scream and hurried onward. Something slammed into me after only a few moments, and I felt talons dig into my flesh. I began screaming frantically and thrashing wildly. Feeling the grip loosen, I landed a few more kicks on the devil and fought my way free. I sprinted up the stairs again. The devil came after me again, and this time it pulled my feet out from under me. I yelped and kicked. The talons dug painfully into my ankle, and my kicking didn’t make the devil loosen its grip.

The green skinned woman suddenly appeared beside me, and she began beating on the devil as well. The devil let go after she kicked it in the face a few times. Grabbing me, she sprinted back up the stairs. It didn’t take long for the devil to let out another roar of rage, and I let out a pathetic whimper of fear as I heard the devil’s wings flap in the air again. The green skinned woman suddenly ducked down and yanked me to the stairs with her. The devil soared over us, pushed off the ceiling and came after us again.

I screamed, but the green skinned woman tugged me on running up the stairs with an unnatural speed. I tripped and was dragged for awhile at one point, and the green skinned woman only paused when she ducked to avoid another aerial attack form the devil. The devil roared as it charged after us, and the green skinned woman didn’t dodge this time.

My head was slammed to the ground with such force that I do believe I was rendered unconscious for a few moments. When I regained my senses, I was at the top of the stairs, and the house was burning around me. The green skinned woman was fighting the devil once more, and it was clear that she must soon lose. Many deep scratches from the devil’s talons were bleeding, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. I was too incapacitated to do anything for awhile, and I could only watch in a detached fear as the devil and the green skinned woman fought. I realized that the devil was getting slower, and starting to become shadowy and insubstantial. It suddenly burst into black flames, and the green skinned woman sprinted away from the devil as fast as she could. She seized me by the wrist as she fled out of the house, and I was dragged none too gently from the house.

Black flames exploded outward from the house moments after we had fled, and the wave of heat picked us up off our feet and flung us into the forest. I smashed my head against a tree as I landed, and I was quite dazed as the green skinned woman dragged me onward.

I confess that I don’t remember much more than a blur of trees after that, for I was too dazed to take note of anything. I believe, at one point, we fled past several deformed animals that were burning or melting into a black ooze, but I was delirious at that point and may have imagined it. When I finally came to my senses, I was sitting in a hospital bed. I was alone, and I saw that I wasn’t completely intact. The arm that had been cut by the woman’s curved knife was gone. I was told that a strange infection had caused the doctors to amputate it in an attempt to prevent the strange infection eating at my arm from spreading. Additionally, I had several black marks on my body from where the devil had ripped me with his talons. The marks gradually went from black to deep red, and they never faded for the rest of my life.

Although I never saw the green skinned woman again, I had the feeling that she was still around somewhere. My garden grew unusually well even in years of drought, and I had a feeling that the green skinned woman was behind it somehow.

I always lived in a shadow of fear never going anywhere without my revolver and several knives. Sometimes at night, I thought I could hear the distant roar of the devil, and my scars would pain me terribly whenever the sound echoed to me. I had a feeling that someday, perhaps when I passed from this world to the next, the devil would come for me again and attempt to devour my soul. Death had never frightened me more, and the fear only grew as I got older.

In his teens Jack Cohen had felt incredibly superior to the grease stained kids who dropped out of Andrew Jackson High to go to the local Vo-Tech. Vo-Tech’s were considered the lowest of the low, even lower than the “special schools” because at least those kids were retarded. The kids who went to Vo-Tech’s were just stupid, a whole different level of humiliation. He was only marginally embarrassed when those kids turned up as the owners of their own garages, charging excessive fees to maintain his high priced sports car. What he wouldn’t give to have one of those mullet coiffed guys here right now, and he wouldn’t even laugh at the guy’s name stitched onto his coveralls.

It had never really been a problem that Cohen knew nothing about cars other than how to drive them. Sure they broke down occasionally but, since the advent of cell phones, you just called the auto club and waited for help. At first he hadn’t worried about this breakdown either. The car was a rental, so ultimately it was the problem of the ironically named Dependable Car Company. Besides he had his cell phone tucked into his pocket and several spare batteries in his luggage. Then he saw the terrifying “No Signal” message blinking on the display.

He should have expected it. He had seen nothing taller than a cactus for the last hour,

ever since the grizzled attendant had filled the tank and checked the coolant at the inevitable “last chance” gas station. Cohen had accepted his recommendation to buy bottled water for the next leg of his trip but had balked at the addition of a foam cooler and a bag of ice. He had saved a whole eight bucks.

He repeatedly paced from one end of the car to the other, considering his options. His retinas were already strobing with the sunlight reflected into his eyes from the windows and painted surfaces of the car. He couldn’t stay here. With the sun almost directly overhead there was no shade except under the car where a pool of some steaming liquid was collecting. The interior had become a solar oven, the fancy leather seats already too hot for contact, even through his slacks. He had heard that the desert heat could rise to 115̊ during the day and then drop to near freezing at night. The freezing part sounded pretty good right now. He even thought of setting the car on fire in the hope that it would attract someone, but the more he looked around, the more unlikely that seemed. Besides, he was a civilized man and civilized men didn’t do things like that.

There was no way he could walk the fifty miles back to the gas station even if it wasn’t high noon in the Arizona desert. He was in as good shape as a thirty five year old with a sedentary job could expect to be but it had been years since he had walked more than a few miles at a time, and that was on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. He had a bottle and a half of water and was dressed for a casual drive, not for a survival hike in the desert. The last time the subject of wilderness survival had come up was in the Boy Scouts, and the only lesson that stuck was to never let Elliot Shapiro’s father into your tent at night.

He opened the trunk and the doors gingerly, using his handkerchief to keep his skin from burning onto the metal. Fortunately he had a baseball cap in his luggage and some extra handkerchiefs he could drape over his neck to keep the sun off. He retrieved the two water bottles from the front seat and, just to keep from wondering about it on his walk, turned the key in the ignition a few more times. Nothing. He adjusted his sunglasses, made sure he had the water and the cell phone and started walking. He knew there was nothing behind him. He could only hope there was something ahead.

He had never been so hot in his life. It was worse then when the old men had urged him and his friends into the shvitz, those God-awful steam rooms where elderly Jewish men (at least they looked old, it could have been the long term effects of the steam) sat for hours suffering with delight. The road was paved, which made it a little easier to walk but he soon began to feel the heat seeping through the soles of his expensive cross-trainers. He wondered how people could live out here and then thought sometimes they don’t.

He stopped and looked back at the car. He had made some progress but it was desperately little. He started to doubt his plan. Not much water, the punishing heat and safety could be a hundred feet ahead or a hundred miles. Since he was a child he had read stories of incredible journeys; Shackleton returning from the Antarctic, Bligh sailing 1600 miles in a small boat with no food or water. But you almost never heard of amateurs doing that. Those guys knew what they were doing. And what about Scott, an experienced explorer who died only miles from safety?

He had the urge to run, to cover more ground, but knew his strength would fail even faster. Just put one foot in front of the other, slow and steady, sip the water even if you aren’t thirsty, but not too much. After a long time he risked a look back and could no longer see the car. He hoped that was a good sign. When he took the last sip of water from the first bottle he considered throwing it away. Still, it didn’t weigh much and if he found more water what was he supposed to do with it, carry it in his pockets? He crumpled the empty water bottle to fit in his pocket and kept walking.

After that things got hazy. It was the heat, the damn heat, like a throbbing that never went away. He thought he’d get used to it but from the moment the car had died and the air-conditioning switched off it had just gotten worse. The hot air was like a spongy wall that he had to press against with each step. He promised himself that he wouldn’t take a sip from the second bottle for at least a half hour, but that would mean checking his watch and perhaps the realization that almost no time had passed. He held off from cracking open the bottle for a long as he could, took one sip and replaced the cap. Still no signal on his cell phone.

One step after another. Each step like the last one. The road underneath his feet, the sun that never seemed to move towards setting, his clothes soaked with his sweat. Occasionally risking a sip of water from the dwindling bottle, and when that was gone there would be no more. He didn’t see a building or even a sign. He was afraid to stop and sit because he might never get up. He was going to die and it was going to be awful. Death by heat stroke and dehydration was not his first choice, or even his tenth. He hadn’t done anything to deserve this, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that mattered.

He’d be found, sooner or later. Then people who knew the area better than he did, or at least didn’t have to make the same life and death decision he had been forced to make, would critique his mistakes. He didn’t expect to make the headlines, but the story would be in the newspapers: “Man dies in futile attempt to walk to safety”, “If only he had stayed with the car.” Or “Man dies in car”, “House full of porn starlets only three miles away.” Or maybe both choices were wrong. Damn cell phone. Weren’t they supposed to work anywhere?

By the time the second bottle was empty it was becoming difficult to take each new step and his breathing was becoming labored. There was no more sweat on his forehead and that meant the end was near. He even thought it was an illusion when he saw a flash of light off to his left. He stepped back and saw the flash again, and again when he stepped forward. It had to be a window. A house. On the road ahead he saw nothing but the edges of the pavement converging at or near the spot where they would find his body. He began to feel dizzy and knew that even if that flash came from an abandoned car or a shiny rock he would have to try for it. He wanted to live and a desperate attempt to reach nothing seemed more life affirming than just continuing on the same road until his strength failed.

He left the road and slid down the embankment to the sand and began walking. Occasionally the light would flash again, calling him forward. He was staggering and tripping over things but he wouldn’t let himself fall. If he fell it would be all over. He had to keep walking and nothing could be allowed to stop him. He kept walking until it became automatic and he remembered nothing after that.

When he awoke it was dark and there was something wet and cool on his forehead. He tried to move but a woman’s voice told him to stay still.

“You’ve had a bad time,” she said. “It was a near thing.”

Cohen tried to talk but his mouth and throat were raw. An ice cube was pressed against his lips and he sucked hungrily on it until the water flowed over the parched areas of his mouth. When the ice was withdrawn he tried to speak again.

“Don’t talk,” the woman said. “I know what you’re wondering and everything is going to be fine. You’re not dead and you’re not dying. You’re in my home and you are going to be all right. I’m keeping the room dark because you’ve had enough sun for one day. I have ice water and moist cloths next to the bed and I’ll stay here with you as long as you need me. You’ve been asleep for hours and I think you’ll sleep some more. You’re going to be fine.”

He wondered again if he was dead. It was so dark and cool that this could only be Heaven and the woman’s voice was as beautiful and soothing as that of a ministering angel. She laughed gently, as if she had read his thoughts, and then slipped an ice chip into his mouth. He rolled it around with his tongue and drank down the icy water. When the chip was gone, he slept.

When he awoke the room was brighter, but with only as much light as filtered through the heavy drapes. He could feel the breeze from a ceiling fan even before his eyes focused on the rotating blades. As he tried to sit up the woman left her chair in the corner and gently dabbed his forehead with a moist cloth. She appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, with golden hair and a face in the exact proportions to please the eyes. Her eyes were blue, a light blue like cool water.

“Do you feel strong enough to sit up?”

He nodded again and she helped him to a sitting position. He took several sips from the glass she held to his lips. “I need …”

“I know,” she said, and her voice again reminded him of laughter and wind chimes.

She helped him stand, led him to a bathroom and gave him his privacy. After he was done, he washed his hands and face and studied himself in the mirror. His face was red but not burned and there was only the hint of stubble. He lifted the short sleeves of his shirt and could see the dramatic difference between his sunburned arms and the paleness of the protected skin. It could only be the same day or the next morning. Any longer than that and he’d be deeply burned, perhaps with lesions breaking open the overcooked flesh. When he left the bathroom she was waiting for him. She was dressed in a loose blouse and a flowing skirt. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“I’m glad to see you’re stronger, Mr. Cohen,” she said, “or may I call you Jonathon?”

“Jack.” His voice was still a bit raspy but it sounded better. “Most people call me Jack.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I went through your wallet. I wanted to know who we were entertaining.”

“I don’t mind at all. You said ‛we’.”

She took his arm and led him out of the bedroom. With each step her hip brushed against him. When they reached the living room there was an older man sitting at a dining table next to a window overlooking the desert. He looked to be about sixty or maybe a sturdy seventy. His hair was white and he had a trim mustache. He looked fit, if not muscular.

“Edward, let me introduce our guest.”

Edward didn’t look happy. He stared at Cohen with a hostile gaze and refused to rise from the table.

“Edward, this is Jack Cohen.”

Edward made a snorting sound and muttered. “Figures.”

Still weak from being saved from certain death, Cohen was not about to respond to an old man’s anti-Semitism. Let him think what he wanted.

Cohen approached him and held out his hand. “I want to thank you. I would have died out there.”

Edward rose from the table and walked to the bar where he poured himself a whiskey. “Don’t thank me. She brought you in. As far as I’m concerned you could have lain out there until you cooked.”

“Edward!”

At first Cohen had thought that he was the woman’s father but, besides her calling him by his first name, her rebuke had the same effect on him as a slap across the face. So, an older man terrified of being cuckolded by his trophy wife, and by a Jew at that.

“Look,” Cohen said, “I didn’t come here to cause trouble. I appreciate your help and as soon as I can get a ride out of here I’ll be on my way.”

The old man looked skeptical even before the woman insisted that he stay until he was stronger.

“Rose, please.”

“I’m sorry Edward, but he’s a guest and he’ll enjoy our hospitality. You know that.”

The old man looked stricken, as if he could see it all in advance. The young wife slipping out of her cold marriage bed to join the (if he was allowed to flatter himself) handsome young visitor to spend the night making love and laughing at the old fool. Cohen could not deny that the woman was attractive. If she had a flaw it was not visible to the eye. Perhaps she resented or despised her husband. Maybe she had married for money and found the bargain more expensive then she had expected. It could be that this house, isolated by the desert and miles, even hundreds of miles, from fun and laughter and the admiration of other men, was more a prison than a home.

“Now you men relax and I’ll start supper. You must both be hungry.” She brought Cohen to the table and seated him three seats down from Edward. Before entering the kitchen she put a fresh whiskey in front of her husband and a glass of ice water in front of Cohen.

“Give the man a drink, why don’t you?”

“I think he’s better off sticking to water, for now.”

“Do you think it will make a difference?” The old man’s gaze was becoming feral.

“Maybe.” She moved the glass closer to Cohen. “Just water, for now. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?”

Cohen picked up the glass and took a sip. Before, in the bedroom, the water had tasted sweeter and purer than any he had ever had. That was to be expected; it had brought him back from the brink of death. But now that he felt stronger the water tasted just as sweet. He could hear Rose in the kitchen, humming to herself as she cut vegetables and dropped them into pots of water. Cohen grew uncomfortable under the old man’s gaze and looked around. The house was ringed by windows, each showcasing a different desert view. The hills were red and grey with the occasional startling green of a cactus or other desert plant. This part of the house seemed to be one immense room, separated into areas by a stone fireplace, wooden panels and strategically placed Mission furniture.

Cohen took another sip of the sweet water. “You have a beautiful home,” he said to Edward, who responded with a grunt and sipped his whiskey. “I don’t pretend to know much about these things but is it a Frank Lloyd Wright?”

“He was never here. It’s in his style though.” Edward took another drink of whiskey. His laugh was, again, more of a growl. “And you love it, all of it.”

“I was just admiring the house.”

“And Rose. You admire her as well, don’t you?”

“I’m not here to cause trouble. I’d leave right this minute if I could. Drive me to a town where I get a tow truck for my car and I’ll be out of your life. I don’t want to be here.”

“Even if I believed you, it’s too late for that.”

“It’s not that late.”

“It’s too late. Besides, Rose is making dinner for three. It’s too late for you to leave.”

Cohen continued to drink his water and decided the best course was to say nothing. Dinner was ready sooner than he had expected and confirmed, again, that beautiful Rose had few flaws. She started by bringing out a huge wooden bowl overflowing with a fresh salad. Several dressings were available and each was almost too appetizing to pass up in favor of another. As Edward and Cohen munched on the salad, Rose brought out the main course; grilled salmon, prepared to perfection with asparagus and mushrooms. Rose drank a chilled white wine, while Edward stuck to his whiskey and Cohen to his water.

When the meal was over, at the risk of infuriating Edward even more, Cohen had to tell Rose that the meal had been one of the finest he had ever had.

“Why aren’t you sweet,” she said, with her musical laugh. “I’ll accept your compliment and ignore the fact that a man who came so close to death would love any meal.”

“No, I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better meal. Where you a chef before … before you moved here?”

“No, but I love to cook and I’m glad you enjoyed it. Why don’t you two relax in the living room while I clean up?”

“Let me help.”

Rose laughed again. “Oh, no. At the risk of sounding old fashioned, let me do the woman’s work. You men relax.”

The two men moved to the living room, Edward seated in what was obviously “his” chair and Cohen taking one end of the couch. The room was incredibly comfortable and, despite himself, Cohen could not help picturing himself living there. It was obvious that Edward knew how he felt.

“Tough break.”

“Excuse me?”

“Missing your chance to help her rinse the dishes. Little domestic chores can be so romantic when shared.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Liar.”

“Look …”

“I know, you came here because you had to and you’ll leave as soon as you can.”

“That’s right.”

“Lie to me, I expect it, but don’t lie to yourself.”

Cohen sat back and didn’t try to engage the man in any more conversation. The uncomfortable fact was that he did feel like a liar. There was no denying that Rose was very attractive, in addition to be being a terrific cook, but if that was all there was to it he would have fallen in love with the Latina grill chef at the Steak Palace. It was as if Rose was composed of the best features of every woman he had ever known. Everything about her was wonderful; her voice, her laugh, her smile. She was a wife, a lover, a guardian angel. She was the woman every man wanted, and telling Edward anything else could not be totally honest.

After she finished the dishes, Rose joined them and they sat in the living room, talking about nothing in general as the sun finally went down. He didn’t need to talk about anything. Just the sound of her voice was enough. Finally she began asking more pointed questions.

“So, Jack, what do you do?”

“Do?”

“I mean what brought you to Arizona?”

Cohen laughed, afraid to tell her the truth and risk the look of boredom he had seen in so many women’s eyes. “Well, I’m in charge of branding for Petersen and Anderson in New York.”

Edward jumped on that one in the same growl he had used before. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s boring.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Edward, please.” Her rebuke was gentler this time. “Please, Jack, tell us what you do.”

“Well, we match up organizations that want to put their name on something and people who need money and have a building that could use a new name.” Seeing that neither of them knew exactly what to make about it he tried to explain. “You see, years ago, they used to name stadiums after the teams that played there and buildings after the companies that owned them. Then they started naming stadiums after the governors who got the funding and buildings after the tycoons who built them. These days, business being what it is, none of those approaches pays the bills. So, the names of buildings and stadiums are up for sale and you get the ‛Fruity Cola Arts Center’ and the ‛TeleCommCorp Sports Arena’. My company makes those matches.”

“How proud your parents must be,” Edward said.

“I’ll admit it’s a living and not a calling. I don’t pretend to be curing cancer.”

“So,” Rose asked, “what are you doing on this trip?”

“Why are you asking him that?” Edward asked. “Why bother?”

“I want to know, and he wants to tell me.”

“I told you it was boring.”

“Please,” she said, “tell us.”

“I was on my way to the Hopi Reservation. A company wanted some positive publicity and had the money to do it. Most of the money was recovered from a Swiss bank in a plea agreement with their former CEO. The reservation will get a new school and clinic and International Pressboard gets to convince people that they’re not just about pollution and embezzlement.”

“That’s wonderful. You’re helping educate and treat people in need. You are doing a terrific thing.”

“He was,” Edward said.

“I’m still going to do it.”

“You think so, don’t you?”

“No one knows the future, Edward.”

Edward laughed. “I do, and so do you.”

Cohen took another sip of his water and found it difficult to place it squarely on the coaster.

“You’re tired,” she said. “It’s time for you to turn in.”

“And how you’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?” Edward growled.

“Oh, Edward, you know me better than that. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Rose brought him back to the guest bedroom and waited for him to use the bathroom. When she left him alone he turned in, wearing only his underwear. The room was as dark and cool as when he had awakened there earlier when all he knew was that he was going to live, if in fact he wasn’t already dead. He was tired and should have fallen asleep immediately but his brain would not shut down. The situation was volatile and when he heard the door open he knew that it could only be Edward with a kitchen knife or Rose in a lacy peignoir and either was trouble. He turned over and in the dim light made out Rose in a sensible bathrobe. She came closer and sat on the edge of the bed.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

Rose laughed gently. “You think I’ve come to make love to you?”

“The thought had occurred to me, and to your husband.”

“Edward isn’t my husband.”

“He isn’t your father.”

“No, he isn’t. I haven’t come here to join you, Jack. I’m a one man woman, and Edward is my man. I came in because you should be asleep.”

“I can’t seem to fall asleep.”

“You’ve had a long hard day. Sleep.”

“Edward is really suspicious of me. He has no reason.”

She rested her fingertips on his forehead and, with no apparent effort, pressed him back onto the pillow. “Close your eyes. Sleep.”

“But … I … I …”

“Shhhhh, sleep.”

Cohen drifted off into sleep. He had never slept so peacefully, so dreamlessly. The only thing that crossed his mind as consciousness faded was the feeling that he was being sung to sleep.

When he awoke the room was light and he felt better than he had in years. In the bathroom he found that several large fluffy towels had been left next to the shower, along with a fresh cake of soap and a terrycloth bathrobe. After his shower he dressed in his freshly laundered clothing and joined Edward and Rose at the breakfast table. Rose had cooked for them and, of course, breakfast was magnificent with hand squeezed orange juice, perfectly prepared scrambled eggs and fluffy blueberry pancakes.

Rose picked delicately at her breakfast. “I love to watch men eat,” she said.

Even Edward seemed to be in a better mood, possibly due to the substitution of gourmet coffee for the whiskey of the night before. He had a hearty appetite and cleaned off his plate, washing it down with his second mug of coffee, as Cohen was wiping up the maple syrup with the last fragment of pancake.

“Another wonderful meal.”

That got a laugh from Edward. “Everyone gets one.”

Cohen expected another rebuke from Rose but she was silent.

“Well, I think it’s time to talk about getting out of here.”

“You relax and digest your meal,” Rose said, “then we’ll discuss what comes next.”

The men again retired to the living room and waited as Rose did the dishes. It was an hour before Cohen excused himself and made a trip to the bathroom. When he returned, Rose and Edward were standing at the dining table.

“Everything come out okay?” Edward asked.

“Sure, thanks.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want an unfair advantage.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Edward looked to Rose and, apparently getting her approval, lifted a cloth napkin off the table exposing a chrome plated revolver.

“Okay, fun is fun, but this is too much.”

“It’s time,” Edward said.

“You’re going to shoot me?”

“You misunderstand,” Edward said. “That is your gun. This is mine.”

Cohen stared, not willing to accept the implications, at the identical gun tucked into Edward’s waistband, only revealed when he lifted his shirt.

“There’s no need for this.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, “but this is the way it has to be.”

“Edward, I don’t know what the hell Rose told you but nothing happened between us.”

“I know that,” the old man said. “I know it better than you. But now it’s time to decide who gets her and who doesn’t.”

“Is that what this is about? Who gets her? Shit, you can have her. I don’t want her.”

“I told you before, lie to me but don’t lie to yourself.”

“Edward, I’m willing to leave and never come back. I never touched her and I never will. I’m attracted to her, sure, but I’m not going to shoot it out with you to get her.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Rose said.

“Why don’t you just shut up!” Nothing up to his point, not even his ordeal in the desert, had been tougher than yelling at her. It felt like a combination of kicking a puppy, bursting a child’s first balloon and slashing the Mona Lisa. Even now he couldn’t get himself to accept the idea that she was the driving force behind this. “If this is the way you two get your kicks you can get someone else. I just want out of here.”

Rose came around the table and Cohen felt himself backing away. She wasn’t the first woman he had met who tried to get her boyfriend to beat the crap out of him, but most of the others had been high school skanks or tattooed biker babes. This was different. Edward was right. He couldn’t deny that part of him was perfectly willing to kill for her, and that frightened him even more than the thought that Edward was planning on winning this duel.

“I am not going to shoot anyone.”

“Jack, you have to understand that Edward has no reservations about this. He will shoot you.”

“Tell him not to.”

“I can’t.” Was that genuine regret in her eyes?

“Then I’ll just leave.”

“There’s no car for you to use. You know you can’t walk to safety, but even if you could Edward would be after you in five minutes. Could you outrun him all the way to the Hopi reservation? Can you outrun a bullet?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s the way it has to be.”

“We’re wasting time,” Edward said. “Let’s get going.”

“Take your gun, Jack. Take it and use your head start. Five minutes. This is not a game or a joke. It’s life and death.”

“But not yours, right?”

“No, not mine. Yours or Edward’s.”

“Bitch.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but it doesn’t change anything.”

Cohen picked up the revolver. He knew nothing about guns but he was sure he knew something about people. He pointed the revolver at Edward. “Fine, now put your gun on the table and give me your car keys.”

Edward laughed in his face.

“Do it!”

Rose spoke to him as she might have to a child. “Jack, there aren’t any bullets in your gun.”

Cohen fiddled with the unfamiliar gun until the chambers snapped open. They were empty. “Shit!”

“I appreciate your initiative,” Edward said, “but you’ll have to do it our way.”

“You said you didn’t want an unfair advantage. Do I get bullets?”

Rose led him to a sliding door overlooking the desert. Through the window he could see, their brass casings reflecting the morning sun, a half dozen cartridges carefully lined up on the rail post.

“Five minutes.”

She slid open the door and then shut it as soon as Cohen stepped out into the sun. The morning sun was only a few degrees above the distant hills. Was it possible that in less than twenty four hours he had forgotten how awful it could be? The sun had not even begun its climb to the hottest part of the day but he was already blinded by the blazing sun and felt as if he was being cooked in God’s broiler. Rose was right, he’d never be able to walk to safety, but he wasn’t through being clever. He looked right and left as he carefully gathered up the six cartridges and fitted them into the chambers. The narrow porch, bordered by the glass shell of the house and the wooden railing, ran to the corners of the house and probably went all the way around. He looked back and, sure enough, they were watching him. Crazy bastards. He had just over four minutes left.

He descended the few stairs down to the sand. He had no intention of playing hide and seek against a maniac with a .357 Magnum. While Edward had the home field advantage and seemed eager to kill him, Cohen had the same plan as always; to get as far away from those two lunatics as he possibly could. Once Edward came after him he’d do the one thing they’d never expect. Instead of running off into the desert in a panic or trying to set up an ambush, he’d circle back to the house. By the time Edward realized he’d been tricked Cohen would have had time to commandeer a car and would be long gone.

That plan lasted about ten minutes. From his position behind a shrub he kept expecting to see Edward searching for him, but the older man never appeared. With every minute that passed he could feel his strength failing. He had no water this time and if he waited too long Edward would find him in no shape to fight back. He risked moving from his position, staying low and keeping watch for Edward. When he caught a glimpse of the roof of the house he began to crawl. It took him another minute to reach a spot with a clear view of the side of the house from which he had emerged fifteen minutes earlier. Edward was sitting on the stairs.

Cohen dropped to the ground, his face pressed against the hot sand. It was like the old man had read his mind. Edward was hemmed in by the railings and it would be difficult for him to move out of the way if Cohen started firing. The range was the real problem. Cohen had never fired a gun in his life and he had no confidence that he could hit anything at this distance, which he estimated to be thirty or forty feet. He would have to break from cover and run towards the old man, who would immediately start shooting in return. Edward probably spent his days practicing with the Magnum, shooting at cacti he took to be Rose’s imaginary lovers, and might easily pick him off before he could get close enough to hit anything. If Cohen managed to dodge the incoming bullets, and that was a big if, he might just manage to kill Edward. Then what? An old man dead on the steps of his own home, killed by a stranger, and a grieving widow who’d say God knew what to the police. He could wind up surviving the shootout only to die in prison.

Keeping low he began circling around to the back of the house. His plan could still work, if he could open a back door. He suddenly thought of Rose. Would she be in her bedroom waiting for the victor or would she be at the window, ready to warn Edward of Cohen’s approach? Was he prepared to silence her? The thought of raking the pistol across that beautiful face filled him with revulsion. How was it that, even now when he knew what a bitch she could be, the thought of hurting her was more than he could bear? He realized that, deep inside, he hoped she was rooting for him.

The back of the house didn’t have stairs but the floor of the porch was only several inches above his head. Cohen tucked the revolver into a back pocket and began pulling himself up. It was an ugly scramble but he managed to get a leg up and then climb the railing as if it was a ladder. He paused for a moment to see if his activity had alerted Edward, but there was only silence. Before looking for a door he peered inside and saw no one. Rose was probably near the front, watching Edward and expecting, as the old man did, that the action would take place on that side on the house. The first door was locked and he tried, without success, to lift it out of the tracks. He moved to the next door but the result was the same there and at the door after that.

When he was within ten feet of the corner of the house he decided that he could circle the house, coming up behind Edward and take him by surprise. The alternative was breaking a glass door with the butt of the pistol which would alert Edward. The element of surprise still seemed to be the only thing he had going for him. He drew the gun and peeked around the corner. The side of the house was clear. As he approached the front corner of the house he took a few deep breaths. The air just kept getting hotter and hotter.

Cohen turned the last corner, knowing that in a few seconds he might have to shoot if Edward refused to drop his gun. In the movies it was so easy for the hero to wing the bad guy, disarming him without any real damage. If Edward refused to drop his gun Cohen would have no choice but to shoot and there was no telling where the bullets would hit. Maybe he’d be lucky, he thought. Maybe the older man had been felled by the heat and was now sitting unconscious on the steps. He moved slowly forward until he reached the door from which he had exited the house. Edward was no longer on the steps.

He heard rapid footsteps behind him but it was too far to the stairs. His only chance to live was to throw himself over the railing. He heard a yell of triumph behind him and then an explosion at the same time he caught a blood red flash at the limit of his peripheral vision. He hit the ground hard, throwing up a cloud of sand that left him running blindly into the brush. Before he could clear his eyes he collided with shrubs and cacti, cutting his arms and legs. There was a second explosion behind him and he turned and fired blindly. He had no hope of hitting the old man but he hoped that it would provide him the seconds he needed to lose him.

With one eye clear he took up a position behind a cactus but Edward was too smart to keep following him and had probably fallen back to the house. Cohen was gasping for breath; too exhausted to run anymore. He was spitting out sand and trying to sweep his right eye clear. He had minor cuts on his arms, legs and sides but he was still standing so the old man had missed with both shots. By all rights it was Edward who should be worn out, but the old man was tough. Someone had once told Cohen that there were two types of people – those made of wood and those made of iron. The old man was made of iron, tempered in this desert. Cohen didn’t want to be shot at again, but his other choices were to wait here until he was overcome by his need for water or try to walk to safety, with less chance of making now then he had before. It was his move, and the old man was waiting for him.

Cohen worked his way back towards the house. He took a different route than last time, under no illusion that Edward would be sitting on the steps, waiting for him to sneak up.

When he reached the house there was no sign of Edward. Time to be clever again.

“Edward!” He waited a minute and called again.

“You looking for me?” The answer came from his left.

Cohen moved towards the sound of the old man’s voice, as he knew the old man would be homing in on him. “Can we talk?”

“Talk all you want.” The voice was closer.

“Any chance of calling this off?”

“Sure.” The voice seemed to come from just the other side of a clump of twisted shrubs. “Just step out and we’ll talk.”

“You mean step out and you’ll kill me.”

“Then why ask?”

“I like to hear your voice.” He moved slowly to his right.

“You think you can shoot at my voice and hit me?” The voice had moved. Edward was probably still moving.

Cohen was about to speak again, but suddenly he knew that Edward was about to fire. He steadied the gun in both hands, firing once and then moving quickly to his left. A return shot came through the shrubs and Cohen charged towards the sound, firing again. There was another shot from Edward but the old man had made a mistake. The shot went past Cohen and he caught a glimpse of his opponent running behind a cactus. Cohen ran to cut him off and fired as he saw the old man break cover.

“Edward, drop the gun!”

As Edward turned and raised his gun Cohen could see blood on the old man’s shirt. He was hurt but he was still trying. Cohen gripped the gun in both hands and fired. Your rules, he thought, not mine. There was a fresh burst of blood from Edward’s chest and the old man was punched to the ground. Cohen moved forward, hoarding his last shot, to where the old man lay dying. Edward was gasping for breath but still trying to raise his gun. Cohen stepped on his gun hand and held it down until the old man’s grip failed. He kicked the gun out of Edward’s reach.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” Cohen said.

The old man laughed. “You know better. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but I’ll miss her so much.”

Cohen crouched by his side. He was going to live, at least until the police started asking questions but, unlike his survival trek across the desert, there was no sense of triumph. He had killed a man and it was all for nothing.

“You could just have let me go,” he said, “and you could have had her all to yourself.”

“It doesn’t work that way, you’ll see.” It took the old man more and more breaths to gather the strength to speak. “You’ll see when men come to challenge you. You’ll do anything to keep her.”

“I’m leaving, just as I planned to.”

“You can’t. You love her, as I love her and she needs you now. You can’t just walk away and leave her all alone. I envy you.”

The old man’s head fell back to the sand and he stopped breathing. Of course the old man envied him. He was still alive and, as far as Edward knew, was going back to the house to have sex with his girlfriend. In a way Cohen envied him. What did he have to look forward to but a police interrogation and possibly a life sentence? Nothing would ever be the same again. All his plans and dreams were gone because of two people’s sick and twisted relationship.

Cohen rose and walked towards the house. He was going to leave. He was going to get away from this insanity, even if it meant driving into the hands of the police. Better to admit what he had done than to spend the rest of his life waiting for the safe to fall on him.

Rose was waiting at the house, sliding open the door for him and guiding him to Edward’s chair. Cohen was too tired to be insulted and let his body sink into the comfort of the cushions, cradling the gun in both hands. She left for a few seconds and returned with a glass of ice water.

“I knew it would be you,” she said. “Edward was good, but he was old and tired. He wanted to live but he knew his time was up.”

She offered the glass to Cohen and he wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything, other than Rose herself. He didn’t so much want to drink the water as dive into it, knowing that his sweat-stained clothes would be stripped away as he broke through the surface, leaving him to swim through the clear water as it bathed his naked skin. He pushed the glass away. Drinking the water seemed like a betrayal of the crime he had just committed.

“Edward is dead.”

“I know,” she said. “Only one of you was going to come back alive.”

“He meant nothing to you.”

She smiled that wonderful smile again. “He was everything to me, and I was everything to him.”

“But now he’s dead and you’ll go on without him.”

“Yes, I’ll go on without him. I’ll go on with you.”

“You’re insane. You were both insane. I don’t want you.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I don’t want a woman who would make me kill to get her.”

“There was no other way. You feel sorry for Edward, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“There’s no need,” she said, trying to bring the glass to his mouth, only to be refused again. “We had wonderful years together. If you feel guilty about shooting him, remember he would have killed you. He’s killed many times. He killed to get me, and he’s killed to keep me. Just as you killed to get me, and, when the time comes, you will kill to keep me.”

She reached forward to stroke his forehead but he pulled back as if her delicate hand was a venomous snake.

“Jack, no, I’ll call you Jon. You’ve always wanted to be called Jon, haven’t you? Jon, you’ve won and the prize is yours. A beautiful home and a beautiful woman. An oasis from the world with a companion who will make you happy every day of your life. Think of what that means. The sun will rise and set on us. Each meal will be a feast. We will sit in this room and read books and talk for hours. Then we will make love with an intensity you’ve never known and life will be a daily wonder.”

“As long as I kill any man who comes along, whether he wants to take my place or not, until one of them kills me and leaves me to rot in the desert.”

“Isn’t bliss worth killing and dying for?”

“For as long as it lasts.”

“Each day here will be more wonderful than any week or month you’ve ever experienced. It will all be worth it, I promise you that.”

“You think I’m going to stay here, with you?”

“No man has ever chosen to leave. You won’t either.”

“And how many men will I have to kill?”

“There’s no way to know. Edward killed eleven, not counting the first.”

“Eleven men?”

“Yes, but that was over the thirty years he was here.”

Cohen looked at the water. He wanted it, but it was just another part of the trap. Once he started drinking it, she would win. “How many years did you say?”

“Edward was here for thirty years.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

“And he killed the man who was here before him? How long was that man here?”

“He wasn’t as lucky or as skillful as Edward. He was only here sixteen years.”

“With you?”

“They were all here with me.”

“And there was a man before him?”

“Yes, for almost twenty years. The man before him was here three years. I don’t think his heart was in it.”

“But he killed the man who was here before him; a man who had killed the man before him?”

“That’s right.”

Cohen tried to laugh, but he throat was dry and felt as if it were lined with sand. “Lady, I’m not going to bother to point out that you haven’t been here, much less alive, for the last seventy years, but they didn’t even build houses like this back then.”

“A house should reflect its owner. This was Edward’s house. It will be the kind of house you want before you know it.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t a Frank Lloyd Wright house when Edward got here, but the kind of house that the previous man wanted.”

“That’s right.”

“And I guess that before that it was another house, and before that another house. But you’ve always been here, just like you are now?”

“More or less. A woman should be what a man wants as much as a house.”

“So before it was this house it was, what, a Greek Revival, or a Tudor? And before that a farm house, and before that a ranch house, and before that a log cabin and before that an adobe hut until I guess it was a pueblo with some dumb bastard of a Hopi killing strangers to keep them away from you.”

“That’s not a bad guess.” Her smile seemed to tell him that everything was going to be fine, more than fine. “Now drink your water and in time I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Cohen looked into the glass of water, water sweeter than any he had ever known. He wanted the water, and he needed it. He couldn’t survive, even in the air-conditioned house, without it.

“Fine,” he said, “but first there’s one thing I have to do.”

Before she could respond he used both hands to raise the gun until the muzzle was pressed to the soft skin of her throat, just below the chin. The barrel was pointed slightly upward so that the bullet would either blast through her throat, carrying chunks of her spine out the back of her neck, or go directly upward into her brain, exploding outward through the skull. He pulled the trigger, firing the last cartridge. The explosion, confined to the house, was louder than any he had experienced in the desert. His eyes were blinded by the flash and his ears rang with the blast. His strength gone, he lay back in the chair and let the empty revolver slip from his fingers to fall soundlessly onto the thick carpet. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Now all he could do was rest.

Rose brought the glass to his lips, and this time he drank deeply. She gently poured the cold water into his mouth until he was strong enough to hold the glass by himself. He continued to drink as she rose from her seat and ran her fingers through his sand encrusted hair.

“When you finish that glass I’ll bring you another,” she said, smiling at him. “You’ll have time for a nap and a shower before dinner. I’m making your favorites.”