Ceremonies

Book Three: The Call
12. CALLING IN THE DHOL.

Only the player holding the Book may call in the Dhol, and only at the designated time.

Instructions to the Dynnod

July Second

The heat in the little Chevy had grown oppressive, but rolling down the window meant she couldn't listen to the radio. No matter, she'd had her fill of Honda ads and reports of what a great weekend it was going to be. Silly to get your hopes up… But maybe it would be great. Carol turned her head from side to side as she let the gusts of wind from off the highway cool her scalp; once again she found herself thanking God she'd had her hair cut short. Did men feel this cleansed, this free, all the time? The Voorhis Library back there in the city seemed like a prison on the other side of the world.

She had lost track of the time, and with it her sense of direction. She knew only that she was extremely late. Despite her intentions of starting out at ten, she had put in too many hours last night over the week's work for Rosie – papers on a certain Ozark nursery rhyme, a fertility ritual in North Africa, and something called the Mao Game, though it wasn't Chinese but Welsh – and she'd overslept this morning despite the sunlight streaming through her blinds. Rochelle, who'd been supposed to wake her, had gone out – shopping for shoes, she'd said, returning just as Carol left – and obtaining the car from the uptown lot where Rosie kept it had taken the better part of an hour. It had been almost one by the time she'd left the city, and the last news report she'd heard had said one forty-five. Now the radio was drowned out by the wind.

On the seat beside her the reassuring bulk of Rochelle's red canvas tote bag, borrowed for the weekend, bobbed up and down with the motion of the car. Inside, pressed against her nightgown and a sweatshirt she probably wouldn't need, lay the wine Rosie had brought her – a home brew, white, in an unlabeled bottle – and a slim little package wrapped in white paper that he'd given her for Jeremy. It was a pack of cards, he'd said, 'an amusing variation on the old tarot deck.' Leave it to Rosie to think of everyone. Alongside them were the three books she was taking to the farm. Two were for herself, just in case she found the time: a dog-eared paperback of The Bell Jar and an early Teilhard de Chardin, copiously underlined by the fellow novitiate from whom she'd borrowed it long ago. The third book – the Machen – was for Jeremy, and bore special instructions from Rosie. 'Now for heaven's sake don't just hand it to him when you get there,' he had told her, old eyes twinkling. 'Save it for Saturday night. It's the sort of tale you've got to read at bedtime; otherwise it simply doesn't workV

One thing about Rosie, he sure took his literature seriously.

Freirs sat in a deck chair on the lawn outside his building, squinting in the glimmering sunlight and heat, attempting to concentrate on his book while brushing away two small flies that kept buzzing around his head. He would have been glad to move back inside to the cool shadows of his room, but he was hoping to work up a last-minute sun tan before Carol arrived. He wished that despite Deborah's good cooking he'd made more of an effort to diet during the past week, but at least he'd forced himself to take a few minutes' jog along the road this morning (followed by a long soak in the tub) and afterward had made a real attempt to brighten up his room; there were clean sheets on the bed, a poster of Resnais's Providence tacked to the wall, and a vase of fresh-cut roses from the bushes beside the house. His books and papers were in order. He had even trimmed the ivy vines that surrounded his windows.

The day was at its hottest now, the heat soporific, and, despite the persistence of the flies, it took some effort of will simply to remain awake. He was beginning to feel slightly guilty, sitting there reading, daydreaming, drowsing, shifting position only to unstick his perspiring skin from the back of the chair, all in plain sight of Sarr and Deborah laboring in the nearby field to the beat of some monotonous little chant. It was clearly hard work – a lot harder than turning the pages of a novel, and a hell of a lot more boring. But he made no move to help them, nor did he retreat inside. Whatever they may think of me, he told himself, I'm paying good money for this reading time and I'm damned well entitled to enjoy it.

He was, in fact, enjoying it. The Monk, the Gothic he was immersed in, was proving far more lively than the others he'd read -and, as he'd been pleased to discover, unrelievedly dirty-minded, even by modern standards. He could imagine the sensation it must have caused back in the eighteenth century.

But he was growing impatient and uneasy. Where was Carol? What could be keeping her? She had told him she'd be there by noon, and it was already a quarter past two. Maybe something had come up and she'd had to bow out of the weekend. For once he wished the Poroths had a phone; it was frustrating to have to rely on the mail. He had left a forwarding address with the post office back in New York, but so far he'd received nothing except Carol's letter, addressed directly to the farm, and a few birthday cards, hollowly cheerful things congratulating him on entering his fourth decade, a doom which in fact would befall him tomorrow. He had carefully hidden the cards away in the top drawer of the bureau, deep among his notebooks and his stationery, so as not to be reminded of the day. He wondered if tomorrow's mail would bring a card"from Laura or his ex-wife. He rather hoped it would not.

God, could it really be tomorrow? How had it come so soon? He felt like Doctor Faustus, with his one bare hour to live. Of course, turning twenty had been even worse; it had seemed so tragic, somehow, to kiss his teenage years goodbye, with all their arrogance and special privileges, that sense of glorious future possibilities…

He felt the book fall shut. His head was growing heavy; his mind was slowing down. He was dozing off again, drifting back into a purple world where dreams and half-dreams mingled, heated by the sunlight that flamed against his eyelids. Carol sat nearby, stretching her arms in the warmth. With a languorous movement she rolled toward him, mashing her hips against the back of bis hand, and instantly he knew that she was naked beneath her skirt; he could almost feel a wisp of hair against his fingertips. But the hair, he saw now, was not Carol's, it was Deborah's, thick and dark as fur, and at his touch she rose and stood before him with Deborah's full hips, Deborah's full breasts. He saw her glaring down at him, saw her mouth fall open as if she were about to speak, and suddenly the place his fingers touched was wet.

He awoke with a gasp. The Poroths' old charcoal cat, Rebekah, was pacing back and forth in the grass beside his chair, butting her head softly against his outstretched hand and looking up at him. As he watched, her pink tongue darted out to lick his fingertips.

Backs aching from the hours spent stooped over the furrowed ground beneath the burning sky, Sarr and Deborah were planting pumpkin seed between the bare rows where soon tiny corn sprouts would dot the field. Less than fifty yards away their visitor sat nodding over his reading, brushing sporadically at some invisible flying insect. From time to time Deborah would look toward him and smile, but her husband only shook his head and kept his gaze upon the ground.

Whenever the mood struck them, they would sing one of their planting songs – a different song this time, simpler, more in keeping with the present task:

'One for the blackbird,

One for the crow,

One for the cutworm,

And three to grow.'

Suddenly Deborah paused in the singing and poked her husband in the ribs. 'Look,' she said, lowering her voice and grinning. 'Look at him.'

Over by the outbuilding Freirs had dozed off again. The book lay open on his lap, the pages turning slowly backward.

Sarr frowned and looked away. He could usually convince himself he loved this labor – hellfire, he really did! – but it was harder with Freirs so near and so disconcertingly idle. In truth, he would much rather have been asleep right now himself, or at least lying up in the little bedroom on the cool sheets, while Deborah, in the kitchen, made him something cold to drink. Then she would come upstairs to him with two tall glasses on a tray, the ice cubes clinking as she walked, the long dress swishing softly around her legs… He shook his head to clear it of this vision and stomped some dirt over a clump of seeds with the heel of his boot.

'Wouldn't be surprised if he got twenty hours of sleep a day!'

Deborah smiled. 'Now, honey, that's not fair. You know how late he stays up every night, and I've seen him up real early in the morning, doing his exercises. He didn't see me looking.'

Sarr snorted derisively. 'Exercises! That's a laugh! And then he spends all morning soaking in the tub – as if he's even worked up a sweat! Let me tell you, if he really wanted to build some strength he'd be out here helping us. Lord knows there's plenty of work to be done.' Laying a line of seeds along the furrow and pressing each into the earth, he straightened up and rubbed his back. 'I'll give him all the muscles he wants. I'll bet he's never done a day's work in his life. Not real work, like this.'

He noticed that his wife was making a face at him. 'What's so funny?' he demanded.

'You are,' she said, nudging him with her hip. 'You act like you've been doing this ever since you were a little boy. You forget who you're talking to! I've seen where you grew up, and the nearest you ever got to a field was that playground out behind the school. I remember you at college, only a few years ago. You didn't have a callus on your hand! In fact, I remember now, that's just what I liked about you. You had the softest hands I'd ever seen.'

He had to laugh. She really took him out of himself, this woman. She was good for him. 'Lord's my witness,' he said, 'any hands would seem soft to you after some of the clodhoppers you took up with. I was probably the first man you ever saw who didn't have dirt all over his face and manure on his shoes!'

Playfully she tossed a lump of dirt at him. 'Well, you sure do now, mister!'

He reached for her and would have thrown her down beneath him, as he knew she expected him to, but at that moment a small cloud drifted across the sun and shadows darkened the field. His smile faded abruptly; he drew away his hand. 'There'll be time for this later,' he said. 'Right now we've work to do.' He bent back to the rows.

Responding to his mood, she pulled away. She was used to these changes in him. 'And not even much time for that,' she said. She wiped a sleeve across her sweating forehead. 'If that girl of his is coming today, I've got to get back inside soon and start dinner.'

Sarr nodded silently, busy grappling with the earth. Deborah's mention of the girl had reminded him of something that had been troubling him. He felt like a fool, now, for having carried on so with her. There was something more important on his mind.

It really was a shame, Carol decided, that she wasn't going to sleep with Jeremy.

She would have liked to. And under different circumstances she might actually have done it. Surely God would have understood (though the farmer and his wife might be shocked). She'd never pretended to be a saint, she told herself; if Rochelle could sleep with all those men, it wouldn't hurt for her to sleep with one. High time she got it over with, in fact; this maidenhood of hers, this blessed virginity, was fast becoming a burden and a bore. While once it had seemed worth preserving, setting her a cut above the rest of the world, now it seemed little more than a souvenir of the convent, separating her from her friends, her own sisters, most of all from Rochelle. She was sick of being different.

But now was not the time to change. After twenty-two years of holding onto something, you didn't just give it away to the first halfway acceptable man who came along. Especially not tonight, on what amounted to their second date, in a glorified henhouse with stern, religious, disapproving strangers all around. She hoped Jeremy didn't expect anything more, and assumed he'd had enough sense to make provisions for her to spend the night inside the farmhouse.

Not that there was anything wrong with Jeremy; as soon him as anyone else. It was all very well to remind herself that, considered critically, he was not the first man she would have chosen and that her interest in him derived, in part, from that most humbling of predicaments, his being, at least for now, the only game in town. Still, the choice was more than just pragmatic. He genuinely appealed to her. He made her smile.

All this past week he'd been much on her mind. She had found herself pausing in her homeward walk down Eighth Avenue to stare expectantly at the western horizon, as if to catch a glimpse of distant marvels – in Jersey, of all places! She'd even found herself inventing entire conversations with him, conversations which, however playful or earnest, invariably ended with a mutual declaration of love. / must be crazy, she told herself for the dozenth time. Was her life really so empty that she'd fall for the first man who showed an interest in her? And did it really take so little – a drink, a cheap Italian meal, a walk home in the dark? Surely there was more to her life than that.

FLEMINGTON, the sign said. KEEP RIGHT.

Moving back into the slower lane, she took a moment to count her blessings. There was her family, of course, though scattered now, and Rochelle, and the sisters she still talked to at St. Agnes's, and evenings at the ballet every week or two, and maybe an occasional fancy meal this summer with Rosie, and the endless rows of library books that stretched before her, thirty hours a week…

Surely that was enough for any girl. More than enough.

But a contemptuous little voice inside her head whispered, Who do you think you're kidding?

So be it. She spun the wheel and pressed her foot against the gas pedal. The Chevy swung onto the exit ramp and sped across the waiting world toward Gilead.

Freirs put down the book and checked his watch. It was almost a quarter to three. He looked to the right, squinting at the sun. Sarr and Deborah were still at it, both of them bent almost double, moving through the plowed field with the seed bags at their sides, chanting as they went. They reminded Freirs of a pair of huge black insects depositing endless rows of eggs. Behind them sunlight glimmered from one of the homemade scarecrows that Sarr had erected -really just aluminum-foil pie plates with strings through one end, dangling like limp kites from the tops of a row of stakes so that, at the smallest breeze, the plates would swing and flutter back and forth, banging softly against the stakes with the sound of far-off temple gongs.

How strange and picturesque it all seemed. He felt as if he were in a distant country. It was easy to forget that the two of them out there were human beings, people he sat down to eat with, people like himself.

He hoped Carol would arrive soon; the day seemed to be passing so quickly that, even with the sun still high, he could feel the chill of evening, the day already lost. A fly settled boldly on his cheek and he struck at it, knocking his glasses askew. Quickly he adjusted them, hoping the Poroths hadn't seen. Where in God's name was Carol? In a little while he was going to get angry, or worried, or both. He plunged despondently back into the novel, trying to lose himself again and speed her coming.

Sarr was thinking about the girl while he counted out the seeds, and he was troubled. He wondered if he'd done the right thing, allowing Freirs to have her out this weekend. Maybe his mother was right.

He had seen her at her house the previous night, where, offering some fresh eggs and a bag of early peas from Deborah's garden, he'd gone to seek his mother's advice on how best to deal with the members of the Co-op, to whom his debt was about to fall due. Thirty-seven hundred dollars for the mortgage, and another thousand for repairs – he would owe them, by August, nearly five thousand dollars. But there were a few grounds for hope, including a modest family trust left by his father that might, in emergencies, be drawn upon…

When he'd mentioned, in passing, that Jeremy Freirs had a girl coming on Saturday, his mother had seemed shocked. No, more than shocked. Dismayed, almost, like one who's learned an enemy has breached the gates.

'Son,' she'd said at last, 'I wouldn't open my door to her.'

'Now, now,' he'd said, 'the two of them aren't going to spend the night together. I wouldn't allow such a thing on my land.' He was already beginning to feel sorry he'd brought it up, and guilty about having acquiesced so easily to Deborah's argument that what Jeremy and Carol did was none of his business. Of course it was his business; everything that went on under his roof or his property was his business.

The evening – so agreeable, at the start, perhaps because he hadn't brought Deborah, always a source of tension – had ended in the sort of unforgiving argument, neither yielding an inch, that he hadn't had with his mother since he was a boy. Even as he'd left, she had still seemed uneasy. 'No,' she kept saying, 'the woman shouldn't come. She shouldn't be here at all.'

'Well,' Sarr had said at last, 'it's too late now. I can't stop her from coming; I can't go back on my word. At the very least, I have to offer common hospitality. Don't worry yourself, Mother, there'll be no sinning on my land.'

But she hadn't appeared comforted.

And now, as he labored in his fields, Sarr couldn't get the matter off his mind. Maybe, in some dark way he didn't yet understand, he had made a mistake.

He wondered if he would have to pay for it.

Mrs Poroth grimaced beneath the beekeeper's veil. Grey wisps drifted past her face from the nozzle of her smoker, a teapot-shaped metal contrivance packed with smoldering rags and fanned by miniature bellows. Every few minutes she would shake her head uneasily, as if trying to clear it of some indigestible thought. Earlier, as she'd gone about her Saturday chores, pruning the hydrangea on the south side of the house and, with veil on, examining the upright wooden frames of the beehives for the day's accumulation of honey, she'd considered, half seriously, the possibility of setting up a roadblock on her lane. Anything to keep away the visitor.

Of course, maybe this was just some idle girlfriend of Freirs' and not the woman whose coming she dreaded; there was no way to be sure. Still, she hated to take chances. Stationing herself by the third hive, lowest on the hill and closest to the roadside, she waited for the visitor's car to pass.

If the woman turned out to be the one she feared, what should she do? Killing her, of course, would be a sin, and the Lord punished such acts, even when committed for good ends, though she was half prepared to accept the sin and the eventual punishment. Besides, she reflected, killing was probably the kindest thing she could do for the poor girl.

No, she couldn't do it. She would have to play by the rules. The Old One would be playing by them too.

There was nothing to do for now but find out all she could. Adjusting her veil and once more directing the smoker into the hive so that the insects, reacting as if to a fire and gorging themselves on honey, would grow sluggish, she lifted the flat unpainted lid and withdrew one of a dozen wooden frames acrawl with bees. Transferring the honey-laden frame to a storage chamber above the hive, she stood once more and prepared herself to wait for the passing of the car. If the chosen woman was in it, she would recognize her – by her hair, if nothing else. It would be red. It would have to be. That, too, was a rule.

Gilead at last. There was no mistaking the tidy little crossroads and the general store, obviously the Co-op that Jeremy had spoken of. He had also said something, Carol recalled, about 'high walls' surrounding the town, but no doubt he'd exaggerated; the only walls she'd seen were low stone ruins back at the approach road, stretching from each gatepost and winding off among the trees. She might not even have noticed them if she hadn't been told to look.

But perhaps, she mused, there were walls here of a different sort. The place seemed different from other towns: neater, certainly, to judge by the well-tended lawns she'd passed coming in, and more decorous in other ways as well. Across the street from the Co-op, where a red-brick schoolhouse glared through a line of trees at the grassy playing field in front, a group of little children played quietly on seesaws, neither shouting nor laughing, as subdued as children in a century-old woodcut, and all without a sign of adult supervision. Nor were there the usual small-town idlers gathered in front of the general store.

Parking in front, just beyond the untended gas pumps, she climbed the steps and entered. The store appeared uncommonly well stocked, and smelled, in the dim light inside, of spice and old apples. It was almost like entering a cave. The beams in the ceiling were heavy with merchandise – everything from sausages to snow-shoes, from bulbous white garlics to lamp wicks, frying pans, and coils of rubber hose. A tall white metal cooler hummed serenely near the back, stocked with cheeses, ordinary-looking cans of soda, and things wrapped in wax paper. Low shelves near the front displayed cellophane-packed cup-cakes, barbecue chips, and beef jerky. A huge jar of picked eggs stood beside the cash register on the counter.

The woman behind the counter was talking with another woman; both were elderly and dressed in black. While pushing through the screen door, Carol overheard references to a Brother Joram and a Lotte Sturtevant, who was apparently growing quite enormous lately, but the two women fell silent and turned to her as soon as she came in. She asked directions of the one behind the counter. 'I'm trying to reach the Poroths' farm,' she said.

'Well, now, Sarr and that wife of his, I believe they bought the old Baber place.'

The other woman nodded gravely. 'My Rachel was out there last Friday evening. They're the ones that planted late.'

Farther back, in the shadows, Carol saw an alcove with another wooden counter, almost the mirror image of this one, and a wall lined with shelves and cubbyholes, in some of which leaned dusty-looking white envelopes. This, then, would be the local post office. It looked little used.

'You want to head out along the granary road,' the first woman – no doubt the postmistress – was saying. She stepped from behind the counter and, holding open the screen door, gestured in the direction of the retreating maples and the line of distant hills. 'Keep goin' straight past Verdock's dairy – it's just around that bend – and there you turn right and go along for half a mile or so.' She launched into a lengthy, detailed account replete with references to gullies, washed-out crossings, and lanes that dipped up and down like greased pigs, with particular attention to a mill road (' 'Course there ain't no mill there nowadays, it's all fell down since I was a girl') and a fork ('Don't go turnin' off on the little old road that splits off it on the left, 'cause that's goin' to lead you to the Geisels, and Matt and Cora like visitors so much they ain't goin' to let you leave before suppertime'). Carol found herself nodding politely, eagerly, but forgetting everything as soon as it was spoken. Right past Verdock's dairy, she remembered that much. She would find the place, no fear. She thanked the two of them and left the store.

'And be sure to say hello to Sister Deborah,' the woman called after her. 'Tell her we'll be lookin' for her at worship tomorrow.' The other woman tittered.

Parked in front of the store like a reminder of the world she'd left, the small cream-colored Chevy was one of the brighter objects in sight; the only other vehicles she'd seen since entering town had been dark unornamented cars and pickup trucks at least a decade old. Driving down the road in what seemed the suggested direction -it was, at least, the way she'd been heading anyway – she proceeded slowly at first, studying every passing farm and homestead for signs by which she might distinguish it later, if she had to return this way; then, as she realized that there were relatively few turnings to choose from, with more confidence. On impulse, more from the memory of something Freirs had told her than anything the woman in the store had said, she turned right when the road branched after the large dairy farm and found herself heading downhill toward a small, swiftly running stream whose sound echoed in the fields and thickets through which she was passing.

She drove for what seemed several miles along its winding banks, avoiding a narrow stone bridge – had the woman said anything about a bridge? – and coming at last to a clearing where a cluster of shanties stood huddled at the edge of the woods. The road she'd been following curved back uphill among the trees, branching just before the houses into an unsavory-looking pitted dirt road that she prayed was not the Poroths'. Three large, nondescript dogs raced up to the car and yapped fiercely at its wheels. A man in shirt sleeves – not bearded but unshaven, and with a hillbilly's long, straggly hair -looked up from a rusting automobile he'd been scraping, his dark little eyes peering suspiciously toward her car. In the weed-choked yard several pale, moon-faced children in T-shirts and shorts paused in their playing to watch her pass. They looked surprisingly ragged for this area, almost Appalachian. She drove past quickly, determined not to ask for directions here, and with sinking heart followed the road back uphill, taking the first opportunity she found to double back in the direction of the stream.

This time the way felt familiar; when she came again to the stone bridge, she turned left with more confidence and drove over it. The road wound steeply uphill once again, curving past a small stone cottage, a cozy-looking place set well back on a rounded hill, the yard around it overgrown with flowers.

She was so busy admiring them as she drove by that she almost didn't see the tall, faceless figure looming darkly at the edge of the road. With a little cry she swerved to avoid it, the car speeding around the bank of earth and shrubbery as if under its own volition, carrying her past. The road climbed farther, curving now in the other direction; she wasn't inclined to look back. It was only later, when the house would have been concealed from sight behind the bend, that she realized what she'd seen was a woman in a long black dress and the odd, shroudlike mask of a beekeeper.

'She's going to be here soon,' Deborah was saying, 'and I mean it, honey, the least you can do is drive to the Geisels and get us some of that rhubarb wine.'

'I heard you the first time,' said Sarr. 'Don't worry, I'm going.' He wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'But I don't intend taking out the truck for a task like that. Some of us still know how to walk!' He cast a pointed glance to where Freirs lay dozing. 'You've got the room all ready for her?'

Deborah nodded. 'If she's really going to use it.' This had been designed to get a rise from him, and it did.

'She'd damned well better!' he said, exasperated. ' 'Tisn't a whorehouse I'm running!'

'Oh, easy, honey, it's not for us to decide. Don't forget, they're not our people.' She paused, musing. 'Wonder if she'll be pretty. It's hard to picture what Jeremy likes.'

'I can tell you what he likes,' said Sarr. 'Have you ever seen the way he looks at you?'

'What he does with his eyes is his business.' Still smiling, she raised her fist. 'But let me tell you something, mister. What you do w ith your eyes is my business! Now get along down to the Geisels and buy that wine! She ought to be here any minute – should've been here hours ago. Get moving!'

He pretended to cower before her, the sight all the more comic because of his huge size. 'I'm moving,' he said. He loped off toward the house to get his wallet. The screen door slammed.

I wonder what's keeping her, thought Deborah. Probably overslept herself. A good match for Jeremy.

She looked at him. He was no longer asleep. She smiled; he smiled back.

The screen door slammed again, and Sarr emerged. With a wave he disappeared down the road.

The road was proving difficult to follow. It gave another twist, a living thing, hostile to the tires digging into its dusty back, and she had to wrench the wobbly steering wheel to keep the car from going off onto the shoulder or even crashing into the thick underbrush. The front wheels suddenly dropped into an unseen gully with a jarring clang of metal. Applying the brakes, she proceeded more slowly; fearful lest the dust and the bumps and the potholes damage Rosie's car. She pictured herself explaining how it had happened, Rosie's baby smile turning somber, and the empty way she'd feel if he dismissed her. How had she ever gotten herself into this? It was like a carny ride one couldn't get off. Grimly she continued down the road, jaw set, imagining with something close to hunger the comfort of the bed that awaited her at the farmhouse.

Her eagerness to see Jeremy had long since yielded to a certain resentment. What a fool she must look, to have gone to so much trouble just for him! Better to assert herself from the start; if he thought she'd driven all this way simply for the privilege of cuddling up to him, the boy was in for a surprise. Did he take her for one of his horny little students? She would show him just how wrong he was.

On the radio a man was prophesying fair weather; it seemed like magic that his voice remained so steady, so unaffected by the pounding and the bumping of the car. The time, he said – 'Bible time' -was four thirteen.

God, she was late! And perhaps there was no one on this back road after all; perhaps it would simply grow narrower and narrower until it finally disappeared amid the undergrowth and swamp. What if she was simply getting deeper into wilderness and would never be able to get out without abandoning the car? Everything's going to come out okay, she repeated to herself. Meanwhile the radio was whispering the far less sanguine words of Jeremiah: 'And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the Lord: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.'

She was almost ready to turn the car around when, up ahead, half obscured by dust and the waves of rising heat, she saw a dark figure stalking grimly toward her like a moving shadow.

It circled the car warily as she slowed to a stop. She saw a gaunt, rather handsome face staring down at her, eyes wide and shy above the fringe of beard. She knew immediately who it was. 'Sarr,' she said, almost breathless with relief. 'At last!'

Mrs Poroth put the beekeeper's mask back in the closet and sat herself morosely on the narrow bed. She was worried. She had seen the woman. It was her, the one whose coming she'd dreaded. She had recognized the red hair and the intense, almost ascetic face, like that of an unwitting Joan of Arc. A holy victim.

Removing from the drawer in her night table a tattered yellow pile pressed flat between two sheets of cardboard, she untied the ribbon that held the sheets together and gazed down once again at the Pictures. Hesitantly she reached for the one on top – a landscape drawn entirely in white upon a grey background – and turned it over. She sifted through the rest of the pile, not shuffling them, proceeding with no established order, merely allowing her mind to roam free as she scanned Picture after Picture. Her gaze fell immediately on the image of the book, an obscene fat yellow volume, covers bulging, bloated, almost, as if barely able to contain the mass within. The moon drawing, too, caught her eye; but the moon that would appear in the sky tonight, she knew, would be nothing like the cruel, slim crescent shape in the Picture, with the star trapped between its tips. The one that shone tonight would be full.

Laying aside the Pictures, she closed her eyes, fell stiffly back on her bed, and tried desperately to think of a connection.

The hum of insects was beginning to drive him to distraction. His ears tingled to the buzz of a mosquito, it seemed about to pierce into his brain, and yet behind it he could hear the reassuring drone of the hornets and bees and those flies with heads like jewels. What was there in that sound? He cocked his head to listen, and, for a moment, believed he understood: it was the hum the world made as it went about its work, serenely preoccupied, all gears meshing smoothly, the mechanism utterly dependable.

Now there was another sound behind it, another motor – and in the distance a small white Chevrolet came lurching slowly up the dirt road toward the farm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two kittens padding across the lawn to investigate, tails eagerly aloft. He got up from his chair and walked hurriedly around the side of the house to the driveway, just as Deborah was emerging from the back door. She joined him at the bottom of the steps, and by the time the little car had pulled up next to the house, he and Deborah were waiting side by side, cats gamboling at their feet, as if the two of them were the farm couple and he Deborah's lawful husband.

Carol had arrived at last, but more than four hours late, and he could see, even through the dusty windshield, that she was in a bad mood. Well, he would just have to hold her awhile and make her feel better. Turning the engine off, she wiped a hand across her shining forehead and climbed silently from the car. For Deborah, now rushing forward to welcome her, she managed a smile, but it looked forced, strained; and for him, hanging back, there was no smile at all, not even a hello – though he got a greeting he would not quickly forget.

'I swear I could strangle you!' she said, slamming the door shut as the kittens fled back across the lawn. 'How could you tell me this place was only an hour or so away?'

His first reaction was simple embarrassment that she should speak to him that way in front of Deborah. Her mood also unnerved him; it was going to be that much harder now for the two of them to get romantic – which was presumably what they both wanted. Hesitantly he reached in through the window for the tote bag on the seat. 'Here, I'll get this.' It was heavier than he expected; he felt the awkward weight of a bottle and some bulky parcels.

He was about to start for the outbuilding, but she took the bag from him. 'That's okay, I've got it,' she said, already calming down. She turned to Deborah, who, behind her back, had been giving her a cool, appraising glance. 'I'd really like to go wash up. I feel like I've just run a marathon.'

'Come on inside, then. The bathroom's just off the kitchen.' Deborah led her up the back porch steps, the two of them chattering about the unseasonable heat. Seen together like that, buxom brunette and slim redhead, they looked like some Victorian allegory of darkness and light. After all those nights alone on the farm, he was glad that one of them was his.

He drifted back to his room, casting his eye over it one more time before she saw it. The roses on the night table were a nice touch, he decided. Too bad the windows in the back didn't let in more light.

Finally, bored, he walked back up to the house. Voices came from the second floor, but not, as usual, from the Poroths' bedroom. Dismayed, he hurried upstairs to find the two of them, just as he'd feared, in the small spare room in back intended eventually for a child's bedroom. They were talking about the pictures that covered the walls – a series of nursery rhyme cutouts and lithographed Bible scenes chosen with the room's future occupant in mind. Deborah was holding a wrapped-up bottle. Carol's tote bag already lay upon the bed, a fresh towel beside it.

'Jeremy,' said Carol, beaming, 'do you know, this is just like the room my sister and I had when we were growing up! I swear, I had some of these same pictures.'

'Oh, really?' He stood in the doorway, hoping his face didn't betray his disappointment. 'I guess all that's really needed is a crib.'

Deborah was watching him closely. He couldn't tell if she was gloating or feeling sorry for him. 'Well,' she said, 'call me if you need anything. I've got to get back downstairs now – there's something in the oven.' She held up the bottle. 'And thanks again for the wine.'

'Carol,' he said when she was gone, 'you don't really intend to stay here, do you?'

Her eyes widened. 'Where else would I stay?'

He sighed. Already things were going wrong. Out there, beneath the sun, the world was turning serenely, yet inside here a piece of it had turned away from him. 'The fact of the matter is, I thought that you'd be staying out there with me.'

'That's certainly not what I had in mind,' she said. 'And I don't think the Poroths would approve of an unmarried girl spending the night back there with you.'

'Their opinion doesn't matter.'

'Of course it does, Jeremy. We're guests in their home.'

'I'm not a guest. I'm paying rent.'

'Yes, but I'm a guest,' she said firmly, 'and I wouldn't want to offend them. And anyway, though it probably sounds silly to you, I just don't do that sort of thing.'

He'd deserved that, he realized. There was nothing dumber than trying to argue a girl into bed, and that's exactly what he'd been trying. Now she had blown him out of the water. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I understand.' Maybe he could still change her mind.

'And look,' she said, 'I'm sorry about that little outburst of mine, back in the yard. I didn't mean to take it out on you. I guess I just got nervous driving Rosie's car.'

He shrugged. 'Didn't bother me. Honest. I'm just sorry you had such a rough trip.' Glumly he eyed the room's low ceiling, the wide plank floorboards covered by a throw rug, the shallow, smoke-stained fireplace taking up most of one side. How could she actually think of staying here? It was so damned claustrophobic. Around him shapes were thumbtacked to the pale blue papered wall: faces grinned from the ramparts of a cardboard castle, a white-robed priest made solemn gestures before an altar fire, a cow danced dreamily round a startled moon. He waved his hand toward the room at large. 'Well, anyway, welcome to the Land of Nod.'

'It seems very comfortable.'

He sniffed. 'A little stuffy, though.' Frowning, he went to the other side of the room, where a tiny dormer window looked out upon the yard. Just inside the panes, hanging by a length of string from a hook above a lintel, a hollow, ruby-red witch ball of hand-blown glass revolved slowly in the sunlight. Large as an overripe apple, it was designed to keep evil spirits at bay; inside it lay a sprig of angelica, the herb beloved of the Holy Ghost. Across the room, from a trick of the light, a glowing disk the size and color of a rose appeared to float upon the wall above the bed.

From behind him came the muffled sound of a zipper. He caught his breath and looked around, half expecting to see Carol stepping lightly out of her jeans, but she was busy rummaging through the open tote bag; a hairbrush and a pair of slacks already lay upon the bed. Inside the bag he glimpsed a fat yellow book with ornamental covers but failed to recognize it. She reached inside for the volume, then seemed to think better of it and shoved it back among the clothes. God, he thought, she's even brought some kind of prayer book! With a sigh he turned back to the window. Unfastening the latch, he pushed open the two sets of panes, letting in a breeze from the yard. The leaves of the apple tree whispered with it just outside the window, and the witch ball stirred lazily on its string. Past the garden the dusty white Chevy sat dozing in the driveway. In the distance he could see his own building, the afternoon sunlight shining fiercely on the shingles of the roof, and, beyond it, the smokehouse and the old black willow that grew against the barn. She would have a pleasing view if she stayed up here tonight – a better view than he would have from down there on the lawn.

And he would be alone down there.

But she still might reconsider, the optimist in him decided. In fact, he felt confident that she would. Far from discouraging him, her behavior back in the yard made him feel curiously protective: here she was, supposedly a resourceful corn-fed country girl, yet she'd apparently managed to get herself lost two or three times on the ride out and had obviously had trouble navigating the final stretch of road. Whatever she liked to fancy herself, she was certainly no pathfinder. He realized that in the short week he'd been living here, he'd begun to feel at home.

'Come on,' he said, 'let me show you where I live.'

Their footsteps clattered through the hall and down the stairs, the floorboards echoing as they passed.

Behind them in the little room, deserted now, the ball of ruby-red glass spun like a planet in the sunshine. The image it cast on the opposite wall was aglow with rosy light, its center filled with swirling bands of red.

Gradually, hour after hour, the sun would settle earthward; the rosy light would travel ever higher up the wall. At last, trembling with the final rays of sunset, it would strike the lower corner of a Bible lithograph, then a line of badly painted foliage, a rock, a patch of moss, a bit of long white robe… until, like some intense supernal spotlight, it would shine directly on the center of the picture, on a bright configuration with the contours of a star: the altar fire.

Inevitably, for a moment, the star and rose would merge.

Afterward, the sun would settle further; the spotlight would move on. Yet for that single moment, beneath its rays, the fire would have flickered, glowed, and come to life. For an instant the flames would leap higher, burning with a vastly deeper hunger, now shifting, now spreading, devouring picture, planet, all.

Lazy clouds drifted above the tops of the surrounding trees; wisps of shadow swept the grass. Freirs sat slouched next to Carol on a rock by the banks of the stream, beneath the shade of one of the willows that grew along the side.

To his uneasiness the two of them had once more fallen silent, and now barely stirred except to brush away an occasional fly or flip a stone or twig into the water – water so clear that it was impossible to tell the depth. Along the opposite bank, where the woods began, the pine trees shifted restlessly in the afternoon heat, but the water here beside them was nearly cold enough to freeze one's fingers.

Carol leaned over, trying to see her reflection, but the current was too swift. Sunlight glimmered from the water's surface, picking out dead leaves and bits of debris being carried downstream. In the shadows one could see other things, smooth and pale and snakelike, twisting among the rocks at the bottom.

She seemed preoccupied. Freirs watched her out of the corner of his eye with a yearning he couldn't quite remember feeling since the days before his marriage. He wished she were staying more than just one night; he hadn't realized, till now, how lonely he had been. It was something of a surprise, in fact: she looked so wonderfully tight sitting here beside him in her old plaid shirt and slim-legged jeans, her skin so pale in the sunlight, her hair so red against the grass.

And she herself hadn't been immune to the feeling. By the time the two of them had left the farmhouse, she'd seemed very happy to be here with him today. Deborah had been singing in the kitchen. Outside, the air had grown cooler. Butterflies were dancing on the lawn.

'God,' she'd said, 'it feels like coming home!'

But something had unaccountably changed her mood; without warning she had suddenly become less friendly, just when he'd begun to feel close to her.

It had happened in his bedroom. A silence had seemed to fall between them, there among his books and papers. Somehow she had had a change of heart. He had seen it when she'd first walked through his doorway; he'd seen a vague expression of distaste come over her – had she actually wrinkled her nose? – and a certain wariness when she'd looked from bed to rear window and window to bed, as if measuring the distance.

He had tried to keep the conversation going, something he was usually adept at, but maybe in the past week he'd gotten out of practice. They'd talked about a hike they hoped to take, and where to search for animal tracks, arrowheads, edible wild plants. But it had been no more than filling in the blanks. She'd seemed restless and distracted the entire time and was soon suggesting that they go back outside. She hadn't even wanted to sit down – had flatly refused, in fact, to sit beside him on the bed. You'd have thought she was a virgin, the way she'd behaved.

He wondered if maybe the fault lay with the bed itself: with its presence, its very concreteness. Women, he knew, were practical at heart – quite ruthlessly calculating, some of them, certainly the one he'd married – but there were always a few romantic souls who managed to forget that making love was also a matter of bed space and damp sheets and where to put the elbows. Maybe Carol was one of these, her head spinning round and round with flower-scented fantasies until, with a jolt, she stumbled against the hard physical reality of his narrow iron bed. Maybe she preferred to think they'd do it in the air, like angels.

He'd given it one try, at least. He'd felt fat and dull and sweaty, but he'd kissed her just the same, leaning toward her as she looked at the woodcuts in a paperback grimoire and planting a firm kiss at the side of her mouth. She'd been surprised, of course – her eyes had gone wide and she hadn't exactly fallen into his arms – but she hadn't pulled away.

But then, like a kid on his first date, he had failed to follow it up. Instead, he'd made some lame remark about the Brethren and their attitude toward sex – 'very Old Testament,' he'd said – and the two had lapsed back into awkward conversation. The moment had been lost.

Afterward, more tense now, and with more blank space to fill, they'd strolled aimlessly around the farm, Freirs pointing out the various outbuildings and fields just as Sarr had done for him and, beneath a demeanor almost as reserved, watching her reactions with the same anxious curiosity.

She had not been impressed. At first the place had seemed, paradoxically, both novel and familiar, but her initial enthusiasm had apparently worn off, and she was no longer moved by the mere sight of rural landscape. Casting a critical eye at the broad, uncultivated lands beyond the stream, the old wooden outhouse rotting beneath its tangle of vines, the mass of the encroaching woods, the farm machinery rusting in the barn, the north field overgrown with weeds, she had pronounced the farm 'in very poor repair.'

She'd been right, of course, yet somehow the comment had irritated him. What did she expect? After all, this was Sarr and Deborah's first year here. He realized that he'd come to feel a certain loyalty to them.

How to change the mood? How to bring them closer once again? He'd wondered about it all through the remainder of their walk -and now, sitting here beside her on the sun-warmed rock while streams of shadow spread across the lawn, he still wasn't sure what to do. Drop his pants? Recite a poem? Whip out some imaginary pocketknife and carve their initials on the nearest tree? A directly physical approach was out of the question – he could hardly just reach out and grab her, here among the insects and the rocks – and he'd long since run out of things to talk about. What, after all, had he been doing with himself for the last week, except sitting on his ass and taking notes? He had already tried to describe for her the Gothic excesses of The Monk, but though she'd seemed interested enough -'My God,' she kept saying, 'to be so afraid of nuns' – the novel's horror had quite suddenly and unexpectedly begun to pall on him. Subterranean dungeons, inquisitors, and chains all seemed rather foolish and insubstantial out here in the sunlight, with dragonflies dipping innocently above the stream and the smell of pine trees wafting from the woods on the opposite bank.

And anyway, Carol was beginning to seem distracted. 'I hope he'll understand,' she said abruptly. 'Sarr, I mean. I should have offered him a lift. I didn't know he'd be away this long.'

Freirs shrugged, just as happy that Carol hadn't gone off alone with Sarr before reaching the farm. That would have made her even later, and… well, he didn't like the idea of the two of them sharing anything without him. Anyway, why bring him up now?

'He mentioned something this morning about buying wine,' Freirs said. 'There are some people over on the next road who make it out of rhubarb and dandelions and things.' The thought reminded him of dinner; he looked back to the house – just in time to see Sarr himself walking up the back steps, a large jug swinging heavily from his arm.

He turned back to Carol without mentioning it, but she too had been looking toward the house. She stood, brushing off her jeans. 'He's back,' she said. 'They'll probably be getting dinner ready soon. I'd better head on over to the house and wash up.'

Freirs stood and followed her slowly back across the lawn, past his own ivy-covered building. Somehow it looked quite unlovely now. 'Do you still want to see that field guide?' he asked hopefully. "The one that has the recipe for cattails?'

'After dinner,' she said, not even turning. Suddenly she laughed. 'Speaking of cats… ' Beside them, attracted by the direction of their walk, loped two of the younger cats, an orange male and a tortoise-shell female, perhaps anticipating dinner.

'Where are all the others?' asked Carol, crouching to extend her hand toward the female. With the usual feline ambivalence it dodged her attempt to pat it on the head, remaining just beyond arm's reach; but the orange male crept warily up and, tail lashing, permitted her to stroke its neck.

'The older ones tend to go off by themselves,' said Freirs, watching Carol's fingers sliding through the animal's silky hair. Lucky little bastard. 'They spend all day creeping through the long grass like tigers on the prowl. One of them's a big silver female – you'll see her tonight – who actually roams around in the woods, just like a wild animal. Sarr says she eats what she kills there.'

At that moment, up ahead, Deborah appeared at the back door and stepped out onto the porch, her apron white against the long black of her dress. She was carrying a large ceramic bowl. At her side a thin, wicked-looking bread knife hung like a ceremonial sword. Crouching, she set the bowl carefully beside a smaller one at her feet. The dangling bread knife touched the floor and caught the sinking sun. Brushing back a lock of hair, she stood and waved a greeting to her guests, then tilted back her head and yelled what sounded like a single mystical demon-name: 'Bekariabwada!… Bekaria bwaaaadal'

From the long grass behind them three blurred shapes, a charcoal, a tiger-stripe, and a silver grey – Rebekah, Azariah, and Bwada – streaked across the lawn and up the back steps. And sure enough, one of them, Freirs noticed, bore something small and struggling in its teeth.

The city feels deserted this evening. It is the start of a three-day weekend, and even some of the poor have managed to escape. The rest sit in their doorways and curse the heat.

The Old One doesn't mind the heat. In fact, he is in an extremely good mood. As he waits outside the building where the women live, he hums a little song.

The sun sinks toward the river like a dying rose. Lines of jagged shadows creep farther down the sidewalk. One by one, as the darkness descends, he flexes his pudgy little fingers.

'Honey, are you sure Matthew gave you your money's worth?'

Sarr looked up from the astrological column in that day's Home News: Full moon tonight, and unexpected sights beneath it. 'Huh?'

'Matthew Geisel. Did that old man try to cheat you?'

'That's no way to talk about Brother-'

'Because this thing's not even full,' Deborah went on. 'See? It's five or six inches down.' She pointed to the wine jug that stood upon the table. Suddenly her expression changed; she looked at him suspiciously. 'Hey, have you been into this?'

Scowling, he went back to his paper. 'And what if I was? It's hot out there.'

She sighed and shook her head. 'Gonna get yourself sick, you are, walking in the sun with a belly full of wine. It's a wonder you left any for the rest of us.'

He grunted noncommittally, already looking forward to finishing off the jug at dinner, along with the wine that Freirs' skinny redheaded girlfriend had brought out. The Brethren didn't hold with drunkenness, but as sins went it was a minor one. No sense getting into an argument over a few tart swigs of rhubarb wine. He looked up. 'Want me to rinse off those greens?' he asked. 'Or feed the cats?'

She was having none of it. 'All that's been done,' she said. 'Dinner'll be ready in a minute. Go see where they are.'

'Last time I looked, they were still out there trying to make friends with Zillah and Toby. She seemed to give up on Zillah – without getting scratched, praise the Lord – and then she started in on Toby. Picked him up just like a baby.'

'And he let her?'

'He seemed to like it.'

Deborah shrugged and began methodically slicing a tomato. 'Probably thought she was his mother, with that hair of hers. You don't suppose that's the real-colour, do you?'

Sarr smiled. He was tempted to say something about women and cats, but held his tongue. 'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'Here she is. Why don't you ask her?'

He was amused to find the subject dropped. While Carol, then Freirs, filed into the bathroom to wash for dinner, Deborah busied herself at the stove. Suddenly she paused and turned to face him.

'By the way,' she said, 'aren't you forgetting something?' She nodded toward the porch. 'May as well get it over with before you wash up.'

Sarr winced. It was time for the body count. He had almost forgotten. With a sigh he heaved himself from the chair. 'Ah, yes. 'Twouldn't do to neglect the dead.'

Pushing through the screen door, he stood with hands on hips and watched the cats gathered round a bowl heaped with dry commercial cat food mixed with last night's table scraps; a water dish stood nearby. Moments later the two remaining kittens, charcoal Dinah and coalblack Habakkuk, came scampering up the back steps to join the other five. Bwada raised he silver-grey head to glare at them as they crowded in beside her. She gave a warning hiss, but they ignored her and, purring softly, proceeded to gobble up as much food as they could in dainty but determined bites.

While they ate, he went grimly about his task. It was not a pleasant one, even when blunted somewhat by the drink. Each evening around mealtime, now that summer was here, the cats had taken to bringing in dead things, corpses of animals they'd caught during the day: field mice, moles, shrews, birds – even, once, a slender green garter snake. It was doubtful that they saw those creatures as food (though Bwada, on occasion, had been known to make a meal of one – as if she weren't fat enough already). Usually they just laid the bodies out upon the kitchen steps for the Poroths to see. Sarr believed the offerings were meant as tribute – a kind of ceremony.

Tonight, thank the Lord, they had returned with relatively little plunder: he saw only two mangled field mice and, almost out of sight within the shadows by the wall, the not-quite-lifeless body of a young robin, one delicate brown wing still trembling.

A good thing Deborah hadn't seen this. How she raged and carried on about the birds! Frowning, he stooped to pick the mice up gingerly by the tails. With his other hand he grasped the robin by the legs and walked down the back steps to a pair of garbage cans that stood beneath the porch. His head was swimming slightly from the wine, but he knew his intoxication only brought him nearer to the essential mystery. Placing the bird on the hard ground and looking away, he crushed its skull beneath the heel of his boot. As he did so, he thought he felt a tiny soul flutter past his face and up to heaven.

Wrinkling his nose, he lifted the lid from the nearer can and was immediately sickened by the foul odor of rotting flesh that welled up from its depths. Quickly he dropped the three bodies into the can and clamped the metal lid back on. It was a process he'd had to repeat, with little variation, nearly every night, but he still had not grown used to it.

Before returning inside, he paused a moment, leaning against one of the square white posts that supported the roof and gazing out at the farmland as it stretched away past the outbuilding and the brook to the distant line of woods. He spent a lot of time here on the porch, especially at the end of the day, staring alone and silent at the land. It was a sight that never failed to move him; familiar as it had become, he still felt like a stranger.

It was a paradox, really. During the day, at the height of the sun, while he sweated over some intractable root or turned the soil of some outlying pasture, though the land resisted him with all its strength, he nonetheless felt himself its master. But at moments like this – at dusk, when the world was at peace and he could survey his domain in lordly comfort from the back steps of his house – it somehow seemed to him that the land wasn't really his at all and that, with no human figure to mar the landscape, the farm reverted to what it had always been: a living thing, belonging only to itself. The waving grass and newly planted fields seemed to keep their own counsel; there was a consciousness at work in the lengthening shadows by the apple tree, outbuilding, and barn. True, he had purchased all these himself only last fall; the deed, signed, dated, and notarized, lay upstairs in a desk drawer. But how foolish he'd been to think that he could actually own this land, land which had been here so long before him and would be here so long after his body had crumbled beneath it. He was just another visitor, though thankful even for that; enough that he'd been given tonight's scent of roses and marsh water and pine, the faint evening breeze that even now brushed his face, and the darkness stealing leaf by leaf over the great trees.

Suddenly, disturbingly, another scent was mingled with the roses: the scent of decay seeping up from the garbage cans, a reminder of what lay waiting for everything that walked or crept upon the earth. Turning away, he hurried back into the house.

When he emerged from the bathroom after washing and rewash-ing his hands – faintly troubled, as he was every night, by the inevitable thoughts of Pilate – the odor of death seemed to linger in his nostrils, gradually mingling with the smell of roasting meat that filled the kitchen. Deborah was still at the stove, stirring one large black pot while keeping watch on a smaller one. The others were already seated, Freirs, as usual, toying with his napkin ring. The wine had been opened, the four glasses filled. It looked tawny and sweet; Sarr wished there were more.

'It's lovely, the way you've fixed this place up,' Carol was saying. She ran her hand appreciatively along the smooth, age-stained wood of the little dining table, set with four straw place mats. It was the same table that, a week before, had borne the star of cottonbread. 'This kitchen's around ten times the size of the one in my apartment, and I'll bet it's twenty degrees cooler in here.'

Bending over the stove, Deborah called back, 'There's a certain person I know who believes the city's hotter because it's so much closer to you-know-where!'

Sarr forced a smile, but he felt a flicker of annoyance. 'Oh, I wouldn't put it like that, exactly,' he said, crossing the kitchen, 'but Lord knows there's precious Utile comfort there.' He pulled back his chair and sat down heavily. 'It's a matter of science, I suppose -something to do with the pavement and the brick. Hardly the sort of place I'd care to live.'

There, the gauntlet was thrown; no use blaming it on the wine. He hadn't meant to speak out that way, but it was too late to take it back. He suspected he was going to have an argument on his hands, because Freirs had stopped toying with the wooden ring.

'Sure,' said Freirs, 'it is a bit hotter in the city. But that's why God gave us air conditioners.'

Sarr heard the laughter of the two women, and his smile vanished. He had always been uncomfortable with jokes, especially jokes about the Lord. He began to frame a reply, but paused, for Deborah had come from the stove carrying a large, steaming bowl of barley soup. Placing it on a hand-painted tile in the center of the table, she seated herself and clasped her hands piously before her. It was time to say grace.

He took a breath. 'Dear Lord,' he said with sudden vehemence, clasping his own hands and dropping his gaze, 'as we, Thy servants, prepare to enjoy the richness of Thy bounty, we give thanks for the two good people who have come to share it with us-'

He glanced up to see their reaction. Freirs, as usual, was merely inclining his head, staring pensively at the soup bowl, as if to prove that, while polite, he was not about to buy any of the Poroths' beliefs; but Sarr was pleased to see that Carol's fingers were locked in fervent prayer, her eyes shut tight, her expression rapt. She looked almost angelic.

– and thanks to Thee, O Lord, as the source of all well-being and content.'

'Amen,' they murmured, even Freirs. Perhaps he was going along for Carol's sake.

Carol – she was an odd one for Freirs to bring out here. He wouldn't have thought she was his type. Not that she wasn't attractive; she was, and Sarr was honest enough with himself to acknowledge the feelings she'd inspired in him ever since he'd met her out there on the road this afternoon.

It was good to have her so close now; he suddenly realized that it had been years since he'd sat down to dinner with an unmarried woman from outside his family, especially one with Carol's strange mixture of independence and submissiveness, her soft uncallused skin, her clean-looking red hair cut so curiously short, so unlike the women's here in Gilead. He couldn't help picturing her climbing into his bed, so thin and pale and trembling; and he knew that tonight, as he made love to his wife, his thoughts would stray unbidden to this new woman, at least until he forced himself to think of holier things.

Deborah was speaking, lightening the mood, drawing the visitors in while she poured the rhubarb wine and served them their soup.

She was so much better at that than he was. 'I wouldn't trade the country with anyone,' she was saying, 'but there are times I miss the city something awful. If I hadn't gotten myself married I probably would have tried to live there for a few years. I still think about going back someday, just for a visit.'

Freirs made a mock bow. 'Just remember,' he said, 'whenever you're in town you'll always have a place to stay. Not exactly the Waldorf, maybe, but comfy enough.' He raised his glass. 'To travel, and the broadening effects thereof.'

The others raised theirs. 'To country virtues,' said Carol, smiling. 'And to those of us who still remember them.'

Deborah giggled. 'And to city vices!' She took a sip of the wine. 'Mmm, good.'

Sarr watched uneasily, wondering if Freirs and Deborah were flirting with one another. Unable to think of another toast, he brought the wineglass to his lips and took a large swallow, almost without tasting it. The lines, he realized, were shifting, setting him and the new woman against his wife and guest. He alone remained consistent. The thought made him feel stronger and at last encouraged him to speak.

'Deborah,' he said, choosing his words carefully, 'I know you've got a longing for the city. I've heard you talk of it before. And it's just as I told you when I made you my wife: you're free to do as you please. I'll not stand in your way.' He took another drink and wiped his mouth. 'As for me, though, I'll never set foot in that citadel of godlessness again. It's a place of corruption, and its people are swollen with envy and greed. Even the very best of them are infected. I hear it in their voices: the obsession with luxury, money, and the things of the world.'

He looked from face to face. He could see that they knew he was serious. Freirs, though, was eyeing him skeptically. No doubt he resented not being the center of attention – how like a schoolteacher! -and would take any word spoken against the city as a personal attack. Probably he would try to assert himself in the eyes of the women. Yet to do so would only be natural; it was God's way that men must compete. Sarr understood and forgave.

'That's why I'm so glad the two of you are with us here tonight,' he went on, nodding to Carol and Freirs. 'Lord's my witness, I truly believe you'll both be the better for this. At least you're out of danger, at least for now.'

'Danger?' said Freirs. 'You mean like street crime?'

Sarr shook his head. 'It isn't criminals I mean, nor dirt and noise. I mean a danger to the spirit. I see the city as the prophets did, a place to rival Babylon. Everyone is buying and selling, and everything's for sale. Even their own souls have a price.'

Freirs smiled. 'I'm not so sure about that,' he said. 'I've tried to buy a few lately, and no one's selling. In my film class I asked someone-'

But Sarr wasn't waiting for his explanation. 'Perhaps you should have offered more,' he said. 'Remember, you're competing with the devil, and he's got the city in his pocket.'

He was still feeling, he realized, rather light-headed. Too many hours in the sun. It would be good to get some food in him.

'Mind you,' he added, almost apologetically, 'I didn't always think so. When I was growing up here, I used to dream about running off to see the Empire State Building, and at night I'd pretend that I could see it brightening the sky. I used to think that, if light was good and darkness evil, then God must love the cities best. I knew He'd made man and man made the city, so I thought that was where He must live.' He paused, suddenly remembering. 'I don't think so anymore.'

'I gather you had a less than delightful visit,' Freirs said lightly, with a look toward Carol. 'What happen, you get mugged?'

'No, not that. I may have been a bit too big for that, even then. I've heard they prefer old ladies.'

'They'll take whoever they can get. How old did you say you were?'

Sarr rubbed his chin. 'It was Christmas of your senior year in school,' said Deborah. 'That's what you told me.'

Sarr nodded. 'That's right. I'd just turned seventeen. My father'd died that fall God rest his soul.'

'My father died then too,' said Carol. 'I mean, in the fall. It'll be a year this November.'

'Really?' He regarded her with new interest. 'Then that's another thing we have in common.'

Freirs looked up, quick to catch a hint of conspiracy. 'You mean, aside from your both being country people?'

'No, I meant aside from our both being religious. We talked about it when I met her on the road.'

'I had a Bible program on the radio, that's all,' said Carol. She sounded irritated, but it was hard to tell at whom. 'As for our respective fathers… '

'We've both experienced loss,' said Sarr. He was about to add a biblical observation on the ephemerality of man, but Deborah cut him off.

'I'll bet her mother took it a whole lot harder than-' Sarr silenced her with a look. 'My mother bore her loss with dignity,' he said, with another glance at Deborah. 'She's always kept pretty much to herself and doesn't let on how she's feeling. But I knew what was in her heart -1 knew that the feeling was there – and I thought, If only there was something I could give her, something that would interest her, it'd pull her away from… well, all the things that were on her mind. So one Saturday morning I put on my father's old sheepskin coat-'

Deborah nodded grimly. 'Like a lamb to the slaughter!' '-and I hitched a ride to Flemington and climbed aboard the bus to New York. I thought I'd bring her back some sort of gift. A jewel, maybe. Something precious.' He shook his head. 'It was a long time ago.'

'And your mother,' said Carol. 'She didn't mind your going?' He looked pained. 'I told her I'd be in Flemington till after dark, trying to find a part-time job. It was probably the first time I ever lied to her. Not that she was fooled.'

'Nothing fools her,' said Deborah. 'She knows everything.' 'But she never seemed to care too much where I went,' said Sarr. 'So I yielded to temptation and set off.'

He sat back, pulling himself almost physically from the memory. At the same moment he became aware of a scratching at the door, where four owlish little faces were peering through the screen. It was the younger cats; he still tended to think of them as 'the kittens.' As he rose to let them in, he saw Carol turn and look questioningly at Freirs, who shrugged in acknowledgement. 'It's okay,' Freirs said. 'They're in here almost every night. I think I may be getting used to them.'

As always, no sooner was the door opened for them than the cats seemed to grow undecided about whether to enter, even though San-stood waiting by the doorway. Bwada pushed impatiently from behind them and bounded beneath the table, but the others hung back as if making up their minds; and when at last the four slipped past his feet into the kitchen, it was with a kind of wary indifference. Their parents, Rebekah and Azariah, remained outside, pacing like tigers back and forth along the steps, and soon disappeared into the long grass at the edge of the yard.

Sarr returned to the table to see Deborah ladling out more soup and the cats grouped like disciples at her feet. Freirs looked up from his bowl as Sarr resumed his seat. 'So there you were,' he said, 'speeding toward Gotham and God knows what iniquity. Then what?'

Sarr smiled uncertainly. 'Well,' he said, 'it's a long story.'

'No doubt,' said Freirs.

Carol added, 'You can't just leave us on the bus, you know.'

'I'm afraid that Deborah's heard it all before.'

'And more than once,' said Deborah. 'Still, you'd best tell them, honey, now that you've a proper audience.'

He had meant, as the host, to hold his tongue, the way he usually did, but somehow this whole meal had started wrong. Perhaps it was the wine.

'Well… ' He took another swallow. 'All right, then. Perhaps you'll even learn from my mistakes. I remember I reached the city a little after noon. The first thing I did was just stand there in the bus station and look at all the people. I'd never seen so many in one place, nor yet so many shades of skin. Twas like looking into an anthill, only this one was going on all around me and I was in the middle. I was bigger than most everybody else, and I know there's always Someone up there watching' – he pointed toward the ceiling -'so I'm not the kind to feel scared. But if I was, that's the time I would have felt it.'

'It's hard to believe you'd never been to New York before,' said Freirs, as if already regretting he'd given up the floor. 'Let's face it, you're only a little over an hour away.' He glanced guiltily at Carol. 'Okay, maybe two hours, if the traffic's bad.'

'The Brethren don't see it like that,' said Sarr. 'Just because a place is an hour or two away doesn't mean they'll want to pay it a visit. I'd say half the folks in this town have never been to New York.' Beside him Deborah nodded. 'They read about it in the Home News -'

'The ones who aren't afraid to read a newspaper,' she added. 'Some of 'em around here think it's a sin to read anything but the Bible.'

'And some don't,' said Sarr firmly. 'A few of them see it on the TV, if they have one, or even at the drive-in up in Lebanon. They know all about New York. The point is, they just plain don't want to go. My mother's never been there, and never will. But I was curious, and I don't scare easy. So there I was, in the middle of the anthill, plowing my way toward the street.

'The first thing I saw when I got outside was this little fellow in a red getup, standing there on the sidewalk and ringing a dinner bell. He had a beard as white as old Brother Mogg's and twice as long, but I could see it was just lamb's wool. I knew who he was supposed to be, of course – you can't walk a mile out of Gilead, that time of year, without seeing an electrified Santa Claus on some fool's lawn – but I sure wasn't expecting to see a grown man dressed up that way in public.

'I stood and watched him for a while. It turned out he was collecting for some sort of charity, and I figured I'd best give him something. I had the money with me I'd saved up from working in my father's store. Looking back now, it doesn't seem like much -less than forty dollars – but it was all I had. I reached down in ray pocket to dig it out, and that's when I found out it was gone.

'I can still remember how I felt. It was like somebody'd poleaxed me, it near made me dizzy. I went stumbling back into the bus station, searching every stranger's face, trying to find out which one could have done this to me- as if I'd know just by looking in his eyes. And I'll tell you something: everyone I passed looked like he could have done it. Maybe it was just the way I was feeling, but I swear there wasn't an honest face amongst 'em.'

The room had grown silent but for the purring of the plump grey cat as it pressed itself against the foot of his chair. He realized with a flush of embarrassment that the others had long ago finished their soup and were waiting for him to do the same. 'Here,' he said, pushing the bowl roughly toward his wife, 'take it! I've had my fill.' As she collected the bowls he frowned and turned away, reaching down to stroke the grey cat's head.

Carol was watching him expectantly. 'How awful,' she said at last.'To lose all your money like that! And it always happens to the ones who need it most.'

'I assume you took the first bus back to Flemington,' said Freirs. There was a shade less sympathy in his voice.

Back at the oven, Deborah laughed.'Then you don't know Sarr.' She swung back the oven door and reached inside with the pot-holder; something bubbled and hissed, and the smell of roasting meat grew stronger. 'He's a stubborn one, he is. He's not one to give up without a fight.'

Sarr smiled. 'I'm stubborn, all right. And also a damned fool! I could have come home, because I still had my return ticket, right there in the pocket of my shirt. But that would've been too easy. I was out for justice. Maybe God had meant it for a sign, but I thought He was giving me a test. So what I did was, I went back out to the sidewalk and just stood there goggle-eyed a while, staring at the crowd. I had this crazy notion that maybe I'd see some other fool's pocket getting picked. I didn't, of course – no thief s that stupid -but I did get some advice. I felt a kind of tugging at my coat sleeve, and when I looked down, there was old Santa Claus peering up at me. His face was covered by the beard, but I could see his eyes, and they were sad. "I saw them take your money," he said. His voice was real soft, like an old flute. "It was two black boys with coats like yours. They ran up there." He was pointing north, past a row of bars and pawnshops and movie-house marquees. Way off in the distance I could see a line of trees, as if that was where the city came to an end. I thanked him, and he wished me luck, and I headed up the street.'

Sarr paused as his wife returned to the table with a platter topped by a sizzling brown leg of lamb. It was followed by potatoes, his Aunt Lise's homemade mint jelly, and Deborah's own garden-grown beans. He saw Carol eye the meat dubiously and assumed she must be worrying about how much it had cost them. Well, it hadn't been cheap, especially for a man already in debt, but there were certain obligations to a guest that couldn't be evaded.

'Sure wish I'd had a meal like this when I started on my walk,' he said, sliding the platter toward him. He took the carving knife Deborah handed him and sliced off a thick slab of meat. 'Unfortunately, I'd nothing but a few cents change tied up in a handkerchief-just enough to buy myself a bar of chocolate.' He speared the meat and turned to Carol. 'Here, pass me your plate.'

She shook her head. 'Thanks, but no. I don't eat meat.'

He felt a spark of irritation. So that's why she's so skinny.

Deborah looked upset. 'Why didn't you say anything, Carol? I could have made something else tonight.'

'It's really okay,' said Carol. She seemed embarrassed. 'There was no need to go to any trouble. I've been a vegetarian since college, and I'll manage perfectly well on what you've got right here.'

'But Jeremy, why didn't you say anything?'

Freirs shrugged. 'I didn't know. We've only had spaghetti together. Carol, you never even told me.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I guess I never got the chance. Honestly, it's no big deal. I'm happy with the beans and potatoes.'

'Well,' Deborah fretted, 'as long as that's enough… '

'It will be,' said Carol. Poroth could see that she wished the subject had never come up. 'Now poor Sarr, here, all he had to eat was a bit of chocolate.'

'Well, that wasn't till later,' he said, grateful she'd remembered. 'At the time, all I wanted was to find my money.' Carefully he served the others, then himself. 'I suppose it was foolish of me to try.'

'Naive, at any rate,' said Freirs. 'How'd you think you'd recognize the thief? There are a lot of sheepskin coats in New York.'

'I expected the Lord would give me a sign. He's never failed me, you know.'

Freirs looked skeptical. 'Really? Another sign?'

Sarr nodded. 'He doesn't fail believers. And with that knowledge in my heart, I kept on walking north. 'Twas a sour, cold day, I remember, with grey skies and a wind up, but there was no snow on the ground. It must have been a good deal hotter down below, because clouds of steam kept rising from holes in the pavement, and everyone in town seemed to be out of doors, rushing from one shop to the next, studying the goods behind the windows. Most of the goods looked awfully shoddy, with nothing special to them but their prices. I can't for the life of me see how anybody could afford them. Even if I'd had my money, it wouldn't have gotten me much. And yet everyone I saw seemed to have a package or two under his arm. Not a person was smiling – there wasn't a happy soul amongst 'em -but they sure must have wanted the things in those windows, like pigs fighting over a pile of garbage. I guess that's how they celebrate Christmas over there. It's a wonder they don't hate it.'

'A lot of them do,' said Freirs. "The rate of crime and suicide goes up that time of year. But it sounds like you're saying it's just what the people deserve.' Sarr saw Carol's look of annoyance, but Freirs went blithely on. 'You think they're all wicked, don't you?'

'No, I don't,' said Sarr. 'I think a lot of them are wicked, but a lot of others are nothing more than victims, and it's up to us to punish the first and save the second. Sometimes, I'll grant, it can be hard to tell the difference, but still I don't condemn them all. Not even the women who tried to stop me on the street, the ones who called out to me as I passed. I didn't understand, then, what it was they wanted, but I had a sense of it -1 saw as how they weren't dressed for the cold – so I made no answer and walked on.' He had added that for Deborah's sake; he couldn't let her get the wrong impression. 'I know about them now, of course. They said they wanted love, but they really wanted money. Twas all right there in the Bible, though I never thought I'd see it for myself. Some of them were wicked, all right, "an abomination unto the Lord." But some, I'm sure, were just the victims of the city.'

Deborah eyed him with amusement. 'Come on, honey,' she said. 'Tell them what you did.'

'I am,' said Sarr. "What I'm saying is, there were all kinds of temptations in that city: places I could have entered, things I might have done. But I passed them by.'

Freirs grinned. 'You were broke!'

'No, sir,' Sarr said gruffly, 'I was strong. The Lord was with me. I passed the tempters by and kept on walking. I walked until I came to the line of trees I'd seen from down the street. They began just past a low stone wall. It was a bit of greenery at last, the edge of Central Park; I'd heard about it. A dangerous place, that's what I'd been told, but when I looked over the wall I could see there were people all through it that day, out for a stroll, eating roasted chestnuts or just sitting on the benches with their hands' stuffed in their pockets. The street ran right alongside it, but I followed my instincts and walked on up the path toward where the woods looked deepest. I suppose I thought God was going to lead me to the thieves who stole my money. But He had other plans for me… '

A breeze lifted the flowered muslin curtains in the window by the sink. Night was coming on. The sporadic clatter of their knives and forks now rose above the faint rhythm of crickets.

'At first the park was real ugly,' he went on. 'Everywhere you walked you could hear the sound of traffic, automobile horns, people yelling at each other… And everywhere you stood you could see buildings in the background, just behind the trees. Maybe this time of year it would have been different, with leaves to cover up the view, but when I saw it the branches were bare. Besides, the place just didn't seem real. Not to me anyway. It was supposed to look like you were in a forest; I could see how they were hoping to fool you with the rocks and the brooks and that winding little path going up and down over the hills. Yet wherever you looked there was garbage on the ground, and the trees were black with soot.

'But as I kept on heading north, the place began to draw me in somehow. It was so huge for a city park, it just went on and on-'

'It's supposed to be twice the size of Monaco, in fact.'

'Oh, Jeremy, hush!'

'-and I began to lose the sense of being in a city. I could still see buildings far away, behind me and on either side, but the place seemed quieter now. I could actually hear the wind in the branches, and there weren't many people anymore, just a few strange, lonely-looking old men out for a winter's walk. All of a sudden the trees thinned out -1 hadn't been expecting that – and I came to the edge of a great flat meadow. Most of the grass there was dead, with bare patches showing through everywhere. Underneath that dark grey sky it all looked very sad. There were two or three figures in the distance kicking a ball around, but I wasn't interested in them, so I moved off to one side, still keeping to the trees. After a while they began getting thicker again, and the ground got hilly. One minute I was walking over a little stone bridge, the next I was moving through a tunnel. On the other side I couldn't see the meadow anymore. I couldn't even see the buildings. I was inside a tight little ring of trees – a perfect circle, the limbs actually touching one another, like children playing ring-around-the-rosy. And I was in the middle all alone, with not a sound or a sight to distract me. Why, I could have been in the center of a forest, the deepest forest on the face of this planet, with no one there to see me but the Lord.

'I knew at once it was a holy place, God's own preserve in the very heart of wickedness. And I don't mind telling you-' He gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward, talking especially to this new woman who had come among them, who seemed to have some of the Holy Spirit in her. 'I don't mind telling you that in that lonely place, myself a stranger of just seventeen years, I got down on my knees and said a prayer. I said, "Father, make me a vessel of Thy cleansing light and deliver me from evil. And if Thou pointest the way, I shall follow." That's what I said, and I started to get to my feet.

'And just then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught a flash of movement somewhere outside the circle. By the time I turned, I'd missed it, but then there it was again, only far off to the side now, like a pair of dark shapes flitting past the trees. 'Twas only a glimpse, mind you, and then they'd moved away out of sight, but I was sure somehow that God had led me to the black boys I was after, the ones with coats like mine. I was wrong, though, I must have been, because when I ran across the circle and into the woods there was no one around. And the woods were so thick thereabouts, what with creepers and puckerbrush and all, that I didn't see how two people could've run through that way anyhow, one right beside the other, and I thought that what I must've seen was one man running with his shadow, or the shadow of a bird.'

Freirs looked as if he were about to ask a question, but Deborah spoke up first; 'Honey, you're gonna have them thinking you were drunk!' She lowered her eyes. "Course I know you'd never touch a drop.'

He grinned briefly, 'I'll not claim that! But I'll grant I was feeling spoke up first. 'Honey, you're gonna have them thinking you were since morning, and had a long ways still to walk.'

'You mean back to the bus?' said Carol.

'No, I kept on heading north, at least until I got out of the park. When that was behind me I took to the cross streets and started working my way up in a kind of zigzag fashion, wandering from one side of the island to the other. I actually believed I could cover every block. The streets up there were even dirtier, and there didn't seem to be as many people as before. There were the same holes in the ground, though, and the same steam coming out, as if the whole town had been built on top of a volcano. My own breath was steaming too, like a dragon's, and when I walked through a steam cloud I couldn't tell which part came from underground and which came from me. I was hungry and tired by then, and little by little I could feel the day get colder as the sun began going down, even though there were still a few hours left of afternoon. Most of the faces around me were black or foreign-looking now, and by the time evening came I felt like I'd wandered into a completely different country. But I put myself in the hands of the Lord and kept right on walking.

'The farther I walked, the more black faces I saw. Everybody'd watch me as I passed, at times just with curiosity, at times with something more, I saw a few people smile, like they knew some joke against me, and a lot of others glared at me with hatred in their eyes. At one point a group of kids tried to stop me from going up their road. They formed a line across the sidewalk and told me that if I wanted to get past I'd have to give them all my money – just like the kings of Jerusalem asking pilgrims for a toll. But like I said, I'm not a one to get scared off. There were a lot of them, but I was bigger, and I knew the Lord was with me. I turned out the pockets of my pants to show them I had nothing and just kept on walking. No one tried to stop me, and I never looked back. My pockets stayed turned out for the rest of the night.'

'For the rest of the-' Freirs stared with disbelief. 'What'd you do, spend the night in Harlem?'

Sarr shrugged. 'Can't say. I just kept moving, that's all, and I wasn't much aware of the passage of time. I even forgot to worry about what my mother'd think. I just knew that the night was coming early, I didn't have my money, and everything around me was godless and ugly and mean. The houses – well, they were a horror, they looked as if they'd been deserted for years, like the ruins down the road from here, only there were lights coming on in some of the windows. And the shops were foul and dingy, though their prices were just as high as all the rest. Even the churches made me wonder, they looked so much like shops, with doorways along the sidewalk and billboards in front. There was one place, the Church of the Dog… ' He shuddered.

'And the people I saw! If only I could forget. The ones in the alleys, or sitting on the curb, or lying in the street asleep with bottles by their heads… It was almost night now, freezing cold, and they should have been indoors. So should I, though I didn't pay much heed to it till the sky turned really dark. I managed to find a few faint stars up there, but not a great many – nothing like out here. And then the streetlights all came on, up and down the blocks without a sound. They made everything seem even darker, and the stars were blotted out. That's the time I felt the loneliest, I think. I found myself looking into every window I passed and wishing I could join the folks inside, black as they were. It seemed so warm and light in there, especially from out on the street with the homeless ones and half-starved dogs and frozen-looking cats.'

Idly he glanced down at Bwada, who was curled beside his chair, preoccupied with licking one fat grey forepaw, toes spread and gleaming nails extended. In the sudden silence she paused a moment and looked up, then turned her attention back to the paw.

'You'd think she was just a sweet-tempered old lady,' said Deborah, 'but it's all play-acting. I saw the way she tore open Joram's hand.'

"Twas nothing,' Sarr said quickly, noticing Carol's look of uneasiness. 'She meant no harm, nor Brother Joram either. A misunderstanding, that's all it was. A clash of spirits.' Still, the city was momentarily forgotten, and the deep-rooted old affection he'd been feeling – almost a reflex now, whenever he thought of the cat – was pierced by the memory of that bellow of pain, the small grey shadow fleeing toward the woods, his own stammered apologies and the other man's furious, accusing glare as he yanked back his hand and watched the upturned palm fill quietly with blood.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

How right Jeremiah had been! How eternally mysterious the world was, and all the beings in it…

He realized, with a start, that Carol was asking him something about the city and that his head had begun to throb uncomfortably. The drink was wearing off.

'There's not much more to tell,' he said, 'not that much I actually remember. I recall a fight outside a barroom, with one man spitting teeth, and some children throwing dice against a playground wall, but what sticks out more is the line of police cars I saw parked along one lonely street with the lights out and the motors running, and the men in their uniforms sitting together inside, talking and laughing as if they were waiting for something. After I was past them I stopped to look back, and I saw one of them come out of a building and another going in. And farther up the block a boy about my own age, sitting on his stoop, made an angry face at me-1 guess he supposed I was one of the police – and asked me if I'd gone and had myself a piece. That's just the way he put it. He pointed to the building I'd passed and said there was a fourteen-year-old girl in there, living in the basement. Her mother'd run off to Puerto Rico, and this afternoon they'd put her father in jail, and now the girl was all alone and the police were taking turns with her.'

He fell silent for a moment, surprised by the vividness of his own memory and wondering what impression it had made on Carol. Somewhere inside him, where his thoughts were darkest, he felt the first unwelcome stirrings of a reawakened lust, but fought them down.

Carol had stopped eating and was frowning in his direction. 'I can't believe a thing like that could happen around Christmastime. It's just too sick! Where were all the decent people hiding?'

'They must have been inside,' he said. 'I only saw the ones left out in the cold. And everyone was crazy, and no one seemed to care. Everyone was talking to himself, or singing like a drunk, or making odd gestures in the air, or shouting his lungs out at things I couldn't see. I remember a huge black man, big as a bear, who stumbled past me carrying on a conversation with himself in two different voices. And then behind him came this skinny old white man, the only one I saw up there, tagging after him like someone in a clowns' parade, laughing and pointing and making the madman sign, as if to tell the world, See, this man is crazy!' Sarr twirled his finger beside his head. 'I think the second man was as far gone as the first.

'And everything was ugly, and everything was crazy and corrupt. I kept telling myself that the whole city wasn't like this, couldn't be like this, but it's still the only part I really remember. I hadn't eaten all day, nothing but a little bitty candy bar, and I was high – dizzy, almost – by the time I reached the river at the top of the island. There was another stretch of woods up there, and a field for sports. It was as far north as I could go, so I turned around and started walking back. I could never do a thing like that today – all those miles on an empty belly, without a thought of sleep – but I was younger, then, and inclined to extremes.'

He looked past the others, past the sink and the curtains and the window screens, into the remembered darkness.

'The night I'd picked was very long, the longest of the year, and I began to wonder if I'd ever see another morning. Whenever I came to a cloud of steam I'd walk right through the center, hoping it would warm me up a little, but by this time my teeth were chattering so hard I thought they'd break like china, and the wind seemed to go right through my coat and gloves. I felt like I'd been walking forever past those eyes looking out at me from windows and doorways and alleys, those sad dark faces saying things to no one in particular.

'Finally, though, the sky began to brighten some, and when I was two or three miles to the south I realized that the streetlights had gone off. Things somehow looked a little better then, and for the first time I wondered if maybe I'd been too hard on everyone, too quick to judge.' Out of the corner of his eye he saw Deborah give an almost imperceptible nod. 'I told myself that if the people I'd been among seemed godless, 'twas only because they'd never been taught the truth, and that just because a few of them acted crazy, it didn't mean they all were.

'And just then, as if to prove it, the steam parted and I saw a really distinguished-looking coffee-colored man walking toward me up the block. He was getting kind of old, I could see, but he stood erect and tall, and he had on a long grey winter dress coat with a scarf tucked in at the neck, and a fancy creased hat, and he was swinging a long black umbrella with a shiny wooden handle. The sun was just beginning to come up, and I finally remembered the day – 'twas Sunday morning – and I said to myself, "See, here's a good sort of man, probably on his way to church. There are still a few decent people left in this city." And then, as he got closer, I saw that he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were glassy and fixed on something just in front of him, and he was snarling to himself, words I wouldn't repeat even in anger.

'I knew right then exactly where I was, and where I'd been all night. I knew that the Almighty had vouchsafed me a vision. Those frozen streets, the sky without stars, the ground steaming under my feet… There are spots in the world where the hellfire peeps through, and I'd just had a tour of one.

'It was meant as a warning, of course. I put aside all thoughts of my money, made sure to keep the river on my right, and kept on moving south.

'Well, even the longest night's got to end eventually, that's one thing I've learned, and by the time the sun was up above the buildings and the day had gotten warmer I was halfway back to the bus station. I figured I was in the normal world again, I thought I'd put all that wickedness behind me, and so when I passed an open area with statues and iron gates and big Greek-looking buildings -Jeremy's old university, it turns out -1 decided it was finally time to sit down awhile and maybe put my feet up. I'd seen the river gleaming at the end of the cross streets, with a thin green park beside it sloping down toward the water, and there seemed to be plenty of benches I could rest on before heading back. By that time my wandering was beginning to catch up with me, and rest was what I craved.

'There were a surprising lot of old folks in the park that Sunday morning, walking dogs or just watching the river, and they all looked nice and peaceable and happy with the world. I knew I was among my own kind now. God's my witness, it was really a relief. A few of the benches were already pretty well filled, but way up ahead, past the others, I saw one that was empty except for a little old man sitting by himself, all bundled up in an overcoat and muffler, with just his little pink head peeking out like a baby's, and fuzzy white hair on the top. He had a brown paper bag on his lap, and I figured he was fixing to have lunch. But when I sat myself down at the opposite end, he pulled up the bag and stood, as if he hadn't wanted company. Well, that was all right with me; I was suddenly so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I remember, though, how he stopped to look down at me as he walked past, and how his whole face lit up when he smiled. Reminded me of my grandfather, or maybe even my father in one of his better moods, just like after worship. I think I may have dropped off then, at least for a second or two, because when I opened my eyes he was still standing there, looking sort of concerned. But when he saw I was okay he just nodded and gave a sort of wink. Then he stuffed the bag into a trash can and strolled away, humming some peculiar little song.'

'I hate this part,' Deborah said abruptly. She got up and went to the stove for the last of the vegetables. . He ignored her. 'I can still see that wink, and the careless, almost contemptuous way he stuffed that bag in among the garbage… Afterward I must have gone right back to sleep, because I don't remember anything else. I recall I had a dream about a man with snow-white wings, I thought it was my father come back as an angel. I don't know exactly how long I slept, but it must have been for some time, because when I woke up I was shivering, my hands were clenched like fists inside my pockets, and the day had gotten darker.

I'd thought it was a child's cry that woke me, but there weren't any children in the park, and not many adults left either. It was late afternoon. I shook myself awake and hurried from the bench. Lord, how my body ached! Just after I passed the trash can, I heard a tiny little cry, so faint it sounded miles away. But something made me stop. I looked around, and sure enough, 'twas coming from the bag.

'Well, Deborah knows the rest. Inside there were the remains of a sandwich – wax paper with some icy crusts of bread, a bit of meat -and six or seven newborn kittens. Dead. Frozen, I believe, though a couple looked broken like-'

'Honey, please!'

He nodded, the vision fading. 'I'm sorry, Deb. You're right. I'm acting like a fool. Enough to say it was a sight not fit for Christian eyes. But then I noticed a bit of movement, and I reached down and found that one of the bodies, a little grey thing underneath the others, still had a tiny breath of life left in it. I picked it up – it was so small I could hold it in one hand – and very softly it began crying, crying… '

The sound of it came back to him, and the chill from off the river. He could feel once more the stiffness of his limbs, the pain of the wind against his numbing fingers, the exhaustion of that journey. Suddenly he felt very tired.

'The shops there were still open,' he said at last. 'That's just about the only thing we have in common, the people of the city and the Brethren, we're none of us too proud to work on the Lord's day. But the shopkeepers in that hellish place had hearts like flint, and nary a one would give me a penny's worth of milk – not that I could have paid for even that. So I asked God for forgiveness and took the milk anyhow, a carton from a supermarket shelf. I saw to it that the creature got nourishment, warm from my own mouth. No one was looking, or if anybody was, no one seemed to care. Except for me. I cared. And I cried. God help me, that's the only time in my life I've ever stolen anything – that Sunday in that city of yours. Ten years it's been, and then some, and I've yet to set foot there again.

'They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. I'd hoped to bring a jewel home, and now somehow I'd found one – the last innocent thing left amidst all that corruption. I kept her inside my shirt, pressed up against me, all the way back to the bus station and all the way to Flemington. She was almost dead by the time I got her home, but I knew my mother'd nurse her back to health.'

Carol lay down her fork. 'And did she?'

'Sarr's mother can do anything,' said Deborah, returning to the table with the salad. 'She has the healing gift.'

'I won't deny it,' said Sarr. 'She can make things live and grow when she's a mind to.'

'So the story has a happy ending after all.' There was relief in Carol's voice. 'And the kitten?'

'Haven't you guessed?' Sarr bent forward and lifted Bwada onto his lap. Squatting there uncertainly with her ears bent back, claws digging into his trouser leg, the animal looked fat and sullen and dangerous, but as soon as Sarr began to scratch the silver fur between her ears she blinked contentedly and relaxed, settling herself on his lap with an almost inaudible purring.

The others looked on, grinning; even Deborah seemed pleased -Deborah, who had heard the tale before and who bore little love for Bwada, the one cat of the seven that was Sarr's alone.

But Sarr himself shared none of their content. Now lapsed into reverie, he was years away and thrice as many miles, remembering in Bwada's purr the susurrus of wind as it raced beneath a frozen grey sky through that desolate circle of trees; and as the cat sound swelled and deepened, taking on what almost seemed a note of warning, he heard once more the old man's peculiar little song.

I'm among loonies, Freirs was thinking. These people are all insane! Every time somebody farts they think God is giving them a sign.

All through the story he'd been watching Carol's face. She'd been listening with rapt attention, and at certain points – whenever Poroth had prayed or called on God – she'd gotten positively starry-eyed.

But maybe it wasn't God that made her starry-eyed. Maybe it was Poroth.

Well, what else did I expect? he told himself. He's a hell of a lot bigger than I am, and in a hell of a lot better shape, and that soft, low voice of his would probably make any woman think she's a little girl again being tucked into bed by her daddy.

He wondered if Poroth talked so much whenever a new woman was around. Or perhaps it was the influence of the wine; that home-brewed stuff had been surprisingly potent. His own head was still swimming with it.

And of course there was that brooding quality he had – something, Freirs knew from experience, that women seemed to like. It was so easy to mistake for real depth.

Maybe this was all a bad idea, he told himself. Maybe I should never have asked her out here in the first place. Clearly Sarr's the master here. This is his world.

'No, I'll not deny it,' he was saying to Carol. 'I still feel the attraction of the lights. But I'm a wiser man today -1 know it sounds prideful, but it's true – and I know the path we've got to follow. We've got to give up the ways of man and the ways of the city: the corruption, the idleness, the love of worldly gain. And you should too. You should come back to the only constant things: the land… and God.'

That bastard. ^ 1 thought Friers. He's using God to make time with my girl!

'Now I'm not saying we have it easy here, Deborah and me, and I'm not saying we have a lot of anything but work. But we're living the way the Lord wants us to, living just like people in the Bible.' Poroth's hands took in the kitchen, the farmhouse, the fields and woods beyond. 'Our only aim, really, is to abide by what the prophet said: "Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein." '

Carol nodded as if she understood. 'Yes,' she said, 'that's Jeremiah. I kept hearing passages from him on the radio today. He must be big in these parts.'

Deborah seemed to find this irresistibly funny. Her husband did not. 'He's the prophet of our sect,' he explained.

Freirs spoke up. 'And a good thing, too. I sometimes think that's the only reason they let an unbeliever like me stay here – because they liked my name.'

Carol barely seemed to hear; her eyes were still on Sarr. 'The one thing I don't understand,' she said, 'is where you're hiding your church. I drove all over Gilead and didn't see a single one.'

'Oh, we don't go to church,' said Deborah, getting to her feet. 'We hold our meetings in the Brethren's homes. Later this month we'll be holding one here, and you're welcome to come out and see for yourself.'

'We take our call from the Gospels,' added Sarr.' "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." '

Carol nodded. 'I see. That's Matthew, isn't it?'

'Hey,' said Freirs, surprised, 'you're pretty good!'

She looked slightly embarrassed. 'Didn't I tell you? I went to parochial school for twelve years.'

Freirs' eyes widened. 'No kidding! I knew you were Catholic and all, but – well, I guess I'd always pictured you as just a nice corn-fed country girl from some little red schoolhouse in the sticks.' He tried to remember if she'd said anything about parochial school over dinner the previous week. Probably he'd done so much of the talking that she'd never had a chance.

'There's a lot you don't know about me, Jeremy,' she said. She turned to Sarr. 'You see, I may go about things a bit differently, but I've tried to live in the Lord's way too.'

Freirs regarded them sourly. They sound like they're on speaking terms with God, he thought. But I'm not so sure I'd want to meet the Poroths' version on a dark night.

Leaning back in his chair, he peered out the window above the sink. It was certainly dark enough out there tonight. The moon seemed to be hidden behind a cloud, with only a pale streak above the trees to mark its presence. A line from a poem came back to him: On the farm, the darkness wins. Though no doubt the Brethren would argue that the darkness here was the darkness of God.

Beside him Deborah was clearing away the salad plates; the Poroths ate their salad European-style, just before dessert. 'Hey,' she said, nudging him gently on the shoulder, 'come back and join us. I went to a lot of trouble over what's coming.'

It proved to be a steaming Indian pudding which had lain nearly three hours in the stove. Made of cornmeal and molasses, it was served with thick fresh cream from the Verdocks' dairy in town. 'Now, Carol,' she said, 'I sure hope you'll have no objection to this.'

'Not the slightest,' said Carol. Her eyes widened as Deborah ladled out a generous serving for each of them. 'God, it's a wonder the two of you can even stand!'

Freirs nodded ruefully. 'I'm still trying to figure out how they stay so thin.'

'I have to watch that man like a hawk!' said Deborah, laughing. 'He'd eat everything in the bowl if I let him.'

Pensively Poroth licked the spoon clean and looked up. 'They warned me about that when I married you,' he said. 'They told me, "Sarr, that woman from Sidon's going to starve you!" ' He eyed her with affection. 'But the truth is, we work hard, Deborah and me. We're at it all day, seven days a week. Keeps a body from getting fat. We don't believe in sitting on our duffs.'

There was a moment of silence; Freirs decided that Poroth had been speaking to him. He forced a smile. Keep it light. 'Oh, physical labor's all right, I guess, if that's what turns you on. But as the philosopher said to the farmer, "While you're feeding your hogs, sir, you're starving your mind." '

He glanced sidelong at Carol for approval and caught a smile. Maybe the night was still salvageable.

'By the way, have I told you about the exercises I'm doing?' While Deborah set aside the jug and brought out Rosie's wine, he launched into a description of his daily routine: the sit-ups, the push-ups, the stretching motions for the back. 'I've also done a little jogging,' he heard himself say. 'It's more interesting here than in the city, and a lot more private. Maybe I'll explore the other end of this road, or hike in the direction of those hills… '

He listened to himself talk on aimlessly, inconsequentially: perfect New York small-talk. Yet perhaps he'd overplayed his hand, for Carol, he saw, had turned back to Sarr, who, all the while, sat silent and unsmiling. They're sharing something I can't touch, he decided.

Deborah was smiling at him sympathetically. 'Sounds okay to me,' she said. 'A lot more fun than washing dishes.' She got up from the table and began collecting their bowls.

Carol seemed to shake herself awake. 'Oh, can I give you a hand with that?'

'Won't say no!' Deborah tossed her a towel. 'You can do the drying up.'

Neither Poroth nor Freirs made any move to help. Freirs had offered a few nights ago and had been politely rebuffed by Deborah; such work, she'd said, was 'women's work.' It had shocked him at the time to hear her say such a thing, but he'd been content to let her have her way. If she was so big on tradition, he sure as hell wasn't going to dissuade he.

He seized the opportunity of being alone with Sarr. Digging into his wallet, he extracted a ten-dollar bill. 'For tonight's dinner,' he said in a low voice. 'Thanks a lot. It was great.'

Poroth smiled wanly and shook his head, not even looking at the money.

'Go ahead,' said Freirs, 'take it. I want to reimburse you. It's for Carol. I mean, let's face it, she's not your guest, she's mine.'

Poroth did not appear to take the hint. In fact, Freirs thought he looked hurt. Maybe he'd been more sincere all evening than Freirs had realized.

'Put away your money, Jeremy,' he said quietly. 'It's well meant, I know, but I can't accept it. Our hospitality's for everyone; your guest is also ours. Truth is, I sore regret every cent we've had from you already. I like to think of you as a guest here, and I only wish we could treat you as a guest deserves.'

God damn it, thought Freirs, isn't that just like a Christian! Just when you've decided that you hate his guts, he goes and makes you feel guilty about it.

Drying her hands with the dish towel, Carol yawned and realized how tired she was. She would probably fall asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. And with the thought of bed, she remembered the present Rosie had given her for Jeremy, and the book she'd brought out for him. It was meant to be read only at bedtime, the old man had emphasized, and surely bedtime would not be long in coming. She turned to Deborah at the sink beside her. 'I'm just going upstairs for a moment,' she said, lowering her voice, though at the table the men were still talking. 'A friend of mine gave me a little gift for Jeremy.'

She saw him look up as she left the kitchen. He looked concerned, probably afraid she wasn't coming down.

'I'll be right back,' she said.

The living room was small and low-ceilinged, with simple oak furniture grouped around a braided rug. Several not-very-clean-looking farm implements lay scattered on the floor beside a wooden bench, patches of metal gleaming from their rust, as if polishing these tools was the usual evening's pastime. In the corner near the stairway stood a tall grandfather clock whose ticking, when all else was silent, could be heard throughout the house. A narrow wooden writing desk stood in the opposite corner, its dusty bottom shelf stacked with books, many of them college texts; Carol noticed a

Fundamentals of Social Change and a volume of inspirational verse. It was apparent from their position that they were never removed, yet clearly Poroth had been unable to bring himself to throw them away or store them in attic or cellar; perhaps they were a source of pride, perhaps one of temptation.

By the other wall a corn-husk broom and iron tongs leaned against the stones of the fireplace. There was a smell of wood and lemon oil in the room and, behind it, one of charcoal; though the fireplace must have stood empty for some time now, it had obviously seen much use during the winter months. Venturing closer, Carol stopped to read the crude wooden plaque that hung by the chimney, with a motto from someone named Cowley burned into the wood: A Plow on a Field Arable Is the Most Honorable of Ancient Arms. On the mantelpiece below it lay a garland of dried flowers, a group of china cats (several chipped or broken), and a little wooden weather house with the man out in front. He looked a lot like Sarr.

Taking a lamp that stood burning on a table in the corner, she hurried upstairs. In the flickering light the Man in the Moon gazed down at her benignly from the wall as she rummaged through her tote bag for the parcel and the book. Outside the window, the real moon lay hidden by a cloud. Pressing her face to the glass, she tried to pick out the long, low guest house and the barn. They were hard to find. She'd forgotten how dark it got in the country once the sun went down.

Jeremy would be out there alone tonight… Well, it simply couldn't be helped. There was no way she'd dare offend the Poroths by sneaking off with Jeremy, on whatever pretext. Besides, she was far too tired to contemplate sleeping with him now, tired from the drive out, the wine, the tensions of their silly conversation. She had felt Sarr's eyes boring into her all evening and had felt herself, for a moment at least, the more desirable woman in the room. Jeremy had suddenly seemed too abrasive, too eager.

But in fact, her mind had been made up all afternoon, ever since she'd seen that awful grey-brick building he was living in. The thing was ugly even for a chicken coop; it reminded her of something abandoned by the army. Jeremy had tried, of course, to brighten it up a bit – the blankets had been folded, the furniture polished, the books all put away – but somehow that had only made it more depressing. A vase of roses he'd placed by the bed had failed to disguise the pervasive smell of mildew (her nose wrinkled in recollection) and a hint of insect spray; and just outside, their shadows falling across his pillow, a group of trees had stood peering in at them like spectators waiting for a sacrifice. Just as well she'd be spending the night here in the farmhouse.

Downstairs the two men were still slouched at the table over the wine, Sarr fiddling with a worn-looking pipe while Deborah mopped the counter by the sink. Both Poroths looked tired, though Jeremy sounded awake and animated as always. Well, not as always: she'd noticed, earlier tonight, that his leg no longer swung nervously beneath the table, as it had back in New York. At least the country was having some effect.

'-or that line of Butier's,' he was saying – God, he never stopped!' – 'about how "I'd rather buy milk than own a cow." And let's face it, there's some truth to that. For instance, speaking for myself, I'd rather rent a room than own a house.'

'On the other hand,' Deborah called back, giggling, 'I'll bet you'd rather have a wife than-'

They looked up as Carol came in.

'Jeremy,' she said, 'I just wanted you to know that I didn't come here empty-handed today.' Smiling, she stood beside his chair. 'In fact, I have two things I'm supposed to give you: this book you wanted' – with mock gravity she laid it on the table before him -'which, according to my instructions, you're to open at bedtime. And this gift from Rosie' – she placed it beside the book – 'which you're to open now.'

Deborah came to the table. 'Oh, Jeremy,' she said, 'lucky you!' She ran her fingers over the book's embossed yellow covers. 'They sure made them nice in those days.'

'What book is it?' asked Sarr. He made no move to touch it.

'Oh, I remember now,' said Freirs, unwrapping the small package. 'It's a story collection, that's all. I need a couple of things in it for my project.'

'I borrowed it from Voorhis,' Carol added. 'I'm supposed to take it back with me tomorrow.'

Deborah picked it up and examined the spine. 'Oh, I see,' she said, 'it's a library book. The House of Souls' She smiled at Freirs. 'This looks like it'll send you off to dreamland, all right!'

Freirs had undone the white paper and was examining the slim cardboard packet inside. ' "Dynnod," ' he read, puzzling out the ornate gold letters on the front. He opened the flap at the end. 'Hmmm, it's a set of cards of some kind.'

'Rosie says they're like the tarot deck,' explained Carol, peering over his shoulder; she'd never actually seen the cards before. 'Dynnod's Welsh for "images," he says. They're supposed to correspond to the twenty-two whatever-you-call-ems – picture cards.'

'The Greater Arcana,' said Sarr.

They all looked at him. 'You know what these are, honey?' asked Deborah.

'I know the tarot, yes. But not these.' He eyed them dubiously. The card on top bore a round yellow face and the words The Sun. 'Or at least, I'm not sure. I'd have to look them up.'

'Sarr has read more weird old books than any twelve people,' said Deborah, seating herself beside him. 'He knows almost as much as his mother.'

He shook his head.

'I'll bet you do, honey,' she said. 'It's just that she gets it all without reading.'

'I've never heard of this sort of thing,' said Freirs, who had been studying the box. 'It doesn't say "Welsh" on the label. It just says "Made in U.S.A. Crystal Novelty Co., Cranston, R.I.," and "Instructions included." But there don't seem to be any instructions.' He showed them the empty box.

'God, how annoying!' said Carol. 'Isn't there anything printed on the back?'

He turned it over. 'Nope. Nothing except "For entertainment purposes only." ' Looking to the deck, he slid the top card off; the one below it showed a crescent moon. 'I guess they mean it's not supposed to be used for gambling.'

'Well, of course not,' said Carol. 'It's for fortune-telling. Isn't that right, Sarr?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe. What did your friend say?'

'You mean Rosie? He didn't say. But isn't that what a tarot deck's for?' She sat down and reached for the moon card. The pale crescent shape was faceless against the purple sky. Between the two horns gleamed a star.

'A tarot has seventy-eight cards, though,' Sarr said guardedly. 'This only has – did you say twenty-two?'

'Let's see,' said Freirs. One by one he began going through the deck, counting each card as he came to it while Carol, beside him, read the title at the bottom.

'The Sun.'

The face, she decided, was mysterious and cruel – anything but sunny.

'The Moon.'

'Look,' said Deborah, 'look where that star is. Isn't that impossible?'

'There's something like that in the Ancient Mariner,' said Freirs, with a whispered two to himself. 'At one point he looks up and that's what he sees.'

'But it isn't natural.'

'It's not supposed to be natural.'

'The Book.'

'Gee, it looks just like this one,' said Deborah, pointing to The House of Souls. The book in the picture was fat and mustard-colored. It bore no visible title.

'The Bird.'

A graceful white shape with a splash of red at its breast.

'The Watchers.'

'It's just a group of pussycats,' said Deborah.

Carol studied it a moment. 'Hmmm, you're right. I wonder why they give it that title.'

Freirs revealed the next card. 'The Moth.'

It looked more like two green leaves stuck together, Carol decided. She was still disappointed by the oddness of Rosie's present – which, in a way, had become her present. The illustrations weren't very pretty, just rather lurid lithographs; and what was the point, anyway, seeing as they'd forgotten to include the instructions?

'The Wand.'

Black as ebony, and shiny-looking.

'Odd,' said Freirs. 'It seems to have holes along the side.'

'The… Dhol.'

'The what?' Deborah craned forward to see; Sarr squinted at it suspiciously. The thing on the card was dirty black and had four legs; beyond that it looked ragged and half-formed, a papier-mache mouse.

'It must be a misprint,' said Carol. 'For mole, maybe. Or vole.'

'Honey, maybe you can look it up later.'

'The Serpent.'

A pale, snakelike thing. Funny, thought Carol; she'd have expected a typical red Welsh dragon.

'The Mound… The Lovers.'

A man and woman, smiling.

'The Eye.'

A single staring eye amid the branches of a tree.

'The Rose.'

It was hard to say why the picture was so disturbing, thought Carol. Perhaps it was the inner row of spiky petals that looked so much like teeth.

'The Marriage.'

Odd, the thing standing beside the woman looked like the molelike creature from the earlier card.

'The Pool.'

Greenery all around…

'The Tree.'

'It's the same picture we saw before,' said Deborah. 'It's "The Eye." '

'You're right,' said Carol, more disappointed than ever. 'It must be another misprint.' The deck was unusual, all right, but obviously rather cheap.

Freirs slid up another card.

'Hmm,' said Carol, 'this one doesn't even have a tide.'

The card bore a simple design of three concentric rings slashed by a vertical red line.

'Maybe it's like the Joker,' said Freirs. He turned another card.

'Spring.'

The card showed a landscape, but done entirely in white.

'This is weird,' said Carol. 'White's supposed to be for winter.'

'Summer.'

A landscape all in green.

'Fall.'

All in red.

'Ah, here it is. Winter.'

The land was black, like the aftermath of a fire.

'Here's the last one,' said Freirs. 'Twenty-two.'

'The Egg.' Carol made a face. 'Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?'

The picture was of a globe of the earth, the familiar continents clearly visible.

'Well,' said Freirs, as if trying to inject a note of heartiness, ‘your friend Rosie comes up with some pretty unusual presents. I'll have to write him a nice thank-you.' He tapped the edges of the cards against the table, lining them up evenly once more. From the one on top the sun's face glared toward the ceiling. ' "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun," ' said Freirs. 'Does anyone want their fortune told? I have no idea what these damned things mean, but maybe I can improvise something.'

'No thanks, for me,' said Carol. 'I'm exhausted after all that driving. You know how it is when you get away from the city.' Pushing back her chair, she stood up. God, she really was exhausted! 'And I think I had a little too much wine. I guess I'd better just go on up to bed.' She saw Jeremy's smile fade.

'We're pretty tired too,' said Sarr. 'We'll be up in a few minutes.'

Carol stood looking down at Jeremy, feeling awkward. She handed him the yellow book. 'And don't forget this,' she said, trying to cheer him up. 'I've got to take it back with me tomorrow.' He stared at it miserably, as if it were his own death warrant.

'Oh, yeah. Thanks.' He didn't look up.

'Well, then- ' She made her goodnights to them all, and, on impulse, leaned over and kissed Jeremy on the cheek, wondering as she did so what he'd think of it and, more, what Sarr would think. Nonsense, she told herself, surely these people can't disapprove of that! She felt Sarr's eyes on her as she turned to go but couldn't tell what he was feeling.

Jeremy, though, was no mystery. Looking through her bedroom window when she got back upstairs, she saw him leave the kitchen and walk dejectedly across the lawn, the book tucked beneath his arm. For a moment he was outlined in the kitchen light; then the night closed over him like a shroud.

If Rochelle hadn't had that second glass of wine and the remainder of a joint, she might have taken more notice of the fact that the lock on the door of her building was broken again for the second time in a week. The door swung open as she leaned against it, and closed behind her with an echoing of metal up and down the tiled hall. The hall itself appeared more dimly lit than she remembered; two bulbs at the other end had been removed – stolen, probably – since she'd come through here earlier today, leaving the passage to the elevator obscured by shadow.

But it was late. She was in no condition to recognize signs such as these, and in no mood to heed them. Shrugging off the darkness that had settled upon the street, she pushed her way inside and moved wearily down the hall.

She felt cheated. Buddy had not shown up tonight, nor had she been able to reach him by telephone. The party had proved enjoyable enough without him – she had known most of the people there and had given her phone number to one of the host's friends who'd been eyeing her all evening and had come to her near the end – but afterward, on the cab ride home, she had grown depressed again, weighed down by a vague sense of betrayal. Carol was away for the weekend, all excited over some guy she hadn't even slept with, and for the first time in months she and Buddy could have had the apartment to themselves without the need to keep their lovemaking out of Carol's sight or to endure her lonely envy. Instead, she was coming home alone; the night was all but wasted.

The streetlamp by her doorway had been dead almost a week. The moon had long been lost behind the rooftops. Her mind still fogged by alcohol, she had overtipped the driver and stumbled from the cab, bruising her knee as she stepped down. She paused now in the middle of the hall to rub it, then walked blindly on. Something shrank within her as she remembered what awaited her upstairs, the dark and silent rooms, the emptiness beside her in the bed.

Turning toward the elevator, she nearly tripped again over a shapeless bundle of rags that, hidden by shadow, had been heaped up against the rear wall. She mouthed a curse. Just as soon as she got the money together she was going to move out of this rat hole. She'd had enough of garbage in the halls.

As she pulled open the elevator's scarred black metal door, the bundle rose and followed her inside.

She turned, her stupor lifting, to find a gaunt and wrinkled old woman beside her, filthy-looking and impossibly stooped, the back bent almost double. The face, too, was averted, as if in deference or fear, but by the light of the one bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling Rochelle made out a mass of stringy hair, deep creases and discolorations in the skin, and, clenched as if praying, a pair of plump little hands. It was the hands that bothered her most.

Pressing the button for her floor, she edged away. The metal door slid shut. 'Do you belong here?' she heard herself demand. Her voice was harsh within the little car.

The figure made no answer. But as the car jerked upward, something stirred beneath its rags.

'I asked you a question!' snapped Rochelle. 'If you don't belong here-'

She gasped. The figure had turned toward her and was beginning to straighten up. Overhead, with an almost audible pop, the bulb in the ceiling winked out. There was time for one brief, desperate scream that echoed through the blackness of the car – and then the plump little hands closed over her throat.

The night was filled with the sound of crickets, a vast and mindless machine grinding without end. Lightning bugs gleamed above the grass. Bats darted under the eaves of the barn. In the light from the kitchen the apple tree's branches were bright against the darkness.

Freirs looked disconsolately toward the sky, wondering, now that it was too late, if he should have asked Carol to come out for a stroll. But it was not a time for strolling; the night was dark and unpleasant, the moon half concealed behind clouds. And anyway, how obvious it would have been to resort to such a ruse, and how humiliating if she turned him down.

No, there'd been nothing he could say or do – not in front of the Poroths. There was no way he could have invited her out. It would have seemed too much like pleading.

Brooding over the patronizing little peck on the cheek she'd given him, he slunk back to his room.

Somehow I didn't think I'd be writing this tonight. I suppose I had visions of Carol with me, beside me, all night long… Instead she's up there in the farmhouse right now, about to sleep the sleep of the virtuous in that tacky little room, while I'm alone out here, scribbling the night away in this goddamned journal amp; trying to lose myself in the dubious consolations of prose.

It's probably my own fault. She was probably embarrassed to do anything in front of the Poroths, amp; I didn't encourage her enough And maybe she really was tired…

If only I'd asserted myself more. If only I hadn't behaved like such a goddamned gentleman, she'd be here beside me now. Wish to hell she didn't have to go back to the city tomorrow.

And now I've also got a headache, thanks, no doubt, to Rosie's wine.

Damn.

He took out his anger on the bugs. He spent half an hour going over his room, spray can in hand, looking for them.

He found them, too. As many times as he'd gone over the room -the corners by the ceiling, the spaces around the window frames, the cracks beneath the sills – he always found new ones. There was no keeping them out.

Whenever he saw an insect, he blasted it with the spray. Spiders, doused with it, curled up like men in despair, clutching their knees; he almost could have felt sorry for them, if only their brown legs hadn't been so hairy and their eyes so cruel. He blasted some large beetles that were clinging to the screens, trying to push their way in; they convulsed and dropped away, disappearing. He watched a lot of daddy longlegs curl up and die, and fat, bloated caterpillars wriggle. He tended not to kill the moths out there – they seemed so vulnerable, so hopeful, like humans, striving toward the light beyond the screen, bodies pale against the surrounding darkness -unless their banging annoyed him.

The ones he really liked, however, were the fireflies; he felt a little sorry when he sprayed a few by mistake as they clung to the wire. When he sprayed them, they'd glow, and that cold light wouldn't wink off, it would just keep glowing, glowing much too long, till at last it faded away.

Thais the only clue, he decided. The dead ones don't wink.

At that moment, the singing began. He could hear it from the farmhouse, coming faintly through the night. The Poroths were going through their hymns.

He had heard them do this before: their evening devotions, they called it. But he'd never heard them singing as late as this, and never with such intensity. They must be atoning for the glass or two of wine, he decided. Big sin!

'Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt,

Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured,

There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.'

The rug had been rolled up; Sarr and Deborah were on their knees on the bare plank floor, watched by three of the cats. Their hands were clasped before them; their eyes were shut tight. They seemed to be beseeching something they could see inside their heads.

'Dark is the stain that we cannot hide,

What can avail to wash it away?'

Their voices rose louder and louder as they worked themselves into the song.

'Look! there is flowing a crimson tide;

Whiter than snow you may be today.'

Briefly Sarr thought of Carol in the next room; her crimson hair would be pressed against the whiteness of the pillow.

'Grace, grace, God's grace,

Grace that will pardon and cleanse within…'

He threw himself into the song, singing all the louder to regain the feeling that was gone.

'Grace, grace, God's grace,

Grace that is greater than all of our sin.'

Carol had been almost asleep when the singing started. She roused for a moment, but she was so tired – curious, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so tired – that moments later she was slipping again into sleep, incorporating the words of the hymn into her dream.

'There are days so dark that I seek in vain

For the face of my Friend above…"

Jeremy's face… Sarr's face, his dark probing eyes… a black thing watching from a tree…

She started awake, thought briefly of the Dynnod, and drifted back to sleep -

'But tho' darkness hide,

He is there to guide

With the touch of His hand and His love.'

– back to sleep, with Sarr's hand, Jeremy's hand, the hand of God on hers.

The room smelled faintly of insecticide. He had put away the can and decided to call it a night. Now he sat morosely on his bed, listening to the voices drift across the lawn to the outbuilding. They made him feel even lonelier. The others were all there, together in the farmhouse, and he was alone out here, exiled till dawn.

He wondered if Carol was singing with them. He doubted it, though it was hard to make out individual voices; she was probably already in bed. Wonder if she's thinking of me. I'd give anything to be inside there with her…

Suddenly the singing stopped. He could picture the two of them climbing into bed and envied them, their warm familiar bodies pressed together, the mattress sagging softly beneath them. All was silent now, except for the crickets.

Unfortunately, he wasn't very tired. In fact, he was still restless and on edge. The sick feeling left by the wine had finally worn off.

Maybe a dip into someone else's mind would do the trick. He undressed and got into his bathrobe. Glancing around for a book to read, his eye fell on the faded yellow covers of the one Carol had brought him. Seating himself at his desk, he ran through what he knew of its author. Machen had been a Welsh minister's son who went to London and lived alone for many years, nearly starving, haunted by fantasies of weird pagan rites and longing for the green hills he'd left behind. Lovecraft, in a survey of the field, had praised him highly.

Freirs flipped through the yellowed pages, searching for the story the old man had recommended, 'The White People.' It was near the center; the book fell open easily to it. Someone – perhaps old Rosie himself, hadn't he been scribbling something that day? – had written in pencil just above the tide, Only effective if read by moonlight.

Too bad the moon was blocked by clouds tonight; it might almost have been worth a try. Just for fun, of course. By way of experiment he snapped off the desk lamp. Surprisingly, moonlight was now streaming into the room, falling onto the bed and a strip of the floor with a radiance far brighter than he'd imagined, though the table he was using as his desk was still in shadow. Peering out the window, he saw that the clouds had begun to part; the moon was shining down now unimpeded.

Leaving his chair, he seated himself on the edge of the bed and laid the book on the windowsill. He discovered that, by squinting, he could just make out the words. It might be amusing, he decided, to try and absorb the story this way. Maybe it would ease him into a dream.

Holding the book open by the moonlight, he began to read.

His eyes were moving faster. They felt as if they were darting back and forth as rapidly as insects, yet his vision seemed glazed, as if he were no longer reading the words but was instead being read by them, carried along like the beetle he'd seen kicking in the swiftly flowing stream, borne by the current… toward what rapids?

The story's prologue, a framing device, had confused him, with all its high-flown talk about the human soul and the Meaning of Sin, and he wasn't even sure exactly where the tale was set – somewhere in the countryside, that's all he could be certain of, with a big house near a forest, and secret places, hills and pools and glades.

But the main portion of the story, the extract from a young girl’s notebook, was staggering, overwhelming. It was as if it spoke to him aloud.

' I looked before me into the secret darkness of the valley, and behind me was the great high wall of grass, and all around me were the hanging woods that made the valley such a secret place…'

He couldn't read it rapidly enough: the air of pagan ecstasy, the rites one doesn't dare describe, the malevolent little faces peering from the shadows and the leaves. It was, he felt certain, the most persuasive story ever written. He found himself whispering the lines as he read them, the words coming faster and faster -

' I knew there was nobody here at all besides myself, and thai no one could see me… Sol said the other words, and made the signs'

– and by the time he'd finished he was half convinced he heard another voice, one softer and more ancient than his own, whispering an even stranger story in his head, a story in a language he seemed dimly to remember.

He had no idea how much time had elapsed. It might have been days. His head was still spinning from the rush of words, or maybe it was only from the effort of reading in so faint a light. A pair of flies, trapped in the darkened room, were crashing into the window screens around him; the crickets droned their song; frogs piped madly by the brook, but he no longer heard them. Still in the story's spell, he felt himself slip off the robe and walk slowly across the room, opening the door to the lawn outside and stepping into the darkness.

But it wasn't dark. It was a different night he stepped into, one almost as bright as a stage. Every rock was visible, every blade of grass; every object cast a shadow. The clouds had rolled back, the sky had opened up, and the full moon now shone forth onto the yard with all its power. Pale light seemed to pour from the sky, revealing things not meant to be seen, the secret night side of the planet. He felt the wet grass beneath his feet, and small wet things that moved, and things both hard and sharp, but he didn't pull away. He felt himself drawn like a dancer across the lawn, past the back of the farmhouse and the line of dark rosebushes standing like sentries along one side, the house itself sleeping in the moonlight, its windows dark. And still he was drawn back, toward where the bubbling stream made sucking noises at him, back toward the massive shape of the barn, the moonlight so strong now he could see his own shadow floating over the grass, floating toward the gnarled old willow that grew against the barn. And his own shadow yearned toward the shadow of the tree, and he watched it and felt himself follow, past the corner of the barn, moving inexorably toward the dark branches. And at last his shadow touched the other, merged with it, was absorbed in it; and still, not knowing what he did, he followed.

Deborah caught her breath in wonder. Beside her, two of the cats looked up and regarded her curiously, then settled back to sleep.

She too had been asleep, but she'd been awakened by the shift in the clouds and the bright moonlight which had suddenly flooded the room. There were no curtains on the windows; their people didn't hold with them, feeling it correct to get up with the sun. Unable to go back to sleep, she had been sitting up in bed and gazing absently out the window, head still spinning from the wine and the pictures of the Dynnod, when suddenly Freirs' door had swung open, down there in the yard, and now Freirs himself emerged into the light, his body pale against the lawn.

Her eyes widened. He was naked.

His expression was strangely preoccupied as he stepped onto the grass. She felt excited, watching him pad farther from the building, like a child watching something she shouldn't. She hadn't seen a naked man, aside from her husband, in – she couldn't remember how long it had been. But here were Jeremy's smooth white buttocks, his thighs, his sex… She caught her breath.

Where was he going at this hour? He must be off to have himself a pee, she thought. But why's he heading clear across the lawn?

At no time did he glance up toward her window (not that he could have seen her in the darkness anyway, she told herself, and he without his glasses); and he couldn't have known, as late as this, that anyone was watching. She wasn't sure of the time – the only clock was downstairs, the big grandfather clock Sarr had inherited; she could hear its regular ticking – but she thought it must be close to midnight.

He was walking slowly, like a sleepwalker. Maybe he was sleepwalking, she thought; Jeremy wouldn't walk barefoot like that, he was far too squeamish about bugs! worms! night crawlers! Yet there he was, across the lawn and disappearing in the shadow of the barn.

Perhaps she should stop him. If he was sleepwalking, could there be any danger? She dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred. Why embarrass him? If he wandered off into the long grass or the forest – well, he wouldn't be hurt, the Lord watched over sleepers; and if he found himself on rough ground, why, he'd simply wake up. She thought of calling to him through the open window, but she was already too excited. She could feel herself breathe faster now and was suddenly aware of her hand beneath her unbuttoned nightgown, cradling and squeezing her breast.

With a little sigh she lay back, deliberately jarring the bed, hoping to awaken Sarr, his face pressed to the crumpled pillow. He stirred, clutched the pillow tighter, and slept on.

She shifted closer to him, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body. He, too, wore the traditional nightgown, but as her hand explored beneath the sheet, she could feel that it had worked its way above his waist. Her fingers caressed the familiar contours of his hips and slid into the soft, girlish hair. Gently yet urgently they closed over his penis.

He groaned softly, still asleep, and turned toward her, eyes closed. She tugged more insistently, and in reflex he twisted his hips to be nearer her, snaking his arms along her body, at last finding her breast. Carefully keeping her breath slow and silent, she rolled herself on top of him.

In the smaller room, Carol slept on, outlined in the moonlight, her arm thrown over her eyes. Her regular breathing grew faster; suddenly her hand clutched the edge of the sheet, her other hand formed a fist, and a tremble shook her body like a fever. Her leg straightened, then pulled back; her form seemed to grow heavier, pushing into the mattress, as if she were retreating, in her dream, from some unwanted approach. Soundlessly her mouth formed words. Above her, in the pale light, the cardboard nursery shapes stared indifferently down.

He felt the rough bark against the soles of his bare feet and sensed dimly that he was climbing the gnarled old black willow that grew beside the barn. The branches bent beneath his weight but did not snap. He felt himself climb upward, unerringly as a squirrel, as if he had done it many times before and knew exactly where to place his hands and feet.

Attaining the upper branches, he made his way out onto one of the thicker limbs, let go with both hands, and, precariously balanced, stepped lightly onto the barn roof just before the limb began to give way, the old wooden shingles curling wet beneath his toes. He continued climbing, bathed in moonlight now, the moon's face just above him, whispering him on.

At the apex of the roof he unbent and slowly stood upright, one leg on each sloping side, one foot planted east and one foot west, straddling the center line. The moon, gazing down at him, was close enough to touch. He raised his hands to it.

Deborah eased the sleeping Sarr onto his back, rose on her knees, and straddled him. Reaching down, she grasped him and put him inside her. He slid in easily.

Hands raised as if in supplication, Freirs felt himself make overtures to the moon, gestures and faces that no one could see, no one would ever see, no one had ever seen before. Perhaps some ancient force was in control, but there was no thought of explaining what he did, or why. Past and future did not exist. There was nothing real but his own movements. The shingles, he sensed idly, were rough against his feet. The ground seemed far away, but he had no fear of falling. From this height the land below him, the distant farmhouse with its little black windows like eyes, its outbuildings and its garden, seemed almost luminescent in the moonlight, with the trees a dark ocean around it.

Sarr awakened and looked sleepily up at Deborah, her face pale above him, eyes half shut. He reached out and caressed it, then slipped the nightgown up and off her shoulders so that her breasts hung down heavy and full upon him. Briefly he tasted a dark nipple. Slowly, then faster, lifting and lowering her body, she began to pump.

Freirs tried to touch the full moon's face, and shaped his lips toward it, and heard someone whisper to it, words he'd never heard before and didn't know the meaning of and instantly forgot. Beneath his feet the fireflies were like shooting stars, and a silver mist was rising off the field. He smelled roses; he could taste them on his tongue. Listening to the chanting in his ear, he waved his arms and made the faces and did the gestures with his fingers, looking like a madman's shadow as he signaled to the moon and to the dark woods spread below.

The moment came. He wriggled his head, arched his neck, threw his chest out in the night air. Sarr kissed the breasts before his face and arched his body into Deborah, who leaned forward to widen herself just as Freirs threw his arms wide and Sarr pushed himself all the way in so that Deborah gasped and they trembled, all three, and Deborah made a moaning sound just as Carol cried out in her sleep and Freirs heard the whispering and chanting louder now inside his head and realized that the sounds he'd heard were coming from himself.

Abruptly he stopped singing. The trance left him; the dream fled. He was standing on the barn roof, weary and gasping and suddenly exhausted, as if he'd just finished a race, dance, and struggle all in one. He looked down, lost his balance, almost fell. He was astonished at where he was standing, and at his own nakedness.

Carol, for the first time that day, had been out of his thoughts, yet there on the rooftop, with the planet at his feet and the taste of roses in his mouth, he looked down at himself and saw he was erect.

The dream. Those mad, twisted trees, and the eyes.

Carol was still shuddering from it, trying to throw it off, as she lay breathing heavily in the tiny bed, the damp sheets clutched to her throat. Moonlight seemed to filter into the room like poison, seeping into her brain, making everything she looked upon seem strange and menacing: the shiny little cardboard figures with their evil, knowing smiles, the gaping black fireplace, the pale red witch ball hanging in the window like the child of the moon.

The moon – its very brilliance was disturbing. She remembered the story she'd read long ago, about the sailor who fell asleep on deck, lying on his back with the full moon shining brightly on his face, and how, rising from a dream in which an old woman clawed him by the cheek, he awoke to find that his face had been permanently drawn to one side…

She was suddenly aware that something had changed. Something was missing. Without realizing it she had been breathing in time to the old grandfather clock downstairs, whose loud ticktocking could be heard throughout the house, through the spaces in the floorboards, the thin walls and doors. And suddenly the clock had gone silent.

Ah, there it was again, with a pair of faster beats thrown in as if to make up for the missing ones. No doubt a broken spring. Well, everything had to run down eventually, after years and years…

She drifted back to sleep, her face smoothing, her breathing growing slower, the dream dissipating like smoke from an altar.

The spell was broken. The magic didn't work anymore. He almost slipped three times as he crept down the side of the slippery roof, ass in the air, fearfully clutching at the shingles. When he groped for a branch of the willow, it broke off in his hand.

Somehow he was able to grasp a limb and hoist himself back to the tree, and at last, with much difficulty and a badly skinned elbow, he climbed down to the ground. He realized he was trembling from exhaustion.

Jesus, he thought, what the hell was in that wine?

Slipping timidly around the side of the barn, he covered his nakedness, an Adam after the Fall, and dashed across the wet grass to his doorway. He winced with every step, feeling dozens of wriggling living things, some imaginary, some less so, beneath his bare feet. He prayed no one was looking.

When he was back inside he stood shivering by his bed. A great way to catch a cold! he told himself; these nights out here were damp, and his feet felt clammy. His skin, he noticed, was covered with mosquito bites; he itched all over as he slipped his robe back on. His eye fell on his wristwatch on the stand beside the bed. Just past midnight.

He shook his head and sat down on the bed. Of all the schoolboy stunts! he thought, wiping his feet off and scratching at his ankle. Whatever possessed me to -

He paused. Something odd had just occurred.

While he'd been sitting there, trying to reorient himself, he'd been half-consciously aware of the crickets in the yard outside. The regular cadence of their chirping had been soothing, like the sound of a well-oiled machine. It had been making him drowsy, in fact, lulling him to sleep.

But for a moment just now the crickets had seemed to miss a beat. They'd been singing steadily, ever since he'd left the farmhouse, yet all of a sudden they'd simply stopped, a break in the natural flow -and then moments later they'd begun again, only out of rhythm for a beat or two, as if an unseen hand had jarred the record.

Well, they were back on the beat now. It was nothing to worry about, probably something to do with a temperature change.

He turned back to preparations for bed: locked the door, put the Machen on the table, closed his journal for the night.

It was only when he'd opened the top drawer of the bureau to put the journal away that he saw the brightly colored greeting cards he'd shoved to the back and realized, with a sudden burst of sadness, that it had happened without his remembering it; the moment he'd dreaded had come and gone. It was his birthday.

And in her stone cottage on the hill above the stream, seated at her bedroom window with the moon swimming full above the hedges by the roadside and the Pictures scattered at her feet, Mrs Poroth, hearing the crickets break rhythm, looked down from the moon to the image of the yellow book, and from that to the one which lay beside it – a shapeless black scribble with a hint of stubby legs – and realized, at last, why the woman had come out today.

Book Four: The Dream

Think ye that the lot of them – the Worm, the Virgin, and the rest – are but Symbols of Corruption and Purity? Then think ye again…

Nicholas Keize, Beneath the Moss

July Third

Carol opened her eyes, shut them tighter against the brightness streaming through the unshaded window, then opened them again and stretched languorously. She had not slept well; bad dreams – or, rather, one bad dream – had troubled her throughout the night. Now she was glad to be awake. Yesterday the room had had a musty smell, but this morning it was filled with sunlight and the scent of things in bloom. From outside the window came the raucous cries of birds; aside from that the world was silent, no sound of breakfast dishes or of singing in the kitchen.

Dressing in jeans and a clean shirt and running a hand through her hair, she peered out the window. No one was about; the farm seemed deserted. Then she remembered: it was Sunday. The Poroths would be at services, at one of the Brethren's houses, and would probably be away till past noon.

Going downstairs, her footsteps on the wooden treads breaking the morning stillness, she saw, by the clock in the living room, that it was not yet eight. But perhaps the clock was wrong; she suddenly remembered that late last night she had heard it wind down. Or had that too been part of the dream?

Her eye fell on a portable radio standing by one of the kitchen shelves. Hoping it might give her the correct time, she switched it on. The sound of singing filled the room: a hymn, like the ones Sarr and Deborah had been singing last night, only here there were dozens of ecstatic voices backed by an organ. She stood listening to it a moment, then snapped it off. They reminded her, those voices, that she herself should be in church this morning. Well, she would make sure to drop in and say a prayer this afternoon, just as soon as she got back to the city. God would understand.

The silence in the kitchen was oddly oppressive, but outside the cries of the birds held a note of invitation. She pushed through the screen door and out onto the back porch. The sunlight was intense, and the land in back, stretching down toward the distant stream, looked beautiful, but there was a smell of dampness in the air. Two of the younger cats – an orange one and a tortoise-shell, she didn't know their names – lay washing themselves in a small patch of sunlight, but when she started down the back steps they both rose and trotted after her.

The grass was wet around her ankles as she strolled toward Freirs' outbuilding. She walked to the front and peered through the screen, a little nervous. Yes, there he was, a pale shape lying twisted in sleep on the bed. The shape stirred, and she saw, with embarrassment, that he was naked. Hastily she stepped back and began moving away, hoping he hadn't awakened and seen her.

She continued down to the stream. Schools of tiny silver fish darted back and forth in the shadows of the rocks. It looked so inviting that she could almost imagine herself going for a swim; she reminded herself that, after all, she hadn't bathed this morning. She would leave her clothing there on the rock and step gingerly into the water. It would be chilly, of course, as it climbed her legs. And perhaps while she was naked and so occupied, Jeremy would awaken and, walking silently down behind her, would surprise her, there in the warm sunlight. He would reach for her hand This was no way to behave on Sunday morning! Besides, she thought, the water's only a foot or two deep, and the bottom must be covered with sharp stones.

With a sigh she sat herself on the rock and gazed at the pine trees across the stream, trying to pretend the place felt holy. Jeremy could get up when he pleased.

Woke up later than I'd wanted to, feeling stiff amp; hung over. Carol amp; I went for a ride in Rosie's car, me at the wheel. Told her, as we drove, about its being my birthday; she was properly solicitous, I was gloomy. Telephoned Mom amp; Dad from a shopping center outside Flemington; they seemed worried about my allergy ('you mean they have seven cats?') amp; whether the seclusion's good for me.

After lunch in Flemington, Carol insisted on buying me a small birthday cake to take back with us. Spent the afternoon driving through the countryside, past endless miles of farmland, shopping malls, new suburban tracts. This area is changing fast.

Had a somewhat unpleasant encounter in town…

Gilead wore a soberly festive air as they drove up to the crossroads. A dozen cars, most of them black and all of them at least a decade old, were parked along the main street, and there were dark-clothed figures talking in small groups on the open land that adjoined the general store. Several turned with undisguised curiosity as the car approached, but their faces seemed friendly enough.

'Let's stop,' said Freirs, pulling up beside the store. 'I want to buy more bug spray.'

The front door was open now, barrels of goods crowding the porch. 'This place is a co-operative, you know,' Freirs whispered as they walked past boxes of cutlery and rolling pins. 'All the Brethren own it and all share in the profits. Karl Marx would have been pleased.' After so much time on the road, it took Carol a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the store's dim light. She looked for the woman she'd talked to yesterday, but there seemed to be no one behind the counter. Three men were standing near the back, by a passage that led to the grain warehouse. All of them had beards that curved from ear to ear; all were gaunt and solemn-looking, with faces that looked as if they'd been carved out of the same unyielding wood. They had been talking about someone with a drinking problem – 'a scandal to the community,' one of them was saying, 'and I hear tell his boy Orin's a-takin' after him' – but they fell silent when Freirs and Carol entered. The man in the middle turned toward them.

'And what might you be wantin'?' he said. There was a wariness in his voice, but Freirs appeared not to notice.

'I need a can of insect spray,' he said. 'Something good and powerful.'

The other stared at him a moment, as if he'd recognized Freirs and was trying to recall where. Suddenly he nodded. 'Ah, yes, well, you would be havin' some trouble with the bugs, now, wouldn't you? I mean, 'tis that time o' year.' Carol saw him dart a quick glance to the others. 'Now let me see what I can rustle up for you.'

He led Freirs over to an aisle along the wall, and the two of them disappeared behind a pegboard; Carol heard them talking and the clink of cans. She was left facing the other two and feeling awkward. Awkward for them too, apparently – they stared silently at the floor, not even acknowledging her presence.

Suddenly she heard feet tramping up the wooden porch behind her. In the doorway a heavy-set figure stood silhouetted against the light.

'Steegler, if you tell me you've no more sandpaper,' he called out,

'I swear I shall-' He caught himself. 'Ah, Adam! Werner!' He came forward, a dark bear of a man, nodding to the other two. He turned to Carol, and his eyes narrowed with interest. 'And who might this be?'

'I'm just visiting,' she said timidly. 'With him.' She made a vague gesture toward the other aisle.

'Be right with you, Brother Rupert!' came the voice of the storekeeper. He rejoined the group, followed by Freirs, who was carrying a hefty-looking metal canister.

The larger man ignored him. 'Ah, yes,' he said, as soon as he saw Freirs. He looked from him to Carol and back again. 'You'd be the one from the city, yes? The one who's stayin' with Sarr Poroth?'

'That's right,' said Freirs, his voice level. 'I'm the one. And you are-?'

'Rupert Lindt.' He stuck out a beefy hand which swallowed Freirs' up whole; but if his grip was painful, Freirs made no sign. 'And this here's Adam Verdock and Werner Geisel.'

Freirs shook both their hands as well. 'I've been drinking your milk all week,' he said to Verdock. He turned to the third: 'And judging from your name, you must be related to our neighbor.'

'I guess you're right,' said the other. He was the oldest in the room, his head nearly bald, his beard shot with grey. 'You know my brother Matthew, do you?'

'Sure,' said Freirs. 'He lives just down the road from us. In fact, you might say-'

'And then again you might not,' said Lindt. 'Fact is, those Poroths are off on a road by themselves – like they are in a few other ways, as well. Matt Geisel is on the other branch, the one that doesn't run so far from town. Tis a good – oh, what would you say, Werner, a mile or two closer?'

The other nodded uneasily.

'Lord knows why they bought it,' Lindt continued. 'Old man Baber hooked himself a proper one when he sold that place to Poroth. 'Tis a ways too far from the rest of us, if you ask me.'

'And a ways too close to the Neck,' added the storekeeper, ringing up the purchase on the cash register.

Freirs looked startled. 'What neck?'

'McKinney's Neck,' said Geisel. 'You don't want to go pokin' your nose around there. The ground's treacherous this time o' year, and you're liable to get yourself drowned.'

Lindt seemed to find this funny. 'Heck, nobody's gonna drown in a little bitty patch of mud, leastways nobody whose mama taught him to walk right.' He cast a cold eye on Freirs, then a warmer one on Carol. She felt her heart beat faster. 'You goin' for walks in the woods with this fellow?' he demanded, nodding toward Freirs. 'Or you come out here to give that Deborah woman a bit of competition?'

'Now come on, Rupert!' It was Adam Verdock who spoke. He was the tallest and thinnest of the men, the one with the gravest expression. He'd been the one speaking when the two of them had entered the store. 'Brother Rupert's only jesting with you,' he explained. 'I was talkin' to Sarr and his woman only this morning, just after worship – he's my nephew; as you young folks may know, I married his pa's sister – and he says everything's goin' just fine, you're the best guests a man could want. Says he'd like to put up a whole string of guest houses, if he could.'

Lindt snorted derisively. 'Sure, and maybe get himself outa debt!'

Freirs took the spray can – Carol was afraid, for a moment, that he was going to aim it at the larger man's face – and slipped his hand protectively in hers. 'Come on,' he said, 'let's go.'

She held back a moment; she had a sudden vision of herself and Jeremy up to their necks in quicksand. 'Tell me,' she said nervously, turning to Geisel, 'just in case we do decide to take a walk in the woods, should we avoid that McKinney section you mentioned?'

'Well, like I say,' the old man answered, 'it's a little treacherous out there in the Neck, especially for a stranger. And there are some' – he cast a sidelong glance at Steegler – 'who say the place is haunted.'

The storekeeper stepped from behind the counter. 'Now, now, Werner,' he said testily, 'I don't claim that. But you know perfectly well the place has a mighty peculiar history.'

'What's this about haunted?' asked Freirs. Carol could almost see his ears perk up; this was probably just the sort of thing he'd come out here for.

It was Lindt who answered, looking somewhat amused. 'I believe they found a girl hanged out there, back before the war.' He nodded to Carol. 'A nice young girl, she was, pretty much like yourself. Ain't that right, Werner?'

The older man nodded. 'Twas in the thirties, I recollect.'

'Suicide?' asked Freirs.

'Not likely. There was talk of other things that had been done-'

'Beggin' your pardon, all of you,' said Verdock, looking pained, 'but I don't think this is a fit subject for a Sunday.'

'You're right,' said Freirs hastily, to a chorus of nods and omens. 'Anyway, we've got to go. Sarr and Deborah have a nice dinner ready for us… debt and all.' He glanced quickly at Lindt. 'Mr Verdock, Mr Geisel – a real pleasure.' As he took Carol's hand and began walking out, he called over his shoulder, 'And Rupert, next time you're in New York, be sure to look me up.'

She was glad when they were back outside on the street.

They didn't go right back to the farm, though. Freirs was now excited. He dragged her across the street toward the line of massive oaks and, beyond them, the schoolhouse.

'Come along,' he said, 'I've got a sudden yen for local history. Let's look up that murder.'

'But where are we going?' asked Carol, as she followed him across the dusty brown playing field.

He nodded toward the red-brick walls of the school. 'The town library. It's supposed to be here in this building.'

Carol laughed. 'This is turning into a busman's holiday!'

'Oh, don't expect this place to be like Voorhis. Sarr says it's hardly more than a school library – and Bible school, at that. He warned me about the place, in fact. He told me, "You'll not find the shelves filled with pornography, the way they are in New York." ' Freirs shook his head. 'Good old Sarr! He really thinks we're next door to Gomorrah.'

The library proved to be on the first floor of the building, and, true to the Brethren's work ethic, was open even on a Sunday. Poroth, they soon discovered, had not been exaggerating about its contents. As the two of them surveyed the narrow room with its meagerly stocked shelves, they saw nothing that would have corrupted the most innocent schoolchild. There were cookbooks, books on farming, and books of household hints, but the bulk of the works were religious, and most of them appeared to have been written in the days when people still drove Model T's to church. An entire shelf was devoted to refutations of Darwin; another bulged with temperance literature, most of it written before the start of Prohibition.

'Sarr was right,' said Carol. 'There's certainly nothing here to make the blood race.'

'Yeah,' said Freirs. 'Too bad!'

Carol looked in vain for a librarian. There appeared to be no one around, nor even a desk or a counter where one would have worked. Voorhis seemed very far away. The only other person in the room was a short, portly woman who was fanning herself vigorously as she peered through a section of inspirational novels.

'I've read every one of 'em once or twice before,' she confided, after they'd walked over to introduce themselves, 'but I like 'em even better when I know how the story comes out.' She explained that, in fact, there was no librarian on duty – 'leastways not summers, when the school's closed down. Folks just come in, take what they please, and bring the books back when they can.'

'No kidding,' said Freirs. 'What's to stop somebody from just walking in and stealing all the books?'

The woman seemed surprised. 'The sort of folks who come in here ain't the sort who steal,' she said, regarding him with suspicion. 'And the sort who steal ain't the sort who come in here.'

Freirs, having sized up the woman as a regular, explained what he was looking for. She led him and Carol to an alcove near the back where floor-to-ceiling shelves sagged beneath the weight of thin brown books the size of atlases, piled flat. They were bound volumes of the Hunterdon County Home News.

'Perfect,' said Freirs.

'Back before the war,' Rupert Lindt had told them. The two scanned the shelves for the volumes from the thirties, and found them in a pile near the floor. From the way the books stuck together from the heat when Freirs pulled out the one marked 1937, Carol guessed they were rarely consulted.

He flipped through the volume. The newspapers were yellow with age and smelled like a damp cellar. Over the years many of the bindings had loosened. Most were missing corners; here and there whole sheets were torn in half. The Home News had, in those days, been a weekly, with few issues more than eight pages long, but it was obviously the only source of local news; Gilead had never had a paper of its own.

Carol watched as Freirs turned the pages. What struck her immediately about the stories she saw was their violence; rather than the sedate era she'd imagined, the newspapers conjured up an age of lawlessness, freak accidents, and sudden death. A local dentist, speeding from Flemington to Sergeantsville, had injured his best friend in an auto crash and had promptly committed suicide: Arrested as Drunken Driver, said the headline, He Goes to Office and Inhales Laughing Gas. A man in Pennsylvania had been shot down by a fellow hunter in an argument over a deer. A Baptistown man had been stung to death by bees.

Other news was more frivolous and bespoke a happier time. A convention of dance teachers in Atlantic City had proclaimed the end of jitterbug ('People are tired of the jumping dances such as the Shag, Big Apple, and other athletic steps,' explained one), and railroads still ran everywhere: a special train had been initiated, running from Flemington to the New York World's Fair, whose admission price had just been raised to fifty cents. A New Haven Railroad ad suggested Sleep on the Train – Wake Up Refreshed in Maine. Clearly some conveniences had vanished since then.

It took them nearly half an hour to work through the 1937 volume and the subsequent one before they came upon the article Freirs sought, in the issue of August 3, 1939. It had been an otherwise happy summer week, the populace keeping busy with a round of local fairs, auctions, and church socials. The weekend's weather had been hot; temperatures had run to 96 degrees during the day, 81 at night. The moon had been full. Amid the welter of other news the report of the murder near Gilead – Slain Girl's Body Found in Woods – would have gone virtually unnoticed if the two of them hadn't been looking for it.

The article was a brief one; no doubt many of the details had been suppressed. The girl, one Annelise Heidler, twenty, had been reported missing on the evening of July 31 by her father, a prominent Flemington attorney. Two days later a party of deer hunters had discovered her corpse suspended from a tree in the woods outside Gilead. It had been partially burned and bore markings 'of an obscene nature' made with black grease. 'Although police refused to speculate,' the article added, 'elderly residents of the town have opined that the perpetrator or perpetrators may have been imitating a similar crime committed on July 31,1890, in the same location.'

Freirs' eyes widened. 'Jesus,' he said, turning to Carol, 'it seems the murder had a precedent.'

'Somehow that makes it even more horrible.'

He nodded, not really listening. 'Let's see what the paper said.' Replacing the volume, he searched for the one marked 1890.

'There it is,' said Carol. She pointed to an upper shelf. Freirs had to reach for the book on tiptoe and tug to pull it out.

It was well that, this time, they knew the exact date of the article they sought,. because finding it in this early volume would have been difficult. The Home News had changed greatly in the intervening half century, and the version they were looking at now contained far fewer photographs; the typeface was smaller, the front page more cluttered, and the headlines, true to the practice of the day, maintained an almost enigmatic reserve: A Fatal Argument, The Closing of a Brewery, Unfortunate Accident in High Bridge.

Freirs leafed quickly through the book, watching the county's history pass in review. Mills had been erected; people had made fortunes in the railroad; a Baptistown farmer had set a state record with a squash that weighed 118 pounds.

He came across the article he wanted in the first issue of August. The county then had been suffering an unusually hot summer. The week's average temperature, the paper said, was 98 degrees in the shade. Ads recommended Hood's Sarsaparilla as 'an excellent remedy for summer weakness during the oppressive, muggy weather of the dog days.' A West Portal boy had gone blind from picking strawberries in the hot sun; eleven celebrants at the Hunterdon County Harvest Festival – 'the biggest gala in the history of the county' – had had to be treated for heat prostration.

The article in question was a relatively brief one, crowded out by optimistic pieces on the fair. Tragedy Revealed, it said.

Gilead, August 2. – Authorities here report the death of Lucina Reid, 16, daughter of Jared Reid of this town. She had been missing since the evening of July 31. Her body was discovered by searchers in the section of outlying woods popularly known as McKinney's Neck, the full moon aiding them in their task. Positive identification of the body was difficult, abominations having been practiced upon it, though further reports indicate that death was due to strangulation. Authorities are searching She heard Freirs catch his breath. For some reason, she didn't know why, she felt her own heart pound a little harder as she read the passage again.

Authorities are searching for Absolom Troet, 22, of the same town, believed to be the last to see Miss Reid alive.

For Freirs, it was like seeing a familiar face in the middle of a nightmare: it made the nightmare worse. So here the trail ends, he thought. The evil led back to Absolom Troet, the boy with the devil in him. Freirs recalled the blank space on the tombstone and, even in the heat of the library, felt a shudder.

'This is the guy who set fire to the farmhouse that used to be on the Poroths' land,' he said to Carol, knowing there was too much to explain. 'He was some kind of distant ancestor of Sarr's, and when he was a little kid he killed his whole family, burned 'em in their sleep. And now it seems he must have gone right on murdering.'

'God!' said Carol, shaking her head. 'I thought things like that only happened today.'

There was nothing about the crime in the following week's paper, but two weeks later a brief notice appeared to the effect that Absolom Troet, 'wanted in connection with the killing of a Gilead girl,' was still missing. 'Authorities have been unable to locate him,' the notice said. 'It is believed he has taken his own life.' There was no further mention of the crime.

'Well,' Freirs said, 'there's just one more item to search for.' Shoving the book back onto the shelf, he withdrew one still earlier, marked 1877.

It was a curious sensation, looking through these volumes in reverse. Time was running backward, and Hunterdon County grew younger. New Jersey, he saw, had been a rather wild place in '77; he read of cattle rustling, stable fires, and hunting accidents. A Milford boy had died in February from the attack of a 'mad bull,' another from the bite of a snake. In Flemington in March one Deto Turo, described as 'an Italian bootblack,' had stabbed three men in a bar. In June a Moses Rehmeyer, four years old, had fallen down a cistern and drowned, and a man had been sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment for horse stealing. One of the lead stories in July, Died from Drinking Too Much Milk, told of a cook 'employed on Gen. Schwenck's large dairy farm' who'd drunk herself to death after having become, in the words of the article, Very fond of fresh milk.' He wondered what the temperance crowd had made of that.

There were dozens of reports of fires – civilization in those days seemed to have been one colossal tinderbox – but it wasn't until he saw the notice Tragic Fire in Gilead, near the end of the volume, that he knew he'd found what he'd been searching for.

'Here it is,' he said.

The report was a brief one, buried near the bottom of the page.

Gilead, Nov. 1. – The farm of Isaiah Troet, 38, was the scene of a terrible tragedy last night when sparks from a wood stove apparently ignited combustible material in the kitchen. Eight of the family are believed to have perished in the conflagration that destroyed their home. Among the dead were Troet, his wife Hanna, and six children, all of whom were apparently asleep when the fire broke out. The volunteer fire brigade arrived too late to save the unfortunate family. Authorities from Annandale and Lebanon picked through the charred remains this morning and attributed the fire to 'an act of God.' The only survivor, nine-year-old Absolom Troet, had been outside at the time of the blaze, attending to a sick calf in the barn. Authorities say the boy will live with relatives.

'Can't we go now, Jeremy?' whispered Carol. 'This tiny print's beginning to give me a headache. Or maybe it's just thinking about all those poor people.'

'Sure,' said Freirs. 'Sorry for taking so long.' He slipped the book back on the shelf and wiped the dust of the old paper from his hands.

He thought about Absolom Troet all the way back to the farm. And he kept wiping his hands.

Sarr and Deborah were in the house when we got back. They were all fired up amp; full of the Holy Spirit; even when I was out here in this room, I could hear them clattering through the kitchen, humming little snatches of hymns. I suppose that when you don't have any Broadway shows around, or movies or TV, you take whatever entertainment you can get.

They both told me over amp; over how 'exalted' they felt, but as far as I'm concerned they might just as well have said 'exhausted,' since they'd apparently spent the last four hours praying on their knees, rising to sing, kneeling, standing again… Good preparation for planting seeds, maybe, but not the sort of religion I'd choose.

They were both very nice about my birthday, though – why hadn't I told them, Deborah would have baked me something special, etc. etc. She actually kissed me on the side of the mouth. (Could feel her breast brush against my arm. I don't think she wears anything beneath that dress.) Sarr put down the wicked-looking scythe blade he was honing amp; contented himself with an earnest shake of my hand.

Wish I knew how Carol felt about him. Of course, nothing could have gone on between them last night (notwithstanding a few fantasies I had when I came out here), but I still sense a certain interest there, at least on Carol's part. As for Sarr, I'm now convinced he has his mind on God and eyes for no one but his wife. But who can say? Who can say what's in another person's head?

I twisted Carol's arm a bit, amp; she agreed to stay for dinner, despite lots of moaning amp; groaning about the drive back to New York. It was a nice meal, one that Carol, this time, could eat: cheese omelet, garden salad, amp; that cake of Carol's for dessert. She amp; I finished off the Geisels' wine from last night; both Poroths declined. I guess one night of transgression is enough for the weekend.

Deborah, as usual, spent the meal laughing amp; carrying on amp; generally having a good time – she obviously craves company – but Sarr tended to withdraw a bit as the evening wore on. He sat there like one of his own cats, getting all silent amp; brooding amp; inscrutable. Maybe it's because I made the mistake of asking him about those murders.. .

'God's my witness, Jeremy,' he said, 'you know more about those things than I do. I'm just plain not interested. I wasn't around in 1939, and I certainly wasn't around in 1890. I've heard my mother had some sort of premonition about the one in '39, but I'm not really sure. She was a young girl then. I told you about the gift they say she has.'

Freirs nodded. 'Obviously in this case the gift didn't help.'

'I guess not,' said Poroth. He sounded somewhat downcast. 'My mother seldom speaks of it. I expect it's troubling to her.'

'What intrigues me most,' said Freirs, 'are the legends these things give rise to. I gather people claim they've seen ghosts in the woods where the murders occurred.'

Poroth shrugged. 'Some claim that. Personally, I don't hold with such tales. I believe they're probably in error. Still, there could be something to it. It's not for us to say.'

Freirs decided that he liked the idea of having a haunted place so nearby. It was just the sort of thing he could take back to his classes, evidence of modern superstition.

Carol was gazing at Poroth sympathetically. 'You don't believe in ghosts yourself, then?'

'On the contrary,' he said. 'I know full well that they exist, as sure as there are eggs and fireflies and angels. I just don't think they stay out there in the woods.'

Freirs decided that he hoped they did.

Carol wanted to leave before eight, to give herself plenty of daylight to navigate the dirt road amp; the way back to Gilead, but the Poroths' clock has gone off amp; I'd left my watch inside here, so she probably didn't start till close to nine, when it had already begun to get dark. Hope she makes it okay; she was really nervous about the goddamned driving.

Was sorry to see her go. Never really got as close to her as I'd wanted to, amp; don't know when she'll have another chance to come out here. There's a kind of genuineness in her I don't find in most New York girls; she makes me feel like a teenager again, which isn't really as bad as it sounds, esp. for an old man of thirty.

'Oh, come off it,' says another voice. 'You just want to get laid.'

Could be. (Sigh.) Maybe I'll try to see her in the city next time, in my own environment, Tather than out here on someone else's turf.

Came out here after she left amp; tried to do some work. Started on Melmoth the Wanderer by the Rev. Charles Robert Maturin. Powerful stuff, but after the Lewis book I'm getting a little sick of all the Catholic-baiting. No doubt it's great fun for the connoisseur of atrocity scenes – still more mothers clutching the wormy corpses of their infants (a Gothic staple, I suspect), starving prisoners forced to eat their girlfriends (that's a new one on me) – but the Inquisition's over now, the villains dead amp; gone, amp; all a book like this can do is put you in a rage. Fine for getting me through tomorrow morning's pushups, no doubt – a drop of adrenaline works wonders – but otherwise quite useless.

Hmmm, never thought I'd find myself sticking up for the Papists. Must be Carol's influence.

Afterward, wished I'd taken some notes on that story 'The White People,' which Carol took back with her. Already seem to have forgotten most of it, and what I do remember seems oddly confusing amp; repetitive. I did locate, in one anthology, another Machen piece, about a London clerk named Darnell who has mystical visions of an ancient town amp; woods amp; hills.

Our stupid ancestors taught us that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddling with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the like; but they who have cast off these follies know that the soul is made wise by the contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites. In such things Darnell found a wonderful mystery language, which spoke at once more secretly and more directly than the formal creeds; and he saw that, in a sense, the whole world is but a great ceremony.

The writing was beautiful, with a real magic to it – yet somehow my mind began wandering. When I was halfway through I looked down amp; saw something squatting sticklike on my pillow, just beneath my nose, something like a cross between a cricket amp; a spider amp; a frog, amp; as I watched the thing began to chatter; it pranced amp; chirped amp; shrieked at me amp; shook its tiny fist, amp; then I woke up. The story was still where I'd left it, amp; a huge white moth, horned like the devil, was tapping at my window.

Must be midnight now, amp; the coldest night so far. Strange, really: it was hot all day, but with evening comes a chill. The dampness of this place must magnify the temperature. Carol complained that it gave her bad dreams last night, but she wouldn't talk about them.

Yes, past midnight; I just checked. Thirty years behind me now, another birthday gone. Where do the damned things go?

July Fourth

You'd never have known it was a holiday. The morning hung damp and overcast when Freirs staggered from his bed and began his morning ritual of exercises. He had skipped them yesterday, and somehow they didn't come easy; instead of doing one more pushup than the time before, he could barely do one less.

He spent most of the morning on Melmoth, but by noon he'd had his fill of corpses and his head was spinning from the novel's convoluted plot, stories within stories within stories – perfect for class assignments, he decided, but exhausting en masse. He was glad to put it aside and break for lunch. Deborah was working in the garden, accompanied by several of the younger cats, but she'd left a meal for him; he sat eating egg salad, gingerbread, and a tall glass of milk while leafing through the seed ads in the Home News.

When he left the kitchen, he saw that the sky had cleared and that a strong sun was beating down, drying the morning's dampness. The temperature had climbed. Absently he searched his room for a distraction. The vase of roses caught his eye, the dark red blossoms vivid as a flame against the pale green of his walls.

Blossoms… It seemed as good an idea as any. Putting on his sneakers, he picked up his Field Guide to the Wildflowers and went for a walk.

He decided, as he turned his steps down the slope of the back yard, to follow the little brook and see where it led; he recalled that, after the water wound north through the abandoned field, it seemed to disappear into the woods, making it a good point for exploration. At the water's edge he saw dozens of little silver fish, several dead ones floating upside down or washed up in the mud. As for the frogs he heard each night, he still could not find one. No doubt they slept all day – a habit he hoped he'd never fall into himself.

At the brook's first bend he heard the sound of thrashing. There in the distance stood Poroth, tall against the sun, head thrust forward, jaw set, swinging a scythe as he cleared the field of scrub. He reminded Freirs of some extra from an Eisenstein film. Or maybe the Grim Reaper, Freirs decided.

He looked up as Freirs approached. 'Hello there,' he said. 'And where might you be off to?'

'Just going for a walk.'

Poroth grinned. 'You sure you don't want to try your hand at this?' He held the scythe out in either invitation or challenge.

Freirs sighed. 'Oh, why not?' he said. 'Might as well see what I've been missing.' Making his way through the tall grass, he took the tool from Poroth's hand.

'You hold it like this,' said Poroth, twisting the blade around so that it was poised to cut, 'and you swing it like' – he demonstrated with his hands – 'this.'

Feeling as if he were gripping a bicycle, Freirs aimed for a clump of weeds and swung. The long curved blade, gleaming in the sunlight, swished harmlessly past them and almost caught him in the leg.

'You're trying too hard,' said Poroth, concealing whatever amusement he may have felt. 'Don't twist your body so.'

Freirs tried again; the tool still felt awkward in his grasp, but the blade caught the bottom of the weeds and whipped right through.

'You keep this thing pretty sharp,' said Freirs, staring at the blade with new respect.

Poroth reached into his back pocket and drew forth a thin grey rectangle of stone. 'Sharp as a razor,' he said. 'I whet the edge a dozen times a day. But mind you keep the blade up there, or you're going to strike against a rock, and 'twill be of no blessed use to me then. I've yet to clear this part of the field.'

Freirs brought the blade higher, but it was a more difficult position to maintain, putting more strain upon his shoulders. By the time he took a few more swipes, his shoulders ached.

'God!' he said, his pleasure draining away, 'they ought to make this thing smaller, with a lighter blade. I don't like the way this one's designed. You can't swing it without whirling yourself around.'

Poroth smiled. 'My friend, they've been using that design for a thousand years or more without a change. What you want's a sickle. It's a smaller tool, for a single hand to use. I've got one back at the house.'

'Fine,' said Freirs, rather dubious. 'That can be my next lesson.' He handed the scythe back to Poroth. 'Now I've had enough of playing farmer for the day. I think I'll play explorer.' He waved and began moving off.

Poroth watched him go. 'Mind you watch out for copperheads. They say the woods are thick with 'em this year. Brother Matt says he saw a pair last week, around three miles downstream. Don't go sticking your foot in any holes or clumps of brush, and don't go turning over rocks.'

Freirs stopped and looked suspiciously at the ground. 'What happens if I get bitten?'

Poroth shrugged and brought the scythe back up into position. 'You won't die,' he said. 'But you won't like it.' He began swinging the blade in a determined rhythm.

Freirs headed downstream with considerably less enthusiasm. He was aware that Poroth took pleasure in doomsaying, perhaps even in unnerving a visitor from the city, but the lure of exploration had diminished.

The worst thing, he discovered, was the mosquitoes. They hadn't been so bad up by the house, but down along the brook the air was thick with them, and he found he was continually fanning them away with every step. There were caterpillars, too, fat green ones that burst if you stepped on them, and little yellow ones that hung from every tree on invisible filaments of silk. Several times he found himself forced to take off his glasses when bugs and bits of leaf got caught between the lenses and his eyes.

For a hundred yards or so it was hard to tell where the fields left off and the woods began. He had to stick close to the brook, following an indistinct little trail that ran along beside it, for elsewhere the undergrowth made walking difficult. He was glad, at first, that he'd brought the field guide with him; here and there he stopped to look up various flowers – at least the ones he hadn't already squashed underfoot.

Crouching down, he identified the buds of a swamp rose mallow, which he remembered from Forbidden Games, and something called a great St-John's-wort, which the book rather unnecessarily warned him not to eat. A lot of things, it seemed, were poisonous in these woods. He was careful to memorize the three-leafed shape of poison ivy. At one point, noticing a large, exotic-looking flower, he half wondered if he'd stumbled upon some rare black orchid out of Tim Tyler's Luck, but it turned out to be nothing more than skunk cabbage. Soon afterward he began encountering massive clumps of the stuff; there was a moral here somewhere, he decided.

By this time he had lost interest in looking up any more names. The woods were getting thicker, with tall trees arching overhead, blotting out the sunlight. As he moved still deeper into them, attempting to follow the stream's path through branches that impeded his progress and snapped in his face, he discovered that he'd have to get his feet wet, for the trail had completely disappeared and the underbrush grew right down to the water's edge. Rolling up his pants, he hesitantly dipped one sneakered foot in, then the other. It was like stepping into an underground spring, and made him think of caves of ice deep beneath the earth. He gritted his teeth and walked on. Soon the cold seemed to go away; either he was getting used to it or his feet were numb. Ahead of him, like a bridge across the stream, rose a low archway of decaying boughs and vines. He ducked under it and continued forward, his sneakers sloshing in the water.

On the other side of the arch he saw that, as the stream curved west, it had formed a small circular pool with banks of wet sand surrounded by statuesque oaks, their roots thrust below the surface. Obviously a watering place, he decided; there were animal tracks in the sand – deer, no doubt, and what may have been a fox or perhaps some farmer's dog. He wished he'd brought his tracking manual with him; it was going to be difficult to check such things from memory.

The place, as he moved forward, seemed surprisingly familiar, but he wasn't sure just why. Had he dreamed of it?

He waded toward the center of the pool, the water rising past his ankles. Everything was silent but the birds, and they were few, calling to each other in the trees overhead. The air around him echoed with the sound.

Somehow he felt soiled here, impure, as if he himself were the impurity, the thing that made the birds cry out. He was suddenly conscious of his body: of the oily juices flowing from his pores, the noisy rush of air in and out of his nostrils, the foulness of the city that clung to his hair, the foulness of his flesh, the foulness deep within him. He had no business being in this place; his mind – a human mind, any mind at all – did not belong here. This pool was not for those who thought; thought defiled it. He felt the alien shoes upon his feet, the canvas, dye, and rubber, the filth of the city that had spawned him. And he looked down at himself, and saw the water lapping round his ankles, and his own reflection…

For an instant the two beings stared at each other, forest man and city man. And during that instant all sound, all movement, ceased. And he laid himself full length in the pool.

Afterward he stood, freezing water dripping from his shoulders and his hair. He heard the birds once more, singing with fury or joy, he couldn't tell which, and he saw the sunlight lancing down between the leaves in shimmering gold bars. A longing gripped him: he felt a strange pull to the west. And when, like the needle of a compass, he turned in that direction, looking westward from his fixed point in the center of the circle, it was as if the trees had opened. He could see the brook stretch endlessly ahead, shining into the heart of the forest like a thin silver line, pointing toward places only the birds and the animals knew. When he saw this he yearned to go farther, and dreaded to go farther, and was suddenly so tired that he turned and went running up out of the pool and lay exhausted in the sand.

As the afternoon drew on, the sky became overcast again. Rain hung like a promise in the air. He breathed deeply, found his feet, and took the homeward path, realizing, as he left it, where he'd seen the place before. It was in the Dynnod, on the card marked The Pool. The resemblance was uncanny.

The sky remained overcast all day, but the rain did not come. At night the sky was cloudy, and all the stars were hidden.

At dinner I was famished, thanks to the day's exertions, amp; found myself agreeing to a second helping of pie. So much for willpower! Wouldn't be surprised if I put on a few extra pounds before the summer's over.

Sarr and Deborah seemed a bit jumpy; I think we all felt Carol's absence. Or maybe it was the weather, that feeling of tension you get before a rain, a sense of something holding back. I certainly never saw them lose their temper at a cat before, as Deborah did tonight. For the past week she's been trying to convince Sarr to put bells around the cats' necks – she feels sorry for the mice and birds they kill – amp; so tonight, when Toby showed up at the door with feathers sticking out of his mouth amp; a tiny yellow leg among them, she almost had a fit; she snatched up the bread knife amp; chased him down the steps and halfway to the vegetable garden before she turned around and came back, looking very ashamed of herself. I thought for a second she would really run him through.

'Happy Fourth of July,' I said, but that didn't go over well. They regard the day as primarily a war holiday, a celebration of the military amp; an excuse for people to avoid work. You certainly get no feeling of the holiday out here; nothing to distinguish it from any other day, except for the saying Sarr quoted glumly, 'Fourth of July, corn knee-high.' Alas, since he planted so late the corn isn't even up to my ankle! No wonder he was in such a sour mood.

Managed to brighten things up a bit, I think, by telling them of my 'day's adventures,' i.e., my little outing. In fact, they seemed eager to hear all about it, like parents asking what I did in school. I'm sure they've both been down that exact same path dozens of times, since it cuts right through their property; but then, I always get a kick out of hearing visitors describe their first day in New York, amp; I suppose it was the same pleasure for them: familiar surroundings seen through unfamiliar eyes. So I tried my damnedest not to disappoint them: played up my hatred of the bugs, nervousness at being alone in the wilderness with snakes amp; wolves amp; quicksand pits, etc. May have overdone it a bit, but I think they were amused.

Or at least Deborah was. She told me that next time I go for a walk I should carry a sprig of pennyroyal behind my ear, as somehow this prevents the female mosquitoes from knowing I'm around. (The females are the ones that bite.) She said she'd clip me some; she grows it in her garden.

As for Sarr, I'm not so sure he realized when I was kidding about my day's exploits, amp; for all I know he may have felt secretly contemptuous – though I suspect his main feeling was one of concern. He told me, with great seriousness, that it's just as well I stopped where I did today, at the bend in the stream, since if I'd followed it a couple of miles deeper into the woods I'd have ended up where the stream empties into a marshy backwater amp; it's easy to get lost. Just beyond the marsh, he said, is a place where on certain nights you can actually see clouds of steam amp; swamp gas rising from the ground, amp; will-o'-the-wisps, and trees that, in these parts, you don't expect to find. It's the place the men were talking about in the store yesterday, where those two girls were killed – the place they call McKinney's Neck.

When I think about it now, the whole afternoon seems almost as unreal as a dream. Glad I'm back inside again, four walls keeping out the night, with bed amp; books amp; lamplight here beside me. At times like this the farm seems like a precious little island, amp; no one but a fool would venture out into the darkness where they don't belong.

Feel too stiff now, amp; a hell of a lot too sleepy, to sit up writing anymore. Time to put away this journal amp; turn in. Carol's probably going to bed now too, never knowing how lucky she is to be surrounded by all that concrete amp; brick, those noisy, well-lit streets

… Manhattan may be just another island, but it's nothing like this place. Ten to one I dream of it again tonight – so arrogant, so massive, amp; so safe.

Fourth of July

Dear Jeremy,

Well, it looks like you're not the only one who'll be spending the summer in isolation. When I got back here last night I found my roommate gone, along with most of her clothes. She'd typed me a note saying she was going off on a trip with one of her boyfriends (I've never been able to keep track of them), and that I should hold her mail and water her plants while she's gone. She didn't even say where she was going. I can't understand it, for her to just pack up and leave like that without giving me any kind of warning – it seems so inconsiderate. But I guess it's the sort of thing I should have expected from her. She's always been extremely irresponsible. She did leave me her share of the rent, though, thank heaven, enough for the entire summer, right down to the last penny, in two neat little piles of cash labeled 'July' and 'August'.

Incidentally, in case it wasn't obvious to you, I had a wonderful time this weekend. I really did, you know, it was just what I needed. I'm going to write the Poroths a little bread-and-butter note as soon as I finish this. They were both extremely nice to me, in every way possible, and I do hope I'll get a chance to see them again before too long. They're so different from some of the people you meet in this city, you just can't imagine.

Believe it or not, the ride back to New York took only an hour and a half, and I had no trouble at all in that parking lot uptown. I guess it was because of the holiday weekend; the whole city seems deserted. It was depressing to come back, that's for sure, but I kept thinking about the Poroths, and the countryside, and you and all those cats.

Rosie came down here tonight and insisted on taking me out to dinner. He pointed out how I really ought to be happy for the extra room I'll have now, and for the peace and quiet, not having Rochelle's awful friends running around all the time. I know he's right, and in a way I suppose I am just as happy she's gone, but I still can't help feeling a little bit abandoned. I miss her. Who knows, I may even miss you…

July Sixth

Had she meant the letter as bait? In retrospect Carol was forced to admit that perhaps there had been something slightly calculating about it. But then, she'd merely hoped to be invited back to the farm before the end of summer. Never for a moment had she expected that Freirs himself might show up in the city – and only two days later.

'I thought I'd go by that restaurant again,' he began, telephoning her at work, 'just in case that goddamned book bag turned up.' And then, as if it were an afterthought: 'Anyway, you sounded like you might be in the mood for a little company. So here I am.'

He was calling from the Port Authority bus terminal; it was nearly four o'clock on a hot and muggy Wednesday afternoon. He had gotten a ride to Flemington that morning, shortly after reading Carol's note, and had taken the early bus out. Though he'd be stopping down on Bank Street first, to search his apartment and talk with the new tenants, this evening he expected to be free. Would she care to meet for dinner? He would pick her up at seven thirty.

Two hours still remained before she could leave work, and Carol spent them thinking of what lay ahead. Freirs hadn't said anything about where he planned to stay that night. No doubt he planned to stay with her, in her bed. The thought was a disturbing one, yet undeniably attractive; she turned it over and over in her mind.

What struck her first was his presumption. Did he actually believe that, having put him off once – or twice, if you counted their first date – she now owed him this night? Yes, quite likely he did; for, considering how methodical he could be, how stiff-necked and precise, it wouldn't have surprised her if he were one of those conscientious souls who proceeded according to schedule: first date a kiss, second something stronger, third a night in bed.

But wait, maybe even here she was being old-fashioned. Maybe she was living in the past. After all, Jeremy had been married once, and perhaps for him the usual three days' expectations had long since been compressed into a single busy evening. In which case, Carol realized, she was already in his debt twice over – though it scarcely made the prospect more inviting; she'd be damned if she was going to give herself to him simply out of social obligation. When she took a lover it would have to be someone special, not just an impatient man exacting his due.

And yet… And yet by the end of their weekend together, she had been resigned – no, more than resigned, she had been determined to sleep with him, if not there at the farm, then somewhere else. She'd known it ever since that first evening together: that he would be the one. She had been ready then – and she was ready now.

And how pleasant it would be to he with him tonight, knowing he was there beside her in the darkness, keeping her company in the suddenly empty apartment; to feel his naked skin pressed against hers, warm between the cool of the sheets. Neither of them would have to get up early tomorrow. They could sleep together late into the morning.

The day had so far shown no signs of drawing to a close. Light continued to stream into the room around the tattered edges of the shades; the shades themselves glowed yellow in the sun, and heat had made a prison of the unmoving air. As she knelt to steady the contents of her book cart, Carol felt herself perspiring beneath her blouse, while through her ran a tiny flicker of foreboding. If it was this bad so early in July, what would the rest of the summer be like?

She piloted the overloaded cart through a delirium of aisles and shelves and tables, her mind far from the routine tasks, her footsteps keeping time to the regular squeaking of the wheels. Entering the little glassed-in office to complete a series of subscription forms, she thought that at any moment she might faint: the air conditioner was still broken from last September, and with three desks crowded side by side the room seemed even smaller than it should have, and twice as cluttered. Her own desk lay buried beneath a stack of old Library Journals and an assortment of damaged paperbacks; its lower drawer was stuck fast, its wooden surface clammy to the touch. Carol ran a hand through her damp hair and slumped back in her seat. It was going to be a warm night for making love.

Later, bringing an armload of returned books upstairs to help fill in the hour left of work, she passed between the ranks of children's classics and inspirational works that lined an aisle near the doorway: Little Women, retold for younger readers; King Arthur and His Merry Men, with Victorian illustrations; Great Teens in History, a girlish

Joan of Arc on the front. Dog-eared and skinny, with brightly colored covers and ragged spines, the volumes seemed repositories of a kind of innocence that, after tonight, she'd be unable to share. She paused beside the reference desk to study the photos on a Girl Scout poster, relic of some long-ago recruiting drive, and found herself face to face with a racial mix of laughing little girls. They, too, seemed inhabitants of another, more innocent world, a world already receding into the past. She wondered if they'd laugh for her tomorrow.

Enough! she told herself. She must keep things in perspective. What, after all, were a tiny patch of skin and a few drops of blood to St Agnes's beheading, Catherine on the spiked wheel, Ursula ravished by the Huns, Marcus stung to death by wasps? Why pretend the thing she'd do tonight had any mystical significance?

Moving toward the front of the room, the day's heat at last beginning to lift, she deposited her books on a return table by the windowsill. Downstairs this area was where the ten-cents-a-day bestsellers lay piled; up here the books were sooty, and faded by the now-departing sun, but a scattering of gold Newbery medallions gleamed among their covers like symbols of purity.

Purity! Once more it rose in her, that absurd feeling of regret. This was a world she'd be leaving tonight. She felt like one condemned to death, gazing upon all she encountered as if for the last time.

Around her children were reading aloud to themselves, mouths laboriously shaping the words, while others puzzled in silence through the more difficult books or roamed up and down the aisles in a temperature-induced torpor, pulling out volumes at random and putting a few of them back. Most of the children, absorbed in their reading or daydreams, took little notice of her or Mrs Schumann; those who were bored made it obvious, unlike their elders downstairs, leafing impatiently through picture books or disputing with their friends. Still, the second floor was quiet at this hour, the atmosphere unusually subdued, and there were few real fights to settle; the room echoed with a soft gabble of voices punctuated only by laughter and the occasional high-pitched complaint. Carol found it a curiously restful sound.

Just before closing time, she was about to replace a handful of books on a shelf at the back of the room when, turning down the farthest row, she came upon a pale, skinny little girl, underpants below her knees, in the act of lifting her dress above her waist. Two small boys who'd been crouching in front of her jumped to their feet and dashed noisily up the aisle, disappearing around the other end. Carol heard the patter of their footsteps as they raced across the room. One of them made straight for the doorway and vanished down the stairs; the other paused only to snatch up a baseball cap and glove before hurrying after him.

The girl, however, was frozen guiltily to the spot, her eyes wide. She'd had time to yank the underpants up over the crumpled pink of her dress but was still clutching the waistband with both hands. Abruptly she let the elastic snap free, attempted to smooth back the dress, and cried, 'Didn't do nothing!'

Nor had she, of course. There was certainly nothing to punish her for, and though Carol couldn't resist giving her a brief, whispered reminder on How Some People Take Advantage of Other People's Innocence, she said nothing at all when, a few minutes later, the girl's irascible-looking mother came to claim her.

In fact, though she was slow to admit it to herself, Carol was amused – and in some dim, disreputable way, even somewhat aroused. She couldn't get the sight out of her mind: the child's brazenly hoisted dress, the sunlight on her legs, and the two boys hunched like worshipers before that frail, hairless little tuck of skin no bigger than a fortune cookie. There was a kind of power in it. It reawakened memories of her own, playing doctor with the neighbors' boy, and body magic in the loft above the garage, and -was it a painting she'd once seen? That group of men who stared in fearful wonder at the bound and naked body on an altar: had she seen it in a picture book? Maybe it had only been a dream.

Only a dream. But in the shower that evening, as she prepared herself for Jeremy's arrival, the vision remained, and she stood with head thrown back, the hot spray beating sharp against her skin, obscurely stirred as she felt the water on her, and the eyes.

Jeremy arrived more than half an hour early, muttering about the heat and noise outside and the trash in the hallway downstairs. The restaurant hadn't found his book bag, nor had it been returned to his apartment, and the couple who were subletting the place had treated him, he said, 'like a stranger in my own home.' He'd met a friend for drinks, but the conversation had quickly turned boring. He looked at Carol expectantly, as if waiting for her to set things right.

She was fresh from the shower and still in her robe, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. She'd been rather put out that he'd come so much sooner than planned, and after buzzing him in downstairs she had struggled into a bra and panties and had raced through the apartment gathering up loose clothes and flinging them toward a closet, wiping the crumbs from the kitchen table and her hair from the tub, and squinting at her features in the steamy bathroom mirror. She'd thought she looked disconcertingly pale, though it was hard to tell in the bad light; just to be safe she'd pinched her cheeks the way Scarlett O'Hara used to do before meeting a beau.

But Scarlett O'Hara had never found herself parading around in a terrycloth bathrobe and turban, and no beau of hers had ever shown up with sweat stains on his shirt and liquor on his breath. The whole evening seemed to be getting off to a miserable start – at least that's what she'd thought – until, settling himself on the living room couch, Jeremy eyed her up and down and said, 'You know, you look damned nice right now.'

She waited for the derisive little smile which was often the only way he signaled he was joking; but his mouth, and his eyes, remained serious.

Nervously she tightened the sash. 'I suppose I'd better get dressed.'

'Hey, don't go doing that for my sake!'

She laughed. 'I thought you wanted to go out for dinner.'

'Of course I do, but what's the rush? Come on, sit down here a minute.' He slapped the cushion beside him, then pulled away his hand, as if surprised at his own audacity.

Surprised at hers, she sat.

They were silent for a time, as if each were pondering the implications of this new development. Carol heard her breathing coincide with his. Seated so close to him, she was exquisitely aware of how little she had on beneath the robe. Her skin still tingled from the shower; he would find it clean if, by some chance, he were to reach out and touch her right now.

At last, with something like a sigh, he reached out and scratched his knee. 'Jesus,' he said, 'remind me never to drink on an empty stomach.'

'Do you want me to make some coffee?' She was already getting to her feet.

'No, no, sit down, it would just make things worse. One cup and I feel like I'm in the Boston Marathon.' He patted his heart. 'And after the second I'm awake all night. Even without it, these days, I seem to be staying up later and later. My whole schedule's screwed up.'

Carol nodded. 'Mine too. I guess I'm still not used to having this place alone.'

She watched the final minutes of sunshine inching steadily up the wall and was struck by how shabby the apartment looked even in the waning light. The living room still smelled faintly of Rochelle, especially by the couch where they were seated. Rochelle had slept on it whenever she was home; unfolded, it became a bed considerably wider than her own. Carol thought of all the men this couch had seen; she had already decided that this was where the two of them would sleep tonight.

'My roommate was one of the noisiest people I've ever met,' she said. She wondered briefly why she'd used the past tense. 'Sometimes, just as I was turning off my light, I'd hear her snoring. And when one of her boyfriends was over… ' She made a face. 'I could hear them even with my door closed. I guess that's why the silence feels so strange. Lately I just can't seem to get to bed before two or three in the morning.'

'Oh, really? You sure went to bed early enough that night at the farm.'

His voice was edged with resentment. God, she thought, how ridiculously selfish he can be! But at least he still seemed interested.

'I was tired from all that driving,' she said. 'And I didn't get much sleep there anyway.'

'Yeah, I remember. Nightmares, you said. Hell, I'd get nightmares too, with all those Bible pictures hanging over my head! Next time, why not stay out back with me?' He gave her a sly look.

'Who knows?' she said. 'Maybe I will.' She saw that she'd surprised him and felt an urge to laugh. 'That is,' she added, 'if you promise I won't have any more bad dreams.'

He shook his head. 'I only wish I could. But I promise I'll be there when you wake up.'

'You don't say!' Smiling, she leaned closer to him. 'And just what good do you think that'll do?'

'Oh, I don't know. I'll be there to talk to you, comfort you a bit. And I can always do this.'

As he put his arms around her, her nervousness returned with a rush. She couldn't understand it; she was proud of her slim body. This was supposed to have been a time of letting go, of shedding inhibitions; her natural passions were supposed to take control. Soon she would he back and become the woman she wanted to be, and Jeremy her true lover; the walls were about to be breached, the mystery revealed. Yet instead she could feel herself grow rigid against him, her heart pounding furiously, her hands beginning to tremble. What in heaven's name was the matter with her?

It wasn't as if she hadn't had time to prepare for this; she'd had nearly a quarter of a century. She knew perfectly well what would happen now, or at least what was supposed to: the things he was going to do to her, and how she was expected to respond. It was like knowing all the answers without ever having been asked any of the questions.

'Come on, now, Carol, please don't tighten up,' he said, his voice close to her ear. She'd never heard him sound so gentle before. 'Just sit back and relax. I won't hurt you, honest. I won't even budge.' His hand came to rest above her hip; she felt it pressing lightly against her robe, like a living creature that moved when she moved, breathed when she breathed. 'Come on,' he whispered. 'Talk to me.'

'What should I talk about?' Her voice dismayed her; it sounded so breathless and frightened that she barely recognized it.

'Talk about anything you like. Tell me a secret. Or tell me a dream.'

She willed herself to relax. 'I save my secrets for confession,' she said. 'And I never remember my dreams.'

'Except the one at Poroth Farm… Remember?'

'A little, yes. Not all of it.'

'It doesn't matter.' He drew her closer. The towel loosened from her hair and slipped softly to the couch. 'Go on. Tell me.'

'I'm sure it all had something to do with those weird cards Rosie gave you,' she said. 'I couldn't get some of those images out of my head.' Reluctantly she cast her mind back. 'I remember being in a kind of jungle – an awful place. The undergrowth was all ropy and thick, and the air was steamy hot and hard to breathe, and in the distance I could hear wailing flutes, and drums just hammering and hammering away without a stop. It was night, I'm sure of that much, but all around me everything was shining like it was on fire.'

She felt his hand stir almost imperceptibly.

'I didn't know who I was,' she said, 'or what I looked like. Maybe I was dead and no more than a ghost, because I seemed to be floating over the ground, gliding between the trees. The vines and bushes somehow opened up for me, and I passed right through without a scratch. The farther I went, the louder the flutes and drums kept getting, and the thicker the trees, but just before the end I began to see a kind of clearing up ahead. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of the sky. The moon was out, and… '

'And what?'

'It was shining like a spotlight on the center of the clearing.'

'All the better to see with.' Gently his hand slid toward her breast. She pressed it closer with her own.

'I wish I hadn't looked,' she said. 'It wasn't nice at all. In the center, all alone, stood a tree, and these men were gathered beneath it, watching something on the ground. Then they moved back, and I saw that at the foot of the tree was a kind of altar. There was a body on it – the body of a girl.'

'And then, I suppose, you saw that the girl was you. And woke up with a scream.' He was touching her breast, caressing it.

'No, it was nothing like that. It was much worse. Much worse.' She could feel her heart racing again; she wondered if he felt it too. 'I woke because I heard something fall onto the body, and lying there in the moonlight was this long white slippery thing, curling and uncurling… And then suddenly, as I watched, it arched up from the body and began to sway, faster and faster, and I could see that somehow it was dancing, heaving itself up and down to the music, like a great blind snake-'

'Uh-oh, you know what that means!'

She nodded and pulled away slightly. 'Yes, yes, I know. But this time I'm not sure it applies. Anyway, why does a snake always have to be a phallic symbol? What if it was simply – a snake?'

'It's possible, I guess.' She felt his hand slip beneath the robe. 'As a matter of fact, there's this crazy Bram Stoker novel-'

'Wait, Jeremy, what are you doing there?'

'Nothing.'

'That doesn't feel like nothing.'

'I'm not going to hurt you. Just lift yourself up a minute.'

'You mean… like this?'

'Mm. Do you have to keep both legs so – there, that's better.'

She watched what he was doing, still held passive by the dream.

'Try to relax,' he said. 'Tell me about the way it ended. About the altar, and the nonsymbolic snake. I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to.'

Her eyelids felt heavy. She took a deep breath and let it out. 'You don't understand,' she said. 'It turned out to be something else entirely. Something more. I only saw a part of it, I think – the part above the altar. I remember how the creature rose up and down to the music, in time with the drumbeats and the whistling of the flutes. The other end seemed buried in the ground, there was just no telling how far under it went. Somehow I sensed that it was attached down there, that all I was seeing was the tip. And then F – she caught her breath, half curious as to what Jeremy was doing, half reluctant to think about it – 'I realized that the drums must be coming from the same place, from somewhere far below me, deep inside the earth… And suddenly it occurred to me, with absolute certainty, that all the things I'd been seeing – the altar, the clearing, the whole entire jungle – were a part of something else, something huge and hateful and alive.'

She could feel her panties being tugged down over her thighs, and liked the feeling, the fact that there was nothing she herself had to do. She could let her mind wander, back to that night…

'I knew, then, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was there and all around me, stretching from one end of the night to the other, a single monstrous creature half as big as the world. The sound of the flutes was the sound of its breathing, and the drumming was the beating of its heart. That horrible white snake that thrashed back and forth on the altar was just a tiny artery, pulsing with its blood. But hanging from the tree was the most hateful thing of all, because that's where it sat watching me, the eye and the face and the brain-'

She was jerked upright by the sound of the buzzer. Someone downstairs was ringing to get in. Yanking up her underwear and closing the robe, she hurried across the room and pressed the intercom button. 'Who is it?' she called. Her voice was trembling.

There was no reply; the intercom hissed with ghost winds roaming up and down the empty halls. Freirs stirred impatiently on the couch.

She called again, louder this time. 'Who's there?' Something crackled tinnily, and at last, from the emptiness, came a faint, familiar voice. It was Rosie.

He prays he isn't too late. Yet as he stands there panting in the entranceway, waiting for the woman to admit him, his patient little smile never wavers; and no one who's been watching him from the street could possibly realize that it masks a howl of blind demonic rage.

All day he has plotted the man's progress toward the city; he's traced him every mile of the way. He has charted the woman's reaction, has catalogued her every mood and sigh, down to the tiniest flutter of her heart. Nonetheless, he has been careless; in all his calculations he's neglected to take one small factor into account. The air is warmer, ever so slightly warmer, than he's anticipated: less than a degree, perhaps, but enough to make a difference. He knows that even on a cooler day, when men and women are brought together – human beings being human – anything might happen. What the two of them upstairs might regard as consummation will, to him, mean catastrophe; a lifetime of planning may come to nothing in the space of a single gasp, a sudden cry of pain. And possibly that very thing has already occurred.

In which case, of course, the two will have to die.

But even if he has arrived in time, there is a second problem, no less urgent, created by the unexpected heat: a problem, in a sense, of waste disposal…

It hadn't seemed important at the start – merely a question of temporary storage – but thanks to the weather it is now approaching an emergency. He cannot put it off any longer; there is no more time to lose. He simply has to get the man and woman out of the apartment. If they chance too near that couch… well, it might prove rather nasty for them all.

Nasty indeed. That's just how he is feeling at the moment. But after the woman has buzzed him inside and he's passed through into the hallway, his face remains frozen in its customary smile. Even here, someone may be watching; you can never be too sure.

Only when he finds himself within the familiar confines of the elevator, safe amid the privacy of its battered metal walls, does he allow the mask to slip. As the door scrapes shut and the little car lurches skyward, the smile drops away and his lips curl back in a snarl of animal fury. Teeth gnashing with a sound like grinding stones, features contorted almost beyond recognition, he shakes his tiny fists in the air, and all the evening's pent-up rage comes bursting out of him in a frenzy of noise and spit and flying limbs. Like one possessed he flings himself about the car, fists lashing out to beat against its walls; walls and floor reverberate with the pounding of his shoes, and the little car rocks back and forth as if a swarm of maddened bees were trapped inside.

At last, on the fifth floor, when the car has come to rest, its doors slide open on the plump, unassuming figure of an old man. He stands there looking cheerful and composed, if a trifle winded, and his eyes twinkle with impish good humor as he steps into the hall and makes for the apartment at the end. Mopping his brow with a small white handkerchief, he blinks amiably at the heat, fixes his smile in place, and rings the bell.

Voices are coming from the living room. He cocks his little head to hear and sniffs the air that flows beneath the door. No, there is no question about it: he will have to get them out of there, away from that accursed couch, and soon – before they open it and find what is hidden inside. Flesh, even when suitably prepared, does tend to smell so in warm weather.

I was going to answer the door, but Carol beat me to it. Never saw a girl get dressed so fast.

In her own screwed-up way she probably felt guilty about my being there, because she proceeded to make a totally unnecessary fuss over Rosie – what a wonderful surprise this was, how much she'd been wanting to get the two of us together, etc., etc.

Can't say I was especially pleased to see him again, considering his rotten timing – in fact, I spent several minutes silently cursing him -but I have to admit the guy seems inoffensive enough (though I could do without the lisp and the mincing little walk). He was all smiles, from the moment he waltzed through the door, amp; despite his age he appeared to be constantly in motion, sniffing around the room like an overgrown pink puppy; you could almost see him wagging his little tail.

I thanked him, of course, for that crazy deck of cards – hadn't yet gotten around to writing the thank-you note, and now I won't have to – amp; must admit the old guy showed a rather flattering interest in my work. Exchanged chitchat about film courses, grad school, the plight of Ph. D. s, but I got the impression it was mainly for Carol's benefit. He seemed pathetically attached to her; in fact, the only time he looked a little hurt was when Carol said she was surprised to see him. He just couldn't understand it; had she forgotten about their dinner date tonight? Apparently she had, or at least that's what she claimed. She acted very embarrassed, apologized amp; all, but behind his back she shrugged at me and shook her head. Maybe Rosie's the forgetful one.

Anyway, we decided to make it a threesome for dinner. Playing the proper hostess, Carol asked us if we wanted to have a glass of wine before going out. I certainly could have used one by that time, preferably ice cold, the way I was feeling, but Rosie said he was famished and seemed eager to get away.

Outside, it was already dark – one of those hot, smelly New York nights when the streets echo with mambo music amp; drums. There was violence in the air, even more than usual, amp; everyone seemed to be out on the sidewalk dancing or drinking or waiting for something to happen. On nights like that, in Puerto Rican neighborhoods like Carol's, you can almost imagine you're in the tropics. The sound makes you impatient, it's hard to concentrate on things. Not such a bad feeling, really, though it has its scary side. I can see why so many people I know retreat to Fire Island or the Hamptons for the summer; I can also see why, if I were a bit younger amp; poorer, stuck in the city with nothing to lose, I'd be tempted to bash somebody's brains out with a tire iron. As it was, my impulses were somewhat more humane; I felt like pulling Carol out of the glare of the streetlamps amp; making love to her all night. I'd even have been willing to go back up to that stuffy little apartment with the roaches amp; the heat.

Must admit, there's something about her poverty that appeals to me. It's sort of a turn-on to think that, little as I have, I could really be a help to her financially.

It took us some time to decide on a restaurant, since Rosie kept suggesting all sorts of obscure, outlandish places on the other side of town. Maybe he was trying to impress us. Finally we settled on Harvey's; it's just a few blocks east, amp; they never rush you. Carol amp; I made do with omelets – with her crazy notions about food, she seems destined to remain a cheap date – while old Rosie wolfed down a filet mignon half the size of his head.

Dinner was excellent, though we were interrupted in the middle by a very brief brownout; Carol says New York's had a lot of them this year. All of a sudden the entire room went dark, but it only lasted a few seconds before the lights came back on. Still, I was grateful for the candle on the table.

I'm not sure just why, but Carol excused herself right after that, amp; when she sat down again she was looking sort of distant amp; hardly spoke for the rest of the meal. I wondered if somehow she'd been rattled by the lights going out, or if it was something I'd said, but I think now that she was probably just feeling a touch of embarrassment – amp; maybe even, in some weird Catholic way, remorse – over what had gone on back in the apartment. Only natural, I guess; when you've opened up too much to another person, you sometimes tend to backtrack a bit as compensation. Just the same, I do wish she hadn't turned quite so cold.

Rosie offered to foot the bill, as I knew he would, but he amp; I ended up splitting the total between us. Which meant that I sort of got taken. Afterward I expected him to call it a night, amp; was looking forward to some time alone with Carol, but no such luck; it seems our Rosie is something of a night person. He insisted Carol and I accompany him to this old West Chelsea bar he knew about – drinks on him, at least – amp; it turned out to be way the hell over on Eleventh Avenue, practically knee-deep in the Hudson. At the rate he walked, with his stubby little legs, we must have killed a good half hour just getting there.

The place wasn't anything special, but nevertheless we stayed for a couple of rounds. Toward the end Rosie started getting all sentimental over his childhood out in the country somewhere, amp; we more or less let him run on. Hard to picture him as a farm boy.

We didn't get back to Carol's till after midnight. By this time, I think, Carol would've been as relieved as I'd have been to see the last of Rosie, but he mumbled something in this pitiable little voice about being 'close to exhaustion,' amp; quick as a catechism she was asking him up for coffee.

As soon as we stepped out of the elevator, Carol said she smelled something funny, amp; after a moment I smelled it too. We all braced ourselves as she unlocked the door to her apartment, amp; sure enough, that's where it was coming from. Held my breath amp; ran into the kitchen, where I noticed that the pilot light had gone out amp; that the rusting old hulk of a stove in there was hissing like a snake. It had probably been leaking for hours, amp; the entire apartment was filled with gas. If any of us had lit a match the whole place would have gone up.

Rosie amp; I opened all the windows while Carol went downstairs to wake the super. He turned out to be a grumpy old Cuban who acted as if the entire thing were Carol's fault. He took one look amp; said a pipe had broken somewhere above the shutoff valve. He'd have to get some men to fix it in the morning.

Rosie insisted on putting us up at his place. So there we were, piling into a taxi at one thirty A.M. amp; heading uptown, Carol fussing about her stove but maybe just as relieved that everything had worked out this way, amp; me cursing to myself, while Rosie, all unaware, beamed at us from the front seat.

He lives in one of those ugly old buildings off Riverside Drive, way up in the hundreds near Columbia. The apartment itself is really much too big for him – two huge bedrooms, high ceilings with plasterwork and ornamental molding – amp; thanks to rent control the old bastard probably pays next to nothing for it. He told us he'd been living there for more than thirty years, but he certainly hasn't done much with the place. The kitchen was pleasant enough – all china-ware, teacups, amp; painted little trays, like the haunt of some dotty old lady – but the rest of the place barely looked lived in. Nothing on the walls but a few framed art prints – calendar stuff – and a crude, obscene-looking kid's drawing he said was by a little boy he knew. For someone who's traveled as much as he claims, he doesn't seem to have acquired anything very interesting; you certainly can't accuse him of being a materialist. The only books I came across were the usual bestseller-type things – I'm OK, You're OK, How to Be Your Own Best Friend – amp; a few dusty Victorian sets that you see in old ladies' parlors amp; no one ever looks at anymore. Carol seemed a bit disappointed; I guess she'd been expecting a museum.

Rosie apologized for the place's looking so 'spartan' amp; said something about not being home much. Until a year or two ago, apparently, he spent most of his time abroad or in the library – 'sometimes both,' he said. I kept picturing libraries amp; reading rooms all around the world, and in each of them, somewhere in the corner, that same wizened little face.

By then the two of us were close to dropping off, amp; I could see exactly what was coming; in fact, I should have seen it the moment that buzzer sounded back in Carol's apartment. Somehow, without meaning to, I had cast myself in the dumbest role of all: I was the horny but thwarted lover in one of those exasperating Howard Hawks comedies, condemned to spend the night alone. And sure enough, Rosie proceeded to stick me on a sofa in the anteroom adjoining his, with Carol in the spare room amp; his own fat little self parked neatly between us.

So I had to go to bed celibate again, with a premature hangover, a bad mood, amp; a useless hard-on. I couldn't get my mind off Carol -the sight of her half out of those flimsy white Woolworth's panties, looking like a skinny little farm child with her small ass amp; slim white thighs amp; solemn expression, but also incredibly sexy. Boy, do I want her badly.

Somehow, despite it all, I slept without a single dream amp; got up feeling just as lousy. Rosie was puttering around making breakfast amp; whistling some tuneless little song – he looked awful; I think he'd taken out his false teeth – but Carol was more distant than ever. Later, as we rode downtown together on the subway, she seemed preoccupied with her apartment amp; her job. Clearly it was time to say goodbye. So I got off at Forty-Second Street, sat through half a porn film called The Coming Thing, amp; took the bus back here to Poroth Farm.

Book Five: The White Ceremony

Then there are the Ceremonies, which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than others.

Machen, The White People

July Seventh

Just as well that Jeremy was gone. Carol needed time to get her thoughts in order. That he'd had her so worked up last night, that she'd been naked, exposed before him, and so obviously excited, ready to yield – somehow it all seemed far more intimate than if they'd actually gone to bed together. And to think that, the entire time, he'd had his own pants on! The whole thing was just too embarrassing. It almost made her angry.

It also made her angry to return to her apartment and find the gas still on. 'Couldn't the men fix it?' she asked the superintendent, who stood grumpily in his first-floor doorway with a Spanish station on the radio behind him and something spicy frying in the kitchen.

'They comin' round this afternoon sometime,' he said, impatient to return to his meal. 'These guys, they're very busy. You come back tonight, everything be fixed.'

'You mean they haven't been here yet?' said Carol. 'That's funny, somebody's sure been up there.'

Back upstairs, careful not to breathe in the vicinity of the kitchen, she looked around. No, she had obviously been wrong; she could find nothing out of place, nothing missing or stolen (not that there was anything worth stealing, she reminded herself), no real sign that anyone had been here since last night. The sunlight streamed harmlessly through the open windows; the apartment still reeked of gas, and she was reluctant to stay more than a minute or two. Idly she straightened up the stack of papers in her bedroom, more of Rosie's articles to plod through. Myths of the Cherokee (Washington, 1900). Description of a Singular Aboriginal Race Inhabiting the Summit of the Neilgherry Hills (London, 1832). They would be here when she got back; it was nice hot to have to look at them now. She would change her clothes, go off to work, and try to forget everything that had happened last night.

Holding her breath, she entered the kitchen, rinsed out a few glasses – no sense letting the repairman think she kept a dirty house – and wiped off the counter. In the living room she fastened back the curtains, wondering if it was safe to leave the old TV set unguarded, and decided that no one would want it anyway. If those workmen took anything, she could report them somewhere. She noticed several strands of black hair on the rug near the foot of the couch. There's always something of Rochelle's here, she thought, as she picked them up between two fingers and released them out the window. They drifted downward on the summer breeze, floating like a spiderweb.

The library, despite the heat, was unchanged from the day before; she felt as if she'd never left. There were fewer grad students this time of year, but their elders, those pale wraiths who haunted the long tables and magazine racks each day, took no notice of the season; they had no beaches or resorts to flee to when the weather grew warm. There were the usual piles of ragged-looking books to put away, and she did so silently for most of the afternoon, but her mind wasn't on her work. She was dunking of her apartment: of the super – how rude some men were, they certainly did what they pleased! – and of Jeremy, who'd made her feel so vulnerable. Was he laughing over her right this minute? Did he think of her at all? Maybe to him she was just another conquest. And she was, she told herself, there was no sense denying it; she had been conquered last night. She thought of Rosie – and quickly pushed the thought from her mind. He was the one man who treated her kindly; she didn't want to think about what she had seen in the restaurant last night, it was too ugly…

Later, as she patrolled the aisles of the children's section, she was almost able to put the restaurant incident from her mind. Mrs Schumann was reading Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales to a story group at the table in the corner. Carol passed by from time to time on her rounds and caught the tale in snatches: 'The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf.' No doubt the little monsters had specifically asked for that one. It was the most repellently bloody-minded of the lot: a little girl who pulled the wings off flies, and her bizarre punishment, standing helpless and frozen while these same insects crawled over her face and body.

She was glad to see that two little boys, at least, were having no part of such sick fantasies. They were crouched before the bottom shelf of the biology section, a shelf that, Carol knew, contained some junior-level health and medical texts. Strolling round the floor, she passed them twice; they appeared to be engrossed in an oversize anatomy book, their small, intense faces studying something hidden by its covers. Carol surmised, from the way one of them glanced guiltily over his shoulder at her the second time she walked by, that the two were searching for nude pictures; it was a common preoccupation among the children who used the library. The bank of fans atop the bookshelves hummed, and Mrs Schumann's voice continued to drone across the room, echoing like a memory.

On Carol's third round she noticed that the thinner of the two boys was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the other kneeling. She was debating whether to direct them to chairs – their pants were going to be filthy when they got up – when suddenly the larger of the two made a little dip of his head and fell forward onto the other boy, clutching him in a furious hug. In a second they were rolling over on the floor, grunting with exertion and tearing at one another's faces, the book tossed aside. Carol was bigger than they were – as the assistant supervisor had once reminded her – but not so much bigger that she was able to tear the two apart. She ran for Mrs Schumann, who stood up from the reading circle like some great plump monster rising from a pool, and together they managed to separate the two combatants. They were brothers, it turned out, fighting not over the volume on the floor but over a small pocketknife which each claimed as his own. The fight ended with the knife in Mrs Schumann's desk drawer, permanently confiscated, and the two boys warned not to set foot inside the library again without a note from their mother – a note which, both women knew, would never be produced.

It was the knife that brought the memories back, memories of the previous night, the incident at dinner…

She had been so happy as they'd all sat down, happy that Rosie and Jeremy seemed to be hitting it off; happy, in a way, perhaps, that Rosie had arrived in time to stop her from doing something irrevocable; happy just to be spending a summer night in the company of two men she liked, in a comfortable candlelit restaurant with good food and an air conditioner that worked.

She remembered how Rosie, smiling fondly, had been talking to her of her future; how all his words had gone to her head, all his talk about courses and openings and opportunities. 'You're an unusually talented young lady,' he'd been saying, exuberantly waving his steak knife. 'I expect great things from you!'

Then suddenly, like the ending of a dream – she felt a chill even now as she remembered it – suddenly the lights had flickered once, twice, and gone off, leaving only the candles on the table.

It had all happened in an instant. Seconds later the power had come back on; once again the air conditioner's hum had filled the room, and with it movement, conversation, laughter. But in that frozen moment of shadows and silence, with only the candle on the table for illumination, she had seen Rosie regarding her – and it had been like seeing him for the first time. In the altered light, that instant, everything had looked different: the old man's face had been hard, icy, cruel. He had held the knife poised in her direction, and his tiny eyes had glittered like razors in the candlelight.

The bed was wide and almost filled the little room. They lay naked, the two of them, drugged with the heat of the evening, staring at the lantern light that flickered from the table by the wall. Deborah's hair, unfastened, was spread beneath her like a cape, black against the whiteness of the sheet. Around them lay their seven cats: Dinah and Tobias by Deborah's head, Habakkuk, or 'Cookie,' at her feet, Zillah with her face buried just behind Sarr's ear, 'Riah and Rebekah on the corner of the bed, and Bwada half beneath it on the wooden floor, yet well within reach of Sarr's caressing hand.

They lay silently, listening, waiting for Freirs to leave for the night. They could hear him downstairs in the bathroom, noisily brushing his teeth, rinsing his mouth, zipping up his toilet kit, and blowing out the kerosene lamp. The thin wooden door opened with a rattle, followed by footsteps in the kitchen directly below them. Deborah leaned from the bed and watched his progress; through the chinks in the wide-plank floor, with its warped and tilted boards, she saw the faint gleam of Freirs' flashlight moving toward the back door. The door opened, closed, the latch clicked shut, and they heard footsteps descending the back steps. There was silence, broken only by a faint muttered 'God-damn!' – he had stepped on something in the grass – and then they were left alone with their thoughts.

'He was in a bad mood tonight, wasn't he?' whispered Deborah. 'I think it was over Carol. Every time he spoke of her his face got angry.'

Sarr half closed his eyes, settling back against the hard mattress as if it were of down. 'It's only what he deserved,' he said slowly. 'He went back to the city for one reason, and you and I both know what it was. His heart was filled with lust, and the Lord made him suffer for it.'

'He misses her, honey, it isn't any more than that. He's courting her, just the way you courted me.'

He appeared to consider this a moment. 'Well, maybe it's only natural to follow after someone your heart's set on… But he should never have followed her to that place!' His face had become hard again; he looked like the faded photograph of his father which glared sternly from atop the bureau.

'He was only going home.'

'He was leaving all the things we've offered him here, leaving it all behind like it meant nothing to him, like we mean nothing. And for what? For a mess of light and noise and show. 'Twas a mistake, going back there.'

Deborah was silent a moment. 'I guess so,' she said. 'But you know, honey, this place is quite a change for him. He's not used to our ways yet. He likes having people around.' She paused. 'Can't say I blame him, either.'

'Oh, I see.' A hint of smile played about his lips; without turning his head to look at her he reached over and cupped a breast in his hand. 'You're saying I'm not man enough for you anymore, is that right? And you want him instead?'

She giggled and edged closer to him, dislodging two of the cats. 'That's right,' she said. 'I'm getting sick of the likes of you. I'm thinking I'll take me a lover.' She rolled over and pressed her body next to his. He ran his fingers through her hair, brushing it away from the pale skin of her shoulders.

'Guess I should have listened to my mother,' he said, planting a kiss on her mouth. He looked into her face, then smiled. 'Glad I didn't, though.'

The cats moved out of the way, reluctantly, as they made love. The old bed creaked and trembled.

Afterward, even while still inside her, his eyes still closed and his breathing heavy, he was reaching out for the Bible on the night-stand. He slipped out of her just as his hands closed on the book's worn leather binding.

She sighed. 'You know, honey, this is the last night we can do this for a while.'

'Hmmm?' He lay on his elbows in the bed, already thumbing through the dog-eared pages, squinting at the columns of print in the flickering light.

'I said we can't do this for a while -' less you want another mouth to feed.'

He stared at her for a moment as if weighing the matter. Then, shaking his head, he returned to the Bible. 'There'll be time for such things,' he said. 'We owe so much now, you and I, and have so little ourselves… ' He paused again. 'Well, maybe the prophet can guide us.'

He handed her the heavy book and got up from the bed. Silently he walked to the corner of the room near the fireplace where the wall faced inward toward the house, unadorned with pictures and unbroken by a window. Moving the simple hand-braided rug out of the way, he knelt facing the wall, his bare knees upon the planks.

'Let's begin,' he said. He closed his eyes.

Deborah sat upright in the bed, feeling the hard wooden headboard against her back; it seemed only fitting, the hardness, when she held the Bible on her lap. It was open to Jeremiah, as was usual when they performed the ceremony known as 'drawing the sortes,' though occasionally Sarr would test himself by substituting a less familiar chapter. Deborah raised her gaze to the opposite wall, where below a tattered Trenton State banner hung an ancient crocheted design, the Bird of Paradise in the Tree of Life. Keeping her eyes upon the green and gold foliage, she flipped through the chapter at random and poked her finger toward the bottom of the page.

'Twenty-nine three,' she said.

He remained silent, rigid.

She read over the text and raised her eyebrows. "Fraid I started off with a mean one,' she said.' "By the hand of Elasah the son-'

'-the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent unto Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon

'Right.' She looked away, flipped the pages again. 'I wonder if Jeremy's been using those cards Carol gave him' – her finger stabbed downward – 'to tell fortunes with, the way we use the Bible. Eight fifteen.'

' "We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!" Frankly, I think Carol swallowed a white lie about those cards. The Dynnod's not for telling fortunes.'

'How do you know, honey?'

'I read about it back in college. One of my religion courses.'

'I thought the cards were just a game invented by some novelty company.'

'The cards are, yes. But the pictures on them are a whole lot older.'

'What are they for, then?'

'They're supposed to bring on visions.'

Deborah stared blankly at the ceiling while her fingers selected another passage. 'Hmmm. Well, I guess Carol didn't know any better.' She looked down. 'Forty-four seven.'

' "Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling… " '

'Right.' She chose another. 'Thirty-seven four. Speaking of sucklings, Lotte Sturtevant's belly is so big now that all of us think it's going to be a boy. Twins, even. Now, if I were to have a son, say-'

' "Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people… "*

'-he could help me with the housework when he was little, and you with the farm work by the time he was half grown. You've been saying you could use another hand. And there's-' She looked down. 'Um, eleven six. There's just no end of things that need doing around here.'

' "Then the Lord said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them." ',

'Right.' She flipped farther back. 'I expect all that rusted machinery in the barn is going to have to be cleaned or sold or -forty-nine sixteen.'

' "Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldst make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down." '

'And have you noticed how the caterpillars have gotten under those eaves? There's a regular mess of them, last time I looked, and the other day Jeremy complained they're nesting in his building. Five thirty. And the woods by his windows need clearing-'

' "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land." '

'The land, yes. All that land's just going to waste right now. Ten twenty-two.

' "Behold, the noise of the bruit is coming, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons." '

'Uh-huh.' Deborah smoothed back a lock of hair and stared reflectively at the ceiling. 'You said those cards are supposed to bring visions? The ones she gave Jeremy?'

'That's right.'

'Do they really work?'

Sarr nodded, still facing the corner. 'Of course they do. All magic works.'

'Maybe we ought to tell Jeremy.'

There was a pause. 'I don't think the Lord means us to interfere. Consider it a part of his spiritual education.'

'I wouldn't say-'

Sarr glanced impatiently over his shoulder. 'Come on, Deb, let's get on with this.'

'All right. Just one more.' She leafed blindly through the pages. Her finger stabbed toward the words. 'Five thirty.'

' "A wonderful and-" Wait a minute, we just did that.'

Deborah peered at the words. 'My Lord, you're right! That's funny.' She turned to another passage and looked toward the ceiling, her finger poised above the page.

At that moment a staccato drumming echoed from somewhere above them. The sound seemed to start at one corner of the room and, like Freirs' footsteps earlier that night, to pass above their heads and beyond the farther wall. The cats looked up and growled, tails lashing.

'Oh, no!' groaned Deborah, laying aside the Bible. 'Not again.'

They'd been hearing it for the past few nights: the sound of tiny feet magnified by the reverberation of the wooden boards. Mice were up there, young ones, born just this spring and thriving in the past month's unseasonably warm temperatures; but as they ran across the attic floor, feet thumping on the floorboards, they sounded huge as weasels.

Sarr, still on his knees, was gazing toward the ceiling. He shook his head. 'We'll have to let the cats get at them. There's nothing else to do.'

'Oh, no, honey. I'll not have it! I'll not have them killing things.'

Protectively with her hands she reined in Dinah and Toby, drawing them toward her, but both continued to look longingly at the ceiling, making little sounds of eagerness and hunger deep in their throats.

Sarr got to his feet and came over to the bed. 'Look,' he said gently, 'you don't want those creatures to keep you awake all night, do you? They'll just multiply, you know.'

'Then you and I can go up there and put them out – give them a way to get outside, where they'll have more to eat. I'll not have any murdering in my house.'

She closed the Bible and laid it back on the table, then settled down in bed, face turned toward the wall. Clearly this was to be her last word on the subject. Sarr, sighing, climbed in beside her and blew out the light just as another series of footsteps rattled overhead.

Soon, despite the occasional noise, both he and Deborah were sleeping soundly, chests rising and falling in a common rhythm. But all night long the seven cats looked up toward the ceiling, eyes wide, and growled.

Rosie came to see her that night. He seemed positively cherubic, all chuckles, winks, and smiles. It almost made her forget about what she'd seen in the restaurant the evening before.

'I just dropped by to see if they'd gotten that awful gas under control,' he said, shaking his little head. 'Frankly, young lady, I was worried about you.'

He had brought her a gift in a large, flat cardboard box – it’s some kind of clothing, thought Carol eagerly – but he wouldn't let her open it till after they'd talked. 'First,' he said, 'I want to see those summaries you've been doing for me,' waggling his plump finger with mock-schoolmasterly concern; but when she handed him her notes on the Cherokees and the aborigines he barely seemed to glance at them.

'Excellent, excellent,' he said distractedly, shoving the papers into a folder and withdrawing a slim grey book. 'It's clear to me now that you're ready to go deeper, young lady. High time I started giving you some language lessons.'

Ghe'el… ghavoola… ghae'teine…

He gave her the lesson in her bedroom, Carol having invited him in; somehow the living room held bad associations for her now, and

Rosie himself seemed just as happy to escape it. The two of them sat sipping iced tea, Carol on her bed and Rosie propped like an animated rag doll in the high-backed chair.

For more than an hour he read to her from the book he'd brought, an old, flimsily bound language text entitled Some Notes on Agon di-Gatuan or 'The Old Tongue,' With Particular Respect to Its Suppression in the Malay Subcontinent. Appendiced with a Chian Song Cycle and Primer. It had been privately printed in London in 1892, and the binding was now held together with black electrical tape. Rosie, face half buried in the book, would read a string of words aloud in a strange high singsong voice, and Carol was expected to repeat them with the same accent and intonation.

Riyamigdl'eth… riyamoghu…

'It's actually the only way to learn a language,' he assured her. 'The way a baby does – by imitation and constant repetition.'

He seemed convinced that he was right, and surely he knew what he was talking about. But the words she repeated were meaningless to her, like catechisms in an alien religion; for the life of her she couldn't remember a single one only seconds after repeating it, and she couldn't understand how familiarizing herself with some obscure phrases from a long-dead native dialect was supposed to help her in her reading. What possible good was all this going to do her? What was this Old Language, anyway?

'It's rather special,' Rosie explained, looking up from the book. 'It's the language people speak when they speak in tongues.'

This didn't sound right at all, but she didn't have the heart to argue with him. 'I don't think I understand,' she said, hoping he wouldn't lose patience with her. 'What do the words mean?'

Rosie smiled. 'It's a song about angels,' he said. 'One of the Dhol Chants.'

'Dhol?' The word was somehow familiar.

'Yes, like in the Dynnod. You remember.'

'But I thought that was Welsh,' she said, thoroughly confused now, and already weary of it all. Maybe it was the heat; the iced tea didn't seem to be helping much. 'How can something be Welsh and also Malayan and also be spoken in tongues if it's not-'

'Carol,' he said gently, shaking his head, 'the important thing is simply that you memorize this little rhyme.' He returned to the book.

Miggke'el ghae'teine moghwvoola…

Carol struggled to say the words. They seemed formed for other mouths than hers, other tongues. Yet somehow Rosie didn't seem to mind; he just kept nodding and smiling and watching her with satisfaction in his eyes. The alien sounds reverberated in the room, as if every word she'd uttered were hanging in the air, filling the space around her like incense, softening the edges of things and making her so dizzy she couldn't think straight. Later she recalled Rosie patiently explaining something about 'who the Vodies are,' and wondered if she'd heard right; and there'd been something he'd said about 'things hidden behind the clouds' – had she been dreaming? – and she vaguely recalled his promising to teach her the rules for ancient games, contests, dances, and she herself thinking how this, at least, would have a bearing on her work, maybe she could teach them to the children in the library…

'And next time,' he added, 'I'll teach you something special, the real names for the days of the week.'

She wanted to ask him what he meant, why he was filling her head with such strange impossible things that made no sense at all, but he had gotten to his feet and was already opening the box on the night table.

'Because you've been such a good pupil,' he said, eyes twinkling. He sliced the ribbon with a surprisingly sharp fingernail and lifted the lid. Inside, something pale lay covered by tissue paper. He reached down and withdrew a white silk short-sleeved dress that glimmered in the light.

She heard herself gasp. 'Oh,' she said, 'how beautiful!'

She got up from the bed and felt the cloth; it ran like water in her hand. There was, she saw, no label in the back, or else it had been removed; maybe Rosie was embarrassed about where he'd bought it, or maybe he was ashamed of how expensive it was. She held it next to her body. The style was old-fashioned and a little full for her, yet it was cut rather short, almost embarrassingly so, in fact; she would have to keep her legs well together when she wore it. But oh, how lovely it was!

'I can't wait to try it on,' she said.

Rosie shook his head. 'I don't want you to. I'm sure it'll fit well enough.' He flashed a sheepish grin. 'Actually, I have to tell you, this dress originally belonged to a friend, but she only had a single opportunity to wear it, and, well' – he shrugged – 'I wanted you to have it. You may find it a trifle large, but I think it will do One. I've taken the liberty of having it altered.'

'I'm sure it'll be perfect,' said Carol.

'What I was hoping was, maybe, if you had some time, you could wear it this Saturday night. We could make an evening together, you and I – unless, of course, you have some nice young man to look after you, someone a bit more handsome than an old thing like me.'

'Why no,' she said, grateful for something to do, 'that would be wonderful. I have no plans at all. Honestly, it's so sweet of you, Rosie, giving me something like this. You know, I've been needing a summer dress; I had absolutely nothing nice to wear.'

He was nodding. 'Good,' he said. 'When I saw that dress I immediately thought of you, because you see' – he smiled – 'it's your natural color.'

On his way home that evening, as he sits on one of the old folks' seats on the northbound bus, blinking at the passing lights and smiling at the occasional passengers who jostle him as they climb aboard, he thinks about the snow-white dress, the woman he's just left… and remembers the first time.

The first woman to wear that dress had been a farmer's daughter. Strong, better muscled than the slips of girls these days. And tediously pious. And trusting.

Like all first times, it hadn't gone very well.

The groundwork had been boring but necessary, exactly the sort of stupid sentimental story she'd been brought up to believe. He had told her he was going to marry her; he'd said he had great plans. He intended, he'd said, to make something of himself in the town. They had gone for long walks together, along country lanes and over the fields and through the woods.

Especially through the woods.

How she had enjoyed it, dreaming of the future with him! She had probably enjoyed it right up till the end.

He had tied the rope too tightly, that was his mistake. She'd been heavier than he'd thought, which had tightened the noose even more. And her struggles, once he'd gotten the dress off her, had made it tighter still, cutting off her wind before he'd gotten more than halfway through the other things he was supposed to do.

Oh, he had chanted the right words, and had drawn the necessary pictures in the earth below her as she struggled, and he'd even anointed her body with the black powder, in the special way the Master had prescribed…

He had tied that rope much too tightly, though. That had been his big mistake. She had died far sooner than he'd intended.

But then, he had just turned twenty-two, and this had only been a dry run, an experiment. He was still young. He would practice.

Next time, he vowed, he would get it right.

July Eighth

Good to get up in the country again: warm breeze, sunshine, sound of birds outside. Lay in bed listening to them late into the morning. Sarr was off clearing brush from the area just beyond the stream, amp; every so often I could hear his scythe ring out as it struck against a particularly thick branch. Deborah was closer by, just behind the house, hanging laundry on the clothesline. (Must remember to give her these pyjamas of mine, maybe also the bedsheets. The dampness around here makes it harder to keep things clean.) Later heard her working in the garden; from time to time she'd call out to one or another of the cats, scolding them for going after birds.

Trouble getting out of bed; actually, slept poorly last night, awakened from time to time by what must be mice running across my ceiling. Hope it's mice, anyway, amp; not rats!)

Don't know exactly what time it was when I finally got up, but I felt famished amp; really had to force myself to do my exercises. Guess it's because I missed another day. Somehow I only managed to do twenty-seven pushups, though I was supposed to do forty. I'm slipping back – better watch that.

Managed all of Le Fanu's 'Carmilla' before lunch. Wonderful allusions to forbidden books: Magia Posthuma, Phlegon de Mira-bilibus, Augustintts de euro, pro Mortuis, and something called Philosophicae el Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris by John Christofer Harenberg. Oh, for a peek at such stuff!

Eggs for lunch, from our hens. Still can't say I taste any difference, though Deborah seems to take it as an article of faith that country eggs must taste better than week-old city ones; so I humor her amp; smack my lips amp; tell her that there's simply no comparison. I'm beginning to think that country people have to have it confirmed, every so often, that they've made the right choice.

After lunch, hit the books again. Started Tales of Hoffman but put it aside; ugly, disturbing, amp; a hell of a long way from the Nutcracker Suite. Next, prompted by that odd phallic image in Carol's dream amp; by something Sarr mentioned at dinner last night about there being an unusual prevalence of snakes around here this summer (just my luck!), took down Stoker's Lair of the White Worm, about some legendary monster surviving beneath an old Derbyshire castle.

At first it made a welcome change of pace: not too subtle, I suppose, but I liked the references to local history amp; to a place the author called 'Diana's Grove.' (Cf. 'Lucky's Grove' in the Wakefield tale, sacred to the evil god Loki.) After a few chapters, though, my attention began to wander; I got tired of waiting for the goddamned Worm to show up amp; was put off by the uninspired prose. Dutifully the book brought in the whole supernatural grab bag – the Druids, the rites of ancient Rome, even a discussion of African voodoo – but there was somehow no magic in any of it, amp; no real feeling.

So I occupied myself out here till dinnertime with scissors amp; a can of insect spray, cutting away the ivy that's grown across my windows. Those little green shoots fasten themselves onto the screens amp; cling like drowning men, practically ripping out the wire when I pull at them. Something almost frightening about their tenacity – all that mindless, unshakable will. The spiders living among them seem timid in comparison, scrambling frantically for cover in the leaves. I only killed a few that seemed inclined to stand their ground; amp; now, here at this rickety old table, with the windows dark amp; nothing but the screens between me amp; what's alive out there, I'm teasing myself with Hammer Films visions of how the survivors might take their revenge. Wish, now, I hadn't killed any – or else had killed them all

…

Beef with noodles for dinner tonight, praise the Lord, amp; apple pie for dessert. Drifted into the kitchen a bit early; didn't know what time it was, but knew I. was hungry amp; smelled something good. So did the cats. All seven of them were assembled by the back door waiting to be fed, milling back amp; forth with tails swishing, Bwada growling at the others, amp; I had to push my way through them to get inside (stepping over the usual assortment of bloody mice amp; moles which they'd laid out for inspection amp; which I was careful to avoid looking at). Deborah was humming some sort of hymn; she seemed glad to have me around.

Just then there was a chorus of miaows from outside the door, followed by the clank of an overturned garbage can amp; the sound of little claws scrabbling down the back steps. Above all this I could hear Sarr swearing – words I'd never heard him use before – amp; a few moments later he walked into the kitchen clutching his hand to announce, with some amusement, 'I've just been bitten by a corpse!'

At least he'd thought it was a corpse.

He had just come back from the fields, hungry for his dinner and for human company. The cats had been waiting for him there on the porch, purring and rubbing up against his ankles as they displayed their day's catch – all the luckless Utile animals they'd pounced on in the grass.

Listen to them purr! he thought. They're just natural-born killers. Yet the Lord must love them more than He loves a sinner like me… He stooped to pick up the nearest body, a tiny brown field mouse. Good-natured Azariah, striped like a plump tiger, purred and butted his head against Poroth's arm. 'Away with you!' he muttered, cuffing the cat lightly with the back of his hand. Gingerly he picked the mouse up by the tail and tossed it into the garbage can.

A young goldfinch was next – a good thing Deborah hadn't seen! -and then another mouse. Stooping a fourth time, he paused. The one remaining body looked different from the rest.

At first he'd taken it for the remnant of some larger animal – a fox's paw, perhaps, the stump of a severed limb – until, crouching down to get a closer look, he saw four legs, like little sticks or twigs, and exposed along one end, a row of tiny yellow teeth.

The thing was black, burned-looking, with the texture of dirt and dead leaves; it looked like a child's clumsy attempt to fashion an animal. He realized, quite suddenly, what it must be: the dried and swollen body of a shrew. It appeared to have been dragged across the ground, or even buried; no doubt, too, it had been well mauled by the cats, for the mouth was all askew, nearly vertical, in fact, and there was soil and mold still clinging to its fur. He looked in vain for eyes, and for a tail to lift it by. Grimacing, he was forced to grasp the thing tentatively around the middle. It felt odd to the touch, like picking up a crumbling clod of earth.

Suddenly it moved. He felt it twist in his hand and bite him on the thumb. With a yell he dropped it and watched it patter off into the grass, with Bwada and the rest in frantic pursuit.

'Come back here!' he called, but the cats paid no heed. It was nearly the end of dinner before they returned, with nothing to show for their chase.

' 'Twasn't dead at all, you see.' He scooped himself a final helping of salad. 'Must have been just feigning, like a 'possum.'

'Well, I just hope you don't go getting rabies,' said Deborah. 'You never know in the summertime, and it's a death I wouldn't wish on Lucifer himself.'

'I'm not dead yet,' said Sarr, extending his hand. 'See? It didn't even pierce the skin.'

'Looks okay to me,' agreed Freirs. 'I hope you're not going to start foaming at the mouth right here at the dinner table!'

Deborah shook her head. 'I don't know,' she said. 'I hear flitter-mice in these parts carry rabies-'

'Bats,' explained Sarr, to Freirs' puzzled look.

'-and who knows what other things might be infected. This is one time I'd feel safer if a doctor were around.' She was still fretful as she began clearing away the plates.

'Hey,' said Freirs, 'do you suppose house mice can get rabies?'

'Why?' Sarr was absently examining his thumb.

'Because I think I've got mice living up in my attic back there.'

'You too?' said Deborah, from the sink. 'This sure seems to be the season for them.'

Sarr nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'we've been hearing them too.' He glanced at Deborah, then dropped his voice. 'Want me to let the cats up there?'

'I heard that,' said Deborah, 'and the answer's no! Jeremy will just have to learn to make friends with them.'

Freirs smiled. 'Sure,' he said, 'I'll fit 'em out with little sneakers.' He turned to Deborah. 'But I hope they're not going to keep it up all summer. It's going to make it hard to get to sleep.'

Sarr was regarding him somberly. 'Just make sure you don't sleep on your back. And if you do, make sure you don't snore.'

'Why's that?'

'So if one of them gnaws through the ceiling, he won't fall in your mouth.'

Freirs laughed, until he saw that the other wasn't smiling. 'I think that'd be a lot worse for the mouse. than for me.'

'Don't be too sure,' said Sarr. 'I once read about a man who was killed by a mouse that ran right up his arm and jumped into his mouth. Somehow it got wedged in the man's throat and almost bit its way right through.'

From the sink came an exasperated 'Honey!'

'What happened?' asked Freirs.

'Both of them suffocated, man and mouse.' Sarr saw the expression of disbelief on Freirs' face. 'It's a true story,' he said. 'There was even a picture. I'll never forget it.' He could still see, in the crude Victorian illustration, the terrified face of the man's wife, and the man's wide-open mouth and staring eyes as the small dark thing leaped toward him.

'I think it served him right,' said Deborah, returning to the table with a bowl of fresh fruit. 'He was probably trying to kill the mouse, when he could have just turned it out of doors.' She nudged Freirs with her elbow. 'Bet you didn't know he was such a one for tall tales, did you?'

'Say what you like,' said Sarr. 'You believe me, don't you, Jeremy?'

Freirs laughed. 'Well, frankly, no. But just the same, I think I'll sleep with my mouth shut tonight.'

There's one of the little bastards right now!

Lying here in bed, listening to sounds above my head. A moment ago it was one of my little friends in the attic; just before that was an airplane, the first I've heard all week. It seemed to pass directly over the farm; I can still hear the roar of its engines receding in the distance. Such a familiar sound, once upon a time – amp; now it seems like something from another world!

Sounds in the, woods, too. The trees really come close to my windows on one side, amp; there's always some kind of stirring coming from the underbrush, below the everpresent tapping on the screens.

A million creatures out there, probably. Most of them insects amp; spiders, I guess, plus a colony of frogs in the swampy part of the woods, amp; maybe even skunks and raccoons. Depending on your mood, you can either ignore the sounds amp; just go to sleep or – as I'm doing now – remain awake listening to them.

When I he here thinking about what's out there, amp; how easily I can be seen, I feel vulnerable, unprotected, like I'm in a display case. So guess I'll put away this writing amp; turn off the light.

Darkness fills the apartment – darkness and the weary droning of an air conditioner, as if the two were coterminous, the droning the sound of the darkness itself as it settles like a veil over floors and furniture, stretching across doorways, masking books on shelves and pictures on the wall. The droning muffles other sounds; the apartment is an isolated cavern, cut off from the world and beyond the reach of time.

Outside, twelve floors down, the weekend has begun. Friday night has reached its zenith, dawn is still five hours away, and the streets are filled with noise: music, voices, distant sirens. The planet rolls serenely into blackness, the stars hidden by haze. Overhead a yellow gibbous moon, one day wide of half, glares down upon the city like a cat's eye.

Within the apartment an occasional band of light reflected from the headlights of some passing car sweeps the high ceiling and slides down a wall, picking out a small framed picture, crude as a child's, done on yellowed paper cracked with age – the picture of a naked girl standing side by side with some tiny black animal. Below it an older hand has written simply, Marriage.

Otherwise the darkness is unbroken, save for a single cone of yellow light, a candle flame within it, falling from the gooseneck lamp upon the table where the old man sits working.

He sits crouched forward, staring intently at the instruments before him on the table: the straw mat, the bone needle, the pliers, the little bowl of amber fluid, the guttering candle in its brass candlestick, the shard of metal. His own face is painted like a savage's, streaks of color emanating from his eyes and mouth and a heavy black line down the center of his forehead where he's rubbed the holy powder. He looks like a lion, a sunburst, a flower as big as a man. Around his neck, on a knotted leather thong, he wears some- thing resembling a pendant, something curved and yellowing and hard: an index finger-human, female-that, one short week before, pressed the buttons of an elevator downtown.

He picks up the metal shard in the pliers and holds it in the flame. His old-man's breath is audible as he waits for the metal to grow hot, smoke, turn red… When it is glowing he places it upon the straw mat before him and, with the bone needle, scratches the first sign into its surface. Picking the shard up once more with the pliers, he dips it in the bowl of amber liquid. The liquid bubbles and hisses; a little puff of foul-smelling steam rises up the cone of light. The old man croons a certain word and smiles.

He smiles because the sign has taken; the ceremony will not be in vain. Counting to himself, he turns toward the window beside him in time to see a single star glimmer in the night sky. He watches it floating just beyond the window, centered in the topmost pane. Then, as the count is repeated, it dims and disappears behind a wave of mist. The old man expels his breath and turns back to his work.

The visitor is out there now, somewhere in the Jersey hills – he can feel it. All week long he has seen the evidence of its arrival, felt the changes, read the signs. Now he can be sure. It has come.

Once more he holds the metal shard within the cat's-eye of flame that sputters atop the candle; once more the shard grows smoky, blackened, and turns red. He lays it on the straw and scratches another sign.

Another step. There are always steps to follow, rules to be observed. Funny, that he of all people should have to play by the rules. The visitor must find it funny too. The Old One has not seen the visitor, not for more than a century, but he knows what must be happening: somewhere in the Jersey hills the process has begun. It will continue now, advancing ever more quickly, ravenous as a flame.

The flame spreads outward and licks against the metal. He holds it forth again. The signs he's scratched so far are intricate and tiny – tiny like the visitor, seemingly insignificant, easy to overlook.

But tomorrow at this time, once he's gotten the woman to perform the Ghavoola, the White Ceremony – why, then the thing will be free to advance a step up the ladder…

He places the metal shard back on the mat, whispering another word as he scratches the third and final sign. It is hard to repress a smile. Even though he knows how it all must end, he feels a certain excitement at what is to happen now. Already the woman has performed a useful service; she has played the proper messenger. But now it it time for her to garb herself in white, step forward, and assume her rightful role.

The metal is still hot, still glowing. Smiling, the pain streaks curving on his cheeks, he picks it up with the pliers and touches it to the tip of the severed finger hanging around his neck.

The finger twitches, as if recoiling from the heat.

He pulls the metal away and examines it, turning it over and over before him. The shapes scratched on its surface gleam evilly in the lamplight.

He whispers the Fifth Name. The blade is ready.

July Ninth

He arrived at seven that evening, exactly when he'd said he would. More than an hour of daylight still remained, but the sun was hidden behind a row of buildings and the avenue was dark beneath their shadows. 'I'll wait for you down here,' he shouted into the intercom. 'I've got the car tonight.'

The car? Then perhaps they'd be driving somewhere outside the city – what a relief that would be, on a night as hot as this. Crossing her fingers, she hurried down the hall toward the elevator.

Behind her she was leaving an apartment full of work. She had meant to spend all day on Rosie's project; she'd been absolutely determined to complete the task today, for earlier this week he'd provided her with a formidable array of new journal articles and reports with a host of arcane-sounding titles – Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (London, 1882), Holiday Customs in Malta, with Sports, Usages, Ceremonies, Omens and Superstitions of the Maltese People (Valletta, 1894) – but it had been so enervatingly hot in the apartment, even with the windows open, that she'd lain in bed as if drugged until afternoon and had put off starting work till just a few hours before. Hours of reading still awaited her tomorrow; she'd have to spend all day catching up.

Somehow, despite the pay, her initial enthusiasm for the project had waned. The papers had proven to be less interesting than she'd hoped, and Rosie, too, had continued to show surprisingly little interest in her summaries, barely glancing at them except to praise them mechanically and make out her paychecks, never once quizzing her on the material. The entire project had begun to seem more and more like busywork.

It felt good to escape the stuffy apartment, just as it was going to feel good to get out of the city. The thought of escape was so welcome, in fact, that it almost made her forget how unwell she'd been feeling all day. But as she pressed the button on the wall and waited for the elevator to ascend, the throbbing weakness in her legs reminded her that she would have to make this an early night. She'd been having stomach cramps since morning, and now it seemed as if a metal band were tightening round her head. Her period was due, and as she stepped into the elevator she felt the familiar heaviness, a fullness in her stomach, breasts, and thighs. A good thing the dress Rosie'd given her was so loose. It was too loose, in fact, obviously fit for someone with a bigger frame than hers; though whoever'd altered it had made the hem awfully high. Still, she told herself, I have to wear it, I simply couldn't say no; after all, it was a gift.. .

Rosie wasn't waiting for her in the hall, nor was he on the front steps when she emerged. She looked in vain for him until a horn sounded farther up the block. She recognized the car and, dimly, the little pink smiling face inside. He was waving.

As she neared he car he jumped out and ran around to the other side to open the door for her, just as if the old Chevy were a coach and four and she the princess he'd been waiting for all his long life. He himself appeared rather dapper in a blue-and-white seersucker suit, though she believed she noticed an odd little streak of red just below his ear. It looked like lipstick; perhaps the old scamp had a woman somewhere.

'You look absolutely ravishing, my dear,' he said, eyeing her up and down. 'That dress suits you perfectly. I only wish I were forty years younger!' His eyes twinkled. 'And I'm glad to see you wore your nice white shoes, that's very sensible of you. I knew you were a sensible girl.'

He's being silly, she thought, but she felt a rush of pleasure at the attention. 'Actually, the shoes belong to Rochelle,' she said. 'I'm surprised she didn't take them with her. They're a little too big for me. I had to put tissue paper in the toes.'

'That's my girl!' He beamed. 'I'm sure Rochelle won't mind. And just look at you, you're a vision – a vision all in white.' With a mock-courtly bow he took her arm, about to help her into the car, but suddenly he paused, just as she was bending to get in. 'Uh-oh,' she heard him say, 'this will never do.'

She straightened up and saw that he was frowning. Though he quickly averted his eyes, she realized he'd been staring at her hips. He was obviously embarrassed. She studied herself nervously, already worried about her period. Clearing his throat, he leaned toward her and spoke in a near whisper. I think, Carol, that with a dress as thin as that one, you might be better advised to wear, shall we say, undergarments of the same color.'

She looked down and blushed. He was right. The pink panties she was wearing showed clearly through the thin fabric of the dress.

Even as a voice inside her said And what if they do? They look sexy, she heard herself stammering apologies to him as if she'd committed some terrible faux pas. 'I'll run up and change right now,' she said. 'It'll only take a minute.'

She hurried back toward her apartment, hot with embarrassment, aware of his eyes watching her as she climbed the front steps. Upstairs in her bedroom, feeling like a little girl who'd been naughty and didn't know why, she removed the panties and slipped on a pair of white ones from her drawer. There, she thought, standing before the mirror, now I really am a vision in white… She checked once more in the mirror, half afraid that the delta of red hair below her stomach might be showing through the filmy cloth; but no, she was pale as a statue.

He was still standing by the car when she came back down the steps and seemed so genuinely pleased to see her that her mood brightened again. He hadn't really meant any harm, she told herself, he hadn't meant to embarrass her; it was really her own fault. And he hadn't been looking at her lecherously, not at all, he was just a prissy old grandfather type who wanted her to look her best.

'Wonderful,' he said, 'that's a considerable improvement. Now I know that I can take my little girl anywhere'.'' He helped her into the car and began to close the door. 'Whoops, watch your fingers now.

Don't want you to lose any!'

She tugged her dress down as she sat waiting for him to get in. She hoped there'd be no more remarks about her clothes and was determined to change the subject. I can take my little girl anywhere, he had said; perhaps it would be someplace fancy. She would love a fancy place tonight, with white tablecloths and roses, dark red roses, a vase of them on every table.

'Are you going to tell me where we're going,' she asked, as he climbed in beside her, 'or will it be a surprise?'

He turned the key, and the engine sputtered to life. 'As a matter of fact, he said, a little smile playing about his lips, 'we're going someplace special tonight, in honor of our first fortnight together.'

'Oh?'

'Yes,' he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye as he pulled out into the street. 'Tonight I'm taking you to Coney Island.'

He had been joking, of course, at least in part. As soon as he'd seen the uncertainty and disappointment on her face – disappointment she hadn't been able to hide – he'd laughed and explained that, in fact, their destination was a charming little Scandinavian restaurant near Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, where he'd already made reservations.

But afterward – after a delicious meatless meal with homemade chocolate cake shared between them, and nearly half a bottle of Rosie's nameless wine that he'd produced from a cooler in the back seat and brought into the restaurant with him – he turned to her and said, 'Now it's time to keep my promise. Next stop, Coney Island!'

It sounded like fun, now that dinner had been such a treat. She had heard of Coney Island ever since she'd been a little girl, but she'd never been there. 'Isn't it sort of- you know, dangerous?' she asked, as they made their way along the quiet sidewalk toward the car. Brooklyn was different from her own neighborhood; now that it was night she heard the faint sound of crickets, and the city seemed far away. She found that it made her think of Jeremy.

'Dangerous?' he was saying. 'You mean lots of blacks and Puerto Ricans?'

'Well… yes, I guess so.'

He smiled reassuringly. 'There's nothing to worry about. There are lots of people there, people of all types, but they're all just interested in having a good time, you'll see. Besides, I keep telling you – tonight's a special night. I'd never put my little girl in any danger!' The smile widened. 'Or myself, either! Just between the two of us, I intend to live forever!'

He snapped on the headlights and spun the steering wheel, and they set out through the darkened streets. Rosie had insisted that she wear her seat belt and shoulder harness and wore his as well; like, other old people he was an awkward, hesitant driver who tended to go too slow. He was so short he had to crane his neck to see over the wheel, and he kept peering back and forth at every cross street, proceeding with extreme caution as if unsure of the way.

'Are you looking for signs?' she asked.

'What? Signs?' He darted her a nervous glance.

'For Coney Island.'

'Oh!' He laughed. 'No, no, not really, I just want to get us there safe and sound. You can't be too careful, that's what I always say.' He patted the dashboard. 'Never was fond of these contraptions.'

She soon saw that she'd been wrong; he did know the way, even in the darkness through the back streets of Brooklyn. Once she even saw him looking up through the windshield rather than at the road, as if he was navigating by the stars. Within a few minutes they were rolling down Shore Parkway, the water on their right with the lights of tankers reflected in it, a warm wind rushing through the open windows. Faster traffic passed them by. Behind them, across the water, she saw Staten Island and the glowing form of the Statue of Liberty; ahead stretched the Verrazano Bridge, a spiderweb of cables and lights. The highway passed beneath the nearest arch, an immense gateway, and as the little car moved through it, she felt the bridge pass over her like a wave. It was like entering a new country or, on a certain midnight, a new year, feeling the change wash through her every cell; she felt invigorated now, as if breathing cleaner air – as if her cares, her loneliness, her poverty were in that other world behind her.

In the distance ahead of them, across Gravesend Bay, gleamed the lights of the amusement park. One tall structure, shaped like a palm tree, stood out above the others.

'The parachute jump,' said Rosie. 'I think we'll pass it up. There's so much else to do.'

She was looking toward the lights, enjoying the pleasures of expectation, when the car passed a group of running shapes on the stretch of grass to their right – late-night joggers? fleeing fugitives? It was impossible to tell, they'd gone by so fast, but somehow the vision had been unnerving, those heaving brutish shapes. ..

Moments later she felt a little bump beneath the car. Looking back, straining against the constricting web of her shoulder harness, she could see the dark, humped form of some small animal dead behind them on the highway. Rosie appeared not to notice. They hadn't killed it, she told herself, it had obviously been dead a long time. Still, her mood of expectancy was dimmed.

It was dimmed even more when, after Rosie had pulled into a commercial parking lot on Neptune Avenue near the boardwalk and they'd gotten out, she heard the roll of distant thunder.

'Maybe we'd better stay close to the car,' she said, eyeing the sky uncertainly. It looked clear enough now, though, the half moon almost supernaturally bright, and she could see stars up there she never saw in Manhattan's hazy skies.

Rosie, she saw, was shaking his head and smiling, not even bothering to glance up.

'Don't worry,' he said, 'I heard the report. The rain'll hold off for a while yet. We'll have time to do one or two things, I promise you." He reflected a moment. 'In fact, we'll have time to do three things, three delights: the ferris wheel, the beach, and' – he cocked his head -'and a surprise.'

Ahead of them ran the dark length of the boardwalk, dividing the beach from the amusement area. The ferris wheel rose gaudily in the distance, twirling like a great jeweled pinwheel. As they drew closer, the crowds increased – young people mostly, brown and black and white, a few in beards and yarmulkes, couples and groups of boys and, even on a Saturday night, many families with children in strollers or carriages. The air was filled with a cacophony of music and voices: disco piped from a dodgem-car emporium near Nathan's, salsa from an all-night cuchifrito stand, rock songs sounding hard and tinny from hand-held radios, calliope music from a carousel on the next block, screams from the roller coaster rumbling overhead with cyclone outlined in colored lights on its side, the cries of food vendors selling pizza, Italian sausages, clams on the half shell, saltwater taffy, cotton candy, buttered corn on the cob. Young men in colorful booths hawked games of skill and chance, as if this were some electrified Arabian bazaar. Carol heard the whoop of an occasional siren, maniacal laughter from a loudspeaker outside the funhouse, wild animal sounds from the safari ride, the buzz and grate and clank and rattle of a hundred attractions that, all around them now, were flashing with lights, constantly in motion – a whole new world of movement, of strange, gargantuan machine shapes whirling and spinning and bobbing and dipping like a factory gone mad.

An area devoted entirely to kiddie rides reminded her of the children's section at Voorhis, fond parents grinning at offspring who rode miniature fire engines round and round in endless circles, and racing cars, dune buggies, helicopters, pony carts, old-time autos, boats that churned slowly through a shallow ring of water, spaceships that echoed the huge silver Moon Rocket looming beside the boardwalk, a scale-model kiddie roller coaster (That’s the only kind they'll ever get me on, thought Carol), a half-sized Tilt-a-Whirl, a serpentine caterpillar ride with wide eyes and broad grin, a beleaguered-looking merry-go-round, music issuing from it, with mirrored panels and peeling paint and horses that looked somehow gaunt and starved.

'I'm dizzy,' said Carol, 'this place is like a dream,' instinctively drawing closer to Rosie as he threaded his way through the crowd. She felt particularly vulnerable in her white dress, which stood out from all the clothes around her and which she feared would be stained by ice cream or mustard or a spilled glass of orangeade. Food and drink were everywhere, carried in every hand, forever underfoot; the smell of fried things and spices and the sugar smell of cotton candy hung in the air. She thought of her period again and wondered if her headache would come back. The wine they'd had at dinner was already making her sleepy.

'We'll try the ferris wheel first,' said Rosie, turning to her and raising his voice to make himself heard. 'Maybe it'll help us get our bearings.' He nodded toward the immense structure now ahead of them, a hundred fifty feet of steel and light bulbs called the Wonder Wheel. The seats were enclosed within metal cages lined with wire screening; the outer cages had the better view, while an inner ring of cages slipped back and forth, swinging wildly on short metal tracks.

Carol looked around and lost sight of Rosie, then saw his diminutive form by the ticket booth. He returned to her bearing two yellow tickets. 'Come,' he said, 'we'll take an outside car. You're not scared, are you?'

Carol hesitated. 'Well, I've been on ferris wheels before, at county fairs… but never anything this big.'

He chuckled. 'Don't worry,' he said, ushering her into a waiting car, 'it's no more dangerous than going up in an elevator.'

The car was large. Haifa dozen people were already inside, seated on two small wooden benches. She and Rosie took their seats on the third, Carol making sure the seat was clean before sitting down. An attendant slid the door shut, enclosing them all within the wire cage.

There was a sudden vibration; the great wheel began to turn. The car gave a lurch and was airborne. On the bench behind them a couple began talking urgently in Spanish; on the farther seat a small, nervous child asked its parents, 'When's it gonna stop?'

The car did stop, halfway up the side of the circle, while down below two more cars were filled. Just outside the cage glowed a row of bare light bulbs, with thousands more ringing the wheel, illuminating the thick iron cogs, the peeling turquoise paint, the rusting chicken wire that stretched like a spiderweb between the metal braces, as if warning that, up close, the material world was but an insubstantial thing, with gaps yawning wide.

Carol turned and looked behind her, at the grotesque illuminated facade of Spook-a-Rama, with its strange twenty-foot-tall monster grinning at the onlookers and the walls polkadotted with signs: See Dracula's screaming head chopped off! See Frankenstein speaking from the grave! special today: see the invisible Man. She smiled and was going to bring the last to Rosie's attention when the car gave another lurch and once more began to rise. Signs advertising Bat Woman, Cat Woman, Screechy Nell, and Coffin Nanny flashed past, come-ons for Meatless Bony Sam and Skully the Ghost Head dropped away beneath them, and, with a chorus of oohs and ahs from the other seats, they found themselves in the air, nearing the top of the wheel, the car rocking gently with the motion.

Once again it slowed to a halt as more people climbed on, but now the whole amusement park was laid out at their feet, a wilderness of lights, the rides below them twisting along their miniature tracks like children's toys beneath a Christmas tree, others spinning like beach umbrellas. Behind them came terrified, delighted screams from the roller coaster. Across Surf Avenue, before a wall of housing projects, a BMT subway train rumbling along its elevated track looked like just another ride, as if the entire city out there to the west were merely one vast amusement park.

'It's beautiful!' said Carol.

Rosie looked up and blinked distractedly at the scene; he had been peering at his watch. 'Yes,' he said, 'I knew you'd like it.' He hummed a little song to himself and sat back in the seat, staring not at the world below but at the sky.

On the right, in the distance, she could see the outline of the Verrazano Bridge. Nearer, to the left, stretched the expanse of boardwalk and dark sand and, beyond it, the darker ocean, with rows of lights reflected in the water, miles off, where freighters lay mysteriously at anchor. A combination of sounds drifted up to her, music and voices, machines and distant waves, like a flood of all the memories in the world.

Another lurch; the car began its descent, the great wheel fell away, and they seemed to be settling downward without apparent support, slipping toward the sound and lights and the dark walls rising up to block the view.

They went around a second time. Once more the boardwalk, beach, and ocean dropped into view, Carol wondering what lands lay beyond the dark horizon. She felt a sudden tickle on her hand and looked down to see a tiny six-spotted ladybug crawling dili-gently over her thumb, like a shiny little red plastic toy from the amusement park below. 'HeUo, bug,' she said, 'are you coming for a ride with us?' She held her hand out to Rosie, who smiled wanly.

'When this is over,' he said, 'we'U take a walk along the sand, how'U that be?'

'That will be fine,' she said, looking back toward the beach.

As the wheel turned, the car on the inner track ahead of them rolled clatteringly toward their own. Carol gave a little gasp of alarm but felt foolish when, to a chorus of screams within it, the other car swung away just before it hit them. Rosie smiled, and Carol looked down to find the bug was gone. Scared off, she supposed.

On the next ascent, Carol felt the same excitement as the car rose to the top of the wheel and the scenery lay spread out below, and the same inevitable disappointment as the car moved onward, back toward the ground. The view had become precious to her because of its very transience, a glimpse from a moving platform. Sometimes her own life, too, seemed as fleeting.

'I wonder if we'll get another time around,' she said.

'Hmm? Oh, no, I imagine this will be the last,' said Rosie. He seemed preoccupied; he'd been staring with rigid fascination at the light bulb that glowed just beyond the window of the car. She peered at it just in time to see a small red dot with black legs mashed burning against the heated glass of the bulb, but then the car scraped noisily along the exit track and an attendant was hauling open the metal doors and urging people out. She followed Rosie toward the passageway, feeling disturbed but unable to express it. Her head had begun to ache again.

'Come,' he was saying. 'Let's see what it's like down by the water.'

They walked up a nearby ramp to the boardwalk, continuing on it past a line of food stands, tattoo parlors, and fortune-telling booths. From the space below their feet came the sound of soul music and salsa; dimly she heard voices. Ahead of them another ramp led out onto the sand, which stretched away toward the shifting black line of surf.

The beach looked mysterious in the moonlight, dotted here and there with shapes that could have been dreamers or driftwood or corpses. She followed Rosie out onto the sand, feeling it give beneath her shoes, making walking difficult. She took the shoes off and held them in her hand, walking barefoot, the sand deliriously cold between her toes.

Rosie turned and watched what she was doing. 'Be careful,' he said, with a hint of disapproval, 'there's a lot of broken glass around here.'

Behind them, in the darkness beneath the boardwalk, she could make out the shapes of teenagers smoking, listening to radios, or embracing in the sand. She turned away, the sound of the music receding as she moved slowly toward the water. To her right a black couple stood and kissed in the middle of an empty stretch of beach, like a tree standing alone on an arid plain. Beyond them she saw the lights of a steel pier extending into the water; past that, much farther past, she could see the lights of ships. On either side of her, jetties of huge boulders thrust deep into the surf.

As she and Rosie drew closer to the water's edge, the sound of radios, the music of the carousels and games, was lost behind the steady roar of waves.

'Follow me,' said Rosie, a touch of urgency in his voice. 'Let's get far away from everybody else.' He began walking along the edge of the water, away from the lights. Beside them the waves seemed to make an angrier noise, though in the darkness their height was difficult to judge. Once again Carol heard the distant roll of thunder and wondered how long it would be before the rain came.

They walked along the water, saying nothing. Gradually they came to a stretch of beach where the garbage seemed less plentiful and where Carol could find no other people, unless there were couples crouched unseen in the sand making love. The only shapes on that stretch of beach were the seagulls, scattered over the sand like ghostly white statues. The birds made no sound at all, nor did they take to the air when the two of them walked past; they simply turned and watched the pair, as if waiting.

Abruptly Rosie stopped and looked down at the water. 'I think we've gone far enough,' he said. 'Let's go back now.' He walked a little way, then stopped. 'Funny,' he said suddenly. 'Come over here right now and I'll show you a trick.'

He was pointing to a certain spot at his feet where the ocean had just gone out. Nearby, up from the water's edge, lay a curving line of clam shells, like ashtrays half filled with sand; they reminded her somehow of the dead animal they'd passed on the highway. 'If you stand right here with me,' he said, 'and hold my hand real tight, I guarantee you won't get wet.'

Carol moved next to him. 'You'd better take your shoes off like I did,' she said. 'The next wave's going to soak your feet up to the ankles.'

But he was putting his finger to his lips. 'Sssshhh,' he whispered, 'you have to know the trick. Just close your eyes and try not to move.'

She did as she was told, and heard the hiss of the oncoming wave. She shut her eyes tightly, expecting to feel the chill of water sweeping by, but felt instead old Rosie throw his arms around her, and heard the sudden raucous cries of seagulls screaming up and down the beach. She was so surprised that she opened her eyes; Rosie was gazing fiercely up at the moon, and just in front of them the wave was parting, sweeping past them without so much as touching…

She shut her eyes again and felt the old man relax his hold. 'Sorry if I scared you,' he was saying gently, his voice soft, almost intimate.

'You can open your eyes now.*

She looked down. 'Rosie, that was wonderful!' she said. 'How did you do it?'

He was already ambling away. 'Just a question of finding the right spot,' he said over his shoulder. 'It's a game we old-timers know. Nothing to it, really.'

He began to whistle. Above him in the blackness the half-moon floated over the beach like an alien presence, holding something unnatural in its geometries. She trudged after him through the sand, her feet as dry as if she'd stayed indoors.

The music and the screams were louder now. They were passing through a line of arcades below the boardwalk, ignoring the enticements of the vendors. Shoot the Rapids! Shoot the Hoops! proclaimed the billboards. They passed the peeling facade of the World in Wax Musee but didn't stop to go inside.

Rosie, in fact, seemed to be rushing her. He had actually taken her hand as they'd walked up from the beach, mumbling something about 'rain coming soon, time enough for one more ride,' and he'd persuaded her, shamed her, into going on the one thing she'd vowed she'd never do. They were heading toward the roller coaster.

Next to it loomed the entranceway of the Hell Hole, a giant red Satan in front holding a pitchfork obscenely from his crotch. All Ye Who Enter Here, Abandon Hope, a signboard read. Satan seemed to leer as they passed.

'I think he's trying to warn us to go home,' said Carol, nervousness constricting her chest.

'What? Who?' Rosie seemed distracted again; he had been looking up at the stars.

'Satan,' said Carol. 'I think he knows where we're going.'

Rosie let out a sputter of laughter. 'Satan? Who's he?' She felt his grip tighten on her hand; he was leading her toward the ticket booth. 'Come on,' he said, 'the line's moving now, I think we'll make this run.'

The open red cars were filling up quickly. Carol was about to slip into one of those in the middle, but Rosie steered her toward one in the rear. 'It's better here,' he said. 'I mean, you won't find it so frightening, your first time. Trust me.' The hand tightened on hers once more.

'Okay,' said Carol, swallowing. She felt a chill sea breeze on her neck and, sitting beside him, removed a light blue kerchief from her purse and tied it around her throat; it was going to get colder when the ride started. Rosie was looking up again, but then he turned to * her arid frowned.

'What's the matter?' asked Carol.

'That kerchief,' said Rosie. He was reaching for it. 'It's much too nice. I really don't think you ought to wear it here. It might blow away, and then you'll go blaming poor old me! Here.' He unfastened it and handed her a clean white handkerchief from his jacket pocket. 'Put yours away and wear this. If you lose it, it won't be any loss. Come on, now, Carol, the ride will be starting in a moment.'

She fastened the handkerchief around her chin and huddled down beside him. Her heart was pounding so hard she could almost hear it above the thunder of the other cars and the screams of the riders. Or perhaps it was the thunder she was hearing… A burly attendant came down the line at last to fasten them into their seats with leather waist straps.

'Don't worry so,' said a small voice close to her ear. Rosie was smiling at her, eyes merry. 'Just repeat that angel song I taught you and you'll feel better. Come on, now, you remember. Sing with me.' He began chanting the tuneless little rhyme he'd had her repeat that evening in her room. 'Ghe'el, ghavoola, ghae'teine…" She knew the words were in the Old Language, but their meaning had long ago been lost to her, and her mouth refused to shape the syllables.

'You're not trying,' he said. 'Believe me, Carol, it's an excellent way of calming down. Come on, now, let's try again. Riya migdl'eth, riyamoghu… '

He sang the words, and she sang them back to him. With a grating of metal and a chorus of excited screams from the passengers in front, the car began to slide forward on the track.

'Sing,' Rosie commanded. 'Don't think about where you are. Sing!'

Carol closed her eyes and sang the words. 'Migghe'el ghae'teine moghuvoola… ' They did help, somehow, just like Rosie said they would – they helped even though she didn't know what she was singing. Or was that what made them so powerful? She tried not to think about the vibration of the car, the steep climb that threw her back against the seat as they ascended the first rise. She gripped

Rosie's hand and shut her eyes and sang the song to herself.

She opened her eyes when the car seemed to be slowing down, and gasped, for ahead of her the other cars seemed to be spilling into an abyss – and then they too were hurtling downward, faster than they'd have fallen, faster than she ever thought she could go, and screams were in her ear and her eyes were shut tight again and she felt Rosie's hand on hers and once again she sang the words as if they were a prayer.

It was not so bad with her eyes closed. She even managed to open them before the final run, for she thought she'd felt a raindrop on her cheek. They had just reached the top of the last peak, the highest one; the car climbed slower and slower and almost stopped, until for a moment it seemed poised, balanced between the two worlds, ready to slide forward but equally ready to slide back. And just as they were teetering on the edge, with the whole park spread below them -the ferris wheel, the beach, the dark ocean – she thought she saw a wisp of fog along the ramp ahead of them. For a moment she thought it might be smoke from a burning bulb, or some trick of the moonlight… and then in the next instant they were hurtling downward, ahead of them people were screaming, she was holding onto Rosie with all her might, and they were dropping with such speed she thought the straps would break and she'd be thrown right out of the car, into the darkness. 'Sing, Carol!' he commanded, and she sang, together they sang, raising their voices above the roaring and the screams. And suddenly, like a vision, there was a huge white bird before them, hanging angelically in the air, and Rosie was reaching up – protecting her, she knew – and batting at it with something in his hand, something that gleamed in the light, his hand moving so fast she couldn't see, and he must have broken its neck, because the next moment she felt its body smash against her, then fall away behind, and it left a bloody stain all over the front of her new white dress.

Later, as they stumbled from the park, Rosie comforting her and dabbing ineffectually at her dress, she felt, almost in sympathy, a trickle of her own blood at the juncture of her legs. By the time they reached the car, the sky had opened up and it began to rain.

On rainy evenings, after Bert Steegler had locked up the Cooperative and bolted the huge sliding doors of the barn that served them as a feed and grain warehouse, and after his wife, Amelia, had closed the books for the night, having carefully recorded the day's entries for parsnips and soybeans and peas, the two of them would hurry across the street to their house by the schoolyard, share supper with their eldest daughter and her family, and then don their old raincoats and go back outside. They would take the long way around the square, avoiding the mud near the school and continuing past the cemetery to the home of Jacob and Elsi van Meer.

When the weather was warm, a few of the old-timers would already be gathered on the van Meers' front porch sipping mint tea with chunks of ice in it from the freezer at the Go-op, the men with their pipes, the women crocheting or knitting. They would sit and watch the rain come down, talking of crops and the Scriptures. When a vehicle went by on the road that wound past their front yard, an event that occurred only rarely, they would speculate on who was inside and where he was bound. When the iced tea ran out and the women were yawning and the men had smoked their last pipeful of tobacco, they would stretch, get slowly to their feet, exchange goodbyes, and head for home.

They didn't always feel the need to talk; sometimes they just sat together in silence, listening to whatever sounds the night made. They craved no entertainment. They were content.

Or most of them were. Adam Verdock, who'd just arrived from his dairy down the road, recalled a relative of his up in Lebanon who'd yielded to his wife – not one of their sect – and had had his home wired for electricity. ' 'Twas hard to stop, after that. First he bought the woman an electric steam iron, then he bought one of them things with blue lights that kill the bugs, and finally he went and bought himself a television set, just like young Jonas Flinders.'

There was a general sighing among those assembled, and a rueful shaking of heads. They knew what was coming; most of them had heard the tale before.

'Well, he had that thing put in, right in his living room where he could watch it all the time, and at first he thought it was something really special. But then his little ones took to it, and I hear it turned their heads right around. They got to scanting their dinner and their chores so they could sneak in and watch, they'd be asking for every frippery they saw, and his oldest boy near got himself thrown out of school for the way he was acting 'round the girls. That was enough for him; he took that contraption and buried it out behind his hog wallow. Now he does penance for two hours every night, staring at a blank spot of wall right where that thing used to sit. He says it's to remind him of his sin.'

More headshaking, sounds of assent, another round of tea. Bethuel Reid got up and walked noisily to the bathroom; Jacob van Meer continued rocking in his favorite chair; Adam Verdock filled his latest corncob pipe.

Finally van Meer cleared his throat. 'Wouldn't be surprised if that nephew of yours decided to buy one of those things, just to please that woman of his.'

Verdock let that sit a while, puffing ruminatively. 'No,' he said at last, 'that ain't what she wants. What she wants is company. She's from a big family, you know, one of them New Church clans up in Sidon, and she's used to havin' lots of folks around. I think she won't be happy till she's got herself some little ones – and that ain't up to her, it's up to Sarr. Right now he ain't ready to raise a child, and he knows even less about raisin' crops.' He paused. 'Ain't that right, Lise?'

His wife didn't look up from her knitting. She was a Poroth and, consequently, inclined to be more sympathetic. 'Seems to me Sarr's doin' all he can with that place,' she said, 'and I think he's doin' right by his woman. At least he's agreed to take in a boarder.'

'Yes, I saw the fellow at the store,' said her husband. 'You remember, Bert, 'twas last Sunday. Fat fellow, kinda soft lookin', but he seemed likely enough. Got a little insolent with Rupert.'

Steegler nodded. 'Struck me that way too. Young Sarr seems to speak well of him, though. Brother Rupert, now, he's got little good to say for a fellow who doesn't earn his keep.' He paused. 'Of course, Rupert would talk that way, wouldn't he?'

'Now don't be unchristian,' said Amelia. 'We're goin' to be guests at Brother Rupert's house tomorrow morning, don't forget.'

There were nods all around. Worship that week was going to be held at the Lindts'. The following Sunday would see it at Ham Stoudemire's, and then would come the Poroths' turn.

Elsi van Meer looked up. 'You suppose Lotte Sturtevant will be there? She's gettin' awful close to her time, from the look of her.'

'She's got a few weeks yet,' said Amelia. 'But I'll grant she's sure swelled up. Never seen the like. It will be a son, I'll wager – and a mighty big one.'

'She ain't due till the end of the month,' said Lise Verdock. 'It may well take till August.'

Van Meer paused in his rocking. 'Let's hope so,' he said. 'Let's hope it goes past Lammas Eve.'

'Amen,' they all said hurriedly, and nodded. 'Amen,' said Bethuel Reid, who had just come back out to the porch. He shuffled across to the old wicker couch and sat heavily beside his wife.

Van Meer resumed his rocking. His wife shooed a bug from the pitcher of iced tea. Lise stared meditatively at the rain falling in thick cascades from the eaves of the porch. In the distance came the sound of thunder.

'Really comin' down,' she said. 'Funny how nobody predicted it. 'Twasn't the sort of day for rain.' She paused.' 'Bout time we had some, though. Corn's been needin' it.'

The others turned to stare out at the night. Once again they heard the rumble of thunder. Past the farther side of the house, beyond the line of trees, they could hear the rain beating against the tombstones in the cemetery.

'Amen,' Reid said again.

July Tenth

Sarr and Deborah were going to spend the whole day at worship; they had walked toward Gilead hours before Freirs woke up. He was left to share the farm with the animals: the seven cats, four hens, and rooster, the birds that sang unseen behind the leaves, the bugs that whirled frenziedly in the heat. The sun itself was hidden behind a lowering grey sky; the ground was still damp from last might's rain and had a stagnant smell. On days like this the earth seemed capable of breeding insects, like the carcasses of horses were once believed to do.

From the window he could see Bwada and Rebekah chasing after something near the barn, the grey cat in the lead despite her greater age. Lately they'd taken to stalking grasshoppers, which swarmed around the cornfield in abundance.

Foregoing his exercises, he went into the farmhouse and made himself some breakfast in the kitchen, leafing gloomily through one of the Poroths' religious magazines, and then returned to his room out back for some serious reading. He picked up Dracula, which he'd started the night before, but couldn't bring himself to scribble more than a few lackadaisical notes.

Tried to settle into the Stoker, but that soppy Victorian sentimentality began to annoy me again. The book begins marvelously, on a really frightening note – Harker trapped in that Carpathian castle, doomed to be the prey of its terrible owner – but when Stoker switches the locale to England amp; his main characters to women, he simply can't sustain that initial tension.

For that matter, what's so bad about becoming a vampire if it means you live forever? Wish one would come amp; bite me. I'm sure I'd develop a taste for blood eventually.

Besides, the story's spoiled for me: I keep picturing Carol in all the female roles amp; find myself wanting her. Dear Carol, weather is lousy, wish you were here…

With the Poroths gone he felt lonely and bored. He found himself staring at the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling, the mildew on the walls, the dying roses drooping in their vase. It was hard to concentrate. Though he'd brought shelfloads of books to entertain him, he felt restless and wished he owned a car; he'd have gone for a drive, visited friends in Princeton, perhaps even headed back to New York… But as things stood he had nothing to do but take another walk.

He picked two sprigs of pennyroyal from the garden where Deborah had shown him and stuck them behind the earpieces of his glasses. They tickled as badly as the mosquitoes they were supposed to ward off, and even with no one to see him he was conscious of how silly he must look. When he reached the stream he tossed them in the water.

He followed the stream's twisting path back into the woods. Even though he'd seen it only once before, the way already seemed familiar. Ducking once more beneath the arch of vines and branches, he winced as he prepared to get his feet wet. To his surprise the water seemed less cold this time. Thin wisps of greenish scum floated here and there on the surface.

The pool, though, when he reached it, was as clear as he'd remembered. There were some new animal tracks in the wet sand. Ringed by oaks, the place seemed strangely beautiful, yet even here, somehow, he felt bored. Again he waded into the center of the water and looked up at the sky through the trees. In the center of his vision, directly overhead, a flock of gulls were heading westward, their great wings extended. He could almost hear them shrieking.

The gulls passed. Feeling himself alone once more, he recalled the excitement he'd felt that night on the roof of the barn and, by way of experiment, made a few of the same gestures with his face and hands. .. but his memory failed him, the moment had passed, and these half-hearted movements seemed awkward and unaccountably robbed of their power. Standing there up to his ankles in water, he felt foolish.

Worse, upon leaving the pool he found a bloated red-brown leech clinging like a tumor to his right ankle. It wasn't large – a long way from the 'cluster of black grapes' that some Faulkner hero he'd read about had found dangling from his groin – and he was able to scrape it off with a stone; but it left him with a little round bite that oozed blood and a feeling, somehow, of physical helplessness. The woods had once again become hostile to him and, he was sure, would forever remain so. Something had ended.

Listlessly he followed the stream back to the farm. When he reached the edge of the woods he heard, once more, a distant shrieking overhead and saw another line of gulls, if that's what they were, sweeping high across the sky. How can gulls be all the way out here? he wondered. We're so jar from the sea.

When he looked down, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a familiar grey shape. It was Bwada – but Bwada as he'd never seen her before. She was crouched on the other side of the brook among the rocks and weeds, frozen like an animal in a museum diorama caught just before it springs. Her eyes were wide, glazed, and somehow astonished-looking, as if she were staring at something directly in front of her but seeing nothing. All at once her body gave a tiny jerk, a kind of hiccough, and Freirs saw strands of pink foam at the corners of her jaws. He realized, suddenly, that she was hurt.

He remembered Deborah's warnings about rabies, but dismissed them. Rabies didn't take effect so fast; he'd seen Bwada racing through the grass only an hour before. More likely she'd simply eaten something that had disagreed with her.

He stood watching the cat for a moment, uncertain what, if anything, he should do. Insects buzzed around him in the stillness; from the cornfield behind him came the shrill cawing of the crows. 'Are you okay, girl?' he said at last, with a warmth he didn't feel. 'You all right?'

She continued to stare directly ahead of her, the empty gaze never wavering. He saw with surprise that her claws were extended; they were gripping the rock she clung to as if at any moment it might rise up and shake her loose. Abruptly she gave another hiccough, and her body seemed to tremble.

Bwada was the only cat he actively disliked, the only one that regularly hissed at him, but with the Poroths gone he felt responsible for her. Frowning, he walked to the water's edge, picked out a flat rock in the middle of the stream, and in two long strides was standing on dry land beside her. Hesitantly he reached out his hand. The animal's gaze remained turned away from him, but suddenly her Up curled back and he heard, above the murmur of the water, a low growl building in her throat. Instantly he yanked back his hand. He was just about to turn away when in a fleeting moment of sunlight he noticed, for the first time, a dark, glistening stain on the rock where her body pressed against it.

Warily he circled her to get a better view, keeping his distance. The animal's growl became louder, higher in pitch. Suddenly he saw it, on the side that had been turned away from him, almost hidden by fur: a rose-red hole gaping in the flesh beneath her ribs. Around this wound the skin was folded back in small triangular flaps, like little petals. It was clear, even from several feet away, that the wound had been made from the inside.

He remembered Poroth's story of the mouse caught in the man's throat and recalled a kind of slug he'd read about that, when eaten by a bird, will bore its way out through the bird's stomach. But he'd never heard of such things happening to a cat.

More likely, he decided, she had impaled herself on a tree branch or the sharp end of a root – something that, as she'd disengaged herself, had tugged the flesh out with it. He was surprised there wasn't more blood.

One thing was certain: there'd be plenty of blood – his own – if he tried to pick her up. In her condition she would probably try to scratch his eyes out. Still, he would have to do something; the Poroths would expect it. After all, the damned animal was like one of their own children, especially to Sarr. He thought, briefly, of trying to contact the two of them, but he had no idea where they were • today. Even with a phone, it would be almost impossible to locate them; they could be at services at any house in the community.

It occurred to him, suddenly, that there was one thing he might do: find himself a pair of gloves – surely Sarr must have work gloves somewhere-and use them to carry the hurt animal back to the house until the Poroths returned. Yes, that was it. He cleared the brook in two strides and hurried up the hill toward the farmhouse.

The slope was more tiring than he'd expected, the proof of how out of condition he was. He felt thoroughly winded by the time he reached the house and pounded up the steps of the back porch, where two of the younger cats eyed him with alarm. Once inside, he realized that he didn't know where to look. This is crazy, he told himself as he dashed up the stairs. She'll be dead before I get back.

He checked the low cabinet in the upstairs hall, but it contained only linen and blankets. Entering the Poroths' bedroom, where the creaking of the floorboards made him feel like an intruder, he stood panting in the center of the rug. Where would Sarr keep his gloves? There was a Bible on the nightstand by the bed, a kerosene lantern on the dresser. He peered at the shelves that ringed the crowded little closet, but found only hats, shoeboxes tied with twine, a painting set, a sewing box, two old cast-iron banks, and various dark folded clothes of Deborah's that he was nervous about searching through. The dresser contained neatly folded clothes and, in the top drawer, a tidy stack of deeds, diplomas, loan receipts, and a few old photos, including one of a severe-looking bearded man with Sarr's jaw and brows.

By the time he'd decided that the gloves must be in the workroom above the barn, he was certain it was already too late. Anyway, he'd had enough of this. Tiredly he ran downstairs, hurried out to his own room, and tore the frayed woolen blanket off the bed. If the damned animal were still alive, this would serve as well as gloves.

He trotted back down the slope to the stream, the blanket beneath his arm. Even before he reached it, he could see that the rock on which the cat perched was now bare.

Probably dragged herself off into the woods to die, he thought, disappointed more at his own wasted efforts than at the loss of the cat. He eyed the pines across the stream; there'd be no finding her in there.

He wondered what he'd tell the Poroths when they got home; bearers of bad news were always blamed, and, after all, he'd been left in charge here today. He could picture their anger as he told them of the hurt animal and of his own failed efforts to help her. If he hadn't taken so long up at the house, she might still be alive. Maybe his own shirt would have sufficed, instead of a blanket. Maybe he'd been a coward not to have used his bare hands. Sarr would never have hesitated.

Glumly he walked back to his outbuilding and threw the blanket on his bed. Better to say nothing, he decided. Better to pretend he'd never seen the cat. Let Sarr discover the body himself.

He spent the rest of the afternoon reading in his room, pushing through the Stoker. He wasn't in the best mood to concentrate.

Sarr and Deborah got back after four. They shouted hello and went into the house. When Deborah called Freirs for dinner, neither of them had been outside.

All six cats were on the back porch, washing themselves after their evening meal, when he walked up to the house.

'Have you seen Bwada?' asked Poroth, as Freirs pushed through the screen door, the cats filing behind him into the kitchen.

'Haven't seen her all day.'

He had done it; the lie was told. There'd be no going back now.

'Sometimes she doesn't come when I call her in for supper,' said Deborah. 'I think it's because she eats the things she kills.'

'Well,' said Sarr,' 'twill still be light after supper, and I'll go look for her.'

'Fine,' said Freirs. 'I'll help.' Perhaps, he decided, he could lead the other down toward the stream. Maybe the two of them would come upon the body. Resignedly he sat down to eat.

And then, in the middle of dinner, came a scratching at the door. Sarr got up and opened it.

In walked Bwada.

What a relief! Never thought I'd see her again – amp; certainly not in such good condition.

She was hurt badly earlier today, I know she was. That wound in her side looked fatal, amp; now it's only a hairless reddish swelling.

Luckily the Poroths didn't notice my shock; they were too busy fussing over Bwada, seeing what was wrong. 'Look, she's hurt herself,' said Deborah. 'She's bumped into something.' The animal did move quite stiffly, in fact; there was a clumsiness in the way she held herself. When Sarr put her down after examining the swelling, she slipped when she tried to walk away, like someone walking on slick ice instead of a familiar wooden floor.

The Poroths reached a conclusion similar to mine: that she'd fallen on something, a rock or a branch, amp; had badly bruised herself. They attribute her lack of coordination to shock or perhaps, as San-put it, 'a pinching of the nerves.' Sounds logical enough, I suppose. Sarr told me before I came out here for the night that if she's worse tomorrow he'll take her to the local vet, even though he'll have a hard time paying for treatment. I offered to lend him money, or even pay for the visit myself; I'd like to hear a doctor's opinion.

Maybe the wound really wasn't that deep after all; maybe that's why there was so little blood. They say animals have wonderful restorative powers in their saliva or something. Maybe she just went off into the woods amp; nursed herself back to health. Maybe the wound simply closed.

But in a few short hours?

I couldn't continue dinner amp; told the Poroths my stomach hurt, which was partly true. We all watched Bwada stumble around the kitchen floor, ignoring the food Deborah put before her as if it weren't there. Her movements were awkward, tentative, like a newborn animal still unsure how to move its muscles. When I left the house a little while ago, she was huddled in the corner staring at me. Deborah was crooning over her, but the cat was staring at me.

Killed a monster of a spider behind my suitcase tonight. That new spray really does a job. When Sarr was in here a few days ago he said the room smelled of it, but I guess my allergy's too bad for me to notice.

I enjoy watching the zoo outside my screens. Put my face close amp; stare at the bugs eye to eye. Zap the ones whose faces I don't like with my spray can.

Tried to read more of the Stoker book, but one thing keeps bothering me: the way that cat stared at me. Deborah was brushing its back, Sarr fiddling with his pipe, amp; that cat just stared at me amp; never blinked. 1 stared back, said, 'Hey, Sarr? Look at Bwada. That damned cat's not blinking.' And just as he looked up, it blinked. Heavily.

Hope we can go to the vet's tomorrow, because I want to ask him how a cat might impale itself on a rock or a stick, amp; how fast such a wound might heal.

Cold night. Sheets are damp amp; the blanket itches. Wind from the woods – ought to feel good in the summer, but it doesn't feel like summer.

That damned cat didn't blink till I mentioned it.

Almost as if it understood me.

Book Six: The Green Ceremony

And my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did… So I did the charm over again, and touched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner, and said the old words… and I was so glad I could do it quite well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that came into my head… songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones.

Machen, The White People

July Eleventh

The sky above the city is the color of dirty water, the air heavy with humidity. An occasional drizzle smears the windows of the massive grey building near Riverside Park and runs in sooty patterns down the bricks. Inside, the apartment smells of old rugs and furniture, and of an old man who only bathes when he has to.

The Old One doesn't care. As he enters the front hall carrying a brown paper bag of groceries and, on top of them, his day's mail, shakes off his umbrella in the bathroom and leaves it open in the tub to dry, then sits down on the stained lid of the toilet and carefully slips off his galoshes, he pays no attention to the place's shabbiness or smell, or to the pleasures of coining home. Repairing to the kitchen, he stocks the sparsely filled refrigerator with groceries and removes the tape and tissue paper from the bag; the mail he throws away unopened, except for two bills. Tugging out his false teeth, twin strands of saliva stretching from the ends, he deposits them in a water glass in the bathroom. He spends the next half hour at his desk, balancing his checkbook and writing out checks for the rent and electricity, delicately licking the stamps he keeps in a cigar box in the drawer and affixing them with care to the envelopes. These he leaves on the table in the hall for the next time he goes out. Then, idly scratching his nose, he walks to the bookcase in the living room and stoops before a set of drab brown Victorian volumes gathering dust on the second shelf from the bottom.

How amusing, he thinks, as he withdraws one of them – amusing that a key to dark and ancient rites should survive in such innocuous-looking form.

A young fool like Freirs would probably refuse to believe it. Like the rest of his doomed kind, he'd probably expect such lore to be found only in ancient leather-bound tomes with gothic lettering and portentously sinister tides. He'd search for it in mysterious old trunks and private vaults, in the 'restricted' sections of libraries, in intricately carved wood chests with secret compartments.

But there are no real secrets, the Old One knows. Secrets are ultimately too hard to conceal. The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone. You can find them on the paperback racks or in any second-hand bookshop.

You just have to know where to look – and how to put the pieces together.

There are pieces in an out-of-print religious tract by one Nicholas Keize. And in a certain language textbook which, in its appendix, transcribes nursery rhymes in an obsolete Malaysian dialect surprisingly like Celtic. And in a story, supposedly fiction – but not when read at the right time – by an obscure Welsh visionary who barely suspected why he'd written it, and who regretted it in later years and died a fervent churchman. And in the pictures on a cheap pack of novelty cards based on images from unguessed-of antiquity. And in a Tuscan folk dance included in a certain staid old dance book which, along with plies and pirouettes, has the dancer make a pattern called 'the changes.'

The pieces are there, simply waiting to be fitted together into what, from the start, they were meant to be: a set of instructions for the Ceremonies.

Carefully the Old One wraps the book in tissue paper and tapes it closed. He leaves it on the table in the hall. He will send it off tomorrow, in the box he's prepared.

He hopes that Carol likes his little gift. Dancing is supposed to be her specialty.

Bwada's walking better now, seems more affectionate than ever toward the Poroths – even lets Deborah pet her, which is something new – amp; has an amazing appetite, though she seems to have difficulty swallowing. Some minor mouth infection, perhaps; she won't let anybody see. Sarr says her recovery demonstrates how the Lord watches over the innocent; affirms his faith, he says. Quote: 'If I'd taken her to Flemington to see the vet, I'd just have been throwing away good money.'

Later this week he'll have his mother over to take a look at her. She healed Bwada once before, amp; maybe she can do it again.

But even without her, the swelling on Bwada's side is almost gone. Hair growing back over it like mildew growing up my wall, spreading fast.

Mildew. I'm all too familiar with it now. Every day it climbs higher on the walls of this place, like water rising; glad my books are on shelves off the ground. So damp in here that my note paper sags; books go limp, as if they're made of wet cloth. At night my sheets are clammy amp; cold, but each morning I wake up sweating. My envelopes have been ruined – glue's gotten moistened, sealing them all shut. Stamps in my wallet are stuck to the dollar bills. When I wrote a letter to Carol today, I had to use the Poroths' glue to stick the thing together.

Spent a lot of my afternoon in here rereading 'The Turn of the Screw,' which I hadn't looked at since my undergraduate days. Seem to be alone in finding it the single most pretentious amp; overrated ghost tale ever written (though perfect for the ML A crowd); Clayton's film version, which I showed in class this year, is ten times as effective. Searched in vain amid the psychological abstractions for an authentic chill amp; found only one image that moved me: his description of a rural calm as 'that hush in which something gathers or crouches… '

Outside, another drizzly day. Soggy-looking slate-grey skies, gloomy evening, thunder. Hasn't let up since Saturday night, amp; depressing as hell, like something out of Cold Comfort Farm. One huge cloud seems to have settled over the landscape like a bowl. A few pale shapes – seagulls again? – high overhead, but no other birds around, amp; no sign of the sun.

Wandered around the farm late in the afternoon, bored with sitting still. The Poroths were out pulling weeds among the shoots of corn amp; were blessedly silent for once. Was tempted to join them but didn't feel like getting my hands dirty, much less spending an hour or two bent almost double.

Rainy night. After dinner, reluctant to come out here amp; be alone again so soon, hung around the farmhouse with the Poroths, earnestly squinting through Walden in their living room while Sarr whittled amp; Deborah crocheted. Rain sounded better in there, a restful thumping on the roof; out here it's not quite so cozy.

Around nine or ten Sarr went to die kitchen amp; hauled out the radio, amp; we sat around listening to the news, cats purring around us, Sarr with Azariah in his lap, Deborah petting Toby, me allergic amp; sniffing. (My 'total immersion' experiment isn't working.)

Nice to have a radio, though, amp; feel that tenuous contact with the world out there. Even Sarr must recognize the attraction. Remember hearing how, up in Maine, some poor families spend each Sunday sitting in their car parked in their yard, listening to the only radio they own.

Guess I'm just not cut out to be a modern-day Thoreau.

Halfway through some boring farm report I pointed to Bwada, curled up at my feet, amp; said, 'Hey, get her. You'd think she was listening to the news!' Deborah laughed amp; leaned over to scratch Bwada behind the ears. As she did so, Bwada turned to look at me. I wonder what it is about that cat that makes me so uneasy.

Rain letting up slightly. I'm sitting here slouched over the table, trying to decide if I'm sleepy enough to turn in now. Maybe I should try to read some more, or clean this place up a bit. Things soon grow messy out here, even though I don't have much to keep track of: dust on windowsills, spiderwebs perennially in corners, notes amp; clippings amp; dried-up rose petals scattered over this table.

I think that the rain sound is going to put me to sleep after all. It's almost stopped now, but I can still hear the dripping from the trees outside my window, dripping leaf to leaf amp;, in the end, to the dead leaves that line the forest floor. It will probably continue on amp; off all night. Occasionally I think I hear a thrashing in one of the big trees down in the direction of the barn, but then the sound turns into the falling of the rain.

July Twelfth

Carol staggered into the apartment, fanning herself with a creased copy of Spring: 'Start Fresh with Our Three-Part Summer Makeover.' Her Tuesday-evening dance class had been exhausting, and the ride back downtown no better: twenty-five minutes on a crowded bus with inadequate air conditioning.

Here there was no air conditioning at all. As soon as I have the money I'm buying one, she reminded herself. It must be a hundred and ten in here. No sooner had she locked the door behind her than she was unbuttoning her damp clothes, dropping them to the floor in a heap as she made for the bathroom.

She felt a little better after showering. She brought in the cheap Woolworth's fan from her bedroom and planted it by the TV.

Switching both of them on, she settled back naked on the couch, eyes half closed, and listened to the reading of the news.

Except for the weather, it had been a normal day. The city was closing another hospital; vandals had defaced a statue of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park; blacks were charging police brutality in the arrest of a so-called 'voodoo priest'; the mayor had presided at a fashion show; a girl's head had been found in a trash can near the Columbia campus; and Con Ed was warning consumers to 'go slow' this week on the use of air conditioners. The catalogue was curiously soothing, a meaningless litany. It was almost enough to sleep to.

'Fireman in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn battled a six-alarm blaze that took the lives of at least seven persons, all but two of them children. And now-'

Behind her the buzzer sounded. She roused herself and went to the intercom.

'Package from a Mr Rosebottom.'

She buzzed him in and, stepping into the bedroom, wrapped herself in her bathrobe. A minute later the doorbell rang; she turned down the TV and went to answer it.

'Sign here, please,' said the delivery boy, handing her a flat grey cardboard box, then a slip of yellow paper and a pencil. He seemed bemused at finding an attractive girl in her robe waiting for him and looked as if he were struggling to think of something clever to say. She felt his eyes on her as she scribbled her name, and pulled the bathrobe tighter. 'Thanks, honey,' he said, a flicker of a smile. 'Enjoy it.'

She saw, when she'd gotten the box open, that Rosie had sent her another dress. It was old-fashioned looking, cut similarly to the first – maybe if she felt ambitious she could take it in a bit – but the color, this time, was dark green. Consider this a replacement, he had written in a note. At least this one won't show grass stains!

In the box with it, wrapped in tissue paper, he'd enclosed a second-hand book, a slim brown antique-looking volume whose spine had long since been rubbed clean of lettering. The title page read, The Ridpath Dance Series, Volume TV. On the Folk-Dances of Umbria and Tuscany. Newly translated into English. New York, 18J7. Idly she flipped through it. There were several crude line drawings of peasants dancing in various ungainly costumes, faces utterly expressionless, but most of the book was filled with diagrams, a mass of footprints and black arrows. She thought she recognized a few simple steps – there was one promenade that seemed right out of 'The Cunning Vixen' – but it was difficult to imagine what most of the others must look like. She put the book aside; probably Rosie would know.

Once again the dress bore no label – Wherever does he find these things? she wondered – and, as before, the material felt like silk. Shrugging off her robe, she slipped the dress over her head and examined herself in the mirror on the closet door, pressing the cloth against her belly, breasts, and hips. Like the first dress, now safely packed off to the cleaners, its hemline was cut rather high, and she realized that, once more, she was going to have to keep her knees tight together when she wore it. Maybe Rosie found her legs exciting; or else he just didn't know the length young women were wearing their skirts these days.

She would have to call him to thank him – he's really spoiling me, she decided – but she was feeling too tired now. Still in the dress, she returned to the couch. The cloth felt smooth and cool against her bare skin; there was something a little bit sinful about it. She lay back and stretched her legs. The TV, with its volume down, was practically inaudible.

'Unprecedented temperatures,' someone was saying. 'Freak storms. .. ' She ran her hand inside the collar, touching her neck. 'Warm air masses over New Jersey… '

New Jersey. Visions of the countryside, the peaceful blue skies of the farm, came back to her in the breeze from the fan. She remembered tiny silver fishes darting in the stream, the fields of young corn, Sarr and Deborah and the kittens.

'Reports of thunder,' the TV was saying. 'Changes in the atmosphere… ' She ran her hand deeper beneath the dress, closed her eyes, and thought of Jeremy.

Thunder last night, but heard no rain. Wonder if the weather's affected the stream, because walking by it today, I noticed it's becoming clogged with algae.

Chicken amp; dumplings for dinner. Had three helpings. Deborah didn't seem to mind.

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen, 1818, chapters one through seven. Not the parody I'd expected – the mock-Gothic bit obviously isn't central to the story – but witty nonetheless. Fun to picture Deborah in the leading role.

Love stories tend to bore me, but this one's proved quite bearable so far.

Bwada seems to be almost completely healed now, at least outwardly, though still may have some sort of throat obstruction. When she miaows there's a different timbre, a kind of huskiness. Sarr's mother is coming tomorrow to look at her.

Read some more Le Fanu in bed. 'Green Tea,' about a phantom monkey with eyes that glow, amp; 'The Familiar,' about a staring little man who drives the hero mad. In neither case – cf. de Maupassant's 'The Horla' – is the hero sure just why he's been singled out.

Not the smartest choices right now, the way I feel, because for all the time that fat grey cat purrs over the Poroths, she just stares at me. And snarls. I suppose the accident may have addled her brain a bit, or perhaps she somehow blames me for it, or has forgotten who I am, or something… Can a cat's personality change like that?

Petted Toby tonight, the little orange one – my favorite of the bunch, the one I like to play with even though my nose gets clogged amp; my ears tear. Came away with a tick on my arm which I didn't discover till I undressed for bed. A tiny flat thing, paper thin, like a squashed spider; it was dull red, no doubt from having made a meal for itself on my blood. As a result, I can still feel, even now, imaginary ticks crawling up amp; down my spine.

Damned cat.

July Thirteenth

Another poor night's sleep. Awakened sometime shortly before dawn by thunder, not so distant now. Once or twice I swear it shook the ground. No sense to it at all; the weather had been mild enough when I went to bed, amp; it's just the same right now, with not a sign of rain. Maybe the noise was caused by 'heat lightning' – you sometimes read about such things; but though I sat up for half an hour last night peering through the screens, I saw no lightning.

I did hear someone singing (or trying to) very late, out toward the farmhouse and the road. Possibly just an old tramp out on some night-time excursion, but it didn't sound like one. It's hard to tell, though, when you're half asleep; maybe it was only Sarr or Deborah gargling in the bathroom.

I've been thinking a lot about Deborah lately – about how little Sarr seems to appreciate her. Sure, he grabs her all the time amp; obviously likes having her around, but I wonder if he wouldn't feel the same way toward any woman within reach. Still can't decide if anything went on between him amp; Carol.

For that matter, I wonder just how much Deborah really cares for him. He's tall amp; powerfully built, sure, if you happen to like that type. (And I guess most women do.) But guys like that can sometimes be so goddamned boring…

Of course, Deborah might not mind being bored. Anyone who could spend all day shelling peas, or shoving seeds into holes, or praying on her knees, obviously has a pretty high boredom threshold. Still, I can't help thinking that Deborah's interested in me. She's certainly attentive enough, giving me all that good food, taking my side against Sarr whenever disagreements arise. And she certainly is looking good these days, the more I see of her. That long black dress may cover her up to the neck, but the cloth is thin (thank God for summer!), amp; I'm sure she wears nothing beneath it.

I know it's wrong to have these thoughts, no doubt the loneliness is getting to me, but I can't help wondering if Sarr ever goes off by himself in the evening – a night out with the boys, maybe. I sure wouldn't mind being alone with Deborah some time…

This morning, though, all three of us were together, up in the work area Sarr's constructed in the attic of the barn. The two of them were cutting strips of molding for the extra room upstairs, and I was helping, more or less. I measured, Sarr sawed, Deborah sanded. All in all I hardly felt useful, but what the hell?

While they were busy I stood staring out the window. There's a narrow flagstone path running from the barn to the main house, amp; Toby amp; Zillah were crouched in the middle of it taking the morning sun. Suddenly Bwada appeared on the back porch amp; began slinking along the path in our direction, tail swishing from side to side. When she got close to the two little ones she gave a snarl -1 could see her mouth working – amp; they leaped to their feet, bristling, amp; ran off into the grass.

Galled this to the Poroths' attention. They claimed to know all about it. 'She's always been nasty to the kittens,' Deborah said, 'maybe because she never had any of her own.' (I thought she sounded a bit wistful.)

'And besides,' said Sarr, 'she's getting old.'

When I turned back to the window, Bwada was gone. Asked the Poroths if they didn't think she'd gotten worse lately. Realized that, in speaking, I'd unconsciously dropped my voice, as if someone might be listening through the chinks in the floorboards.

Deborah conceded that, yes, the cat had been acting a bit odd these days, ever since the accident. It's not just the kittens she fights with; Azariah, the adult orange male, seems particularly afraid of her.

Sarr was more helpful. 'It's sure to pass,' he said. 'We'll see what my mother thinks.'

Mrs Poroth arrived while they were eating lunch. The three of them had been seated at the table, talking about the general store. 'It wasn't always a co-operative,' Sarr was saying. 'Years ago, before my father ran it, it was owned by just two families, the Sturtevants and the van Meers. It did quite well in those days, so I've been told, but then there were several bad years in a row. The rain was poor, some crops around here failed, and the price of corn fell off. 'Twas just a streak of bad luck. Nobody was at fault, and nobody could have predicted it-'

'Some folks could.'

They turned to see the hard, unsmiling woman standing in the doorway to the hall.

'Mother,' said Sarr, rising, 'how did you-'

'I let myself in through the front door,' she said. She walked into the kitchen and looked around. 'The animal's outside?'

'I'll get her,' said Sarr. He walked out to the back porch. They heard him hurry down the steps.

'Mrs Poroth,' said Deborah, 'this is Jeremy Freirs. Jeremy, this is Sarr's mother.'

'Glad to meet you,' said Freirs, standing.

The woman nodded, barely looking at him.

'Jeremy here's from New York City,' added Deborah. 'He's our summer guest.'

'Guest?' The woman eyed him coldly. 'I thought he was a tenant.'

Freirs flinched, but Deborah did not. 'We've come to think of him as a guest,' she said. 'He's been a big help to us. Why, just this morning-'

At that moment Sarr came through the back door carrying Bwada. The cat lay cradled sleepily in his arms, but its eyes were wary as they surveyed the people in the room.

Freirs looked from the cat to Mrs Poroth. He'd been surprised by the woman's behavior – and was just as surprised now to see her regarding the animal with an almost ferocious intensity. She seemed to be staring directly into Bwada's eyes.

At last she shook her head. 'This isn't the kitten I nursed.'

'Well, of course not, Mother,' said Sarr. 'That was ten years ago. You've seen her a hundred times since.'

'That ain't what I mean.' She came toward him, reaching for the cat. 'Give her here.'

The animal seemed to grow limp in Sarr's arms; its eyes closed further, as if it were about to fall asleep. But Freirs thought he heard, from deep within its throat, a low, forbidding growl.

Mrs Poroth's hands closed firmly around the animal. Freirs was sure he heard that growl now – it had grown higher, more menacing – but the woman appeared not to notice, or at least not to care. She picked the cat up and held it in the air before her face.

And suddenly the animal exploded. With a howl of rage it twisted in the woman's grasp and slashed out at her face. Deborah screamed. The woman's hand went to her cheek. The cat dropped to the floor and raced shrieking round and round the kitchen, while Sarr and Deborah jumped back in alarm.

Freirs glanced at Mrs Poroth. To his astonishment the woman appeared to be smiling. There were four bloody lines across her cheek, but she no longer seemed to notice. With a single swift movement she stepped to the screen door and yanked it open. In an instant, like a silver-grey projectile, the cat disappeared through it and down the back steps. Through the window they saw her racing toward the woods.

How impressive Deborah was this afternoon! The way she stood up to that bitch.

After hearing Deborah's description of her early in the summer, I suppose I'd been expecting a sort of backcountry witch, filled with homilies and spells and homespun wisdom. Instead, I got a nasty old hag. Still can't get over how rude she was; she obviously didn't take to me at all. Probably hates New Yorkers. Anti-Semitic, too, I'll bet. I almost have to laugh, now, the way that goddamned cat attacked her. Though at the time it wasn't quite so funny…

They searched for her everywhere. All of them were white-faced and shaken except, oddly, Mrs Poroth herself. She appeared almost calm.

'I've seen what I came to see,' she said to her son. She didn't appear to mind the deep, painful-looking scratches on her face and declined to stay. "Tis just as I thought. There's a spirit in that animal, something that's against all nature. There's naught I can do, though, for I know you'll not heed what I have to tell you. The animal's yours, and you're the one that must destroy it.'

He didn't say anything until she'd left, but he was obviously troubled. 'No,' he kept saying to himself, 'no, I couldn't do a thing like that. This time she's wrong.'

'Of course she's wrong,' said Deborah, tight-lipped. 'She was just upset about what happened.'

Sarr nodded, but he seemed unconvinced.

They strolled around the property without managing to find the cat. In vain they searched the smokehouse and the barn. 'Sometimes she gets under the front porch and won't come out all day,' Deborah recalled, but the cat was not there. Finally they gave up.

'She's off in the woods,' Sarr said. 'She'll come back when she's ready.'

'In a better temper, I hope,' Deborah added.

Freirs left them, still despondent, at the house and walked back to his room. He noticed, as he approached, that the door on the other side of his outbuilding was slightly ajar. It might easily have been left that way by Deborah or Sarr – because that half of the building was used as a storeroom, the two of them were always bringing things in and out – but he wondered if the cat might have slipped inside. He was tempted to go back up to the farmhouse and tell the Poroths, but he didn't want to seem afraid, especially in front of Deborah. Besides, he'd be embarrassed if they came all the way out here and found nothing. He told himself that he had nothing to fear; it was only a cat, after all. And if he found her he'd be a hero.

Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him and switched on the light. The room smelled heavily of mildew and mouse droppings. It was piled high with lumber, bottles, old furniture, carefully folded seed bags, and dusty footlockers, some of which obviously predated the Poroths and had, no doubt, been moved down here from the attic in the farmhouse.

Crouching, he peered nervously beneath an old sofa which sagged beneath the weight of four overstuffed valises and a cardboard carton filled with empty jars. From behind him came the buzzing of horseflies as they slammed themselves against the windowpanes; the sills below were Uttered with their bodies.

A dead wasp lay among them, probably one from the swarm in the smokehouse, lying just inches from the tiny space at the bottom of the pane by which it probably had entered. Freirs imagined it battering itself against the glass and wondered if, as it lay dying, it had seen the hole at last and realized the futility of its efforts.

In one corner, almost at eye level atop the slashed and pitted surface of a table, an ancient steamer trunk caught his eye. It was decorated with faded ribbons and appeared to be some remnant of the previous century. Upon it lay several piles of moldy-looking books. He picked them up gingerly, one by one, holding them away from his face lest they be crawling with silverfish and worms. They proved to be religious tracts, and as boring as most of that genre. Heaven's Messengers, he read with distaste. Bible Themes for Busy Workers. The Shepherd and the Sheep. He tossed the books aside and raised the lid.

Inside there were more of them, and some badly folded old clothes. So much for his fantasies of stereoscopes, antique postcards, jewels. .. The clothes, though moth-eaten, might have had a certain value – he noticed a woman's black dress with large cloth-covered buttons down the front, a dress which, though severe, might have fetched a good price in some Village boutique – but he wasn't very interested in such things. The books here were even worse: Aids to Believers. Handfuls of Help. Beneath the Moss. The Footsteps of the Master.

At the bottom of the pile, however, against the trunk's age-discolored lining, lay what appeared to be a stack of magazines. He lifted them out, hoping for a cache of old Munsey's or some ancient

Harper's Weeklies from the Civil War days, but they proved to be something more unusual: yearbooks. Spring Street Bible School, the covers said. Gilead, New Jersey.

There were almost two dozen in all, in no particular order, ranging from the early 1880s up to 1912. The covers were of paper, cracked and yellowing, with several separated from the bindings; the yearbooks themselves – mere pamphlets, actually – were only thirty pages long. Most of them bore names at the top, written in childish hands: Isaac Baber, Rachel Baber, Andrew Baber… This was the family, he recalled, that had previously owned the farm.

Picking up the most recent issue, he flipped through it back to front. Student essays filled the pages, essays with tides in old-fashioned gothic letters on such subjects as 'The Duty of a Christian' and 'Living in the Way of the Lord.' There was also a selection of song lyrics, not alma maters but hymns: 'Reapers of Life's Harvest' 'Blue Galilee,' 'There Is a Power in the Blood.'

To the work! to the work! there is labor for all;

For the Kingdom of Darkness and Error shall fall;

And the name of Jehovah exalted shall be,

And we'll shout with the ransomed, 'Salvation is free!'

In the front of the book were four group photos: male and female students, male and female faculty; obviously the sexes had been segregated. There appeared to have been fewer than sixty students in the entire school, and half a dozen teachers. They were a solemn-looking bunch, sitting stiff and unsmiling as they gazed up at him from that bygone day as if through a sepia mist. He scanned the captions; a welter of familiar names greeted him. P. Buckhalter, J. van Meer, several Lindts and Reids and Poroths. Most, he realized, would be dead by now. The name Baber had been carefully underlined wherever it appeared. In the first row, among the youngest boys, he was amused to notice a pale, earnest little face labeled M. Geisel.

Suddenly his eye was caught by the name V. Troet. There were an R. Troet and an S. among the girls, he noticed, and a B. among the female faculty. Deborah had said it was a large family.

What of the branch that had been wiped out in the fire, the branch that had lived right here? Were any of them represented? No, he checked again; the books only went back as far as 1881. They'd all be dead by then, dead and in their graves.

All but one…

He turned to the earliest book; the boy would have been around thirteen then.

Yes, there he was, in the middle row, crowded in with the rest: A. Troet.

He held the book up to the light, peering more closely at the tiny, blurred figure, that stared at him from the page. The figure was short, with a wide, honest-looking face, but beyond that it was indistinguishable from the rest. Perhaps – was it a trick of the light? – perhaps there was the tiniest hint of a smile at the corners of the lips, a lone smile among all those grave Utile faces…

No, it was just his imagination.

He looked ahead to the next book, 1882. There he was again. A Troet, still slightly shorter than the rest. He felt a tiny, inexplicable chill. This time there was no doubt at all. The figure was smiling.

There was no mention of him in the following year's book, or in any of the others. No doubt he'd dropped out of school and out of the world – until he'd struck again in 1890…

Well, his photo would make an amusingly ghoulish little pinup for the wall above Freirs' desk. Portrait of the Devil as a Young Man. Tucking the collection of yearbooks beneath his arm, he piled the other books back inside the trunk, laying the clothing on top. He hoped he hadn't piled them too high, and that the trunk would close. Reaching up, he pulled the lid down He jumped back. Bwada was crouching behind the trunk only inches from his face, eyes unblinking, burning into his. A hissing sound escaped her throat, and her body seemed to swell. Spreading her claws, she prepared to leap.

Suddenly, for no discernible reason, she appeared to think better of it. She settled down, licked her lips, and purred.

'Nice cat,' said Freirs, backing out of the room. 'Nice cat.' There'd been something about the way she licked her lips, something not quite right, but there was no time to worry about it now. 'You just sit there, and I'll be right back with your friends.'

Slamming the door, he ran for the farmhouse.

She walked home, musing, following the dusty road as it wound its contrary way through the forest and fields. She paid no mind to her torn cheek; there were nine ways of making pain go away, and she knew them all. Besides, she had more important matters to occupy her now.

The visitor had come. It was here among them. When she'd looked into the cat's eyes she had seen it glaring out at her, as if through the eye holes of a mask.

Lucky that she'd seen it while it was still so weak. Proof, no doubt, of divine Providence – for she knew how to fight the thing. Her boy, Sarr, was useless, but she knew what to do.

Yes, that was a possibility old Absolom hadn't counted on – that one of the Brethren would know and be prepared.

She had been prepared for more than twenty years. She had known that it would happen like this; it was just as her visions had shown her.

She set her jaw, thought of the struggle that lay ahead, and continued down the dirt road with a more determined stride. She felt vindicated. She'd been right after all. On her cheek the blood was dry, the wound already healing.

Rosie was waiting for her when she got off work at seven. He'd stationed himself at a table by the window of the shabby little coffee shop next door, biding his time with a chocolate malted and a slice of pound cake until she emerged. He knocked on the window as she walked past and waved her inside.

'Just let me pay the bill,' he said, making greedy little sounds with his straw as he sucked up the last of the malted. He stuffed the final crumbs of cake into his mouth. 'May I walk you home? I want to talk.'

Carol had talked with Rosie on the phone just last night, when she'd called to thank him for the new dress, but she was happy to see him again. Voorhis had been hard to bear today; Miss Elms, the assistant supervisor, had wounded Carol with a caustic remark, early in the afternoon, about her lack of enthusiasm – 'When you came to work here we all thought you were going to amount to something, but so far you haven't' – and there'd been hints from one of her superiors, oily Mr Brown in acquisitions, that he and Mrs Tait were considering reducing her hours still further during the summer lull. They aren't even paying me a living wage now, Carol had thought, but she'd been too cowed to say anything.

Rosie's smiling face made a welcome contrast to the librarians' sour ones, and strolling downtown with him, laughing at the excited way he'd peer into every store window they passed as if he just might buy whatever was inside, be it a baby toy, a side of beef, or a maid's uniform, was the perfect way to unwind.

'Have you looked at that book I sent over?' he asked, as they waited for the light to change at Twenty-first and Eighth. 'The one with all those country dances?'

'I've only had time to glance at it,' she said. 'Some of the steps certainly look complicated.'

'How'd you like to try one with me?'

Carol shrugged. 'Sure if you like. Any particular reason?'

He looked hurt. 'Don't you think it might just be fun?'

'Oh, of course, Rosie,' she said hastily. 'Of course it'll be fun. 1 only meant, did you send the book over as part of our research, or simply because you know I like dancing?'

He stuck his hands in his pockets and moved closer to her as they walked. 'As a matter of fact, young lady, that book is extremely germane to what the two of us are studying. The steps peasants once danced in tiny, isolated North Italian villages were the same ones children danced in Elizabethan England – and are still dancing in modern-day East Africa.'

'No, it can't be!'

'Oh, yes. And strictly entre nous, yours truly is the first to have discovered the connections. So you're going to be involved in some pretty important research, young lady – original research that ought to cause quite a stir. You may find yourself with a very nice little career, by the time we're done.'

'Wow wouldn't that be incredible!'

She reminded herself that the old man was probably just trying to impress her, or else he might simply be mistaken. But what if he was right? Wouldn't it be wonderful to make a real contribution to scholarship, to be respected at last as an authority on something, her work studied by the sort of earnest souls who came to Voorhis every day? That institution's miseries were temporarily forgotten; she was thinking, instead, how the tedious little summaries she prepared twice weekly for Rosie, the abstracts of papers and journal articles, might be worthwhile after all.

By the time they reached her house, he was mopping his forehead repeatedly with a large white handkerchief. 'Lordy,' he said, 'I can't remember when it's been so hot.'

'It is pretty awful,' she conceded. 'I hate to think of what's still in store.'

'Do you think I might come up and cool off?' He dabbed wearily at his throat.

'Oh, of course you can. I'll give you some iced tea. I have to warn you, though, it's probably hotter up there than it is here on the sidewalk.'

Rosie smiled. 'Well, I'll take my chances.'

He continued to smile mysteriously as they rode up in the elevator. By the time they'd reached the door to her apartment, she'd begun to grow uneasy.

Unlocking the door, she pushed it open. A wave of cool air bathed her face. From the living room she heard the soft churning of a motor. She turned to him, eyes widening. 'Rosie, did you-?'

He nodded, chuckling. 'Had it installed this afternoon, while you were at work.'

'Oh, Rosie, this is the nicest surprise I've ever had!'

She rushed into the living room. There, fitted into the window, was a glossy white Fedders, two round vents regarding her like eyes.

Rosie followed her in and stood grinning at his handiwork. 'It should make the place a bit more livable, don't you think?'

'God, will it ever!' she said. 'But how in the world did you get in here?'

He shrugged. 'Your super was very understanding.'

Carol breathed deeply of the cool air and let the chilly breeze caress her face. She wished there were some way to repay him, or at least to show her gratitude. 'Well,' she said finally, 'it's certainly going to be more comfortable to read in here, thanks to you. I'll be able to work twice as hard now.'

'You know, I do believe you have a point. In fact' – he surveyed the room – 'there's something the two of us could work on tonight. Here, give me a hand with this.' He began tugging the coffee table toward the wall.

'What are you doing?' she asked, already coming forward to help him.

'Clearing away some of this furniture,' he said, grunting with exertion. 'It'll give us more room.'

'Room for what?'

Rosie smiled. 'Why – to dance, of course!'

But it was only Carol who danced that night.

Opening up the book of folk dances seemingly at random, he chose one near the back. 'Here,' he said, handing it to her, 'this one looks interesting.'

'II Mutamentos (The Changes),' she read. 'Of unknown origin."

This dance is said to mimic, in symbolic terms, the transformation of a worm into a butterfly.

It may be performed either singly or in pairs.

'It looks a little monotonous,' said Carol, studying the diagrams. 'All this spinning…'

'Nonsense,' said Rosie, 'just give it a try. You'll find it more fun than you imagine. Here, I'll play shaman, and you can be the nubile native girl.' Clapping his hands, he began singing in a frail old-man's voice, softly at first, as if to himself, but then with growing enthusiasm.

'Da'moghu… da'foe moghu… riya daeh… '

Shamans? Native girls? What was the old man talking about? 'Wait,' said Carol, trying to hear the beat before taking a step, 'that doesn't sound like Italian.'

'A dialect,' said Rosie, still clapping his hands and nodding 'From Tuscany.'

'Oh.' Carol peered over his shoulder at the book, still hesitant to begin. 'Look, couldn't we do some of the others, instead? The ones near the front look more like fun.'

Rosie smiled patiently and stopped dapping. 'Don't worry, Carol, we'll get to it. We'll get to all the others, if you like.' Gripping her shoulders in a fatherly way, he moved her into the center of the floor. 'But this is the one I think you should try now. Just a practice run.'

'But-'

He raised his hand for silence. 'Believe me, Carol,' he said, 'it's your dance. It's for you.'

And he clapped his hands again, and cocked his head, and sang. And in the center of the little room, to the interminable churning of the air conditioner, she danced.

July Fourteenth

Taking a bath at Poroth Farm was a three-step operation, and Freirs had become adept at it. First it was necessary to turn up the flame on the modern gas-powered hot water heater – a round white tubular affair nearly as tall as a man, which took up much of the bathroom -while simultaneously twisting a faucet in the unit's side, releasing more water into the tank. One then waited half an hour or more, doing chores or checking through whatever assortment of seed catalogues and Bible tracts the postman had brought, or, as was usual in Freirs' case, celebrating the end of morning exercises by snacking on some likely morsel discovered in the cool of the root cellar, where most of the perishables were stored. When the water supply was hot and ready, one returned to the bathroom, turned down the flame and the water, and opened the spigots in the huge old bathtub, stained with age and big enough for three, which stood beside the heater. Finally, after another wait, one could climb into the tub and enjoy a long-overdue soak. It was a somewhat tedious process, but an ultimately rewarding one. Freirs went through it almost every day.

It was half past ten and he was about to perform the first step in the operation. The day was hot and overcast, and as he trudged across the yard toward the farmhouse, his towel around his neck, he found himself wishing once again that he had a car at his disposal – something to take him away from the confined, landlocked atmosphere of the farm. Maybe it's ridiculous to think of spending the entire summer out here, he told himself, not for the first time. I'm clearly not cut out for it. But where, then could he stay? He couldn't just kick that couple out of his apartment; they had it, by rights, till September. And the Poroths were depending on his ninety a week.

The two of them were singing – chanting, praying, he couldn't decide what function it actually served – while they weeded the narrow field adjoining the road. They didn't see him go by. Two of the younger cats and the older tiger-striped male, Azariah, were curled like spectators in the grass, watching them. The field itself, bare when Freirs had first arrived at the farm, was now well covered by a tangle of cucumber vines. "These are fast growers,' Poroth had told him confidently. 'I figure they'll be ripe by the end of August -just in time to put 'em in your salad.'

Well, maybe he'd still be around then. He would see…

He climbed the steps of the back porch and entered the kitchen. Across the room, one of the wooden chairs was propped against the bathroom door. Without thinking he moved the chair away and pulled the door open.

There was a scrabbling sound. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a grey shape dart past his feet and across the kitchen floor. It was Bwada.

For an instant he deliberated whether he should try to catch her -he knew how wicked those claws could be – but then, to his amazement, the cat dashed herself against the screen door, throwing it open. Moments later she had vanished outside. Jesus! he said to himself, thats a trick she didn't know yesterday.

Sarr and Deborah were standing ankle-deep among the broad leaves of the cukes when, behind them, they heard a commotion. An orange blur was zigzagging through the grass with a silver-grey shape streaking just behind it. Suddenly Azariah came tumbling toward their feet with Bwada practically riding on his back in a frenzy of clawing. In less than a second the two had become a snarling ball of orange and grey, spitting, screaming, with an occasional glimpse of flashing claws and teeth.

A few seconds more and Sarr was upon them, screaming with a rage as great as theirs. A brawny arm stabbed down, and Bwada was hauled twisting and struggling into the air, gripped around the neck. Sarr stalked back toward the house with her, brandishing the animal.

'For God's sake put her down,' cried Deborah. 'You're strangling her! You'll crush her neck!'

He looked back, eyes wild, the veins standing out in his head. Only moments before she had been pleading with him to watch out for the claws, and, moments before that, to stop the fight.

'If I kill her,' he said between his teeth, 'God's my witness, I'll not shed a tear!'

The animal had long since ceased struggling and now hung limp in his grasp, seemingly lifeless except for periodic hissing sounds that came from deep within her throat.

Marching up the steps and into the kitchen, Freirs sheepishly holding the screen door for him, Sarr yanked open the bathroom door and hurled the animal inside. He slammed the door shut, propping the chair back in place before it.

'Sorry,' said Freirs. 'I'm the one who let her out.'

'It's all right now,' said Sarr. Wearily he sprawled onto one of the kitchen chairs, his hand and wrist a mass of lacerations. He was breathing deeply. 'It's all right.' He paused, composing himself. 'Have you already turned on the water?'

'Uh, no, I was about to, but I-'

Sarr shook his head. 'Don't. Put off your bathing till the end of the day. I want to leave her in there for a spell. God's my witness, I swear my mother was right. The devil's in that animal.'

Deborah had come into the kitchen and now stood behind him, caressing his neck. 'Can you imagine?' she said to Freirs, 'she just attacked poor 'Riah for the second time today.'

They had put her in the bathroom last night, after she'd been located among the trunks and old books of the storeroom in Freirs' building. She had been strangely tractable at the time, nestling in Sarr's arms, making no protest as he'd closed the door on her. T almost hate to do it,' he had said, 'the way she's acting now. But when I think of what she did to Mother-'He shook his head.

This morning, when they'd come downstairs at seven, she'd been gone. Apparently she had learned to turn the knob on the bathroom door by swatting at it with her paw. She had still been in the house, though, for, in addition to the screen door, the heavy wooden kitchen door was closed. As Sarr and Deborah had descended the stairs, followed by the six cats who'd shared their bed, they had seen Bwada race up from the root cellar and pounce on Azariah.

'And now she's gone and done it again,' said Deborah, with a shudder. 'Make sure that chair's braced tight against the door.'

From the bathroom came a disconsolate miaow.

'You're staying in there!' Deborah shouted angrily. 'We'll see how you like it!'

A miaow again, but drawn out this time into a long, ugly caterwauling that sounded disconcertingly like human speech.

The three eyed one another uneasily.

'She's not been sounding like herself lately,' said Sarr. 'There's a kind of- hoarseness. At first I thought it was the accident. Now I'm not so sure.'

Freirs nodded. 'Yesterday, when I found her in the storeroom, there was something funny about her.'

'Funny?'

'She licked her lips – you know the way an animal will do – but it looked like she had something in her mouth.'

Sarr shrugged. 'Maybe she did. That place is full of mice.'

Deborah laughed. 'Or maybe she's got a frog in her throat!'

'I don't know,' said Freirs, shaking his head. 'I'm not too familiar with cats, inside or out, but I'd say she's got something in there. Something wrong. A tumor, maybe, a growth of some kind. I'd take a look at her, if I were you.'

'I'll do that,' said Sarr, 'as soon as we let her out tonight. I'm even thinking of taking her to that vet over in Flemington. There isn't much else I can do.' He stared gloomily at his hands and fell silent. At last he looked up. 'Well, there's one thing. I wonder if you'd excuse us for a few minutes, Jeremy. I want Deborah here to join with me in prayer.'

'Oh, yes, of course.'

'And you know,' said Sarr, 'maybe when we're done I should give a look to her mouth. No reason to wait till tonight. Better to get to the source of the trouble right away.'

Freirs wandered into the living room and leafed boredly through an Old Farmer's Almanack while Deborah sat down across from her husband. The two of them propped their elbows on the table and clasped their hands. Freirs looked in at them once; they were silent, their eyes tightly shut.

He drifted back into the living room and waited, listening to the ticking of the clock.

Was there another sound?

Yes, he heard it now. A low, grating sound was coming from the other room.

It came again, followed by the frantic scrape of chairs and Sarr's angry swearing. Freirs rushed into the kitchen in time to see Sarr yank open the bathroom door.

'The window!' Deborah cried, pointing. Its screen gaped outward, crisscrossed by two wide slashes.

The room was empty.

She wasn't in the storeroom this time, or in any of her usual hiding places. Sarr amp; I searched the workroom in the barn amp; the chicken coop too, on a platform six feet above the floor. Plenty of dust amp; fat buzzing bluebottles, but no sign of the cat. Even took a peek into the old smokehouse, as much as the wasps there would let us. We looked for her till dinnertime, in fact, but she was gone without a trace.

It began to rain during dinner amp; I hung around the house till it stopped. When I got back here I attempted to relax by reading Algernon Blackwood's 'Ancient Sorceries.' One of his lesser tales, perhaps, but I found it anything but relaxing. It's about a town inhabited by a band of feline witches – were-cats, I guess you'd call them – amp; it's done unpleasant things to my imagination.

Close to midnight now, amp; despite the day's heat, the coldest night we've had so far. Think I'll have some trouble getting to sleep; tonight the whole atmosphere seems weird, worse than ever I recall. Thunder coming regularly – more rain on the way, no doubt – amp; lightning with it, obviously close by. But why, then, is there so much more thunder than lightning?

A bright flash that time -1 felt the whole room shake, right down to the floor. Wish I were inside the farmhouse tonight. Wish I weren't sleeping alone.

Can hear the two of them in there singing their nightly prayers now. A rather comforting sound, I must admit, even if I can't share the sentiments.

Maybe I'll be able to fall asleep if I pretend He looked up. There'd been a rustling at the window by his bed, the one that faced the woods. He turned to look, but he was blinded by the desk lamp beside him, and the window was a great square of blackness.

Suddenly a flash of lightning lit the sky. Freirs shouted and drew back. A humped grey shape was pressed against his screen, outlined in the light. The eyes were wide, unblinking, cold as a snake's. The mouth hung partly open. There appeared to be something crouched inside it…

All this he saw in the flash of lightning, while the pale little face of Absolom Troet smirked down at him from the picture on the wall. An instant later the darkness returned. He heard something drop heavily from the screen and pad off into the underbrush, to the echoing rumble of thunder. The next time lightning flashed, the view held only the forest.

July Fifteenth

I woke up to the sound of Sarr's axe. You could probably hear it all over the farm. He was off among the trees at the edge of the property, chopping stakes for Deborah's tomatoes.

Went out and joined him for a while. I told him about seeing Bwada last night, amp; he said that she hadn't come home. Good riddance, say I. Helped him chop some stakes while he was busy peeling off bark. Christ, that axe gets heavy fast! My arm hurt after three lousy stakes, amp; Sarr had already chopped fifteen or more. Obviously what I need is more exercise, but think I'll wait till my arm's less tired.

I left Sarr to his business amp; went up to the house. Guess I got there a bit earlier than usual, because" Deborah was still running her bathwater, amp; just as I came up out of the cellar with a jug of milk she walked through the kitchen with nothing but a towel wrapped around her. She jumped; so did I. Don't know which of us was more surprised. I took one look at those creamy white shoulders, which I'd never actually seen before, amp; those beautiful white legs amp; thighs, and my cock gave a little leap. Like a fool I immediately averted my eyes, amp; she hurried into the bathroom, but she was laughing as she closed the door.

I could hear her shut the water off amp; settle into the tub. Sarr's axe still rang out from time to time from over near the woods. I waited a really feel – 'You sure you don't want me to scrub your back?'

She didn't say anything for a second; maybe she was actually considering the idea. Then she said something about Sarr's not liking it.

'He's half a mile away,' I said, giving it the old Freirs try. I really would have loved just to see her… She laughed again, I think, amp; then – alas! – she said, 'Not today.'

Well, so much for that dream. If she wasn't up for anything then, I'm sure she never will be. Moments like that don't come very often.

Oddly enough, she was extremely friendly – almost affectionate, really – for the rest of the morning. After she got dressed she made me some delicious wild-blueberry pancakes (with berries she'd picked herself), amp; it seemed plain that she liked having me there while she puttered around the kitchen.

Today, she informed me, is St Swithin's Day – whoever the hell he was – amp; she recited a little rhyme:

7” rain on St Swithin's Day, forsooth,

No summer drouthe,' or something like that. Apparently the day's weather is supposed to determine the weather for the next forty days. All very scientific, like that business with the groundhog. I looked out the window, but the sky was so changeable that I found it hard to decide exactly what kind of weather we were having then amp; there, much less going to have. The clouds were moving fast across the sun, with a huge grey one looming just above the horizon. So as I see it, we're in for forty days of sun, clouds, nastiness, amp; fog, with just a touch or two of rain.

Sarr came in around lunchtime, looking troubled. Seems he'd accidentally killed some kind of thin white snake that had been crawling along one of the branches. He'd sliced it in two with his axe, amp; the thing had had babies inside.

'It was a milk adder,' he told Deborah, as if that signified something of great importance. She asked him if there'd been much blood. 'Yes,' he said. 'But it was white.'

He explained to me that milk adders are supposed to get their sustenance by sucking the milk out of cows' udders. Maybe this one had been on its way back from the Geisels'. They're the closest ones around here who own cows.

I said I thought all that was only a legend.

He nodded. 'So did I.'

He had buried the thing immediately, before the cats saw it. The babies had gotten away.

Later he fell to talking about some other local legends – about the Hop Ghost, that hops behind you when you walk past a churchyard at midnight, and the Magra, a sort of unwanted companion, and something known as the 'Jersey Devil,' the thirteenth offspring of a Mrs Leeds, who'd cursed being pregnant again. In the end, Sarr said, she'd given birth to a horrible half-man half-bird thing which flew up the chimney amp; disappeared.

He also told me about dragon beetles, supposed to be as big as a man's fist, amp; screwworms, which can breed in people's nostrils, amp; hoop snakes, that swallow the end of their tails and roll along the ground behind their prey.

I was curious about the last; it sounded like a variation of the old Uroborus myth, the dragon with its tail in its mouth. The alchemists had used it as a symbol of eternity, unity, the all-in-one, or some such blather. Maybe there was something to it after all.

Actually, I've always had a yen to read that Eddison novel, The Worm Ouroborus, but I'm told it's impossible to get through. Waded through some poems in The Ingoldsby Legends before dinnertime, amp; that was punishment enough.

Omelet for dinner with home-grown herbs. Damned good. The hens have been laying well lately.

At night the wind blew from the north amp; the sky got very clear. I spent close to an hour sitting out back in the deck chair with my Astronomy Made Simple amp; a flashlight. There was no moon out, but so many stars that I. could almost read the book by their light. I picked out the Eagle, the Swan, the Plowman, amp; the Bear, amp; sat amp; watched the Dragon chase the Virgin. I'll forget all the names in a day or two amp; don't intend to learn them again, but it was nice to have done it once. Saw at least eleven shooting stars, then I lost count.

The Park West Institute of Dance was one of the few places in the neighborhood not yet gentrified, although the old two-story building it occupied on the west side of Broadway now housed a joggers' shop and a fancy new women's boutique. Carol had been coming here for nearly six months and had begun to feel like a regular. Until this summer she had had to content herself with a single weekly dance class on Tuesday nights, but now, thanks to Rosie, she could afford to take an additional class when she was in the mood; and she was in the mood tonight. It was Friday, and her datelessness weighed more heavily upon her than usual. Tomorrow, at least, she had something to look forward to – Rosie would be taking her to an evening concert in Central Park – but tonight she knew she couldn't bear to go home immediately after work to sit alone in her apartment reading Rosie's articles, air conditioner or no air conditioner.

As she slipped on her leotard in the noisy little locker room, she wondered how many of the women around her had husbands or boyfriends waiting for them at home. Not that many, from the look of them. They were an older, unhappier-looking bunch than the

Tuesday-night crowd, women who were filling some gap in their lives or who'd suffered too many disappointments; they were taking it out here, throwing themselves into an activity where they need depend on nothing but their own bodies. She was pleased to see that, as usual, she was one of the thinnest in the room; she told herself she would look young for years and felt no envy for the woman to her left, cursed with huge breasts that were already starting to sag. There were a lot of plump thighs and soft-looking stomachs. Dance, for some women, was probably no more than a pleasant way of dieting.

The main room stretched for half the length of the building, occupying the space above three stores. One wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling mirrors whose silver backing, here and there, had flaked away. Windows ran along the opposite wall, above a barre worn smooth by years of ballet students. Carol had not taken ballet since college. She regretted she hadn't continued with it, and didn't pretend that the modern dance classes at Park West accomplished anything more than keeping her limber.

There were sixteen people in tonight's class, including three slim, amiable-looking young men she immediately assumed were gay. The teacher – not the one she had on Tuesday – was a wiry little woman in her late thirties with tight black curls and a drill sergeant's voice that belied her height. She, too, seemed less than happy to be here tonight.

The first half hour of the class was given over to mat and barre work, stretching arms and shoulders, twisting necks, and raising legs in modified plies, all to the softest of calypso tunes played on the tape deck in the corner of the room. Outside the dirty windows she could see the lights of the buildings across the street, a starless black sky overhead. There was no sign of a moon.

The teacher clapped her hands for attention. 'All right, let's review the combinations we learned last time.' For this part of the instruction the class moved onto the polished wooden floor in ranks of four across, following the teacher's moves while a disco beat, louder than before, now rocked the room. The steps were familiar to Carol from her Tuesday-night class and she was good at them; although she would be learning nothing new, she was pleased to be singled out several times for demonstrating the correct form. 'Watch the redhead,' the teacher said more than once; it took Carol a moment to realize the woman meant her. As she danced, twisting her torso and letting her arms swing free, she watched herself reflected in the mirrors on the one side and the glossy blackness of the windows on the other. She liked what she saw.

With twenty minutes still to go the teacher switched cassettes again, the disco music giving way to a reggae group Carol had never heard before. Once more the volume was raised; the rhythm grew faster and harder to resist.

'All right, people,' said the teacher, 'it's time for improvisation. Back against the wall in groups of four, and come out when I call you.' Dividing up the class, she motioned for the first group to come forward. Improvising was something Carol had never done before; immediately her pride gave way to nervousness, as if she'd been asked to speak in public on a topic yet to be announced.

Still, the music was persuasive; she found herself tapping her foot and rocking her hips to the beat while watching the first group of four women take the floor. 'Get in tune with your bodies,' the teacher called, without noticeable effect. 'Don't watch anyone else. Just let your body follow the music, let it come naturally.' Only one of the four was any good, Carol thought, a haughty-looking dark-haired girl who tossed her shoulders and shook her head as if she were actually on some Caribbean beach surrounded by a dozen obliging black men. Carol wondered what she was going to do when her turn came.

'Next four,' the teacher called, and two women and two of the young men stepped forward, the previous group having retreated back to the mirrored wall. 'Don't watch anyone else, I said,' the teacher cried a little testily at the two men, who seemed to be blithely dancing with one another. 'Close your eyes if you have to.' The four did so, with predictably awkward results.

A gesture from the teacher indicated that Carol and her group would be next. At the woman's command they moved out onto the floor, Carol, two older women, and the remaining man. 'Close your eyes,' the teacher said, 'and feel the music. Let it move your body.'

Carol tapped her foot self-consciously, trying to do what the woman had advised; but though she liked the music, it was nonsense to think that it could really move her. It wasn't fair, she told herself; she'd never wanted to be a choreographer.

It occurred to her, suddenly, that she might do the Mutamentos, the Dance of the Changes she'd practiced two nights ago. It was a slower, more sinuous dance, and didn't really go with the lively black music she was hearing, but it consisted of only nine simple movements, and if she did them in the right rhythm she might be able to fill up the time till the next group was called out.

Shutting her eyes, she tried to remember. There were two different spins, and a side step and a back step…

Yes, that was it, she'd got it now; the trick was remembering the odd movement of the hands, and where it came. It felt strange to be doing a folk dance here in class; she wondered if she looked foolish. No doubt the other women would be performing some wildly expressive modern dance routines or some reggae steps they'd picked up. Hoping the teacher didn't think the less of her, she opened her eyes.

She found herself facing the mirror, the teacher's image reflected in the glass. For some reason the woman looked amazed; she was staring back and forth between Carol and the two other women, her eyes growing progressively wider. Carol sneaked a glance at the others and gasped: they too appeared to be performing the Changes. Their eyes were shut tightly; they looked rapturously happy. The man, eyes also shut, was a little way off, doing disco numbers by himself.

Carol felt somewhat chagrined; obviously the two women had cheated. They'd opened their eyes while hers had been closed and had copied Carol's steps. Perhaps they meant to mock her; perhaps they hadn't known what else to do.

Looking back toward the teacher, Carol saw that, if anything, the woman's astonishment had increased – for she was now staring at the man. Carol whirled to look at him. He too was performing the folk dance, keeping time with her and the others, though his eyes, at the moment, remained closed. It isn't fair! Carol thought, suddenly indignant. This was her dance, and the others were imitating it.

The four of them, in fact, were moving in unison now, pounding the wood floor with their feet at the same time, spinning at the same time, the others with their eyes shut tight, the huge room echoing to the sound of their feet. It was almost uncanny. She noticed with embarrassment that the bulge in the young man's tights had grown larger, and wondered who in the class had aroused him.

Just then the teacher stepped forward. 'Did you people rehearse this?' she cried. 'You've got it down pat.' Without giving anyone time to answer, she signaled for the final group to take the floor.

The other three moved back toward the mirrored wall, but Carol, lagging behind them, found it hard to stop dancing; she was still caught up in the rhythm. Dimly she heard the others talking. 'I just did what the music told me to do,' the young man was explaining to his friends. She noticed in the mirror that the four new women seemed to have picked up the dance merely by watching their predecessors: they too were performing the Changes now, and in the same perfect unison.

She wanted to speak to them, to ask them how they'd learned the dance so fast, but she was too busy watching her reflection, watching her hips jerk, her head toss, the motions of her hands – when suddenly, with a crack like a gunshot, her image in the mirror splintered into thousands of pieces. There was a crash at her back. She turned to see one of the tall windows shatter and fall. Someone shouted; behind her the crowd was backing away from the shards of broken mirror. Abruptly the four dancers stopped and opened their eyes, staring at one another in confusion. The teacher hurried over to the tape and shut it off.

'Maybe some kid with a slingshot,' she heard one of the men say.

'Is it a sniper?' someone cried. Women screamed and retreated toward the doorway. Carol followed, though even as she ran she wondered how a sniper could have done it. It had all happened so quickly… yet it seemed to her that she'd heard the window shatter an instant after the mirror had cracked.

'I think we'd better call it a night,' the teacher said. The students followed her off the floor and into the locker areas.

People were still talking excitedly about the incident as Carol dressed and moved toward the doorway. As she left the studio she saw the dance teacher in- conversation with a large black man in janitor's overalls. The two of them were standing at one side of the dance floor, pointing up toward the corner of the room near the ceiling where a complicated spiderweb of tiny cracks covered the heavy masonry. Carol hadn't noticed them before. As she walked past, she heard the man saying, 'We lost a window downstairs too.'

She paused, nervous again. 'Is there really someone shooting out the windows?'

The man shook his head. 'Naw, nothin' to worry about, lady. Ain't no sniper out there. The old place is just settlin' a little, that's all.'

'Oh, what a relief.'

Nonetheless, she was glad to get away; as she walked down the hall and the echoing stairway, she was sure she heard tiny cracking sounds.

The night was clear and cool, with a panoply of stars. The others were already on the porch, their faces ruddy in the lamplight, when the Verdocks pulled up in their truck.

'How is she, Brother Adam?' called Jacob van Meer, seated in his rocker as if it were a throne.

Verdock shook his head. 'Not so good, I think.' He and Lise came up onto the porch and pulled up chairs. 'We must try to remember her in our prayers tonight. She'll need 'em.'

'We left Minna with her, to tend her till the morning,' said Lise. She was talking to everyone on the porch but, as was customary, directed her words to Elsi van Meer and the other women. 'Minna's made her comfortable, and she'll see to it the garden's looked after till Hannah's got her strength back.'

' If she gets it back.' It was Rupert Lindt, who had joined them that night and was taking up a good portion of the couch.

'Now, now, Brother Rupert,' said Verdock, 'the Lord looks after those that keep the spirit.'

The other shrugged. 'Maybe so, but the spirit and the body's got to part some day. I can't say much about Hannah's spirit, but her body's gettin' old.'

Hannah Kraft was a widow of limited means and solitary habits whose health had been poor for decades, although never so poor as she'd painted it – at least not until now. Now, in her eighties, she seemed to be dying in earnest. The Verdocks had visited her earlier in the evening with their widowed daughter, Minna, and had left Minna there to spend the night with the old woman in the little three-room house off the back road.

'She takes on something fierce about the weather,' Adam was saying. 'A good thing it's so mild tonight. She told Minna she can't get a wink of sleep anymore, what with the thunder and the rain.'

'Well, Hannah will go on,' said Bethuel Reid, perhaps the closest to her in age. 'I remember – years ago, it was – when she wouldn't let you get a word in edgewise and you couldn't make sense of a single thing she said.'

They nodded, all of them, but Lise Verdock raised her voice to add, 'She says there's noises pretty nearly every night now. A rumbling, she calls it, like something's moving out there.'

'Well, sure,' said Bert Steegler, 'it just stands to reason, you stay down by the Neck and you're goin' to hear noises at night.'

Van Meer looked skeptical. 'Oh, a few frogs, maybe, a whippoorwill or two. And maybe the Fenchel boys up to their usual mischief. But I trust you're not holdin' with all those stories about spirits.'

'Well, maybe I am, maybe I ain't. All I'm sayin' is, there's holes in those woods, there's underground springs, there's pockets of gas in the swamp… Such things'll make a bit of noise, as I'm sure Brother Rupert remembers.'

Lindt nodded, pleased to be singled out. He was the youngest man there, and the largest; he had a habit of saying disagreeable things, often in a booming voice, but these people had known him since his boyhood and tolerated his ways. Any time they needed help, they knew they could count on his strong shoulders.

'I grew up near the Neck,' he said, 'and I know the sounds the swamp can make. But this time I ain't so sure. I've heard the thunder too, and it ain't the same. I think it's a sign. Just like all the snakes we've had this summer.'

Van Meer paused in his rocking. 'What are you drivin' at?'

Lindt shifted uneasily in his seat. 'All I'm sayin' is, let's look at what we got. We got us a new influence in the community – a snake in our bosom, so to speak – and I think you all know who I'm talkin' about.'

'I follow you, all right,' said Adam Verdock, 'but I think you're makin' a mistake. I met the boy too, that day in the store, and I liked him all right. Seems to me he's got a good name, too; it honors the prophet.'

'Or mocks him,' said Lindt.

'I asked Sarr about him,' said Bethuel Reid. He drew deeply on his pipe. 'Sarr says he just reads books all day.'

There was a round of head-shaking. Idleness was sinful when there was land to be worked.

'Ever see the fellow's hands?' said Lindt. 'Soft as a baby's. Any fool can see he's never done a day's work in his life. Must have a lot of money stuffed in his pockets – like all those city people.'

Reid nodded, glad he had no pockets of his own. 'Yep. That's their trouble.'

Steegler nodded too, and grinned with a sidelong glance at Lindt. 'All I know is, he had some young woman out here the other week. He must be doin' more than just readin'.'

'Well, you know those city folks,' said Lindt. 'They don't believe in marriage anymore.'

Lindt's thoughts had turned more than once to Carol since he'd first seen her. He himself was married and unhappy; he spent little time with his wife and had come alone tonight.

'And when they do get married,' he added, 'they don't stay that way for long. Some day, you mark my words, that city's gonna be smote with fire, like the Cities of the Plain.'

There was a chorus of assent, with several abstentions.

'Well, I spoke to Sarr about it,' said Verdock. "Tain't as if I didn't try reasonin' with him. I told him -1 said it just ain't proper, takin' a man's money and callin' him a guest. But Sarr, well, when he makes up his mind he's hard to change.'

'That ain't it,' said van Meer. "Tain't proper to bring someone like that into our little congregation, someone who don't fear the Lord and don't know our ways.'

'Our Rachel was talkin' about that just the other day,' said his wife. 'She says Amos don't want his children exposed to such people.'

'I don't think it makes much sense to worry 'bout such things,' said Lise. 'Not now, anyways. All we can do is say our prayers, trust in the Lord, and keep watchful.'

She waited for the amens, but they were slow in coming.

Minna walked slowly from the kitchen, carrying a broad wooden tray whose hand-painted rose border had almost entirely peeled away. She ducked her head as she passed beneath the low beam of the doorway.

'Here we are, Hannah. This'll get you off to sleep quick enough.'

The old woman was sitting up in bed, her head turned toward the open window in the wall behind her. She didn't look around when Minna entered, and turned only when she felt the tray placed upon her lap, to stare fretfully at the bowl of oatmeal and the cup of steaming milk.

A cool breeze blew through the window, bearing the smell of damp earth and summer leaves and almost masking the odor of sickness and decay that hung about the room. Insects wandered up and down the screen. Minna heard the night sounds of the forest, the sound of things calling to each other, the chant of the crickets and frogs.

Scowling, the old woman tried a mouthful of the oatmeal and took a sip of the warm milk. Suddenly she slammed the mug down and shook her head.

'No,' she said, waving away the food, 'I can't get to sleep! If it ain't one thing, 'tis another. First there's the thunder, it made my head ache – and now this! Tis too damned quiet.'

Minna smiled stiffly. 'Quiet? With all that commotion out there? You just listen to those crickets for a spell and have yourself some o' that milk – there's honey in it – and you'll be sleepin' like a baby in no time.'

'Hmph,' grumbled the woman. 'More like the dead!'

She took a few more swallows of milk, then set the cup back down and turned around on the bed to stare once more out the window.

'Watch out that don't fall now,' called Minna, pointing to the tray balanced precariously on the old woman's lap. Ducking through the doorway, she went into the kitchen.

There were plates to wash. The little house had no running water, and Minna took the bucket that hung by the washstand and walked outside, down the front path to the pump. She gave the pump handle a few vigorous strokes, her arm strong as a man's. Above her a shooting star streaked across the sky.

From the house came the crash of falling crockery. I knew it, Minna thought, cursing herself as she hurried toward the bedroom.

Fragments of the shattered bowl gleamed amid a pool of oatmeal. The cup lay overturned on the rug. Minna noticed these things before she saw the woman twisted half off the bed – her mouth stretched wide, eyes bulging, hands clutched stiffly to her throat. From the gaping mouth came the last spasmodic moments of her death rattle.

Minna was a strong girl and had seen death at close hand before. She did not scream. She jerked the woman by the shoulders, shook her, slapped the dead white face, listened for a heartbeat. There was none.

'Dear Lord,' she whispered, 'take the soul of Sister Hannah to Thine everlastin' mercy. Amen.'

Methodically she laid the body straight upon the bed, pulled the blankets up over the face, and bent to clean up the shards of crockery, the spilled oatmeal and milk. Only then did she scream -when, lifting the overturned cup, she saw what had lain curled beneath it: the tiny white shape, thin as the finger of a child, coiling and uncoiling on the rug.

Three A.M. The building is asleep. Outside, in the darkness, a chilly rain drums against the pavement. A streetlamp on the corner makes oily reflections in a puddle. Lampposts in the distance are obscured by mist.

The lobby is deserted, the light dim. Barefoot, dressed in baggy shirt and pants and clutching his little bag of tools, he tiptoes down the stairway to the basement. The corridor winds before him like a maze, its turnings illuminated by bulbs in metal cages, its ceiling just a foot above his head, as if pressed down by the weight of the building. From somewhere comes the hum of huge machines.

His teeth are out; his mouth hangs slack. The concrete floor is cold beneath his feet. He hurries past the steel-grey doors of the laundry room, the storeroom, the room where the superintendent keeps his mops and pails. Here it is at last, a battered metal door marked No Admittance. Impatiently he slips a strand of wire into the lock and gives it a twist. The door swings open.

The room is dark; from the darkness comes the hum of a machine, louder than before. Reaching inside, he switches on the light. Beneath him, down a flight of iron steps, stands the furnace.

It is huge. It fills the room like a monstrous metal tree, a vast tangle of pipes arching from its central core and spreading like branches across the ceiling.

Shutting the door behind him, he rushes down the steps and crouches like a supplicant before it, emptying his tool bag on the floor. A screwdriver tumbles out, then a wrench, then a pair of thick asbestos gloves.

It takes him but a minute to remove the boiler plate midway up the side. Within, the gas burns a bright and steady blue, and the roaring it makes is like a waterfall. The flame is not high now – in summertime the furnace only heats the building's water – but its force is still intense; as he lays aside the metal plate, his face is scorched by blasts of burning air. In the firelight, the black streaks on his skin look like a sunburst.

Stepping back to where the heat is less intense, he takes a stub of blue chalk from his pocket and hurriedly scrawls the circles on the floor, and then the circles within circles. The design is crude, simple, totally unlike a cabalistic star of tetragrammaton. It has eyes, a tongue, and claws. It resembles, in fact, a kind of beast: something primeval-looking, serpentine, coiled with its tail in its mouth.

The design is ready. He climbs the steps and switches off the light. Now the only illumination in the room comes from the mouth of the furnace, aglow with dragon fire.

Standing just outside the chalk line, he shrugs off the loose-fitting shirt and drops his baggy pants. Naked, he steps into the circle, his soft pink body hairless as a baby's. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he begins to dance.

His movements are awkward at first, then more certain. Suddenly he flings his arms wide and hops from foot to foot in an ever more complicated rhythm. From his toothless mouth comes a low ecstatic crooning and a string of unintelligible words.

'Da'moghu… riya moghu… riya daek… '

Round and round he dances, eyes shut tight, hands weaving ancient shapes above his head. Faster and faster move his fingers and his feet, faster comes the stream of words. Sheened in sweat, his body glows eerily in the flickering blue light that bathes the room. He bows, he leaps, he spins, pirouetting girlishly but turning ever faster till he's whirling like a dervish, his tiny withered penis flopping up and down, his plump breasts sagging and jiggling like a woman's. The crooning grows in volume, turns into a ululation, then a high-pitched wail.

'Riya moghu… davoola… DA'FAE!'

And suddenly with a cry it is over. The vision has come. Exhausted, he sinks to the floor and lies flat on his back with his head in the center of the circle, body still trembling, limbs still twitching from the dance. His eyes, opening, roll back to stare at the fire, but he sees far more. He sees all that he has to.

The Dhol has come at last. It is out there now. And it is free.

July Sixteenth

Sun's been warm today. Blue sky, fleecy clouds, refreshing summer breeze, all that rot. The sort of day that's supposed to make you feel good to be alive. Would have been perfect except for the bugs.

Got up reasonably early. Butterflies on lawn, cats playing tag. Bwada never came back, which is also nice. Sarr repairing leaks in the barn roof amp; knocking down nests of caterpillars from beneath the eaves; Deborah weeding in her garden, pruning rosebushes, hanging out sheets to dry. They do keep busy, these rural types.

And I should keep busy too. I've been here three weeks now amp; have yet to write a word on the dissertation. Slipping in my exercises, too. Didn't do them yesterday, and haven't done today's yet, either.

God, three weeks! Hard to believe. Even out here the time goes fast, when you stand back amp; look. Half of July's already gone, amp; I can almost feel August's hot breath on the back of my neck, something huge amp; angry waiting for me beyond the next hill…

From his rooftop, with the hot afternoon breeze at his back, he surveys the great doomed city spread before him in the sun. He hears, floating up to him, the hum of traffic, people's voices, the hiss of wind from off the Hudson. Children's cries reach him from the playground on the next block; he leans over the wall for a better view. Two of them down there are fighting. The larger boy has the smaller one down and is kneeling upon the other's shoulders, slapping at the face below him, slapping, slapping…

Elbows resting on the parapet, head resting on his hands, the Old One smiles as he waits for the tears to start. There; he has seen the gleam. His smile widens, spreads across his face. For a moment, as a wisp of cloud obscures the sun, the shadows change, his skin looks chalky pale, and he becomes a thing of stone, a gargoyle.

The gargoyle moves, dissolves. He raises his gaze from the playground to the dark green line that slices through the center of the city.

He has business there tonight – he and the woman. He is prepared. She will be, too, when the time comes: for tonight she'll wear the second victim's dress.

Last night was his turn to dance.

Tonight will be the woman's.

Night, now, amp; tired. Spent a lot of time in the sun this afternoon with Arthur Gordon Pym. The flies made it pretty hard to concentrate, but figured I'd get myself a tan. Probably have a good one now. (Hard to tell by looking in the mirror, though; light's too dim.)

But it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not going to be seeing anyone for a long time anyway, except the Poroths, so what the hell do I care how I look? Deborah had her chance; no sense trying to look good for her anymore.

No moon tonight, which works to the advantage of the stars.

One thing rather troubling: When I came back here after dinner I felt like reading something light, to counterbalance all the claustrophobic horrors of the Poe book with its pirates amp; corpses amp; cannibals – so I reached for the Saki collection.

Now I know I shelved that damned book under H.H. Munro, where it belongs. I specifically remember doing it, amp; I'm equally sure it was that way last night, because it gave me A.N.L. Munby on one side with The Alabaster Hand amp; Oliver Onions on the other side with Widdershins, all three books in fancy old bindings amp; looking quite handsome together. I remember sitting here admiring them.

But the Saki wasn't there tonight. I found it under S.

It's just a little thing, of course. Utterly trivial. Nothing else in here is out of place, that I can see. Nothing's missing. But it means that somebody must have been in here today – somebody who went through my books (maybe my other things as well) amp;, not knowing Saki was Munro, misfiled it.

Can't believe it was Sarr or Deborah. They've always been respectful of my privacy here, and anyway, when could they have come in? I can't remember a time today (except dinner, of course) when I wasn't here, either in this room or right outside the door.

Oh, well, maybe I'm wrong; maybe the heat's getting to me. I suppose I might have stuck the book back in the wrong place myself, late last night when I was sleepy, or when I was working today.

Just to play safe, though, I'm going to start hiding this journal. There are too many things I wouldn't want either one of them to read – I mean, all those stupid daydreams about Deborah…

I can hear them at their prayers right now, over in the farmhouse; until just a few minutes ago they'd been singing hymns. Comforting, to hear sounds like that on a night as dark as this.

But when I think about them poking around in here amp; then not telling me, it gets my dander up.

Meant to write a letter to Carol tonight, after putting it off for several days, but now I'm just too tired. I'll probably have trouble getting to sleep, though; my eyes itch amp; I can't stop sniffing. Must be the dampness.

He was waiting for her at the subway stop in front of the Dakota, a picnic basket on the ground beside him. He brightened when he saw her. 'Carol,' he said, waving his hands for emphasis, 'you look like a dryad come to life.'

'A what?'

'A wood nymph, a tree maiden.'

She laughed. 'Thank you. I feel like I just stepped out of "La Sylphide." Or maybe the Saint Patrick's Day parade!'

She was all in green tonight – in that beautiful green dress he had bought her, beautiful even if the fit was a little loose and the hem a little too high, with green shoes she'd discovered in Rochelle's closet, and even a green scarf at her throat. The scarf she had thought of herself, just before leaving the apartment, knowing that Rosie would be pleased. She was beginning to anticipate his taste.

Of course, she had white on underneath. But even the most puritanical man in the world couldn't object to that; absolutely nothing showed through the tightly woven material of the dress. In fact, she had been a bit daring tonight and hadn't even put on a bra; it was all in perfectly good taste, of course, it wasn't as if anyone could actually see anything, but when she breathed she could feel the dress rub ever so lightly against her nipples, so that they stood out against the cloth. She had never walked around this way before. It felt good, now that she'd done it. It felt good to know that men would be watching her, wanting her, good to know that she was desirable to them. Slowly but surely, she told herself, I'm coming along…

'Come,' he said,*we want to get a good seat.' He reached for her hand. He had already picked up the basket, an old-fashioned wicker one with a blanket folded over the top and the handle of his umbrella peeping out in front. Together they crossed the street to the park.

Crowds of people were already streaming in the same direction, moving up the paths toward the Great Lawn. Most of them, like Rosie, were carrying baskets or tote bags or blanket rolls.

'I've never been to one of these before,' said Carol, as they passed beneath the trees. It felt strange, to be walking through what was virtually a forest in the midst of all these people.

'You don't know what you've been missing,' said Rosie. 'This is the way music's meant to be heard, underneath the stars.'

She looked up. There were no stars yet – the sun would not be going down for almost an hour – but behind the canopy of branches the sky was already growing dark.

'They're up there,' said Rosie. 'Take my word for it.'

The trees suddenly gave way, and before them lay the broad expanse of the Great Lawn, acres of it, already covered with human figures. She couldn't remember ever having seen so many people gathered together, except in pictures of Woodstock. It’s like a religious event, she thought, with a feeling of excitement, and she was suddenly very happy about being here, among all these people, not just in the park, but happy about being in New York where special things like this could happen, happened all the time.

'Do you want to sit up close,' Rosie was saying, as they picked their way among the people and the blankets, 'or is halfway back okay?'

'Oh, this is fine,' she said.

He stopped at the first open spot of ground and, with a flourish, laid out the blanket. Reaching into the basket, he began to pull out paper plates and silverware.

'Wait till you see the dinner I've packed!'

There was French bread, and goose-liver pate, and deviled eggs, and cold chicken, and Rosie's own sweet golden wine, and strawberry tarts for dessert. It was absolutely perfect, like a dream, almost, to be sitting here on Rosie's blanket among this happy crowd (some of them surely envying her right now, it was such an extravagant dinner), with the food spread out before them and the band shell in the distance and, behind it, the towers of Central Park South glowing gold in the sunset.

They were still eating, finishing the last of the wine, when the orchestra began to take its seats. She could hear it tuning up, one instrument at a time, then increasing in volume and complexity until the sound swelled into a wave.

Suddenly applause swept the crowd, and heads turned; the conductor had appeared. There was an interlude of silence – and then the music began, a gaily seductive piece that made her want to sway her body in time. 'It's Dvorak,' Rosie whispered. ' "Slavonic Dances." Afterward I'll play you something even nicer.'

'On what?'

He smiled. 'You'll see.'

It was dark now, with the only light coming from the band shell and the distant buildings. She looked in vain for a moon.

'Sorry,' said Rosie. 'No moon tonight.' She hadn't realized he'd been watching her.

'That's a shame,' she said. 'I would have liked a full moon overhead. It would have been just the right touch.'

He shrugged. 'This month has two full moons, one at the beginning, one at the end, which makes it pretty special. Right now you'll just have to make do with starlight.'

The stars had come out – the brighter ones, at least, that could penetrate the haze – by the time the orchestra reached the second half of the program.

' "The Rite of Spring," ' said Rosie, as the haunting tones of a bassoon floated in the air.

'I know,' she said. 'I love it. I've always wanted to see the ballet but never had the chance.'

'The inspiration for it was the image of a naked girl dancing round and round before the elders of her tribe – round and round until she died.'

Her heart beat faster. 'Yes,' she said, 'I can picture it.'

The night grew even darker as the piece progressed; the crowd was still and silent. Lying back on Rosie's blanket and gazing up at the sky, Carol found it easy to forget where she was, and where the strange, discordant music was coming from, with its undertone of menace and ancient evil. At times she almost imagined it was directed at her alone.

Toward the end, as the woodwinds became strident and the kettledrums pounded like a pulse beat, he turned to her again. She sensed him looking down at her in the darkness.

'Carol, you're not tired yet, are you?'

'No. Why?'

'I just thought, since you're lying down… '

'No, honestly, I was just enjoying the music' Had she somehow offended him? She sat up.

'Then you're not tired?'

'Not at all.'

'Good.'

Suddenly, with a drumbeat and a blare of horns, the music ended. The meadow echoed with applause, and then people around them were standing, folding blankets, and pushing slowly through the darkness toward the paths out of the park.

She and Rosie picked up their things and followed, moving with the rest. On the outskirts of the crowd, vendors were selling hot dogs, ice cream, soda, and white plastic hoops that glowed in the dark. Rosie disappeared for a moment and came back with a hoop, which he fitted over her head like a necklace.

'There,' he said, 'it's your halo.'

Around them now the crowd was splitting up, half streaming toward the paths to the east, half to the west. Carol began following the second group, but Rosie stopped her.

'Let them go,' he said. 'I have a better idea.' He took her hand and they began walking north, away from the crowds.

'Wait,' she said, suddenly afraid. 'Where are we going?'

He turned to her and smiled. His grip tightened on her hand. 'Don't worry, it's a special place I know. You'll love it.'

They went on, cutting across paths and down a slope toward a low wooded area. Soon they had left the crowd far behind them.

'But isn't this dangerous?' said Carol, in a near whisper. The trees were so thick now that she could no longer see the lights of the buildings that bordered the park.

'You're safe with me,' he said. 'Honest. Trust me.'

She still felt nervous; she had heard so many frightening things about this park that she'd even been uneasy walking in it earlier with him. She remembered Sarr Poroth's story about wandering through the park that winter day. He had come out safely enough, but he hadn't been here at night and he wasn't old and frail like Rosie. Though Rosie's grip on her hand was anything but frail.

They were walking blind now; she had lost all sense of direction and was relying completely on him.

'I don't know,' she said, trying to control her nervousness with a joke, 'I sure hope you know karate.'

She heard him chuckle as he pulled her along. 'I don't need karate. I've got God on my side.'

A few steps farther on, at the entrance to a foul-smelling little tunnel that ran beneath a footbridge, he stopped.

'Look, remember that little rhyme I taught you? In the Old Language?'

'You mean the one we sang together on the roller coaster?'

'That's right. It made you feel braver then, and it'll do the same now.'

'But I've forgotten all the words.'

'I haven't. Come on, I'll teach it to you again.'

As they started through the darkness of the tunnel, their footsteps loud against the cobblestones, he whispered the words, and she repeated them, and the echoes in the tunnel repeated them again. And he was right: it was happening just as before, the fear was leaving her like a dream, a dream that on waking she would never be able to remember.

They emerged from the tunnel and left the path, moving through a densely wooded thicket where the ground was rocky and she nearly stumbled. Ahead of them loomed an archway of branches… and suddenly she found herself in a grassy clearing, a nearly perfect circle surrounded on all sides by trees so close their branches seemed almost intertwined. She knew she had never been here before, or even near it, but the place seemed somehow familiar – like a fairy ring, she thought – and she knew that here, at least, she was safe.

He had let go of her hand and was searching in the basket. 'Ah, here we are. I knew I'd brought this old thing along.'

It was a stubby white flageolet of polished wood.

'Oh,' she said, 'I didn't know you played the flute!'

He beamed at her. 'Let's just say I've taught myself to play one or two songs.'

He brought it to his mouth, but paused.

'Wait a second,' he said, 'before I go gumming it up, why don't you have a try?' He extended it toward her. 'Don't worry, it's clean.'

'But I don't know how to-'

'That's okay,' he said, holding it out, 'just give it a try.'

She stepped back – he was practically shoving the thing into her face – but she didn't want to hurt his feelings and he seemed so eager that at last she took it and put the end in her mouth. Touching her fingers to the holes, she played a few notes. The sound was jarring, strident, but the fact that she had tried it seemed to please him.

'Good,' he said, taking the instrument from her. 'I can see you've got real talent!' He laughed.

'Very funny,' she said, oddly humiliated. 'Now it's your turn.'

'I'd be delighted,' he said, with a courtly bow. 'But only on one condition – that you dance for me.'

'Here?' She searched his face in the darkness, trying to see if he was joking. 'What kind of a dance?'

He cocked his head. 'The one we've been practicing, of course!'

'I'm still a little stiff from a class I took last night,' she said. 'And I'm not so sure I'd feel right doing it here… '

'Come on now, Carol,' he said, smiling, 'this is absolutely the perfect place. You've always wanted to be a dancer. Now's your chance!'

Maybe it would be best to humor him. Besides, it was so dark no one would be able to see her.

'Oh, all right, why not? I'll pretend I'm a – what did you call it?-a dryad.'

She stepped forward into the circle and waited silently, trying to recall the steps from last night. There were just nine of them, she knew, repeated over and over in a complicated sequence: a step here, a back-step, a spin…

He was already raising the flute to his lips, and now he began to play – a slow, measured series of low notes, not exactly a melody, but the notes seemed to belong together, flowing into one another like the music a snake charmer played. Concentrating on the rhythm, she began to dance, slowly at first, in time with the music, but then faster as the music picked up speed. She had started out feeling somewhat self-conscious, even after her practice it was hard to think of where to put her feet, but gradually, as she let the music take her, she began not to think about the steps, they began to be second nature, maybe it was the wine; she simply let her feet and hands and head move the way they wanted to and felt wonderfully free and not afraid at all.

The song ended. She found herself standing in the center of the circle, thoroughly winded but, like last night, eager for more. She took a few deep breaths; her head was spinning.

'That was wonderful!' said Rosie. He walked out toward her. 'It was like watching the music come alive.'

'Oh, really, I was awful.' She shook her head but was pleased. 'It's a wonder you could even see me. There's practically no light here.'

He smiled. 'I could see that necklace of yours whirling in the dark.'

'You mean my little plastic halo!' She could feel it encircling her sweaty throat. Her hand went to it. 'I'll have to remember to dance with it again some time.'

He checked his watch. 'As a matter of fact, we have more time right now. Ic isn't very late, and there's something I'd rather like to try. Something special.'

'A different dance?'

'No, just a different song.'

She shrugged. 'All right. Sure. It might be fun to try out a new song.'

'Actually,' he said, 'it isn't new at all. In fact, it's very very old. But I think you might enjoy dancing to it.' He didn't give her time to reply. Laying out the blanket, he sat down and crossed his legs. 'Ready?'

'No, wait.' She ran a hand through her hair and loosed the top button of her dress. 'Ready.'

The new song was even more beautiful than the first – more exotic, yet she almost felt she'd heard parts of it before, and wondered where. No matter, she was busy now, concentrating on the steps: The backstep, the spin, the lift of the arm, the faster spin…

The rhythm was different this time, it took her a while to get accustomed to it, but then she saw that, in fact, it was far more suited to the dance than the first song had been.

The lift of the arm, the faster spin, the special signs the hands made with the next spin… And then the step, the spin, the spin. ..

And suddenly she was into it; the music was inside her now and the stars were whirling overhead. It felt lovely, she had never known dancing could be like this… And the steps were suddenly easy, they came to her so naturally that she didn't even have to think about them, she could watch the trees surrounding her like guards, their arms entwined, all black and green in the starlight.

The spin, the spin…

And the night was heating up around her, and the grass was soft, and the tune he was playing was indescribably beautiful; she let it move her as it willed, stepping when it called for her to step, and spinning when it called for her to spin, and her body grew warm as she whirled round and round in her silky green dress with her flame-colored hair forming the center of a great green flower and her head spinning and her hands making the signs…

The special signs the hands made with the next spin, the step, the spin, the spin…

And her body was hot now, her feet were on fire, she paused to kick her shoes off beneath one of the trees and then whirled back into the circle, barefoot now, the music lifting her again, whirling her round and round until her head was spinning faster than the stars and the green dress was swirling round her legs and her necklace was twirling in the dark and her body was burning, burning… And she knew what to do; while Rosie played and didn't see, she spun behind a tree and slipped off her underwear, leaving it a little splotch of white on the dark grass, and then she spun back into the circle, Rosie would never know, she whirled and danced for him and felt the music lift her as before, the grass alive and hot beneath her feet, her dress swirling around her waist now, her legs and body bare against the night, the night air on her body as she spun.

The spin, the spin…

The trees danced round and round her and her body was on fire, and she knew she would have to dance faster till the burning went away, and dimly she knew, as she danced even faster, that her dancing was forming a pattern within the circle of trees, tracing a picture so monstrous and huge that no one in a million years could ever possibly imagine what it was… And the stars were a part of the dance now, whirling with her as she moved about the circle, and dark green things were stirring in the grass, rising from the earth and fluttering around her, tiny green butterflies with wings like leaves, or maybe they were leaves that moved like butterflies, creatures from a deck of magic cards, and even the trees were moving to the song, and things in the trees, the faces in the leaves and the branches and the air, and she danced and danced until she felt so hot that she thought she would burn up, and she knew she was the native girl who'd dance until she died, and her body was on fire, and the fire was all around her, and she collapsed in a heap in the middle of the circle just as the song ended.

She could hardly remember how she got home. She had dim memories of Rosie pulling her after him into a cab, and of riding up in the elevator with him, her feet still bare, the floor painful beneath them, painful and dirty and cold… And then he was gripping her hand tightly and saying goodbye at her door, just as if he were a proper young gentleman and she his date.

And the next thing she knew it was Sunday morning, she was still in her green dress, the cloth all damp and sticky now and wrinkled from the bed, and her hair was matted and greasy and there was a silly white piece of plastic around her neck.

She was stiff and aching all over, but her feet hurt the worst. They were raw and blistered, as if instead of dancing last night on some grass in the park, she had been walking through a desert.

It was then she realized she'd forgotten the shoes. She'd left them, and the panties too, somewhere beneath those trees. They were probably still there.

There was no way out of it. She would simply have to go back uptown and get them. After all, they were Rochelle's shoes, not hers; Rochelle had probably paid forty or fifty dollars for them, and she wouldn't want to come back and find them gone.

The park was filled with joggers and radios and dogs that day, and angry voices arguing in Spanish. Blacks in headbands and earrings were playing conga drums by the fountain which, last night, had echoed to Stravinsky. She noticed Utter everywhere; she didn't remember its being there last night, but perhaps it had been too dark to see.

It took her almost an hour to find the clearing where she'd danced, and by then her legs were aching so much she wished she'd never come.

The clearing, seen in daylight, was a terrible shock. She'd remembered it as being like something in a dream, a vivid dream of green leaves and cool air and music beneath the stars, but by day the place appeared completely different. The trees were burnt and blackened along the inside of the ring, and the grass where she'd been dancing was lifeless, charred quite black in spots. The very air that had smelled so sweet last night now reeked of burning. What a shame, she said to herself as she looked around, there's just no place for nature in a city like New York. She looked at the trunk of the nearest tree; it was completely scorched, right up to the leaves. These trees are all going to die, she realized. It's those awful Puerto Ricans with their campfires.

She walked around the ring of trees several times and combed the blackened earth, but she never found the panties or the shoes.

Book Seven: The Altar