Ceremonies

XXX

Jeremy

He lies rigid on the bed, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. The sheets have dried now, the sun has come up, and his limbs no longer tremble. He has lain here unblinking for almost twenty hours; for the final ten of them he has not moved a muscle, save for the nearly imperceptible rise and fall of his belly. The room around him, the street outside, the formless living mass that is the city, all these are forgotten. He is not here. He is across the river now, belly to the ground, moving through the forest on all fours.

Contact has finally been attained.

Contact! – a linkage of the minds, just as, so long ago, the Master promised. He sees through its eyes now, feels the roughness of the forest floor through the pads of its feet, listens with ears more acute than any human's for the rustle of small creatures in the leaves. He smells the scent of pine boughs, marsh water, putrefying flesh; he feels his muscles ripple like a tiger's. Its body moves now to his will.

He feels the creature's fury, shares the memory of last night – the discovery of the ruined altar, scattered pebbles, shattered skulls -and shares, too, the hunger for revenge. They will pay, the race of men.

That, too, the Master has promised.

Stealthily he presses through the undergrowth to the forest's edge, slips through the long grass bordering the stream, and swims across with a confidence and ease no cat has ever felt. Selecting a likely maple on the other side, he lopes easily up the trunk; it is as effortless as running on the ground. Creeping out along an upper limb, he settles down to watch.

The three of them are gathered in an empty field, their figures ungainly and stiff as they stand intoning words out of a book. Before them lies a freshly dug hole and a small blanket-wrapped form.

For the first time in ten hours there is a flicker of movement on the Old One's wrinkled face, a nearly infinitesimal twitching at the corners of the lips.

And that same moment, as it gazes upon the proceedings from its perch in the tree, the animal's mouth widens into an almost human smile.

Unpleasant day.

Cats' funeral went off well; proved, in fact, to be rather touching, even to my jaded amp; allergic eyes. It was held out beyond Deborah's garden. Sarr had dug a small hole for the body, which was wrapped in black cloth. The other body – well, God knows what Bwada's done with it.

The Poroths, too, were dressed in black, but that's normal for them. I wore my best shirt amp; pants, the ones I'd first arrived in, amp; did my best to seem concerned: when Sarr quoted Jeremiah and asked, appropriately, 'Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?' I nodded with all the gravity I could muster. Read passages with them out of Deborah's Bible (Sarr seemed to know it all by heart, Deborah almost all), said amen when they did, knelt when they knelt, amp; tried to comfort Deborah when she cried. Asked her if cats could go to heaven, received a tearful 'Of course.' But San-added that Bwada would burn in hell…

What concerns me, apparently a lot more than it does either of them, was how the damned thing could have gotten into the house. Deborah said, with real conviction (though I don't think she'd believed it until this incident), 'The devil taught her how to open doors.' Sarr nodded solemnly amp; added, 'She was always a smart cat.'

He reminded me of an outlaw's mother, still somehow proud of her baby.

Yet after lunch he amp; I looked all over the land for Bwada so that we could kill her.

Took the same route we'd gone over twice already: barn, storeroom, beneath porches, even down among the pines that grow on the other side of the stream. He called her, pleaded with her, amp; swore to me she hadn't always been like this.

We could hardly check every tree on the farm, unfortunately, amp; the woods must offer the perfect hiding place for animals even larger than a cat. So of course we found no trace of her. We did try, though; we searched all the way to the old garbage dump at the far end of the road.

But for all that, we could have stayed much closer to home.

We returned for dinner, amp; I stopped by my room to change clothes.

My door was wide open.

Nothing inside was damaged, everything was in its place as it should be – except the bed. The sheets were in ribbons right down to the mattress, amp; the pillow had been torn to shreds. Feathers were all over the floor.

There were even claw marks on the blanket.

At dinner the Poroths tried to persuade me to sleep downstairs in their living room; they said they'd lock all doors tonight so that not even a human burglar could get in. Sarr believes the thing is particularly inimical, for some reason, toward me.

It seemed so absurd at the time. I mean, nothing but a big fat grey cat…

But now, sitting out here, a few feathers still scattered on the floor around my bed, I wish I had taken them up on their offer. Wish I were back inside the house. I did give in to Sarr when he insisted I take his axe with me.

But what I'd rather have right now is simply a room without windows.

I don't think I want to go to sleep tonight. I'll just sit up all night on my new bedsheet, my back against the Poroths' extra pillow, leaning against the wall behind me, the axe beside me on the bed, this journal on my lap.

The thing is, I'm rather tired from all the walking I did today. Not used to that much exercise. Slacking off too much lately.

I'm pathetically aware of every sound. At least once every five minutes some snapping of a branch or rustling of leaves makes me jump. And who'd have believed that mice could make so much noise as they patter across my ceiling? They may be small, but they sound like veritable behemoths.

How did that line go from the funeral today? From the Book of Jeremiah?

Thou art my hope in the day of evil. At least that's what the man said.

July Twentieth

A dream of dragons. Woke up this morning with the journal amp; the axe cradled in my arms. What awakened me was the trouble I had breathing – nose all clogged, sneezing uncontrollably. Down the center of one of my screens, facing the woods, was a huge diagonal slash.. .

Book Eight: The Test

What we did was no harm at all, only a game.

Machen, The White People

July Twenty-first

The dawn was grey and overcast. The sun was lurking just behind the tops of the surrounding pines, yet there seemed no end to the night. It was like one of those short, chilly winter days when darkness extends far into the morning – the sort of day when all a man's instincts rebel at getting up, and when the thought of rising as early as five thirty seems scarcely to be borne. Yet five thirty was when the sun rose; and with it rose Ham and Nettie Stoudemire.

There was, beyond the darkness, another reason for Ham's reluctance to face the day: this year had been, for him, a year of troubles. If it wasn't a late frost that had stunted the roots of his young saplings, it was the fruit tree blight, or worms in the tomatoes, or tent caterpillars that nested in his maples just when he and Nettie had played host to the assembled Brethren.

And now, after splashing some cold water on his face and sipping a pre-breakfast mug of coffee with Nettie – who, as the local midwife, seemed better able to cope with getting up mornings – and after stumbling from his house into the semidarkness, now Ham discovered what appeared to be some new trouble over at the pigpen.

The animals were gathered in one corner, snorting and pawing at something on the ground. Only one thing will disturb a pig that way, and even as he hurried toward the pen Ham imagined exactly what, in fact, he found: a garden snake, thick and black and harmless, which had somehow wandered into the pigs' territory and had been stamped to death by their hooves.

Climbing nimbly over the fence, he gave the animals hard whacks on their sides. To them it was like a caress; they moved apart to let him pass. He took the dead, mashed body, still quivering from nervous contractions, and hurled it sidearm toward the woods, past the northern edges of the field.

A bad omen, he thought to himself, this early in the morning. A bad omen for the day.

Ten minutes later, as he strode out to the cornfield, a hoe upon his shoulder, he saw the next snake. It was small and slim and green, and was moving slowly down one of the planted rows. Such snakes were beneficial – they fed upon the rodents that fed upon the corn -and he let it go by, though not without a shadow of a frown. Watching as it passed timidly down the furrow, he turned to follow its course – and, turning, saw another snake, less small, less slim, and darker green.

Briefly he recalled something he'd heard at the worship last Sunday: a chance remark, prompted by the news of Hannah Kraft's death, about this season's having seen more reptiles in the woods than any time in recent memory…

Ignoring his growing uneasiness, he pushed between the waist-high stalks of corn into the next row. To his relief it was empty, empty except for the brown tilled earth and the green of the stalks and the yellow where the ears of corn peeped through And where the foot-long yellow corn snake slipped easily around a nearby stalk and glided up the row in search of food.

He turned and walked purposefully toward the house, keeping down the impulse to run. A garter snake was unwinding from the bushes that grew in front of the basement window. Wait – there were two more just behind it.

'Nettie,' he called. 'Nettie!'

The door opened and she stood upon the back steps, studying his face. 'Ham? What's the-' She looked past him. 'Oh, sweet Lord!'

He turned. For a moment it looked as if the cornfield was alive with snakes, each row a river of cold squirming bodies.

'Lord,' she said, "tis like the plagues of Egypt!'

He looked down at his feet; the very ground on which he stood seemed to breed them. As he watched, three small dark heads appeared only a few yards away, three small heads with eyes of shiny black, heads that grew like ground vines and that, slipping from their holes, crept forth to wriggle upon the earth.

He pointed, wide-eyed, to where two more scaly bodies were emerging from the ground. 'Something down there is forcin' 'em up.'

In the shadow of the outhouse writhed a veritable Medusa's coil of them, strands of which were detaching themselves and moving toward the woods. How could the earth hold so many? It was as if they'd been planted like seeds a moon or two ago and had now begun to ripen.

Retreating to the back steps, he stood beside his wife and surveyed the things that crept across his land. 'What does it mean?' she kept asking – asking herself, or him, or God. 'What does it mean?'

Others were asking that same question. At Abram Sturtevant's a beloved old pony suddenly turned vicious and bit one of the children on the neck; Hildegarde Troet watched with horror that morning as a family of mice came dancing out of their holes beneath the kitchen and ran round and round the floor; Adam Verdock's cows had, for the past two days, been giving sour milk, and a hen in Werner Klapp's henhouse had just laid its third double-yoked egg. One of Shem Fenchel's dogs, the younger male, snapped at the female and had to be locked up. Shortly after noon Rachel Reid's canary sat stock still in its cage, its beak gaping wide, and uttered strange, piercing cries.

What was happening? Were they living under a curse? At first they asked individually, but as they learned, throughout that day, that others, too, were suffering the calamities, they grew more frightened and asked it of one another. What was happening? they asked. What did it mean?

A fourth day has dawned, a fine layer of dust has settled on his eyeballs, and still he has not moved. He does not hear the radio blaring salsa music in the street below, or the sound of children's voices in the playground down the block, or the urgently repeated ringing of the telephone. He is far away, far across the river. He has not broken contact.

He will see this thing through till the end. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

He intends to be in on the kill.

Freirs counted his change and tried to get his story straight as he stood contemplating the pay phone that jutted from the rear wall of the Co-op, just inside the passageway to the grain warehouse. Surely, he told himself, Carol wouldn't turn him down – it wasn't as if he was asking so much, just a night or two of simple hospitality -but just the same, it was best to be prepared.

He had decided, this very morning, to leave the Poroths; had awakened, in fact, with that resolve uppermost in mind, having spent the previous night camped in the farmhouse, sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the living-room floor. He had gotten up shortly after day-break in a sour mood, eyes itching and nose running, his skin covered with cat hairs. This was no way to be passing the summer, hiding in a cat-infested farmhouse while another feline, downright homicidal, lurked somewhere nearby. The whole thing was turning into a bad dream. He wanted out.

The Poroths, unaware of his intent, had been nothing if not solicitous. They had moved aside all the living-room furniture to make a temporary bedroom for him and had made sure that the doors to the house were firmly locked, both front and back. Yesterday, on their way back from Werner Klapp's chicken farm, where they had purchased four new laying hens, they had stopped off in town to buy new screening for Freirs' room and a latch to bolt his door from the inside. Sarr had rigged up a simple wooden floor lamp for him from an old clothing rack and some spare parts found in the storeroom. Obviously the two of them were sorry that events at the farm had taken such a turn; obviously they wanted him to stay for the rest of the summer. It’s probably my money they want, he told himself.

He hadn't yet said anything to them about leaving, though no doubt they sensed the possibility. He wasn't sure just how to bring it up, and besides, there was one thing he'd have to arrange first in private: finding a place in New York where he could stay until his own apartment was vacant. Perhaps Carol would be willing… He would have to propose it as a temporary measure, of course – just until he found a summer sublet. He could ask if he might simply use the couch for a few days; and then, if things developed as he hoped they would…

Getting into town to phone her had seemed a problem. The Poroths would hardly be driving in again, having made the trip just yesterday, and he hated to ask to borrow the truck, especially when he'd have to make up some innocent-sounding pretext for needing it.

It had looked, though, as if he'd have no choice. He'd been seated on the front porch, preparing himself to walk down to the cornfield where Sarr and Deborah were working and ask them for the keys, when from up the road had come the sound of an engine, followed by a cloud of dust the same grey as the sky. Moments later a square yellow van had rattled into view with Hunterdon Oil amp; Gas in large red letters on its side. Sarr had hurried back from the field in time to help the company's driver replace one of the tall silver cylinders that stood behind the house with a new one and to stow the empty cylinder in the back of the van. Afterward, with an apologetic smile – as if this were a betrayal of the Poroths' trust – the driver had presented them with a printed receipt and, attached to it, the bill for last month's gas. The first Sarr had slowly and conscientiously signed, but the bill had left him scowling and shaking his head.

Freirs, seeing his chance, had asked the man if he'd be driving toward Gilead; there were things he needed at the store.

The Poroths had exchanged a glance. 'You should have told us yesterday,' said Deborah,*when Sarr and I went in. We'd have been glad to pick up something for you.' Sarr, meanwhile, had been looking gloomily away, as if he knew that Freirs might be leaving them soon and was resigned to it.

'I need more bug spray,' Freirs had said. 'Something a bit more powerful.'

'But how will you get back?' Deborah had asked as Freirs climbed into the van. 'Should I-'

'He'll find a way,' Sarr had cut in. 'Come on, woman, there's work to be done.' He had turned his back and started off in the direction of the fields.

'I'll get a hitch,' Freirs had yelled, as the van came to life with a roar. 'See you by dinnertime.' Soon they'd been rolling down the road, the farm receding behind them, Deborah's forlorn figure still watching them go, Sarr's already lost behind the house.

He still felt faintly guilty, standing here now before the phone. He was going to betray these people. Deborah, in particular, would be hurt.

He forced himself to think of the city as he slipped a dime into the phone and dialed Carol's number. The memory of New York's hot and sticky streets was beginning to seem almost attractive. There'd be movies to catch up on, and restaurants to try, and Carol 'Please deposit seventy-five cents,' said an unfamiliar voice.

He thumbed in the contents of his back pocket, fixing his face in a smile to help put himself into the proper mood. Okay, he thought, here goes nothing.

Where was Rosie? What could he be up to? She hadn't heard from him in days. This wasn't like him at all.

Carol reached down from the bed, picked up the phone, and dialed again. She let it ring for almost a full minute, her ear pressed close to the receiver, as if, by listening with all her might, she could hear the ringing echo through the corridors of his apartment, the sound of morning traffic in the street below his window, the regular faint whisper of the old man's labored breathing…

No, it was no use. No one was going to answer. She hung up the phone and wondered what to do.

There was really nothing to get excited about, of course. Rosie was probably out of town, attending to business or visiting friends. He would be back this weekend, she was sure of that, because he'd promised to take her to the ballet Saturday and he always kept his promises.

But then, he'd also promised to call her sometime this week, and here it was Thursday and she hadn't heard from him. That was unlike the old man; he usually phoned her every day, often twice, and sometimes even took her out to lunch at one of the Cuban Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood. She had come to expect his little calls, to look forward to them. Perhaps, in a way, she depended on them.

His sudden silence worried her. After all, he was so old and frail; he'd never actually told her his age and she'd never dared ask him, of course, but the more she'd seen of him the more she'd begun to think that he must be eighty at least.

What if he was lying dead, right this minute, on the floor of his apartment? That sort of thing happened often in New York, she'd read about it; there'd been a poor old man in the Bronx who'd died of a heart attack and had lain for months, an entire summer, in fact, his body decomposing, swelling, bloating with maggots and gas until it seeped through the ceiling of the apartment below.

Or what if he wasn't dead but simply in a coma, unable to hear the phone? Or perfectly conscious but simply unable to reach the phone? How horrible she'd just been, then, to let the phone ring for an entire minute; she could almost picture the old man lying there paralyzed, listening to the rings, helpless to stop them, praying that someone would help him…

She swung her legs off the bed and hurried to get dressed. Maybe nothing would come of this, she was probably just being silly, but she wouldn't be able to go to work this afternoon until she'd satisfied herself that he was all right. She had to do something, anyway. She owed him that much.

The phone rang nine, ten, eleven times without an answer.

'Damn!' said Freirs. It was almost noon. Maybe she was on her way to work. Well, he would wait around for a while and try her again at the library. Having gone to so much trouble to get here, he wasn't about to leave without talking to her.

He wondered how he'd kill an hour or so, and wished he'd had the sense to bring a book. He'd thought general stores were supposed to stock magazines or at least the local papers, but the Co-operative had none. He was surprised how much he'd begun to miss the Times. The cemetery across the street held no interest for him in all this heat, the dusty headstones baking in the sun. Briefly he thought of the corpses beneath; at least they'd be cool down there.

His shirt, he saw, was sticking to his back, and there were already sweat stains beneath his arms. With a sigh he rubbed the perspiration on the back of his neck and walked into the main room of the store.

Too bad the Brethren seemed never to have heard of air conditioning; the only trace of refrigeration in sight was the cooler near the back. Bert Steegler, carefully marking catalogues at the front counter, looked up with as little friendliness as he'd displayed when Freirs had entered. Steegler's wife was across the corridor in the post office section, filling out a pile of official-looking forms. Freirs wandered down the nearest aisle, smelling the clean, cozy scent of spice, coffee, and floor wax. One aisle up from the passage leading back to the warehouse stood three large burlap sacks of grain, the first of them open at the top. I wonder whether you plant this stuff or eat it, he thought, running his hand through the kernels.

'Is there somethin' you want?' Steegler had come around the counter and was peering down the aisle at him. Freirs dropped the grain and pointed to the cooler.

'I think I'll get myself one of these hero sandwiches.' He took the largest, with a not-too-cold can of diet cola. 'And I'd better pick up some insect spray,' he added, suddenly remembering to lie to the Poroths. A dark red can labeled Chemtex caught his eye; this brand looked even stronger than the first. For Outdoor Use Only, the label warned; probably that just meant it was powerful.

Steegler eyed the can dubiously and seemed reluctant to ring it up.

'Don't worry,' said Freirs, grinning. 'I'll make sure I point it away from me.'

But as the other looked up, Freirs saw the hardness in his gaze, the set of his mouth, and realized he'd misread the man's expression.

'You fixin' to stay out here much longer?' asked Steegler.

Freirs flushed guiltily. Had the other read his mind? 'What do you mean, "out here"?'

'I mean here among the Brethren.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Freirs. Across the corridor Steegler's wife had paused in her writing and appeared to be listening. He chose his words with care. 'Sarr and Deborah are expecting me to stay until the end of the summer. Why?'

Steegler shook his head. 'Nothin'. Just wonderin', that's all.' He totaled Freirs' bill with pencil and paper, a small drawer serving to hold the cash. 'You tell Brother Sarr I said hello, all right?'

'Oh, sure,' said Freirs. 'Sure thing.' Taking his purchases, he walked quickly from the store. He was confused. Why had Steegler been so hostile? It was almost as if the fellow wanted him to leave town. ..

Not until he'd seated himself on the hard wooden bench on the Co-op's front porch and was unwrapping the sandwich on his lap did an explanation present itself. Of course! he decided. He must nave heard me over by the phone and figured I was calling New York. He's probably afraid I'm running out on the Poroths.

Freirs felt better now. Yes, that must be it. It wasn't that Steegler wanted him to leave town – quite the opposite. The fellow wanted him to stay!

Ever since he'd first laid eyes on him that warm Sunday in May, Bert Steegler had never forgiven the outsider for sleeping in the graveyard. Oh, he'd seen him, all right, up there in the shadow of the Troet monument, snoozing away the afternoon with his fat belly in the air, just like those were his own people up there and he had a right to he amongst them. Steegler and his wife had family buried there – poor little six-week-old Annalee, Lord rest her soul – and he took it amiss to see this sloppily dressed stranger lying on top of the departed like they were so many clumps of earth. He had seen Brother Sarr Poroth climb the low hill to the monument that day, had seen him wake the city fellow and take him down to his truck, and had heard how the Poroths had opened their home to him. Brother Sarr didn't seem to mind the outsider; but then, Brother Sarr didn't seem to mind very much about a lot of things: the proper respect the community was due, to say nothing of his own mother, the boy up and going off to get his education in some other town, then trotting back home like the Prodigal. And now he was flouting the Co-operative itself- which was, after all, really no more than the community of Brethren anyway, as they existed on paper – to which he owed – what was it now? Why, it was over $4900, the last time he'd checked. How did the boy think he was going to pay that off? A good thing his father wasn't alive, Lord rest his soul; the old man wouldn't have taken kindly to a son so deep in debt to the Go-op.

Steegler craned his skinny neck and peered out the window. Yes, he was out there, all right; he knew he hadn't heard the fellow walk down the front steps. There he was, sitting fat and lazy on the bench, young enough to work, certainly, and probably strong -folks who carried a lot of weight usually had the muscles to go with it – but preferring to remain there in idleness, swallowing his sandwich and staring out at nothing, with Lord knows what sinful thoughts in his head. Brother Rupert Lindt was right about the fellow: that sort expected others to work for them but wouldn't do a lick themselves. It set a bad example, him being there like that, with his bulging pockets, in front of the store that was the symbol of the community. He should never have listened to Amelia he should have taken that bench away years ago; he'd warned her it was an invitation to the idle, but she'd maintained that old folks needed a place to rest their bones. As if old folks had nothing better to do this side of the grave than sit and stare at the street. For all he knew, the fellow was discouraging trade.

From across the room the glass door to the cooler didn't look completely shut; it would be just like the outsider to leave it hanging open, wasting the propane gas whose price had just gone up another dollar twelve a tank. Steegler hurried down the aisle to check and saw, with a tiny edge of disappointment, that the door was in fact closed. He turned lest any of the cornmeal livestock feed had spilled from the sack the fellow had been running his hands through. That's when he saw the worms.

The corn was alive with them. There were dozens – no, hundreds, he suddenly realized, as his eye took them all in: squirming little yellowish things nearly the color of the corn, slipping in and out amongst the kernels like the inhabitants of some satanic city.

And even as Steegler told himself that it couldn't be the stranger's fault, that the worms must have been breeding there for weeks, that the unusually hot weather was to blame, or whoever'd sold him the corn (hadn't it been Brother Ham Stoudemire?) – even as these thoughts occurred to him, the association was formed: the stranger spoiled things just by touching them. It was like the Bible said: at his touch sprouted vermin.

He couldn't wait to tell Brother Rupert about this. He could almost see the other now, the slowly widening eyes, the deepening scowl, the angry clenching of his huge fists.

Bert Steegler was no fool. He had a good idea what was behind Lindt's dislike of the outsider: it was that thin redheaded girl, the one'd he'd had with him that Sunday right here in the store. Steegler had seen the larger man glance her way and glance again, and he'd sympathized; everyone knew Sister Anna led Rupert a hard life.

Still, he could appreciate the truth of what Lindt said. The fellow out there on the porch just didn't belong here. He had come amongst the Brethren bearing the taint of the city; he was a gateway for sin. Gilead would need a cleansing to rid itself of him.

The subway uptown was almost empty in the late morning heat except for a pair of Columbia summer-termers, one of whom kept eyeing her over his paperback, and a group of black youths with baseball caps and duffel bags. Two of them were looking past her and giggling. Pretending to wipe the sweat from her forehead, she turned and saw a tattered blue sign pasted to the window just above her, bearing a cross and the printed slogan, It’s A Blessing To Be A Virgin. Below them someone had scribbled, But you got to give Great Head. Quickly she looked away. She was glad the next stop, 110th Street, was hers.

She walked south until she recognized the ancient grey brick building just off Riverside Drive. From eight till six a doorman was on duty, a sleepy-looking Hispanic whose only uniform was a T- shirt and brown slacks. He seemed confused as to what she wanted of him and, after she'd explained herself, reluctant.

'No,' he said, shaking his head slowly. 'I can't open no door for nobody.'

'But he may be in there dying,' Carol pleaded.

His expression suggested that he found this unlikely. 'Look, lady, I ain' got no key. The super, he the one with the key, but he gone out now. You wanna come back tomorrow, you talk to him, okay?' He looked away, his face impassive, as if she weren't standing there in front of him.

'Well, can I at least go up there and knock on his door?'

He nodded, still not looking at her.

'Thanks a lot.' She walked past him to the elevator and jammed her thumb onto the button marked 12. A minute later she emerged on Rosie's floor. His apartment was at the end of the hall, behind a dull green rather shabby-looking door from which gleamed three brass locks of formidable size. The old man was worried about thieves.

'Rosie?' she called, holding her finger against the buzzer beside the door. 'Rosie?' She could hear the buzzer's muffled ringing within the apartment. She pressed her ear to the door. There was no other sound.

She knocked now, softly at first, then harder, putting her ear once more to the door.

Nothing.

She shrugged, began to walk away, then stopped and went back. 'Rosie,' she called, putting her mouth to the crack, speaking as softly as she dared because she was somewhat embarrassed to be doing this, 'Rosie, this is Carol. If you're in there, listen to me. I can't get in the apartment, but I'm coming back tomorrow and I'll have the super let me in. So try not to worry. I'll be back.'

More than an hour had passed, and he still couldn't reach Carol. There was no answer at her apartment, and the woman he'd spoken to at Voorhis said that Carol hadn't come to work today. 'No,' Freirs had told her, 'no message.' He hung up, troubled, almost indignant, at this unexpected absence of someone he'd regarded as reliable. Where the hell was she, anyway? Who had she gone off with? Well, he would call her in a day or two, when he got back to New

York. He certainly wasn't going to wait around here any longer; he had already wasted enough time. Gilead's main street had been dull, with cars passing but rarely and those inside them regarding him with little warmth; and the library, where he'd thought he might spend the afternoon, had been unaccountably closed. He had drunk too many cans of soda, there on the porch, and eaten too many potato chips. Now, as he got to his feet and moved slowly down the front steps, the heat made him feel dizzy.

It was a long way back to the farm. He walked for more than twenty minutes down the road that curved past Verdock's dairy and the Sturtevant home, hoping for a ride, but the only car that passed him was an antiquated Ford, black as a hearse and traveling in the opposite direction. The elderly couple inside, also in black, regarded him with stony disapproval as they went by, giving him a taste of their exhaust.

He watched the car recede slowly up the narrow road until it rounded a bend and disappeared, the faint hum of its engine lingering a moment or two afterward. Once again the air was still, but for the sound of a distant tractor and the echoes of an axe; not a thing was moving save the cows eyeing him suspiciously in a field to the left, the butterflies hurrying from flower to flower, and an occasional green snake that wandered onto the pavement and slithered back into the grass at his approach. The oak trees' shadows lengthened perceptibly with the passing day, as if reaching back toward town.

Five minutes later, just as he was descending the hill that ran past Ham Stoudemire's farm and stepping past the dark, motionless form of a garden snake coiled in sleep at the edge of the pavement, a rusty blue pickup truck appeared on the road, two black-garbed figures inside, a sparsely bearded boy at the wheel and beside him a plump, snub-nosed girl. The truck bore swiftly down upon him. He stuck out his thumb and flashed a hopeful smile.

Far from slowing as it neared him, the truck increased its speed and made a sudden swerve to the right. The garden snake woke just ' in time and slipped into the grass. Freirs jumped back to avoid being run down.

'Assholes!'

He hoisted an angry finger at them as they went by, hoping, at first, that the two had seen the gesture and then, on reflection, that they hadn't. No sense getting into fights with the townspeople.

Teenagers, he supposed, were teenagers everywhere, even among the Brethren. Anyway, for all he knew they'd just been aiming at the snake.

It wasn't until he'd descended halfway to the brook, the road ahead now crisscrossed with shadows of trees, that he encountered a genuine Samaritan: a leathery old farmer with a truckful of garbage, on his way to the town dump half a mile past the Geisels' north field. 'I almost didn't stop for you,' he said, eyeing Freirs warily through eyes whose whites had turned as yellow as corn. 'Thought you might be one o' them gangsters.'

Freirs laughed and assured him that he was as honest as the next.

The other nodded gravely. 'You're the guy who's stayin' at the Poroths'.'

'How'd you know?'

'Figured that's who you'd be, soon as you opened your mouth.'

'It must be hard to keep a secret around here. Everybody seems to know everything that's going on.'

'Pretty much.'

It occurred to him, after they got. under way, that the man might be a resource. 'For a town this small,' he said, 'there seems to be a wealth of family history.'

The other was shaking his head. 'There ain't too much wealth in this town, son. We don't hold with gatherin' up the goods o' this world like some folks do.'

'No, no, I mean, a wealth of memories, a sense of identity based on family background.' God, he sounded like a textbook! 'Like Sarr Poroth moving back to his ancestral farm after more than a century. That's pretty amazing.'

The man shrugged. 'It was for sale at a good price, and someone was bound to settle there by and by. The Babers never did do much with it – not as much as some folks might.'

'I suppose the land's not all that fertile down there.'

'No, sir, there's nothin' the matter with that land. It's just a matter of clearin' back the trees from time to time. You've got to have the will to see it through.' He paused. 'Less'n you fancy livin' in the woods, like some around here.'

'You mean families like the Fenchels. I've heard Sarr speak of them.'

He nodded. 'Folks like that.'

'And the McKinneys,' said Freirs. "They must live out there, too, even deeper in the woods.'

The other looked puzzled. 'Never heard of anyone by that name, leastwise not around here.'

'No? What about the place they call McKinney's Neck? I figured it was named for someone in the area.'

'I expect you're right. But I sure ain't never heard of no McKinneys. Not in these parts.'

Freirs tried to remember his stroll through the cemetery. Now that he thought of it, he couldn't recall seeing any gravestones with that name.

'At any rate,' he said, 'I mean to hike through that region someday. Maybe I'll even run into a few ghosts.'

The man didn't take the bait. 'Don't see why a ghost would pass his time out in the Neck. Ain't nothin' there but swamp water and mud. You just be careful you don't go sinkin' in.'

'Still, I hear some pretty strange things have happened out there.' He watched for the other's reaction. 'Even a couple of murders, I hear.'

The man's expression barely changed, save for a certain impatience. 'I remember somethin' like that, but it was years ago. 'Twould be well before you were born. And beggin' your pardon, it seems to me that when it comes to killin', the place you're from has the rest of us just about beat.'

'I won't deny it' said Freirs. He tried to look properly contrite. 'But the killings I'm thinking of were a bit unusual – both on the last day of July. I don't suppose anything special happened last year on that date, did it? Or maybe the year before? Some sort of violent crime, or someone missing? An unexplained death, maybe?'

The man drove a while in silence. 'Nope,' he said at last. 'Not so's I remember. Summer's pretty quiet around here. Why?'

'Oh, nothing,' said Freirs. 'Just a thought.'

July 31, 1890, and July 31,1939… Why those two dates nearly half a century apart? There had to be something special about them, something that separated them from all other July thirty-firsts…

'Fact is,' the farmer said, breaking into Freirs' reverie, 'that time o' year's amongst the holiest, August commencin' as it does with the Feast o' the Lamb and closin' on the harvest festivities.'

'Really?' He was slightly disappointed. 'I guess your year must be filled with all sorts of holy days.'

'Well, we try to live in the way o' the Lord. For instance, only last Sunday, at worship, Brother Amos turned to me and said… '

But Freirs' mind was already back at the farm, going over the preparations to be made before leaving: the explanations that, tomorrow morning, he would have to give the Poroths, the shelfloads of books to pack away… And through it all his thoughts kept returning to the faded old photograph that he'd taped to the wall above his writing table – a photo of that curious little white face, smiling at him from the past.

It was the leg of mutton that prompted his question – the mutton which, upon Freirs' return, lay roasting in the oven for the night's dinner, its smell filling the little kitchen.

'Deborah, what's the Feast of the Lamb?'

She shrugged. 'Just another one of our observances. Why?'

'The old man who gave me a lift here mentioned that it comes at the beginning of August. I'd never heard of it before.'

'Honestly, Jeremy,' she said, laughing, 'you haven't even tasted tonight's meal and you're already hungry for more!' She turned back to the cucumbers and tomatoes she was slicing for the salad. 'What else did he tell you?'

Freirs thought back. 'Nothing very interesting,' he said. 'I don't think he knew that much. I asked him about McKinney's Neck, but he'd never even heard of anyone around here named McKinney.'

'Come to think of it, neither have I,' said Deborah. 'Honey, was there ever a McKinney family in these parts?'

Poroth looked up from the previous day's Home News, which he'd been frowning over. 'None that I recall.'

'So where'd McKinney's Neck come from?' asked Freirs.

The other shook his head. 'Couldn't tell you. But I'll see what I can find out.' He returned to his reading.

'If you're interested in the Feast of the Lamb,' said Deborah, 'you could join us at the Geisels'. That's where we'll be having it this year. Sister Corah's a wonderful cook, but I warn you, there'll be a lot of praying.'

'I take it I'm invited.'

'I don't see why not. Honey, can't Jeremy have the lamb with us at Matt and Corah's?'

'He'll be welcome,' said Poroth. 'If he's still here.'

Freirs flushed. 'I certainly hope I am.'

'And why wouldn't he be?' said Deborah, busy taking out plates and saucers. 'Put away the paper, honey, it's time to eat.' She glanced at Freirs. 'Nobody's going to leave meals like this behind.'

'How could I?' Freirs said, with a heartiness he didn't feel. Eyeing the food she was already laying on the table, the bright reds and greens of the salad, the cold pitcher of milk, the beans fresh from the garden, he wondered what the Poroths had been saying about him today.

The subject of his leaving didn't come up again. But after dinner, as the two men stood on the back porch watching darkness settle over the land and listening to Deborah singing hymns as she worked in the kitchen, Sarr returned, if only indirectly, to an earlier subject.

'You know,' he said with obvious deliberation, 'God answers to many different names, and He's worshiped in strange ways. But He's always the same God.'

There was a pause; Freirs felt the other's eyes on him. 'That's true,' he said at last, wondering what the man was driving at. 'I'm sure it doesn't matter what you call Him.'

'It doesn't,' said Poroth heatedly. 'The words may be different, but the spirit's always been the same. At Trenton the professors talked about "other systems of belief," and so did all those books in there' – he nodded toward the house, where his few remaining college texts stood gathering dust in the living room – 'and at first I was troubled, I don't mind telling you, at how many different forms God seemed to take. But in the end I found I was able to return to the fold with even more faith than I'd started with, because I came to see how, even when He had different names, He was the same God I knew.'

'I once read a story,' Freirs began, 'about how the people in Tibet have nine billion names for Him… '

'You don't even have to go that far away,' said Poroth. 'There was a little village down in Mexico that the Catholics were wonderfully proud of. The Indians in the area had all been converted, you see -they'd been Christians for at least a hundred years – and week after week every last one of 'em would show up in church to worship the Virgin Mary. And then one day the priest had the altar taken up, so as to make some repairs, and underneath it he discovered another altar, with an idol much older than his, a cruel-looking thing with a snake head and teeth.'

'And that's what they'd really been worshiping all along?'

Poroth nodded. 'But the point is, they were all just fooling themselves. The Catholics thought they were praying to one god and the Indians thought they were praying to another, but they were really praying to the same. It's as if below both the Virgin and the snake was still another god – the true one.'

'The one with the capital G,' said Freirs. Privately he had drawn a different conclusion from the story: something about older, darker gods, and rites in which the blood wasn't just a symbol.

'It's the same with the Feast of the Lamb,' Poroth was saying. 'Actually, it's got another celebration buried underneath, though folks around here wouldn't have heard of it.'

'What kind of celebration?'

Poroth shrugged. 'Pagan. Your standard harvest festival.' He held open the screen door. 'Come on, I'll show you.'

Deborah was standing at the sink as they passed through the kitchen but didn't look up from her washing. A glowing lantern made the night beyond the windows look darker than it had from the porch. Sarr lit another and they went into the living room, where he stooped before his little cache of books in the corner, peering at the names on the spines.

'Sometimes,' he said, 'the Christians took a pagan day and made it their own – like Easter, which, as I expect you've heard, was a planting festival long before Christ.' He pulled out a battered grey volume from the bottom shelf and began thumbing through it. 'Sometimes they changed the name a little, to disguise the origin. That's what we Brethren did with the Feast of the Lamb, which sounds so proper and Christian.'

'It wasn't originally?'

Poroth looked up from the book. 'No,' he said in a low voice. 'And I'm probably the only one who knows.'

'What's that you're looking at? Some rival to the Bible?'

The other laughed uneasily. 'No, just an almanac, something I haven't opened for years.' He squinted at the cover, but the name had long since worn away, and he turned instead to the tide page. 'Byfield's Newly Revised Agricultural Almanack and Celestial Guide f or 1947,' he read. 'I found it at a church bazaar in Trenton for fifteen cents.' Looking down, he flipped through several more pages, then paused. 'Ah, here's what I've been searching for.' He handed the open book to Freirs, pointing to a line in the middle of what appeared to be a chart. 'See? Right there.'

The book itself smelled faintly of mildew, its covers warped and faded. Freirs scanned the opened page. Festivals of the Ancients, it said at the top; below it lay a complicated-looking calendar. He found the indicated line. August 1, it said. Lammas.

'It's got nought to do with lambs,' said Poroth. 'Nor does the night before.'

Freirs checked the previous column. July 31, he read. Lammas Eve. 'Hmmm, sounds sinister!'

'It can be. Black magic's always powerful on Lammas Eve. There'll probably be some odd doings somewhere in the world that night.'

'Why's that?'

Instead of answering, Poroth merely pointed back to the calendar in the book. There was something called Roodmas on May third, and Midsummer on the twenty-fourth of June, and the day Deborah had spoken of, St Swithin's, on the fifteenth of July. Several dates, he noticed now, were marked with tiny asterisks – dates like the first of May and the last day of October. So was Lammas Eve, the last day of July.

He looked down at the bottom of the page. There beside an asterisk was the footnote, a simple one, just two words long:

Sabbats likely.

Moonlight slanted through the misty air of the place known as McKinney's Neck, through motes of dust and dancing insects, through the latticework of ancient roots that spread from the column of a fallen cottonwood, down through the roots, down to the freshly built little altar of rock and mud and bone.

The altar was smaller than the first but considerably more colorful. Between each of the tiny standing pebbles that encircled the mound like a miniature Stonehenge lay freshly plucked rose blossoms that shone, by day, like red beacons in the mud, and at night looked like small knots of darkness. And stuck at the top of the mound, like a comical little pompom atop a clown's hat, there now lay a single round head, eye sockets empty but ears and whiskers intact – and with black fur still soft enough to pet.

Night. The crescent moon is hidden by trees as the animal creeps out upon the lawn and sits gazing at the farmhouse. Singing comes from a dimly lit room on the second floor where the farmer and his woman are at their evening devotions.

'Watchman ofZion, herald the story,

Sin and death His kingdom shall destroy… '

It moves closer, to crouch below the window. Forty miles away and twelve floors up, a wrinkled shape upon a bed hears the closing verses of their song.

'All the earth shall sing of His glory;

Praise Him, ye angels, ye who behold Him,

Great is Jehovah, King over all.'

The voices die away. Briefly the man is heard again, reciting a short prayer; the woman joins him, echoing his words. Then, as always, the light goes out. Soon the room will echo to the sounds of their lovemaking. The animal moves on.

Around the front of the house, lights are still burning on the first floor. There he sits again tonight, the visitor from the city, absorbed in a book, his plump white face glowing like a full moon in the lamplight. The animal watches, and the Old One watches, as he turns another page.

Momentarily, as if aware he is observed, the visitor sets down the book and goes to the window. His troubled eyes peer blindly through the screen, unable to see past the lamplight. Seven feet away, the animal sits watching him, shielded by the darkness.

The man returns to his chair and, moments later, to the thick grey book he has been reading. The animal turns and pads briskly around the side of the house to the porch steps in the back. There, in the darkness beneath the stairway, two metal garbage cans stand reeking of death and corruption. On one of them the scent is old, but the other has accumulated a full week's stock of tiny mangled corpses, a choice supply of putrefying meat.

And this very putrefaction has its uses.

With the easy swipe of a paw and a clank of metal the can is overturned, the lid tumbling noisily off to roll several feet away upon the grass.

Upstairs, in the darkness, the woman's grip tightens on the man's shoulder. 'Honey, wait,' she whispers. 'Did you hear that?'

He makes a low sound of assent. 'Coon,' he says, and enters her again.

Downstairs, in the living room, the visitor puts down the book and walks around the room, carefully shutting each window.

The animal, untroubled, creeps into the darkness of the overturned can. The fragrance of death fills its lungs. Before it lies the little mound of bodies, the field mice, frogs, and snakes. Delicately, methodically, it runs its razor claws through the soft and rotting flesh – first the front claws, then the rear, shredding the flesh with machinelike efficiency, working the corruption into the fur and deep beneath each gracefully hooked nail.

Forty miles away the Old One watches, smells the death smell, feels the decay beneath the nails of his own fingers. Yes, it is good: it may be helpful in tomorrow evening's enterprise. A little poison never hurts.

July Twenty-second

Amos Reid had a bag of Bordeaux dust under his arm for the leaf blight on his cukes, young Abram Sturtevant was about to buy his third can of Malathion for a sudden invasion of aphids, and Rupert Lindt was stocking up on Gurney's patented worm powder for the cutworms and snails that had already slaughtered a third of his tomato plants. None of them had any moral qualms about using chemicals on their crops; what qualms they had were purely economic. Pesticides were expensive, but under the circumstances they were going to have to rely on them and salvage whatever they could. It was suddenly turning out to be a bad year. You could see it in their faces; you could hear it in their talk.

Not even Bert Steegler was happy, though business had been brisk today. He and his wife worked mainly on salary; the profit or loss they derived from the store hardly differed from anyone else's. Besides, Bert's married daughter, Irma, had just had an entire plot of pattypan squash wiped out, almost overnight, by a particularly voracious breed of corpulent grey slug that had never been seen in the area before.

'You heard about what happened at the Verdocks?' asked Steegler, as he rang up Abram Sturtevant's purchase.

'I've been too busy tryin' to save my crops to worry myself about other folks' affairs,' said Sturtevant.

'I'll tell you,' said Rupert Lindt, from halfway across the store. 'Lise got herself kicked in the head by one of Adam's cows, tryin' to squeeze a bit of milk from it.'

'You don't say! Lord's mercy on her, how's she bearin' up?'

'Pretty bad,' said Lindt. 'They think she may not live till Sunday.'

'We've been prayin' for her regular,' added Amos Reid. "Tis all we can do.'

'I'll be sure to do the same,' said Sturtevant. 'Does my brother know of this?'

'You can ask him yourself,' said Steegler, who'd been looking out the screen door. 'That's him comin' now.'

They heard Joram’s heavy foosteps on the porch outside. He was a tall, formidable-looking figure with eyebrows black and heavy as his beard, but as he entered the store he appeared pale and unwell. 'Aye,' he said, of the news about Lise, 'I'll be headin' over there this evenin' to pray with Brother Adam and their girl.' He sounded troubled, but from the briefness of his response it was clear that it was some other trouble that occupied his mind.

'And how's Sister Lotte bearin' up,' said Amod Reid, 'in her time of trial?'

'As well as a man can expect,' said Joram gloomily. 'I'd thought her a stronger woman than she's turnin' out to be, but-' He shrugged. 'The child's a large one, I guess. The labor's goin' to be hard. But we're resigned to it, Lotte and I. If that's God's will, so be it.'

He moved off down the aisle, peering through the shelves of household goods, obviously somewhat unfamiliar with an aspect of the shopping that, before her pregnancy, his wife would have seen to. As he crossed to the adjoining aisle, he found himself face to face with Lindt, the only man there as tall as he was.

'Greetings to you, Brother Joram,' Lindt said. 'Anna and me, we've been includin' Sister Lotte in our prayers.'

Joram nodded curtly. 'That's good of you, Brother Rupert. 'Tis a time for prayin' now, if ever there was one.'

'Ain't that the gospel truth,' the other said. 'You heard 'bout the trouble Ham Stoudemire suffered yesterday? Well, the same thing's been happenin' up the road from me, over at Bethuel Reid's. 'Tis like the Land o' Tophet – never saw so many serpents in one place. Old Bethuel don't even want to set foot outdoors no more.'

"Twill pass,' said Joram. 'All things must.' He did not sound very hopeful.

'Of course,' said Lindt, following the other as he continued up the aisle. 'The Lord takes care of His own. But when you start to add up what's been goin' on-' He enumerated on his thick fingers. 'They say there's a pack of dogs runnin' wild now up by the Annandale road, runnin' wild the way the Fenchels' did just yesterday, I'm told. And what happened to poor Sister Lise, well… ' He shook his head. 'The same thing's agoin' to happen again, you mark my words, 'cause all the Verdocks' cows have been actin' up.'

'Matthew Geisel's too,' said Steegler, from the counter in front. 'He says they're like to kick the barn door right down.'

'Fact is,' said Lindt, 'we've all of us got our tribulations-'

'Werner Klapp was in earlier this mornin',' Steegler cut in, 'and he says he's havin' troubles with his fowl. Sold four of 'em to Sarr Poroth and his woman just the other day, and now he's afraid they'll be askin' for their money back when they find out that the critters just ain't layin'.'

'We were of a mind to ask you what you thought, Brother Joram,' Lindt continued. 'When people's got troubles like this-'

'Man is born to trouble,' said Joram, 'and 'tis through tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God. You know that, Brother Rupert. The Lord is testin' us.'

'Aye,' said Lindt, 'but mightn't He be warnin' us as well? I'm talkin' about the one who's come amongst us this season – the one from the city, who's took the prophet's name as his own.'

'I'm aware of how you feel,' said Joram. 'You don't have to lay these snares for me. I knew what was in your heart from the beginnin', for 'twas in mine as well. I'll be wantin' to hear what

Brother Sarr has to say for himself when next we meet- don't forget, the worship's at his farm this week – and I'll also be lookin' at the stranger come Sunday, lookin' real hard. Then we'll see what the Lord commands of us. But till that time there's nothin' more to be done. Remember, now, "Blessed is he that watcheth… " '

'Amen,' they said mechanically, little satisfied, as Joram continued his distracted way down the aisle, thinking of a pregnant wife back home.

Sarr Poroth, too, knew trouble now, as if clouds that had once loomed on the horizon were gathering dark and thunderous overhead. He was plagued by a host of small afflictions; he despaired of the fate of his farm. Though the surviving hen from the original four had once more begun to lay eggs, they had proved to be hideously soft things, almost transparent, that shook like jelly when you held them in your hand. He reminded himself repeatedly that, for poultry, this was not so uncommon an ailment – it might be cured within a week or two by adding calcium to their feed, normally in the form of the ground-up eggshells of healthier birds – but for now the thought of a nestful of eggs as soft as his own testicles filled him with disgust; they were obscene, against nature, an abomination unto the Lord. Deborah had sworn they could be eaten, that there was no harm in them at all, but Sarr had done a different kind of swearing and had hurled the eggs against the barren ground east of the barn. He had acted, he realized, like a spoiled child and felt shame for it now, but it was already too late to apologize.

Yet even soft eggs were better than nothing, and nothing was what they'd had so far from the four hens they'd purchased Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was just a question of their new surroundings, he was too inexperienced a farmer to know for sure; perhaps they simply needed time to grow used to the place. Nevertheless he'd already decided that, if they weren't laying regularly by the end of the month, he'd go to Brother Werner and demand his money back.

Money – that was the real trouble, the one that stung the most. For just this morning the thing he'd been dreading had happened: Freirs had come to them and told them he was leaving – Freirs, whom they'd sheltered for the last two nights beneath their very roof and whom they'd treated, at all times, like a guest rather than a paying tenant. Freirs had cleared his throat this morning, after helping himself to his usual oversized breakfast, and, obviously shamefaced, had announced that he'd be pulling out on Saturday.

And why? All because he was frightened of that damned infernal cat.

'You told me yourself that the devil's in her,' Freirs had said. 'And maybe I'm beginning to believe it. At any rate, I don't particularly relish sleeping back in the outbuilding with a thing that likes to claw its way through screens.'

'You don't run from the devil,' Poroth had argued, 'not when it's your own land. You stand and fight him.'

'It's your land,' said Freirs, 'not mine. You fight the devil. I'm going home.'

Well, he'd seen it coming, this betrayal; he'd discussed it with Deborah just the night before last. He had warned her that city people turned tail and fled at the first sign of adversity. After all, they had no God to call upon, no certitude of heavenly support. Even the best of them were faithless.

At any rate, he hadn't made a scene; he hadn't argued with Freirs and he hadn't pleaded with him either. 'I expect you know what's best for you,' he'd said, reaching across the breakfast table to shake Freirs' chubby hand. 'I wish you all the luck a man can have.' He had comported himself gently, like a true Christian should; though inside he'd been crushed – panicked, even, for a moment – and haunted by a mocking little voice that echoed All the luck a man can have and then whispered You're ruined!

'Honey,' Deborah had said, when Freirs had gone back to his room, 'this means we'll be out nearly five hundred dollars. Do you think it'll be-'

'None of that matters!' he had said, more roughly than he'd intended. 'We'll just find the money somewhere else. God watches out for His own.'

Still brooding over Freirs' announcement, he had gone stalking down the slope toward the cornfields when his eye had fallen on the old wooden smokehouse that stood between the barn and the stream. He had always avoided it because of the wasps' nest somewhere inside, but now he saw it as a challenge, an outlet for his frustrated energies: something he might do to cleanse the land. Seizing a broom from the barn and prepared at any moment to flee, he had peered inside the little building through the hanging-open door. To his surprise he had seen no sign of a nest until, looking upward through a smokehole in the ceiling – a hole that now led nowhere, for the roof above it had long since been sealed over – he glimpsed in the darkness a pale grey claylike thing the size and shape of a human brain, plastered to the underside of the roofbeams.

There would be no knocking the nest down, he realized; it was too inaccessible. The only way of reaching it was by the circuitous route the insects themselves used, flying in and out the open doorway and up through the passage in the ceiling. It would have been a great place to hide money, if he'd had any, but in truth he had nothing worth stealing. Halfheartedly he had jabbed the broom up through the smokehole, and had been rewarded for his effort with a painful sting on his right hand just beneath the thumb.

Grimly he had hurried off to the abandoned field and, despite the pain had busied himself clearing rocks when, like a messenger come to see Job, worried Amos Reid had come bumping down the road in his car with the news that Poroth's aunt, Lise Verdock, had been kicked by a cow last night as she tried to coax some milk from it and now lay at death's door. So he and Deborah, both sorely troubled, had piled into the truck and had followed Amos back toward town and up the hill to the Verdocks' farm. Aunt Lise had been lying pale and unconscious on the bed with a horrible purple swelling curved across one temple like a hungry living thing, while Minna, her daughter, had been sitting exhausted nearby, and poor Adam Verdock – who'd known trouble enough the past week, God knows, what with his cattle having ceased to give milk – was almost too distraught to speak. Poroth had looked down at the unconscious woman and a terrible dread seized him; he had thought for just an instant, She'll die if they don't get her to a hospital. .. But that had been the devil's solution, not his own, a remnant of the years he'd passed in the wicked world outside. Prayer, he knew for sure now, worked just as well as surgeons' polished steel.

And prayer was what they'd raised. They had gotten on their knees, all five of them together by the bed, and had prayed silently for what seemed close to an hour. And here he had discovered the most terrible secret of all: for while the others had been praying, he'd been wrestling with visions of losing the farm; and that mocking little voice had kept whispering Money… ruined… damned!

And so, because of him, what should have been a holy occasion, filled with the devotion a man owes his father's only sister, had been blighted. The guilt was his alone; he had discovered sin, not under his roof but in his own heart.

He stood leaning by himself against the pickup truck parked just beside the barn. He surveyed the straggly rows of cornstalks, prey to all manner of vermin and not half so high as they should have been by this time of year, and he wondered, for the first time in his life, what the future held in store for him, for Deborah, for the Brethren. Had they been abandoned by God? Did the devil have his claws around their ankles? And was he somehow to blame, if this was so?

He kicked gloomily at the earth at his feet. How ironic, that the Brethren should be coming here this Sunday to hold their worship! This was no place for blessings. This earth was damned.

The student checked his watch – two p.m. exactly – and opened the door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Switching on the light, he crossed the small cluttered room and unlocked a cabinet where the rolls of lined paper were stored. Taking a fresh roll, he returned to the main room; here the geology department's recording instrument stood on permanent display, connected by cables to a Sprengnether vertical seismograph in the basement. With another key he unlocked the large glass-and-steel case and slid back the heavy glass lid that protected the device from dust and disturbances in the room. The paper on the drum was changed daily at this hour, and the task had to be done quickly; back in 1979 the department had missed recording one of the largest earthquakes in central New Jersey history because a student had been caught between rolls.

Carefully he lifted the delicate metal stylus from the paper, the ink at its tip leaving a jagged little squiggle as if the vicinity had suffered some small disturbance. Slowly turning the metal drum, he pulled off the old paper roll and slipped the new one in its place, fitting the ends into slots in the metal. He relocated the stylus and, taking a pen from his pocket, scribbled a few words on the new paper: the date, time, attenuation, or signal power of the machine, and the name of this seismographic station – PRIN for Princeton. Closing the glass lid, he locked it in place.

Turning to the previous day's record, the student scanned the thin black line that rose and fell across the paper as if tracing the contours of a mountain range. Yes, the pattern had been holding all this week, as it had been for most of the month, and even without triangulating the data with the other stations in the Lamont network, he knew exactly what it represented: minor seismic disturbances in the north central part of the state.

For the next half hour, he transcribed the data onto a series of U.S. Geological Survey record forms; the paper roll was filed in a closet. Still calculating mentally to himself, he carried the forms across the corridor to an office marked 'Prof. J. Lewalski -Director.' He knocked twice and went in.

The young man inside was not Professor Lewalski; he was a graduate student in geology employed by the department for the summer. He took the forms and ran his eye over the data.

'Hmm, one point four, eh? That's up a little, isn't it?'

The younger student nodded. 'Yes, it was one point two on Wednesday. It's been climbing all week. Are we supposed to inform someone about this?'

The other rubbed his chin. 'Well, according to policy, we're not supposed to issue reports unless disturbances get above three, when they may start doing some damage. Otherwise, all you do is scare people.' He looked down at the data once again and frowned. 'Of course, this trend is rather interesting… But with things like this, you never know. It could stay at one point four all year or die away tomorrow. Anyhow, Lewalski won't be coming back till August, and I don't want to make it seem like I'm out to get publicity while he's gone.' Opening a desk drawer, he filed the forms inside. 'Besides,' he added, before turning back to his work, 'people aren't even aware of readings below three. The only things that feel them are animals.'

Back in the outbuilding tonight – my last night here on the farm. Can't help wishing I'd stayed in the farmhouse again, but felt so guilty about cutting short my stay that I wanted to get as far away from the Poroths as possible, amp; now it's too late to change my mind. I don't intend to set foot outside, amp; I'll keep the lights on in here till dawn.

Deborah seemed really disappointed to hear I was leaving. Wonder if I've read her wrong; maybe she's fonder of me than I realized. Sarr didn't seem at all surprised, amp; though he may have been hurt, he's much too proud to ever show it. In fact, he's been extremely nice about the whole thing. Refused to accept the extra week's rent I offered him by way of apology, though I'm sure he's strapped for funds right now. He even lent me his sickle for the night, knowing it would make me feel less nervous. It's certainly better than the axe I had here last time. Hope to hell I won't have to use it.

Immobile in the silence of his apartment, heedless of the streetlights outside, he lies watching through the animal's eyes as, behind the encircling screens, the man sits writing.

He is up late tonight. So far he has shown no signs of ever going to sleep. He is alert, edgy, obviously nervous, jerking his head at every sound. The sickle lies well within his reach.

It will have to be done quickly. There is going to be blood. And even now, with the new strength and speed the animal has gained, even with its infinitely sharper senses and the extra sting it carries in its poisoned claws, killing the man is going to be difficult.

Lying on his bed, the Old One tenses his limbs and ever so slightly trembles.

It will be difficult indeed. It is going to require all his concentration, all the animal's strength, all the ferocity of their combined wills.

But the twitching of the old man's limbs has also been a tremor of exultation. This is, after all, the moment he's prepared for…

Taking a' deep breath, feeling in his city lungs the cool moist country night, he begins.

I suppose that, in one way or another, I'm going to miss this place. It's certainly more peaceful than New York, at least it was in the beginning, amp; I imagine the city's going to seem pretty dirty, hot, amp; sticky when I get back. And for all my rural fears, of course, it'll probably be a lot more dangerous. It would be just my luck to flee in terror from what's really no more than a nasty little house cat, only to get brutally mugged a few minutes after I step off the bus.

Another irony: Just today got a really offensive letter from the folks, reminding me that I'm 'not cut out to be a woodsman' (maybe they think I'm cooking on campfires amp; sleeping in a tent!), with a typically derisive little comment at the end, chiding me for wanting to do 'the old Thoreau bit.'

I'd almost be tempted to stay here for the rest of the summer, just to spite those two. Hate to give them the satisfaction of learning they were right, that I couldn't make it out here…

Still, no sense jeopardizing my safety. And besides, it's impossible to have a good time anymore, with all this Bwada nonsense going on.

I suppose if I'm really going to stay awake I ought to try doing something a bit more useful amp; continue going through the source material. Probably I ought to choose a book that won't Think I hear something in the bushes. Am turning off the light.

Leaves stirring, insect noises, touch of breeze on fur. The animal leaps nimbly from the tree; feet claw the night air, then soft earth as it lands in the undergrowth beneath one of the windows and begins a slow, cautious circle of the building, searching for an opening.

Inside, the man rises and hurriedly snaps off the lamps. Apparently the fool believes that the darkness will make him less vulnerable.

That is his mistake. The darkness will, in fact, make it easier to catch him unawares.

Silent as a shadow now, on velvet paws, it continues to circle the building.

Freirs stood frozen in the center of the room, ears straining for a sound. For a moment he thought he heard the stealthy, irregular crackling of leaves from the direction of the woods… or was it coming from the side that faced the lawn? He turned, trying in vain to follow it. His hand reached out gingerly in the darkness, felt the smooth metallic curve of the sickle, and passed on, grasping the flashlight.

Blindly, eyes not yet adjusted to the moonlight outside, he groped toward the screens facing the woods and stood looking out, seeing, hearing nothing.

Hadn't that been a new sound from the lawn side? He tiptoed across the room, the linoleum cool beneath his bare feet, and paused beside the closest window, listening, feeling against his cheek the faintest hint of breeze.

Was that the sound again? Was it his imagination? He held his breath and listened, pressing his face close to the screen…

Silence. No, there it was again, a tiny rustling in the ivy, not far below him. Silence again. He stood there frozen, still hardly daring to breathe, straining to hear.

A minute passed. At last, patience exhausted, he brought the flashlight to the screen and switched it on.

With a cry he fell back, dropping the flashlight; there was a shattering of glass, then darkness. For an instant, in its beam, he had seen the animal's wide grey face just inches from his own, the yellow gleaming fangs, the two eyes blazing like coals in the light.

Blindly he groped for the sickle, hearing, behind him, a sound that made his blood freeze. It was the slow, methodical tearing of the screen.

It can see the man perfectly now. He is blundering through the darkened room, fingers scrabbling frantically for a weapon.

Beneath its claws the screen wires tear like thinnest silk, strand after strand…

The aged figure on the bed feels the pressure of the wire beneath his fingertips, the successive individual strands giving way, his claws widening the gash…

Suddenly there is another sound. The clank of metal echoes through the halls. At the other end of the apartment, up and down the front door, the locks are being turned.

Feverishly he throws himself back to the countryside. Hurriedly his claws push aside the flaps of screen.

A crash out by the doorway; the sound of the door swinging open; and voices. Voices here in his apartment.

He cannot remain in the country. He must return at once. In an instant they will discover him here naked on the bed…

Looking one last time through the eyes of the animal, he comes to a decision. The animal, alone, may still be no match for the man. The risk of failure is too great. Too much is at stake.

Voices in the hallway. A heavy voice calls out, 'Mistah Rose-bottom?'

He has time for just a single thought, one final command before contact is broken.

Leave the man for now! he screams silently. Go for the easier kill!

A softer voice. 'Hello? Hello? Is anybody – Oh, my God, Rosie!'

It knows itself to be alone now, on its own once more, but it feels neither loss nor regret. There will not be time to kill the man till later, but it is not impatient. All its strength and cunning will be turned, with cold precision, to its new task.

Withdrawing a paw from the rent in the screen, it drops silently to the ground beneath the window. Within seconds it is racing across the moonlit lawn in the direction of the farmhouse.

Quick as a spider it scurries up the gnarled trunk of the apple tree that grows at the rear of the house, pale claws sinking deep into the bark. Reaching the upper portion of the tree, it darts along one of the limbs and springs lightly to the nearby windowsill. The window is open; the room within stands empty, nursery figures grinning from the wall. All that blocks the window is a screen. With a touch delicate as a surgeon's it rends the wire, then slips inside and drops soundlessly to the braided rug beside the bed.

A new darkness now, new smells. Padding stealthily through the hall, it passes an open doorway and looks in. It is the bedroom. Moonlight falls upon two sleeping forms, the man and the woman entwined in one another's arms, and on the eight wide, watchful eyes of the cats that crowd beside them on the bed.

Deep in the orange one's throat a warning sound begins, a growl of anger and alarm…

Before the sound grows louder the intruder is gone, racing onward through the hall and down the stairs. It remembers the house perfectly; it knows where it must go.

Turning at the foot of the stairs, it passes through the lower hall and stops before a doorway. Then it is gone once more, vanished down the steps into the darkness of the cellar.

July Twenty-third

Freirs fell asleep just before dawn and dreamed he was fleeing down an endless dark passageway from something small and silent and untiring, but that was also huge, bigger than he was, bigger than the labyrinth he struggled through. In the distance someone called his name. He awoke with sunlight in his eyes – and had a moment of terror. A face was studying him through the gash in the screen.

It was Poroth, standing outside on the lawn, a rake in one hand.

'It's almost eleven,' he said softly. 'You asked me to wake you today.' He pointed to the torn screen. 'What's this? Has she been back?'

Freirs nodded sleepily, sitting up in bed. 'It was her, all right. She tried to get in here last night, but for some reason she gave up. I haven't seen her since.'

Rubbing his eyes, he slipped on his glasses and peered through the screen, wondering if the animal might still be nearby. By daylight the farm seemed a completely different place; it was impossible amid the tranquilizing warmth, the singing of the birds, the bright green canopy of maple leaves dancing in the sunshine, that anything terrible could ever happen here.

Poroth gazed gloomily at the damaged screen. Shaking his head, he pulled the two sides closed. 'The animal is cursed,' he muttered, 'or else I am.' He looked down at Freirs. 'Well, maybe she'll stop her mischief once you're gone. I don't pretend to understand the devil.' Shouldering the rake, he turned to leave. 'I'll be out by the barn, for now. Let me know when you're ready and I'll drive you into town.' He nodded toward the farmhouse. 'Deborah'll have some lunch for you before you go.'

Yawning, Freirs watched him move off toward the barn and disappear around the back, returning moments later with a tall ladder. Raising it against one side and hoisting the rake, he began to climb. As Freirs turned to dress, he saw Poroth poking morosely at a network of gypsy moth nests that bulged like white hammocks beneath the eaves.

The bus would be leaving at a quarter to one. Freirs would not have time to dawdle. The thought of leaving prompted an unexpected wave of sadness, but he forced it down. That’s just dumb, he thought. Instant nostalgia! You always feel bad about leaving a place you know you'll never see again. Throwing a towel around his neck and buttoning his shirt, he walked outside and headed for the farmhouse.

The kitchen smelled of baking bread. Deborah seemed in a better mood this morning than she'd been in yesterday. The disappointment at his leaving was still apparent, but it was with her usual energy that she hurried around the kitchen, kneading a yellowy mass of dough, periodically checking a second loaf in the oven. 'If

I'd had more time,' she said. 'I'd've cooked you up a big fat blueberry pie for you to take back to New York. Do you do your own cooking?'

'Some,' said Freirs. 'I eat a lot of meals out. But none of it's as good as I've had here.'

She smiled broadly, wiping her hands on her apron. 'I sure wish I had time to make you something nice for lunch, but there's a million things I've got to do before tomorrow morning.' Taking a loaf of brown bread from the shelf, she sliced off several pieces with the bread knife. 'It's a shame you won't be able to come to worship.' She shrugged. 'But then, you'd probably be bored by it anyway.'

Freirs watched her pour him a small glass of milk. 'I'd give you more,' she said, 'but there isn't much left. There's that trouble at the Verdocks' with poor Lise, and Sarr says Brother Matthew didn't have anything to sell this morning either. His cows haven't been right.' She set a plate before him. The sandwich she'd made was enormous – ham and cheese on thick slices of brown bread. Freirs ate it with a twinge of regret: it was the same as the first meal she'd ever served him.

When he got back outside, he saw that Poroth had abandoned the ladder and was crouched precariously on the lower edge of the barn roof. Freirs winced as the other reached beneath the eaves with bis bare hand and hurled down a writhing clump of caterpillars.

Eventually Poroth looked up, noticed him watching, and nodded in the direction of the road. He called, 'You about ready to go?'

'In a minute. I just have to get the rest of my things together.'

A few bugs, having found their way into his room through the tear in the screen, were now buzzing against the wire trying vainly to find a way out. Nature! he said to himself. He fastened the clasp of his suitcase and strapped on his watch. It was an automatic, supposed to wind itself from the movement of his wrist, but he'd worn it so seldom out here that he now had to wind it by hand. Taking his wallet from the dresser drawer, he slipped it into his pocket, followed by the unfamiliar bulge of his apartment keys, a handful of loose change, and a New York subway token.

Briefly a sound reached him from the farmhouse, a single muffled wail, but it died away in the air. He was tying twine around a final stack of books when, from across the lawn, he heard the thump of something hitting the ground. He looked outside in time to see

Poroth stumbling to his feet; in an instant he was off and running toward the farmhouse. Freirs saw him dash up the back steps and disappear inside, and moments later heard him shouting Deborah's name. Knocking aside the books, Freirs hurried after him.

He entered the house just as the other, with pounding feet, was coming down the stairway from the second floor. 'She's here somewhere,' Poroth said. 'I heard her scream.' Suddenly his gaze fell upon the peg high on the wall where the extra lantern usually hung. The lantern was gone. 'The cellar!' he cried. Rounding the hallway, he paused at the top of the steps and peered worriedly into the darkness. 'There's another lantern in the kitchen,' he called over his shoulder. 'Get it and follow me.' Putting out his hand to feel his way, he started down.

'Wait!'

The voice had come from below them, up through the cracks in the floor. It was feeble, a mere croaking, nothing at all like the voice they knew. 'Wait,' they heard again. 'I'm… all right now. Give me just-' It paused. 'Just one moment.'

There was a slow, unsteady shuffling from within the cellar, then the clump of footfalls on the wooden steps. Gradually the outline of a dark form appeared, advancing slowly toward them up the stairs. Sarr reached down and grasped her arm, and moments later Deborah staggered out into the light. She was clutching her bunched-up apron to her throat. The apron had been white; now it was sticky and red where the patches of blood had seeped through.

Suddenly her eyes rolled up, her legs buckled, and she tilted forward. Sarr caught her before she hit the floor. Lifting her as lightly as if she were a rag doll, he carried her upstairs, two steps at a time, and laid her gently on the bed in their room..

Freirs followed them up. Deborah seemed to be still conscious -her eyes were open and she was staring dully at the ceiling – but her always pale skin was now deathly white save for dark skull-like rings beneath her eyes. Her breathing was labored, rasping deep in her throat and her head lay like a stone upon the pillow, yet she resisted Sarr's efforts to pry away the bloody apron she held pressed to her neck. 'No,' she whispered hoarsely. 'Not yet.'

'What happened?' said Sarr. 'Can you tell me?'

Her eyes rolled slowly around to look at them both, but she remained silent. At last, very feebly, she shook her head. Removing a hand from her throat, she pointed to the floor. 'Bwada,' she whispered.

Sarr, who had been leaning over the bed, straightened up, eyes blazing. 'That devil's down there now?' He started for the door.

Deborah grasped his wrist, holding him back. She managed to get out one word.

'Dead.'

We raced downstairs amp; down the cellar steps, Sarr grabbing the lantern from the upstairs hall. Even with the light it was hard to see down there, amp; the ceiling was so low he had to duck his head. Near the foot of the stairs, on the hard dirt floor, we saw an overturned milk pitcher, the lantern Deborah must have dropped, amp; what at first looked like a clump of matted grey fur. It was Bwada. She looked, in death, amazingly small. How could a creature that size have inspired such terror?

She seemed frozen in the middle of an attack: eyes wide amp; glassy, filthy-looking claws extended, mouth agape, the rubbery-looking grey lips pulled back amp; exposing a row of yellow fangs. Even though it was obvious she was dead, I still couldn't hold back a shudder; in the glare of that lantern she looked just the way I'd seen her last night in the beam of my flashlight, her face pressed to the screen.

I saw a small round hole in her side – a puncture wound, from the look of it – bordered by pinkish grey flaps of skin. Nearby, at the foot of one of the shelves, we saw the gleam of Deborah's long thin bread knife amp; began to figure out what had happened…

Later, after she'd had a bit of sleep, Deborah was able to stammer out the rest, though it was clear she still found it painful to speak. Apparently she'd come down to the cellar, after I'd gone out, to see how much milk was left amp; to bring up some things for tomorrow. She'd already been down there several times before, during the course of the morning, but she hadn't noticed anything wrong; the animal must have remained hidden. This time, though, there was no one else in the house upstairs; maybe that's what made the difference. She says she heard a sound just above eye level amp; was suddenly looking at the cat, crouched on one of the shelves No sooner did she see it than it sprang for her throat.

This is when God, or luck, or something, seems to have saved Deborah's life: for all this time she'd had the bread knife by her side, hanging from a loop of her apron; she had carried it downstairs, she said, to cut off a slab of bacon for tonight's meal. Somehow, when she was attacked, she had the presence of mind to grab for the knife. She managed to wrench the animal off her neck amp; with the other hand was able to impale it on the sharp end of the blade.

Judging from the nature amp; position of the wound, I'd say she had even more luck than she amp; Sarr realize, because the tip of the knife must have caught the animal precisely in its old wound, reopening it – to the extent that, when the blade was withdrawn, the flesh bulged out just the way it had before. Naturally I couldn't mention this to Sarr.

It seemed somehow poetically appropriate, when you stop to think of it: that murderous creature finally dispatched – amp; efficiently, too – by the smallest amp; weakest among us. Maybe there is a God after all.

Deborah was weak from shock throughout the afternoon amp; lay upstairs on the bed. When we finally persuaded her to take the cloth away, we were relieved to find that the gashes in her neck were relatively small, the claw marks already clotting. (Thank God that thing didn't get the chance to sink its teeth in.) Sarr was so glad to have her alive that he couldn't do enough for her. He said he heard 'heavenly choruses.' Kept kneeling at odd moments in the corner of their bedroom, thanking the Lord for delivering Deborah safely amp; for ridding him of his curse. For the rest of the afternoon he amp; I took turns bringing things up to her from the kitchen – towels soaked in cold water, etc. At one point, while he was downstairs, she reached out amp; took my hand as I was standing by the bed. 'Thank you,' she said in a hoarse whisper, giving my hand a squeeze. 'Thank you for staying.'

That jolted me. In all the commotion I'd completely forgotten about catching the bus home. I glanced down at my watch; it was already half past one. I'd missed my chance to leave today.

'Well,' I said, as if I'd actually planned it this way, 'I couldn't leave you at a moment like this. I'll think about leaving tomorrow.'

She was still gripping my hand. 'Please,' she whispered, looking up at me, her eyes wide amp; somehow even more beautiful in that pale, bruised face. 'Please stay.'

I hadn't thought of staying; I hadn't even considered it. But it occurred to me now that with Bwada gone – gone for good, this time – the reason for my leaving had been eliminated.

'Well,' I said, still doubtful, 'maybe I can stay a while longer. At least till you're well again.'

She smiled amp; squeezed my hand tighter. 'Good,' she whispered. We stared at one another for a moment or two more, amp; then, hearing Sarr's footsteps on the stairs, we dropped our hands.

He fixed dinner for us tonight – little more than soup, actually, because he thought that it was best for Deborah. She stayed upstairs, resting. Her voice sounded so bad – breath so rasping, words so slurred – that he told her not to strain herself any more by talking.

We had left Bwada's body in the cellar; it's the coolest spot in the house. After dinner I sat with Deborah again while Sarr drove the cat's body into Flemington to have it checked for rabies. (For once he spared us the expected diatribe about veterinarian bills; apparently when it's something as serious as this, his faith in God isn't quite enough to rely on.) He was away for almost two hours, during which time, as Deborah was too overwrought to fall asleep, I did my best to entertain her by reading aloud from one of the books of inspirational verse I'd found downstairs. I could see, from the notes in the margins, that it had belonged to Sarr in college. (Typical that he'd favor humorless old bores like Milton, Vaughan, amp; Herbert.) Most of the poems were dark, somber things, perfect for a Puritan's funeral; the rest were rosily optimistic – Sunday school stuff. Deborah just lay there on the bed listening, watching me rather dreamily ( amp; appreciatively, I hope), smiling but saying nothing, not stirring at all, barely even blinking.

Sarr got back long after dark, looking quite exhausted. He said Bwada's body had begun to stink even before he got into Fleming-ton, amp; now the whole truck smells of her. The vet was surprised at how quickly she'd started to decompose; the dampness, apparently. He took scrapings from her teeth amp; will know by tomorrow if there's any sign of rabies. It'll give the Poroths something extra to pray about tonight.

They were, in fact, doing just that when I left them: Sarr on his knees in his accustomed spot, praying aloud, Deborah watching him silently from the bed but, in her heart, I'm sure, praying along with him.

I can still hear him, more faintly now, as I sit out here. No, he's stopped now; the night is silent again. We had some faraway thunder before, but now that too has stopped. When I think of how nervous I was about staying out here alone last night, I feel a tremendous sense of relief; God knows how many times I've lain here thinking every sound I heard was Bwada. Nice to have that reign of terror over.

Hmm, I'm still a wee bit hungry – that soup we had for dinner didn't really fill me up. I'll probably dream of hamburgers amp; chocolate cake tonight.

I've unpacked all my books New York will just have to wait. Looks like I'll be doing 'the old Thoreau bit' a while longer. ..

Dear Jeremy,

I was so glad to hear from you again. How awful about those two cats. Hope that grey one's gone for good. I never did like her.

I wish the Poroths had a telephone; there are so many things I'd like to tell you, my head's still spinning. I suppose they'll have to wait – but only till next weekend, fortunately, because, taking you up on your invitation, I do hope to come out again and see you. The weekend of the thirtieth, I mean. And I want to bring Rosie. I think the trip would be good for him (and besides, it's his car). He's been ill and is badly in need of a vacation. After not hearing from him all week, I got very worried and last night I got the super to let me into his apartment. The two of us found poor Rosie in a really terrible state, naked on his bed, and I swear we both thought he was dead. And the way he looked -1 just hope I never have to see anything like that again. It really gave me quite a shock. I'm convinced that if I hadn't taken a chance and come in when I did, we would have lost him.

He apologized later – said this had happened to him before, it's just a kind of nervous condition he gets- and I must say he's recovered nicely. You've met him, Jeremy, so you know how easy he is to get along with. I'm sure he won't give the Poroths any trouble at all. He'll sleep anywhere there's room for him, even a living room chair will be all right (he claims he needs only an hour or two a night), and we'll be bringing out extra food with us so that no one will have to go to any added expense.

He's really amazing, in fact, for a man his age. (My guess is he's eighty if he's a day.) He was up and around in less than an hour, after we got some food in him, just as cheerful and energetic as ever and, as you can imagine, very grateful to me. He rested most of the day, but this afternoon he called to say he was sick of being cooped up and wanted to get out; and earlier tonight, though I kept asking him if he really felt up to it, he insisted on taking me to the ballet, just as he'd promised – the Royal Ballet's on tour here now – even though I'd have been perfectly willing to forgo it. I'm glad I went, though; we had great seats, first row dress circle (leave it to Rosie!), and saw, among other things, a beautiful Antony Tudor ballet called Shadowplay, a sort of pagan piece with wood spirits and all, and so continually inventive and lively that I'm sure even you would have liked it.

Afterward we went and had dessert across the street at one of those cafes, the kind I could never afford on my own – they charge $5.95 for a little dish of ice cream – and then he insisted on seeing me home. You can never get a cab around here, so we ended up on the IRT. It was really crowded on a Saturday night, but Rosie somehow manages to turn everything into a game. He had us stand up front where we could watch the tunnel ahead of us through the little window. As we sped along, he told me about some scene in the old King Kong in which the gorilla sticks his head up through an elevated track and derails an entire train. I never saw the movie, you know I hardly ever had a chance to see anything before I came to New York, but I tried to imagine what the scene must be like and pictured a huge snarling head filling the subway tunnel. And then Rosie said, Okay, but what if it wasn't a head, what if it was just a hand big enough to stop the train? (That's one of the games he plays, the What If game, also called the Riya Mogu or something like that. Whatever the other person says, no matter how outrageous, you have to force yourself to really totally believe in it with all your heart.) I could picture a huge clawed hand sticking up in the middle to the tunnel. And then he said, What if it was just a single finger big enough to fill the tunnel? And I said, How about the claw of such a finger? The tip of the claw? A thing so big it filled the whole tunnel?… Rosie laughed and said, Yes, that's the idea.

But maybe I have too vivid an imagination, because somehow I managed to make myself sick that way, picturing those huge things in front of us; or maybe it was the heat on the train after all that ice cream, and the crowd, and the roaring. I started feeling very weak, all of a sudden, and someone nice got up for me so I could sit down. And just then the train came screeching horribly to a stop, right in the middle of the tunnel, all the lights went out and the air got hot and stopped moving, and I got a sudden icy feeling up and down my spine, so bad I thought I'd throw up. Someone said, Don't you hear it, there's something blocking us, and Rosie went up and tried to see if there was another train up ahead, but he couldn't see through the crowd; he'd been standing next to me and we'd lost our place by the window.

A few moments later the lights came on and the train began creeping forward. Then suddenly it stopped again, and again the lights went out. This jerking, starting, and stopping made me feel even worse. It happened several more times, and each time we ground to a stop I felt my stomach heave like I was going to be sick, even though Rosie was right there beside me with his hand on my shoulder.

The train kept rocking and jerking all the way downtown; it was really nightmarish. I know it was the movement that was making me sick, though the odd thing was that each time I seemed to get this wave of nausea just before we stopped, as if it was the train that was somehow affected by what was happening inside me, rather than the other way around. I told Rosie I was afraid I was going to be sick, and he said, Try to keep it down, we'll be there in a minute or two; and I managed to control myself all the way, fighting down the nausea while the whole world seemed to twist and heave inside me. Keep it down, Rosie kept saying, and it seemed to work; and just as he was helping me off the train he turned to me, smiling, and gripped my hand, and said, Congratulations, Carol, you've passed the test…

Book Nine: McKinney's Neck

There were black terrible woods hanging from the hill all round; it was like seeing a large room hung with black curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I had ever seen before.

Machen, The White People

July Twenty-fourth

Sunday dawned grey and gloomy, mammoth clouds rising on all sides like the smoke from distant fires. Freirs got up early, awakened by voices up at the farmhouse, followed by the slamming of the screen door. Sleepily he remembered: this was Sunday, the morning that the Poroths were to play host to the assembled Brethren. He sat up in bed and looked out. A shiny navy blue station wagon was already parked beside the house. He reached for his eyeglasses, then took his wristwatch from the night table. Seven fifteen – an ungodly hour to be thinking about God. He wondered if plans were being changed in light of Deborah's injury, but probably it was too late for that now.

Slipping on shorts and a T-shirt, he left his building and crossed the damp grass to the house. As he climbed the steps to the back porch, he could hear a gruff voice saying, in a slightly defensive tone, 'We'd planned on walkin' here, but with Lotte's condition- '

As Freirs opened the screen door, the man who'd been speaking fell silent. He was seated at the kitchen table with Sarr Poroth and a slim grey hard-faced woman whom Freirs recognized as Poroth's mother. The two men had mugs of coffee before them. All turned as he came in. Freirs felt like a child who'd blundered into a party where he didn't belong; only Poroth's face showed friendliness.

'Ah,' he said, getting to his feet, 'you've risen early this morning!' He turned to the other man, who was also standing now. 'Brother Joram, this is our guest, Jeremy Freirs. Jeremy, this is Joram Sturtevant.'

'Good morning,' said Freirs.

The man nodded stiffly. 'A good morning to you.' So this was the leader of the sect; Freirs had heard much about him. He was bearded like Poroth, with eyes as dark and piercing, but his face looked older and even more severe. The formal-looking black jacket he wore lent him an air of authority. Freirs waited to see if he would extend his hand, but the man made no further sign of greeting. In the silence Freirs heard voices coming from the living room – children's voices and a woman's. The guests were here early.

'And I know you two have met,' Poroth was saying, with a nod to his mother.

'Yes indeed,' said Freirs. 'Under rather unpleasant conditions.' He turned to the woman, who sat regarding him silently, with no trace of recognition. There were still a pair of thin red lines across her cheek. 'You look as if you're healing nicely.'

She arched her brows. 'If that's God's will.'

Poroth heaved a sigh as he sat down. 'Ah, well, 'tis all in the past now, thank the Lord.'

'The past?' The woman gave a skeptical shrug. 'That's hardly for the likes of us to say.'

Sturtevant cleared his throat. 'With the Lord's help we'll put the wickedness behind us this very morning.' He shifted his gaze to Freirs. 'I'm told the accursed creature had a special… interest in you.'

'Yes,' said Freirs, still standing in the doorway; no one had invited him to sit down. 'I'm not sure why, but it seemed to bear me a particular hatred.'

'And yet for all that, you were never actually harmed by the beast.'

Sturtevant's eyes were subtly accusing; Freirs decided to end the conversation. 'I guess even us infidels have someone watching over us.' He turned to Sarr. 'How's Deborah this morning?'

'Healing well,' said Sarr. 'She's upstairs taking her rest now, but she'll be down. Why don't you have yourself some breakfast while we three move into the living room and wait for the others?'

There was a sliding of chairs, and they filed out of the kitchen. Freirs could see a boy around nine or ten already in the living room, and a large, flushed young woman, obviously very pregnant, who sat slumped in the rocker as if exhausted.

Heating some coffee, he took from one of the cabinets a box of cold cereal he'd bought on his first trip to town. The milk pitcher on the table was almost empty. Picking it up, he took the lantern that hung by the top of the steps and went down to the cellar in search of more.

There was still an inch or two of milk at the base of the metal storage container, but it had gone decidedly sour. The smell pervaded the entire cellar – or was that, perhaps, another smell, the odor of decay? Could the smell of Bwada's body have lingered so long? Passing the farthest shelf as he headed back upstairs, he looked in vain for eggs. The egg rack was empty; the hens still weren't laying. What the hell is this place coming to? he thought. Everything's falling apart.

Upstairs more people were beginning to arrive, some of them pulling up in cars or pickup trucks, others who lived closer arriving on foot. The later arrivals headed directly for the back lawn; those who'd been seated in the living room moved outside to join them, leaving the house to Freirs. He watched black-garbed families congregate outside as he attempted, stomach growling, to make a breakfast for himself out of burnt toast and coffee. He recognized some of the faces that passed beneath the window and noticed family resemblances in others. Matthew Geisel had arrived with a beaming grey-haired woman Freirs guessed to be his wife, and now he recognized Geisel's brother Werner from their long-ago meeting at the Co-op. He saw Bert and Amelia Steegler, the store's managers, and Rupert Lindt, whom he recalled disliking, flanked by a wife and two daughters. One of them, the younger, looked familiar; he stared at her a long time, increasingly convinced that she'd been the girl in the truck that had tried to run him down. Mustn't jump to conclusions, he told himself. With all the inbreeding around here, everyone looks a little bit alike.

In fact, the people assembling on the lawn were hard to tell apart; they were dressed and groomed alike, as well. He felt, more than ever now, like an outsider. He didn't belong here. Better to be back on Bank Street, with the radio playing and the traffic outside. Briefly he considered retreating to the privacy of his outbuilding, but in his incongruously bright clothing he knew he'd feel even more conspicuous crossing the lawn; and then, too, he'd be trapped in his room like an animal in a cage. He decided to stay where he was.

The screen door burst open and Poroth hurried in, looking distracted. He headed for the stairs but called over his shoulder, 'Aren't you coming out?'

'I'm not really dressed for it,' said Freirs. 'I think I'll just watch from in here.'

Sarr paused. 'You'll have to come out eventually,' he said. 'We're performing a Cleansing.'

'A what?'

But the other was already hurrying up the stairs. Freirs could hear him tramping overhead, then the creak of floorboards as he helped Deborah off the bed. Their footsteps as they descended were slow and unsteady. Moments later Sarr appeared with Deborah leaning on his arm. She looked as pale as before, with the same dark rings beneath her eyes, and her pallor was further accentuated by a black scarf wrapped around her throat, concealing her up to the chin. She smiled weakly at Freirs as they passed.

'Sarr, what's this Cleansing you spoke of?'

'Something special,' said Poroth, busy helping Deborah out the door. 'You'll see. Best just to stay inside here till the singing's over.'

The screen door slammed, and Freirs could see the assembled Brethren turn to watch as the two of them stiffly descended the back steps, like the last and most important arrivals at a ball. There were by now nearly a hundred people in the yard. Among them he recognized the leathery old farmer who'd given him a lift and the elderly couple who'd refused him one. He even thought he recognized, from the skimpiness of his beard, the teenage boy who, with the girl, had almost run him down. He wished once again that he'd gotten a better look at them.

Abruptly the elderly couple turned their backs on one another like figures in a dance, and, as he watched, the woman appeared to walk away without a word of goodbye. In fact, he noticed now, all the women, old and young alike, had begun to move off to the side of the lawn nearer the barn, leaving the major portion of it to the males. He realized that the sexes were once again being segregated, just as they'd been in the Bible school yearbook. Like Orthodox Jews, he decided. Crazy.

Freirs had expected Joram Sturtevant to lead the worship, but apparently the man's position was more social than theological, for when the services finally began it was neither he nor Poroth, the host, who strode to the front of the group and asked for silence, but rather a short, older man whom Freirs had never seen before. Clasping a large, worn-looking black Bible before him, he called upon the assembled Brethren to pray with him for Sister Lise Verdock, who, along with her family, could not be with them this morning owing to her tragic accident. All eyes were downcast as the man led the invocation, quoting at length from Jeremiah – 'O Lord, my strength and my fortress and my refuge in the day of affliction' – the Bible open in his hands now but never actually looked at, as if the mere act of holding it affirmed the truth of what he said.

After the prayer the man stepped back, handing the book ceremoniously to a younger man who took his place. Gradually, as the morning progressed and new speakers, women as well as men, replaced the old, each of them holding the Bible while addressing the congregation, Freirs began to realize that what had seemed, at first, to be an unstructured occasion was in fact highly formalized. People seemed to know just when to take their turns as speaker; when, as happened but seldom, two Brethren found themselves approaching the front of the congregation at the same time, one would hold back and wait, as if by some prearranged system of dominance.

Nearly a dozen people, mostly men, had addressed the group, with further prayers for everything from more rain to the smiting of idolaters, along with another prayer for Lise Verdock, when, after a pause in which no others had volunteered to speak, Sarr Poroth pushed his way to the front. Watching from his seat by the window, Freirs saw him scan the congregation and smile at Deborah, who was supported by two of the women – and closely observed, at the same time, by Mrs Poroth.

Holding the Bible open before him, Sarr began to speak. Freirs leaned closer to the screen to hear better.

' "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man… " '

It took Freirs a moment to recognize the passage. Though most of the others had spoken from Jeremiah, Sarr was telling of the Flood, of great cataclysmic events that at last, under God's goodness, had had an end. ' "And Noah builded an altar," ' he said, not once looking down at the text,' "and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." '

Freirs found the singsong rhythm of the passage unexpectedly comforting, easily as much so as the words themselves, though for hours afterward something in him would repeat, troubled, that final qualifying phrase:

'While the earth remaineth.'

Joram Sturtevant stood ramrod straight, defying the heat and staring intently at each successive speaker, but he found it hard to concentrate on what was being said. His thoughts were on the stranger back there in the house.

He had not liked what he'd seen. Granted, the man bore a name hearkening back to the prophet, yet he himself was, by his own admission, an infidel. That had been his very word, in fact; he'd spoken it with pride.

There'd have been danger enough if the stranger had been of a rival faith, one of the numerous Christian or Hebrew or mongrel sects that schemed and struggled and vied for men's souls in the vast benighted world beyond the borders of the town; they were all the same, those sects, all greedy and, when the Last Judgment sounded, all damned. But to have so bluntly declared himself an infidel, an enemy of faith itself- surely this was a hundred times worse. Maybe Brother Rupert had been right about him.

And to call this infidel a 'guest,' as Poroth had this morning -surely that was the flimsiest of lies.

Poroth himself was speaking now, drawing laborious parallels, in a low and earnest voice, between the tribulations of Noah and the Brethren's current difficulties. The young man had a good mind, Joram conceded, but he was clearly nervous in groups and made a poor speaker. And it seemed he made an even worse farmer. Joram cast his eye over the cornfields in the distance, the small, sickly-looking stalks already prey to all manner of weeds and pests. He could see, even now, that Poroth's first crop would be accounted a failure.

The image struck him as an apt one: for wasn't Gilead itself a kind of garden, carefully cultivated, nourished and protected, its families as varied as the crops of a well-managed farm, its young like tender shoots? Yes, here was the stuff of some future sermon! And admitting a stranger entrance, as Poroth had, was akin to opening a garden's gates to predators. The shoots would be corrupted, seeds trampled, the soil itself tainted.

Perhaps, though, as with the first Fall, a woman was to blame.

Young Poroth, lacking as he did a father's guidance, seemed inclined to let Deborah order him about, and it was said that taking in the stranger had been her idea.

There she was now, amongst the women near the barn, staring dully at the proceedings. What had happened to her yesterday had been no surprise to Joram. He had been convinced for some time that the devil was in that cat; his right hand still smarted from his encounter with her earlier in the year. Sister Deborah should have foreseen the tragedy. Like as not it had been a judgment upon her. She was, Joram allowed, a handsome woman; he admired the slim-ness of her form and her dark, wanton-looking eyes, though he suspected she'd be capable of all manner of sin.

Lotte, his own wife, had once been just as slim, but after three sons her figure had thickened. And now, of course, the woman was almost unrecognizable, her belly grown so enormous it pained her constantly. Joram thought of her as Sarr came to the end of his talk. He had left her in the Poroths' living room, her sweating form filling their little rocker in a way he'd found faintly disagreeable. Somewhere in him was the vague suspicion that he'd been wrong to bring her here today, but this he'd long since repressed, and what he felt instead was, for the most part, a mixture of irritation at her feminine frailty – the other children hadn't been such trouble – and concern at her appearance. If he felt any guilt, it was for not having insisted that she come outside here with him for the services, to stand, just like Deborah, with the other women. They couldn't allow themselves to grow soft, he and Lotte. They had an example to set for the community.

Freirs had expected the services would be over when Poroth finished speaking; he hadn't counted on the hymns. There were more than a dozen of them, from 'Blue Galilee' to 'Christ the Harvester,' growing in volume and fervour until he felt sure some of the Brethren would wilt beneath the steadily advancing sun, which, having risen above the low wall of clouds, now shone down fiercely.

Toward the end, growing weary of the songs, he thought he heard from the living room, a low, agonized moan. Leaving his seat by the window, he walked to the doorway and looked in. There, still sunken in the rocker where he'd seen her before, was the pregnant woman, alone now and looking barely conscious, sweating terribly in her heavy black dress and obviously in great discomfort. She looked up dully as he entered, blinking at him through great trusting cow eyes that showed neither recognition nor fear.

Freirs approached the chair and stood staring down at her, thinking, Christ, she shouldn't be out of bed looking as pregnant as this. As she raised her head to look at him, he forced his face into a smile. 'Hello,' he said softly. As the morning sunlight touched it, he saw her swollen belly squirm.

He was the first man to smile at her all morning. Joram only glowered at her these days, as if her condition were somehow not a blessing but a curse. She hadn't wanted to come to the worship, she'd felt so tired, so filled up inside she could scarcely breathe. It had never been like this before, not with the others; sometimes, when the child inside her moved, it felt as if the child were rearranging all her insides to suit itself, so strong-willed was it, like Joram. It was surely bound to be another boy. She wished that just this once the Lord would let her have a daughter, but it wasn't for her to question His ways. Joram would be angry with her if he knew she'd even thought of it.

She wanted this pregnancy to end. It was becoming too much for her to bear. And it was so hot today; she'd have liked to sit out upon the back porch and watch the services, she knew they'd be a comfort to her, but Joram wouldn't hear of it. He'd said that either his woman stood out there in the sun with the rest of the congregation or else hid herself away; he'd not be shamed by having her sit while the others stood. So she'd been condemned to this airless little living room. She had been feeling dizzy from the heat and the discomfort when the stranger approached her.

She envied the way he was dressed; he looked so much more comfortable, and you could see his plump arms and legs, like a baby's. The colors of his clothing reminded her of the flowers in her garden. He had a kind face, and his hands looked soft, like healing hands; they stirred vague memories of Joram's own hands long ago, before the children came, and memories of the soft hands of the mid wives.

'How are you feeling?' he was asking, smiling down at her like the sun.

'Oh, my,' she said, 'just look at me!' And she shook her head, almost ready to laugh, as if the two of them were sharing a joke, one that people like her husband would never understand.

'I am looking,' he was saying, and his smile was so sympathetic she was almost able to forget the ache inside her. She smoothed back a strand of hair from her sweating brow, wishing he could see her at her best, and realized, suddenly, that her thighs were parted more than was proper for a married woman with a strange man, the heavy black material dipping like a damp trough between her legs. But it was all right, the stranger was comfortable in his way and she was comfortable in hers. He looked as though he would understand.

'How much longer do you have?' he was asking, nodding at her stomach. She could see he was impressed. She was proud of her condition once again and remembered that she didn't have to be ashamed at all, the way Joram tried to make her feel. She thrust her belly upward even more.

"Twill be any day now,' she confided, with a little shiver of excitement. 'I feel it movin' all the time.'

The stranger smiled. 'I guess the poor kid's getting impatient!'

She giggled; the sound felt funny, she hadn't laughed in so long. 'It's movin' now,' she said, but not alarmed for once; she was pleased at the stranger's interest. She ran a hand over her belly, feeling the child kick but also feeling how good her own hand felt. His would feel even better.

'You can touch it if you want,' she said, smiling up at him, her body so huge and so sensitive. The stranger reached toward her, then hesitated.

'Go ahead,' she said breathlessly. 'Touch it… Touch it… '

They were all looking at Sturtevant now, waiting for him to give the word. He turned to the assembled group. 'Brothers and Sisters, as you know, the Lord has given us a special task to perform today. These good people fear they've been sheltering malign spirits under their roof. It is for us, their brethren and neighbors, to purify the house and all within it. Let us, then, have a Cleansing. Join with me now in divesting their home of its worldly goods so that we may better fill it with the Holy Spirit.'

The sun was hot on his head. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. While the others formed themselves into a line and made ready for heavy labor, the men laying aside their vests and rolling up their sleeves, Joram walked round the side of the house and, slipping off his heavy black jacket, left it folded on the front seat of his car. In a moment or two the others would be filing into the house, with Lotte still seated there fat and sweating in the living room. He hated the thought of them seeing his wife like that; better to rouse her and get her outside, maybe have her sit in the car. He hoped she would not attempt to argue with him; with a determined stride he hurried up the front steps and through the open door.

The short hallway was dim, but sunlight streamed from the living room, through whose doorway, as if within a frame, he saw the figure of his seated wife – and of Jeremy Freirs bending over her, murmuring soft words as he stroked her rounded stomach.

It took the others several minutes to calm Joram down. The first group of Brethren had entered the house just as the yelling began, and in the end what they remembered were Joram's wild expression, the way the veins stood out in his forehead, and the admirable way that, in consideration of Freirs' relations with the Poroths, he restrained himself from physically attacking their guest.

His greatest fury was directed at his wife – though this, too, was held in check before the eyes of the community. Choking out a 'Woman! Remember yourself!' he seized her arm and dragged her roughly past the others, down the porch steps, and out to the navy blue station wagon parked beside the house. And what he said to the quaking woman once they were inside the car with the windows rolled up tight, no one in Gilead ever learned.

Meanwhile, politely ignoring the contretemps, if not oblivious to it, the others were continuing to file inside for the Cleansing, the crowd streaming through the back door and spreading throughout the house, each person taking as many objects as his or her arms could hold and carrying them out onto the lawn behind the house. It was like an old-fashioned moving day, Freirs decided, with the entire community there to help. He had stoutly maintained his innocence throughout Sturtevant's harangue, and now, reluctant to venture outside where the two of them were parked, he remained on the first floor watching the activity and lending a hand when he could. He saw men carry out chairs, shelves, a picture of the Holy Land from the living-room wall, even the andirons from the fireplace; two men struggled down the narrow wooden stairway with a chest of drawers; Rupert Lindt picked up the heavy wooden kitchen table all by himself and bore it outside. Women moved through the house, their arms laden with stacks of plates, clocks, rugs, or jars from the cellar. Even the smallest children worked, one with a handful of silverware, another with a flat, hard pillow from the bed, another with the little weather house from the living room. Cats darted excitedly beneath everyone's feet.

Gradually they were stripping the house of everything but the walls. Corah Geisel carefully untied the red glass witch ball from the lintel above the window in the nursery. Joram's brother Abram helped Poroth and Galen Trudel as they struggled to haul the Poroths' huge, heavy bed down the narrow stairs. Deborah, ill as she was, tried to carry out the Bible from the night table in the bedroom, but in her weakness dropped it to the floor, so that old Sister Corah, muttering a hurried prayer, had to carry it for her, Freirs helping Deborah herself downstairs. He was pleased at how tightly she gripped his arm.

The Poroths did not have a great many possessions, but the collection on the lawn grew huge, encompassing as it did all their worldly goods, even to the tiniest thimble. Freirs, when he wasn't actually helping, stood in the living room watching the furniture and objects being taken away around him with bemusement, like a homeowner surrounded by moving men – nearly a hundred moving men, to be exact, and clearly familiar with the requirements of the occasion. In little more than half an hour the lawn outside, like the scene of some desperate everything-must-go tag sale, lay covered with household belongings and a mob of milling people.

The barn was next. Poroth released the hand brake in the truck and the assembled men pushed it out of the building and into the yard, with no need to start its engine and break the holy silence of the service. Following the truck, men hauled out the rusted old farm implements and, from the attic, the tools and removable furnishings from Sarr's workshop. The five hens and the rooster, cocking their heads as they looked down curiously on all the activity through the wire of their cage, were left inside to be blessed.

Poroth stood by the barn with hands on hips, overlooking the accumulation on his lawn with a gaze that appeared transported.

Freirs realized that he must be seeing, in all this, proof that his luck would surely turn. What Deborah felt was impossible to make out.

Freirs moved beside him and looked dubiously at the clouds. In a clearing to the east a smoke-white half-moon hung suspended in the sky. 'Let's hope it doesn't rain,' he said.

Poroth glanced up but, surprisingly, showed no concern. 'No matter,' he said with a shrug. "Twould simply be a cleansing sign from the Lord.'

Freirs nodded, privately recalling twin sayings about the weather at funerals: sunshine was a sign that heaven loved the deceased; rain was a sign that heaven was weeping for him. It was impossible to lose.

He looked back down at the lawn in time to see that a group of nearly twenty young women had joined hands in a ring and were staring in their direction.

'Who are they?' he whispered.

'Unmarried women,' said Poroth. 'I'll explain in a minute.' Smiling, he strode off into the center of the circle. One of the girls brandished a large black kerchief and, as Freirs watched, bound it around Poroth's eyes like a blindfold. Suddenly the group began singing, their high, girlish voices carrying eerily across the lawn:

'Make the choosing, round about,

Choose the one and draw her out.

First her willing hand you take,

Then the Cleansing she will make.'

As they sang, they began turning slowly around Sarr, watching him intently. They had circled three times and had finished three complete choruses of the song when suddenly Sarr's hand shot out and tapped one of them, a thin young blond girl, on the shoulder.

'Eve Buckhalter,' someone called.

'Draw her out!'

It was Joram Sturtevant who'd spoken. He was standing straight and tall on the back steps of the farmhouse, still grim-faced from the encounter and careful, it seemed, not to glance in Freirs' direction. Freirs assumed that, by this time, he'd settled the matter with his wife, for she was no longer in the car. Perhaps he was even ashamed now of having gotten so hot under the collar.

The Buckhalter girl was led outside the ring, where a woman

Freirs didn't recognize handed her a small white feather. Grinning broadly, she stood waiting, awkward as all teenagers but clearly pleased at the attention.

'She will lead the Cleansing of the barn,' called Sturtevant. 'Now choose for the house.'

Once more the girls in the ring began revolving, raising their voices in song. They had sung for three more revolutions of the circle when Sarr's hand shot out again, touching another girl, this time just below her breast, which made her squeal.

'Sarah Lindt,' Brother Joram called. 'Draw her out!'

It was Rupert's daughter; Freirs studied her closely as she was led from the circle, recognizing the wide face and snub nose. He felt even more certain now that she had been the girl in the truck.

Sarr, his task completed, had returned to Deborah's side, while in the center of the yard two women – the girls' mothers, he guessed, recognizing the woman he'd seen arrive with Lindt – proceeded to twine corn leaves in their daughters' hair. The leaves in place, the pair of girls, each grasping a white feather, were led before the group, where they stood waiting nervously. The second girl, young Sarah, he saw, looked very nervous.

Sturtevant, on the back steps, raised his hand. Turning to the girls, the congregation murmured an invocation:

'May the Lord be with you as you carry out your holy task.'

'They're the ones who'll cleanse the buildings,' whispered Poroth, his arm around his wife. He looked pleased, though Deborah's face was blank. 'They're robed in innocence, you see, and are fit for such holy work.'

'Oh, so that's the object,' said Freirs. 'Yes, I guess it makes sense.' Virgins, he said to himself, as, in silence, the Buckhalter girl began walking past the company toward the barn while the Lindt girl proceeded toward the house.

For all the awkwardness of it – the round self-conscious teen-aged shoulders and the determinedly stately pace, the silly white feathers and the corn leaves in their hair – it was a curiously solemn moment. He scanned the assembled crowd. Parents were nodding and murmuring silent prayers; Poroth was gazing at the two girls like a proud papa at graduation. Only one face made Freirs pause: that of Poroth's mother. For the first time that he could remember, the woman looked surprised and uneasy. Freirs followed her gaze. She was staring hard at the Lindt girl as the latter walked slowly toward the house, her girlish face grave, eyes directly before her, clutching the white feather as reverently as if it had been plucked from an angel wing.

'What's troubling your mother?' whispered Freirs.

'Sshh!' said Poroth, not looking at him. He did, however, turn to look at the woman, and, seeing her expression, his own face grew puzzled.

All this time the Lindt girl had been advancing slowly toward the house past the rows of assembled men and women. Suddenly Freirs saw her pause and, for the briefest moment, gaze wide-eyed with terror and misery at a white-faced young man who stood in the midst of the crowd. It was him once again, the one from the truck; Freirs had no doubt of it now. For an instant the young man returned the girl's gaze; then he looked guiltily away.

The eye contact between the two teenagers had been brief, and only someone who'd been watching for it could possibly have noticed. But it had lasted long enough for Freirs to see the look that passed between them, and he almost burst out laughing. Hah! he thought, she's not really a virgin! And the only ones who know it are her, the boy, and me! Scanning the crowd again, he saw the shock on the face of Sarr's mother. And maybe, he added, Mrs Poroth.

No one else had seen. Sarah Lindt continued moving toward the house, Eve Buckhalter toward the barn. At last the two disappeared into the buildings, the Lindt girl hesitating a moment before entering, and there was an audible sigh from the assembled Brethren. As if suddenly released from a spell, they broke ranks and milled around the yard while Freirs and Poroth looked on, the crowd eventually spreading over the lawn so that each person was left standing before a small clump of household objects.

'What's going on?' whispered Freirs.

Sarr, too, seemed more relaxed. 'Well, the girls are inside now. Sarah will go through every room of the house, from attic to cellar, blessing each room with a prayer, and Eve will do the same with the barn. Meanwhile, the others are going to bless our possessions out here. Deborah and I aren't allowed to participate.'

The blessing he'd spoken of had already begun, Freirs saw; Brethren with waving hands were making signs and passes in the air, murmuring strings of prayers like people at some ancient bazaar.

"This does my heart real good,' said Sarr, taking it all in.

Obviously size didn't matter. Freirs saw a little boy who looked all of seven standing solemnly before the grandfather clock, which dwarfed him, while hulking Rupert Lindt, his younger daughter in the house, stood mumbling a prayer over several lanterns and a rolled-up rug. Corah Geisel stood before a table piled high with jugs and jars and bowls; nearby stood her husband, blessing two of the implements from the barn, a broken plow and a rusted vehicle with wicked-looking prongs around the wheels. Brother Joram gravely blessed the pickup truck, whose cab, Sarr had said, still smelled of decay. Freirs wondered if the smell would disappear now.

Watching Geisel at his prayers, he realized that an item had been overlooked. He slipped into the outbuilding and emerged with Poroth's shiny little sickle, which had been lying on his night table. 'I wouldn't want anything to escape your blessing, Matthew!' he said, tossing the sickle on the ground beside the plow. The old man nodded distractedly and continued praying.

At last Eve Buckhalter appeared in the doorway of the barn. Sticking the white feather like a talisman into a chink in the wood by her head, she gazed around her, smiling. Moments later Sarah Lindt appeared and forced a smile too, though she looked somewhat drawn and pale. Pausing at the back door, she struggled for a moment and finally managed to fit the white feather into a crack in the wood. She descended the back steps to a host of smiling faces; the praying had stopped. The Cleansing was completed.

'Brothers, Sisters,' said Poroth solemnly, climbing onto the porch, 'I thank you all for the service you've performed and the kindness you've done me and Deborah. Now let us thank the Lord for allowing us all to be here together.'

He bowed his head; they all prayed silently for more than a minute. Freirs bowed his head, too, but only briefly; looking around, he saw that all other heads were bowed. Deborah was gazing at her feet, seemingly either deep in thought or not thinking at all. Sarr's eyes were shut tight, as if with profound concentration. Joram glared severely at his clasped hands, obviously with weighty matters on his mind. But Sarr's mother was staring intently at Deborah.

Moments later Joram raised his head. 'Amen,' he said.

There was a further easing of tension, a loosening of posture. A faint breeze had sprung up, tempering the force of the afternoon sun. Across the dome of sky a white half-moon hung just over the horizon like a smoke wisp. One by one, as if a film had been reversed, the Brethren picked up the objects on the lawn and carried them back inside. The bed and bureau were hauled up to the Poroths' bedroom; the truck was rolled into the barn.

Freirs checked his watch. It was just after one p.m. Deborah was standing silently on the porch. Sarr was supervising the moving in, pointing out where objects were to go, but was obviously not worrying much about exactness. "Tis fine, 'tis fine,' he was saying, as the women replaced the dishes in the cupboards. 'Deborah and I can arrange it all later.'

'Are you going to have to feed all these people?' asked Freirs, during a moment when the other was not distracted.

'No, thank the Lord.' Poroth smiled. 'We Brethren know how to control our hungers.'

'It's clear you do,' said Freirs, but he was thinking of the Lindt girl.

People, as he spoke, were beginning to leave: making their goodbyes, blessing one another, and drifting off up the road in little groups or, more frequently, piling into cars parked near the front of the house. On their way out, many of the Brethren stopped to thank Poroth and wish him well.

'I think the Cleansing went splendidly,' said Abram Sturtevant, a dutiful brother, 'and I know Joram thinks so as well.' In fact, the later and his family had been among the first to depart.

'I just hope it proves a help to us all,' said Amos Reid. And old Jacob van Meer stopped to offer wishes from himself and his wife that Deborah, who had long since retired to her room, would make a speedy recovery.

Moments later Freirs saw Poroth talking in urgent whispers to his mother. The farmer looked annoyed. 'I will,' he kept saying. 'Don't worry, I'll be there.' At last the woman left, but Freirs could see she was dissatisfied and troubled.

The Geisels appeared reluctant to go. 'Please,' said Poroth, 'stay and share our Sunday meal. We'd like you to, Deborah and I.'

Corah Geisel elected to stay, but it was with the express purpose of caring for Deborah. 'I'd like to stay too, Sarr,' said Matthew. 'I know your woman's in no fit way to cook or fix the house after today. But I'm sorry, I have to go. There's been a mess of trouble at our place too – in fact, we may call for a Cleansing of our own, if we can get the Brethren together before next Sunday. Our hens and cows haven't been right all week.'

After the old man had bid goodbye to Sarr, Freirs accompanied him out past the front yard and onto the dusty road. 'What's the matter with your animals?' he asked. 'I've been drinking your cows' milk all summer. It's tasted fine.'

They walked a little way in silence, till the Poroths' farmhouse was well behind them. 'Most of the livestock in the area's been acting strange lately,' said Geisel. 'I don't rightly know what's behind it all. Some folks think – well, I don't mind telling you, there's those who say all sorts of things. Some even maintain the trouble comes from you.'

'Me?' Freirs' laughter felt a little forced. 'Why in the world would anyone think that? I've got nothing to do with this place.'

'That's just the point,' said Geisel. 'You're an outsider. You're living here amongst us, but you ain't one of us. But don't you go worrying yourself over it. Some folks around here just get scared and look to all kinds of excuses.'

'And what do you think the cause is?'

But the old man never got a chance to reply, for at that moment the earth tremors began.

Bert Steegler and Amelia had already gotten back to the store. They were invariably among the first to leave worship so that they could get the merchandise out and open up for business on Sunday afternoon. They sensed that something was wrong when all the lanterns, hanging sausages, wires, auto clips, and fishing rods hanging from the overhead beams began to tremble. As they stood there in terror, gripping the counter at the front of the store as if it were a life raft, they felt a deep, very low rumbling beneath their feet. Before the vibrations ceased ten seconds later, three heavy glass lanterns had crashed to the floor, and all the items on their shelves had crept mysteriously toward the north, as if magnetized.

Most of the Brethren were still on the road – the Poroths' dirt road or the paved ones nearer town – when the tremors hit. Those who were walking felt themselves rocked and came close to losing their balance. 'It was like setting foot in a tippy boat,' Galen Trudel would say later. He felt the ground shift, and the simple phrase 'the solid earth' came mockingly to mind. Those in cars had to fight to keep their vehicles on the road. Driving close to town, Amos and Rachel Reid saw the pavement ahead slowly undulate as if it were a black ribbon floating on waves.

Many Brethren, true to their natures, were driven to recall warnings from the Bible. Klaus and Wilma Buckhalter, driving Eve home after an already exciting day, were reminded of Matthew: 'And behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened… ' Eve herself felt witness to a God 'whose voice shook the earth.' Others remembered the book of Revelation or, like Bethuel Reid, thought of Isaiah: 'Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.'

And twenty-five miles to the south, graduate students in the geology department at Princeton, responding to a call from the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory in Palisades, New York, checked their instruments and verified the findings from Lamont: that north central New Jersey had just suffered a minor earthquake measuring four point nine on the Richter scale.

The excitement only lasted a few seconds, though it gave us all something to talk about over lunch. And it'll give me something to talk about when I get back to New York. Never experienced one of these things before; hope they're all as mild as this one proved to be.

Corah Geisel stayed upstairs with Deborah amp; left soon afterward, reporting that Deborah's reflexes seemed a little off, but that otherwise the wounds were superficial amp; were healing well.

It was grey the rest of the day amp; I sat in my room reading Robert W. Chambers amp; half waiting for another earth tremor, which fortunately never came. Most of Chambers' tales begin with marvelously ominous quotations from a mythical book called The King in Yellow. However, that single gimmick – masterful, I admit – seems to have been his sole inspiration.

I was sorry that old Corah left amp; that dinner was again made by Sarr; Deborah was still upstairs resting, he said. He sounded a trifle concerned, despite all the good things that had happened to this place today. He alluded to things wrong with her that Corah amp; the rest hadn't noticed or had overlooked. He amp; I ate a forlorn bachelor meal of cheese amp; bacon from the cellar (which, despite the Lindt girl's visit, still smells – went past the doorway tonight amp; got a strong whiff of decay). To keep Sarr company I stuck around the farmhouse a while after washing the dishes, but felt very drowsy amp; for some reason rather depressed. Hardly the appropriate mood for what's supposed to be a new beginning for this farm amp; my renewed decision to stay on. May be the gloomy weather; we are, after all, just animals, more affected by the sun amp; the season than we care to admit. Most likely, though, it was the absence of Deborah. Hope she feels better soon. We depend on her.

After Freirs went out, Sarr blew out one of the lamps. Taking the other, he walked softly upstairs, keeping to the edges of the old wooden steps so that they'd creak less. As he tiptoed into the bedroom, the light fell on Deborah's pale form. She was lying in bed on her back, staring into the darkness.

'Oh, you're awake.'

She nodded. 'Lots… to think about.' Her voice, a croaking whisper, still disturbed him.

He patted her head. 'I was going to pray silently, but I'm glad I won't have to. Just let me pray for both of us, okay? No talking now.'

'All right.'

He knelt in the corner, his knees upon the wooden planks. 'O Lord, hear me in Heaven thy resting place… '

She watched him levelly until he was done. He was smiling as he came toward her. 'And no singing tonight either,' he said, climbing into the bed. He brought the lamp closer on the night table and gently touched the bruises on her neck. 'These look even better now than they did this afternoon,' he whispered. 'God loves you, honey, and so do I.' Slowly he leaned over and kissed the raw places at her throat. She stirred slightly; he took it for a response, hoping that, after this weekend's events, she'd want to make love as badly as he did. Leaning farther, he kissed her lips. She kissed him back only halfheartedly, her lips clamped closed. He kissed her again, waiting for her to open her mouth; she did not. Well, perhaps she still hurt there; he pulled away, feeling foolish.

Later, as they lay together in the darkness, he reached out and touched her shoulder. He felt her stir. Running his hand over the nightgown, he moved down her breasts toward her stomach and belly, sensing himself grow aroused. She stirred again and rolled away, turning her back to him. Guiltily he withdrew his hand and, with a sigh, turned over and tried to go to sleep.

July Twenty-fifth

The Poroths had been up for hours when he awoke. He rolled over in bed and looked out. The first thing that caught his eye was a garden spider just outside the screen, clutching the tattered remnants of a moth. Nature! he thought, as he had in days past. The animal was grey and hairy, as large as some of the mice the cats had killed. It was clinging to the dark green ivy that grew over the outside of the sill; obviously it had had good hunting this summer, preying on the insects that lived among the leaves. Almost as if it sensed Freirs' revulsion, the thing suddenly began to move, climbing purposefully up the screen and, as he watched, horrified, making straight for the rent in the wire. Hurriedly he seized the spray can from the shelf by his bed, held its nozzle against the screens, and inaugurated the new week at the farm by dousing the creature with poison. It struggled to within several inches of the gap, then stopped, arched its legs, and dropped backward into the ivy.

Darkly the nursery rhyme came back to him:

If you wish to live and thrive,

Let the Spider walk alive.

He tried to shrug it off, reminding himself that he had already killed so many that he was living, even now, on borrowed time.

A rather quiet day, after the weekend's excitement. No visitors, no accidents, no noise or movements in the earth. Read some de la Mare in the morning – horrifying story of a little boy who sees a crouching demon each time he turns his eyes to the left – but his writing's so tentative amp; subtle amp; the day was so quiet amp; muggy that I somehow couldn't keep reading. Sarr was scattering some sort of white powder in the cornfield that's supposed to keep cutworms away, but he was also making sure to keep an eye on Deborah. She in turn sat watching him from a rocking chair on the back porch, rocking slowly back amp; forth but not otherwise moving, like a silent old woman more dead than alive.

Seeing Sarr's labors, I felt I ought to get some physical activity myself; but the thought of starting my exercises again after being out of practice so long seemed just too unpleasant. I took a walk down the road a little way, up to the first bend where the house is lost from sight. Perhaps I was hoping that the driver from the gas company would happen by again amp; offer me a lift… Somehow, though, I didn't want to get out of sight of the house, as if it might not be the same – or there at all – when I got back. Like the way Sarr keeps one eye on Deborah… I was bored, amp; walking to town sounded temping, but Gilead had so little to offer amp; just seemed too far away.

Was going to cut the ivy away from my windows when I got back, as it's become a haven for all sorts of bugs, but decided the place looks more artistic covered in vines.

Deborah made dinner tonight – meat loaf, string beans, amp; potatoes – but I found it a bit disappointing, probably because I'd been looking forward to it all day. The meat was underdone, somehow, amp; the beans were cold. Though she still seems tired amp; stiff, she seems otherwise normal now, amp; at least was able to talk over dinner-more than Sarr, in fact, who said almost nothing, except that he'd been unable to find out anything about the McKinneys (if in fact there are any). Deborah's voice is still hoarse, though, amp; she ate very little, as she has trouble swallowing. I persuaded her to let me do the dishes again. I've been doing them a lot lately.

I didn't have much interest in reading tonight amp; would have preferred sitting around their living room, like we used to do in the past, listening to the radio – Deborah, I'm sure, would have been up for it – but Sarr's gotten into one of his religious kicks lately amp; began mumbling prayers to himself immediately after dinner. Guess he's still worked up after the services here yesterday. Absorbed in his chanting, he made me uncomfortable -1 didn't like his face – amp; so after doing the dishes I left, borrowing the radio for the night.

Walked back here with some rock music playing. It sounded pretty obscene, here in this rural quiet beneath the stars, but somehow once I got inside it seemed to keep the night at bay. Listened to the ads between each song – plugs for car stereos amp; acne cream amp; roadside disco lounges. It all sounded terribly alien out here; what must people like the Brethren make of such stuff? Next I listened to a bit of the news (no mention, alas, of our pathetic little earthquake). Lots of heavy international power politics, crime amp; corruption in New York, blacks amp; Libyans demanding this amp; that, bus drivers threatening a walkout… No wonder the people here despise the outside world; judging from the picture of it you get on the radio, it's as wicked as Sarr claims.

Have been listening to the radio for the past hour or so. Recall the days, not so long ago, when I'd have gotten uptight at having wasted an hour, but out here I'm slowing down, more amp; more, the longer I remain.

… Can't find that goddamned new can of bug spray. I usually keep it right by this table, close at hand, and play Search amp; Destroy each night before turning in. Annoying to think that one of the Poroths took it amp; didn't return it; don't like the idea of their entering my room. The other can's almost empty, but by judiciously using it amp; an old rolled-up Sight amp; Sound (whose cover I'll now have to throw away) I managed to give the place a good going over. Now the room smells of spray amp; I'm exhausted.

Just shut the radio off. I'd be tempted to leave it on all night as I go to sleep, but then you can't hear what's happening outside, and I don't like to be at that sort of disadvantage.

Now that it's quiet, I can hear Sarr praying amp; singing hymns. Odd to think of him doing so alone. I imagine that Deborah must be up there with him, mouthing the words.

July Twenty-sixth

Writing this, breaking habit, in early morning. Was awakened around two or so last night by sounds coming from the woods. A wailing – deeper this time than anything I've heard before – followed by what sounded like a low, guttural monologue, except there seemed to be no words, at least none I could distinguish. Maybe it was another whippoorwill, or a large bullfrog, or even some local poacher on a nightly sortie through the swamp. If frogs could talk… For some reason I fell asleep again before the sounds ended, so I don't know what followed.

This morning's paper had a brief piece about our 'earthquake.' Also had a letter from Carol today. She'll be coming out this weekend -unfortunately with that creepy old Rosie. Don't like the way he's cozied up to her; she practically lives for the guy. Still, it'll be great to see her again. Despite what they say about Lammas Eve, this weekend shouldn't be so unpleasant after all…

From the Hunterdon County Home News, Tuesday, July 26: QUAKE CAUSE STILL UNDETERMINED

Gilead, July 25. – Though this tiny fanning community is located less than ten miles from the Ramapo Fault believed to run from Somerset County to the Hudson, a research team of Princeton University geologists reports that the causes of Sunday afternoon's earth tremor here appear to have been 'independent of the fault.' According to the group's findings, released early today and based upon data collated with other seismographic laboratories in the region, the quake's epicenter was somewhere north of the town. Damage was slight, confined to broken windows and household articles, though farmers report some panicking of herds. The disturbance appears to have been highly localized, affecting only the town and its surroundings; neighboring communities were not aware of it.

Contacted by telephone in Connecticut, vacationing department staffer Dr James Lewalski, director of laboratory facilities, noted that no place on the continent is totally free from such quakes; even New England, he noted, has had 'at least one recorded earth tremor of sizable proportions every year since the founding of the colonies.' Lewalski pooh-poohed the notion that the state might be entering a new earthquake phase not associated with the Ramapo Fault. 'There will always be a few freak quakes whose cause is difficult to pinpoint,' he said, 'but there is at this point no cause for alarm.'

Deborah was able to walk around today amp; spent most of it in the woods picking berries. She came back amp; made us dinner, but it was nothing special. The four new chickens have begun to lay, but we've only had around half a dozen eggs from them since they were purchased; the old hen, after a week of laying soft eggs, has responded to her new high-calcium feed by not laying anything at all. Deborah made us a vegetable omelet using all six eggs, but it was surprisingly poor. Odd medicinal taste; Sarr didn't even finish his. Deborah herself barely ate, which also seemed to annoy Sarr. 'Eat something,' he kept saying. 'You don't even open your mouth.' He's been in a bad mood lately.

Dessert not much good either: cheese amp; early apples which Sarr had bought in town last week. He'd been keeping them down in the root cellar; now most of them have gone bad. I took a few steps down to the cellar amp; could smell that the food down there had started to spoil.

Probably it's just as well I ate so little tonight; I'm definitely getting heavier out here, despite all my good intentions. Or flabbier, if not heavier. Really ought to do my exercises. Maybe tomorrow. Looked in the bathroom mirror after dinner, before coming out here, amp; wasn't too pleased with the sight. Maybe I can try to get a better sun tan before Carol arrives, amp; I could also really use a haircut. Must shave, too.

As I left the Poroths, they didn't seem to be getting along. Deborah, still hoarse, announced that she was tired amp; went upstairs alone. I left Sarr praying in the living room.

While I was outside, just before entering this room, I chanced to turn around amp; look at the farmhouse. The lamp was burning in the Poroths' bedroom, amp; to my amazement I saw, in silhouette, Deborah slipping off her long black dress. She was right in front of the window. Then she turned amp; stood there a moment, looking out. Sarr must have come upstairs right after that, because I heard him call to her amp; she quickly moved away… But until she did I had the distinct feeling that, as she stood there, she knew she was being watched, amp; that she, in turn, was looking right at me.

Later they would talk about it often. The good people of Gilead would talk and speculate and argue, gathered around Bert Steegler's cash register at the Go-operative, or sipping tea or lemonade on the van Meers' front porch, or on their way to Sunday worship: how, on the night of July twenty-sixth, just before the strange culmination of the events at Poroth Farm, Shem and Orin Fenchel saw the light dancing in the woods.

Neither father nor son was the kind to show up at Sunday worship, and the past Sunday, while their fellows were congregating at the Poroths', the younger, more enterprising Fenchel had been helping himself to a basketful of tomatoes from Hershel Reimer's garden (taking care to leave no tracks), and old Shem had been fast asleep and snoring. As to the events of the twenty-sixth, they would claim, later, that they'd been searching for a favorite hound that had wandered from the yard and lost itself in the swamp outside of town; but those who knew them best would suspect, always, that they'd been hunting out of season, the Fenchel larder being surprisingly well stocked with meat despite the annual failure of that family's crop.

It was safe to say, too, that the pair had drained a bottle or two that night; as one of the town's rare jokes had it, the elder Fenchel had brought up young Orin on the words of Jeremiah 25:27 – 'Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall.'

Their testimony, therefore, was not the most convincing, and there were those in Gilead who would deny that the two had seen anything at all. But there were others who, noting the son's wide-eyed amazement, the older man's obvious confusion, the discrepancies in their stories, and reflecting that the two had nothing to gain from lying – for indeed, the incident could only increase their notoriety in the town – would be inclined to believe all or much of what they said.

The moon was gibbous that night, casting a cold, sluglike face at the trees and rivulets and fallen logs over which they'd been stumbling. They were nearing the marshy region along the northwest border of the old Baber place – Sarr Poroth had bought the property last fall, and Fenchel agreed with those in town who held that he'd been cheated – and walking had become difficult; their boots made a wet, sucking sound with each step, and to remain too long in one place gave them the feeling of sinking into the earth.

The younger man was the first to hear it. Initially he took it for an animal caught, struggling, in some remote trap, but then he began to pick out what sounded like words – foreign words. The father heard it too, by now, and was thereafter to maintain that the language was Hebrew; his son, less dogmatic, would never venture to guess.

It was shortly afterward that they saw, far in the distance, the dancing light. It was bobbing up and down out there in the swamp, over land so treacherous that neither man dared approach too closely. Sometimes it would dip below a shrub or rotting log and would be lost from sight: at other times it seemed to float above the surface of the ground-water, as if playing with its own reflection. Occasionally it winked, flickered, and dimmed; most often it burned with a small, steady flame. Both men would later agree that it had been moving ever deeper into the woods, away from Poroth Farm.

But subsequently their reports would differ. Orin, who had the sharper eyes of the two, was to describe the light as that of a single candle. His father would deny this with a queer vehemence; though in his sorry life he'd been accused, by his more pious brethren, of every form of blasphemy, he would shudder, even months afterward, at the notion of a burning candle, as if at something unnatural and obscene. He would never explain his reasons, however, except to say that no candle could have cast so strong a glow; he'd claim that what they'd seen had, in fact, been a hand-held lantern, or even a flashlight.

As to just what sort of hand held the lantern, it was still too far away to tell, and a low midsummer mist obscured their view. They stood awhile in uneasy silence, squinting at the light. It seemed, slowly, to be drawing closer. Occasionally the faint singsong voice would reach them from over the swamp. Shem, at this point, observed that whoever was carrying the lantern must be small indeed, because it appeared to be swinging only inches from the ground. Perhaps it was a child… The two peered into the darkness ahead, wondering how any being could make its way through that mud and looking in vain for a face they might recognize above the approaching light.

In fact, they looked in vain for any face at all.

It was here that Orin broke and ran. Later, when asked to account for his uncharacteristic faintheartedness, he would mutter something about that light's having been 'too damned close to the ground. No man could carry a candle that low,' he'd say, crossing himself. 'Leastwise not in his hand.'

Shem Fenchel didn't remain there much beyond his son, but he lingered long enough to form an opinion – or, rather, several opinions – of what might have been out there. 'Some kinda animal,' he told his wife, when he woke her that night. 'A dog or monkey or' -his eye fell on young Lavinia's picture book – 'or a trained seal. Like in the circus. Carryin' the lantern in its teeth.'

It was only later, when in his cups at the roadhouse up near Lebanon, that he was heard to brag that what he'd really seen crawling through the swamp that night had been a naked woman.

July Twenty-seventh

Feeling tired amp; on edge today. I was up most of the night, thanks to the sounds outside – like distant thunder… And when I finally slept, woke up wishing I hadn't. If only there were some way of warding off these bad dreams. They're soon forgotten, of course, amp; seldom repeated; but while you're living through them they're all the reality you've got.

How does that line from the Cabala go? Reality hangs by – a thread?

Closing his journal, Freirs strolled outside and wandered toward the farmhouse. He felt grubby and was sure he needed a bath, but he'd forgotten to bring his towel and was too enervated to go back and get it. Heating the water for a bath was too complicated anyway.

Deborah was nowhere around, but there was a hot fresh blueberry pie cooling by the window. He was still aroused, in memory, from the sight of her disrobing in her room last night and was eager to see her again. From Sarr's workroom in the attic of the barn came the sound of steady hammering, echoing through the yard. He found some lukewarm milk left in the pitcher on the counter, enough for a shallow bowl of cereal, but he felt like something more; lighting the lantern, he climbed down the narrow steps to the cellar. The entire room now smelled of spoiled food; had the weather really gotten so much hotter lately that the perishables had… perished? He stayed down there as short a time as he could: just long enough to assure himself that the milk in the container was sour and that there were no eggs on the shelf. He was glad to get back upstairs.

Wandering out to the back porch, he heard Poroth in the barn give a yell of exultation. It was the first time in days that the farmer had shown such emotion; lately he had grown morose and moody. Freirs hurried to the barn to see what had produced the change.

Poroth was crouching on the platform that supported the chicken coop, peering into the nest with the smile of a brand-new father looking through the glass of the maternity ward. Freirs climbed up the ladder to join him.

'Look,' said Poroth, 'look what they've done.' He pointed to a pair of pristine-looking white eggs lying on the platform by his feet. 'I found them under two of the new birds.'

'About time they got the hang of it.'

'And look at this.' Leaning into the coop and digging beneath the one surviving hen from the previous flock, who scattered, squawking, as he reached toward her, Poroth pulled out another egg.

'See? The calcium's working! This one's back to normal.'

Indeed, when held up to the light, the egg seemed plump and healthy and the shell hard.

'A welcome sight,' said Freirs. 'I've missed my morning omelets.'

'Yes,' said Poroth, 'I have too.' He was staring pensively at the egg.

'Should we take them up to the house?'

'Those two,' said Poroth, indicating the pair at his feet, 'but not this. It's already fertilized – I just felt it tremble in my hand. Here, feel.' Without warning he thrust it into Freirs' unwilling hand.

Freirs hefted it gingerly, thinking of Lotte Sturtevant's stomach. The egg was wanner than he'd expected. Soft, impatient movements came from within it. Hurriedly he returned it to the other, who slipped it back into the eldest hen's nest.

'We'll let her sit on it awhile,' said Poroth, 'and soon we'll have ourselves another bird.'

Each with an egg, the two strolled toward the farmhouse, their spirits high. Nature, in the end, would not be denied; the sun was out, the corn was ripening, and the hens were laying again.

For several minutes after the two figures had gone, the old bird continued to pace round and round in the dust and odor of the coop, at last settling herself back onto the remaining egg. The barn was still. Shafts of sunlight crept steadily across the wooden floor; a trio of bluebottles buzzed in contentment.

Suddenly she jerked her head erect, her round eyes staring wide. With a flurry of feathers she hopped off the nest and scrambled to the far corner of the coop, where she stood quivering against the wire, claws raking the straw.

Behind her, in the filthy down-lined nest, the egg twitched, rocked back and forth, and jerked to a series of invisible blows, looking more like a living thing than the container of one. A split appeared in the side. The four new hens and the rooster left their perches and gathered to watch, cocking their heads and twitching as a dark, jagged hole appeared in the side of the egg and a tiny pink arm slipped through. At last a head appeared, and as the squawking of the adult birds rose higher, the child hatched, scattering bits of shattered eggshell.

With frenzied cries, the surrounding chickens pecked to death the glistening pink reptilian thing that emerged.

The house, by this time, had a kind of shabby hominess for Freirs, as if the depressions in the sofa in the living room had come from him, the worn spots on the wooden armrests from his hands. He sat back in the rocker that stood near the fireplace and waited idly for lunch to be ready. Deborah had returned; he could hear her now in the kitchen but didn't have the energy to get up and go in.

Poroth emerged from the cellar, a look of satisfaction on his face. He joined Freirs in the living room, ducking his head as he passed through the doorway.

'Well,' he said, 'we've made a new start. By next week I'll bet the whole shelf s full of eggs again.' He stood thinking, arm propped on the mantel. 'And maybe by fall we'll have enough birds to eat.'

Freirs imagined living beings trapped inside smothering shells, bent almost double with beaks between legs, struggling insanely to burst free. 'You know,' he said, 'until today I never held a fertilized egg, and I'm not sure I ever want to hold one again. It felt really weird. Reminded me of those earth tremors we had on Sunday.'

Poroth smiled. 'A hole milder, surely.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Freirs. 'It's all a matter of scale. If that egg were the size of the earth, those movements we felt would have been worse than any quake in history.'

'You may have a point.' Rubbing his chin, Poroth stared speculatively at the books occupying the lower half of the writing desk in the corner. 'Seems to me I've heard something like that before – the idea that the earth is one big egg. 'Twas a tale my mother told me when I was small. A kind of fairy tale. Or maybe it was just a dream she'd had.'

'They say that myths and fairy tales are public dreams.'

'Well, maybe so. In this one, I recall, a girl believes the earth is a dragon's egg – a dragon's egg just waiting to be hatched. 'Tis all symbolic, of course. A parable, just like in the Bible.'

'Yes, I can see that,' said Freirs. 'And then what happens?' The other shrugged resignedly. 'What else? The world ends with the roar of a dragon.'

Just beyond the doorway of the kitchen, Deborah added a dash more pepper to the pork patties sizzling on the gas range, then threw in another pinch of salt. Two spoonfuls of flour went into the mix, followed by a fresh patty glistening here and there with fat. It hissed as it settled in the pan, scattering drops of burning grease upon her fingers. She did not flinch. Taking an onion from the wicker basket on the counter, she carefully peeled off the larger leaves and dropped them in. There were no tears.

In a shallow bowl she mixed the salad dressing, compounded of oil, lemon juice, vinegar, and garlic. Tasting the result from a finger dipped into it, she picked up the pepper mill once more and gave it three firm shakes over the mixture, then paused and tilted her head, almost catlike now, listening. Outside, the stillness of the yard was broken by the distant crowing of a rooster. From the next room came the sound of the two men in earnest conversation.

Silently she crouched, reached beneath the counter, and drew forth a squat silver can. Prying off the heavy plastic top, she poured a measured amount of pale liquid into a bowl, adding a dash more of the liquid directly onto the sizzling meat. It smoked fiercely for a moment, bubbling with a new and shriller noise. Quickly pressing back the top, she slipped the can back into its hiding place, so that no one except her could possibly have seen the directions on it, or the brand name, or the warning, For Outdoor Use Only.

Only four cats are left from the original seven, yet none of these survivors seem to feel the slightest sense of loss. Played with them for a while after lunch – or, rather, watched them chase insects, climb trees, doze in the sun. Spectator sport.

Speaking of which, finally got around to going 'birding,' something I'd been meaning to do ever since I got here. Armed myself with Peterson guide amp; marched off into the fields. Saw a redwing blackbird, three starlings, amp; what may have been a grackle, then called it a day. Whole thing seems as pointless as tallying out-of-state license plates on a road trip.

Came back in here, opened my notebook, amp; sat down to reread 'Supernatural Horror in Literature' in the Lovecraft collection. Sort of a Poetics of the Horror Tale, amp; a marvelous guide; I've been using it as a summer reading list, trying to cover the material Lovecraft recommends. But it worries me to see how little I've actually accomplished this summer, and how far I still have to go. So many obscure authors I couldn't find at Voorhis, so many books I've never even heard of… Left me feeling depressed amp; tired. Took a nap for the rest of the afternoon.

Deborah looked much better at dinner. Though she still did little talking, her features were more animated, she had good color – she's been spending time berry-picking in the woods, she says – amp; she seemed energetic amp; cheerful. Sarr, by contrast, was moody again. He picked at his food (beef stew, amp; like the pork at lunch, actually quite poor, though I was too polite to say anything) amp; kept asking her why she didn't eat more. When she brought out the blueberry pie he flatly declined to have any. 'How do I know the berries aren't poison?' he demanded. Both Deborah amp; I were scandalized that he'd even think such a thing, amp; I could see that, after all her work, the poor girl was very upset, so I had a huge extra slice. Deborah ate a lot too, no doubt just to show Sarr up.

Sometimes I stay with them amp; talk, but didn't want to hang around tonight; can't get used to the changes in Sarr. He barely said a civil thing all evening. One exception, though: he told me he'd found out, in answer to my question, that there never were any McKinneys. Seems McKinney's Neck is actually taken from some old Indian word.

Felt like rain when I came back out here; clouds massing in the night sky amp; the woods echoing with thunder. Little Absolom Troet seemed to smile at me from his photo when I turned on the light, as if glad to have me back.

Still no rain. Read most of John Christopher's The Possessors. Pretty effective, drawing horror from the most fundamental question of human relations: How can we know that the person next to us is as human as we are? Then played a little game with myself for most of the evening, until I Jesus! I just had one hell of a shock. While writing the above I heard a soft tapping, like nervous fingers drumming on a table, amp; discovered an enormous spider, biggest of the summer, crawling only a few inches from my ankle. It must have been living behind the bureau next to this table.

When you can hear a spider walk across the floor, you know it's time to keep your socks on! If only I could find the damned bug spray. Had to kill the thing by swatting it with my shoe, amp; think I'll just leave the shoe there on the floor until tomorrow morning, covering the grisly crushed remains. Don't feel like seeing what's underneath tonight, or checking to see if the shoe's still moving… Must get more insecticide.

Oh, yeah, that game – the What if Game. The one Carol says Rosie taught her. For some reason I've been playing it ever since I got her letter. It's catching. (Vain attempt to enlarge the realm of the possible? Heighten my own sensitivity? Or merely work myself into an icy sweat?) I invent the most unlikely situations, then try to think of them as real. Really real. E. g., what if this glorified chicken coop I live in is sinking into quicksand? (Maybe not so unlikely.) What if the Poroths are getting tired of me? What if, as Poe was said to fear, I woke up inside my own coffin?

What if Carol, right this minute, is falling in love with another man? What if her visit here this weekend proves an unmitigated disaster?

What if I never see New York again?

What if some stories in the horror books aren't fiction? If Machen told the truth? If there are White People out there, malevolent little faces grinning in the moonlight? Whispers in the grass? Poisonous things in the woods? Unsuspected evil in the world?

Enough of this foolishness. Time for bed.

Adrift – afloat – adream – he was spinning down the river on a narrow wooden raft, speeding toward the falls. He heard them ahead, a monstrous cataract of mist and white smoke and a rumbling deeper than thunder. He was almost upon them now, the raft was tilting forward, he felt it rock frenziedly as the raging current caught it.

And suddenly the raft tipped over and flipped him out of bed. He landed on the floor.

And the floor itself was moving.

Two miles down the road and a mile nearer town, Ham Stoudemire fought his way to the window and peered out, muttering snatches of prayer. His jaw fell. Outside in the moonlight the cornfield was rising, the land tilting as if from giant limbs beneath a patchwork quilt. 'Dear Lord,' he gasped, 'is it the Final Judgment?'

Adam Verdock had been sleeping on a cot beside his wife's bed. He dreamed his daughter Minna was shaking him, and felt a sudden half-formed hope, he was to say afterward, that she had good news of Lise. But Minna was nowhere about when he awoke, and Lise's eyes were closed, and he felt himself tossed around the little bedroom -'like a terrier shaking a rat' was how he'd put it later. And still his wife's eyes failed to open.

Deborah's eyes were open. Sarr awakened with a start to find her shoved roughly against him in the bed. He heard the sound of glass breaking somewhere below. The walls of the house were bending and creaking like the masts of a ship in a storm. 'Honey,' he said, 'come on, we've got to get out!'

She stared at him glassy-eyed; perhaps she was dreaming with her eyes open. She seemed not to hear.

'Honey,' he said, voice rising now, 'come on, 'tis another quake.' He lifted her from the bed, the two of them in their nightgowns, and started toward the stairs.

Shem Fenchel, dead drunk, slept through it all.

In the darkness of the woods, by the tiny mud-packed altar at the margins of the swamp, the thundering vibrations tore the forest floor and threw up great jagged chunks of rock. Part of the ground trembled and gave way, swallowing up all that remained of the fire-blackened cottonwood and the tiny mound of mud. Animals fled the area in terror. Trees still standing bent as from a violent storm. With an awesome cracking sound the earth split, bulged, and lifted, as if from some immense form pressing upward from beneath, straining toward the moon.

Gradually the trembling subsided, the land settling back upon itself. Ham Stoudemire saw his field grow still, the giant asleep again beneath its coverlet. Sarr, carrying Deborah's stiff form down the stairs, felt the tremors stop; Freirs picked himself nervously from the floor. They walked out to the yard and stood with relief upon the firm ground, and the two men talked until the rain came.

And in the forest a gigantic shape, furred with foliage and humped like the back of some huge animal, stood upreared against the stars.

The next morning, in the drizzle, they picked up the pieces. Bert and Amelia Steegler walked up and down the aisles of their store sweeping up the broken shards of bottles. A grieving Adam Verdock roamed through the countryside rounding up his cattle, which had kicked down their already damaged stalls. Old Bethuel Reid, summoning his courage, brandished a rake and chased the snakes that swarmed over his land into the forest.

And young Raymond Trudel, while searching the swampy region of the woods for an escaped hog, came upon the scene of the worst devastation and went running back to his family's farm, screaming in terror about the monstrous hill that had risen in McKinney's Neck during the night.

Book Ten: The Scarlet Ceremony

There are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies and the Scarlet Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best.

Machen, The White People

July Twenty-eighth

Rain spatters the sidewalk; the morning sun glows dimly behind a veil of cloud. Poised between the twin spires of a cathedral, the gibbous moon, just three days short of full, is a blob of smoke against the greying sky. As he wanders through the city, peering from beneath his black umbrella as he catalogues all that will be gone, the Old One perceives the moon's true meaning:

It is a portent of imminent completion.

The two initial Ceremonies are behind him, the woman has been tested and found ready, the Dhol lives clothed in human form… Yet a single step remains now, one last transformation, and the final act, the Voola'teine, can be performed.

All that's needed now is one more body, that of the man; and watching the fall of rainwater from a spout shaped like a gargoyle's mouth above him to an oil-rainbowed puddle at his feet, he is suddenly filled with certainty that the man will meet his end this very day – and with a vision of how that end will come about.

He can see it. It is as real as the rain upon the grimy streets around him.

Death by water.

He awoke to the patter of rain on the already wet grass, as if last night's cataclysm had been, in truth, just thunder and a vivid, violent dream. But no, he recalled, it had been more than that; there really had been a quake of some sort… The memory made this morning's rain seem a kind of absolution, something that would turn the earth into mud which, like mortar, would seal all last night's cracks.

He lay on his bed for a few more minutes, lulled by the sound, but gradually became aware that he was cold. The air was damp today, and a cool wind had sprung up. Across the lawn the house looked dry and cheerful. His watch said ten thirty. He roused himself and hurried out, keeping beneath the nearest line of trees for as much of the way as he could.

Worms had crawled out of the grass and were wriggling like drunken things on the flagstones as he dashed up the walk toward the porch. To his left the cornfield looked drenched, the thinner stalks drooping wearily in the mud. Hard to believe, on such a day as this, that the sky above the farm had ever been sunny.

The radio in the kitchen was tuned to a religious station. Sarr and Deborah were sitting across the table glaring into one another's eyes, like two card players suspecting each other of cheating and waiting to see who would draw first. Freirs could feel the tension break as he came in. Deborah smiled with obvious relief. Rising, she switched off the radio and went to the stove. 'We've no milk today,' she said -her voice had improved dramatically overnight – 'and no new eggs from any of the hens, and the two downstairs were broken when the shelf collapsed last night. So unless my husband-'

'I'm going,' Sarr said loudly. 'I'm going into town this afternoon, to see about the damage and how Aunt Lise is doing, and when I'm there, I told you, I'll stop at the Co-op and buy whatever we need.'

'Why don't you go now? Before it's all gone?'

He snorted with annoyance. 'I told you, I'll not be panicked by what happened last night, and I'll not have it look to the community, when I march into the store and ask for credit to buy powdered milk and eggs and other provisions, that I tried to get there first. Besides, I want to get that broken glass cleared from the cellar.'

'Well, why don't you?'

'I am.' He stood and headed for the cellar.

'Let me know when you're going into town,' said Freirs, 'and I'll come along.'

The other looked dubious. 'You're sure you want to come and see Aunt Lise? I don't think that would be wise.'

Freirs shrugged. 'Maybe, but there are a few things I'd like to pick up before Carol and her friend come out – and I'll be glad to chip in on the rest.'

Sarr nodded morosely. 'I'll not say no to help like that,' he said. 'Thanks.' He left the room; they heard him descending the cellar steps, and then the clatter of broken glass.

'It's a shambles down there,' said Deborah. 'An unholy shambles. Even the things that weren't in jars got spoiled somehow. I did manage to save the bacon and potatoes, though. Why don't I add some to last night's stew – there was a lot left over. Sarr's been off his feed lately.'

'Great. Never let it be said that I require milk and cereal for breakfast.' He ate heartily, not minding that, like last night, it didn't taste up to Deborah's usual standard. She, too, must be a little off her feed.

Afterward, he went to the living room and watched the cats at play; the four had moved inside this morning, away from the cold drizzle and the breeze. But the animals and their ceaseless quest for amusement now depressed him. A moving sock, the sound of a slither or scrape – anything seemed to excite them for a moment, then ultimately bore them. He, too, felt bored. Borrowing the radio and holding it under his shirt, he walked back to his room. He reopened The Possessors and came close to completing it, but soon his mind began to wander to all the books he hadn't yet read that summer, and the thought of them all so depressed and tired him that he laid aside the novel and turned on the radio. He found a New York news station, but though he listened for half an hour, there was once again no mention of the previous night's earthquake. We're too small to count out here, he decided. He felt abandoned. He switched to a local station, but it was the old religious bit. Maybe, though, they would give the news; weren't they required by law to do so every hour?

He listened for a few minutes, trying sporadically to read amid the usual half-heard biblical injunctions, but his mind drifted. 'There is none beside me,' the radio was thundering. 'I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.'

In that case, Freirs thought dully, you certainly aren't much use to anyone – and drifted off to sleep.

The rain, for the moment, had let up. Tiptoeing down the back steps, Poroth slogged through the drenched grass and peered in the window of the outbuilding. Freirs was asleep. Just as well; he hadn't wanted anyone to come with him. His plans today were secret. Silently he moved toward the barn.

Slamming the door of the truck, he twisted the ignition key and jammed his foot on the gas pedal. The engine ticked over once, twice, three times, and died. The next time, it caught. He pulled out of the barn and over the swampy grass, circling around the side of the house and down the dirt road now turned to mud, truck wheels sinking into the water-lined ruts.

He had told Freirs the truth; he was going to stop at the store and to pay a prayerful visit to poor Aunt Lise. But there was another reason for his haste, and for the trip itself. He had an additional appointment – with someone whose advice he craved.

It is a most extraordinary vision. Distractedly he seats himself on the steps of the nearest building, oblivious to the wet concrete or the rain that falls around him like a cage, and from beneath his umbrella he stares at the swirling puddle in the gutter, watching the scene that has taken control of his fancy.

There is the farmwife standing pink and naked in her bath, and the man fully clothed and nervous by her side, and now she has seized his arm in an iron grip and is pulling him into the tub with her. He struggles, off balance, the bathroom rug sliding beneath his shoes; he reaches out blindly to steady himself, but his groping hand encounters only space, then her warm and slippery flesh, and there is nothing to lean against, nothing to break his fall as his knees strike the hard white side of the tub, echoing, and he tumbles head first into the warm water.

He splashes wildly, the water drowning his screams. It is clear, even as she drags his head down and holds it jerking beneath the soapy surface and settles her knees on his heaving chest, that he still cannot believe this is happening.

Deborah on his mind, he trudged grimly up the sloping lawn toward the little stone cottage. Rainwater ran down the back of his collar and flowed in rivulets through the terraced flower beds toward the stream far below, beside the road where his green pickup stood parked. Before him, like three guard towers, rose the boxlike wooden beehives; he gave them a wide berth as he passed, shielding his face when, despite the rain, several insects circled buzzing round his head. The usual welcoming committee, he thought. He waited till they were gone, then hurried onward, arriving at last before the front door. He knocked three times, pounding his fist against the dark wood, then stepped back.

'Mother?' he called, his voice reverberating from the stony walls, the vines that, with thorns and blossoms, climbed in profusion up the sides of the house, toward the little second-story window in the peak of the roof.

The door swung open. 'Good,' she said briskly. 'I've been waiting for you.'

The wind had picked up again, and the rain had come back, a dull monotonous drizzle. Freirs roused himself and looked at his watch. Though it looked like early evening, it was just after two; Sarr would be leaving soon. He forced himself to his feet and hurried toward the house. Halfway there, shielding himself against the rain, he came to a bare patch in the yard and saw tire tracks filling with water. Shit! he thought. I’ll bet he left without me. He looked back to where the barn stood. There was no sign of the truck, but perhaps it was hidden inside. Rather than run all the way back, he continued up the walk to the house.

The kitchen was deserted. 'Sarr?' he called.

'Gone.'

The voice was hoarse, nearly inaudible. It had come from the bathroom, just off the kitchen. The door stood partly open, outlined in light from within.

'Deborah?' He drew closer. 'Sarr left already?'

'Yes.'

Freirs stopped awkwardly several feet away. Through the crack in the door he could see a little slice of bathroom. It looked steamy in the lantern light.

'Jeremy?' Her voice was softer now.

'What is it?'

'Come here, Jeremy.' He didn't move. 'I have something to tell you.'

Slowly he pushed the door open. The room inside was misty; warm moist air bathed his face, smelling of rose-scented soap.

She was lying back in the tub with just her head above the surface of the water. Through swirls of steam his darting glance took in the pale pink length of her body, the dark nipples of her breasts blurred beneath the soapsuds, the widening dark shadow where the black hair curled between her legs.

She lay content beneath his gaze. 'Do you remember,' she said, after a pause, 'how you offered to scrub my back?'

'Yes.' He stood hesitantly in the doorway, wondering if he dared take a step closer.

'And do you remember what I said?'

'Uh, I'm not sure. Something about "some other time." '

She nodded, half smiling. 'Some other time when my husband wasn't here.'

'Uh-huh.' He swallowed nervously.

'He's not here now.'

Slowly she began sitting up. Her shoulders rose above the surface, milky water lapping at the tops of her breasts. Soon, unsupported, they hung heavy and full, water dripping from them, while her glistening black hair fell wetly down her shoulders like a shawl.

She was seated upright now, the water about her waist like a nightgown she'd sloughed off; and still she continued to rise, tucking her legs beneath her and getting to her feet.

'Come on, Jeremy,' she said, standing before him. 'You're just the one I need.'

Rain pounded against the cottage's stone walls and rattled the windows of the parlor. Inside, in the dim light, listening to his mother's words, the farmer felt a chill. The woman seemed farther away than ever. The room, like the entire house, was hers alone and held no place for him. It was the refuge of her widowhood; she'd moved in while he'd been away. He had visited her here many times since his return, but he always felt like a stranger.

'You've come to find out about Deborah,' she was saying. 'You feel a change in her. A distance.'

He nodded, too old to be surprised by the woman's ability to read his mind.

But he was surprised by what she told him.

She told him of virgins and dragons and Dhols, of the rarity of months with two full moons, and of an old man who, if he got his way, would bring this green spinning world to an end. She contradicted everything he'd ever known, and swore to things that couldn't be. He didn't believe a word she said -and yet he trembled.

She showed him the Pictures, and told him where they came from, and his horror grew; for he recognized the figures from the Dynnod, and wondered if they might somehow be real. He sensed things pressing in on him, and knew his life would never be the same.

And when she was done she told him, 'Remember, come to me when your visitors arrive. Come to me in secret that night. And bring the virgin with you.' She leaned toward him, eyes glittering; talonlike fingers gripped his arm. 'That's the most important thing, son. You mustn't forget to bring her. The Lord and I will see to the rest.'

Suddenly she cocked her head and looked toward the rain-smeared window. When she turned back to him, her expression had changed.

'Go now,' she said. Her voice held a new urgency. 'Go and speed home, if you want to prevent a drowning.'

She hurried him out the door, not even saying goodbye.

… And I'd have climbed right in there with her, if Sarr hadn't come driving up the road just then, truck wheels splashing through the puddles. I dashed from the room like a thief, cursing my own stupidity; if he'd found us together I swear he's the kind who'd have killed us both. I fled to the living room amp; snatched up the first thing I came across, that book of inspirational poems I'd been reading from, so that by the time he'd put the truck away in the barn amp; came running through the rain back to the house, I was sitting in the rocking chair with his book on my lap, open to the dryest-looking Milton I could find. I was still nervous as he came in – 1 could feel my heart pounding – but I don't think his mind was on me.

'Where's Deborah?' he said, looking very troubled.

'I'm not sure,' I said vaguely. 'She may be in the bathroom.'

He stood there for a minute, not saying anything, and eventually settled himself on the stool. Only then did he seem to notice me. He cleared his throat a couple of times, as if there were something he was dying to ask but afraid to. Finally he said, 'Jeremy, I don't want to seem like prying, amp; you don't have to answer this, but-' And I thought, Oh, Jesus, I'm in for it now, he suspects! But then, of all things, he asked his question: was Carol still a virgin?

That really caught me by surprise. 'I don't know,' I think I said. 'I doubt it. She's obviously not very experienced – she's a good Catholic amp; all – but she's an attractive girl, amp; I'd assume that somewhere along the line she's had a guy or two.' He looked skeptical. 'If you're asking whether I've ever slept with her,' I added, 'the answer's no, I haven't.'

I would have thought that was what he'd want to hear; I assumed he was asking because, with Carol coming for another visit the day after tomorrow amp; probably staying again under his roof, he wanted to be certain she was pure. But instead of looking cheerful, he looked even more troubled. I asked him what the matter was, but he said he'd explain it all this weekend.

Sausage amp; rice for dinner tonight, both courtesy of the Go-op. String beans from a can amp; powdered milk for our coffee: what's the world coming to? Deborah as cool as can be – didn't look at me once, just concentrated on dishing out the food and smiling at Sarr- but he wasn't having any of it. He just kept staring at her, saying nothing. I got very uncomfortable by the end, certain he suspected. Hope he's not giving Deborah hell tonight.

Back here after dinner, escaping as fast as I could. Should be cleaning this place up before Carol amp; Rosie get here, but with this drizzle amp; the sudden, lonely wind, I somehow have little energy for anything but reading; even keeping up this journal seems a chore. Tomorrow I've got to clip that ivy; it's beginning to cover the windows again, amp; the mildew's been climbing steadily up the walls. It's like I'm sinking into a pool of dark-green water.

Odd that I'm so tired, esp. considering that between getting up late amp; my afternoon nap, I must have slept half the day. Alas, old amp; worn out at thirty!

At least tonight it's quiet in the woods.

He is back in his apartment, the shades drawn and his umbrella drying in the tub, when it comes to him that the man is still alive. Something has interfered.

No, not something. Someone.

And suddenly he knows who it is.

Water hemlock, amanita, hellebore…

As she sat in her kitchen, Mrs Poroth contemplated the enormity of what she was going to do: the killing of the red-haired girl.

It would be easily accomplished; she had more than enough materials here at hand.

Monkshood, lambkill, death camas…

And she saw no other way. The necessity was clear. The girl must not be allowed to play her destined role.

Banewort, mayapple, fly agaric…

But oh! it was a wicked thing she was considering, to raise her hand against so innocent a child! A sudden terror seized her, as if from outside herself, like a thin chilly finger of breeze sent to search for her through the open window. Someone far away was thinking about her, had sought her… and had found her.

No, it was from within herself that the fear had come; she must not yield to despair. No doubt what she'd felt had only been the dread of her own imminent sin. She had to guard against such selfish thoughts; a world hung in the balance. She said a prayer to the cruel Lord and continued with her preparations.

Dogbane, greyana, deadly nightshade…

Sarr turned the lamp down in the kitchen and climbed the stairs to bed. Deborah was gazing out the window as he came into the room, the moon hanging just beyond her head. He heard wind stir the apple tree beside the house, a wind that rose and died and rose again, blowing stronger, tossing the tops of the distant pines. Seating himself on the edge of the bed, he began removing his shoes. 'We'll have to get a new lock for that bathroom door,' he said. 'The one there now doesn't even close any more.'

'You can pick one up in town.'

'Right. And I'd better do it soon, too. Otherwise you know what's going to happen?' He watched her closely. 'One day Jeremy's going to come walking in and catch you in your bath.'

She turned and stood up from the bed. 'We can't have that, can we?'

'No,' he said slowly. 'We can't.' He watched her as she walked to the closet in the corner. Opening the door, she stepped out of his sight. He heard the rustle of cloth, and moments later she reappeared, dressed in her nightgown. Seating herself before a small oval mirror, she began unfastening her hair.

'Time was,' he said, 'when you got undressed in front of me.' Standing and throwing off his shirt, he approached her. Tentatively he reached out and touched her shoulder. 'Time was when things were better between us.'

He thought he saw her stiffen, and something ached inside him -but then she reached up and pressed his hand, and he felt a surge of relief.

'I know, honey,' she said. She was still slightly hoarse. 'It's just that I haven't been well. Give me a few more days… '

'Of course,' he said. He bent and, pushing aside the length of hair, kissed the back of her neck. 'I'm sorry, I've been on edge lately myself.'

He walked back to the bed and continued undressing, while she reached for her brush and began to comb her hair. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he took his own nightgown from the hook in the closet. This was the same woman, he was sure of it. The graceful way she brushed her hair, the softness of her skin – this was the woman he had always loved. For once his mother was wrong. She'd never liked Deborah; she'd never even made an attempt to get to know her. How could she expect, then, to recognize a change in her character? Perhaps she even hoped to turn him against Deborah – to harden his heart – to blight his marriage…

'Tonight,' he said, 'maybe we can pray together again. Your voice sounds like it's coming back.'

'I don't know, honey,' she said. 'I'm feeling awful tired.' Yawning, she laid aside the brush.

'Well, if you'd rather not, I can- What's that?'

She turned to look at him, her eyes wide. 'What?'

'There. Inside your mouth.' He pointed, half conscious that his hand was trembling. 'I saw it in the mirror, when you yawned. There was something there.'

'Nonsense!' She tossed her head and turned away. 'It's just the light.'

'Don't try to fool me, woman! I know what I saw!' He crossed the room in two steps, grabbed her by the shoulders, and whirled her around to face him. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. 'Now open your mouth!'

She shook her head, glaring at him. Her jaw clamped shut.

'Deborah, open your mouth! If something's the matter, I want to know about it.'

'Get your hands off me,' she hissed through clenched teeth.

'Open your mouth or I'll pull it open myself.'

She tried to yank her shoulders away; he held on, dragging her toward the lamp, amazed at how strong she was as she struggled in his arms. Her hands reached clawlike for his face; nails like a cat's raked his cheek. He pulled back, grabbing at her wrists. She spat as he forced her backward, away from him, toward the light. Suddenly she yielded and went limp; caught off balance, he stumbled forward, falling against her and knocking over the table on which the lantern stood. It crashed to the floor and rolled under the bed, still burning. With a yell he released her and lunged for the lantern, fingers groping blindly beneath the bed while she stood above him, not moving, in the darkness. Reaching out, he touched something hard, and screamed as the glass burned his fingers. Ignoring the pain, he grasped the lantern and drew it forth from beneath the bed. It was still flickering; he set it down and checked beneath the bed. It had not caught fire.

'Fool!' Deborah hissed. She was looking down at him, her hands curled into fists. He had never seen her so angry. 'You could set this place aflame.'

Panting, he picked up the lantern by the handle and got to his feet. 'All right,' he said. 'Let's see.'

He brought the lantern close to her face. She hesitated a moment, then opened her mouth wide. He peered into it in the glowing light.

'See?' she said at last. 'Was I lying?'

'No.' He hung his head. There had been nothing there. 'No, you weren't lying. I'm just seeing visions, that's all.' Sighing, he righted the overturned table, set down the lantern, and turning his face to the corner, knelt to say his prayers. She was right; he was a fool. Yet earlier he could have sworn he'd seen something there, small, black, and convoluted, on the back of her tongue.

Hours later he lay staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. He felt her there beside him, felt her weight on the mattress, heard the regular, slow rhythm of her breathing, and wondered what he lay with in the bed.

Outside, in the moonlight, where trees whispered urgently, the wind had begun to sound to him like the rise and fall of breathing, sometimes even coinciding eerily with the breathing beside him; but the breathing outside was of something huge and monstrous, something so big that, with each breath, the trees shook.

Finally, when the sky had grown purple before the next dawn, he was able to drift into sleep. And perhaps it was already the beginning of a dream, but the last thing he recalled, as he turned in sleep toward her, was his wife's face lying on the pillow next to him, her eyes as wide as the moon.

July Twenty-ninth

From the Hunterdon County Home News, Friday, July 29:

VOLCANOES IN HUNTERDON COUNTY??? by News Science Writer Mike Aldano

The Mexican volcano Paricutin, it's said, appeared one morning in a farmer's cornfield. Now New Jerseyans may have a similar surprise in their own back yard: a 40-foot hill in the woods outside Gilead in the heart of Hunterdon County – a hill that, townspeople believe, wasn't there a few days before.

'It just grew up during the night,' said Galen Trudel, whose son Raymond, 12, claims credit for discovering the formation yesterday. 'You could hear the sound for miles, like a roaring. We had our pigpen blown down and we still haven't recovered all the animals.'

The little farming community of Gilead (pop. 187) has already had its share of disasters this week. Sunday it was rocked by a minor earth tremor that measured 4.9 on the Richter scale. Wednesday night it suffered an even greater shock, 6.1 on the scale, causing an estimated $50,000 in damage. (A spokesman for the Governor's office says that to date no claims have been filed with the state.)

The second quake may also have had an additional result: the strange new hill in the woods three miles north of town.

The cone-shaped dirt-and-basalt structure has drawn geologists from all over the state – and some worried comments from townspeople. 'I don't want my children going near it,' says Hannelore Reid, a housewife and mother of six. 'Everybody knows the swamp around there is unsafe.'

Bert Steegler, manager of the Gilead Town Co-operative, is more blunt. 'The woods around there are haunted,' he maintains. 'They always were.'

BUBBLE IN THE EARTH?

Authorities, however, paint a less romantic picture. Describing the formation as the result of 'an immense bubble of methane' – commonly known as 'swamp gas' – Dr James Lewalski of Princeton University's department of geology, contacted by phone, noted that north central New Jersey lies over a recognized geological fault area, the so-called Ramapo Fault, and dismissed the mound as 'a perfectly explainable natural phenomenon,' although he admitted that few such mounds are created with such rapidity and suddenness…

There were other reports, too, that day, in the local press. The tombstone of one Rachel van Meer, who'd died in 1912, had been toppled by the quake and had rolled down the hill to the road, where John and Willy Baber, young men of the town, had hit it the next morning in their pickup truck. The nine-foot-tall granite monument to the Troet family had cracked in two, and a number of graves had been so shaken that at least three wooden coffins were actually left jutting above the ground. "Tis like the Day of Judgment,' remarked Jacob van Meer, whose house adjoined the cemetery.

A man in nearby Annandale had commented that it was 'lucky that the quake hit Gilead,' as it was the only town around without a steeple. A Lebanon man had added, 'It's a good thing those people don't have electricity.' A state legislator for the district had suggested, in a meeting at the local schoolhouse, that the town apply for federal disaster aid and had almost been run out on a rail.

And according to another item, a representative of the U.S. Geological Survey, after visiting the site, had concluded: 'Recent reports of unusual animal behavior in Gilead and the surrounding area may be attributable to preliminary earth tremors leading to this week's disturbances.'

But the people of Gilead didn't see it that way.

To Abram Sturtevant, whose German shepherd had gone wild and had had to be shot; to Klaus and Wilma Buckhalter, whose cow had miscarried; to Adam Verdock, checking the splint on his cow's rear leg, broken when, Wednesday, it had clambered out of its collapsed stall; to Hershel Reimer, repairing the stable door that his horse had kicked down; to Galen Trudel and his son, still searching through the swamp for their missing hogs; to Werner Klapp, burying thirty-seven chickens that had been pecked to death by their fellows on the night of the quake; to old Bethuel Reid, who refused to go outside now without a rake in his hands for fear of serpents; to all of them, the earthquake itself and the animals' unusual behavior were merely two symptoms of the same fundamental disturbance. The one was not the cause of the other; rather, both were portents, signals from above, warnings of divine displeasure. But what, they asked, was He displeased about?

Sunlight amp; grasshoppers: the woods are quiet now. Slept long into the morning, then walked up to the house, scratching groggily. Sounds of Sarr's axe echoing from across the stream. Kitchen deserted; splashed some cold water on my face in the bathroom, gazing longingly at the tub amp; thinking of Deborah's pale lovely body, almost mine for the asking. Over a solitary lunch – mostly store-bought cookies – thumbed through today's Home News. There's some kind of volcanic thing out there in the woods. Must visit.

Felt fat from lunch, amp; angry at the breakdown of my discipline. Ambled down to the stream. Deborah was kneeling in front of it, day-dreaming, amp; I was embarrassed because I'd come upon her talking to herself. I asked her if Sarr had shown any suspicion about yesterday. 'No,' she assured me, 'not even a hint.' She didn't dwell on the subject amp; went back to the house without mentioning it again. I suspect she feels guilty about the whole thing.

Sat by some rocks on the bank of the stream, throwing blades of grass into the water amp; playing word games with myself. The shrill twitter of the birds, I would say, the white birds singing in the sun

… And inexorably I'd continue with the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… The sun's heat on my head felt almost painful, as if my brain were growing too large for my skull. The floor sagging to the cellar, the cellar filling with water, the water seeping into the ground… I turned amp; looked at the farmhouse. In the distance it looked like a picture at the other end of a large room; the carpet was grass, the ceiling was an endless great blue sky. Deborah, in the distance, was stroking one of the cats, then seemed to grow angry when it struggled from her arms; I could hear the screen door slam as she went into the kitchen, but the sound reached me so long after the visual image that the whole scene struck me as somehow fake. The ground twisting into smoke, the smoke staining the sky… I gazed up at the oaks behind me amp; they seemed trees out of a cheap postcard, the kind in which thinly colored paint is dabbed over a black- amp;-white photograph; if you looked closely at them you could see that the green was not merely in the leaves, but rather floated as a vapor over leaves, branches, parts of the sky.. . The sky b urning in the sun, the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… endless progressions that held my mind like a whirlpool. The trees behind me seemed the production of a poor painter, the color amp; shape not quite meshing. Parts of the sky were green, amp; pieces of it kept floating away from my vision, no matter how hard I tried to follow them.

Reality hangs by a thread…

Far down the stream I could see something small amp; kicking, a black beetle, legs in the air, borne swiftly along in the current. Then it was swept around a bend amp; was gone.

By a thread…

Sarr woke me for dinner; I had dozed off, there by the water, amp; my clothes were damp from the grass. I saw scratches on his cheek. As we walked up to the house together he whispered that, earlier in the day, he'd come upon his wife bending over me, peering into my sleeping face. 'Her eyes were wide,' he said. 'Like Bwada's. Like the moon.'

Could he be drinking? No, he didn't smell of alcohol. I said I didn't understand why he was telling me this.

'Because,' he recited in a whisper, gripping my arm,' "the heart is deceitful above all things, amp; desperately wicked: who can know it?" '

Dinner was especially uncomfortable; the two of them sat picking at their food, occasionally raising their eyes to one another like children in a staring contest. I longed for the conversations of our early days, inconsequential though they must have been, amp; wondered where things had first gone wrong.

The meal was dry amp; unappetizing, but the dessert looked delicious – chocolate mousse, a rather fancy dish for people like the Poroths, but which Deborah considers one of her specialties. She took none for herself, explaining that her stomach was upset.

'Then we'll not eat any!' Sarr shouted, amp; with that he snatched my dish from in front of me, grabbed his own, amp; hurled them both against the wall, where they splattered like mud balls.

Deborah was very still; she said nothing, just sat there watching us. She didn't look particularly afraid of this madman – but I was. He may have read my thoughts, because as I got up from my seat he said much more gently, in the normal soft voice he has, 'Sorry,

Jeremy. I know you hate scenes. We'll pray for each other, all right?'

'Are you okay?' I asked, turning to Deborah. 'I'm going out now, but I'll stay if you think you'll be needing me.' She stared at me with a slight smile amp; shook her head; when I glanced pointedly at her husband, she just shrugged.

'Things will work out,' she said. I could hear Sarr mumbling one of his insane prayers as I shut the door.

I walked back here through a cloud of fireflies, like stars, the stars themselves frosting the sky like bubbles in a water glass. Inside here the bubbles in my water glass, left unemptied by my bed all week, were like the stars…

I realized I was shaking. If I have to tangle with him, big as he is, I'm ready. I took off my shirt amp; stood in front of the little mirror. How could Deborah have allowed me to touch her yesterday? How can I face Carol tomorrow? It has been days since I've bathed, amp; I've become used to the smell of my body. My hair has wound itself into greasy brown curls, my beard is at least a week old, amp; my eyes… well, the eyes that stared back at me were those of an old man, the whites turning yellow as rotten teeth. I looked at my chest amp; arms, plump amp; flabby at thirty, amp; I thought of the frightening alterations in Sarr, amp; I thought, What the hell is going on? I smoothed back my hair amp; got out my roll of dental floss amp; began running the thread through my teeth, but it had been so long since I'd done it that my gums began to bleed, amp; when I looked back into the mirror I had blood dripping down my lips like a vampire.

I made a resolution as I stood there. When Carol and Rosie leave after this weekend, I'm going back with them.

Poroth stood on the back porch, lost in imaginary arguments with himself as he stared out at the night, the cats miaowing plaintively at his feet. He felt an angel perched on his right shoulder, a demon on his left. Lord, he whispered from time to time, give me strength. He had erred, losing his temper like that over dinner; he'd been a fool. He had yielded to despair, and that, his mother had always said, was the devil's oldest weapon. But he hadn't lost his faith, he reminded himself; God watched and loved him, just as before; there was still hope. If only he wouldn't tremble so…

He regretted that he'd ever lent an ear to his mother's bizarre notions about dragons and ceremonies and intruders from outside, and that he'd ever allowed her to show him those hellish pictures: that small black shapeless thing like the one he had seen on the cards, and that black face peering from the tree, and the squat unnatural contours of that mound… The myth was just too alien to take seriously, of course; it conflicted with everything he'd been brought up to believe. And yet its power was undeniable.

By rights these visions should have meant no more to him than a half-heard fairy tale from some country far away. His mother's gods and demons were, after all, not his; her virgin was nothing like the Virgin. To think that poor prim red-haired Carol, who'd be here from the city tomorrow, could have any mythological significance! And that her cosmically decreed counterpart might be right here on this farm in the person of Jeremy Freirs! Preposterous! He would have laughed – and someday, perhaps, he might be able to. He gazed out over the lawn, where the light was on in Freirs' room. He could see the plump little figure scribbling away at his studies or meditations or letters or whatever they were. Well, God would set his mother right soon enough. ..

A jet passed overhead, the customary Friday night visitation, a memento of the modern world he'd rejected. Straightening his shoulders, he turned and walked back into the house.

The house was silent, except for the ticking of the clock. Shutting the kitchen door, he paused after turning down the lamp. He hated to think about going upstairs. Up there was Deborah, with whom he'd taken holy vows to share his life, and if the devil was hiding in her somewhere – his devil, Satan, the devil he knew – well, one didn't flee, one stood and fought, cleansing the woman the way he'd seen his house and barn cleansed last Sunday.

Why, then, did he hesitate? Had his mother's stories really gotten to him: her talk of eggs and dragons, and beings that changed shape? Had those pictures of hers had their intended effect? Maybe not; but he knew he wasn't ready to face his wife yet, not after that scene tonight in the kitchen. To lie so close to someone and know that in her heart she was your enemy… It took more courage than he had right now. Lord, he said again, give me strength.

If only he could prove his mother wrong. If only she'd said something that might actually be verified. There was one thing, perhaps…

In the living room he lit the lamp and crouched before his little cache of books. Byfield's almanac was still on the top of the pile from the evening Freirs had asked him about Lammas. Sure enough, in the back of the volume was a section of lunar tables, page after page of spidery fine print. Taking both book and lamp over to the rocker, he settled back to read.

His mother had said yesterday that there'd be two full moons this month; well, that much he'd known already, as any farmer would-any farmer, at least, here in Gilead. But she'd also said that the occurrence was a rare one, at least when the second moon in question turned full on Lammas Eve. This happened more seldom, she had hinted, than mere chance might have led one to expect.

Running his finger down the columns, he squinted at the listings for July thirty-first. The tables were difficult to follow; there were footnotes to refer to, quantities for leap years to be added or subtracted, and rows of tiny figures that seemed to swim together in the flickering light. But as near as he could make out, his mother had been right. In fact, he saw now, if the tables were correct, in the past hundred years there'd been only two occurrences of the full moon on the final night of July: in 1890 and again in 1939…

The wide plank floorboards echoed as he paced back and forth. He was still reluctant to go upstairs – more so than ever, in fact, considering how his mother's words had just found some small measure of scientific support. And those crudely drawn images she'd shown him were still buzzing around in his head like a horde of insects that, once inside his skull, had no way of ever getting out. The luridly colored figures seemed less alien now, the more he thought about them, and no longer quite so impossible: the rose with lips and teeth; the black shape called the Dhol; the odd two-ringed design…

If only he could turn his mind to some passage from the Bible, he would be comforted, he was sure. But the Bible was upstairs, next to Deborah, and though he knew all the words in it perfectly, he needed before him the reality of print.

His eye fell on the ornate binding of the poetry collection Freirs had been reading, still lying out upon his desk. Sighing, he sat back in the rocking chair and opened the book. He remembered how he'd struggled through it years ago, underlining passages, writing comments in the margins, as if these words of mere men deserved the scrutiny he'd given to the words of God.

Still, there was a kind of comfort here in the old familiar religion of his childhood. The volume fell open to a poem he'd studied at the Bible school in town. Christmas meditation, he'd written in careful schoolboy script at the top. It was Milton, he saw, good, dark, steady, pious Milton: 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' a celebration of the birth of the Savior. He read it through, lips moving with the words, barely thinking about what they said, soothed just as he'd hoped to be – until with a jolt he saw what he'd been reading. He went through the stanza a second time.

… from this happy day

Th'old Dragon under ground,

In straiter limits bound,

Not half so far casts his usurped sway,

And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,

Swinges the scaly Horror of his folded tail.

Why was he trembling so again? The poem, at least, was perfectly confident: Christ had banished the dragon, the ancient evil kingdom had been overthrown… But still, something told him, still it waits – waits, like that other poet had said, for the cycle to come round again; waits for another Christmas, maybe thousands of years hence, when it will find release once more.

He closed the book and sat there bolt upright, the planks creaking beneath him as he rocked back and forth. But as fast as he rocked and as hard as he tried, he couldn't shake off the feeling, the terrible conviction that had suddenly seized him. God's Lord now, he said to himself, but the Other waits below. And sooner or later, his turn will come.

She came to him that night, long after the moon had gone down and the fireflies had vanished from the fields. He awoke to find her crouching over him like a succubus, gazing urgently into his face.

Blinking up at her groggily, trying to understand, he began to form a question, but she pressed a hand over his mouth and shook her head. Her eyes burned into his as she sat herself beside him on the bed. She was in her nightgown, her nipples prominent beneath the cloth. Instinctively he embraced her; he was naked and already aroused, the aftermath of a dream now forgotten, as he pushed the sheets away with his foot and drew her down beside him. She wriggled like a cat as he ran his hand down her body, slipping the nightgown up over her hips. He felt her own hands on his penis, guiding him into her as she lay beside him. She was bone-dry; he could not go in. He slipped his hand down to touch the thick patch of hair that, yesterday, had been dripping from the bath, and found it dry as brambles.

'Wait,' she hissed, pushing his hand away, 'let me.' She brought her fingers to her mouth. 'Damn it to hell, I haven't any spit!'

'No need for hurry-'

She hushed him by cupping her hand over his mouth, but kept it there.

'Wet me with your tongue.'

Obediently he licked her hand, then felt it withdrawn, leaving a smear of saliva on his chin. She stared into her hand with what seemed, at first, a grimace of distaste, but then he saw her mouth working fiercely, cheeks sucking inward, and with a harsh little sound she spat into her palm. Once more he felt her hands on his penis, moistening it. He raised himself on one elbow, preparing to mount her from above, but she shook her head and pushed his shoulder flat against the bed. Straddling him, she slipped him inside her. She was dry inside as well, he could feel it, but she spread herself wider and settled farther down, her nightgown slipping back below her waist, concealing the place where the two of them were joined. Tensing her leg muscles, she slowly moved herself up and down. He felt himself gripped as by a fist; there was a roughness in her, something that abraded. God, he thought, she's so dry.

'Don't rush it,' he whispered, drawing her mouth down to his and covering it with his lips. Her own lips remained clamped shut, and moments later he felt her resist. He held her tightly. Without warning her mouth opened under his, but barely, and she got out the name 'Sarr' before his tongue had found its way between her lips.

The name jolted him back to his senses. He felt a twinge of guilt, felt himself shrink and withdraw from her; but it hadn't just been the name, he'd felt something, too, with the tip of his tongue: a roughness at the back of her mouth, a lump of flesh he'd never felt before.

He was out of her now; she had swung herself off him and was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing down her nightgown.

'I've got to leave,' she whispered, getting to her feet.

'Couldn't you just-'

She shook her head. 'There isn't time. Not now. I'll come back to you tomorrow night.'

Tomorrow, he wanted to say, Carol will be here, she may be in this bed with me…

But with a final fierce look she had slipped out the door and was hurrying ghostlike across the moonless lawn.

And in the city, silent in the darkness of his apartment, staring straight ahead at nothing, the Old One contemplates tomorrow's trip – and the past he'll be returning to.

He will be coming home at last, for the first time in over a century. He has been near the place more recently – as recently as 1939 – but he hasn't seen the farm itself since when he was a boy. It will probably not be much different now, though. Things do not change much in those parts.

He will also be returning to Maquineanok, where the two previous women met their peculiar deaths. Now the moon has called for the third and final woman, the third and final death…

Of course, the place will be transformed. The tree will be gone now, swallowed up in the earth: the tree that had seen so much blood and sacrifice will not be there, replaced, though, by something far more wonderful and terrible, the great mound, before which he will stand and perform the final Ceremony.

He laughs his old man's high-pitched cackle. The poor little fools!

July Thirtieth

The woman on the bed groaned. Joram stroked his beard and stared worriedly at her swollen belly. None of her previous children, not even her first, had given her as much pain as this. He bit his lip, wishing that labor would start so that he could in good conscience summon Sister Nettie Stoudemire, the midwife.

Lotte's belly seemed so large. He'd been told that there were signs for twins or triplets, omens he could watch for, but he'd watched and prayed and called on God for advice, and nothing had suggested that his wife had anything more than a single child in her belly. He was frankly scared, and he craved an explanation. He could find only one: the fat, interfering stranger at the Poroths' who'd had the temerity to place his hand on his wife's belly during last Sunday's worship at their farm. If he was really a cursed being, as some of his neighbors were hinting, then couldn't his touch be in itself a curse, to blight the child within?

Joram stood awkwardly by the bedside, brooding about what he should do. He would simply have to wait – and pray, of course -pray that nothing went wrong when the birth came. He hoped it would not come tomorrow, on the Lammas Eve; he hoped, for Freirs' sake, that the birth proved a successful one.

At the farmhouse farther up the road, Adam Verdock gazed mournfully down at his wife on the bed. She had never regained consciousness; she was losing strength fast. Their daughter, Minna, had been wonderful, she'd been there to tend Lise day and night, but the woman had shown no signs of recovery, and this morning he'd been forced to tell old Brother Flinders the carpenter to set aside the pine boards for a coffin. Their prayers, all of them, had been in vain.

Poroth, too, was praying, kneeling as he faced the corner of his room, eyes tightly shut. He had been there all afternoon, unmindful of the heat, the Bible beside him turned to Judges 6 ('And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?'). But nothing brought him peace today. The Lord was unforgiving. How empty the phrases of the Scriptures seemed, how barren the rituals of his religion. Whom was he calling upon, anyway? He felt as if he were kneeling here speaking only to himself. Was anyone listening?

'O Lord,' he prayed, 'let me know that we, thy children, still merit thy love. Vouchsafe me a sign of thy presence… '

He was chilled to hear, as if in answer, a low, malicious laugh. Opening his eyes, he gazed around the room in horror; the sound had seemed to come from just beside his ear. But now he heard voices and more laughter – a man's, a woman's – and realized they were coming from outside. He went to the window and looked out. Down in the yard a dusty white Chevrolet was parked near the house, and beside it stood Freirs, alternately embracing a red-haired young woman, whom Poroth recognized as Carol, and pumping the hand of a short white-haired old man who looked damnably familiar and who, as Poroth watched, threw back his head and laughed.

So they had arrived. He would slip away with Carol tonight, as promised, and report back to his mother.

Below him he heard the screen door swing open; slow footsteps descended the back stairs. The old man turned, suddenly no longer laughing, and for a moment Poroth saw his eyes narrow and a new look enter them, a kind of guarded excitement. All at once he beamed. 'Ah, yes,' Poroth heard him say, his little frame now shaking once again with laughter, 'yes, indeed, and this must be Deborah!'

At last Deborah herself stepped into view. Gravely she advanced across the yard to meet them, a smile spreading slowly across her face as she extended to both visitors, but especially to the little old man, a hand of welcome.

Aside from the contact he's established, there is no particular joy in being back. Everything is much as he's remembered it, despite the passage of a century. In size, shape, even the weathering of its shingles, the little farmhouse looks almost the same as the first one that stood on this site. The apple tree behind it is new, of course, and so is the line of rosebushes he saw as he climbed from the car. But he recognizes the broad unpainted barn farther down the slope, where he'd drawn his secret pictures and practiced secret chants; its roof is sagging now, and, for all its rusted body, the battered old pickup truck parked within the doorway seems alien and new. So does the little wooden smokehouse at the edge of the property, another addition since his time, though for all he knows its door has been hanging open that way for the past eighty years.

The black willow rising by the barn is new to him, gnarled and ancient as it seems. But the acres of cornfield (looking stragglier than those he remembers), the vine-encrusted ruins of the outhouse that the woods have all but reclaimed, the brook where he'd performed those preliminary sacrifices, the dense surrounding forest and the hot, doomed country air – all these are familiar. Yet the memories mean little to him.

He notices, with no more than the faintest curiosity, that some things are gone: the woodshed and the stables and the old chicken coop, replaced by the squat grey structure that the Poroths have converted into a guest house; the elms that lined the roadside (victims, no doubt, of that Dutch disease); and the tall, slender oak that once stood beside the house, shading the living room. But of course, he's almost forgotten: the tree, like the house itself, perished in the fire…

The fire: how far away that night seems now, in the present afternoon sunlight – and yet how close! He can still remember standing in the back yard beside the barn, watching as the roof caved in and the walls collapsed and the house folded in upon itself and all it contained like a clenching fist…

Just as the Master had said.

That same night, at the Master's instructions, he had burned the Master's body and ground the ashes to a black powder- the powder he'd used, as the Ceremony required, to mark the two sacrificial women.

But he'd been careful to save a part of the Master's body from the flames – a single part which, as the Master had decreed, he had buried at the base of the tree.

And now this fragment of the Master is free once more, risen from the earth. It has survived. He has just seen it looking at him through the eyes of the one called Deborah.

Carol had had strong misgivings about bringing Rosie with her to the farm – she knew it was sure to preclude her going to bed with Jeremy, who'd probably resented the old man from the start, and she worried that the Poroths might find him too effete, compared to the crusty old-timers they probably associated with – but now she was glad he'd come along. Good God, he was practically the only one with any animation tonight, and her respect for him grew as she listened to him recount stories of his travels, and poke fun at bis own fussy driving, and tell amusing anecdotes, with actual beginnings, middles, and ends, about their adventures together in the subway and the park; and all the while, as he talked, the fat red rose that Deborah had given him kept wobbling absurdly in his buttonhole, as if he were the father at a wedding, come to give away the bride. Without him, dinner would have been a real struggle to get through. The two of them had 'shot the works,' as Rosie'd put it. They'd brought out cold pasta from the city, and four pounds of flank steak – not for her, of course – and half a cheddar wheel that Rosie had picked up at Zabar's, and along the way they'd stopped off at a sun-baked little roadside stand outside Morristown for a dozen ears of deliciously sweet fresh corn. She hoped Sarr hadn't been offended by it; his own crop looked terrible.

So did Sarr himself. He had been silent and morose all evening -so different from the first time she'd seen him, when he'd spoken so freely – and there were deep rings of worry beneath his eyes. Clearly he was going through some kind of crisis: whether marital or spiritual, she couldn't say.

Jeremy wasn't much better; he looked positively awful, in fact, his complexion blotchy, his hair long, unkempt, and none too clean-looking. And he didn't seem to have lost any weight at all so far this summer; he looked more out of shape than ever. She wondered if this was a preview of what he'd be like ten years from now and was vaguely troubled at the fantasies he'd inspired.

Deborah, too, seemed out of sorts, and it was clear from her hoarseness and her uncommunicativeness that she hadn't yet gotten her voice back – but then, at least she had an excuse; she was still getting over that horrible incident with the cat, Jeremy had told her about it earlier. Carol noticed with uneasiness, not for the first time tonight, that he kept eyeing Deborah surreptitiously across the dinner table, though Deborah herself seemed unaware of it; the woman had eyes only for her guests.

God, what if there'd been something between them, Jeremy and Deborah? And what if Sarr suspected? Certainly the farmer had been giving the two of them a lot of funny looks all evening.

Most of his attention, though, seemed to be focused on, of all people, Rosie. In fact, Sarr had been sneaking glances at the old man all through the meal, even during grace, as if hoping to catch him out in the midst of a prayer. Maybe, after all, it was religion that was on his mind. Serenely oblivious to all this, poor little Rosie had clasped his hands and smiled and uttered a heartfelt amen at the end, right along with everyone else. Carol had actually felt relieved. Yet afterward Sarr had continued to stare at Rosie – and at her too – in the most peculiar way, as if he expected one of them to suddenly do something outrageous. It was disconcerting, to say the least. What in the world had gone wrong with these people? She felt sure that she herself had grown stronger and more confident this summer – had positively blossomed, in fact, out from beneath Rochelle's shadow and under Rosie's kindly tutelage -while here at the farm they were falling apart.

At the end of the meal, Rosie yawned, gave his lips a prissy wipe with the napkin, and informed them all that, thanks to this afternoon's hours on the road, he was 'weary unto death.' Pushing his chair back, he shuffled off to the bathroom and, on his return, announced that he was going to bed. 'I'll leave the night to you youngsters,' he said, chuckling. 'I'm sure you can make better use of it. Now if someone here can just provide me with a blanket… '

'I'll bring you everything you need,' said Deborah. She stood, a trifle unsteadily, and moved toward the stairs. They heard her rummaging in the linen closet in the hallway.

It had already been agreed that Rosie would spend the night on a spare cot in Jeremy's room – an arrangement suggested, to Carol's surprise, by Jeremy himself. Even with Rosie along she'd had a faint, stubborn hope that maybe somehow she'd be able to stay with Jeremy tonight, and she'd at least expected him to ask her. But he hadn't even made an attempt; didn't he realize that it might be weeks before he saw her again? The summer already seemed drearier without him.

Maybe this was simply further proof that he preferred Deborah to her – or even, however unlikely, that something had gone on between the two of them, a possibility she preferred not to think about.

Deborah came downstairs with an armload of sheets, blankets, towels, and a pillow. 'Splendid!' said Rosie. 'My dear, I can't thank you enough.' And bidding the others a cordial goodnight, he followed her out the back door.

Sarr kept his eyes on the screen doors as if waiting to see that they were gone. At last, clearing his throat, he turned to Carol. 'I'm a little curious,' he said lightly, as if in fact he wasn't curious at all, 'just how did you and Rosie come to meet?'

'Well,' said Carol, surprised, 'it's a rather long story-'

'And rather too long to tell now,' Jeremy cut in. 'Why don't we save it for morning?' To Carol, caught off guard, he added, 'Look, let's you and I take advantage of the moonlight and go for a walk, okay?'

It was only a tiny hint of pleading in his voice that prevented her from scolding him. She still felt embarrassed and was not about to abandon Sarr. 'Jeremy, I really don't think it's very nice to go off and leave your host like this.'

'No, it's all right,' said Poroth, 'you two go ahead. You deserve some time together.' He dismissed them both by getting up from the table with a contented stretch and wandering into the living room.

'Jeremy,' Carol snapped, when they got outside, 'how could you be so rude to him?'

He did not immediately reply, but put his arm around her. 'Let's just walk,' he said. Lightning bugs made the lawn look like a convocation of souls, winking silently as they hurried back and forth. The crickets were louder tonight than she'd ever heard before, with a distant chorus of frogs keeping statelier rhythms at the brook. The two of them were passing the side of the farmhouse now; ahead of them a nearly full moon hung low above the ribbon of dirt road. Freirs nodded in the direction of the house, where, through the unlit living room window, outlined in the faint rays of lamplight still streaming from the kitchen, Poroth could be seen pacing up and down in the darkness.

'He's been acting really weird lately,' said Freirs. 'Almost like he's hitting the bottle. Maybe it's financial problems, maybe some kind of religious mania.'

'I thought it might be that.'

'Whatever it is, I want to go back to New York with you tomorrow. If it's okay with you, I'd even like to stay for a few days in your apartment – sleeping on the couch, of course – till I figure out what to do.'

'Do the Poroths know?'

'No.'

'When do you plan on telling them?'

'Tomorrow, I guess.'

She felt a little thrill of excitement. He was asking her to rescue him; she was now a fellow conspirator. 'So this means we won't have to say goodbye tomorrow after all.'

'That's right. We can be together- if you're willing.'

'I am.' She turned to face him. 'And you won't have to use the couch, either.'

They kissed, and she let him kiss her breasts, and she knew that the summer was saved.

Moist air. Scent of roses. Bats fluttering by the barn roof. Silently the two figures – the slim, dark-haired woman and the short, white-haired man – emerge from the outbuilding and make their way toward the barn. Their voices are hushed, their faces indistinct blobs of white.

The one now called Deborah pauses and turns to the Old One. For an instant her eyes flash in the moonlight.

'He knows.'

'Yes, I saw it every time he looked at you. And he suspects me, too.'

'His mother told him.'

The old man nods. 'She's a Troet, like I was. She has the gift. But there are things she doesn't know.'

The woman turns her eyes briefly toward the moon. 'She will be visited tonight.'

They pause in the darkness of the doorway to the barn, beside the broad form of the pickup truck parked inside. The one called Deborah runs her hand lovingly over something unseen in the shadows on the wall.

'They're weak,' she says, 'both of them. I've been poisoning them.' There is something like pride in her voice.

'In that case,' says the Old One, 'we'll be able to make a tiny alteration in our cast. I'd been grooming our chubby friend from the city for this, but under the circumstances – since he's potentially more dangerous – the farmer will serve just as well.'

He watches as the one called Deborah nods in agreement, her hand still caressing the thing hanging in the shadows. It swings gently on its hook; moonlight catches a length of wooden handle, an edge of steel blade.

'So,' the Old One continues, 'he's the one you kill.'

Things going wonderfully with Carol. Suspect she may really be the one. Can't wait till I get back to the city.

Have been talking about her to myself.

'I'm in love with her.'

'Yeah? And what's that supposed to mean?'

'You know – the works. The whole hog. I like spending time with her, want to fuck her, marry her, give her presents. Want to have kids with her, share my old age with her, have her around when I die. All that stuff.'

Poroth lay awake, deliberately keeping his breathing deep and regular, waiting till the others were asleep. Carefully he turned to look at his wife. For once her eyes were shut tight.

Sitting up in bed, he placed a bare foot tentatively on the floor, then the other, knowing that Deborah usually woke when he went downstairs to the bathroom and not wanting to waken her on this of all nights.

His clothes and shoes were where he'd left them, in the closet; he put them on in the hall. Tiptoeing to Carol's room, he stood looking in at her, asleep there on her back beneath the nursery cutouts on the wall: the moon, the bearded old men, the fire. One arm, unseen, cradled the pillow; the other, exposed to view, was lightly freckled and slim as a reed, her wrist a fragile piece of china, her face unclouded by anything but dreams, slack but for slightly pursed lips. He felt an innocence all about her, the innocence of a little child, and he wondered, for the first time since coming home to Gilead, if the room would ever hold a real child, born of him and Deborah.

Better not to brood on that now. God would reward him as He saw fit. Buttoning his shirt, he stepped into the room.

Just before waking her, he hesitated. It might not be so easy to convince her to come with him; there might be an argument – a struggle, even. Embarrassing, under his own roof. How could his mother have failed to realize that?

She's crazy, said a mocking little voice inside his head. Why take orders from a crazy woman?

Better to let Carol sleep, he decided. He would bring his mother out here to the farm; she would just have to be content with that. Backing out of the doorway, he continued down the stairs.

He didn't see the thing that sat upright in the bed and crept down the stairs after him.

The moon was higher now, a beacon at the center of the sky so bright it hurt his eyes to look as he hurried across the lawn toward the barn. He knew that, when he started the truck, the sound of the engine might wake the others, but that couldn't be helped; surely in a moment they'd fall back asleep, and by then he'd be gone. As he tiptoed past the dark outbuilding where Jeremy and Rosie lay sleeping, he heard the throbbing rhythm of the frogs, but he didn't hear the pale, naked figure that followed on his heels like a shadow.

Rounding the corner of the barn and slipping inside, he opened the door of the truck and was about to step up to the driver's seat when, with a cry, he swore and jumped back, away from the form already crouched there directly before his face, little pink hands and plump red lips and wrinkles around eyes that were like razors now. Poroth recognized him at last.

"Twas you in the park ten years ago,' he said. 'I remember now. What business have you here?'

The old man grinned. 'Waiting for you, Sarr Poroth.'

Poroth saw the eyes look past him briefly, to a place just behind his shoulder, and he would have whirled around, but the figure wielding the axe was too swift. Its blade caught him square in the back of the skull and buried itself in his brain.

This is the part he likes. This is what he's waited for. The farmer has toppled like a dying tree and now lies sprawled lifeless at his feet, blood soaking into the dusty floor of the barn. Grasping an arm, the Old One turns the body over onto its back, then watches raptly as the thing that was the farmwife climbs naked astride the farmer and, crouching there, places her open mouth directly over his. A minute passes.

Suddenly an old wound opens in her throat; her body crumples and goes limp, sagging in upon itself just as the corpse's eyes flash open. With an impatient swipe of its arm the thing that was the farmer shoves aside her stiffening body and gets to its feet. Blood continues flowing down its head from the gaping red crack in its skull. It looks at the Old One and smiles. . The man returns its smile. What a moment this has been! The being itself remains hidden from view – it's been more than a hundred years since he's seen it – but he's sensed the thing's presence tonight and has charted its progress as it made its blind way from mouth to mouth. He has seen the farmwife's cheeks bulge, then grow slack; he has seen the wriggling at the farmer's throat. It is lodged there now, just beneath the flesh, already accustoming itself to its new home. He still cannot see it, but he knows it is there, nearly close enough to touch: the one thing left alive after the Master's death; the part he'd left unburned; the organ with no clear human analogue, but corresponding roughly to a phallus, instrument of regeneration; the black thing, undying and unkillable; the Dhol.

Silence within the darkened barn. Beneath the smell of straw, a faint whiff of decay. He grasps the farmwife's body by the ankles.

'I'm good at hiding bodies,' he says, dragging the thing away from the truck. 'You have your own work to do tonight.'

The corpse, heavy, comes to a stop at the doorway. He tugs on the ankles. Slowly it begins to move, then stops again.

He gets a better grip and is about to pull further when the figure of the farmer steps forward, bends stiffly toward the floor, and picks up the corpse as if it weighed nothing. Slinging it roughly over one shoulder like a sack of grain, it strides into the night.

It feels strong now. It flexes its great hands, heaves its massive shoulders, gazes down with pleasure at its lean, untiring form. The burden it carries is a minor one, so light that it might well be made of straw.

Shortly before dawn a tall, shambling figure, the head still bloody from some recent injury, wanders along the borders of the property with the already stiffening carcass of a naked female slung carelessly over its shoulder, the black hair hanging almost to the ground. Making at last for the line of pine trees on the far side of the brook, it strides briskly downhill and, without pausing, steps into the shallow water, scattering the frogs. As if it were walking on dry land, it starts across.

Just beyond the center of the stream, it comes to a sudden halt and stands immobile, the frigid water swirling unnoticed over shoes and ankles. Finally, after nearly a minute in the water, the figure turns and strides back onto the land, heading toward the old abandoned smokehouse by the edge of the woods.

Unmindful of a few unsleeping wasps that still circle the building and are already stirred up, the figure yanks the sagging wooden door open wide and clumsily thrusts its burden into the darkness. Wasps, like bees, go for the eyes. Unlike bees, they can sting many times without dying. Maddened by the intrusion, insects circle the figure's head like attacking warplanes, dealing sting after death-dealing sting.

But venom, however deadly, has no effect on things already dead. The hulking figure feels no pain, no more than it feels from the split down the center of its skull. Heedless of the tiny swarm and the needle-sharp spears that pierce the flesh of its face, the figure grasps the carcass by the legs and shoves it upward into the round hole in the smokehouse ceiling, as if to jam the thing into the tiny attic. But the body cannot fit; the legs wedge tightly in the hole, ridges of flesh bulging up around them. The body hangs head downward like a slaughtered animal, the long black hair swinging like Spanish moss.

Dawn approaches. Leaving the carcass dangling behind it, the thing shambles toward the truck.

Freirs stirred and woke at the sound of the engine, in time to see the broad, dark shape of Poroth's truck roll past the outbuilding and head out to the road. Dimly he could make out Poroth at the wheel. Without his glasses Freirs could not be sure, but the farmer appeared to be wearing a red skullcap. Rosie's bed, he noticed, was empty. Seconds later Rosie entered, wiping his hands and smiling. 'Had to obey the call of nature!' he said, winking.

'Where's Sarr gone off to? That was him in the truck.'

Rosie shrugged. 'You got me, partner. He said something about keeping an appointment.'

The moon stares down as the truck pulls up at the foot of the grassy slope, just down the road from the little stone bridge. Heavily a tall, ungainly figure drops from the cab and lumbers up the slope toward the cottage, heedless of the darkness, trampling upon a bed of flowers as if they weren't there. Thorns tear at its clothing, but it doesn't slow; clumsily it blunders into the beehives standing on the lawn, knocking one of them over.

The insects emerge in an angry swarm and attack the face and eyes. The shambling figure pays them no mind as it moves up the hill toward the house.

At last it turns its shattered face toward the door. Clenching its huge fist, it knocks three times, the noise echoing hollowly in the night.

'Mother,' it calls hoarsely. 'Mother… '

July Thirty-first

Ten a.m. now. Woke up feeling weak amp; disoriented. Dead spider floating in my water glass. Rosie was already awake amp; bustling energetically about, humming some tuneless little song. Said he'd be making Carol amp; me breakfast, as it's Sunday (I'd totally forgotten) and the Poroths have already gone to worship…

But the Poroths were not at the worship that morning, and their absence excited much comment. 'I can't understand it,' muttered Amos Reid, waiting for the opening prayers to begin. 'For Brother Sarr not to be here at a time like this… ' He shook his head despairingly.

Joram Sturtevant and his family were not there either – they were home, all five of them, in the sprawling white farmhouse over on the next hill – but at least they had a good excuse: Lotte Sturtevant had gone into labor this morning.

Lise Verdock, too, was absent; yet in another sense her presence was felt deeply by everyone in attendance. The worship was being held in her front yard, in fact, right beneath her window. It was a memorial service in her honor. She had died during the night.

She had slipped away just after midnight without ever having regained consciousness, watched over by her grieving husband and daughter. In testament to the high regard with which she'd been held in the town, this morning's worship, originally scheduled for the home of Frederick and Hildegarde Troet, just across the road, had been hastily reconvened here at the Verdocks' dairy farm, where, in a moment or two, Jacob van Meer would be leading them all in a prayer.

'It just ain't like Sarr,' muttered Amos. 'That woman of his, now, I wouldn't go countin' on her, but for Sarr to be late when it's his own poor aunt we're honorin'… it don't make sense.' He looked around. 'And where the blazes is his ma?'

Matthew Geisel was standing next to him, thinking sadly of the departed woman while gazing with unconscious envy at the tall, newly painted cattle barn to their left, the lush fields and rich pasturage, and, in the distance ahead of them, the broad, imposing vista of the Sturtevant homestead.

'Well,' he said, scratching his chin, 'maybe they're all over at Fred Troet's right now, lookin' for the rest of us.'

A low burst of laughter came from Rupert Lindt, standing with folded arms behind them. 'That would probably suit 'em just fine,' he said. 'I don't know as those three ever had much use for the rest of us.'

'I'm sure there's a good reason,' said Amos, half to himself. He stared down at his clasped hands as, with a burst of Jeremiah, the service began.

'Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all… '

It wasn't till all the prayers were over and the Brethren were deep into the hymn-singing that Amos, nudged by Matthew Geisel, looked up and saw what many others there on the lawn had already noticed: the thin black tentacle of smoke twisting toward the sky from the Sturtevant back yard.

The egg in Rosie's hand was large, smooth, glistening white; and if it was a trifle heavier than any normal egg of that size had a right to be, no one was the wiser. Eyes twinkling with the contentment of a mother who knows no children in the world are better fed than her own, he cracked the egg on the rim of the already half-full bowl, let the yolk drop inside, and whipped the liquid to a yellow froth. 'Hungry?' he called gaily over his shoulder.

'I'm always hungry,' said Freirs, slouched unshaven and tousle-haired over the table, and Carol, across from him, added, 'It's that famous country air.'

Rosie chuckled. 'That's just what I like to hear.' He poured the liquid into the heated frying pan, where it hissed and bubbled like hell-fire.

Breakfast left them feeling heavy and overfull. While Rosie fussed about the kitchen, the two stumbled groggily from the house and down the back steps, kicking off their shoes in the grass. It was nearly eleven, the sun high overhead. The Poroths still had not returned.

Reaching out a sleepy hand for Carol's, Jeremy pulled her after him, and together they wandered downhill toward the brook, the unmown grass dry beneath their feet. The day was warm, and by the time they'd passed the smokehouse and the barn, Carol was finding it hard to keep her balance; the lawn seemed to slope more steeply as she neared the water, tilting in ways that didn't seem right at all, and she had to stop herself from falling forward into the weeds that grew along the bank. The greenness seemed to spin around her; she felt Jeremy's hand slip from her own, and then she was floating, blue sky underfoot, green overhead, or was it the other way around?… Carol blinked and shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. The sunlight from the flashing brook was dazzling, almost blinding. There was a rushing of water in her ears, and she couldn't tell if it was the brook or her own lifeblood.

'I feel as if I haven't slept in weeks,' Jeremy was saying, yawning. She saw him remove his glasses and sink beside her to his knees by the bank of the stream, then lie back, and as she bent to kiss him she saw his eyes close in sleep. She lay beside him on the grass, feet toward the water, and just before her head fell back against the soft ground she thought, with a brief and terrible clarity, He's drugged us…

They slept.

But in the smokehouse, other things were awake – and angry.

The wasps that inhabited the small, enclosed area just beneath the peaked roof had seen their tranquil world rocked shortly before dawn by the intrusion of a pair of human legs, naked and female, thrust roughly upward into their domain through the hole in the ceiling boards. A few of the insects had been away from the nest at the time; others, during the course of the morning, had by sheer chance managed to slip through a small crevice in the boards, the one small portion of the hole that the legs did not fill. But like dwellers in an attic who have found their trapdoor sealed, hundreds more of the insects were still imprisoned, bottled up amid the darkness and the heat, their passage to the outside world effectively cut off by a stopper of decaying human flesh.

They were angry now, and frantic to escape, their frenzy mounting with each passing minute as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the air within the tiny chamber grew even hotter. In furious circles they swarmed around the grey, brainlike nest, blind things, maddened, stinging one another in their madness.

The morning passed, gave way to noon. Shadows of clouds swept over their bodies, then a sun so fierce it would have wakened any normal sleepers. Insects circled buzzing around their faces, settled on their eyes; a dragonfly hovered as if with evil intent above Carol's half-open lips. Freirs' plump belly rose and fell without a break in rhythm as flies crawled over his skin and mosquitoes feasted on his sun-warmed blood. Two cats crept forward to peer inquisitively at him, and a pale, glistening slug crept in stately slowness over his wrist and down the other side into the grass. His glasses gleamed beside him in the sunlight. The glimmering brook murmured unheard at their feet.

In the distance, up the sloping lawn, the screen door swung open, then shut with a bang. The old man approached them softly, peering at their sleeping forms. Briefly he knelt beside Carol, making curious passes over her face. Getting to his feet, he stood gazing down at them again, his eyes darting back and forth between a heavy-looking rock and Freirs' head.

Suddenly he froze, listening; his expression changed, face hardening into a smile as his eyes scanned the edge of the woods along the far side of the brook. Casually, almost as an afterthought, he brought his foot down on Freirs' glasses, crushing them into the ground. Then, finding a series of stepping stones, he stepped delicately across the brook and disappeared among the trees.

It was a mark of the Brethren's restraint, their sense of decorum and protocol, as much as of their religious devotion that, though all of them were soon staring with curiosity and alarm at the twisting thread of black smoke in the distance, they continued singing as if nothing were wrong, pressing on through the traditional sixteen hymns. Even when the service was over and the Bible shut, few of them made any move in the direction of the Sturtevants' house, preferring to stay and give Adam Verdock and his daughter (who, of late grown used to death, seemed to be bearing up better than her father) what small comfort they could. Too much curiosity wasn't seemly; there were those among them who'd even objected to the presence of the local newspaper in their homes, arguing, with considerable zeal, that what God intended men to know was already set down in the Bible and that other printed words were mere distractions.

And so, in the end, when the assembly at last began to break up, it was only the more avidly curious among them – those such as Bert and Amelia Steegler, Galen Trudel, Rupert Lindt, and Jan and Hannah Kraft – as well as those closest to the Sturtevants – Joram's brother Abram and his wife, the van Meers and the Klapps, Matthew Geisel, Klaus Buckhalter, and a dozen or so more, including Ham Stoudemire, whose wife, Nettie, would be in attendance as midwife – who actually walked, in a party, toward the Sturtevant farm.

The house itself, a broad, white-shingled Colonial with low single-story wings on each side, was set well back from the main road at the end of a pathway bordered by tall shrubbery. The first things the party encountered, after ascending the path, were the Sturtevants' three young boys, normally a rowdy, outspoken bunch, standing in uneasy silence by the front of the house. 'Father won't let us inside,' the oldest boy explained somewhat fearfully. 'We have to stay here in front. Aunt Wilma's in there, though. So's Sister Nettie.'

This last had been addressed to Klaus Buckhalter, whose wife, Wilma – Lotte Sturtevant's older sister – was already inside, helping Nettie Stoudemire with the birth.

Buckhalter conferred briefly with his nephews, then turned back to the group. 'I think Abram and I had best go up alone.'

The others hung back as the two men climbed the front steps and knocked, almost timidly, at the door. After some moments, it was opened by Buckhalter's wife. She looked as if she'd been weeping.

'You can all come in,'she said. 'It's done now… She's alive.'

'And the child?' asked Abram.

She shuddered and shook her head.

Frowning, the two men entered the house, Wilma standing at the door as the rest filed nervously in behind them. Ahead of them, at the top of the stairs, the midwife stood wringing her hands.

'Is my brother up there?' asked Abram.

Wilma pointed, trembling, in the direction of the yard. 'Back there.' She turned and started up the staircase; as if by unspoken agreement the women in the group filed upstairs behind her, continuing toward a doorway at the right, from which issued a series of low moans. Left to themselves, the men stood awkwardly in the downstairs hall, then followed Abram toward the back of the house.

They found Joram seated in a rocking chair in the middle of the glassed-in back porch. He was rocking furiously, as if possessed, and seemed barely to notice them. His face, they saw, was drawn, weary, but his eyes, which stared at nothing, had a wild look. Behind him, outside in the yard, they could see a round pit filled with ashes from which a few dark tendrils of smoke still rose.

At first it seemed that Joram was addressing them, but then they all saw that he was in fact talking to himself. 'God is merciful,' he was saying as he rocked back and forth, over and over like a litany of comfort. 'God is merciful, merciful… '

Abram grasped him by the shoulder. 'What is it, brother?'

Slowly the man in the chair looked up, and recognition dawned in his face. 'He touched her belly,' he said, 'and she gave birth to-' A fit of trembling seized him. He shook his head. 'Thank the Lord it didn't live!'

Rupert Lindt stepped forward. 'Joram, what are you talkin' about? Who touched Lotte's belly?'

Joram turned to look at him. He was silent a moment, as if trying to recollect. "Twas the one from the city. The one livin' out at Poroth Farm.'

The men eyed one another in silence, the same dark look growing on all their faces.

'I think it was the air,' Joram was saying. "Twas the Lord's pure, holy air that killed it. It wasn't meant to breathe as we do… '

And the men looked at one another, and nodded, there on the porch with the ashes just outside, while upstairs, at the other end of the house, out of Lotte's hearing, Wilma Buckhalter sat huddled with the womenfolk and told them, weeping, of the terrible thing that had been born a few hours before and that Joram and the midwife had burned in the back yard – a thing with tiny yellow claws and the beginnings of a tail…

The two men were working in the shadow of the hill. The younger, still in his teens, was crouching over a small grey box-shaped instrument, an emanometer, used to measure radon gas. From a strap by his side hung a similar device for the measurement of methane. The older of the two, a tall, stoop-shouldered man with thinning black hair, was pacing around the base of the hill taking readings on radiation with a scintillation counter. A camera and a light meter dangled around his neck.

'No,' he said, sounding far from surprised, 'it's the same over here. Just background count.' Squinting, he peered up along the length of the cone. It towered forty feet above the forest floor – not so high as most of the older trees, but in this section, where the trees were short and vegetation sparse, its top protruded well above them all. 'Think I'd better get a couple more pictures.'

He backed into the sunlight, holding the light meter before him. Checking the dial, he raised the camera and focused on the top of the mound. The younger man stood watching him. Moments later he called out, 'Dr Lewalski? We've got a visitor.'

The other lowered his camera and turned where the younger man was pointing. At the far side of the mound stood a short, somewhat paunchy old man with glowing pink skin and a halo of fine white hair.

'Oh, don't mind me!' the old man cried. 'I'm just passing through.' He stood staring at them for a moment and made no move to go. 'You two prospecting for uranium or something?'

The one named Lewalski smiled and shook his head. 'Just taking a few measurements, that's all.' He indicated the mound. 'We're trying to find out how this thing was formed.'

'Seems like quite a lot of fellows have been around here lately asking that same question.'

The other laughed. 'Yes, I know. We're a little behind. I cut short my vacation just to come down here. It's quite an unusual formation.'

'We're going to drill a hole right through to the center,' added the younger man, 'and see what's inside.'

The old man's eyes widened respectfully. 'Drill a hole? He looked around. 'With what?'

Lewalski laughed. 'Oh, we're not going to do that now. We'll have to come back tomorrow with the right equipment.'

'Oh, yes, I see. Tomorrow.' He nodded to himself. 'I take it you fellows aren't from around here.'

'We're from Princeton,' said the younger man. 'From the geology department.'

'Really?' The old man seemed impressed. 'And so you drove out here today, did you?'

'That's right,' said Lewalski. 'Why, what's the matter?' – because the other had suddenly frowned and now looked troubled, as if he'd just remembered something particularly unfortunate.

'Oh, it's nothing,' said the old man. 'It's just that – tell me, where are you parked?'

Lewalski nodded toward the north. 'An old dirt road about a mile, mile and a half from here. It runs past what must be the town dump.'

The old man shook his head glumly. 'That's just what I thought.'

'Is something wrong?'

'Probably not. It's just that there's some fool law in this town about parking on that road on a Sunday, and – well, there've been some incidents. Quite a few out-of-towners have had their cars towed away.'

'On a Sunday?' said Lewalski. 'That's absurd! I'm not even on the road, I pulled way over.'

The old man shrugged. 'I'm sure you're completely in the right. I just wish the people of this town had a little more respect for state laws. They have some funny ideas around here about Sunday driving.. . ’

'Hold on a minute!' said Lewalski. 'We saw people driving around here today – at least I think so.'

The old man nodded, looking sorry he'd ever brought up the subject. 'Of course you did. They were probably on their way to Sunday worship. Out-of-towners they regard a bit differently.'

'But we're from Princeton,' said the younger man.

'You're saying they tow away people's cars?' asked Lewalski. He was beginning to look nervous. 'It makes no sense. This is practically official business.'

'Well, that road to the dump is town property, you see – so are these woods – and, well… ' He shrugged and looked away.

'Aw, come on, Dr Lewalski,' said the the younger man, 'nobody's going to touch your car.'

The other looked dubious. He scratched his chin. 'No, I guess not.' He stepped back and brought the camera up to his face. 'We'll just- Jesus, what was that?'

A thick brown snake had slid past his feet. He saw it disappear into the bushes out of the corner of his eye.

'Been a lot of snakes around here lately,' said the old man. 'I suppose you read about it. Some folks say it was the quake that stirred them up. We've had quite a few people bitten this year- more than in the past twelve years combined. Copperheads, mostly. Hope you brought your snakebite kit along.'

The younger man turned to Lewalski. 'Did you?'

Lewalski grimaced. 'No, of course not. I know these woods. There's no danger at all, if you don't go around- Jesus, there's another!' He stepped back, then stared up at the hill, frowning. 'You know, maybe this isn't such a good idea today after all.'

The younger man shrugged. 'Whatever you say.'

The old man cleared his throat. 'Do you, uh, know your way out of here all right? I only ask because I'm heading up that way myself. I can show you the right path, take you back to your car without your getting lost.'

Lewalski was fitting his camera back into its case. 'You know, mister, we'd really appreciate that.' He turned to the other. 'Come on, let's go – we can do a really thorough job tomorrow.'

They followed the old man down the path that wound northward. He was whistling.

'You seem to know these woods pretty well,' said Lewalski.

The old man smiled but didn't look back. 'Yes, known 'em since I was a boy. Grew up around here.'

They were passing a tall clump of bushes. For just an instant the old man's eyes darted to the side, toward where the leaves and brambles grew thickest, and he gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head.

'Stay with me now,' he added, 'I don't want to lose anybody.'

It wasn't till the three had continued down the path and were almost lost from sight amid the foliage that the bushes stirred, then shook, and the hulking form of the farmer pushed its way out onto the path.

It stood for a moment, watching their retreating forms; then it turned to face the mound. Pressing its shoulder to a massive grey rock, larger than any living man could move, it wrested the thing from the earth and rolled it toward the base of the hill. Another boulder followed, and another. Soon the structure rose against the hillside.

It was building an altar.

'You know we've got to do something… '

'No doubt of it!'

The men had walked down the path from the Sturtevants' house in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Now the group stood huddled together by the roadside.

'I ain't never seen old Joram so upset.'

'Well, and don't he have a right to be?'

'Seems to me we got to act now. Let's get our trucks and head on out to Sarr's.'

'Now just a minute, Rupert, we can't none of us be sure-'

'I ain't takin' no chances!' Lindt smacked his fist into his palm. 'I was at the Poroths' place last Sunday, and I watched that boy. I saw the way he was lookin' at my little Sarah.'

'We're not gonna do him any harm now, that wouldn't be right.'

'Course not, Matt. We're just gonna call on him, that's all. We're just gonna see that he leaves-'

'Before tonight.'

'Before dark!'

'Yeah, leaves before dark and never comes back.'

'No weapons now, mind you.'

'No, o' course not! We don't need weapons against a little worm like that! Why, did you see how soft his hands are?'

There was a pause.

'And if he knows spells,' said Abram Sturtevant, touching on what was in all their minds, 'you know that weapons ain't gonna help us anyways. We got to trust in the Lord.'

'Now wait a minute,' said Geisel. 'The Lord counsels patience, you all know that, and maybe we should talk this out with Joram first, when he's come 'round again. Ain't no need to rush into things.' . 'Don't forget what day this is, Matt. We don't want that sort of person around here tonight. He could get himself into all kinds of mischief.'

'But there's no sign he even knows what tonight is.'

'Listen, brother.' It was a leathery-faced old farmer who spoke up. 'I gave that boy a ride in my car just the other week, and do you know what he kept askin' me? All about this very day – the thirty-first of July – and whether we get many killin's on this date.' He glared at Geisel. 'Now what do you say to that?'

The other was silent.

'That settles it,' said Lindt. 'Come on!'

Walking through this part of the woods with the two scientists, he feels a tug of memory almost akin to nostalgia.

He remembers, even now, with perfect clarity, how a century ago he stood here while the Master still lived to command him. He remembers that day in the woods, that chilly Christmas afternoon, and how, as a boy, he first saw the black form in the tree…

And he remembers exactly what it told him that day – remembers because his entire life, since that moment, has been lived in accordance with its words. He remembers how the black thing's eye glared at him and how it opened up its black fleshless mouth.

He remembers what it said.

I have been waiting for you.

'How long?' the boy had stammered, breathless.

Long.

'What do you want of me?'

Muck.

'What must I do?'

You shall perform Ceremonies in my honor.

'Ceremonies for what?'

To bring me back as my Son.

'Where is he now?' the boy had asked, and he remembers today the Master's answer.

He isn't born yet.

The planet rolled through the afternoon with only a scattering of clouds. A soft breeze sprang up, tropical in its warmth; the pine trees stirred among themselves on the other side of the brook. Where small birds had hopped and chirped among the branches, there was now only the whisper of the wind, the most solemn of stillnesses. The branches stretched yearningly toward the two sleeping figures on the farther bank; the shadows of the trees grew longer, reaching across the water where they lay. Slanting rays of sunlight hung like curtains before the bases of the trees, shifting with each movement of the branches. The sun seemed to die a little.

Still prisoner of some all-enveloping dream, Carol shifted in her sleep as if in response to a call. Slowly she stretched and sat up. She gazed across the water into the darkness of the woods; and if she saw the figure there standing veiled in yellow curtains of sunlight, as unmoving as the trees, and if she was surprised, and if she saw it was a man, tall, bearded, nearly naked, his clothing in ribbons, his hands black with dirt, and if she saw the thing that had happened to his skull, she made no sign. She stared at him a moment and said nothing.

Gazing at her from across the water, the figure raised its hand and beckoned.

She stood, paying no attention to Freirs sleeping obliviously beside her among the weeds. Hesitating but a moment, she stepped slowly into the stream, the water swirling round her bare ankles. Heedless of the chill, looking neither left nor right, she walked across, stepped onto the other side, and joined him where he waited for her. His hand reached out for hers, took it imperatively in his grasp. For a moment, as his hand touched hers, she turned to cast a single, half-regretful backward glance at the man still sleeping on the other bank. Then the figure pulled her toward him, and the darkness of the woods closed over them both.

The day is waning at last, and he is glad of it. It is the night that concerns him. He watches impatiently as the professor and student climb into their car and drive off. They wave one more time in thanks. He nods, waves back, smiles till the car has disappeared. They will not return today, and tomorrow – tomorrow will be too late.

For a moment back there on the trail he had contemplated ordering the Dhol to kill the two of them – it would have been far simpler and wasted less precious time – but there is always a chance that the men might have been missed and that others might have come looking for them: others who might interfere with the events planned for tonight. No, he decides, there's no use taking chances. Not with so much at stake.

Which is why he must dispose of the extra man. There is no more need for him; the woman, by now, must be in their hands, and the role Freirs was to play has already fallen to another. It will be well, for safety's sake, to make sure he cannot threaten the proceedings. It will be simpler this way. Cleaner. He has the necessary straps in his pocket, and though they'll eventually be needed for the woman, they may also prove useful for the man.

Hands tingling with anticipation, the Old One turns his back on the road and sets off once more up the trail.

There were less than a dozen of them now: Bert Steegler had had to go back and open the store, Jacob van Meer was feeling poorly, and others had dropped out for reasons of their own. They had crowded into three trucks, Rupert Lindt's in the lead, and had raced along the main road from town, over the bridge and past the silent stone cottage beside it, then up the winding roads into the backcountry. Now they had reduced their speed and were moving up the Poroths' road like a convoy, maneuvering slowly over the ruts and gaps and potholes, yet still stirring up enough dust so that the rear truck, Abram Sturtevant's, was covered with a reddish film, making visibility difficult for the three men inside.

It was old Matthew Geisel, sitting up beside Lindt, who saw it first, at the bend before the Poroth farm. He pointed toward the side of the road. There, tilted forward in a ditch, its right rear tire lifted in the air, was the battered form of Poroth's pickup truck.

'Appears he's had himself an accident,' said Ham Stoudemire, 'and left the truck where it stopped.'

Lindt pulled over to the side; the other two trucks behind him slowed to a halt. The men dismounted and hurried to the truck.

It was empty. Along the upper rim of the steering wheel was a suspicious-looking smear of dried blood.

'Suppose he may be hurt,' said Geisel, 'and crawled off into the woods?' He surveyed the dense vegetation before him.

'It may be so,' said Abram Sturtevant. 'We'd best look for him.'

The men fanned out from the ditched truck, searching for signs: a broken branch, a tatter of cloth, more blood. Lindt, Stoudemire, and Geisel continued on foot now toward the house several hundred yards ahead.

Geisel glanced back at the Poroths' truck; he was troubled. 'Twasn't like Sarr to go off the road like that; the man knew every twist and turn of its length. No, 'twasn't like him at all.

Frowning, he followed the two younger men toward the farmhouse.

Shadows. Evening coming on.

He emerges from the woods, slightly winded, to stand a moment on the narrow strip of level ground that, just ahead, dips downward toward the brook. In the distance the farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings have caught the dying sunlight and glow as if aflame; the sky behind the cornfield is a wall of red, turning the field into a battleground where stunted cornstalks stand silhouetted against the sky like doomed men. Just across the brook Freirs' plump form lies defenseless in sleep, his stomach rising and falling among the weeds. As if sensing the other's presence, he stirs.

For most of his journey through the woods the Old One has been considering Freirs' death. It will be what it should have been three days ago: death by water. His vivid dream of Deborah in the bathtub has been thwarted, chance has saved Freirs from the clutches of the Dhol, but now he will be able to do the job himself. In Freirs' insensible condition, it will be easy; he feels as if he has already done the deed, so detailed and real is the picture. He sees himself turn Freirs onto his belly for the precautionary tying of the wrists, then haul him by the ankles to the stream and shove his face beneath the rushing water. He sees a tremor shake the sleeper's frame, sees his arms twist and strain against the leather in an instinctive, futile effort to escape. The body jerks and thrashes as the Old One bends his full weight upon it. Once, twice, three times Freirs' dazed face, streaming water, lifts above the surface as he wrenches his neck back, legs kicking. But the Old One's grip is like iron, and the joy of what he's feeling now, savoring the final moments of a human life communicated through the spasmodic twitching of the flesh, gives him a tenfold strength. Just another minute to be sure all breathing's stopped…

The reality will be even better. Stepping nimbly from stone to stone, the Old One crosses the stream.

It takes him but a moment to bind the wrists. He is dragging Freirs' inert form roughly toward the brook, scanning the property one more time to make sure there are no witnesses to what's about to happen, when his gaze comes to rest on the smokehouse and the pale thing hanging upside down inside it, clearly visible through the wide-open door and outlined in the final rays of sunlight.

The fool! He moves quickly, cursing. This must not be discovered. Left like this, the body can be seen by anyone who chances to visit the farm. And anyone searching for the Poroths will find it within minutes. Better to hide the thing deep in the woods, where it will be safe until tonight.

Abandoning Freirs for the moment, he hurries to the smokehouse. The little wooden structure already reeks of decay, the smell of something that's been dead more than a week. He does not find it disagreeable; he steps inside, brushing away swarms of flies, and finds himself face to face with Deborah Poroth's earthly remains. Her upside-down eyes, hanging level with his own, are shrunken in their sockets like old apples. His glance takes in her dangling arms, the hands even with his belt, and the crumpled black torn place in her throat, pulled wider by the weight of the head and gaping like a second mouth. The sight inspires in his breast precisely nothing. Reaching up, he grasps the rib cage and pulls.

The body does not give. From somewhere above him comes a muffled buzzing sound, easily confused with the buzzing of the flies that continue to swarm around his head.

He pulls harder, but without success. The two kinds of buzzing blend together in an irritating song.

Grabbing the limp arms, he yanks with all his might. Still the body doesn't move.

Embracing the thing now, he puts all his weight on it, hands grimacing with his own feet in the air. Vertebrae snap, some strands of long black hair shake loose and drift slowly toward the floor, but the legs remain stuck fast.

Wiping away a drop of sweat that has formed on his brow, he stands on tiptoe, reaches up as high as he is able, and grasps the legs nearer the ceiling, tugging on each one individually, trying to dislodge them from the wood. There is a cracking sound; the body starts to give a little. The buzzing overhead is growing angrier, and loud enough for him to distinguish it from the flies.

But now there is a more urgent sound.

'Sarr! Deborah!'

Voices ring out from up the slope, by the farmhouse and the road.

Instinctively he pulls the door closed and turns the catch, concealing himself within the tiny shack. It is hot inside, airless, dark and crowded as a coffin. He is pressed against the wall by the loose, ungainly bulk of the corpse. But he is still confident. There is still time. Distracted, he shoves the corpse aside.

With a splintering of wood it tears loose, crashing to the floor of the smokehouse – and behind it, like a demon from a bottle, rushes a torrent of invisible wings and legs and death-dealing stingers, buzzing, stinging again and again, as if it is the sound itself that brings the pain. They "take their venomous revenge, as wasps will, upon the only living thing at hand; and as wasps will, they go first for the eyes.

Blindly he batters at the closed door. The tiny building echoes with his screams.

For nearly a minute they grow louder, higher-pitched, the screaming of a thing no longer human, carrying across the farm, the fields, the woods. The smokehouse trembles, rocks on its foundation, shivers with the pounding from within.

Then at last it is silent.

His sleep was invaded by screaming, high and womanish and just out of reach. He dreamed of Carol. He willed himself to go to her, to help her, but his body was a thing of rock and would not move.

At last the screams ended, and there was silence. And then that ended too. Dimly he heard voices, men this time, confused, frightened, shouting out to one another in their fear – and then screams again, and running, and a great inhuman buzzing…

He didn't see Rupert Lindt throw wide the smokehouse door, or the cloud of maddened wasps that spilled out, scattering the men and leaving the two who'd been the closest, Lindt and Stoudemire, with painfully stung arms, necks, and faces. He didn't see the horrible swollen red thing that came tumbling out after the wasps to lie twitching and oozing on the grass, a thing almost unrecognizable as human, puffed up as it was to nearly twice its size. And he didn't see what lay behind it on the smokehouse floor, a moldering corpse easily identifiable as human, female, young…

'Oh, my God – Deborah!'

'Matt's right. It's Deborah Poroth.'

'How long's she been dead?'

'Looks like a long time.'

He heard the cries of horror and dismay, the babble of unanswered questions, and a voice that demanded, 'Where's Sarr Poroth?'

He didn't see or hear the rest: how the thing lay there looking up at them with what was left of its eyes, and how, before dying, it smiled. 'Too late,' it whispered toothlessly through cracked lips, as its eyes rolled toward the darkening sky. 'Too late.'

It stands above the expectant earth, its feet planted wide upon the topmost boulder of the great spiked thing it has built against the side of the hill. In the dying light it surveys the scene below.

Twenty feet down, the forest floor lies streaked by shadow, except for a flickering light at the base of the hill where, within a tiny ring of stones, a fire burns. Higher, midway up the altar, on a flat outcropping of granite some ten feet from its perch, it can see the body of the woman, her nakedness pale against the dark grey stone, her hair an obscene splash of red. Her body has not yet been painted. Her eyes, it sees, are shut tight now, her breathing slow; she is dreaming again, lost once more in a drugged slumber. By her hands and feet lie curled the lengths of rugged cloth ripped from the farmer's shirt and trousers, crude substitutes for the straps the Ceremony requires, but sufficient.

The Old One, it remembers, had brought leather straps from the city, but he has not returned. He may not arrive in time to help it shave its head clean for the Marriage, to light the fire, to sing the words. But his absence is of no importance; it can perform the Ceremony without the old man. It knows what to do.

The great hill towers at its back like an immense dark hood. Along the ground the encircling trees make black, twisted patterns in the twilight, the visible veins of some vast invisible being. Shadowy forms shift like woodsmoke in the air overhead. The altar stone trembles at its feet.

It is time. Reaching up past its farmer's face and running its fingers through the shattered remnants of its scalp, it proceeds with its grooming for the Marriage, yanking out clumps of the farmer's black hair, ignoring the swatches of flesh that come loose and the sluggish gouts of blood. No assistance is needed; it puts the old man from its mind. Before the final rays of sunlight have faded from the summit of the hill, its skull is as smooth as a freshly cracked egg. Tearing open the tattered remains of its shirt, it lifts its long pale arms in invocation. Above it, as if a monstrous hand has thrown the switch, the sky darkens.

The mound beneath its feet is trembling more violently now. It can hear the frightened cries of animals in the woods below; black hunched shapes are racing back and forth among the trees.

Carefully, dropping on all fours, it picks its way past the girl and down the slope. Seizing a burning brand, it touches it three times to the ring of wood, undergrowth, and debris it has piled at the base of the hill. The pile smokes, flickers, catches: like a moat that makes of them an island, cutting them off from the surrounding forest, a line of fire leaps outward in a great circle, sweeping out of sight around the far side of the hill, the flames seeming to speed the advancing darkness.

The woman moans, stirs. Firelight glistens in her hair; in the farmer's shattered skull the spaces glow a deeper red. The two of them are like a pair of brands: pale slim bodies, smooth limbs, heads of flame. The trees beyond the firelight are almost invisible now, dim skeletal shapes half hidden by the smoke. The dark hill rears malignly toward the empty sky; the stars are not out, the moon not yet risen. Screaming shapes wheel unseen overhead.

At the foot of the altar it throws the brand aside, stretches up on tiptoe, fingertips reaching toward the ledge, and, like some long pale lizard, climbs laboriously up the rock face toward the woman. Crouching above her, in the absence of the Old One, it opens wide its corpse's mouth, tilts its face skyward, and starts to sing the words.

' "Too late," ' Abram Sturtevant repeated, for at least the sixth time. He fingered his coffee-colored beard. "Twas exactly what the man said, wasn't it?'

Galen Trudel nodded. 'His very words.' He and Matthew Geisel had gone up to the house and had found nothing but four cats who'd followed them back down here, where the others were standing in an awkward, puzzled group around the sleeping form of Freirs. The wasps had missed him; he lay in the grass on his belly, his wrists freed from the straps, arms thrown forward as if to embrace the earth.

'And we were too late, weren't we?' said Sturtevant. 'Too late for him. That would be what he meant. Had we arrived any sooner, we could've saved the poor old man's life.'

It made sense to them. It was just about the only thing that did.

All the rest was questions. Why had the stranger, so monstrously transformed by the venom and clearly in pain, died with a smile on his lips? And who was he, anyway? The men had come dashing down the slope from the road, hurrying toward his screams ringing like a woman's from the smokehouse, and had stumbled into a morass of questions – along with swarms of deadly insects, a pair of ruined corpses, and a sleeper who wouldn't wake up no matter what they did, even when Brother Rupert, his own arms and neck aching horribly from the stings, brought a hatful of cold water from the brook and threw it in Freirs' face. Freirs had simply turned back onto his belly, pressing his ear to the ground as if listening.

Questions. So many things they didn't understand…

They had prayed, all of them, over the bodies of the stranger and Deborah Poroth, and afterward had contented themselves with sending Klaus Buckhalter off to Flemington in his truck to summon the county police; on his way he would take the suffering Ham Stoudemire home, where Nettie could tend to his swellings. Rupert Lindt decided he would stay around, stings or no stings. 'I ain't leavin' till I get some answers,' he'd declared, nodding toward Freirs. 'Unless Klaus wants to drive him into Flemington.'

'Best not to move him,' said Sturtevant.

Freirs slept on. At least, now, he was freed from suspicion; the bound wrists had convinced them that here was no malefactor, just another victim.

But were they all victims? Even the stranger they'd seen die, red and swollen, at their very feet? And what had killed poor Sister Deborah, her (they remembered) so lately recovered from the attack of that demon-ridden cat? And where had Brother Sarr disappeared to? And who had tied up Freirs?

Questions. A sea of questions lapping at their ankles…

Silent and uneasy, the men shifted from foot to foot and looked at

Freirs lying motionless on the grass, the deserted farm, the frozen ranks of pines across the brook. They avoided looking at the two ruined corpses by the smokehouse; they avoided one another's eyes. This was not turning out as they'd expected; they had come, nursing their anger and their fear, to usher this intruder from their midst. .. and had found, instead, a mystery.

A breeze traveled up the slope toward the farmhouse, fluttering the leaves in the garden. Roses shook like fists in the waning light; the dark pines stirred. Night was coming on. At their feet the churning waters of the brook seemed strangely hushed. Somewhere in the forest a jay screamed, once, twice, three times, then fell silent. It was like the signal to begin.

Suddenly, overhead, the sky darkened. Beneath their feet, the ground shook. The land around them trembled with a deep, distant, almost inaudible rumbling.

'Oh, my God,' said Matthew, 'it's startin' again.'

He felt the planet pounding with the beating of his heart, the land beneath him rocking, blood squeezing once again through his veins. I'm alive! he thought dimly. But it was much too slow, too vast, and he realized it was coming from beneath him, and there were voices.

And darkness all around him.

'Looks like he's woke up.'

Sounds of footsteps.

'Son, listen to me.' Someone was standing above him. 'Listen, you've got to tell us-'

'His name's Freirs. Jeremiah Freirs.'

'No -' another voice' – it's Jeremy.'

Someone was shaking him. 'Listen… Jeremy. Tell us what's happened here. Where's Sarr Poroth?'

'Sarr?' He sat up, rubbed his eyes, searched in vain for his glasses. 'Ask-' He looked around him in the darkness, gripped by a sudden panic. 'Where's Carol?'

'Carol?'

'That's that girl o' his,' he heard someone say. "Twas her car we saw in the drive.' Rupert Lindt, it sounded like. But then another voice, much louder, demanded, 'What's she gone and done with Brother Sarr?'

He was confused. 'You mean – ' he stammered, 'you mean the Poroths still aren't back?'

'Deborah's dead, son,' said Matt Geisel.

And over the sound the earth was making, punctuated by tremors whose effects came more regularly now, they told him of the old man's death, and the body in the smokehouse, and the wasps.

'Rosie,' whispered Freirs, 'Deborah… ' He shook his head. It wasn't real, none of it, they were lying to him, and as soon as he found his glasses he would show them they were wrong. The world was a dark place, blurred and confusing. He felt the ground tremble. 'I don't know what's happened,' he said, raising his voice to compete with a rumbling that had grown progressively more insistent. 'All I know is I'm worried about the girl who came out here yesterday. We've got to find her.'

He heard someone cry out and saw the others turn to look. Behind them one of the men was pointing into the darkness, where several small grey shapes were racing madly round the lawn in endless circles.

'The cats!' said Geisel. 'My Lord, just look at 'em, they're chasin' one another's tails… '

Freirs remembered the Uroborus, the dragon with its tail gripped in its teeth. A full circle, that's what it signaled. Completion. The rolling year come round again to this most special day…

'What we ought to do,' one of them was saying, 'is try Shem Fenchel's dogs. I hear they're real good trackers.'

'We should head back to the trucks,' said someone else, 'and split up when we get to town.' They began moving back toward the road.

In the east, like a great cyclopean beast lifting its huge head, the moon rose majestically above the treetops, casting long gigantic shadows across the lawn. It was full tonight, the second full moon of the month, and very bright. To Freirs, without his glasses, there seemed something new in its face, something baleful and malign. Yet at its rising he felt a surge of sudden, unlikely hope: maybe in the moonlight they would be able to search for Carol… like those searchers in the moonlight, on the two other nights, for the two other girls. The memory flooded back to him.

'Bloodhounds,' another was saying, as they drifted off, 'that's what we need. We ought to go back to town and get those two pups

Jacob's son's been raisin' out behind his house-'

'Wait,' Freirs called after them. 'Listen to me!' He stumbled to his feet.

The men paused, turned to face him. 'What is it?' came a voice.

'I know where they are.'

Several figures left the group and approached him in the darkness. 'Yeah?' said one. 'Where's that?'

He nodded toward the woods. 'McKinney's Neck.'

The night has deepened and the sky has turned a velvet black when the thing on the hillside finishes its song. Tiny crow's-feet of blood mark the corners of its mouth where, stretched taut by widening jaws, the skin has torn like old paper. Beneath its feet the land is shaking rhythmically now, throwing up small clouds of dust, as if the entire world, wilderness and cities and seas, were echoing to an immense heartbeat.

Poised naked on a rock above the altar, it lifts its face to the sky. It spreads its arms like angel wings and dances like a serpent in the moonlight. It spins, leaps, crouches, stands, spits blood into its mutilated hands. It gestures toward the earth.

It speaks the final Name.

Around it birds fall to the ground and crawl among the rocks like lizards. They open their razor beaks, and the air is filled with a great roaring.

Spiderlike it turns and clambers down the wall of boulders, pointing its face toward the woman.

Miles to the south, the farmhouse stands trembling in the moonlight. Beneath its darkened windows, one by one, the roses in the garden lift their heads, point their faces toward the moon, and open wide their secret mouths; while in the night sky overhead, one by one, the stars come out of hiding.

It is Lammas Eve.

They ran noisily through the woods, crashing through the underbrush like a pack of dogs, dodging brambles and tree trunks, a few of the men in the rear armed with weapons they'd seized from the Poroths' barn – pitchforks, a rake, a long-handled axe with a smeared, discolored blade – mumbling snatches of prayer as they ran and shouting directions and encouragement to one another.

Freirs followed blindly behind them, relying mainly on sound, able to see only dimly without his glasses and still unsteady on his feet. In his right hand he gripped the sickle that he'd lifted from the wall of the barn, holding it before him as he stumbled forward through the darkness, trying to block the invisible branches that snapped painfully at his face. Amid the shouting and confusion he remembered how, at last Sunday's worship, the sickle had been blessed in the Cleansing; maybe it would bring him luck tonight.

They had charged heedlessly over the stream, all of them but Lindt who was hurt and Geisel who was old and Freirs who was sightless; these three had picked their way more slowly, fearful of losing their footing. Freirs had been the last. As he stumbled across, the air ringing with shouts and splashing and the subterranean rumbling that still hadn't ceased, he was sure that he'd heard singing behind him, a thin unearthly wailing, rising from the direction of the farmhouse. He had felt, in that sound, dark heads turn and tiny mouths gape wide, and he'd thought automatically, the cats but he'd shuddered, for the voices he'd heard hadn't sounded like cats, or anything that crept upon the earth. He heard them no longer, but he couldn't get them out of his mind. Just the cats, he told himself, and hurried on.

They were well past the stream now, heading north through the swampy sections of the woods, where their progress was slowed as their feet were sucked down by the mud. Yet even here the ground was quivering as if alive, and below it thunder rolled, as if echoing from caverns deep within the earth.

There were other voices too, filling the darkness with sound. Occasionally he could hear the weird night cries of woodland creatures and, far off, a low, indistinct roaring as from a thousand animal throats; and once a great pale round shape had come hurtling toward them out of a clump of bushes like some boulder come to life, squealing in terror.

'Brother Galen,' someone had called, "twas one o' your hogs.'

And there was still another sound now, far in the distance, a vast and wrathful buzzing. It was like the warning growl that cats make just before they strike, only amplified a million times, or like the buzzing of a million bees.

Panting, Freirs pushed onward, desperate to keep up with the others and afraid of losing them in the darkness. The sporadic shafts of moonlight illuminating the spaces between the trees were of little help and only confused him, like panels in a hall of mirrors. Branches seemed to reach out toward him, as if to hold him back. Thorns and brambles tore at him as he passed. Once, at the edge of the swamp, he tripped over a root and fell headlong in the mud, nearly losing the sickle. Floundering to his feet, he stumbled onward. The roaring was all around him now, rising and falling in time with the beating of the earth, and the buzzing had grown louder.

They had emerged from the swamp and were passing through a stretch of slightly drier ground where the foliage was thinner, when they saw the fire. It was impossible to tell how large it was, or how far away. All of them were tired now, but seeing the flames through the skeletal forms of the trees, and with an objective at last in sight, they broke into a run, though not without a certain wariness lest the blaze prove so large they be forced to turn and flee.

They ran with a new urgency as it became more apparent, the nearer they drew to it, that the fire had been man-made. And suddenly they were running over rocks and debris, the forest had fallen away, and they found themselves facing a wall of leaping flames as tall as they were, and waves of scorching heat, and blinding smoke that blotted out the sky. And beyond the flames, like a great dark presence at the end of a dream, stood the hill.

It rose black and obscene in the moonlight, thrusting itself above the tops of the dwarfed trees like some huge squatting animal, its great humped back furred with clumps of vegetation. Freirs, racing up behind the others, saw them silhouetted against the fire at its base as they stumbled into the clearing with arms or weapons raised, and heard the screams of those who'd blundered too close to the flames. And above the screams a roaring split the night, and a buzzing as of insects, as loud as all the insects in the world; and the roaring came from all around them, from the land and the trees and the darkness itself, but the buzzing came only from the hill.

Beneath the sound he heard a higher, rhythmic cry, the moaning of a woman in pain.

'Carol!'

She was somewhere above him on the hill. Freirs pushed through the crowd of men and hurried forward, but the heat was too intense; he fell back wincing with pain, gasping, eyes smarting.

'She's up there!' He was shouting to anyone who could hear him over the deafening noise. No one turned. Several dim figures were poking feebly at the fire with pitchforks, keeping well back from the flames. He reached for the man who was closest, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder.

'We've got to reach her!'

The other turned, face glowing redly in the firelight, the eyes wide and frightened as a rabbit's, and Freirs saw that it was the leathery old farmer who'd given him a ride from town; he didn't even know the man's name. The farmer shook his head, said something unintelligible, pointed to his ear. He can't hear me, Freirs realized. And he doesn't hear Carol.

Freirs shielded his eyes and looked for the others. Amid the smoke they seemed a crowd of milling shadows, their figures black against the flames, blurred and distorted by the rising waves of heat. None of them seemed to hear.

The moaning came again.

She was just behind the wall of fire, he was sure of it; she sounded almost close enough to touch. And she was hurt, hurt badly; he could hear it in her voice. In despair he stared down at his body, with the fleeting realization that, for all its weight, it was a fragile and sensitive thing, easily pained, easy to damage irreparably, and knowing nonetheless that someone was going to have to do it, someone had to go. Fate, it seemed, had painted him into a corner; he had no choice. Throwing his left arm before his face and brandishing the sickle as if the flames were a curtain he could slice through, he thought of Carol as he wanted to remember her, so sweetly, trustingly naked that evening on the couch in her apartment, and leaped.

And as he did so, just as his feet left the ground, a final thought struck him: what if this was not a wall of fire? What if it was thicker than a wall, or had no end at all? What if He felt his feet drag against timber stacked too high for him to clear, felt some of it give way as he crashed through. He was suddenly surrounded by flames. They licked at his legs and his feet, and he screamed and kicked out as his skin burned beneath his shoes and clothing, his lungs were bursting from the heat, he was breathing fire

… and then he had passed through, he had tumbled among the rocks at the base of the hill and was dragging himself weakly to safety. Clutching the sickle, he staggered to his aching feet and looked up.

The world was a blur, a roaring, earsplitting blur aglow with flame. In its wavering red light he saw the huge mound looming blackly overhead, throbbing as if it were alive, with steady even beats that shook the ground like thunder; he saw the crude truncated pyramid of boulders piled against its sloping side; he saw the narrow ledge some ten feet above him to his left, midway up the rockpile, with a figure that must be Carol still moaning, lying up there on her back so that he could see a pale slice of her body – a leg, an arm, an edge of naked breast – in a travesty of the way he'd just remembered her; and he saw the slender white form, supple as a milk snake, that curled over her in an arch no human should have made, a white rainbow of flesh with ends at Carol's head and feet. This final figure looked barely human; an emaciated naked man, perhaps, with an abnormally elongated body and a shaved head…

He was no longer sure what he was seeing. Shapes were indistinct without his glasses, and the figures on the ledge seemed far away. He was sure the serpentine figure was a man, but he couldn't tell just where the face might be, or how a man could stretch like that, or what was happening to Carol; for all Freirs could see, the two might be enacting some strange solemn theorem of geometry. He noticed now that, in two places, slim white sticklike shapes hung down beneath the man's arched form like twin supports, pointing toward Carol's horizontal body, which now seemed to struggle and heave, her cries rising in pitch. Frantically he hauled himself up onto one of the lower boulders and climbed higher, drawing several yards closer to the level of the pair, and discerned at last the strips of black and white cloth binding Carol's wrists and ankles. He saw the sticks for what they were and realized, with a shock of disbelief, that what he was seeing was a rape.

But the rapist's head and face, he saw now, were not where he'd expected to find them: the act occurring up there on the rocks was a reverse one, a living yin and yang, a mystical obscenity as smooth as a symbol of the zodiac. The white rod of the man's sex, a long, preternaturally thin phallus, exaggerated like the things the satyrs bore in old pagan images, hovered expectantly above the girl's mouth, a mouth still open wide and moaning, while from the rapist's own mouth hung what Freirs at first took, crazily, for a long pale twisted horn, an instrument of bone or wood, but which he now perceived was a living appendage that curled and quested toward her open legs like a great blind worm, prodding them softly and irregularly with its tip. There was a tiger stripe across one thigh; he saw, as he climbed closer, that her legs had been painted at their juncture with a black design of two concentric rings.

Suddenly, like some hungry predator that's sensed the prey at last, the appendage stiffened with a life of its own, stretched taut, and seemed to bury itself deeper between her legs. The girl's struggles ceased, and at the same moment her cries were silenced as the man's sex slipped between her lips.

With the touch of these two organs it was as if a circuit had been forged, a switch thrown, the completion of a white circle there upon the altar, body linked to body, end to end, a double serpent swallowing its tail. Carol's body jerked as if touched with electricity, a great flash of red fire glowed up and down the length of the hill, and with it came the sound of the rending of earth.

Clinging to the trembling rock, Freirs craned his neck, squinted upward through the smoke, and gasped. A crack had appeared in the dark slope above him. The hill was beginning to open. Inside, fires glowed a molten red, smoke belched forth into the night, and he could see, dimly within, a great bunched shape begin to stir, coiling and uncoiling, like a giant worm curled within an apple.

He hung frozen to the rock face, watching as the fissure grew. The opening in the giant mound gaped wider like the jaws of some immense beast, and the buzzing that came from within it grew even more shrill, as if the sound itself might force open the portals still further.

It was the sound that shook him free. He struggled forward now with a new urgency, ignoring the pain of his burned feet, clawing his way feverishly up the rocks that shook and heaved as if to throw him off, pulling himself at last to the ledge by his hands, one hand still gripping his weapon. Before him lay the spread form of Carol and the long white body arching over her, the face turned away, the torso like an immense white artery throbbing in time with the throbbing of the earth.

Even in the darkness he could see that it looked barely human. And what had happened to the head? Once, as a boy, he had chanced to drop a jar of peanut butter onto a stone floor; the container had shattered, but the shards of glass had remained clinging loosely in place, held by the substance inside. So it was, he thought suddenly, crazily, of this creature's hairless skull: shattered like crockery, yet all the pieces still intact.

The other took no notice as Freirs dragged himself onto the rock shelf beside them. Suddenly the white arc of the body tautened, the face, once hidden, turned toward Freirs, the tube filling the mouth, and in the moonlight Freirs recognized the farmer, his host and friend Sarr Poroth.

The face stared past him with no more recognition than a scarecrow, the eyes unseeing. There was nothing behind them. Carol's body quaked, her legs sprawled open in the moonlight, and it dawned on Freirs what the concentric rings on them were for: a signpost for something unfamiliar with the human female body. A target.

Slowly, as if it had read the revulsion in Freirs' mind, the farmer's eyes turned toward him, and the corners of the mouth stretched in a smile.

In terror Freirs lashed out with the sickle, the metal flashing in the firelight. The thing before him barely quivered at the blows, as unyielding as a slab of dead meat. Idly it raised a ravaged hand and groped toward Freirs' face. With the next blow Freirs struck home, the sharpened blade sweeping cleanly through the appendage that snaked from the farmer's open mouth.

Severed, the thing twisted and shriveled like a sliced-open worm, streaming obscene milky fluid. The farmer's body jerked twice, then fell limp upon Carol's. Above them the buzzing grew higher in pitch, became a scream as the thing within the mound thrust once more toward the stars, rising coil upon coil, then subsided. The seam began to close. Freirs saw the line of fire grow thinner as the massive blocks of earth slid together again, the great portals shutting. Miles to the south, the singing ceased as roses turned black and withered on their stems.

The mound sank inward on itself, settling back to its original shape, the cracks closing completely and blocking the fire inside, the tremors subsiding. The white appendage hung limply from the corpse's mouth like a severed umbilical cord. Freirs looked down in time to see a tiny charcoal-black creature slip from the hollow tube and scurry down the rocks, a rodent fleeing the collapse of its home. Poroth's tale came back to him, the mouse within the dead man's gaping mouth. Before he could cry out, the creature had leaped nimbly down the wall of rocks and the dark earth had swallowed it up.

The roaring was stilled, the vibrations had stopped. Around him now he could hear the innocent crackling of the flames and the voices of men pushing their way through to the hillside. Once again the sound of crickets filled the night.

Carol lay dazed upon the altar, eyes shut, her mouth still hanging open. Freirs rolled the farmer's body off her; it was already stiffening, the appendage dry and withered. Gently he closed Carol's mouth as one would the mouth of a corpse, not daring to peer inside, and covered her nakedness with his torn and sweaty shirt, thinking how different the moaning, heaving woman he'd seen below the farmer had been from the Carol he'd known, and wondering, reluctantly, how much pain there'd really been in those sounds she'd made, and how much pleasure.

Embracing her, he promised himself not to think too hard about it.

The moon gazed silently upon his kiss, the stars stared coldly down; and if they heard his vow, they made no sign.