Coven

COVEN

EDWARD Lee

Coven © 1991 by Edward Lee

For Amy & Scott.

—

PROLOGUE

Murder, he thought. Blood.

That’s all the student could think about, all he could see in his mind—the blood. The afterimage burned behind his eyes like red neon: the still corpse in the closet, castrated, headless. And the blood. Had they actually painted the walls with the man’s blood?

Alone now, the student lay exhausted on the jail cot. The station’s murky light drained into the cell; he felt submerged in dark. He tried to sleep, to forget about the blood, but even worse images flushed in and out of his head. He was standing in the moonlit dell, eyes peeled back like skinned grapes. Around him, the woods dripped and shivered. Carcasses, dozens of them, lay swollen to bursting beneath the foot deep fog. The student wore the stench of rot. He breathed it, tasted it. From the trees, and from beneath the fogtop, faces of things peered at him and shrieked. Not animals. Not people…

Things.

Mother of God, the student thought.

—then jerked awake on the jail cot.

Trying to sleep was useless. He remembered too much, in too much detail: his mad sprint out of the fog sodden dell, the sound of pulpous horrors crunching underfoot, and the monstrous laughter, their chitinous witchlike liquid giggles…

Please let me be insane.

What a relief that would be, to dismiss it all to insanity. But the student knew he could not, he knew it was real. Images continued to march through his head, and a parade of morbid questions. What in God’s name were they doing back there? How many people had they murdered? He’d seen their little graveyard in the woods. How many bodies had they buried? And whose? How much more blood had been spilled?

But amid the questions, one certainty remained.

I’m next. They’re coming for me next.

In the half dark, the student leaned forward and touched the jail’s cement walls. Yep, that’s cement, all right. Need more than a French bread to bust through that. His fingers ran down the frame of bars, jerked the locked steel door hard against its mount. Yep, this is a jail. No doubt a fucking bout it.

Safe, he thought.

Yes, he was safe; this was a secure cell. For the time being at least, the student was safe from those women…those hideous women in black.

—

CHAPTER 1

Exham College was, in a sense, exclusive. It was the college of choice for those whose GPAs and SATs wouldn’t get them into reform school, much less Harvard or Yale. As for its exclusivity, you had to be rich. Anyone with money could get into Exham.

The school occupied 160 odd acres of the Deep South, at the very end of State Route 13. The nearest towns were Crick City above and Luntville below, and that was it. The college owned the nearby half town, also called Exham, which was run by a small police department and a white washed city council. After that, though, for thirty miles in any direction, there was just tract upon tract of open farmland. In other words, Exham was the Alcatraz of the college world.

Despite its primary devotion to the upper class brain dead, the school ran very well, which was no surprise considering the amounts of money being dumped into its tills. There were two regular semesters between September and May, and two summer sessions for students to retake the courses they’d failed during the regular school year. The average Exham student took six years to attain a four year degree. Actual matriculation was about sixty percent, and the ratio of dropped classes to classes registered for was the worst in the country.

In all, Exham proved the paramount education institution for the black sheep of America’s wealthiest families. Being a complete fuckup in this world scarcely mattered as long as you were a rich fuckup. This might suggest a colossal indictment that all men and women are clearly not created equal, and that unmoderated wealth leads to a breeding ground of all manner of abandon.

««—»»

The eighteen hour drive from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Exham usually took Wade St. John about fifteen hours. What he drove was a car called a Callaway Twin Turbo, a $55,000 limited edition Corvette. Maintaining 120 mph for vast stretches of 1 95 was a breeze with the Uniden radar detector. The Vette was Wade’s sanctuary from reality, his cocoon. He’d just sit back in the leather seat, crank up the Nak deck, and put the pedal to the metal. Time stood still in the Vette. He was ageless. He was invincible.

Yeah.

Exham College entailed a series of circumstances he’d just as soon forget. Summer was for fun, not college. But goddamn Dad had put a damper on that faster than greased shit through a city pigeon. Wade could’ve killed the mailman; the way he’d felt waiting for his report card was probably close to the way those guys at the Alamo had felt waiting for the Mexican Army.

Dad’s voice needed no exclamation points: “Goddamn it, Wade. Two C’s, two D’s, and you failed history. Again. God in goddamned heaven. How could you fail history twice?”

“Be real, Dad. Does the Battle of Hastings really have any bearing on my life? Will I be made a better person knowing that Peter the Great put a tax on beards? What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal, son, is your brain, and you’re wasting it. These grades are beyond goddamned belief.”

“But, Dad,” Wade asserted, “I’ve done my best.”

“You haven’t done dick since the day I enrolled you at Exham. A chimpanzee could make better grades than these. You’re twenty four goddamned years old and you don’t even have enough good credits for a two year degree. Your marks don’t get better, they get worse.”

“I’m working on it, Dad.”

“Working on it? My God, son. Your grade point average is 1.4. That’s absolutely fucking outrageous.”

Uh oh. Fucking. That was a bad sign. Dad would say goddamn a lot, and occasionally shit, dick, and bullshit. But when he started modifying those adjectives and nouns with fucking…that meant trouble.

««—»»

The trouble had come the next day, with such devastation that Wade felt like someone had just dropped a thousand pound safe on his head.

“It’s ultimatum time, son,” Dad had announced.

“Pardon me, Dad?”

“The bullshit ends here. I will not permit my only child to devolve into the biggest failure in the history of higher education. I’ll give you till next December to raise your GPA to 2.5.”

“Say again, Dad? That’s a mathematical impossibility. I couldn’t pull a 2.5 even if I got straight A’s in the fall semester.”

“I realize that, Wade. So to give you a fair shot, you’ll be attending both summer semesters.”

Wade had laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Dad never looked like he was joking. But…Wade smiled. “Tough luck, Dad. The registration deadline has passed.” Whew!

“I called the dean this morning,” Dad informed him. “An exception has been made. Classes begin in a week; your schedule is waiting for you. Dean Saltenstall took care of it all.”

Oooo, that motherfucking suckface gay bar loitering dean! “Come—on, Dad! That’s not fair!—Everybody knows you have the dean in your pocket!”

“You’re goddamn right, and I will take advantage of that fact every chance I get. You will attend the summer semesters.”

This was serious. “Look, Dad, I can’t go to summer school. It’s, like, against my principles. What would my friends think?”

“Your friends are shiftless idiots not fit to pick the pebbles out of my tires. I don’t care what they goddamn think.”

“But I have a reputation to maintain! I’d never live it down. Summer is for partying, the beach, girls, that sort of thing.”

“There is no excuse for you, son. You’ve been in college six years and you’re scarcely closer to getting a degree than the day you stumbled drunk out of high school. All you do is drink beer, drive fast, and carouse with women of questionable morality. You’re smearing the family name, my name, and I won’t have it.”

This wasn’t going well at all. If Wade had to go to summer school, he’d be the laughingstock. Time for a little of the old B.S., he concluded. “Okay, Dad. Let’s make a deal. You let me have the summer off and I’ll give you my word, as a true St. John, that I’ll hit the books like you’ve never seen. I’ll become a virtual dynamo of diligence, discipline, and scholastic vision. My GPA will be up in no time, and there’ll be no more D’s and F’s, you can bank on it. That’s my promise, Dad, and I mean it with all my heart.”

Dad’s poker face remained as unchanging as a bust of Genghis Khan. “Son, you’re so full of shit you need a toilet brush to clean your ears. The matter is settled. You will attend the summer sessions. Period. And to add further incentive, I’m canceling your credit cards and terminating your $500 per week allowance.”

Wade’s mouth locked open. He was going to be sick.

“It’s for your own good, son. No money from me till those grades come up. From here on, you’ll earn your money. You’ll work a part time campus job.”

Wade was mortified. “A job? Me?”

“Yes, Wade, a job. You. I realize you’ve never worked in your life, but it’s time you started. The dean has made all the arrangements, as a personal favor to me.”

Wade ground fist into palm. So help me God I’ll bury that motherfucking dean up to his neck and SHIT ON HIS HEAD! “What is this, Dad? A conspiracy? National Let’s Screw Wade Week?”

“It’s for your own good, son. One day you’ll see that.”

Wade closed his eyes, tried to simmer down. “Okay, okay. I can understand. So what’s the job? I know you’d never stick me with some shitty bottom of the barrel job, right?”

“You’ll be working several nights a week at the sciences center.”

Doesn’t sound too bad. But— “What will I be doing?”

“Nothing too taxing, just a few hours a day. It’s a fine job, son.”

“Yeah, Dad. A fine job. But how about answering the question? Like what…exactly…will I be doing?”

Dad hesitated and very nearly smiled. “Cleaning toilets.”

Wade was beside himself…with horror.

“Along with assorted other janitorial duties. It’s time you learned to do a little honest work. That’s what made America, son.”

“Cleaning college shithouses is not what made America!”

“It’s honest work for honest pay.”

“Yeah? Exactly how much honest pay are we talking about?”

“Why, minimum wage, of course.”

By now, Wade could barely stand. He knew his flaws, sure. He was a nut-chase, a loaf, and a bullshitter. He used his looks, his car and his father’s money to skate through life. He could even admit that punishment for his ways was in order. Punishment, yes. But this was too much.

And with that thought, something very dangerous happened. Wade St. John, for one split moment, cast his good judgment aside.

“I’m not going.”

“What did you say?”

“I’m not going. I’m not doing any of it. I’m not going to summer school, I’m not giving up my credit cards, and I’m not going to clean toilets for minimum wage. How do you like that, Dad?”

And Dad had smiled a great big warm fatherly smile as he grabbed Wade by the collar and raised him a full foot in the air. Like a fish eye lens nightmare larger than life, Dad’s lips were huge in Wade’s face. “You will go to summer school. You will complete your assignments, you will study every night, and you will clean as many toilets as they tell you to clean. And you will raise your GPA to 2.5 by next December. Because if you don’t, you’re on the street. You lose the stocks, you lose the trust fund, you lose the car. You’ll be out of this house, out of this family, and out of my will. Now, how do you like that, son?”

Wade made the sheepiest of grins. “Gosh, Dad. Can’t you take a joke? Classes start in a week. I guess I better start packing, huh?”

—

CHAPTER 2

Penelope wished she could be a horse. She knew, of course, that wanting to be a horse was not exactly normal—it circumscribed the growth of her socialization. The psychiatrists called it reclusionary concept image fantasy, and they were always harping about “socialization,” whatever that was. “To actualize your individuality, you must develop a collective affirmation, Penelope. A sense of positive function in your interpersonal dynamics. That’s socialization.” And horses? They didn’t like horses. “Your fantasy to be a horse is merely an emotional reaction to your introversion.” Right. It was all poop to her. Daddy was paying $250 per hour for this, so she didn’t care. “Your fermented preoccupation with horses,” the shrinks said, “is actually the result of a malnourished, unidentified sexuality.” It astounded her how intensely Freud’s bullshit dominated modern psychology. It was all about sex.

Penelope was a virgin, and her virginity was something she could somehow never conceal from the psychiatrists. It was the “base” of the “indisposition,” they’d tell her. “It” was the cause of her “problem.”

“A problem of this nature, Penelope, is a commonplace emotional by product of a restrained sexualization.”

“What is?”

“The aberrational equestrian fantasy.”

“Huh?”

“Your wanting to be a horse. And no doubt a further derivational root to your overall amotivational symptoms, your unfocused state of esteem, and your failure in general to be socialized.”

The assholes. It all sounded like horseshit to her, Freudian pun not intended. Were they trying to tell her that she’d lose her interest in horses once she got laid?

Penelope felt comfortable with her virginity, and she couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about anyway. How could anyone want to be penetrated by something that looked like an uncooked half smoke? The idea appalled her. Once she’d watched one of Daddy’s X rateds on the VCR. Little Oral Annie, it was called. Penelope could’ve screamed: one delving, spurting monster after the next, and Little Annie had earned her middle name with startling expertise. One man had put his penis—which was the size of a summer squash—all the way into Annie’s rectum, while another spurted gouts of viscid goo all over her breasts. What a gross out! If this was sex, Penelope was quite happy to want no part of it.

It all got back to what the psychiatrists called the “anomalic base,” or the “illusion of reference”—her “problem” of wanting to be a horse. But what was wrong with that? Horses were free of the injustices of the human world. To these grand beasts, there were no such things as subjugation of womanhood, unequal opportunity, couch casting, prostitution, pornography, and the like. Horses lived in beauty and in peace. They knew only simple desire and simple love.

What a wonderful way to exist.

Weren’t fantasies symbols of our selves? Penelope’s fantasies proved her purity and her innocence. And this was the most outrageous part of all, because it was always the harmless people who wound up as the world’s worst victims. So it was best she didn’t know.

Her fantasies would not wait for her. Nor would her innocence, nor her life. All that waited was an end via her worst fear.

««—»»

The truss bridge was half a century old, and it looked it. Stained cement supports held up pale green girders. Warped planks stretched fifty feet across the sluggish creek.

Jervis Phillips stood precisely over the middle span, leaning over the rail. He stared down into the thick creek, a black mirror to his black thoughts. The sickle moon and starlight reflected nothing.

He wasn’t going to jump; he hadn’t come here for that. Besides, this creek wasn’t deep enough. He’d only get wet and be further humiliated. The little ring in his hand was why he’d come.

He was drunk. He stood unstable as the cruel world twitched and jagged around him. He’d drunk eleven bottles of Japanese beer—Kirin—to numb the pain in his black heart, but the relief was bogus. The alcohol only made it hurt worse.

Graffiti crawled over the rust patched girders, spray paint hearts and coiled 4 evers—a testament of love. It made him sick. Howard loves Sonja, Lee loves Betsey, Mary loves Jaz. Even Cathy loves Lisa. There was so much, so much love.

Jervis’ heart was a knot of pain. He’s probably fucking her right now. The thought cut through his stupor, like dried corpseskin crinkling. The little ring was ice in his palm. Yeah, he’s fucking her brains out right now. How does it feel, Jervis?

Feel? He had no more feelings. Only the image of Sarah wriggling beneath someone else. It was some rich German guy, some foreign developer’s kid. That’s all Jervis knew, and all he needed to know. Tears trickled down his cheeks like hot insects.

Now he understood the tragic logic of suicide. He understood how people could jump off buildings or slit their wrists when love abandoned them. His spectral thoughts were right. Without Sarah, he had nothing.

His tears fell into the water and made little plips.

Love stalks like a killer, he recited the Byers poem. See how freely it wields the ax.

But why should he think of killers and axes?

He opened his fist and looked at the ring. It was to verify their engagement, a diamond on a little gold band, size 4. Sarah had dumped him before he had the chance to give it to her.

When he dropped the ring into the water, he imagined not the ring but his heart sinking slowly to the bottom of the enslimed, black creek.

««—»»

Old Exham Road unwound like a lay by through a corrupt dimension. Nighted swamps and forests soon gave way to open flat fields and a crystal sky. All the way back to campus, Jervis’ despair seemed to sit beside him like a hitchhiker. He chain-smoked Carltons and drank more beer. Soon he came in range of campus reception; WHPL sizzled in like rain, Brian Ferry crooning about the same old blues and brides stripped bare. Skeletal stalks of fields of corn stretched on forever. The crescent moon looked like a reaper’s scythe—soon it would swoop down and cut him in half. Lying underwater in a foot of black muck, lying in pieces next to the little ring.

At last the endless ride began to end. The lights of the campus glittered beyond. He sped up Campus Drive, passed the Circle, and turned at Frat Row. The giant Crawford T. Sciences Center stood completely black, like an intricate carved mesa. Distant music floated down the hill, pipe sounds like druid flutes.

He idled past Lillian Hall, the largest of the female dorms. In the long lot he saw only a red 300ZX, which belonged to that weird redhead who ran the horse stables out at the agro site. But then the massed shadow lapsed. Two more vehicles were parked in the lot: Sarah’s white Berlinetta and the customized white van.

He stopped to stare at the van. It belonged to the German guy, the guy who’d stolen Sarah from him. He fucks her in that, came the simple thought. She gives him head in it. But sight of both vehicles assured what he’d feared. She was back. She would be taking classes this summer too, and her dorm was right across from his. He’d probably see her every day, her averted eyes and tight squeezed smile, and he’d probably see a lot of the German guy too. Jervis would be reminded of his loss every single day.

He got out of his Dodge Colt and trudged drunk up toward his own dorm. The moon slice had turned sour yellow. In the center court, his own heartbreak made him look back once more at Lillian Hall.

The faintest orange light flickered in the end window, second floor—Sarah’s window. They were up there right now. They were together in bed, asleep in candlelight, asleep in love.

Jervis wanted to bay at the moon. The images dropped into his head like stones. How could he live knowing she loved someone else? A crimson flash sparked through his vertigo. Was it premonitory, these jerking, unbidden mental sights? Again, he pictured himself cut in half. He pictured holes in the ground, graves. He felt that the image might be symbolic: seeing himself cut in half. Could that symbolize a separation of mind and body? Or did it mean something entirely different? Symbols, he thought. The more he looked at the candlelit window, the more he saw himself butchered.

This sensory ghost seemed to linger as he approached the opposing male dorm. He felt dead as he shuffled up the court. Wait. Dead? Was that how he felt? Yes, a corpse walking, dead but walking. Three quarters to rot and no life left inside but walking still.

Then the image, or the symbol, magnified—

—perforated dead arms slick to the elbow with blood—

(Whose blood? My blood?)

—and gaps rotted through the hands which held the bouquet of long stemmed roses—

I still love you, Sarah, he thought, his tears running.

But in this ghastly and third inscrutable image, why was his shredded green gray face set in a grin?

“Symbols,” he muttered.

His hands felt wet.

—

CHAPTER 3

SOMETHING—a word.

Suuuuuuu—

Errant rhythms somehow like pictures showed black like onyx. He saw sounds and heard colors—red, pumping. Red running over faces, flesh. Tongues licking red.

Yes. A word. Supremate.

Madness was a sound, images—pressure in his head. The word was a name. Someone was trying to tell him something. I am like a promise in the wind. Give me service and I give you power. You will have power untold. Madness, the sound, floated up from the abyss. The sound was screams.

Orgies? Or meals? Both.

Underneath, deep in black, the great face smiled at him.

Red lips sighed and parted. Bare breasts glistened in steam. The lips stretched slowly back, showing mouths full of needle teeth.

««—»»

Power, Besser thought. Power untold.

He awoke in the dark of his office. Sweat drenched his clothes, grew chill on his face. He nearly screamed.

The red lips, the hungry hungry mouths full of teeth, left his mind. The trances always left the light raw in his eyes, and any other sense perception irritating, like nails across slate. The second hand sounded like someone hitting a garbage can with a hammer. Once he’d heard an ant walk across the floor. Anything but the faintest of light hurt his eyes for at least an hour.

The trances had started weeks ago. But were they really trances? That was the only way they’d agreed to describe them. At first he and Winnifred had feared their own sanity. “Debris stimulated scotopic maladaptation compounded by symptomal endophasic perceptual induction,” she’d first declared. “Inpro-portional catecholamic production causated by reactive deviations of cerebral synaptic response.”

Whatever would he do with her? She jumped to conclusions almost as quickly as she jumped into bed. But Besser knew by now that this “trance” phenomenon was not relative to any psychiatric disorder. It wasn’t lucid dreaming or unsystematized hypnagogia, and it couldn’t be scotopic because it wasn’t visual. In the trances, they saw without seeing. They were simply shown.

“Power,” he said aloud to the beautiful strange edged dark.

The trances left no detail unclear. Each night they came stronger into his head, and emphasized his importance.

(Yes! Importance.)

—and the power, the promised power.

He went to the window. The night outside looked unreal. Colors seemed crisper, blazing, but darker. Lights glazed. Beyond, the campus looked compressed to a scary, opalescent clarity, etched in brilliant darkness.

Darkness, Besser mused. Hadn’t the face—the submerged face in their dreams—implied that darkness was now their light?

Behind him, Winnifred stirred, murmuring like troubled sleep. If the dean only knew, Besser thought. Winnifred Saltenstall was beautiful by anyone’s standards; Besser—fourteen years older than her thirty five—weighed over three hundred pounds. What else but the trances could explain her sudden, constant lust for him? He’d seen her past lovers: well built, handsome young men, reminders of what Besser would never be. So the trances were a bond. Mental. Sexual.

Winnifred Saltenstall was married to Dean Saltenstall. The dean was powerful, important, and very rich. He was also very gay. He’d merely married Winnifred to verify respectability. They had a deal which worked out quite well: they would pursue their own sexual interests as they pleased, discreetly of course, and serve one another’s domestic needs as necessary. “It’s easy to be married to someone who buys you a new Maserati every year,” she’d once said, “and doesn’t care who you fuck on the side.”

“Gods,” Winnifred muttered now. “God and goddess.” Her eyes fluttered open. She breathed deep in her chair, rousing from the trance. Besser was staring at her breasts.

“Oh, Dudley,” she whispered. “It was so strong.”

“I know. The trances get stronger every night.”

Her pose relaxed. Her knees parted. “Are you sure we’re not crazy? Maybe it’s hallucinotic.”

Professor Besser promptly frowned. “Delusional behavior and hallucinations are not shared.”

“Folie à deux, Dudley. It can happen—it’s documented.”

“Yes, I know,” he scoffed. “Multiple hysterical viewpoints, di exocathesis, and such. These are psychopathic labels, Winnie. We clearly are not psychopathic. This is real.”

“I suppose it is,” she conceded. “But it scares me. The trances scare me to death.”

Besser wasn’t listening anymore; he was staring. Her breasts showed through her opened blouse, heavy in the lace bra.

“Ghosts,” she said.

“What?”

“The trances must be ghosts.”

For pity’s sake, he thought. This was not the first time she’d suggested the supernatural. “That’s ridiculous. Ghosts? Demons?”

“‘Paramental entities’ is the proper term.” She ran a finger across her bare stomach. “The face in the trances, the voices—it’s all evil.”

“For pity’s sake,” Besser said.

Her hand rested on her thigh. Moved up. Squeezed.

“Evil,” she repeated, and smiled.

Here was the sharpest aftereffect of the trances: raw, pathological lust. They both trembled with it. The trances accelerated their sex drives, forced them to fuck. How many times had they done it already today? Eight times? A dozen?

The great face in the trance called it his love.

Ghosts? Besser thought.

Winnifred slipped off her dampened panties and began to masturbate. She did this quite a bit now, anytime it suited her. “I’m so horny, Dudley. The trances make me so horny.”

Teasing bitch, he thought. She always liked to tease him first. She unsnapped her bra, releasing the large, beautiful breasts. She caressed them, plucked out the nipples. Her ass squirmed in the chair, and she licked her lips.

Besser had been teased all his life by people like her. But he was powerless in his lust now. He unbuckled his size 54 belt, lowered his trousers to relieve the throbbing. He hated her for this, but he remembered—what? Promises? Yes, and power.

Then he remembered the faces behind the face. Who were these forlorn creatures? He felt them watching this very moment, phantasmal voyeurs. Their lips were so red, their teeth like slivers of glass. Could they really be ghosts?

Winnifred spread her vulva with her fingers, showing it to him. “Isn’t it pretty, Dudley?”

“Yes,” Professor Besser said.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to fuck it?”

Besser groaned. His knees were buckling. Teasing, teasing bitch! It wasn’t fair that she should be able to control him only because he was fat. Her lust propped him up like a dummy, a clown.

“Come over here and fuck it.”

He didn’t like to think of himself as a clown animated by the beauty of women. Yet he obeyed her lewd command, helpless. He would have his revenge later, when better things had come…

Power, he thought, crawling to his nymph. Power untold.

—YES, promised the voice in his head.

“I love you, Dudley,” she sighed. She spread her legs, offering the slit of her sex like a prize. Its pinkened wet glimmer lured him, and seemed to say, Be a good clown.

He dragged her to the carpet and kissed the prize. Squirming, she grabbed his head, rubbed his face in it.

I love you too, he thought. Till death do us part.

—YES, the great face repeated. —OH, YES.

««—»»

Red pumping over orgies and food.

—We wish we could be you.

Chaos wed to perfection. The perfection was a labyrinth and madness was a sound. Were these memories? Taste: warm copper, salt, meat. Sight: swollen breasts bared, loins inflamed.

Sound: screams.

Lips parted over needle teeth. Something—a word. Supremate. Sleek, white throats gulped gouts of blood.

—

CHAPTER 4

Home for the summer stared him in the face like an empty smile. Wade stepped off the elevator onto the eighth floor of Clark Hall, Exham’s largest male dorm. Home, sweet home, he thought dryly. Some fun summer. Thanks, Dad.

Silence fogged the hall. There was no noise, no rock and roll, no ping pong ruckus. No nothing. At least Jervis would be on for the summer sessions. Jervis took classes even when he didn’t need to—just to be close to his girlfriend. The poor jerk was in love, but at least Wade wouldn’t have to spend the entire summer alone.

Wade had two best friends: Tom McGuire and Jervis Phillips. Jervis was clearly the more eccentric of the two. He was a philosophy nut, worshiping any manner of unintelligible schools of thought, existentialism in particular. On his door hung an eternal portrait of Sartre. Wade winced at it, as usual.

But the door was open a crack. Wade entered and announced, “Howdy, Jerv! I’m back!”

Jervis was sitting in the corner. He was unconscious.

Wade rushed to check Jervis’ pulse, then looked around and gasped. The room had been ransacked. Lamps were knocked over, furniture smashed. The Sony TV screen had a hole in it; in the hole was an empty beer bottle. Bookshelves had been hauled down. Jervis’ stereo system and record collection had been thrown onto the floor.

Then Jervis came to. “Wade. Am I...in Hell yet?”

Wade gaped. Jervis looked in worse repair than the room. Dark smudges like axle grease ringed his eyes. His hair, oily and unwashed, stuck up every which way, while his Lord & Taylor shirt was stained with beer and vomit. He looked skinny, starved. Empty Kirin bottles lay everywhere, all around him.

“You’re drunk,” Wade said.

Jervis burped. “I ain’t drunk. I’m just drinkin’.”

“Jerv, what happened here? Do you owe someone money?”

“Yes, my Existenz,” Jervis mumbled. “I have been forsaken.”

He opened a bottle of Kirin with his teeth. Wade winced.

The bottle cap pried off with ease, along with the side of an incisor.

“Jesus Christ! What happened! Did your entire family die? Did your father’s stocks crash? What?”

Jervis spat out bits of tooth. He emptied half the Kirin in one gulp. “The end—that’s what happened. The end of the world.”

When Jervis got drunk, Wade knew, he became indecipherable with all that existential crap. “Is Tom around?” Wade asked.

“I think he’s down at the shop working on his Camaro. I asked him to drive me to Hell when he gets it running.” Jervis finished the Kirin on the second pull. “Yes, I’d like that. I’d like to go to Hell.”

“Jerv, your whole room is wrecked. I gotta know what happened.”

“Sartre was wrong, you know,” Jervis drawled on. “Existence precedes betrayal, not essence. There is no essence. There’s…nothing” —and with that, Jervis passed out again.

Stepping over empty Kirin bottles, Wade dragged his friend to the bed. Then he took another glance at the damage. It was hopeless. This would take days to clean up.

But what had happened?

He’d have to find Tom. Maybe he knew what had turned Jervis into a drunken, rambling waste.

He stowed his bags in his own room two doors down. Its sameness somehow comforted him. Wade’s room came with every luxury. There was a small kitchen, a fridge, a separate bathroom and study, even a trash compactor. How could Dad expect him to do well in school without a trash compactor?

The red light blinked on the answering machine. But nobody even knows I’m back, he thought.

Beep: “Wade, I know you’re back,” said a voice on the machine. “This is Jessica. I…oh, shit, I miss you! Please call me!”

Old flames never die. Sure, babe, I’ll call you. Next century.

Beep: “Wade, I know you’re back,” claimed the next voice. “Word gets around when the best looking guy on campus returns unexpectedly. This is Sally, in case you’ve forgotten my voice. Maybe you’ve forgotten my body too, so why don’t you come over right now, and I’ll give you a little lesson in refamiliarization.”

No thanks. Body by Fisher. Brains by Mack truck.

Beep: “Wade! I can’t believe you haven’t called me yet—”

He reset the machine, ignoring the nine remaining messages. It was nice to be wanted, but Wade figured that was their tough luck. Only so much of this handsome devil to go around, girls. Be patient. Chuckling, he locked his room and went out to the Vette.

The campus roads were close to empty. Wade sped past the liberal arts buildings, watching for the famed Exham police, who all seemed to have an affinity for radar guns. Wade’s Corvette was definitely on their Ten Most Wanted List, and so was Wade. He probably had enough tickets from these chumps to paper his dorm room.

The campus glowed green with grass and sun, placated in lazy tranquility. Crosswalks stood vacant, hall entries deserted. This vast emptiness made him feel sentenced; it reminded him of all the fun he’d be missing out on. Summer school, he thought, in disgust and despair. The rest of the world will be partying, and I’ll be stuck here.

Next he passed WHPL, the campus radio station—progressive, not pop, he thanked God—and around the next bend the Crawford T. Sciences Center loomed. Wade felt dismal driving by. Here, he’d not only be retaking a biology course he’d flunked last year but also starting his new job in toilet maintenance. Wade valued his reputation very much—handsome rich kids in Corvettes had appearances to maintain—but if people found out he was cleaning johns for minimum wage, he could kiss the rep goodbye. He pondered this potential nightmare so intently he missed the next stop sign.

A horn blared. Wade slammed his brakes.

A burgundy Coupe De Ville blew by, missing Wade’s front slope by inches. Wade immediately recognized the car as Professor Dudley J. Besser’s, head of the biology department as well as the most miserable ballpopper on the Exham faculty.

You fat hot air bag! Watch where I’m driving!

As the De Ville turned, Wade noticed a woman sitting next to Besser, and sitting close. Did Besser have a girlfriend? Impossible. Only a prostitute or a vision impaired Weight Watchers reject would date that anal retentive walking lard barrel.

Then Wade did a double take, took a closer look.

No fucking way! he thought.

This woman appeared to be Mrs. Winnifred Saltenstall, who was not only beautiful but also the wife of the dean.

Wade eyeballed after the De Ville until it was long gone. It can’t be, he mused. Winnifred was centerfold material; Besser was a fat dolt. No known logic could explain an affair between the two of them.

The student shop sat at the far end of campus. It existed solely as an ill conceived courtesy; not many rich kids tuned their cars up themselves, but there were a few diehard hot rodders on campus, and Tom McGuire was one of them. He owned a flawless white 1968 Camaro in showroom condition. The “Eat Dust” vanity plates said it all—this was the fastest vehicle on campus.

“Well, shit my drawers,” Tom yelled, looking up from the custom rebuilt 350 smallblock. Some old Deep Purple song boomed through the bays. “Since when does Wade St. John go to school during the summer?”

“Since Wade St. John’s father lowered the boom.”

“Bummer.” Tom wiped sweat off his brow. He tossed Wade a bottle of Spaten Oktoberfest. Tom was beefy, broad shouldered, with forearms thick as softball bats. His hair was dark and short, as conservative as his political views. Straight leg jeans and a white T shirt gave him the appearance of a sixties motorhead. He had a fondness for old music, German lager, and bad jokes. “Classes start in a week,” he pointed out. “We’ve got some serious partying to do in the meantime.” Then he paused, a force of habit. “Hey, Wade. Here’s an old one. Did you hear Nixon, Hart, and Kennedy started their own law firm?”

Tom’s notorious jokes were indeed old. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Prickem, Dickem, and Dunkem.”

Tom roared laughter. Wade shook his head.

“But seriously,” Tom went on. “It’s good you stopped by. I need to tell you about—”

“Jervis,” Wade finished.

“Yeah. You been up to the dorm already?”

“I just came from there. Jerv wrecked his entire room.”

Tom gave a grim nod. “I heard him trashing the place this morning, and throwing up. I tried to calm him down but the lunatic started throwing bottles at me. I guess he just flipped when it happened.”

“What?” Wade asked. “When what happened?”

Stone faced, Tom said, “Sarah dumped him.”

Wade slumped in place at the revelation.

“She dumped him right after the spring semester.”

Now Jervis’ destitution made sense, Jervis was far more impressionable than most; he was nuts about Sarah Black, head over heels in love. His whole life revolved around her; she was his life. “But I thought they were getting married,” Wade said.

“She’s getting married, all right. But not to Jerv. It’s some German guy she dumped him for.”

“A German guy?”

“Some kraut developer’s son, richer than shit. That’s all Jerv knows. And you’re probably thinking the same thing I’ve been thinking.”

“Yeah,” Wade verified. “That he might go right over the deep end, try to kill himself or something. Could he be capable of that?”

Tom’s laugh was stout and hearty. “Capable? You know how much he loves that smug bitch. This is the absolute worst thing that could happen to him. Right now he’s probably capable of just about anything.”

“Yeah, but suicide?”

Tom shrugged. “He’s got a gun.”

“What!” Wade exclaimed.

“Sure. He keeps it under his bed, some big old British revolver his grandpop gave him. I took the bullets out of it this morning when he was throwing up, and I swiped the rest of the ammo box.”

“Yeah, but he can always buy more. What are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna have to pull him out of this ourselves.”

“You’re right,” Wade said. “He’s got no one else.”

“I’ll meet you back at the dorm later,” Tom said. “We’ll clean him up and drag his ass down to the inn, get some food in him. He’s probably been living on Kirins since this whole thing went down.”

“Kirins and Carltons,” Wade added. “See you tonight.”

Wade took off in the Vette, cranking up an old Manzanera song called “Mummy Was an Asteroid, Daddy Was a Small Nonstick Kitchen Utensil.” Thank God for alternative radio; where would he be trapped in a world of bad rap and Madonna? He checked the rearview, then pitched his empty Spaten bottle into the Circle. With the campus this empty, at least he didn’t have to worry about getting pulled over.

Halfway through the Circle, he got pulled over.

That’s just fucking grand, he thought. But where had the cop been? They must have cloaking devices on their cruisers. Get ready, he primed himself. Wade wasn’t much of a student, but when it came to sweet talking police, he made straight A’s. He put on his innocent-face as the cop walked up, boot heels clicking.

“Good afternoon, Mr. St. John. My name is Officer Prentiss. I’d like to see your registration and operator’s permit.”

Astonished, Wade looked up. The cop was a woman. Girlfuzz, he thought. A dickless Tracy. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I just told you. I’m Officer Prentiss and I’d like to see your—”

“I know, my registration and operator’s permit.” Lenient cops asked for your license; but only hard asses called it an operator’s permit. This might take some work. “How come you know my name before seeing my li—I mean my operator’s permit?”

“I know all about you, Mr. St. John,” the cop said. “Chief White has properly familiarized me with all of the campus troublemakers.”

Wade laughed a chumly laugh. “Good old Chief White, always joking around. If you want to know the truth, my—”

“Your police file is the most extensive in the history of this campus.”

Wade paused. It was probably true. “Sure, Officer, I’ve had a ticket or two, but I’m no troublemaker, I assure you. And my father happens to be a significant contributor to the Exham Office of Donations, and is a close personal friend of the dean’s.”

“Which is the only reason you haven’t been kicked out.”

Wade paused again. This girl must work part time on a rock pile, he considered, and she’s using my balls for the rocks. Disgusted, he gave her the cards. He examined her as she began filling out his tickets. She stood well postured and medium-tall, very storm trooperish in her black boots and tailored tan uniform. Bright, straight blond hair was tied in back in a short tail, like a whip, and her eyes were a cold mystery behind mirrored shades. Wade supposed she would be cute if not for the inhuman police traffic stop set of her mouth. Her prettiness and her cop aura were a marriage of opposites: she invited to be looked at, yet revealed nothing to anyone who looked.

But there was something. Just…something.

“I’m citing you for doing thirty four miles an hour in a fifteen zone,” she told him.

“What, the Circle?”

“Yes, the Circle. And you get another one for depositing hazardous material on campus common ground.”

“What hazardous material!”

“The beer bottle you just threw.”

“Oh, you mean that Coke bottle?”

“It was a beer bottle, Mr. St. John, but of course you’re welcome to testify in court under oath that it was not. And since possessing an opened alcoholic beverage container in a moving vehicle is also against the law, you get a third citation.”

Wade was getting bombed worse than Pearl Harbor. All these tickets would cost three bills in fines and three more points, which his insurance wouldn’t tolerate.

Okay. B.S. time, he thought. He put on his best poor boy look, which probably was not very convincing while seated in a car that cost $75,000. “Officer Prentiss, I’m ashamed of myself. There’s no excuse for the thoughtless immaturity that I’ve demonstrated in your presence, and I humbly apologize. But the truth is, Officer, these tickets might cause my car insurance to be dropped, and that would make for some major trouble between me and my father. So I’m at your mercy. I’m going to ask that, in your generosity, you overlook these infractions, and in return you have my word and my personal guarantee that I will never violate the law on this campus ever again. My word.”

“I’ve heard better bullshit from Sterno drinkers,” she replied. She bruskly passed him the ticket book. “Sign, Mr. St. John.”

Wade was getting ticked. It wouldn’t kill this broad to give him a break. “What if I refuse to sign?” he dared ask.

“Then I will arrest you for ignoring a state summons.”

Wade laughed. “You wouldn’t dare. Maybe you don’t fully realize who I am. I’m Wade St. John. My father—”

“Sign the tickets or get out of the car,” Officer Prentiss said, then withdrew a shiny set of Peerless handcuffs.

Wade, boiling, signed the tickets. The cop tore off his copies and rather roughly stuffed them in his shirt pocket. “And if I ever see you throwing anything out of that car again,” she said, and smiled, “I’ll toss your rich boy behind in my jail in less time than it takes to say collegiate expulsion. Oh, and have a nice day.”

Officer Prentiss then drove off in her cruiser, leaving Wade slack mouthed. Have a nice day? he thought. Baby, they don’t get any nicer than this.

—

CHAPTER 5

The women stirred, moaning out from endless dreams. Their lair was a labyrinth; they lay deep in it. The labyrinth was silent and black, like death.

They lay together naked, their big eyes suddenly, inexplicably open. Something had waked them. Something—a word.

—Who are we? they wondered in unison.

But then they remembered. The labyrinth’s buried blackness began to move. They remembered who they were. They remembered the word, the holy, loving word.

Supremate.

—WAKE!

—Hello! one said.

—Hello! cried several more.

—We love you! We remember now!

They giggled together in their box. In joy, they kissed.

Then, like love, the voice caressed them.

—MY DAUGHTERS, MY LOVE.

The labyrinth was coming alive. Their lair grew warm. The dark and holy light felt beautiful on their white skin.

Memory crept closer. All things to serve their god! But first came an impulse. Sustenance. Hunger. Filling themselves up. The women remembered. They were hungry.

—Eat!

Yes, to eat. To make their bellies swell. Warm meat. Blood.

—We want to eat, please!

The Supremate’s voice was like a promise in the wind. —SOON, DAUGHTERS. SOON YOU’LL EAT. YOU’LL FEAST ON THE NEW PIGS.

Their loins tingled. Their red mouths drooled.

—Blood!

—Meat!

—New pigs!

They fidgeted in their box, reveling in the promises, like kisses. New blood to bathe in, and meat. They giggled and grinned.

—PRECIOUS DAUGHTERS…ARISE.

««—»»

The Old Exham Inn was an antediluvian brick and mortar catacomb full of dully clashing decor. Upstairs was the pub, downstairs the stage. The inn served pretentious “light fare” only and imported beer. The town, after all, knew who it was catering to—spoiled, rich college kids—which was how they got away with astronomical prices. Only “diverse” bands were billed, to keep out the local riffraff.

They filed down the stone steps to one of the small dining coves far off from the stage.

“Feeling any better?” Tom asked.

Jervis nodded like a wooden puppet. They hadn’t let him shave—his current hand and mentality could not yet be trusted to hold a razor to his throat. But they’d gotten him cleaned up and walking.

“I’ll have a beer,” he eventually said.

“You’ll have coffee, you dumb schmuck,” Wade corrected.

“And food,” Tom said.

Jervis groaned.

Wade ordered from a waitress whose frilled bräuhaus dress exposed enough cleavage to dry dock a runabout. Tom and Wade glanced warily at each other, contemplating a strategy to open Jervis up. Tom recognized the fragility of the situation. Wade, however, preferred a slightly more direct approach.

“So she dumped you, huh?”

Jervis wailed. Tom shook his head.

“Look, Jerv,” Wade said, “you can’t hide from this thing forever. You’re gonna have to face it, grab it by the balls.”

“Life’s got its ups and downs,” Tom said. “This is one of the downs.”

Jerv’s forehead was on the table. “But I still love her!”

Some can of worms, Wade thought. “Take my word for it, buddy. You’ll get over it. You got your whole life to look forward to.”

“Not without her,” Jervis told the top of the table. “We were gonna get married. I even bought a ring. It was going to be perfect.”

“Jervis, no girl is worth getting this bent out of shape over,” Tom offered. “When things don’t work out, you find someone else.”

“But I don’t want someone else. I want Sarah. I want my Sarah back!”

Wade tried to reason. “She’s not your Sarah anymore. That may sound cold but it’s the truth. Women can be treacherous, cunning monsters. One minute they’re telling you they love you forever; the next minute they’re in the sack with someone else, balling like there’s no tomorrow.”

Jervis jerked upright, pop eyed. He began to make croaking noises. Then he jumped up from the table and staggered away.

“Good going, Wade,” Tom smirked. “You really have a way with words. Why not just buy him a bus ticket to Lover’s Leap?”

Perhaps the direct approach had been a bit harsh in this instance. Wade had blown it.

The waitress with the St. Pauli Girl cleavage brought their orders, a Spaten Oktoberfest for Tom, a Samuel Adams for Wade, and coffee and gumbo for Jervis. “I knew he was serious about her,” Wade said. “But I had no idea it was this bad.”

“Bad isn’t the word. Jerv’s a sensitive guy. He keeps a lot of things to himself.”

“Too many things,” Wade concluded. “I warned him not to go falling silly in love with that girl. I never liked her anyway.”

“You just never liked her ’cause she’s the only girl on campus who never made a play for you.”

Wade rolled his eyes. “Just because I’m the sharpest looking dude in the state doesn’t mean I’m conceited.”

Tom laughed out loud.

After some time, Jervis returned, holding two bottles of Kirin Dry, one of which was already close to empty.

“Jervis, I didn’t mean to shake you up,” Wade apologized.

“Don’t worry about it.” Jervis sat down. “You guys are right. I’ve got to put this whole thing behind me.”

“Now you’re talking,” Tom said.

Wade pointed to the bowl. “Eat your gumbo. It’s good for you.”

Jervis dumped the gumbo into a potted plant. Then he began: “She dumped me by letter, during the break. She told me about the German guy, about how they’d been friends for a while, about how caring and ‘sweet’ he was, and all of a sudden she didn’t love me anymore. She’d stopped loving me months ago, she said, but hadn’t realized it till then. That was it, that simple. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore. And the last line”—Jervis gulped—“the last line of the letter was ‘Have a nice life.’”

“Serious bummer,” Tom commented.

“Oh, man,” Wade said. “That really sucks.”

Jervis continued, as if speaking from the grave. “I made mistakes, sure. I’m not perfect. But true love is supposed to make up for man’s imperfections. Love, real love, is supposed to be enough.”

Ordinarily Wade wouldn’t have been too concerned; this was just more of Jervis’ rhetoric. But although the words were the same, the spirit in which they’d been spoken was entirely different. The spirit was finality—total loss. This was not just another girl dumps boy story. This was dissolution of self.

But Jervis slapped his hands down as if to prove he’d roused himself. “Anyway, enough of my moaning and groaning,” he asserted. “There’s nothing worse than a sad sack feeling sorry for himself. Things just got out of hand for a few weeks. But I’m okay now, really.”

“You sure about that?” Wade questioned.

“Positive. Time to get back to my life.”

“That’s the spirit!” Tom said.

But Wade felt sad; he could see through this. Jervis’ smile was as false as one carved in clay. Despite the smile, there was nothing left for him but his loss. Wade could see it in an instant: Jervis was never going to get over this, no matter how happy he tried to act.

««—»»

• A student named Nina McCulloch lay awake. Above the bed hung a crucifix. Nina believed fervently in God, and she believed that Jesus had died for her sins. In the next room, through the wall, she could hear her roommate, Elizabeth, who clearly didn’t believe in God. Elizabeth had invited friends over to do drugs. They did drugs most every night, and this bothered Nina. Drugs were a manifestation of Satan, and people who did them became incarnates of the devil. Nina found that she could not easily sleep when all that separated her from the Lord of Darkness was one mere dorm wall. All night long Elizabeth and her friends inhaled the satanic white powder while Nina tossed and turned and prayed in snatches for God to protect her from evil.

• A man named Czanek waited in the vacant parking lot. Eventually his client pulled up in a silver Rolls Royce. The headlights flashed. Hokey, Czanek thought. He got into the Rolls. “Good evening,” the client said. “Has the matter returned to normal?” “No,” Czanek said. “Same guy, same moves, and I keep picking up weird stuff on the bugs. They keep mentioning trances.” “Trances?” “Trances. I can’t figure it.” “Keep on it,” the client said. Czanek handed him the manila folder, which contained pictures. The client thumbed through them and remarked: “Amusing.” Why would a guy want to keep seeing pictures of his wife fucking another man? But, hey, it was his money. The client passed him an envelope full of ten hundred dollar bills. “Next week,” the client said. “Yes, sir,” Czanek replied, “and don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. If they try to make a move on you, I’ll know. I’ll protect you.” “Do you really think that’s what’s happening? The insurance, the inheritance?” “Could be,” Czanek said. Suddenly the client was hugging him, sobbing. “Protect me! I’m afraid!” This was embarrassing. Czanek tried to console the old man: “Don’t worry, if that fat scumbag tries to move on you, I’ll blow his shit away from a thousand yards.” “Would you really do that? For me?” Of course he would. What, kiss all this money goodbye? “I’ll protect you,” Czanek repeated, and patted the client’s shoulder. He went back to his own car. The Rolls drove off. The client’s name was Saltenstall.

• A cop named Porker sat at the booking desk, eating a box of cream filled doughnuts. Another cop named Peerce sat at the super’s desk, flipping the cylinder of his Ruger Blackhawk and musing over a glossy mag called Cum Shot Revue. Another cop named White sat in the back office. The door was locked. He was counting this month’s grease. Still another cop named Lydia Prentiss sat alone in her bed, wondering where her life had gone.

• A student named Lois Hartley sat on her boyfriend’s couch. The boy was named Zyro, and he was typing his latest manuscript, “Billy Bud 1991,” which he claimed was about “man’s inhumanity to man, a psychical allegory depicting the suppression of spiritual freedom through capitalistic coercion.” It was also about “the resulting self parasitism of corporate tyranny.” To the publishers, though, it was about bullshit. Lois watched Night of the Living Dead on cable. “It’s about zombies,” she said. “It’s not about zombies!” Zyro yelled back. “It’s about the hunted within the sanctuary of the hunter! It’s about the cyclic futility of the black race trapped in a white supremist world! It’s not about zombies!” Lois Hartley sighed. It’s about zombies, you asshole.

• Two more students named Stella and Liddy were playing Strip Twister with a third student named David Willet. They played lots of games together. Others were Grease the Cucumber, Eat it Off, and Human Sandwich. David Willet’s nickname was “Do Horse,” which he’d earned the first time he took his clothes off in the locker room.

• A handsome young man named Wilhelm exclaimed, “Gott! Was ist dies scheiss?” The TV picture had winked out. “Willy, what’s wrong?” his new American girlfriend, Sarah, asked. “Your Americana television ist piece of scheiss.” “It’s Japanese,” Sarah scolded. “Das right, you Americana do not even support your own economy.” Sarah’s cat, Frid, purred from atop the refrigerator. “Forget about the TV,” Sarah cooed. She dropped her robe and was nude beneath.

• A man named Sladder drove hurriedly toward the campus power station. “Dag power failures,” he muttered. “Blam it!” But suddenly a headache developed. It was so intense he had to pull over and stop.

• Nina McCulloch’s roommate and friends were still in the next room doing drugs and ministering to Satan, the Great Deceiver. Please forgive them, God, Nina prayed. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” she heard from the TV. They’re coming to get you Nina, she thought sleepily. She dreamed of something huge falling—Satan. But the closer it got, the smaller it became.

• A sleek shadow moved quietly down the main hall of the admin building. A flashlight played over muskets and powder horns, an exhibit of colonial relics. Keys jingled; the shadow unlocked the last display case. A large object was removed. The shadow moved away as the object cast its own shadow in the moonlight—that of an impossibly large ax.

««—»»

Penelope dried off and examined herself nude in the full length. She combed her hair out to dark red lines. Light freckles covered her like fine mist. Her breasts were large, pale nippled. Last Christmas her grandmother had called her a “breeder,” eyeing her breasts and wide hips. “You have a breeder bosom, dear. You’re going to make some wonderful babies someday.” Make. Babies. What a thing to say at Christmas! The image caused her to clench.

Her pubis was a slant of shiny russet fur; pink peeked out from its cleft. She bared the tender opening with her fingers and shivered. How could babies come from something so small?

There was nothing to do in the dorm, and no one around to talk to. Sarah and the Erbling sisters were the only other girls on the floor for the summer sessions, but they were all too busy with boys to bother with Penelope. Her horse posters stared at her. The lights reflected too brightly off the walls; she felt trapped by its blaze, spied on by imaginary peepholes. She dressed quickly, got into her ZX, and left.

She felt lonely even in crowds. Most of her friends were only cursory; they were friendly but they really didn’t consider her a friend. They kept their distance because they thought she was weird. Her only real friend, she guessed, was Mr. Sladder, and he was an old man. At least he was nice to her. At least he cared.

She drove off the campus proper, opened up the ZX. The engine purred softly, her red hair danced in the breeze. The horses! she decided. That’s what she’d do, she’d go see the horses.

The agriculture/agronomy department had six cows, some pigs, sheep, and chickens. They also had four horses—two jet black hackneys and two palominos, one brown, one white. They were special to her. Daddy had arranged with the dean for her to be the stable groom again. It was a good way to keep her from “moping another summer away,” she’d overheard him telling her mother. But that was fine with her; she wouldn’t have to see the psychiatrists, and she loved to care for the horses. She loved brushing them and riding them. They were beautiful, and her only peace.

The campus had the agro site because many of Exham’s students came from rich farm families. The site occupied several dozen acres along the stretches of farmland on Route 13. Thoughts of the horses made her smile. She couldn’t wait to see them. Mr. Sladder, the night watchman, always let her in, even this late. The other security guards were young and leering, but Mr. Sladder was always very nice to her, and never crude. He was skinny and old, and tended to ramble about his past, but Penelope didn’t mind. He was just a nice, friendly old man, and one of the few people who didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. Her psychiatrists, of course, told her it was all subconscious “phallic fear removal reinforcement” precipitated by her “pseudo mandala”: she accepted the impotent old man because he did not contribute to her fear of being penetrated.

Was her period coming? A cramp spasmed. Suddenly she felt so sick she had to pull over. The cramp darted up like a spike, or, perhaps, a penis. A headache flared. Yes, it must be her period. “The Red Tide,” some of the girls called it. Why should women have to bleed from their wombs once a month? It wasn’t fair. Men should have to bleed from their penises too, then. But next her nose began to bleed, and that had never happened before.

Dizzy, she wiped her nose with a napkin, then she felt fine again. Weird, she thought. When she got back on the road, she realized her period wasn’t due for another week.

The agro site was pitch dark.

She stopped in the gravel access. The office lights were out; dark blotted the pens and white stables to ghosts of themselves, and the front gates were chained shut. Mr. Sladder’s little security car wasn’t to be seen. She looked past the wooden post fences, past the stables. In the distance, fog rolled along the wood line.

Power failure, she thought. Maybe Mr. Sladder’s car was inside the gate. But when she approached the compound, she knew something else was wrong.

She got out of the car. Total silence yawned over the site. Of course it’s quiet, she tried to assure herself. It’s the middle of the night. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? The site was too quiet.

“Mr. Sladder, are you in there?” She reached in and honked her horn. The night sucked up the sound. “Mr. Sladder!”

Headlights roved across her back. Startled, she turned.

Mr. Sladder was creaking out of the little white security car. He put a piece of gum in his mouth. “Nellapee? Oh, you come to see the horses, did you? ’Fraid we gotta problem.”

“What happened to the lights?”

“Dag power went out. I just come from the power station down the road. Thought some dag kids mighta got in there, messed with the transformers or somethin’.”

“Did they?”

“Nope. Place was locked up tight. Come on, honey.”

He unlocked the front gate and took her to the office, leading with a big boxy flashlight. “Dag quiet out here, ain’t it?”

Penelope didn’t hear him. She was looking out past the fence again. The fog seemed closer, thicker. It was eerie.

“Be with ya in a minute, darlin’. Got to raise me some heck with them morons down campus.” He sat at the desk and dialed the phone. Was it the chair that creaked, or his joints?

Penelope stood timidly. The flashlight seemed to warp the room.

First Mr. Sladder called the campus physical plant department. He was told that no power failures had been reported on campus and that the station meters showed no fluctuations into the agro site. He called the state police and was told that no traffic accidents that might’ve brought down a power line had been reported. Lastly he called the power company, who could not account for their power loss. But a “crew” would be sent “first thing.” “First thing when?” Mr. Sladder shouted into the phone. “First thing next week? Next month? Lugheads!” He hung up, sputtering. “Dag dabbit. Like to kick ’em all in their bee hinds, I would. Ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of blammed shammers.” The draining light made him look shrunken in the stiff uniform. His hat with a big badge on it sat ludicrously atop his cropped head.

“Come on, Nellapee.” He gave her a flashlight. “Let’s go check the junction box. I musta overlooked somethin’.”

Outside smelled funny. Something vaguely bitter meshed with the usual ripe stable smells. They walked between the white buildings. Penelope saw a flask in Mr. Sladder’s back pocket.

The old man looked worried. Could he be as afraid of the dark as she? She glanced past the fences to see how far the fog had crept, then realized they were walking in it. It came up nearly to her knees.

“Dag ground fog creeps up on ya. A fella can’t see where he’s walkin’. Careful of holes, hon. Holes all over the dag place.”

Mr. Sladder slid into the utility shed as if swallowed, light and all. Penelope stood alone in the fog, which the moon had made opaque—a murky, graying half glow.

“Blam it! Look at this!”

Penelope entered the shed, which was full of coursing rings of light. She smirked at an odor like burned plastic.

“Power surge musta blowed through here. Fuse housing melted ’fore the breaker pole could trip.”

The black pop switch on the center box read “On.” The main class CTL fuse sat in the melted carrier like a nugget of coal.

“Has this happened before?” she asked.

“Well, sure, honey. The lugheads don’t regulate the power proper is what. Just ain’t never happened this bad.”

“But you can fix it, right?”

“Me? Naw, hon. Have to get a ’lectrician out here to replace these boxes.” Mr. Sladder scratched his ear. Was he disturbed? “Just ain’t too keen on sittin’ around in the dark.” In the flashlight beam, the lines in his old face resembled knife cuts in meat.

Then a series of very loud crisp sounds echoed outside—

chunk. Crack!

Penelope jumped.

Again: chunk. Crack!

“Jiminy peter and Creesus Jeist! Ja hear that!”

She snatched his arm, which was thin as a wood rail in the starched shirt. “What was that? What’s happening?”

“Monkey business is what, dear. Scuse me while I consult my old friend Mr. Johnnie Black.” He took a quick sip from the flask and smacked his lips. “There she goes, much better. Now come on.”

The skinny arm led her out of the shed. The fog was everywhere now, a shifting great lake. It parted murkily around their steps.

“Mr. Sladder—”

“Jus’ you stay behind me, sweetheart.”

“Is someone here?”

“Dag straight I’m afraid, hon. Probably some town lugheads, comin’ up here all the time in their pickups, drinkin’, carryin’ on. ’Swhat happens ta boys when they’se not brung up proper.”

The farthest stables were out of use. Here, a section of the post fence had been broken, the twin crossbeams cracked.

“Looks like someone had a job here,” Mr. Sladder remarked.

Penelope remembered the two robust chunks. They’d been awful, irrevocable sounds. “Was it…an ax that did this?”

“’Fraid so, hon, and a big one, to drop beams as big as these.”

So people were running around the site with axes? “I’m scared, Mr. Sladder!” she whispered. “We have to call the police.”

“We’ll do just that, sugar. But first I wanna check—”

The animals, she finished in thought. An alarm went off in her mind. The horses! The ax! But that was too horrible to even think of…

They glided through the murk to the henhouses. The silence now seemed threatening. She prayed to hear something, but there was no sound at all. Not a rustle. Not even a single, simple cluck.

They aimed their lights through the chicken wire. Mr. Sladder’s words rolled out of his mouth like some slow, dark liquid. “Holy creepin’ Moses. What kind of dag madman—”

Penelope’s throat shivered closed. All the chickens were dead. All of them, dozens, lay on the dirt floor like piles of fluff, little tongues extruding from opened, tiny beaks.

Trails of fog led them to the sheep stable and the cow pen. They didn’t speak, or were perhaps unable to. They seemed to know—

The sheep were all dead, the pigs were all dead, faces slack on the floor. Worse were the cows, sidled over as if dropped. Their legs jutted stiffly, some frozen in rigor.

Penelope was crying. She was running. Dread propelled her down the wood corridors. No, no, please! Not the—

All four horses lay similarly dead.

“Aw, Moses, honey. Don’t look at this.”

Penelope stood with her back to the stable wall. She had no breath. Moonlight poured in through the roof’s gapped joists, tinting the corridor. Mr. Sladder went into the stables as Penelope strained to blank her mind, swallowing sobs.

“Looks like some right sick sons a bitches done poisoned ’em,” Mr. Sladder said.

Tears struggled down Penelope’s cheeks. How could someone kill the horses? They were the only things that meant anything to her. They were her dreams and her joys, and now someone had butchered them for a prank.

But Mr. Sladder said they’d been poisoned. Hadn’t they heard—

“We heard an ax, didn’t we?”

“That we did, Nellapee. No mistakin’ a sound like that. But it wasn’t no ax used on the critters. No wounds, no blood.”

All she saw in her mind, though, was the ax. Mr. Sladder took her to the stablemaster’s office, and as he dialed the phone, Penelope pictured a revolving display of axes in her mind, all shapes and sizes, cutting edges all agleam. It’s out there somewhere, she thought. She could not evade the question: Where’s the person with the ax?

“This is Sladder out at agro. Get me the—”

chunk.

The wooden building shook from the unseen blow. Penelope screamed. “Dag psychos chopped the phone box!” Mr. Sladder whispered. “They’re outside right now. We gotta haul tail to the car.”

Penelope was incoherent, haunted by the image of the ax. It knew—the ax knew everything before they did. Mr. Sladder hustled her back the way they had come. “We slip out back,” he whispered. “We use the buildings for cover. We weave between the buildings to the gate and jump in the car.”

She vaguely understood what he was saying. How could he think so clearly, so soon after hearing the ax? The chunk filled her mind, it possessed her. chunk. It was all the terror in the world. chunk. It was the sound of death.

They scrambled to the end of the stalls. There was the door, their escape. Moonlight drew its shape in imprecise gaps. The door seemed to stumble toward them. Almost there, almost…

chunk.

Penelope squealed shrilly. They froze as the blade bit through the door and then retracted with a creak.

Mr. Sladder was reaching for something in his pocket, but there wasn’t time, as—

chunk. CRACK!

—the ax tore down the exit door.

A figure stood huge in the doorway, shadowed black. The moon made a blazing halo behind its head. A stout arm held the ax half raised, as if to display it for them.

The ax was so huge it didn’t even look like an ax. A giant blade like an upside down L was attached to a haft over a yard long. Its cutting edge was flat. It looked old, like a relic.

“Holy Moses,” Mr. Sladder croaked.

The ax raised slowly, slowly…

Penelope screamed like a train whistle. Mr. Sladder leapt right. A pitchfork leaned out from the half door of the last stall. He was reaching for it, touching it, grabbing it. Then—

chunk.

Mr. Sladder made an indescribable sound, not a scream but a compressed suck. The ax chopped his arm off against the half door.

Now the figure struggled to remove the blade from the wood. Mr. Sladder pushed Penelope down the hall, to the stablemaster’s office and locked the door.

Sladder held the light while instructing Penelope to tie off his stump with a shoelace. Blood glistened at his feet. The old man’s remaining hand dug into his pocket and withdrew a pistol.

But the gun looked puny, while the figure outside, she knew, was huge, and so was the ax. How could something this small stop something that big?

Mr. Sladder got up, gripping the tiny gun. “You just sit tight, sweetie. I’m gonna poke some holes in that tub o’ lard out there. Ain’t gonna let no sick sons a bitches get their grubby paws on you, that’s fer sure.”

“But he has that giant ax! He’ll kill you!”

“Tojo and his whole fudgin’ army couldn’t kill me, puddin’. Be dagged if some fat lughead’s gonna rub me out.”

Mr. Sladder’s resolve was noble and obvious. Though he’d just been divorced of three quarters of his right arm, he put his fear aside. He would let this intruder, this animal killer, have Penelope only over his dead body. It was that simple. If you want the girl, you go through me first. Becalmed, then, he opened the door and stepped into the aisle.

Penelope peeped around. The massive figure had stopped halfway down the corridor. He held the ax from shoulder to hip.

“Hey, you fat tub!” Mr. Sladder yelled. “Puttin’ in some overtime with the knife and fork, huh? Fellas don’t come no fatter, that’s for dag sure.”

The figure faltered. “I’m not fat,” it said. “A trifle overweight perhaps, but I wouldn’t say—”

Mr. Sladder laughed. “Trifle! Who you kiddin’ trifle? I seen sea cows in Disney World skinnier than you, ya big tub!”

“This is absurd,” the figure said. “I won’t stand for this.”

“I’m surprised you can stand at all, fat as you are.”

The ax raised. The figure, offended, took a step—

—and Mr. Sladder fired the pistol.

Penelope flinched. It wasn’t like TV—the tiny gun made a loud, irritating pop! Then came a ping! A bullet ricocheted off the giant, flat ax blade. Mr. Sladder fired again. The figure howled, fell down, and crawled out the exit.

“He shot me!” he bellowed outside. “He shot me in the ass!”

“Dag straight!” Mr. Sladder affirmed, waving his stump. “Come on back for another if ya like, fatso!”

Penelope squealed, this time in delight. The tiny gun had worked! But then Mr. Sladder said, very slowly:

“What in creepin’ Moses is this?”

Two more figures stepped in the doorway, sleek, slim. They were just standing there. They looked like…women.

—Hello, they said.

But what was that? What was going on?

—We want to eat, please!

They began to step forward.

“You just turn right around!” Mr. Sladder ordered.

The twin silhouettes continued.

“I ain’t kiddin’, sweethearts! Dag dabbit, I ain’t one fer shootin’ a couple of gals, so don’t ya come no closer!”

The figures weren’t stopping, and clearly weren’t going to.

“Daggit! I warned ya, so here it comes!”

Four even shots slapped in Penelope’s ears; she clenched her teeth. When she looked again, the two figures were still coming.

Mr. Sladder scurried back, dragged Penelope out. “Come on, honey. Dag Saturday night specials, can’t hit fudge with ’em. I musta missed all four times.”

“Shoot more!” Penelope screamed.

“I ain’t got no more bullets! Now come on!”

They scrambled down the main stable walk, pushing through swing doors, bam, bam, bam, one after another. Mr. Sladder burst through the last one before the exit and—

chunk.

But it wasn’t a chunk as much as a resonant, wet splap! Mr. Sladder was standing straight as a pole, head bent back. The ax blade was buried in the middle of his face, bisecting his eyes.

“Dag fat psychopath,” he gurgled, staggering back. “Run, Nellapee…” Then he collapsed like a bag of sticks.

Penelope’s blouse was torn open as she turned to run. Two big soft hands plopped on her breasts and pulled. Instantly she was aloft. She was being carried away.

She kicked and screamed. Hot breaths brushed her ear. It was the ax-wielder, the horse-killer. He must’ve come around the other side of the stable. His big hands roughly kneaded her breasts and crotch as he carried her on.

—Be careful with her! the odd slushy voice demanded.

Slats of moonlight passed Penelope’s face. The horse killer seemed to be sniffing her hair, and then he was licking her neck. The harder Penelope squirmed, the more securely she worked herself into his grasp.

Then she thought: Plums.

It was an errant thought, yet very clear in her mind. Plums. The average person certainly would find it peculiar for a young woman to think of plums while being abducted by a madman in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, the image glowed: squashing plums, bursting them. She thrust her hand into the figure’s trousers, into his briefs. His erection felt like a hot bone. Thinking of plums, she grabbed his testicles and squeezed them so hard her hand cramped.

The plums, disappointingly, did not burst. But the figure’s wavering deep yowl was reward enough. He dropped her at once and folded up in the impact of pain.

Penelope ran.

She trampled down the corridor, banging through swing doors. No footsteps could be heard pursuing her. Next she squealed in joy, for in a moment she bolted through the exit.

The open night air felt good on her exposed breasts. She used the moon’s ghostly light to guide her out the gate and to the dark outline that was her car. I made it! she thought. I escaped! God only knew where the horse-killer was taking her, and what he planned to do. Penelope careered around her Datsun ZX, jumped in behind the wheel, and slammed the door. She reached for the ignition, had her fingers on the key, was about to turn the engine over, and only then did she realize in slow, sinking horror that someone was sitting beside her in the passenger seat.

—

CHAPTER 6

“Good to see you, Wade! It’s good to have you back!”

“Wha—” Wade said. A waxlike, idiot grin opposed him as he stepped through the vestibule. The lobby was dismal with cluttered dark and geometric edges of tile shine. Standing thinly before him was Dean Saltenstall.

“It’s a pleasure to be back, sir,” Wade, said, you back stabbing two faced grinning fruitbar.

The dean offered his hand, which Wade shook with some reluctance.

“Affluence is no excuse for one to become separated from the real working world. Isn’t that what life’s all about? Honest work?”

What do you know about honest work, you blue blood hypocritical fuck? “I couldn’t agree more, sir.”

“Good, good! Then let’s go.” The dean’s grin never faltered. “We start at the bottom and we work our way up, right, Wade?”

Wade didn’t know what the old crank was talking about, but he suspected that the reference to starting at the bottom might have something to do with cleaning toilets for minimum wage. They moved briskly down dim halls which smelled of floor wax. Their heels clapped on shiny tile. Wade followed the dean’s back, wishing for a slingshot.

“I’m quite proud of our lab facilities.” The dean looked like a sapling in a pinstripe suit. Preposterously overstyled grayish hair made his tight tanned face appear fake, like bad cosmetic surgery. “And I’m equally proud of our maintenance staff.” He stopped at the door. The door read “Janitorial.”

And the dean was beginning to snicker.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” the dean said.

Wade fumbled. “Why?”

“Why else? To teach you a lesson. You’re a rich, pompous hooligan who’s been breaking my ass for six years. But now, finally, I get to return the favor. Justice is so sweet.”

“So that’s the game,” Wade concluded.

“Indeed it is, so I’d walk softly from here on. Your father is at his final limit—your future is in my hands now. One more mistake, Wade, just one more, and your father will disown you.”

This Wade knew to be fact. He was in a minefield now.

The dean’s grin turned evil, his true colors. “I’m your lord and master from here on, Wade, and don’t you forget it. The rules are simple. You will work this job to the full satisfaction of the department, and you will carry out your duties as prescribed by your immediate supervisor without hesitation and without argument. Otherwise, you will be fired, and it will be my personal pleasure to see that your father is promptly notified.”

The dean had him now, and Wade knew it. If he got fired, he’d be cut off for good. But at least it couldn’t get any worse.

Or could it?

“Did you say something about a supervisor?”

“Indeed I did,” the dean replied. “And here he is now.”

A door clicked shut. A shadow crossed the room—huge, wide as a beer barrel. “Good to see you, Wade. Good to have you back.”

“No,” Wade muttered. “Not you. Anyone but—”

Professor Besser came forward. He seemed to be limping a bit. The plump, slyly smiling face and trimmed goatee made him look like the devil on his way to the fat farm. “I can’t tell you how enthused I am to be supervising you in your new…position.”

The dean handed Wade rubber gloves, a smock, and a toilet brush. “Tools of the trade, my boy.”

“It’s fun work, Wade.” Besser smiled. “As you’ll soon see.”

Wade took the “tools.” Then the dean turned to Besser and said, “I’m afraid there’s been a mishap on the second floor. It seems an entire bank of toilets became…clogged simultaneously, and they overflowed. Ghastly mess, and quite malodorous.”

“I’m sure Wade will be pleased to take care of it.”

“And remember,” the dean added, “honest work, Wade.” Then he threw his head back and laughed, disappearing down the hall.

“No time like the present, eh?” Besser said. “You will clean every toilet in this building, every day, and you will also mop every bathroom floor and scour every sink. And you know what they say, don’t you? A job not done right isn’t worth doing at all.”

“Oh, is that what they say?” Wade remarked. One day I’ll clean these toilets with your fat face. Now, that’s worth doing.

“I’ll be in my office should you need me. Have fun, Wade.”

Wade simmered. But as Besser turned to leave, Wade noticed something. Did Besser have a pendant around his neck? It looked like a black amulet on a black string. It looked like a cross.

But Besser was an atheist, like all college professors. Why wear a cross?

“Professor? Is that a cross you’re wearing?”

Besser didn’t answer. Instead he looked back with an unfocused gleam in his eye. Even more peculiar was what he said next. “Great things may await you, Wade. The most wondrous things.”

“Huh?”

Almost dreamily, Besser walked away. And that was odd too. He strode off in a quickened limp, like a man, perhaps, who’d been recently shot in the buttocks.

««—»»

The compound gate hung open, uncordoned. Some crime scene, Lydia Prentiss thought. Two more cruisers sat out front, both with keys in the ignitions. She grabbed her field kits and went in.

Field forensic experience was part of what she’d been hired for. Equal opportunity was the other part, which irked her because she knew she was the best cop in the department. The others seemed pressed from the same mold—redneck, bigoted, and barely anthropoid when it came to intelligence. Everyone spoke in thick southern drawls, and everyone was lazy—though she supposed this judgment, like all of them, was of her own prejudice. She took things too seriously, she’d been told for her whole life. Her college career counselor had told her she was a hypercritical Type-A personality. Her watch commander at D.C. had told her she was an insubordinate smart ass. These vain faults had always haunted her, had made college very lonely, had kept her from making friends, and had pushed her out of D.C. Not fired, really, just urged to “move on.” She’d even been in love once—just once—and had ruined that too. She’d ruined everything for herself.

Stop. Why think of these things now?

Chief White didn’t like her, but at least he respected her. The other officers were morons who only wanted to get into her pants. They all regarded her as a blond curio, not a cop.

She found Chief White and Sergeant Peerce in the compound office. “What the hell’s going on?” she asked. “The dispatcher calls me and says to get down here with my field gear but doesn’t say why.”

“That so?” White kicked back in the chair. “Guess that means my dispatch is incompetent, right? Like everyone else in this department, right? Except you…right?”

Off to a great start, Lydia thought. “Chief, I only meant—”

“You meant that we’re just a bunch of hick cops who don’t know nothin’ compared to slick city sharpies like you.”

Peerce laughed. Lydia frowned.

Chief White must’ve been about fifty, with short American Legion gray hair and a potbelly. Peerce was a big South Georgia stupe: redneck sneer, Elvis sideburns, and slicked back hair.

“We gotta missing security guard,” White told her, rubbing his temples. “Old rummy named Sladder. We also got evidence a female student was out here with him last night. And that’s just starters.”

“There was a power failure,” Peerce added. “Last anyone heard from Sladder was when he called it in to Physical Plant and the power company. Only sign of the old fucker is his wallet.”

“His wallet?”

“That’s right. Old fucker musta dropped it. We also found a purse,” White said, pointing to a slim purse on the desk. “Belongs to a student, Penelope somethin’, lives over in Lillian Hall. I got Porker out lookin’ for her. Peerce already been over the stables, but I want you to have a look too, judgin’ the seriousness of the situation.”

“Seriousness? A wallet and purse? What’s the big deal?”

White’s snide grin vanished. “Show her the big deal, Peerce.

Peerce took her out, not offering to help carry the field kits. Most of the stables were open faced. She noticed some animals in the field, dead. Their heads all seemed to point toward the woods. From the first stable she heard the buzzing. Then she saw.

Peerce led her from building to building, from bad to worse. Though the animals were token in number, they were all dead. Lydia had seen her share of 81s in D.C.; she was used to viewing dead men. But this was queerly different. Cows and pigs had always struck her as harmless, even comical. Here they were grotesque, swollen masses of meat. The buzzing, of course, came from blankets of flies, oblivious in their feast.

Poisoned, she concluded. But why? And what did they want her to do? Take latent hoof prints? She was an evidence tech, not a toxicologist.

“In here,” Peerce said. Was he amused by her uneasiness? He took her into the horse stable, where each stall housed a dead, gas bloated horse. Channels of white foam lay in their opened mouths, and their faces moved—masks of flies shifting grainily like an optical illusion. Lydia switched on her Streamlight. Clots of flies filled the horses’ eye sockets. Maggots shimmered.

“Serious enough for ya?” Peerce commented.

Asshole. She gulped. “How well did you look over these stables?”

“Like a fine tooth comb. Found nothin’.”

“Nothing? There’s blood on the floor, Peerce.”

“What blood? I don’t see no blood.”

“Bend over and look down, Sherlock.” She pointed to the darkened streaks along the run. “What do you call that? Cherry smash?”

Peerce lost his southern snideness. “Thought it was horsepiss.”

“Yeah, horsepiss. Look out, and watch where you walk!” She followed the blood line with her SL beam. It ended at some larger splashes by a utility stall. A spatter of “fall” dotted the wall in an arch; what she knew about bloodfall trajectory told her the victim must’ve been moving away, not forward. Drop-configuration like this was rare. The large bleed at her feet bothered her most of all. A bleed this big in conjunction with this fall pattern indicated an excruciating wound. At D.C. they’d once walked into a basement where two crack taxis had been murdered. They’d found the men in a pile of neatly stacked pieces. Axes had been used.

Her eyes followed another line up. The halfboard on the stall had a gouge in it, what a tech would call strike impactation. More blood stained the gouge. Shit, she thought. Had the victim been reaching for the pitchforks in the stall? Yes. It’s too perfect. She peered over and looked down. More blood.

The impactation looked good, a good strike. She’d need no toolmarks workup to tell her this was an ax, and a big one. A big blade with an unusually flat cutting edge. But there had to be more.

Follow back, she thought. “Look at the fall.”

“Huh?”

“The bloodfall. The drop points change direction here, a 180 degree shift. They don’t lead forward, they lead back.”

Peerce didn’t know what she was talking about. Lydia followed the line. “Jesus,” Peerce observed. “Fucker lost a lot of blood.”

“Don’t walk in it!” Lydia yelled. “Look, Peerce, this place is too small for both of us. Do me a favor and—”

Peerce didn’t need to be told. He sputtered and went back to the office, bitterly chewing a wad of tobacco.

Now we’re in business. She aimed the SL back on the blood. It went about fifteen feet to the stable charge’s office. The phone hung off the hook. A larger splash had coagulated on the floor. Lydia crouched down, thinking. She closed her eyes and tried to see the victim. Despite the wound, he’d made it back here.

Why? To use the phone.

What then? He hadn’t died here. Not enough blood.

So he left. He’d dressed his wound and he’d left.

Now where? Where would I go if I’d just been severely cut by an ax wielding maniac near the stable entrance?

The stable exit, dumb ass.

But what about the attacker, the axman? He’d still be in the aisle. Cut this bad, did the victim actually have the balls to go back out and fight?

Weapons.

Maybe he was strapped. If the victim was Sladder, maybe he had a gun. Some guards carried them, some didn’t. The security office would know; they had sign out sheets. The suspicion needled her.

She went back out, imagining herself in great pain. She fixed her SL beam, and there they were, like gold ingots at the baseboard. Bingo! she thought. There were six of them. .25s, maybe .32s. He popped six caps at the axman. Okay, okay. What then?

Escape.

She followed away from the empty cartridges. Where did he go now? She pictured a frantic, bleeding man stumbling along. Come on, come on. Show me.

The last swing door before the exit. Bingo! she thought again, but it was a pale thought. She’d been rooting for the bleeding man, for nothing. This was as far as he’d gotten.

Her SL beam frozen down, Lydia stared quietly. Jesus. The bloodstain lay wall to wall. Footprints led out of it like stick on dance steps. It was obvious. The victim had been butchered.

The blood was here, all over the place. So where was the body?

««—»»

“How could you miss bloodstains on the fucking floor?” White was bellowing at Peerce when Lydia came back in.

“It’s dark in there, Chief. Without no lights, it’s hard to—”

“Shit, Peerce! She’s makin’ us look like fools!”

“Well, sir, I—”

“Shut up! What else that stuck up priss find that you missed?”

“Plenty,” Lydia said at the door. Stuck up priss? “The weapon was probably an ax with an unusually long, flat blade. I got several impactations that look the same. The back fence was cut with it, and so was the entrance door and the phone lines. One thing I’m sure of, though. Someone died in there.”

“How do you know someone died?” White protested.

“I followed the bloodfall. No one could lose as much blood as I found at the exit and live. Only problem is there’s no body.”

White conjectured this and scoffed. “I don’t believe someone was murdered.”

“You just don’t want to believe that someone was murdered in your juris.”

White glared. “You got a lot of nerve, girl.”

“Just being honest, Chief. Question. Was Sladder packing?”

“No,” White said. “Only supervisors carry guns. Why?”

“I also found six spent casings. Remington .25s.”

“Shit!” White’s fist slammed the desk. “What the fuck’s my campus turned into?”

A slaughterhouse, Lydia thought, almost with a smile. But the smile drained when she remembered the blood. She wished for her daily Marlboro. “I can stand here and speculate all day, Chief. But it’d just be a waste of time.”

White’s voice lost its edge. An unsolved murder could make the papers, smear the school, get him fired. “I can’t stall this, Prentiss. This shit’s gotta be solved, and I mean by us, not some outside agency. We’ll be closed out once the state gets here.”

“State? The agro site’s part of the campus. It’s ours.”

“No, it ain’t, not really. All them animals are licensed through the state department of agriculture. Health inspectors will be wantin’ to know if some disease killed the animals. We’ll be up to our butts in state by late afternoon.”

Late afternoon? “That’s no time for me to do a workup,” Lydia complained. “I’ll have to get started right now. I need you to get the power back on, I need lights to sweep for prints. And I’ll need cold storage, I’ll need lab space, I’ll need—”

“I’ll get you everything you need,” White interrupted. “You say you can do this kind of shit, then get to it. I’m puttin’ my trust in you, Prentiss, but hear this. If you fuck up and make me look like a damn fool, I’ll make sure you’re checkin’ parking meters for the next twenty years. You got that?”

“I’m touched by your confidence,” Lydia said.

—

CHAPTER 7

Jervis knew he’d fooled no one last night at the inn. Pretending to have put Sarah behind him was an act he’d never pull off, like a corpse pretending not to be dead. Wade had seen right through him; Tom too, probably.

The bar was called Andre’s, a redneck hole in the wall ten miles off campus. A Deep South chant played softly from the juke, swamp guitar and a tale of broken promises and broken hearts. A mob of bikers stood around a pool table throwing back shots and making frequent use of scatological verbs.

Jervis waited in a darkened booth. The equal darkness of his mind sedated him. Like a corpse pretending not to be dead, he thought again. But what would summon such an image? He ordered three Heinekens from a chubby, lank haired blonde whose frayed cutoffs showed the bottoms of her cheeks. “You drinkin’ these all by yourself, cutie?” she asked.

“Just two of them. I’m expecting someone.”

Her belly button peeked from a fleshy gap. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” he lied. He tipped her a fin.

“Gee, thanks, cutie.”

“Don’t mention it.” Just leave me alone.

Eventually his guest arrived, a sleazy shadow sliding into the booth. Slim fingers gripped a clean manila envelope.

“Good evening, Mr. Czanek,” Jervis said.

“Good evening, Mr. Smith. Or is it Jones?”

Jervis slid him a beer. “It’s Tull. Jethro Tull.”

“Of course. My apologies.” Czanek grinned through a con man’s visage, a constant easy smile and long hair pushed greasily off his brow. It was the smile, Jervis realized, that told the genuineness of the man. Czanek was a happy go lucky denizen. He lived with the sleaze and despair that hid behind the world, yet smiled, somehow, in honest happiness.

“Got a lot of poop on your man,” he said. “It’s amazing what you can learn from a tag number.”

Jervis cringed to damp a sudden excitement. This was either fast work or sloppy. “At a hundred fifty a day I figured you’d milk me for a week at least. That’s what private dicks do, isn’t it?”

“Only on divorce jobs where the woman’s a looker,” Czanek said. “I don’t take clients for a ride. It’s bad for business.”

Some business. Jervis lit a Carlton. “Speaking of business…”

Czanek’s voice was soft yet rough, perhaps by design. “Your man’s full name is Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich. His father’s a developer from West Germany, very, very rich. The Germans are investing tons of cash in the south coast, like the Japanese in California.”

“Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich,” Jervis muttered.

“The kid’s twenty six years old. Got a degree from University of Bamberg, business. He’s an instant in for his pop.”

“You got a picture?”

Czanek lay out a stockholder’s brochure. Dozens of neat faces smiled up from a glossy sheet of corporate members. One face was circled in red marker, and read “Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich,” like letters on a gravestone. This man is my epitaph, Jervis thought.

He’d glimpsed Wilhelm only once, at a distance, getting out of his white custom van. Now, though, Wilhelm’s face smiled up in beyond belief handsomeness. Jervis felt very sick all of a sudden. The face looked like something on a GQ cover: square jaw, bright blue eyes, short blond, very Aryan hair, perfect teeth.

“Pretty boy, huh, Mr. Tull?”

“Don’t rub it in, Mr. Czanek.”

“Sorry. Here’s a Polaroid I snapped this morning when he left for the gym.”

This was worse. Lover boy in the parking lot. Blazing white shorts and sleeveless T shirt with the words “Deutschland über Alles.” His legs looked like shellacked oak pillars. Muscles gleamed in too perfect symmetry. Lots of muscles.

“He’s six-two, according to his license, a hundred eighty five pounds, and I don’t see any fat. In real life, he looks bigger.”

Jervis groaned.

“He’s renting a place just out of town, to be close to the girl.” Jervis appreciated Czanek’s courtesy. He never referred to Sarah by name. It was always “the girl.” Jervis supposed it was a trait of Czanek’s profession to depersonify a lost love. It made it less embarrassing.

“The address is here. It’s about fifteen minutes off campus, a fourth floor apartment, nice place. Lease expires September first.”

Jervis cleared his throat. “You got a schedule on the guy?”

“He works out regular at Brawley’s Gym, ten until three every day. I got a look at the sign in sheet.”

“What else? I need more.”

Czanek had more, plenty more. “He picks the girl up at six every night. They eat out, go shopping, like that. Then he brings her back to his place, or they go to hers.”

Jervis lit another Carlton, finished the first beer, and started the second. Czanek’s three day surveillance was exemplary—it drove Jervis’ despair to new heights. He’d asked for it, though. He’d asked for all of it.

“He’s been in the States two years, got his citizenship right away. Two vehicles in his name, a Porsche 911 and the white van. He buys a lot of stuff for the girl. There’re some Xeroxes of his credit card invoices. He’s a big spender, and…”

“What, Mr. Czanek?”

“There’s one more thing I don’t think you want to know.”

“What?” Jervis repeated. “I’m not paying you to be my shrink.”

Czanek removed some papers from his sports jacket. “These are some additional credit card invoices. Lots of jewelry purchases and restaurant tabs from the same places on the invoices there.”

Jervis looked at the invoices in the folder. They all had recent dates. “What’s the difference between these and the invoices in your hand?”

Czanek hesitated. “The invoices in my hand go back six months.”

Jervis stared.

“Six months, Mr. Tull. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.”

Jervis wanted to die. She’d been dating Wilhelm six months before she even broke up with Jervis. Behind his back for six months. Jervis felt minuscule in his seat, blackened by a shadow more vast than all the broken hearts in the world. He must seem pitiful.

He took out his wallet. “A hundred fifty per day, right?”

“That’s right, plus ex—”

Jervis gave him six hundred. “And keep the retainer for expenses.”

The money disappeared into Czanek’s jacket like magic. He left the folder and invoices on the table. “Thank you very much, Mr. Tull. You have my number in case there’s anything else I can do.”

Anything else. Jervis was staring. “What else do you do?”

Czanek leaned forward. “Let’s just say that my services are not exclusively limited to the parameters of the law.”

Jervis didn’t quite know what to say. What am I thinking?

“I don’t kill people,” Czanek said.

Had that been what Jervis was thinking?

“And I don’t break legs. I’m a P.I., not a thug. Besides, I’d have to be out of my mind to try anything against that meat-rack. However, there are some things I can do that you might be—”

“I want something…close,” Jervis said. “I want—”

Was Czanek smiling? “You want a bug in her place.”

A bug? Jervis wondered. “Keep talking, Mr. Czanek.”

“I got a great little wireless crystal, eight hundred foot range. Only problem is it runs on a battery and the battery only lasts ten days. The crystal costs a hundred bucks, I charge five hundred to put it in and three hundred for each battery change. I’ll only change batteries twice, then I’m out. Too risky.”

Ten days? That was plenty of time. That was his whole life.

“You can find guys who’ll do it cheaper, but not better.”

Jervis nodded. He wasn’t about to go hunting in the PennySaver. “I don’t have a key to her dorm anymore, but I got a funny feeling that you’re not particularly troubled by the inconvenience of locks.”

“Don’t worry about locks. Does she have a burglar alarm?”

“No,” Jervis said.

“Then anything she’s got on her door I go through in two seconds.”

“When’s the soonest you can have it in?”

“Tomorrow night, max.”

Jervis passed him six more hundred dollar bills. “Do it,” he said.

««—»»

Jervis drove half drunk back to campus. His arrangement with Czanek would only lead him to further despair, he realized, yet he looked forward to it, as a masochist looks forward to the whip. It didn’t make sense. Why was he pursuing this?

His driving began to falter. The yellow line looked like a smear to oblivion. His thoughts spoke to him like an alter ego, a secret sharer of despair.

I’m crazy, he thought.

Of course you are, his thoughts answered. You’re an English major; English majors are crazy to begin with. It’s all that existential shit they made you read, all that Sartre and Hegel—what a pile of crap. You took it seriously, Jervis, you thought it would save you. Jesus Christ, you’ve become obsessed with this girl. Private investigators? Bugs? It’s crazy. Your love has made you crazy.

“I know,” Jervis whispered to his id. “I’m crazy, and I still love her. What am I going to do?”

The black thoughts seemed to snicker. Kill them, they said.

“Kill them?”

Kill them. Then kill yourself.

««—»»

Wade’s first day as toilet cleaner proved as expected: shitty. His clothes reeked of mop water; it permeated him. Back in his dorm room, he turned on all the lights and the TV, let the room surround him in familiarity. He sat on the bed with a bottle of Samuel Adams lager, pushing the day and its myriad toilets from his mind. He needed mirth, he needed cheer. The TV picture formed, a cable flick called The Louisiana Swamp Murders. Raving toothless hillbillies chased topless blondes through the bayou with hatchets.

So much for mirth.

At least the day was over. He hit the Play button on his answering machine, hoping more girls had called, or friends, or anyone to make him feel better. Instead…

Beep: “Wade, this is your father. Call home at once.”

Oh, no, Wade thought.

Beep: “Wade, this is your goddamn father. I know you’re there; you’re probably sitting on the fucking bed with a beer right now. Call goddamn home at once or you’ll be goddamned sorry.”

Wade dialed the phone in slow, comatose dread.

“Hi, Dad. This is—”

“I know who it is, goddamn it. What the hell are you trying to pull down there? Three traffic tickets? On your first day back?”

Wade flubbed. “How did you find out about—”

“Dean Saltenstall told me all about it.”

Wade seethed. Why that blue blood no dick piece of garbage! So help me, I’ll— “Dad, I can explain.”

“No, you can’t. There’s no excuse for irresponsible shit like this. You’re supposed to be shaping up, not fucking up.”

“Really, Dad, I—”

“Heed my words, son. You’re at the end of your own rope. One more fuckup and you can start packing for the Army.”

Click.

Nice talking to you too, Wade thought.

There was a knock at the door. Tom entered, dressed for town and bearing a bottle of Spaten Oktoberfest. “Hey, Wade. Here’s an old one. Carter walks into the White House groundskeeping office. He’s holding a pile of dogshit in his hands, and he yells, ‘Goddamn it! See what I almost stepped in!’”

“That’s the worst joke I ever heard. Anyway, dogshit, bullshit, it’s all the same to Republicans. They’ve got plenty of both.”

Tom stopped midstep, sniffing. “What’s that smell?”

“I don’t smell anything,” Wade lied.

“Smells like that stuff janitors use to clean toilets.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wade said. “We partying tonight?”

“Of course.” Tom looked at the TV and frowned. Inbred psychotic bumpkins were yanking the pants off a bug eyed blonde. “What’s this? A new campaign ad for the Democrats?”

“No, it’s the reruns of the last Republican Convention. Don’t you remember?”

“Hey, I’m laughing… See if you can drum up Jervis for tonight. I haven’t seen him all day. And… Jesus, that smell’s really strong. You been cleaning toilets?”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Wade balked. “Much later.” If anybody—anybody—found out he was cleaning toilets for minimum wage, his reputation would be…flushed. “I need some time to get ready. Meet me at the inn in an hour.”

Tom nodded, sniffing, and left. Wade finished his Adams and dropped the bottle into the trash compactor. The sound of it being crushed made him picture himself being crushed by Dad, the dean and Besser. He quickly gathered his shower gear, but stopped. On the TV a girl with large breasts was being dismembered by an obese, drooling slob in overalls. Wade grimaced. Whatever happened to happy movies? He knew it was only the power of suggestion, but the grimy hillbilly madman on the TV screen bore a distressing resemblance to Professor Besser.

—

CHAPTER 8

Professor Besser! The name screamed in her head.

Had she been sleeping? Penelope wasn’t sure. Nevertheless, the image remained, crisp and bright as neon. The big face in the moonlight… It was the last thing she remembered before blacking out—being carried into the woods by…Professor Besser.

She pressed against her memory. What had happened?

The power failure. The stables and…my God, the ax! The horses!

She remembered escaping, but she hadn’t escaped, had she? She’d made it to the car, but before she could drive away—

There’d been someone in the car, hadn’t there?

Someone waiting.

The woman, Penelope remembered.

Something clicked, a snap like a tiny bone. Then the rest of the memories siphoned back into her head.

—Hello, Penelope, the woman said.

“How do you know my…” but Penelope’s words languished. Her hand never turned the ignition. The woman was looking at her now, and all Penelope could do was look back.

—You can help us.

The woman was dressed in black, a black cape with a hood. The hood made the woman’s face hard to see. Oddest of all, she wore sunglasses in spite of the night.

—Don’t be afraid. I want to be your friend.

Within the drooping hood, details of the woman’s face seemed to shift beneath a fine blur. Her skin was vibrant white, bloodless.

Penelope didn’t understand anything now. There was only this. “What do you want?” she peeped.

—We want you.

At once Penelope was drowning in her whole life. Tears came. All she ever wanted was to be cared about, to be…wanted.

The woman’s luminous smile eased close. —You’re very special, Penelope. I can show you how special you are.

It was something like credence, an awareness rather than a conclusion. It would be wonderful to be special, to be loved.

—Love.

The woman touched Penelope’s cheek. The warm hand seemed to seal the promise of trust.

—I’ll protect you, the woman in black promised. —I have something to give you, something you’ve never had before.

Penelope’s whole world now was the woman’s touch. The warm white hand began to probe her breasts. The sensation was delicious. But what had the woman said? Something to give her?

—Destiny.

“Wh what?”

—I can show you destiny, Penelope. I can show you love.

“Show me,” Penelope moaned.

The woman’s blurred face hovered close. The scarlet lips parted. The mouth opened wide, full of teeth like a dog’s.

««—»»

Tom poured the Spatens with the exactitude of a master. “We’ll give Jervis an hour. If he doesn’t show, we’ll split.”

Wade nodded. No one could remember seeing Jervis all day. Wade had a bad feeling.

“You’re worried about him,” Tom commented. “You don’t believe he’s over this Sarah thing even though he said he was.”

“Well…”

“You think he’s gonna lose it, shoot himself, or climb to the top of the WHPL tower and do a double gainer.”

Could he picture it? “It’s just not like him to disappear.”

Was he being unreasonable? He couldn’t cast off the gut feeling, the presage that Jervis’ emotions were too rampant for his selfhood. How close was he, really, to cracking up?

“Hey, Wade. Here’s an old one.”

“Please,” Wade pleaded. “I’m in no mood for conservative jokes.”

“What do Carter and the North Virginia Amtrak have in common?”

“I’d really rather not—”

“They both pull out of Rosalynn at five A.M. sharp.

Wade shook his head. Tom’s jokes were like a Kirby vacuum cleaner: they sucked.

The inn was packed. They sipped their Spatens like wine poseurs. Beer snobbery was an intricate art. No Bud for these two. Then Wade said, “Wouldn’t it be a riot if Jervis was here and Sarah walked in?”

Tom glanced behind him. “You psychic?” he asked when he saw who was side traipsing through.

Sarah Black emerged from the wall of backs and heads, her eyes thinned as if in some harsh assessment. She wore purple high heels, blue leather pants, and a clinging blouse the color of arterial blood. Very short platinum blond hair fit against her head like a flier’s cap.

“Hey, Sarah!” Wade called out. “How’s it going?”

“Don’t,” Tom warned. “Don’t start a scene.”

“How are things in the she devil business?” Wade asked. “Good?”

She gauged him without reaction.

“That was really classy the way you dumped Jervis.”

“This is a mistake,” Tom told him.

Sarah sniped back: “I didn’t dump him. Things just didn’t—”

“I know,” Wade completed. “Things just didn’t work out. That’s what girls always say when they dump a guy.”

“I didn’t dump him!”

“You dumped him cold for the first new pecker to cross the pike. Why not just admit?”

Sarah’s dark eyes reflected sheer rage. “What the hell do you know! I didn’t dump him! We broke up because Jervis was no longer compatible with the dynamics of our relationship!”

Wade chuckled. “That’s a good one. You were just taking him for a ride until someone with more money came along.”

“I was not!”

“Oh, and I like that outfit, by the way. I guess Warhol had a rummage sale, huh?”

Sarah’s cheeks seemed to be wafting heat.

“Don’t worry, Sarah. It’s not against the law to be an absolutely awful person. You should congratulate yourself on a job well done… Now, see if you can interpret the significance of the following gesture.” Wade pushed his nostrils up with his index fingers and began to make pig noises.

Sarah shrieked: “I’m getting my new boyfriend to kick your ass!”

“Hey, I’m shakin’,” Wade said. “I’m leaving town. See?”

Sarah tromped off, her lips pursed to a tight, red seam.

“When are you gonna learn to control yourself?” Tom complained.

Wade shrugged sheepishly. Many patrons were staring at him, brows raised. “I couldn’t resist. She had it coming.”

Tom ordered two more Spatens. “I don’t understand how Jerv could fall in love with that gold digger anyway.”

“Love’s a funny thing,” Wade speculated. “It clouds our sense of reason. The Eleventh Commandment: Love makes morons of men.”

Tom slapped the bar. “I knew you had religion in you somewhere.”

The Spatens caught up fast; you could only put so much in before you had to let some out. Wade excused himself to the men’s room, which was empty and damp. As he tended to business, the wall provided an engaging display of graffiti. “Eat, drink, and be Larry,” one scrawl read. “West Virginia men are men…and sheep are nervous.” And: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than have a frontal lobotomy.”

Sounds like you need both, Wade thought. But when he turned to leave, he found a frightfully large figure standing in the doorway.

“Pardon me, brother. You’re blocking the door.”

“Zat iss correct,” came a succinct, zinging German inflection.

Wade already knew who it was. This fucker’s huge, he thought, and that was all he thought for some time. Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich loomed, bringing his angular face and blue eyes into the light. He wore tailored gray slacks and a silk shirt that must’ve cost five hundred dollars.

“You get that shirt at Ward’s?” Wade asked.

Wilhelm’s face remained a stoic blank. “Herr St. John, you unt me, vee must come to an understahndink.”

“I understand that you’re possibly the biggest motherfucker on two legs, but that’s about it. I like the accent, though. French?”

“Unt comedian,” Wilhelm said. “You insult mein girlfriend, and vut it iss you must understant iss zat no vun insults mein girlfriend.”

Wade took a crack at the accent. What did he have to lose? “Vell zen, mein namen must be no vun because your girlfriend iss unt ahz hole, Herr Big German Mozzerfocker.” And then Wade slammed his fist into the soft of Wilhelm’s belly. Only…there was no soft. What his knuckles impacted felt like padded rock. The German didn’t flinch, or even react, to the blow.

“So much for the warm up,” Wade said. This guy must have the Berlin Wall under his shirt. Wade pointed to the ceiling. “Stukas! Look!” Wilhelm looked. Wade rammed his fist into Wilhelm’s jaw with a raw, wet smack.

Wilhelm chuckled. “Unt comedian,” he remarked again, smiling, and flung Wade effortlessly across the bathroom. He crashed into the stall and banged his head against—of all things—the toilet seat. Wilhelm then put a wristlock on him…and twisted.

“I tell you ziss only vunce, scheisskopf. You ever speak to mein girlfriend again” —Wilhelm’s free hand produced a shiny knife— “unt I will kill you.”

The knife flashed. Wade could read the words Blut und Ehre! on the blade. Wilhelm gave Wade’s arm another twist and emphasized: “I vill cut your guts out und stuff zem down your sroat.”

“I think I get the idea,” Wade wheezed, wondering when his wrist would snap.

“Vee have understalindink, zen, ja?”

“Ja!” Wade conceded. “Ja-ja-jaaa!”

A tad more twist on the wrist. The knife turned. “Ja?”

“Ja, goddamn it! Ja!”

Wilhelm put the knife away. “Gute, gute, we have undestahndink, but zere iss vun more sing. In zah fazzerland, vee have a special way of sealing unt agreement.”

Wade rolled his eyes. He knew what was coming.

“Vee drink to zat agreement, Herr St. John, and ziss drink iss on me.”

Wilhelm then thrust Wade’s face into the toilet and flushed. “Gute?” he asked. He pulled Wade up. “Unt anuzzer? Ja?”

“Nein, nein,” Wade groaned, dripping.

“Ja, I sink vun more for zah road,” and down Wade’s face went again. This time he was held much longer. Bubbles erupted from his lips. Somehow he managed to think: I am going to drown in a toilet. What a way to go.

When Wilhelm let go, Wade fell out of the bowl and onto his back, gasping. He coughed up toilet water as his conqueror towered flagrantly above him, hands on hips and smiling.

“Until vee meet again, Herr St. John—guten Nacht.”

Wilhelm turned and left. Dripping, Wade struggled to his feet and tried to clean himself up at the sink. Remind me to never insult Sarah Black again, he chastised himself. Wade’s defeat was optimized when he plucked a big pubic hair off his nose.

««—»»

And what happened after that—the vision of teeth—was a smudge in Penelope’s mind. All she could see was that widening, bright red mouth ringed with teeth. The teeth were pointed and long.

Then came a blur, a vibration. A sudden, nettling pain pricked Penelope’s throat. Then the woman in black got out of the car.

Penelope couldn’t move. She could see, hear, feel, think, but she couldn’t move. She slumped, paralyzed, at the wheel, her hands upturned in her lap like dead birds.

—Hurry.

Someone was coming. A shadow moved across the windshield.

She fell out on the ground when the door was opened. The horse-killer bent over—the axman—and that was when Penelope first recognized him: Professor Besser, her biology teacher!

He did not look pleased.

—Hurry!

He grunted, threw Penelope over his shoulder, and started walking.

He was taking her back to the stables. Where had the woman gone? Besser’s feet thudded the dirt floor. Penelope saw lines of stains, blood. Then Professor Besser stopped.

—Hurry up with her and come right back. There’s much to do.

Mr. Sladder’s flashlight was on the floor. It was still on. Penelope could see upside down past Besser’s legs. And what she saw…

The flashlight cast crisp, black shadows on the wall. One shadow was a prone figure—Mr. Sladder with the ax still in his head. Another shadow squatted over it.

“I’m very tired,” Professor Besser complained. “I need help.”

—You’ll have help soon, the woman’s slushlike voice replied. But where was she now? Was she the second shadow?

More shadows converged. Suddenly there was a wet plunging sound, like someone cleaning the insides out of a big pumpkin. Shadows of hands and arms were reaching into Mr. Sladder and pulling things out.

Professor Besser’s feet started up again. Penelope remained limp over his shoulder as he carried her out of the stables and into the foggy, moonlit fields.

She was slipping away. Her breasts bobbled upside-down. The fog came nearly up to Besser’s waist. They were passing the utility shed and the chopped down fence. All the while, the stinging throbbed at Penelope’s throat. What had the woman done to her?

Had the woman bitten her?

Soon they were past the grazing fields. Penelope’s arms hung down, consumed by fog; he was carrying her into dark woods. Her consciousness seemed to be dripping out of her head, but very faintly she thought: It would be so much better to be a horse.

Indeed, it would have been. Her carrier took her deep into the forest. Twigs crunched beneath his clumsy feet. Then they came to a clearing drenched in moonlight. A brief hillock stood out, and she thought she saw something there—

Something black.

“Here’s your new home, Penelope,” Besser said, trudging across.

She passed out when she saw what he was taking her to.

The thing on the hillock was a black oblong box.

It looked like a coffin.

—

CHAPTER 9

Wade and Tom had left a couple of Spatens later. Tom laughed when Wade recited his encounter with Wilhelm and the toilet dunk. “That’s what I call the house special,” he’d said. “Next time don’t start trouble you can’t handle.” Wade, still damp, agreed.

Downtown Exham was quiet tonight. Quaint, fake gas lamps lit the cobblestone streets. As they headed for the next bar, Wade found himself still preoccupied with Jervis.

“He’ll turn up,” Tom said without having to ask. “He’s probably sleeping off a Kirin shitface back at the dorm.”

Wade hoped so. He caught himself glancing into the gun shop on Huberty Lane. What would he do if he actually saw Jervis in there, buying bullets, buying guns? But that was an absurd idea—besides, the shop was closed.

“Hey,” Tom exclaimed as a car passed. “Was that Besser’s car?”

“What?” Wade was off guard. He turned and saw a big maroon sedan cross the town square and disappear. “Who cares?” he said. The last person Wade wanted to be reminded of was Besser, his janitorial supervisor. “He’s so fat he probably can’t even fit in a car, much less drive one.”

They finished the night at a corner saloon imaginatively named The Bar, which specialized in imported draft like Old Peculiar, EKU Edelbock, and Spaten and Adams, their mainstays. After a few pints, Wade stepped up to the taco bar despite Tom’s warning that tacos never failed to incite horrendous nightmares. As Wade doled on plenty of cheese and chili, he overheard several crim majors whispering about some mishap at Exham’s agro site. He could make no details save for bits of phrases: “deader than dogshit” and “.25 brass all over the fucking place.” Some of the crim students worked security for extra credits; Wade presumed some local rednecks had taken some shots at the agro animals or some such, but he hardly cared. He still felt sidetracked about Jervis, perhaps, but something else too. “Quit worrying about Jervis, will you?” Tom implored when Wade came back to the table.

“Can’t help it,” Wade admitted. “I can’t shake this gut feeling that something’s happened to him.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop by the campus drunk tank on my way back to the dorm, just to be safe.”

“Good idea. Maybe he got trashed, busted.”

But that wasn’t it either. Something itched at Wade. And what he never noticed was that the same car had driven by the saloon a half dozen times. A big maroon sedan, like Besser’s.

««—»»

Penelope found she could move a little now. She could move her head up, she could move her fingers and toes. She looked down the side of her body. She was naked. She’d been laid out on her back in some strange, dim light. Was it a floor she lay on? A table? It was warm here, and humid like a steam room. She could see with great clarity, and there was another feeling, something internal. A sharp dazzle seemed to radiate along her boneline. Had someone given her drugs? It felt strange but not unpleasant.

None of this made sense, yet even that did not occur to her. She’d been assaulted tonight, abducted, and inexplicably paralyzed, but amazingly she felt no fear. She felt giddy, happy even. One of her arms she could move. She guided her hand to her neck, to the faint stinging. It felt like a bump with a hole in it, and right next to it was another hole, which didn’t sting at all. All she knew was that she had two holes in her throat and she didn’t care. She even giggled at the revelation.

Next she moved her hand across her chest; a pleasant tingle followed. The feeling spread in a wishbone from her breasts to her sex, glittering along the inside of her thighs and up her belly. Her breasts felt impossibly large. When she squeezed them, a painful yet prurient pressure gusted to her genitals. In her sedate confusion she finally realized what it was.

She was horny. Inexplicably and irrepressibly horny.

She kneaded her own breast, feeling the swollen nipple. Next her fingers walked down and rubbed the little button of her sex, then plucked it, twirled it, as though it too were a nipple. The sensation was delicious. Suddenly her mind filled with the most lewd imagery, a recollection from that video of her father’s, Little Oral Annie, but at once it shifted slightly, to Little Oral Penelope. In her mind she saw her mouth stuffed with erections, one after another, balls slapping her chin. She sucked and sucked, and one after another, each penis slid out of her mouth at the crisis-point, emptying lines of sperm into her face. She let the bitter sauce run warmly down her breasts, as her hand raced at her sex. An inexplicable feeling was mounting in her—more images assaulted her: massive, veined penises whacking in and out of her vagina like mindless pistons of meat, then tremoring, then filling her to overflowing with more delicious, wet heat...

Something clicked.

The images abandoned her, replacing the unbidden lust with an edgy curiosity. What had that sound been? And, more importantly…

Where am I? she thought. A house? A basement? Where exactly had Professor Besser taken her?

She seemed to be lying in a narrow, dark room whose confines were etched very dimly in orange and silver light. And what were those things above her? She turned her head, looking up. Shelves? she thought. They looked like butts of bottles in a wine rack, so maybe she was in someone’s basement. The things in the rack glinted like glass in the dim, orange light.

Voices suddenly rang in her head like bells.

—Penelope!

—Penelope! We promised you a great destiny.

—Oh, you’re so lucky! We wish we could be you!

—We love you, Penelope!

The voices were a madness in her ears. They blurred from side to side like stereo. They were the woman’s voice, the woman who’d been in her car, the woman in black.

—We have a great silver lord, and you’ve made him very happy!

—Yes!

—And now it’s time for us to fulfill our promise.

The slush voices blanked, replaced by a vast, amplified silence. Penelope could hear her heart, her eyes blinking, her blood as it pulsed through her veins. Her breasts and sex throbbed in the remnants of her sexual fantasizing.

Distantly a door opened. A bent block of light lolled across the floor. The orangish hue disappeared altogether, leaving only what she guessed must be moonlight. A figure came into the room, tiny in the distance and crisply black. It cast no shadow.

More and more Penelope felt pleasantly drugged. There was only lethargy and the intense, primitive horniness that made no sense. The figure stood at her feet now. Penelope recognized it at once as the woman in the black cape and hood, yet now she seemed younger and thin, like a girl in puberty. The white, smiling face gazed down through onyx black sunglasses.

—We wish we could be you.

But why should she wear sunglasses indoors? And, yes, she was very young, for her cape fell open and revealed small, predeveloped breasts and a hairless pubis.

Suddenly the girl seemed very sad.

Penelope was not herself and never would be. Images of sex remained stuffed into her head, stupefyingly precise. How could such thoughts, once terrifying, once her worst fears, now delight her to madness? Penelope, a virgin, cringed to be fucked.

—I have what you want right here. Our master’s gift.

“What?” Penelope was finally able to speak.

—YES, came the voice. But this voice was ragged and black. The single word concussed in her head.

It was a man’s voice.

Penelope moaned. She quivered in heat. The dim, silverish light seemed to smother her in lust.

The girl set something down and backed away. —We wish we could be you, she said sadly. Then she left.

Was someone breathing? Penelope heard a noise.

Grunting, she propped herself on her elbows. She looked past her bare feet at what the girl had left.

It was a bucket. It was just a bucket.

She fixed her eyes on it. The sound grew louder. It reminded her of gurgling, of respiration. Then—

Did something bulge over the bucket’s rim?

The gurgling quickly rose to an excited, wet sputtering. The bucket began to rock back and forth, over and over—

—until it tipped over.

A large puddle of dark slop poured out of the pail. It seemed brown, shining; it shifted slightly. Clumps of gurgling bubbles escaped its amorphous center. The mass floundered; it seemed to be straining upward…

Within the mass, a pair of lopsided white lumps emerged.

They were eyes.

It’s seeing me, Penelope slowly realized. Though merely blobs bereft of pupil and iris, these floating white lumps were seeing her.

The thing was staring at her. Did it desire her? Did her raw, sweating nakedness excite this…this thing? She thought so, for next it strained upward again, with much more force. Streams of bubbles spurtled out below the two white lumps.

Penelope giggled. She wished she could touch the atrocious mass. She wanted to put her feet in it and draw the bubbling slop between her legs, coddle the lumpy gelatin. The woman in black must be a witch, she thought, and giggled again, Witches. Devils. What else could explain the percolating thing before her? The woman in black must be a witch, and she’d conjured up this devil from Hell.

But why?

Now Penelope realized what the mass of glop was straining to do. It surged upward again. It held there, shaking. Then, something gave—

—and it stood up.

It stood before her like a man. In relief, it shivered. It had a lumplike head, stringy brown legs, and arms that sagged nearly to the floor.

—YES, she heard.

And the woman: —Yes!

The thing’s erection stood out like a knotted post.

Penelope sighed.

The thing chuckled.

In hitching, dripping slowness, it knelt sloppily between her legs and lay on her in a delicious, warm weight. Penelope cooed, already beginning to tremor in orgasm. Passions merged like intent plumes of flame; beauty and revulsion coalesced.

Then the face of held together muck lowered, dripping, and gave Penelope a big wet hot lumpy kiss…

—

CHAPTER 10

At the precise moment that a grossly maladjusted redhead named Penelope was, with much delight, losing her virginity to a man shaped cohesion of slop, an old joke prone conservative business major named Tom stepped into his dormitory room on the eighth floor of Clark Hall and witnessed what, within minutes, would describe the end of his life. What he saw, exactly, was an attractive woman sitting on his desk, wearing only a white blouse and high heeled shoes. That’s right—no skirt, no panties. And what this woman was doing, exactly, was masturbating. To say the least, this struck Tom as an oddity. When you walked into your dorm room well past 2 A.M., the very last thing you expected to see was an attractive woman sitting on your desk masturbating. No, you did not expect that at all. Especially when the woman was Winnifred Saltenstall, the wife of the dean of Exham College.

««—»»

Earlier Tom had stopped at the campus police station to see if his friend Jervis Phillips had involuntarily checked in for the night. The night cop, a rather bulbous young man known as Porker, was applying Giant brand peanut butter to a row of English muffins. He was using an ice cream scoop instead of a spoon.

“Excuse me, Officer Porker,” Tom said. “Anyone booked tonight?”

“No,” Officer Porker replied. He seemed addled by this intrusion. “You want to be the first?”

“Not really. Say, I saw in the Sears ad that they’re having a sale this week on backyard sheds.”

“So?”

“Thought you might want to know, in case you’re in the market for a new lunch box.”

Porker stopped clicking the scoop. “My patience is getting thin.”

“Yeah, but the rest of you sure isn’t.”

“You’ve got about a second to get out of here, McGuire.”

“A second? It’d take you that long just to get out of the chair.”

“That’s it.” Porker began to get up.

“All right, I’m leaving.” But Tom paused at the door. He could not resist. “Hey, Porker, here’s an old one. How do you get your mother into an industrial freight elevator?”

“How?” Porker asked.

“You grease the doorway and throw in a Twinkie!”

Tom roared laughter. Porker grabbed his nightstick, yelling, “McGuire, I’m gonna kick your motherfucking—”

Tom boogied, revved the Camaro, and split. What else am I going to do with all these jokes? he rationalized.

But cruising down Campus Drive, his levity waned. The night seemed creepily dry of life. Hollowness followed him back to the dorm like a tailgater, and soon odd thoughts probed his mind, thoughts that seemed like someone else’s, a mad person’s, perhaps. Rhythms of words whose meanings made no sense creaked back and forth in his brain. He heard colors and saw screams. Then he saw something else, much more clearly: a murky shape in spattered moonlight—a man. The man’s face was blacked out. He held a shovel in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.

Tom’s stomach shimmied. He cringed at the image, almost veered off Pickman Way. One too many Spatens, he dismissed.

This, of course, all tracked spoor back to the last significant event of Tom’s evening. He rode the elevator up to 8. When he walked into his dorm room, what he heard was:

—He’s here.

What he saw was:

Winnifred Saltenstall masturbating on his desk.

And what he said, after an appreciable pause, was:

“What the hell are you doing!”

Mrs. Saltenstall’s face was flushed and lightly asweat. She’d been caught, not with her pants down, as the saying goes, but with them off. Her pose lost its tension, and she sat upright. “What’s it look like I’m doing?” she answered huffily. “I’m masturbating.”

Tom could only stare in disbelief. This situation required some consideration. When he finally spoke, the strain of forethought made the next sentence seem guillotined. “Why—is Dean Saltenstall’s wife—masturbating—uh—on my—desk?”

“I hate just sitting around, Tom.” She tossed her head, brushed back her hair. “I had to find something to do while we were waiting.”

“Waiting for what!”

“For you,” she said, and grinned.

Tom’s head seemed to tick. He stalled again. Waiting?

“We knew you’d get here eventually. So we waited.”

Waited. Get here. Waiting. “Then it was you in town. In Besser’s De Ville.”

“Uh huh,” she admitted. “We were driving around—scouting, you might say. We were looking for a suitable enlistee.”

“Why do you keep saying we? You mean you and Besser?”

“No, Dudley’s busy right now.” Winnifred’s grin spread as wide as her legs had been. “He’s helping our master.”

Madness, Tom thought.

“We,” she went on, “as in myself, and…her,” Winnifred Saltenstall pointed into the dark. “Your new sister, Tom.”

A shadow stood in the corner. Tom turned on the overhead. What stood there looking at him was a freakish hooded woman in a long black cloak and sunglasses. She grinned…hideously.

Fluid giggles floated up, like kindergarten kids laughing.

Madness, Tom thought again.

“We need you, Tom,” Winnifred said.

—You’ll be happy with us. Our master will be very happy.

Both women stepped forward. Winnifred continued, “We’re inviting you to take part in a miracle, Tom. We need you.”

The woman in black kept giggling in abrupt, wet bursts. On and off, on and off, the giggling went, like the sped up cackle of a band of witches. The sound made Tom want to puke.

Winnifred was giggling too. Her sparse trim of pubic hair showed unabashed, glistening from self excitation. A black pendant lay between her big, bloused breasts. It looked like an upside down cross. On her left hand was a square black ring. In her right hand she held—Tom’s eyes bulged—a hammer.

The woman in black was holding something too. It looked small, slender, sharp. It looked like a nail.

A nail? A hammer?

Her shaded gaze shifted in on him; she moved gently forward. Her lips were red. Her face was lustrous, perfect white.

Something glistened, and all at once Tom collapsed. Suddenly his neck hurt. He lay on the floor, paralyzed. Shadows stepped around him. Winnifred’s face smiled down like a godhead in the sky.

Did someone say “Destiny”?

The cloaked woman giggled some more. Tom felt numb. The black pendant swayed as Winnifred, girlishly uncoordinated, knelt very daintily and placed the nail in the center of Tom’s head.

««—»»

And at precisely the same time that Tom McGuire was being introduced to “destiny” in a most bizarre manner, Wade St. John was having a nightmare. In this nightmare, Professor Dudley Besser, as an inbred, cannibalistic creek person wearing size 54 overalls, was dragging screaming halter topped blondes onto a nighted swamp pier, stripping them and chopping them up neat as a butcher. Like a machine, the heavy cleaver chunked through flesh, bone, and wood. As he chopped, a pendant swung back and forth about his fat, dirt lined neck. Professor Besser’s eyes were dim silver, and when he opened his mouth, dim silver light came out, and a silver moon cast dim silver light onto the dead water. Professor Besser was chopping away like a regular one man slaughterhouse. Chunk, chunk, chunk, the cleaver went, all night long. Wade was sitting in a lawn chair at the end of the pier. He was reading a book and drinking a bottle of Samuel Adams lager. He knew this was a dream and was therefore unconcerned that his biology professor was dismembering naked blondes mere yards away. Wade supposed he would help the girls if this weren’t a dream, but it was, so he didn’t. A casual glance upward showed him that Besser had kicked his psychotic chicanery up a notch. The overalls had come down and now he was copulating with one of the torsoed blondes...or at least trying. His obesity prevented any effective intercourse and eventually he just said “Damn it!” and began masturbating with another girl’s severed hand.

Charming, Wade thought. Man, this is some fucked up dream.

The cold beer was great in the dank hanging midnight heat of the swamp, but the book he was reading was not so great. It had a girl on the cover, who was beautiful in a way that could not be described. Each page of the book was blood-red. There was writing on them but the writing was in some indecipherable language that was somehow mocking. Dream knowledge informed Wade that only women could read the weird glyphs; men could not. A great fear rose in him, and he threw the book into the swamp. The chunk, chunk, chunk of Besser’s chopping had ceased. Then a scream burst forth loud as a trumpet. Terror pricked up Wade’s back, plucked his skin. Murmurs drifted vaguely in front of him. What were they? When Wade gazed down the pier, he shrieked. Professor Besser lay belly down by a rotted piling. He was no longer dressed in creekman’s overalls but in the usual slacks, shirt, and tie. He lay very still. Oh, and one other thing: his head was gone. Wade wondered where it was. He thought: People don’t take heads. They take exams, they take vitamins, but they don’t take heads! This seemed a very workable social rule; you could generally count on it. But soon the whereabouts of Professor Besser’s head became immaterial. A far more pressing matter arose. The pieces of the girls Besser had chopped up began to reassemble. Pretty, severed legs hopped about, awaiting reclamation. Arms waited to be reconnected to proper shoulders, while torsos bellied through the pile of twitching limbs. One girl with high, pointed breasts twisted an arm off another girl’s shoulder. “That’s not your arm! It’s mine!” Another girl with a broad rump clumped footless through the pile. “Where’re my feet?” she asked. “Has anyone seen my feet?” Slowly but surely the group of butchered girls pulled themselves back together. Wade wasn’t too keen on confronting a bunch of reassembled—and probably very pissed off—women. But the only way off the pier was through them, unless…unless… Wade looked into the swamp water. It was black, mirror still, and it smelled nice, like perfume. I wonder if this bitch is deep, he asked himself. “Of course it’s deep,” chided the girl with the rump. But what was that rasping noise? Wade’s eyes nearly popped out of his head; the girl was sharpening her teeth with a crosscut file. Not good, Wade reasoned. The high breasted girl said, “It’s more than deep, Wade. It’s bottomless.” Wade opted not to jump in the water. He would just have to fight the girls, and was that so bad? It should be easy; women were the weaker sex, right? “Right,” one girl answered. She was petitely slender, ninety pounds if that, with little cupcake breasts. She picked up Professor Besser’s headless, three hundred pound body as if it were a bag of packing peanuts. “See how weak I am?” she said, smiling. She heaved the massive corpse past Wade, where it hit the water like a pallet full of mason blocks. The girls rejoiced in laughter. Wade pissed his pants. No more need be said of the weaker sex. The girls were all reassembled now—perfectly—with no signs of Besser’s methodical butchery. “Does my hair look all right?” one girl fussed. “Oooo, that fat guy broke one of my nails!” complained another. “Girls, girls,” reminded a third. “We have work to do.” “Woman’s work,” came the low chorus. Their eyes all focused on Wade, but were they eyes or dim silver gleams? Wade didn’t know. That was the problem with dreams—you never knew what was what. Was a cigar a phallic symbol, or just a goddamn cigar? The girls closed in on him now, stepping in time very slowly. The high breasted girl assumed the group’s speaking chores. “Wade St. John, it’s time for your sentence.” “Huh?” Wade intoned. “You are an affront to womankind,” she said. “You treat women as objects for your own pleasure.” “Not true!” Wade yelled back. “I have great respect for the female mind.” The girls on the pier laughed, and their laughter was a song of truth. Wade faltered. How many girls had he taken for granted, used, discarded? Dozens? he thought. The girls on the pier laughed. Probably more like a hundred. How many had he deceived for the mindless entity in his pants, lied to, cheated on, hurt? For the first time in his life—and in a dream, no less—he realized what a despicable sexist piece of shit he was. This was the sentence he’d been waiting since puberty to pay. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” “Tell that to all the girls you treated like garbage, all the girls you used.” “I’ll repent!” he exclaimed. The girls on the pier laughed. But he would, by God, if only they’d give him the chance. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered, then heard an absolutely bloodcurdling scream. A shadow moved away. Wade sat spread legged in the lawn chair, his jeans down. The women watched, their eyes full of dim silver light. But what were they watching, and who had screamed? Then Wade knew: his appeal had been revoked. The spokeswoman was saying, “…and your sentence shall hereby be executed at once.” It didn’t take Wade long to figure this one out. The girl who’d been filing her teeth stood before them all, chewing something with vigor. Wade finally recognized the scream—his own—and he looked down in horror to see that he no longer possessed a pair of testicles. Wade screamed again, long and hard, and the girls rejoiced at his horror. The girl with filed teeth grinned as her jaws worked enthusiastically on their new fruit. “They’re kind of crunchy!” she exclaimed. She rubbed her stomach and swallowed. Wade threw up. Then someone shouted, “The Mother’s coming!” “She’s coming back!” the leader rejoiced. “She’s accepting another sacrifice!” Wade was mortified; he gestured at his crotch. “Haven’t I sacrificed enough?” “Your balls go to us,” the leader said. “The rest of you goes to the Mother.” Wade was lifted up and held over the pier’s edge. Behind him something rose from the water, an entity vast, black and immense. Wade could no more describe it than describe the notion of how the universe was made. It was the Mother. That’s all he knew, and all he needed to know. Now he would learn exactly what had happened to Professor Besser’s head. Wade screamed as his own head was completely encased by a huge, wet, black mouth. The girls fell to their knees in worship. “The Mother,” they chanted. “The Mother.” Wade’s head was bitten off. It was swallowed whole down a silken esophagus and eventually landed in a cavern, atop a mountain of heads. There were thousands, or even millions, of heads here, deep in the Mother’s belly. Soon the heads began to be digested in the squirming black stomach. Wade whooped as his consciousness dissolved, feminine enzymes reverting his psyche to wet pulp, then granules, then ash. The ashes of Wade St. John mixed with the ashes of the other men, and over time the ashes were spewed from some tight, miles high orifice, sifting out in a trail over sunlit fields and sweet smelling landscapes of new plowed soil. Moist, pretty things grew from that soil, the loveliest things, through the ashes of Wade’s soul. In other words, Wade was fertilizer.

—

CHAPTER 11

Lydia Prentiss was staring at the single Marlboro 100. It beckoned her, like lust. Rather symbolically, it stood on end.

“Sladder’s not the perp,” she said. “I’ve told you ten times.”

Chief White had put her up in an empty lab at the sciences center. Yesterday she’d made a breakdown of the agro site as fast as she could. Department of agriculture officers had swarmed in just as she finished. They’d sealed the site “pending investigation.”

“You know what I think?” White said. “You’re grabbin’ for shit.”

All Lydia wanted was her cigarette and some sleep. She didn’t want to argue. “Chief, just look at the plain facts.”

“The plain facts are that Sladder was packin’ an illegal gun!”

“Illegally carried, but legally owned. Wake up, Chief. Security guards are notorious for carrying pocket pieces like this.”

“And I suppose you know exactly what kind of gun it was.”

“Sure, a Raven Arms Model P25. Costs about eighty bucks. Don’t they teach your men anything in the academy? All I had to do was call State Handgun Records and ask. Sladder bought the piece, legally, in 1981 from a local gun shop. The guy’s got no rap sheet at all. He’s never even had a traffic ticket.”

“Neither did the Boston Fuckin’ Strangler. He was still a nut.”

“Sladder had forty years of steady employment; his only black marks were a few reprimands for booze. He won medals in World War II.”

“I don’t give a shit. He was a rummy who carried an illegal handgun. That’s good enough for me.”

“Fine, Chief. Think what you want.”

White rolled a King Edward cigar in his mouth. “Just give me your technical conclusions, Prentiss, not lip service.”

The cigarette would be good now, real good. “My conclusions are as follows. Two or more perpetrators entered the agro site shortly after the power failure, about midnight. The girl, Penelope, was with him; several girls on the hall said she often visited the site at odd hours, to see the horses. In the horse stalls, she and Sladder stumbled onto one of the perps, the one with the ax. Here, Sladder sustained a serious injury to his right arm. I believe his arm was completely severed, judging by the trajectory of the bloodfall.”

White was shaking his head. Lydia continued, “At this point, Sladder and the girl retreated to the stablemaster’s office. They managed to dress Sladder’s wound. He tried to call for help but the phone box had already been destroyed. Shortly thereafter, the perpetrator’s attack continued. Sladder responded by firing six shots from the .25 pistol. I recovered five bullets from the stable floor. The sixth bullet hit one of the perps at the far exit. There’s bloodfall of a different type to verify this.”

White was rubbing his brow now, still shaking his head.

“At this point Sladder and the girl attempted to escape via the front exit. Less than ten feet from the door, Sladder was murdered. The amount of blood on the floor makes this obvious.”

White could brew no longer. He…blew up. “Arms cut off! Murder! That’s the fucked uppest bunch of shit I ever heard! We don’t even know that the blood is Sladder’s! We don’t even know he was the one who fired the gun!”

“The large bleeds are all A positive, Sladder’s type according to his health insurance forms. As for who fired the gun, Sladder’s partials are all over the dead brass. I ID’d his prints from his print card from the security office, and I got comparison prints of the girl by dusting common areas of her dorm room. They both left prints on the fence that was cut down, on the utility shed door, on the flashlights. I got their prints on baseboards, Chief, and the lower edge of the stable door. These people were on the floor—they were hiding from something.”

White tapped his cigar, trying to calm down. “Okay, Prentiss. If Sladder was murdered, where’s his body?”

“The perpetrators removed it.”

“And the girl? I suppose she was murdered too.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. There’s none of her blood on the site. My guess is she was abducted.”

“Abducted,” White repeated. “Umm hmm.”

“It’s a setup, Chief. There’s no sign of their bodies. Their vehicles were removed from the property. The girl’s purse and Sladder’s wallet were left behind—deliberately.”

“Why? Why go to all that trouble?”

“To keep us off track. They want to convince you that Sladder was the perp instead of the victim, and it looks like they’re doing a pretty good job. Fortunately, though, the real perps were careless. They took the gun but not the empty brass. They didn’t cover their footprints very well. They left ridge smears on the wallet and purse, proving that those objects were touched, wiped down, and replaced.”

White had inadvertently snapped his King Edward. “And you say Sladder’s arm was cut off? Where’d you come up with shit like that?”