Incubi

Chapter 7

“Meat racks!” Ginny whispered.

“Shhh!”

The two figures stepped through the foyer. “Ah,” Erim Khoronos said. “Here they are now.” He turned from the bar, pouring glasses of spring water. “Marzen, Gilles, it’s my pleasure to introduce our guests, Ms. Virginia Thiel and Ms. Veronica Polk.”

Veronica felt an itch of rage. Why didn’t he introduce me first? she thought as a child might. But Ginny was right. These guys were…gorgeous.

Standing before them were two tall handsome young men in identical baggy white slacks and sleeveless T-shirts. Marzen had long blond hair; Gilles’ was black and cut like a marine’s. Veronica’s gaze felt immobile on them, and she could sense Ginny’s dopey man-grin. Both men were well-muscled and well-tanned.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Marzen said, shaking hands. His hand was large, rough. His accent sounded German.

“We’re happy you can be with us,” Gilles added. A French accent, obviously. His hand was softer, more delicate.

Veronica raced for something to say but found nothing.

“See to their bags,” Khoronos said.

Marzen and Gilles left.

Shit! Veronica thought.

“Shit!” Ginny whispered.

“Marzen and Gilles are my charges,” Khoronos said. “I think of them as sons.”

“They seem very nice,” Ginny said. “How did you meet them?”

“Through my dealings abroad, over time,” Khoronos answered, but it wasn’t much of an answer. Veronica felt certain it wasn’t meant to be. “They’re masterful men, as you’ll soon see,” he went on. “They look upon me as their pundit, so to speak. I’d like to think that much of their aesthetic insight comes from me.”

As you you’ll soon see? Veronica thought. What did that mean?

“I must tend to some things now. Dinner will be at seven.”

Abruptly, Khoronos left them alone in the great room.

“This is really strange,” Veronica said, and sat back down on the couch. She jiggled her ice in the spring water.

“I think it’s fun. It’s mysterious.” Ginny grinned. “And we’re definitely going to get laid.”

“Ginny, we’re not here to get laid.”

“What, you took all that stuff he said seriously? Come on, Vern, it’s all a game to him. He’s rich and bored and he likes games.”

“Keep your voice down,” Veronica suggested.

“He thinks of himself as some artistic seer or something. It makes him feel good to invite artists up here and pretend he’s teaching us something. All this whole thing is leading to is an orgy. The decadence of the idle rich.”

“You’re rich.”

“Yeah, but I’m not idle. This whole thing’s a party, so I’m gonna make the best of it. I’m gonna party my face off.”

Some party. Veronica looked at her spring water. Khoronos had informed them that no alcohol was allowed in the house. No tobacco either, and no drugs, not that Veronica did them. “True artists must maintain immaculate spirits,” their host had said. “Any substance which taints the spiritus is forbidden in my home.”

Eventually she and Ginny went out on the balcony off the kitchen, a huge deck which overlooked the pool. A faint breeze rustled through the trees, and a scent of pine. “You sure changed your tune about Khoronos,” Veronica said.

“Just because I know what makes him tick doesn’t mean I don’t want to get into his pants anymore.” Ginny closed her eyes, turned her face to the sun. “I do and I will. And Marzen, Gilles — I’ll ride their brains out too. Everyone’s got to cut loose sometime.”

“Cut loose, huh? That’s what life’s all about?”

“You want to know what life’s all about? First I’ll tell you what it’s not about. It’s not about babies, two-car garages, a dog in the yard, and a station wagon in the driveway.”

Ginny hated domesticity, but Veronica didn’t know how she felt about that herself. Jack had never actually proposed to her, but the implication of marriage was clear. Had that been what scared Veronica off?

“It’s about independence, Vern,” Ginny continued. “That’s the only way a woman can be free.”

Veronica wanted to say something mean, like. You’re only saying that because it’s the only way you can rationalize two failed marriages. “Freedom and sexual abandon are synonymous?”

“Sexual liberty, smartass. If you don’t do what you want, you’re actually doing what someone else wants. Whether it’s a person or society doesn’t matter. It’s subjugation. If a guy fucks everything that moves, that’s okay because it’s an accepted trend. But when a woman does it, she’s a slut. Men can be free but women can’t. It’s a bunch of sexist bullshit. My rebellion is my right of protest. I will not allow myself to be subjugated. I’ll do anything I want, anytime I want.”

Sometimes Veronica forgot she was talking to a notorious feminist. She wanted to argue with Ginny but couldn’t. Veronica had thought that being in love was her freedom, but freedom had its price, didn’t it? Experience, she thought. Being in love had kept her from experiencing what she felt she had to as an artist. Either way, she was torn between ideals.

Ginny lit a cigarette.

“Khoronos said no smoking,” Veronica reminded.

“No smoking in the house; this is the balcony. And…” Ginny paused, peering down. “Well, what have we here?”

Marzen and Gilles walked across the backyard. Off one of the pool decks stood a rack of weights and a bench.

“See?” Ginny observed. “Men are such vain assholes. Without their muscles and their cocks they have no identities.”

But Veronica remained looking on. Marzen and Gilles each peeled off their T-shirts and began curling dumbbells of formidable size. They seemed bored, curling the weights and speaking casually. They seemed to be speaking French.

“But I still love ’em,” Ginny went on. “Check out the beefcake.”

Veronica couldn’t help not. In moments, their rippled backs shined, muscles flexing beneath their tanned skin. It was erotic, earthy, the way their sweat sheened their flesh. Veronica caught herself in a secret image: running her hands over those slick pectorals, exploring. At once she felt dizzy, like the first time she’d met Khoronos. She felt prickly.

“They know we’re watching,” Ginny said.

“They do not,” Veronica objected. Or did they? Her throat felt thick. Next image: herself naked, squirming atop Marzen…

“And you’re trying to tell me you don’t want to cut loose?” Ginny continued to goad. “That’s subjugation too. You’re afraid to release your inhibitions. Is that freedom?”

Veronica felt lost in her imaginings.

Ginny crushed her cigarette and dropped it into the bushes below. “You know,” she said, “men have been using women for the last fifty centuries. It’s high time we started using them back.”

Veronica imagined Marzen poised nude above her. His sweat was dripping off his chest onto hers, hot, like hot wax.

“They like to show off?” Ginny was saying. “I’ll show them some showing off.”

Veronica gasped within the frame of the vivid image. Marzen penetrated her. Her eyes closed, the image cocooned her. She could picture Marzen’s penis sliding in and out…

Oh, for God’s sake!

The fantasy was ridiculous, a useless breach of reality. She was like a high school girl dreaming of the quarterback.

“What the—” Veronica turned, breaking her muse. “Ginny!”

“Hey, I’m showing off.” Ginny had removed her blouse, braless beneath. She waved the blouse in the air, in circles. “Save your strength, fellas! You’re gonna need it!”

“Ginny, are you nuts!”

Below, Gilles looked up at the spectacle and chuckled.

“That’s one’s mine,” Ginny said.

But Marzen’s face remained plain. He was not looking at Ginny. Instead, his eyes bored directly into Veronica’s.

Jack owned a century-old row house on Main Street, which he’d inherited from his father. The equity was preposterous. It had been purchased in the late fifties for fifteen grand; today he could sell it for three hundred grand, and it wasn’t even in very good shape. Jack lived in the upstairs and rented the downstairs to a couple of college kids. The row house was essentially the only thing he had of real value.

He didn’t sell because he liked it here. He liked the city’s ambience — or the persona, perhaps — of its age and its history. His bedroom window showed him the City Dock; the bright vanishing point of Main Street to the sea looked surreal. He loved the faint salt scents off the bay, and the city’s lights when it was late. He liked being lulled to sleep by the ghostly chimes of sail lines striking the masts of countless boats in the docks. The sound was indescribable.

He showered and dressed without really knowing what for. Never drink alone, Craig had once philosophized. Jack refused to keep liquor in the house, his only gesture of constraint. He could see himself in ten years, or even five — a holed-in drunk, empty bottles piled high in the kitchen. At least in bars, someone else worried about the bottles.

Light classical issued from the dilapidated stereo; it was all he could listen to without being distracted. Distraction was any investigator’s enemy. He wondered if love was too. How many marriages had exploded because of The Job?

Here is my love, he thought. He closed his eyes, to see it in his head, the neat red letters.

HERE IS MY LOVE

And the great star-pointed triangle.

Not an act of murder, an act of love. He remembered thinking that the instant he’d stepped into Shanna Barrington’s bedroom. Karla Panzram had verified this, but with trimmings he couldn’t imagine. The killer had taped her eyes so she couldn’t see what was coming, had tied her up so she couldn’t move. He’d adored her as he extracted her entrails.

Shanna Barrington had been scarified, but to what? What madness? Aorista, Jack mused. He’d looked it up in his paperback Webster’s but found nothing. The FBI’s Triple-I interservice link had reported back this afternoon: nothing. And nothing yet from Randy’s good squad. The Interpol run would take weeks, and even though Auxiliary Procurements had authorized his request for a researcher, there was nothing more on that either. Most murders were solved within forty-eight hours. After that, the apprehension statistics plummeted.

Suddenly he was staring at the portrait of himself. Veronica had painted it, an abstract mash of wedges and smears, the pieces of which formed his face. The likeness, now, was distressing — it looked like a man falling apart. He wondered whose face she was painting now.

When the phone rang, he jumped. The word Veronica echoed somewhere deep. Don’t be an asshole, he told himself. What reason would Veronica have to call him now?

“Cordesman,” Jack said.

“Hi, Captain. Your man’s jizz won’t type. He’s no secretor.”

Jack’s brow creased. No, it definitely wasn’t Veronica, it was Jan Beck from the Technical Services Division. “The killer’s you mean?” he asked.

“I’m not talking about Bullwinkle’s sperm, sir. And I’ll tell you something, this guy’s got a lot of love.”

Jan Beck’s voice was ashy, soft, which never fit with the way she talked. Talking to her was like talking to one of the guys, or worse.

“What do you mean, Jan?”

“He gave it to her like it was going out of style. Cum City up there. Only thing that doesn’t jibe is the timing.”

“He wasn’t in there long enough to do her a bunch of times.”

“Then your estimations are wrong, or he’s the fastest draw in the East. Average ejaculation’s four to six milliliters, up to ten after a long dry spell. This guy left more than thirty hung up past the minus ridge, and that’s not counting the wetspot, which looked about as big as the state of Alaska. My estimation, this guy blew eighty mils of the joy juice, probably more. I’d say she had ten guys in there with her, but the cum’s all morphologically identical. And this girl was ready for it. This was no aggravated rape.”

Willingness, Jack remembered, snapping a Camel. Karla Panzram said that willingness was a key word for Charlie. “You’re saying that the victim was willing, right?”

“She was definitely willing, Captain. Her lube glands were drained. Average girl doesn’t dry up till she’s been getting it steady for a couple of hours.”

“But there was blood in the vagina. Was it her period?”

“That was a cervical bleed,” Jan Beck said. “Not a rape-related abrasion. Last night Shanna Barrington was the best-lubricated woman in the county. You can’t argue with a chromatograph.”

“Maybe he—”

“No artificial lubes either; they would’ve been obvious on the source spectrum. And he didn’t use spit. It was all her up there.”

Jack gulped. This was getting gross, and, knowing Jan Beck, it would probably get a lot grosser.

“The blood was a capillary trauma. Ready for why?”

“No, Jan, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“The guy’s hung, and I mean hung serious. Average girl’s got about seven inches of loveway; Shanna Barrington had eight. Your man popped her cervix — I’ve only seen that a couple of times. This kind of bleed’s minor because of the nature of the capillary structures of the cervical cap. It’s common with girls who make these porno videos. They get all coked up can’t feel a thing, then some guy rams his schlong up her cooze — he’s got more schlong than she’s got loveway — and force-dilates the cervical cap. Tears some minor vessels. Like I said, it happens sometimes, but what doesn’t happen is the rest. Your man’s rod was in her cap when he came; he blew his steam right up into her ampullae, and that’s something I’ve never seen. The cervical channel is about a mil wide unless the girl’s preggers, and the uterine line is essentially microscopic. Both were filled with his stuff. We’re talking about a tremendous ejaculator. Dilating her cervix with his cock is rare, but this kind of seminal presence is downright unreal. Most pathologists would tell you it’s impossible. This guy blew his load all the way up her repro tract. He came so much even her infundibula were distended. The fucker filled this poor girl up like you fill your unmarked at the motor pool.”

Jack’s stomach was beginning to sink.

“Average erection’s about six inches. We’re looking for someone with more than twice that, and that’s very uncommon. I looked it up. We’re talking about less than one tenth of one percent of the male pop. Your killer’s a walking smokehouse, sir.”

“You have a lovely way with words, Jan,” Jack said. “Is the tox screen in yet?”

“Yes, sir. BAC was.01, she was buzzed but not shitfaced.”

“Drugs?”

“Zip. No coke, pot, PCP, skag, no nothing.”

What else did Panzram say? he tried to recall. “Did you run her blood for any synthetic morphine derivatives?”

“Of course. Zero. My spec is the girl wasn’t into drugs and never has been. Even recreational users have a pot history, and one look at the brain tells all. Lipofusial rancidity, we call it. Shanna Barrington didn’t have it. She had a clean brain.”

A clean brain, Jack thought. He could easily picture Jan Beck removing the victim’s cranial cap with a Stryker orbital saw, looking down, and saying, Yep, a clean brain.

“But there was one thing, sir.” Beck’s unearthly voice seemed to shimmer through a pause. “Was she a health nut?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know that much about her yet.”

“I mean her place. You find any vitamins, herbs, health stuff?”

“No,” Jack said.

“Her blood says she’s pretty healthy, except for the booze. Her liver looks like a moderate drinker. The only real deficient blood levels were B6, C, and magnesium, which is common for anyone who drinks regular.”

I better start taking vitamins, Jack supposed.

“We found something in her blood that’s not CDS. It looks like an herbal extract or something.”

“Maybe a designer drug.”

“No way, wrong chain. It’s something organic.”

From his seat on the bed Jack expertly flicked his butt out the window. “Work on it. Anything you got. There’s a real deadline on this.” What else? Olsher, yes. “Olsher said you were doing an n/a/a-scrape.”

“I’m in the middle of that now, I’m going to work all night. The resilience lines and entry patterns worry me. He’s using a funny shank, I mean. The scrape-spectrum’ll be in by morning. Come and see me.”

“Okay, Jan. Thanks.”

“Good night, sir.”

Jack hung up, sputtering. In the mirror, he could not conceive that the reflection was his own: a pale stick-man sitting on a bed, smoking a Camel, long hair a wet mop in his face. Pretty as a picture, he thought.

He went to his dresser for socks. Beneath the socks was a picture of Veronica. He knew he should not be thinking about this now. He should be immersed in the Triangle case — but the picture catalyzed him. It kicked his spirit back in time. Veronica was sticking her tongue out at the camera, holding a big cup of Guinness, her arm around Jack. Craig had taken the picture at the ’Croft last St. Patrick’s Day. It was the day after Veronica had told Jack that she loved him.

One time she’d gone to Atlantic City with Ginny. She’d called long-distance just to tell him she loved him. Another time they’d been downtown with Randy and his girlfriend, having a good time, talking innocuously about innocuous things, and Veronica had inexplicably passed Jack a bar napkin on which she’d penned I love you.

These were just a few. How could something once so bright have turned so black? Now he could view the past as only a dead providence.

He shoved the picture back in the drawer.

He dawdled about the flat, kept glancing at the phone. You’re an idiot, he concluded an hour later. She is not going to call you. Why should she call you? She broke up with you.

…his passion is purposive, Karla Panzram had said. He’s very passionate.

I love you, the bar napkin read.

HERE IS MY LOVE, the wall read.

This guy blew his load all the way up her repro tract.

Jack stared at the dresser mirror. “I am a very fucked-up person,” he stated to it. His reflection looked like a stranger. There was a loose cannon in his town, cutting up girls alive, yet all Jack could think about was Veronica.

He looked deadpan at the phone.

She’s never going to call you again. She’s too busy with what’s his name. Khoronos.

He left the flat. Dusk was descending; it was warm out, pretty. Main Street was alive with lovers and clean salt air. The purity of the vision depressed him. His long hair was still wet. He walked up toward Church Circle, toward the Undercroft—

— but at the corner he stopped. Was he sick? He felt dizzy at once; he backed up against a MOST machine to keep from falling. When he closed his eyes he thought he saw fire.

Something skittered across his mind. Something — a thought. A red thought.

No, a word.

Aorista.

“I knew I should’ve locked the door,” Craig said.

“What, and keep out your best tipper?”

“I’m not into coin collecting, Jack. I’ve told you dozens of times.”

“Just keep hocking in my Scotch like you’ve been doing for the last five years. I’ll get the message eventually.” Jack took his usual stool at the end. Several regulars raised their glasses in greeting. Jack liked the bar’s appointment. The rafters bore hundreds of beer coasters from around the world. Banners from breweries as obscure as Felinfoel, Tennent’s, and Tucher covered the front wall. Craig piped Fine Young Cannibals through the sound system while an Orioles game with the sound turned down progressed from the high TV. Jack was happy to see that the Yankees were using the O’s for toilet paper.

“What do you call three cops up to their necks in sand?”

“What, Craig?”

“Not enough sand.” Craig twirled a shaker cup full of ice perfectly over his shoulder, then poured equal volumes from four bottles at the same time, holding two in each hand. Bar tricks were something he’d honed to an art.

“Poor man’s Tom Cruise,” Jack commented.

“What’s that make you? Poor man’s Columbo?”

“I’ll drink to that. And speaking of drinks, do I have to fire warning shots to get one in this joint?”

“Keep your liver on.” Craig put a shooter before him. “Try that. It’s a tin roof.”

“What?”

Craig rolled his eyes. “It’s on the house. I call it the Piss Shooter.”

It looked like urine. “If your fly was open, I’d be leery.” Jack downed the shooter. “Not bad. You’re learning.”

Craig ejected the shaker’s ice over his shoulder. The ice landed directly in the sink. Craig was famous for never missing. “Couple of your boys were in today, giving me the business.”

Randy’s men, Jack deduced. “They show you pictures?”

Craig nodded and grabbed the Glenfiddich bottle without looking at it. He had the exact location of every bottle memorized.

“You know her?”

“I’ve seen her around, but I didn’t know her. Shanna something. She’s got a rep downtown as a monster rack.”

Craig’s terminology never ceased to amuse, along with such gems as Mr. Meat Missile, Killer Mammalian Carriage, Body by Fisher, Brains by Mack Truck. Craig also had the ultimate last call: Everybody get the fuck out of the bar! A “monster rack” was a girl with whom not much effort was required to get into bed.

“You know anyone who ever jammed her?”

“No one by name. I’ve seen lots of guys pick her up at Fran’s and the Map Room. Sounds like something heavy went down.”

“I’ll spare you the details. Ever see her in here?”

Craig shook his head. “She only hangs out at dance places.”

Not hangs, hung. And she ain’t dancing now.

Craig brought him a Fiddich on the rocks, then raised a brow a few minutes later when the glass was empty. “First one always goes fast,” Jack excused himself.

“I’ll bet that’s what you tell all the women.”

“Just your girlfriend.”

Craig guffawed. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I have a harem.”

Jack had to fake going along with the jokes; the first drink was already bringing him down. “Another, Craig.” Watch it, don’t get shitfaced again. Then the latent fact hit him like a fist. This was the same stool he’d been sitting on the night he met Veronica.

Khoronos, of course, would be strikingly handsome, older, mysterious. He would be different. He would be the kind of guy who could offer her a different experience.

Experience, she’d told Jack that last night.

The second drink went nearly as fast. “Riding the black train again, huh?” Craig asked.

Jack lit up, slouching already. “I’m its favorite passenger these days.” The alcohol and memory formed a whirlpool. He was flotsam in it, wreckage. He was going down.

“Let me tell you something.” Craig flipped a Marlboro in the air and caught it in his mouth. “You’re not the first guy in the world to get sacked by a girl.”

“I know,” Jack said.

“You gotta tighten up the bootstraps and move on. Remember what we were talking about today? Every day you spend boo-hooing about it is another day down the drain.”

Jack shrugged. He didn’t need lectures.

“Here’s another way of looking at it, and stop me if I’m getting on your nerves.”

“You’re getting on my nerves.”

Craig grinned. “First, look at yourself. You’re drinking too much, you feel dismal, and you’re depressed. Since the minute Veronica broke up with you, you’ve been miserable.”

“I don’t need to hear this, Craig.”

“Yes, you do. Okay, we’ve established that you’re miserable.” Craig paused, probably for dramatic effect. “Is Veronica miserable?”

The question sunk deep. Was Craig trying to make him feel worse? The answer was obvious.

Veronica is not miserable. Right now she’s partying it up with Khoronos. I’m miserable and she’s probably having the time of her life. She’s happier…without me.

“See?” Craig said, pouring a Betsey Bomber and Bloody Mary at the same time. “It hurts, sure. It’s the last thing in the world you want to think. But you have to face it, and get on with your life.”

“I know,” Jack whispered.

“And you’re better than all that shit.”

Craig walked away, taking beer lists to some newcomers. Am I really? Jack thought.

He went upstairs to the men’s room, where the walls proved more of the Undercroft’s diversity. No phone numbers or cuss words — the ’Croft sported highbrow graffiti only. “Loss of love equals loss of self,” someone had written. Jack frowned as he whizzed. “The sleep of reason breeds monsters.” Better, he thought. “The test of will is man’s ultimate power,” read another.

I don’t feel very powerful today. He went back down with full intention of ordering another drink.

“Captain Cordesman?” Craig was inquiring. “See that guy there, with the long hair and off-duty gun in his pocket? That’s him.”

A girl, either timid or annoyed, came around the bar. There was some kind of plainness about her; she was attractive through no overt kind of beauty. Her roundish face lent her a cast of frayed innocence; her gray eyes seemed extant. She was neither fat nor skinny in simple faded jeans. A plain print blouse accommodated a plenteous bosom, and a straw-colored ponytail hung nearly to her waist. She was carrying a briefcase.

“Captain Cordesman?”

“At your service.”

“I’m Faye Rowland. Lieutenant Eliot said I might find you here.”

“Jack lives here,” Craig cut in. “He sleeps on the bar after we close. We let him shave in the men’s room.”

Faye Rowland frowned at the jokes. “I’m an information systems technician for the state public service commission.”

“Oh, you must be my researcher.”

“That’s right. Someone named Olsher made the arrangements with my department head. I’m on loan as long as you need me.”

Jack had hoped for an associate prof or at least a T. A. from the university. Instead they’d sent him a systems jockey.

“All I know about your case is what your office faxed me this morning,” she went on. “They said there’s a big rush on it so I thought maybe you could brief me tonight. Save time.”

Jack wasn’t used to people hunting him down in bars on business. At least she was dedicated. He took her to a corner table. From her briefcase she withdrew color dot-matrix prints of Shanna Barrington’s walls, and Jack’s initial 64 summary.

“The very first thing you have to do is find out what aorista means,” he told her. “That’s the—”

“Aorista is an exclamatory form of the noun aorist. It indicates an intransitive verb tense. It’s in the Oxford dictionary.”

Jack felt dumbly impressed.

“Denotatively, it’s a grammatical inflection from Greek and Sanskrit, a set of inflectional verb forms which denotes action without specific reference to duration. In this case, though, I think you’re probably looking for the common connotation.”

“Which is?”

“A process which doesn’t end.”

The possibilities pricked him at once. He ordered another drink and a pint of Wild Goose for the girl. The girl, he thought. What did she say her name was? Faye? Faye something?

“A process,” he said. “Could it be a ritual that doesn’t end?”

“Sure. It’s a connotation. It could apply to anything.”

A ritual that doesn’t end, Jack pondered.

“How was the girl murdered?” Faye Rowland asked.

“You don’t want to know.”

“No, but I need to know once I start digging into current U.S. cult activities. Any detail you can give me might help make a tie.”

Jack hesitated. It was one image he’d never clean from his head. “She was eviscerated,” he said.

Faye Rowland didn’t flinch. “Was her heart missing?”

“No,” Jack replied with raised brow.

“Were any of her organs missing?”

“No. Some of her organs were removed and placed around her on the bed. But none of them were taken.”

“What about her head? Was her head missing?”

Jesus. “No. Nothing was missing. Why?”

“Organs and heads are big with several devil-worship cults in this country, particularly heads. They believe the heads of their adversaries give them power. Was the murder victim baptized?”

“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

“Unsanctified sacrifices are big too. There was one group in Texas a few years ago — they murdered six unbaptized babies before the FBI busted them. They’d make good-luck charms out of their fingers and toes. Severed pudenda, particularly those of infants, were considered a supreme protection from enemies.”

Jack ordered yet another drink. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.