The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

The Man from the Peak by Adam Golaski

The sun left tatters in shades of red across the sky; tatters that shriveled through purple, indigo-to black. The stars didn't come out. Instead, oil-gray clouds. I kept the car going, up, steering around the worst ruts and rocks in the road. I drove under the no trespassing sign, kept driving up. The forest around me was thick-the leaves had come in, hearty and wet: spring. I wondered if this would be the last time I'd make the drive up to Richard's. I thought so. Richard was leaving. Moving east. So, a farewell bash. Sarah would be there, too. With a sound like marbles clicking, or teeth, the wine bottle and the whisky bottle on the passenger seat bumped against each other.

Richard's house stood in the shadow of the mountain's peak. I turned off the car and sat, let my eyes adjust to the darkness, listened to cooling engine skitter. The walk to Richard's was lined with paper lanterns-no doubt Sarah's touch. I grabbed the bottles, set them on the roof of the car, lit a cigarette and looked up the peak. I heard people talking-some of the voices outside, from the hot tub, no doubt, and muted voices from the house. There were a dozen cars parked in front of my own. I opened the back door of the car and took out a small package-a book for Sarah, a collection of short stories she and I had talked about the last time the three of us-Richard, Sarah and I-had been together. I tucked the book under my arm, took the bottles and walked up to the house. I rang the bell and a woman wearing a bikini opened the door. She looked at me-looked me up and down as if I were wearing a bikini-laughed a little and brushed past me. As she passed, she asked, "Did you bring your suit?"

The house was long and narrow. To my left was the guest room, to my right a kitchen and a television room/bar. Michael, an old friend of Richard's who I'd come to like, was busy mixing drinks. He'd explained to me once that he took up the role of bartender at parties so he could get to know all the women. I approached the bar and said, "I'd say the hot tub is where you want to be tonight." Michael nodded, ruefully. I handed Michael the bottles I'd brought. "Good stuff," he said. "Good to see you," he said. I shook his hand and patted his shoulder. "What'll you have?" he asked. "A glass of that whiskey," I said. He said, "Try this instead," and poured from an already open bottle. I put my cigarette out in a red-glass ashtray by the bar and had a sip. I nodded my appreciation. "I should announce myself," I said, and backed away.

The living room: a large, open space dominated by a fat couch and a grand piano (Richard didn't play). Sarah was on the couch drinking wine. When she saw me, she stood, crossed the room with a quick, woozy stride and put her arms around me.

"Watch the wine," I said.

She stepped back from me, a wounded expression on her face. I took her glass and rested it on the piano. She put her arms around me again and said, "I get so excited when you come. I always do. It's so silly. I always am so excited to see you."

"It's good to see you too." We kissed, as we did whenever we saw each other; I'm not sure how this greeting got started, but our kisses were long and on the lips; she'd been dating Richard as long as I'd known her.

"Have you seen Richard yet?" she asked.

"I just got here."

"Can I?" She tapped the cigarette box in my breast pocket. She slipped her fingers into the pocket and smiled at me. "You always have the best cigarettes." As she lit up, she eyed the wrapped package under my arm.

"It's for you," I said.

She unwrapped my gift, dropped the brown paper to the floor. "You found a copy," she said. She opened the book, careful with the spine, a delicate touch on the yellow edge of each page she turned over. "You're the only one who ever gets me books." She tapped her necklace: an elegant, expensive silver knot. "Richard always buys me jewelry," she said, with a frown.

We caught up, a little; a little about Richard's preparations for leaving, though we skirted the issue of whether or not she'd be going. We would have that conversation later. I needed to drink a little more, to meet everyone. I looked past Sarah, at the women on the couch. Sarah said, "That one's Carmilla-she's a stunning bore-and that's Kat-fun, fun, fun. They're friends of Richard's. From where, I do not know. Come, I need more wine." We left her glass on the piano, made our way up to the bar. She fell into a conversation with Michael. I walked off-I didn't feel like standing around while Sarah and Michael talked.

Richard was in the yard, beer in hand, talking with someone I didn't know. Just behind him was the hot tub. The woman who'd answered the door was in the tub with a couple of guys. Before Richard spotted me, the woman said, "You should come in, it's perfect, cold outside, warm in here." She giggled. One of the guys leaned over and whispered to her. She pushed him away.

"David, you made it," Richard said.

"I wouldn't miss it."

"Well I'm glad, you know."

He introduced me to his friend, and to the guys in the tub. He didn't know the woman's name and she didn't supply it. "Come on and sit," he said to me.

I sat on a cooler. Richard and his friend were talking about Boston, where Richard was moving. I'd never been to Boston, I told them, though I'd heard it was like San Francisco. We talked about San Francisco, Seattle, Portland.

The woman in the hot tub interrupted us and asked me to get her a beer. I got up to get a beer from the cooler. She stood. She was very thin, no hips, but gifted with significant breasts. She leaned forward-bent at the waist without bending her knees-and brought her bosom to my face. Freckles swirled into the dark line of her cleavage. "Thank you so much," she said, and took the beer. The guys in the tub were happily gazing up at her tiny bottom-those men were nothing to her, made to carry her bags and perform rudimentary tasks while she gazed off in other, more interesting directions. I'd met women like her many times before. "My name's Prudence," she said.

"Of course it is," I said.

"You really ought to join."

"You know I'm not going to."

She did know, too, and smiled a wide, long smile.

"But I'll be here all night," I said.

She settled back into her pool.

I lit a cigarette; for a moment, a flame cupped in my hand; I drew my hand away, and looked up to the peak. A man, briefly illuminated by moonlight before the clouds closed up, appeared at the top, moved toward the house. I said to Richard, "Does someone live up there?" Richard told me he didn't think so. I tried to point out the man-who I could still see, as a dark shape on a dark background-but Richard couldn't find him. "I'm going to go in, get a real drink," I said. Richard said he'd be in shortly. I shrugged and walked around to the front of the house-an eye on the man walking down the mountain.

Most of the people at Richard's party weren't attractive. They might be fit and many were dressed in expensive clothes, but most of his friends looked average and, upon getting to know them, were. The exceptions were notable. Michael, a transplant from the coast, a man of style; Kat and Carmilla-just beautiful; Prudence-a manipulator I appreciated; and Sarah. Kat and Carmilla were seated on a small couch in the guest room, surrounded by four or five guys and one unfortunate looking girl (pasty, a large, flat nose and hair forced into a strange shade of red). They were all watching a movie-Kat spotted me in the doorway, shifted on the couch, shoved at one of the guys, and gestured for me to sit beside her. They were watching

The Man Who Fell To Earth, that beautiful David Bowie film-

I let myself get drawn into the movie. Kat ran her hand in a circle on my back. When the unfortunate girl sneezed, breaking my mood, I excused myself and walked down the hall to the bar. I passed the front door just as there was a knock; the door was answered and I heard, "What, you need a formal invitation? Sure come on in, you are welcome to come in." Sarah joined me at the bar and took my arm. We collected drinks and Michael and I went out onto the back patio. Mercifully, the three of us were there alone.

Sarah stole a cigarette and complained about Richard's friends-"Present company excluded."

Michael then brought up the subject Sarah and I had danced around once already: "What's in Boston for you? I mean, I know Richard has a great job, but what are you going to do?"

Sarah looked at the floor for a moment, took a drag and a drink and said, "That's just the thing, Michael."

I was eager to hear her explain to Michael just what that thing was-I thought I knew but I wanted her to say it-but instead she stared past Michael, back into the house. I turned and Michael turned and we all watched a very ugly man walk past the back patio door toward the bar.

"Who the hell was that?" I asked.

Sarah said, "I don't know, but-" then drifted past me into the hall. Michael and I looked at each other, then followed-I dropped my cigarette on the patio floor.

The ugly man wasn't at the bar by the time we stepped into the hall-no one was.

He was in the living room, behind the piano, playing the adagio from the

Moonlight Sonata on Richard's out-of-tune grand-the result was not lulling or melancholic, as the adagio is, but dissonant and eerie.

No one else seemed to share my evaluation of the music. Everyone-the whole party except Prudence and her men-were gathered around the piano watching the ugly man play, laughing when he made an exaggerated flourish over the keyboard, but rapt, totally caught up-so that they all jumped when he moved into the more upbeat allegretto. I wanted to jump too-each out-of-tune note grated on my nerves.

I stared at the ugly man as he played. He was bald. His head was long and boney, his eyes lost in shadow. His skin was a dark brown-not like Michael's, no, he didn't look African-the ugly man was black all right, but his skin was waxy and all over there was a patina of green-the green of rotten beef. I couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to touch his skin-my finger, I was sure, would sink in, as it would in a pool of congealed fat. His ears were large and pointed. His mouth was small-pursed as he played-and his teeth were too large for his tiny mouth. His two front teeth were the worst: jagged, yellow, buck-teeth.

I was greatly relieved to see that Sarah did not appear to be under his spell. She stood in the corner watching not the ugly man, but the crowd-and Richard, who stood with a stupid open-mouthed expression on his face, clapping like a little girl every time the ugly man crossed his hands over the keyboard. I could hear, barely audible, David Bowie's voice in the guest room.

The ugly man stopped playing the piano then, and it dawned on me that he must be the man I'd seen coming down from the peak. He waved his hands in the air, and this seemed to release everyone. There was some applause, and people returned to what they had been doing. I watched Kat and Carmilla walk back toward the guest room, Michael made a bee-line for the bar, and Sarah and Richard walked over to me. I noticed the pasty girl with the bad dye-job standing next to the ugly man, looking down at him as he caressed her hand. The perfect couple, I thought. I led Sarah and Richard to the bar and insisted that Michael open the whisky I'd brought-a far better whisky than what he'd served me when I'd arrived.

I asked who the ugly man was.

Sarah said she didn't know. Michael and Richard acted as if I hadn't asked the question. I put my hand on Richard's arm and asked again, and he said, "Which ugly man?"

I took Richard's response to be a joke and gave him a forced, weak chuckle. My whisky was a relief. I needed a moment alone with Sarah-I wanted her to have a chance to finish what she'd been saying earlier, I wanted her to tell me that there was nothing for her in Boston, that she had no intention of ever joining Richard in Boston and was only pretending so as not to break his heart before his big trip.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was certain it was the ugly man's; I was surprised-relieved-that the hand belonged to Prudence. "I'm out of the tub," she whispered.

Sarah and Richard were talking; I asked Prudence what she wanted to drink and she held up a beer. "I'm all set in that department. Did you know they're watching a movie in the guest room?"

"Yes," I said. I followed Prudence down the hall. She'd put on a dress over her wet suit-somehow, with the bands of wet, clingy material around her waist and her chest, she seemed more naked than she had before. I'd catch up with Sarah later, catch her when Richard was off chatting up one of his boring friends.

Prudence and I entered the room-

The Man Who Fell to Earth was still on-had Bowie yet revealed his alien identity? Kat and Carmilla were on the couch, and to my satisfaction, Kat shot Prudence a nasty look and beckoned me to a spot beside her. Prudence, first in the guest room, took that spot. Small as her hips were, there was no more room left on the couch. When she saw this, she slid off the couch, onto the floor, and offered me the spot Kat had already offered. Regardless of the outcome of my conversation with Sarah, I knew I would not leave the party alone; I considered, even, the possibility that Prudence and Kat's attentions would prove useful in gaining Sarah's attention.

Kat stroked my hair; Prudence my leg. The other men in the room couldn't help but glance away from the television to look first at the women, then at me, wishing themselves in my position.

Just before the movie ended-a sad, pale scene-I'd been lulled by all the petting-the ugly man, the man from the peak, walked past the guest room. I caught a glimpse of him, just as he walked out of sight. Except for Prudence, the people in the guest room left: the guys, Carmilla and Kat. Before I could dwell on this much, Prudence was on the couch beside me, hand on the inside of my thigh, mouth drifting toward my face. I knew that face, drifting sleepily, a drunk woman about to kiss me. I let her kiss me. We kissed. Her tongue darted in and out of my own mouth. Her open hand pressed against my erection. My hand on the damp cloth covering her right breast, my hand on the damp cloth at the small of her back.

I broke off our kissing. I said, "Let's get something more to drink." Though she gave me a petulant look, I knew she would do as I asked and I thought-for a moment-this woman actually knows what I'm doing, understands, would have ended the kiss herself, shortly, if I hadn't. In that moment I preferred Prudence to Sarah. The moment was fleeting.

The ugly man had been speaking-addressing the entire party, it seemed. When Prudence and I stepped into the living room, he waved his hand as he'd done before, and the crowd dispersed as it had before. Everyone left the room except for one person, one of the guys who'd been in the hot tub with Prudence-I watched her watch him talk to the ugly man and Prudence said, "I knew he was gay." I wasn't sure who she was referring to at first-I didn't think the ugly man was gay-and then I realized who she meant.

"Who is that man?" I asked.

"I don't know. I've been outside all night."

"Didn't you see him come down from the peak?"

"From the peak? There's nothing up there. I'm going to get another drink."

She left me. I lit a cigarette and went out onto the patio. Richard and Sarah were out there, though Richard was talking with one of his friends and Sarah was just standing around, looking bored. She brightened when she saw me. I gave her a cigarette.

"Why don't we go outside a while," Sarah said.

We left the enclosed patio. We heard voices, coming from the direction of the hot tub. We walked out into the dark yard, toward the woods.

"What was that guy talking about?" I asked.

"Which guy?"

"The ugly guy. They guy with the buck teeth."

Sarah turned up a confused expression. When she pulled on her cigarette, her face was illuminated. She had, I thought, the most perfect face. Between her eyebrows, just above the bridge of her nose was a circular patch of skin very smooth and brighter white than the rest of her face. I wanted to put my fingertip on that spot. I did. She scrunched her face up and giggled, brushing my finger away.

"So that's what that button does," I said. "So," I said. "You didn't finish what you were saying earlier."

She didn't answer me, but pointed, and I forgot what I'd asked when I saw what she was pointing out. The man from the peak walked across the lawn-on a line parallel with our own course, maybe twenty feet away-with the guy he'd been talking to in the living room. They walked toward the edge of the wood, where a woman-the woman with the bad dye-job-lay on the ground.

"What is going on over there?" Sarah asked.

I said, "I'm sure we don't want to know."

"Do you think she's all right?"

"She looks fine to me," I said, though there was no way I could actually judge, from where we stood. "We should leave them be," I said, but I asked, "Who is that guy anyhow? I saw him come down from the peak."

"Which guy?" Sarah asked.

"The bald guy." Right when I said that, he was out of sight, he'd stepped into a shadow that made him all but invisible. So I said never mind.

On the patio, we finished our drinks. Sarah took another cigarette. She looked around-there were other guests on the patio, but none we knew more than just in passing. Richard had gone inside. Sarah said, "I'm not putting any pressure on you, David, but I'm not going to Boston."

Sarah seemed like herself when she said that, more than she had all night, and I was glad, I'd known it, known she would leave Richard for me if I'd wanted, and I did want that, and I hadn't been wrong.

All the voices on the porch seemed to rise in volume-there was a scream-I decided from inside the house-but no one paid any attention.

Several hours later, I stood in front of Richard's house, trying to figure out why there were twelve cars, not including my own, in the driveway. The party had started to die about an hour before; people had slipped out one-by-one. I realized, as I stood in front of Richard's house smoking, sipping a cheap glass of whisky, that I hadn't heard a single car go. Even if people had carpooled, had designated a driver, there were still too many cars in the driveway.

My thoughts weren't adding up in any significant way. I was in a haze of drunk and sleepiness-not so far gone that I wouldn't be able to collect Sarah and leave soon, but dull enough that my lines of thought were short.

I stared for a while at the mountaintop. There were no houses, that I could see, higher than Richard's. If the man from the peak lived up there, he must have walked from the other side of the peak, and that looked to me like a hell of a walk.

I coughed, caught a coughing fit, felt a hand on my back.

"Prudence?" I managed, still bent over.

"No, not Prudence."

The voice was a voice I hadn't heard once that night, but I knew whose voice it was.

"Taking in the air?" the man from the peak asked.

I saw a laugh on his face; he was laughing at me.

"Smoke?" I asked. "Whisky?" I held out my drink and my cigarette.

He held up a hand-his fingers were long, his nails were long.

"You don't drink," I said.

He just grinned his stupid ugly grin, a set of teeth crooked and misshapen. That his speech wasn't impeded by his malformed mouth was a wonder-indeed, his voice was the most soothing voice I'd ever heard. "So who are you?" I asked.

He said, "I'm an invited guest," and I remembered what I'd overheard earlier that night.

I said, "I watched you come down from the peak. Are there houses up there?"

He looked at the peak, followed its upward rise with his head until he'd found the very tip and said, "No, there are no houses."

I thought maybe he lived in a tent or a trailer home and was just having fun with me, making me ask my questions just so. Normally, when I think someone's doing that, some cute girl who thinks she's coy or some clever boy trying to impress, I walk away without so much as a fuck you and that puts them out, and then they beg me for my attention. Normally, that's what I'd do. But I said, "But do you live on the peak? In a tent? In a trailer? In a mobile home?" I gave that ugly man from the peak all the options I could because I was desperate to hear his answer. For some reason: I was desperate to know.

He said, "I live in the peak."

I didn't know what he meant by "in the peak," but I smiled-I felt that dumb smile spread on my face-I smiled and nodded as if "in the peak" made all the sense in the world.

I asked, "So what is it you're doing in the backyard?"

He gave me a straight answer. An awful answer. And for a moment I could see him exactly as he was; all of a sudden I could see him, see that his clothes-from pant cuff to shirt collar-were drenched in blood and gore. Blood dripped off his shirt sleeves, blood was pooled around his feet, there was blood on the top of his bald head and there was blood all around his mouth. The blood around his mouth was the most horrible, smeared around like finger-paint. Before I became hysterical, I couldn't see the blood anymore. He looked ugly, but his clothes were clean. His pant cuffs flapped in the breeze. His bright white shirt sleeves were rolled up just below his elbows.

I wondered, if he could do that, why he didn't make himself look handsome to me. I think he knew my thought, because he said, "Charisma. You know what I mean."

I laughed. He walked back into the house. I stood shaking my head, enjoying for a moment the great joke. Then a wave of nausea passed through me and I vomited-all spit and whisky-and my head was clear. I rushed into the house-for Sarah, I thought, where is Sarah? The guest room was empty. No one was at the bar. Richard was seated on the piano bench next to the man from the peak, and they were playing "Heart and Soul." The man from the peak playing the chords, Richard plinking out the simple tune with a single finger, laughing like an idiot.

I ran into Prudence out on the patio. She was drunk, but when she looked at me I knew she was still in control: I'd known from the moment she brushed past me at the front door that the big breasts and the flirty girl-voice were all for show, plumage that got Prudence what she wanted. I'd known that she was like me in that way, and admired her for it. So instead of just ignoring her for Sarah I stopped and told her that we were all in a lot of trouble.

"I'd sort of picked up on that," she said, pointing with her thumb toward the backyard. Her calm was wrong, a part of all that was wrong that night. She said, "I was just leaving. My car's blocked though. I was trying to find someone-"

"So go out to my car-it's silver, it's the last one in the driveway. Go out to my car and wait for me. I'm going to get Sarah."

She said, "Sarah? Fuck Sarah. What do you need Sarah for?" I sensed her control was limited, or running low, and so she obeyed me, started toward the driveway. Better to do as I said, than to do what the man from the peak asked her to do. I went through the near-empty rooms, finally went into the backyard, where I knew everyone must be.

I tried not to understand too much of what I saw. Since there was no moonlight, no stars, I couldn't make out the exact details anyhow. But the yard was lined with bodies. Many stripped of their clothes, all flat on their back. The bodies, piled like sandbags, formed a wall along the edge of the woods. They were neatly stacked but for a few strays-I saw Michael's body, not five feet from where I stood.

And then I saw Sarah, on her feet, wandering in a daze. I became aware that "Heart and Soul" had stopped. I could hear Sarah's feet brush through the grass.

I couldn't speak-had no impulse to. I ran to Sarah, put my arm around her and guided her toward the side of the house, away from the patio door which was opening, away from Richard, who staggered out into the yard, singing, "Heart and Soul." He fell in love, he sang, "madly."

Prudence was not in the driveway, and I thought fine, if he has her, that'll buy me and Sarah some time, and I'm going to live, and Sarah, too. I pushed Sarah along the driveway, dragged her. I opened the car and put Sarah into the passenger seat, then started the car and backed up to turn around. In the headlights, the car still facing the wrong way, toward the house-I saw Prudence, on her back. Her body must have been just out of sight, just under the front bumper. She jerked, once. I couldn't help watching her breasts: a spray of freckles that vanished into her cleavage.

The mountain road was so rutted, I couldn't go fast, not without taking the chance of breaking an axle.

We were close. Very close to the bottom of the mountain when I heard the bang from the inside of the trunk. I jumped on the accelerator and I could feel a heavy weight shift. Sarah stared calmly ahead, as if we were on a day-trip. There was another bang, and the trunk burst open. I couldn't see anything out the rear-view mirror-just the silver trunk lid. I drove, swerving around boulders, bouncing in and out of pot holes, cursing each time the front end of the car ground into the dirt, until, incredibly, the man from the peak stared at me through the windshield. He clung to the hood on all fours, his arms and legs wide apart, face inches from the glass. He wasn't hiding himself: his teeth were bared and he was filthy with blood, dribbling blood onto the glass, foaming blood from his nostrils.

I felt, suddenly, quite serene. I brought the car to an easy stop. Sarah and I stepped out.

The man from the peak hid himself again. He hopped off the hood with a single, graceful flex of his legs. I heard stones crunch under his shoes as he walked up to Sarah. He looked at me while he put a hand on her right shoulder. And she relaxed completely-I wasn't sure what kept her from collapsing. He grabbed her hair and yanked, forcing her head to the side. She winked at me as if she were about to get a treat she'd been waiting for all day.

Did I make a move to stop him? No. His eyes locked onto mine. And any desire for survival I'd had, any wish for Sarah to live, just slipped away-was leeched from my thoughts. I reached into my breast pocket, slowly removed my cigarette pack, took a cigarette, tamped it against the box, lit it and smoked. I stood, smoked, watched as he tore a chunk of flesh from Sarah's throat with those stupid buck teeth of his and opened his mouth to the jet of blood that burst from her artery. I watched him and he watched me and was he grinning while he drank? Oh, surely he was and I smiled back at him, smiled and smoked my cigarette, smoked so hard the filter flared up before I finally dropped my cigarette and stamped it dead.

I looked up after watching my own foot twist a cigarette butt out on the dirt road and they were gone. He and Sarah were gone. I stared up at the top of the mountain. Stood for at least an hour. Finally, I was released. Trembling, I slid into the driver's seat and drove down off the mountain into Rattlesnake Valley, as blue light crept across the sky.

I listened to the radio for three days. I had the dial somewhere between stations. Sometimes one came in stronger, sometimes the other. I heard news, I heard a minister Bible-teaching, organ music, chants-when both stations grew weak I heard a murkier broadcast: two voices, disharmonious music, swamp-static. I'd ordered all my meals by delivery for the last few days. Greasy wax paper curled in on itself; half-eaten sandwiches, flat soda, Styrofoam. I spent the day in a leather arm chair. I slept there-I woke often to be sure that all my windows were fastened, that the bolts on the door had been shot-that I hadn't been careless after a delivery boy had come by, though, each time I closed the door on a delivery, I locked up, leaned against the door and double-checked the locks. I worried the skin around my fingers and smoked-I'd found a stale pack in my bedroom; not my brand, someone else's cigarettes, some woman I'd brought here had left her cigarettes. I tried to think of ways that I could have stopped what happened from happening, but there was nothing I could've done. I could've done little things differently-not waited so long to take Sarah away (not sent Prudence on her own). Yet, even these small acts seemed out of the realm of possibility to me-that I couldn't have behaved any way other than the way I behaved. My own personality, my own desires, took on monstrous shapes in my mind.

On the third day I remembered the book that I gave to Sarah-that slim collection of short stories. An image of that book popped into my head, completely unbidden. And once that image was there, I couldn't shake it-try as I might. As if the image of that book were being broadcast directly into my head. The book must still have been at Richard's house. I could picture it in each room: on the bar next to a clear, empty bottle; in the guest room on the couch; etc. The book, then the empty room all around it. My thoughts returned incessantly to the book. The book as object. The book as icon. The book as literature-how did those stories tie in with the events of that night? At times, just as sleep would come over me, the stories in that book would seem clearly prophetic-how could I, having read the book, not have known what was going to happen at Richard's party?

I left my apartment to retrieve the book. A small part of my brain screamed at me not to, pointed out that going anywhere near Richard's house was lunacy. I drove up the mountain, tapped the steering wheel, chewed on the end of an unlit cigarette and drove under the no trespassing sign to Richard's. I would get the book and leave. I would have the book. The sun was high and bright, there was nothing at all to going into Richard's house and getting the book and then leaving with it, set on the passenger seat or, perhaps, on my lap. Once I had the book, I would be able to settle back into my rational life.

Prudence's body wasn't in the driveway. I remembered the wall of corpses the man from the peak had made.

I was glad there was still a mess from the party-bottles, ash trays full of butts, objects displaced, leftover dip, etc. If the man from the peak had taken the time to clean the house-that might have made me crazy-if the house had looked as it did on the occasions I'd come to visit Sarah when Richard was away, I'd've been greatly disturbed. There had been a party. The man from the peak had come.

The moment I touched the book I knew that I hadn't come for it after all, and that I hadn't come of my own will.

The peak was a black spike surrounded by sun. I climbed toward the peak. I sweated heavily in my dark clothes-if someone had stood at Richard's front door, would they have been able to see me at all? Just shy of the boulders that crowned the mountain, I found the crevasse I knew was home to the man from the peak. "I live in the peak," he'd said.

I sat down at the edge of the crevasse. A jagged, open crescent in the side of the mountain, as if a sliver of the moon had burned its impression onto the side of the mountain. When I leaned over, I felt a gust of wet air, like breath; it reeked of ammonia and dirt. I'd smoke until my cigarettes were gone and by then there wouldn't be much light left. I didn't want to be here but I found that it was impossible to leave.