The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

HUMAN REMAINS Edward Bryant

Vicky first thought a little girl had lost the doll in the women’s room just off the main lobby of the West Denver Inn. It was a Barbie, just like she remembered from years before. The doll was straight and pink and impossibly proportioned. It lay on the dull white tile beneath the tampon machine. Vicky had heard the clatter as she passed on her way to the sink. Perhaps she had brushed it off, somehow, with an unwary elbow.

Something wasn’t right. The doll did not look at all as she remembered.

Vicky set her black patent-leather purse on the faux marble counter by the sinks, switched the soft leather briefcase to her left hand, and knelt. She saw that the doll was tightly bound with monofilament. Tough, nearly transparent fishing line wound around the doll, binding the ankles, the arms at the waist, the chest, the shoulders, the throat, even around the head, taut across the parted lips. The line wound so tight, plastic bulged slightly around the loops. The bindings actually cut into the doll’s unreal skin.

She gingerly extended the fingers of her right hand and touched Barbie’s shoulder. Cold. Had a little girl lost this here? Vicky forced herself to pick up the doll. Had one of the other women out in the restaurant bar left this? She brought the doll close to her face. Was that a glisten of something red at the corner of Barbie’s lips? The fishing line caught and reflected the harsh overhead light. No, there was no blood. It was only a trick of the light.

Vicky wondered at the obvious strength of the line. If it could do this to the durable synthetics of the doll, what would it do to a caught fish? She had a feeling it would take superhuman—super . . . what was the word for fish?—strength to break these bonds.

Caught would be caught.

She saw no knots where the line ends connected. And maybe there was no need to find them. No point. Trapped. Caught for good. Vicky wound her fingers around the Barbie and turned toward the restroom door. Suddenly she wanted to leave the sharp light and the harsh, astringent odor of disinfectant.

She noticed nothing now save the doll’s seeming to become warmer. Lose heat, gain heat. Barbie was taking heat from Vicky’s grip, her skin, her body, her living, pumping blood.

As she swung the door inward with her left hand, Vicky thrust the doll into her briefcase. Now she had a secret. It was a long time since she had had a new secret.

This weekend, she had a sudden feeling, it was important to keep a secret or two ready and waiting. Something chilling and exciting rippled through her.

When she’d left the table, her companions had been talking about politics local to Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Washington, presidential campaigns, ballot initiatives to alter the whole tone and conduct of capital punishment. Now the other four women were talking about shoes.

Vicky smiled and sat down. Her half-empty supper dishes had been removed. From her side of the table, she could look out the wide expanse of restaurant window, down across the Platte River valley, off to the east across the glittering October skyline of Denver. Above the lights, a nearly full moon had risen. It was another week until Halloween. Trails of fast-moving lights limned the freeway below.

Dixie, the Oregon blonde Vicky already thought of as the wannabe, was saying, “Listen, tomorrow’s Saturday, there’s gotta be a lot of fall shoe sales at the malls. ”

Sonya and Kate, the dark-haired sisters from Utah, looked at each other and laughed. Kate said, “Listen, we’ve got malls in Salt Lake.”

“If we want to shop for pumps or ogle Birkenstocks, we’ll just crank up the Shoe Channel on cable later tonight in the room.” That was Sonya, the elder sister by maybe two years.

Vicky scooted her chair forward and took a sip of coffee. It had cooled to room temperature. Entropy. She remembered the word from a magazine article in her gynecologist’s waiting room. “Southwest Plaza has 27 different shoe stores,” she said absently.

“You counted?” said Carol Anne. She was conspicuously younger than the other women at the table. Vicky wondered about that but had stopped short of asking directly. “I shop there too, but I never counted all the shoe stores.”

Vicky shrugged. “Anyhow, you can’t try them on on the Shoe Channel.”

“I bet Mrs. Marcos watches,” said Dixie. “Is there really a Shoe Channel? We don’t get that on cable in Eugene.”

The supper crowd was beginning to thin out. Vicky realized that most of the faces were women she had seen, and some she had talked to, earlier in the afternoon, when everyone had arrived at the hotel.

“Okay, I’m not going to argue,” said Dixie, smiling. She, Vicky already had noted, laughed a lot. “Tomorrow’s another day. How about tonight? Are we all going to go out somewhere? I know you two sisters have got a car. Is there a Chippendale’s in Denver? Carol Anne? You look hip and you live here.”

Beats me, said Carol Anne. I m out west in Golden. That’s the suburbs. No stud dancers out there. ” She seemed to be blushing a little.

Dixie looked at Vicky. Vicky realized she was hugging the soft briefcase with the bound Barbie doll. She could feel its hardness through the leather. “Don’t look at me,” Vicky said. “I haven’t been to a place like that since—” A chill ran through her belly and up her spine. She felt her shoulders twitch involuntarily. Since the ride.

A man walked up to the table. Vicky at first thought it was the waiter, and then realized that he was another diner. She recognized him as the guy who had been sitting with a woman, probably his wife, at the next table. He was a florid man, perhaps in his fifties, in a dark gray suit. His blue eyes were small and piercing. He had a gray mustache.

He stared down at them. Vicky thought Dixie was going to say something.

“Listen,” said the man, looking quickly from face to face. “I was talking to the manager. He’s a friend of mine and he told me what you’re all doing. I gotta tell you something. I think you’re all a bunch of sick fucks.” He turned on his heel and walked away. His wife quickly got up from their table and followed her husband toward the door. She had averted her eyes, Vicky noticed, from the whole exchange.

The five women at the table stared at each other. Sonya turned and looked after the retreating figures of the man and his wife. She looked angry enough to spit, but said nothing. Kate shook her head.

“Yeah,” said Dixie, “me too. What a jerk.”

Carol Anne looked as if she might cry.

Vicky hugged the doll in the briefcase even tighter, then took a few deep breaths and relaxed her grip. She reached over the tabletop and touched Carol Anne’s hand, wanting to comfort her, reassure her.

The waiter picked that moment to return to ask if anyone wanted more coffee.

They tacitly agreed not to keep talking about the business-suited man with the silent wife. The enthusiasm for male dancers had dwindled. Dixie started talking about movies. Sonya mentioned that the front desk rented VCRs to guests. “Do any of you have the tape?” she said. “The Dobson tape? $29.95 before it got discounted at K-Mart?”

“I looked at it once,” said Dixie. “All that bullshit about booze and porn.”

“I—” Carol Anne started to say something but stopped. She looked to be in her early twenties. Very pretty, Vicky thought. Long brown hair styled back across her shoulders. Maybe like my daughter would have looked if I’d ever had one.

“You were saying?” Dixie said encouragingly.

An alarm sounded in Vicky’s brain. Don’t push her, she thought. Maybe she really doesn’t want to talk.

Carol Anne said, “I watched it, oh, maybe a hundred times.” The rest of the women stared.

“Why?” Vicky almost breathed rather than said the words aloud. Obsessed, she thought. And so, so young.

The younger woman looked down at her lap. “I thought maybe there would be ... a clue. Something. Anything.” She drifted off into silence.

Vicky knew the others wanted to ask, what due? What are you looking for? No one said anything at all. But lord, they wanted to. Obsessed.

And then there was another new presence at the table. It was a young man in a busboy's jacket with brown corduroy trousers. “Bobby” was stitched over his heart. He looked from one face to the next. His eyes, Vicky thought, looked far older than his fresh face.

“ ’Scuse me, ladies,” he said, “did one of you forget—”

Vicky’s hand was already unconsciously reaching for the black purse.

Which wasn’t there on the corner of the table where it should have been.

“—your bag?” He raised his hand and there was Vicky’s black purse.

“It’s mine.” She reached and took it from him.

“You left it in the ladies’ room,” said Bobby. “You gotta watch that around here. This is the city.” He caught her eye. His gaze lingered. Boldly.

Vicky touched the leather with her fingertips. This was mildly disorienting. “Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

“Don’t think nothing of it,” said Bobby. He made a vague waving gesture with his left hand. “No harm done.” He bobbed his head as if embarrassed, caught Vicky’s eye again for just a moment, then turned and walked back toward the kitchen.

Vicky stared. Had the young man smiled? She thought she’d seen a fleeting twist of his lips as he turned. Had he just flirted with her? Returning lost items would be a great way to meet women. Flirt. She hadn’t thought about that word in a long time.

And then she thought of something else. Could lost items be used as bait? But who was fishing?

“Vicky?” Dixie was saying. “Hello, Earth to Vicky? You there, girl?”

Vicky started, realized she was shaking a little, tried to breathe regularly. “I’m here. I guess I was just thinking about how terrible it would have been to lose this,” she said, cradling the purse in her hand.

“Cancelling the cards would be a royal pain,” said Kate, the younger sister.

“Never mind the cards,” said Dixie. “I’d be worried some wacko’d track me down from the driver’s license and show up on my doorstep.”

“Isn’t that a little paranoid?” Kate said.

Her big sister smiled faintly. “Aren’t we all probably just a little paranoid?”

As it turned out, no one went anywhere. The five of them stayed until first the restaurant kitchen, then the bar closed. They talked. Lord, how they talked, Vicky thought.

They talked about that fatal, climactic morning in January, those few years before. Sixteen minutes past seven, EDT.

It was like, where were you when President Kennedy was shot? When John Lennon died? When the Challenger exploded. What were you doing at 7:16 in the morning, January 24, 1989? Listening to a radio. Watching television. Praying his appeals would be turned down.

“I slept through it,” said Dixie. “I’d been watching on CNN most of the night. I went to sleep. I couldn’t help it. ”

“Let me tell you something,” said Kate. She glanced at Sonya. “My sister and me, we know a woman whose daughter was killed. But she was also against capital punishment. She wrote letters and made a thousand phone calls trying to stop the execution.”

Sonya looked off toward the dark space above the bar. “What can you say? She was entitled. She was wrong, but she was entitled.” Her voice dropped off. She said something else and Vicky thought it was something like, “Burn him. Burn them all.”

There was muted laughter at the table behind them. But none at Vicky’s. They talked more about the execution.

“I’ll tell you something really interesting,” said Dixie, “though the rest of you may already know this.” She shrugged. “I didn’t. I just found out. There was a guard who looked real close at the executioner. The guy with the hand on the switch was all covered up, with a black hood and all, you know, just like in a horror movie? Anyhow, the guard says the guy’s eyelashes were incredible. Thick and long, he said. He thought maybe the executioner was a woman.”

They all thought about that for a moment. “No reason why she couldn’t have been,” said Sonya. “Poetic justice.”

“How would she get the assignment?” said Carol Anne.

No one had a good answer.

“Maybe it was just a job,” said Kate. “They all drew cards, maybe. The officials, I mean. The queen of spades or something meant pull the switch. I would have done it.”

“I would have too,” said Sonya. “Under the hood, I think I’d have smiled.” Her teeth clicked together. “I’d have laughed.”

Dixie nodded. Vicky and Carol Anne said nothing.

The already low lights in the bar flickered momentarily and everyone jumped.

They had never met one another before today. Perhaps they would never meet again. But the five of them had, Vicky thought to herself, an incredibly strong bond tying them together. Or more precisely, maybe, they just had something lucky in common.

Sonya and Kate talked about living in Midvale, a little Utah community south of Salt Lake City. In 1974, in October, when Sonya had been 19 and Kate 17, they had been driving home from an Osmonds concert in Salt Lake. One minute the Chevy had been running fine, the next, it was making grinding noises, and the next, it was coasting off on the shoulder on 1-15, just past the exit for Taylorsville.

“It was bizarre,” said Sonya, “here we were on an Interstate, and it was only about midnight, and nobody would stop. It was like we were invisible. ”

And that was when the handsome stranger wheeled his Volkswagen off the highway and pulled in behind them. It was too dark to tell what color the VW was, but the teenagers could see his face in the domelight. He offered to give Sonya a ride into Midvale, but suggested Kate stay with the Chevy to keep an eye on things.

“We said no deal,” said Kate. “We both would go into Midvale, or none of us would. ”

The stranger put his fingers around Sonya’s wrist as though to drag her into the Volkswagen. Kate held up a tire iron she had picked up from the Chevy’s floor. And that was it. The stranger let go, apologized like a gentleman, spun out on the gravel and disappeared into the Utah night.

“He killed a girl from Midvale,” said Sonya. “We knew her. We didn’t know her well, but after they finally found her bones, we went to the funeral and cried.”

Dixie’s was a lower-key story, as Vicky had suspected.

“It was 1975,” said Dixie. “I was a blonde then, just like now, and I know what you’re thinking. Well, he killed two blondes. He wanted brunettes, but he’d settle. He wasn’t that predictable.”

Vicky was glad she hadn’t said anything earlier. She’d known about the blonde victims. She simply, for whatever reason, had been suspicious of Dixie’s attitude.

“I was picking up some stuff for my mom at Safeway,” Dixie continued. “In Eugene. I remember coming up to my car with a bag of groceries in each arm, thinking about saying a dirty word because I couldn’t reach the key in my jeans without either putting a bag down or else risking scattering apples and lima beans across half the lot. Anyhow, just as I got up to the car, there was this good-looking guy—I mean, he looked way out of place in the Safeway lot—with his arm in a sling. I was concentrating on getting hold of my key, so I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying at first, but like I said, he was pretty cute, so I didn’t ignore him completely. He wanted help getting the tire changed on his Volks, he said. Not much help, just having me jump up and down on the spider to loosen the nuts.” Dixie grinned. “I thought I’d be a Girl Scout, so I went over a few steps, still with the bags in my arms, and sure enough, there was the VW. It was a metallic brown Beetle, but I couldn’t see any flat tire. It was about then I heard my mom’s voice telling me about talking to strangers, so I said to him there was a Texaco station with a mechanic just about four blocks down Willamette, and he should get some help there.”

“That was it?” said Sonya. “He didn’t try to grab you?”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” said Dixie dryly. “Didn’t say another word. Just thanked me, turned around and started walking down the street. I got in my mom’s car and left. That was that. ”

Then they asked Carol Anne for her story, but the young woman demurred. “I’m really tired.” They looked at her. “I mean, I don’t want to talk about any of this right now,” she said. “I guess I’m having a little trouble just listening to what all of you are saying.”

“So why are you here?” said Dixie.

“Give her a break,” said Vicky quickly. She’s just a kid. That’s what she didn’t say. It would just have triggered more questions. She made a sudden decision to get Carol Anne off the hook. “Anyway, I’m all psyched to play confessional.”

“Okay,” said Kate.

Dixie glanced at Carol Anne, then looked back to Vicky and nodded. “Then it’s your turn.”

“I was hitchhiking,” said Vicky. “It was April 1975 and the school year was winding down.” I just flunked out, she thought, and then wondered why she just didn’t admit it. Maybe she did have a little pride left. “I was in Grand Junction, over on the western slope. I had the cash, but decided to catch a ride back to Denver just for the hell of it.” For the adventure, she thought. Right. The adventure. Hanging around the club where they’d let her dance topless for tips.

“I waited a while out on the east edge of town. It was morning and there seemed to be a lot more people driving west into the Junction. Finally I got a ride. I think you know who picked me up.”

Slow, serious nods from Kate and Sonya. Dixie’s mouth twitched. Carol Anne just looked back soberly.

“He was the most charming man I’d ever met,” said Vicky. And still is, she thought. “We drove for almost an hour before anything happened.” She fell silent.

“So?” Dixie prompted.

“He pulled off on a dirt road. He said there was something wrong with the engine. It sounded like something you’d hear from some highschool jock taking the good girl in class out to lover’s lane.”

“And?” said Kate.

Vicky took a long breath. “He tried to rape me. He had a knife and some handcuffs. When he tried to force the cuffs on my wrist nearest him, I bit him hard on his hand. I was able to get the door open, and then I was out of there.” It wasn’t rape, she thought. It was mutual seduction. She’d never seen the knife, though the cuffs were real enough. But her moment of panic had come at the point of orgasm when his strong fingers had tightened around her throat. At that moment, she had . . . flinched. Chickened out, she sometimes told herself in the blackest of moods. At any rate, she had kicked free of the stranger. “I ran into the scrub trees where I knew he couldn’t drive a car, and then I hid. After dark, I still waited until the moon rose and set, and then I walked back to the highway. I was lucky. The first car that stopped was a state trooper. I don’t think I would have gotten in a car with anyone else that night.”

Sonya and Dixie and Kate all nodded. Wisely. Then Dixie started to turn toward Carol Anne again.

Vicky said, “Sorry to break this up, but it’s getting late and I’m exhausted. We’ll all have the chance to talk tomorrow.” She glanced pointedly at Carol Anne. The younger woman got the hint.

“I’m going to call it a night too,” she said. “Tomorrow,” she said to Dixie. “I promise. ”

The sisters from Utah decided to stay a while longer and finish their soda waters, though the ice was long since melted. Dixie headed for the elevator.

Carol Anne said to Vicky, “I want to get some fresh air before bed. There’s a kind of mezzanine outside, up over the parking lot and the valley. You want to come along?”

Vicky hesitated, then nodded.

“What time is it?” said Carol Anne. They passed through the bar exit. The bartender locked the door behind them.

“I don’t have a watch on,” said Vicky.

“It’s two-thirty,” said a voice in the dimly lit hallway.

Vicky recoiled, then peered forward. “You,” she said. “The guy who brought back my purse. Bobby.”

“Bobby Cowell,” he said. “At your service, ma’am.” There was something in his tone that was not deferential at all. “Always at your service.”

“Thanks again, Bobby,” Vicky said. She realized Carol Anne had retreated a step.

“Did you count the cash?” said Bobby, stepping closer. He had a musky scent.

“I trust you,” said Vicky. And she did. Sometimes she surprised herself.

Bobby must have realized that. He nodded slowly. “If there’s anything I can do for you while you’re here, anything at all ...” The man’s voice was carefully modulated, sincere.

“Thanks again.” Vicky led Carol Anne past Bobby Cowell.

The man faded into the hallway. “I’d like to get to know you,” he called low after them.

Vicky walked faster.

“I think he likes you,” said Carol Anne.

“He’s more your age,” said Vicky. But she knew she did not completely mean that with sincerity. “Attractive guy.” She had seen his type before. Oh, yes.

Carol Anne laughed. Vicky couldn’t recall having heard her laugh aloud. “He looks like a Young Republican.” She paused. “And he probably drives a bronze VW. ” Carol Anne laughed again, but this time the sound was hollow.

The two women stood against the railing overlooking the Platte Valley. Traffic below them on 1-25 was minimal. To the south they could see the bright arc lamps of some sort of highway maintenance. Vicky could feel heat radiating from Carol Anne’s side.

“You know, I keep wondering about something,” said Carol Anne.

“What’s that?” Vicky found her eyes attracted to the red aircraft warning lights blinking on the skyscrapers less than a mile away.

“This is really petty and my soul’ll probably burn in hell just for thinking it.”

“Let’s hear it.” Vicky’s attention snapped back to the woman next to her.

“My dad told me once that he figured maybe a million people went to Woodstock. ”

“That may be a little exaggerated,” said Vicky.

“No, I mean, a lot of people were so in love with the idea of having been there, but even if they didn’t go, they said they did. Maybe they even thought they did.”

“So are you talking about this event here?” said Vicky. “I think everybody here believes she went through whatever she went through.” She suddenly started to feel the fatigue of the night for real. Her head was buzzing.

“I guess—well, okay,” said Carol Anne.

“Let me suggest something even more troubling,” said Vicky. In the darkness, she saw the pale oval of Carol Anne’s face turn toward her. “You know about astronaut syndrome?”

“No,” said Carol Anne, sounding puzzled.

“People used to go to the moon,” said Vicky. “Men did, anyway. I read an article once, where they interviewed guys who walked on the moon. You know something, it was the biggest, most exciting, most important thing that ever happened to them.”

“So?” said Carol Anne, apparently not getting the point.

“So they had to come back to earth. So they had to spend the rest of their lives doing things that were incredibly less exciting and important. Politics and selling insurance and writing books were nothing like walking on the moon.”

Carol Anne was silent for a while. “So everyone here, I mean, all the women who came in for this gathering thing, they walked on the moon?”

“They all lived,” said Vicky. “They survived. Nothing as exciting will ever happen to them again.”

“What about you?” said Carol Anne. She clapped her hand over her mouth as if suddenly trying to stop the words.

“I fit the pattern,” said Vicky, trying to smile and soften the words. “I’ve gone through a lot of men, a lot of jobs, a husband, more men, more dead-end jobs. Nothing so powerful has ever happened to me again.” She thought, it sounds like a religious experience. And maybe it is.

Carol Anne issued something that sounded a little like a sigh, a little bit of a sob.

“Now,” said Vicky. “What about you? You’re too young for the moon. You know it and I know it. We’ve been talking about them. Now there’s just me, and just you. And you’ve heard about me.” Well, most of it, she thought.

Carol Anne reached out blindly and took Vicky’s hand. She held it tightly. She seemed to be trying to say something. It wasn’t working.

“Calm down,” said Vicky. “It’s all right.” She took the younger woman in her arms. “It’s all right,” she repeated.

“I never knew him,” said Carol Anne, her words muffled against Vicky’s shoulder. “Not directly. But I think he killed my mother.” She started to cry. Vicky rocked her gently, let her work it out.

“We don’t know for sure,” Carol Anne said finally. “My dad and I, we just don’t know. They never found any remains. I was five back in 1975. My mom was really young when she had me. You know something? My birthday is January 24. And for nineteen years I didn’t know what the significance was going to be. In 1989 on my birthday, I only got one present. The execution.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Before that. 1975. It was earlier in the winter than when you got away from him. We lived in Vail. We found my mom’s car in the public parking lot. It was unlocked and the police said later someone had pulled the coil wire. They said there was no sign of violence. She just vanished. We never saw her again.” Carol Anne started again to cry. “She didn’t run away, like some people said. He got her. And there are no remains.”

After a while, Vicky pulled a clean tissue from her purse. “So why are you here?”

There was a very long silence, after which Carol Anne blew her nose noisily. “I thought maybe something someone might say would give me a clue. About my mother. I’ve read everything. I’ve seen all the tapes. Over and over. I just want to know, more than anything else, what happened.”

No, thought Vicky, I don’t think you do. She knew what would happen when she said it, but she said it anyway. “Your mother’s dead, Carol Anne. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. But you know it.”

Carol Anne sobbed for a very long time. She took a fresh tissue from Vicky. “I know it. I know that. I just want to know more. How it happened. Who—”

“It’s enough to accept that she’s gone,” said Vicky. “Maybe someday you’ll find out more.” She hesitated. “I hope you do.”

“I’m 22,” said Carol Anne. “My whole life’s revolved around this for seventeen years. ”

“Do you have . . . someone?”

“My father died five years ago. I don’t have a boyfriend if that’s what you mean.” Her voice was mournful. “I guess I don’t have much of a life at all.”

I’m glad you said it, Vicky thought. “You will,” she said aloud. “But you’ve got to leave all this old baggage. You can’t forget it, but you can allow it to fade. Your dues are paid. Believe it.” Just say good-bye, she thought. Good night for good, and make it stick. She reached out again for Carol Anne’s hand. And then she packed the young woman off to bed. At the door of Carol Anne’s room, Vicky said, “I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

Carol Anne looked like she was trying to smile bravely. Then she shut the door. Vicky heard the chain lock rattle into place.

Her own room was down a floor and at the opposite end of the wing. The windows overlooked the parking lot. If she craned her neck, Vicky could see the downtown office towers with their cycling crimson aircraft beacons.

She didn’t turn on the lights when she entered the room. Vicky lay down on the bed still dressed, the purse and briefcase nestled up against her like kittens. She stared up into the darkness as though she could still see stars. The bright, winking stars of western slope Colorado. The star patterns of 1975. She wondered if she went to the window and looked down, whether she would see moonlight glinting off the shell-like curve of a hunched VW. Bobby’s VW? There was something about his name that tickled at the edge of her attention, something she couldn’t quite remember.

She found her fingers, as though of their own volition, opening the briefcase and taking out the tightly bound Barbie doll. Vicky couldn’t see it, but she could feel the taut loops of monofilament cutting into the vinyl dollflesh. She clutched the talisman and smiled invisibly.

Some men, Vicky thought, would only send flowers.

But then, as the darkness seeped through every pore, every orifice of her body, filling her with night and grief, she thought of Carol Anne and began to cry. Vicky had not cried in all too long. Not in seventeen years, to be exact.

Seventeen years without a life. Seventeen years looking.

At least, she thought, Carol Anne is young. She can go away from this weekend and re-create her life. She doesn’t have to be empty.

And what about me? Vicky thought, before clamping down savagely on self-pity.

What, indeed. Seventeen years before. It was perhaps the next-to-biggest event of her life. The most important was still to come. Perhaps. It had been on its way since 1975. And had been derailed in January 1989. No, that’s not it either, she thought, feeling the long-time confusion. All I want is to walk on the moon again.

Vicky cried herself to sleep.

She knew she was dreaming, but that did not diminish the effects.

She still lay in her bed, but now it was larger than she could envision and softer than she could hope. She lay bound tightly, so tightly she could not move.

But the thing about helplessness was, she no longer had to take responsibility for anything at all. Almost cocooned in monofilament, she could feel the line cut into her skin, deep into her flesh, thin incisions of pain that burned like lasers.

The pain, she realized, was a mercy compared to the years of numbness. The bindings that restrained her body also retained her heat, and now that heat built and built and suffused her from the core of her flesh to the outer layers of skin.

Blood ran from the comer of her mouth, where the line dug so tight, she could not extend her tongue to lick it away. But some ran back inside anyway. Her blood was warm and slick and salty.

She moaned and moved as best she could inside her bonds. It was almost enough.

Vicky awoke confused, staring in disorientation at the bedside clock. She guessed it was still an hour before dawn. She had not slept for long. But she wanted to stretch, and so she did so. Her body felt alive. More, it felt ... she searched for an apt word . . . hopeful.

Then she turned her head and recoiled back against the pillow. Bobby Cowell stood at the foot of her bed. His left hand swung back and forth slowly. Something metallic glittered. A pass-key. Vicky tried to speak.

He had been watching her sleep.

He had watched her dream.

“There’s just something about you,” he said softly. He smiled in the dim light, teeth showing white.

There was no conscious planning. She swung her legs off the bed, hearing the briefcase slide to the carpet, then sat up and took a deep breath or two to counter the sudden vertigo. After a few seconds, she got up and hesitated.

She could lunge for the phone. Or the door. She saw no weapon in evidence other than the key.

“I know who you are,” said Bobby. “I know everything you want.” He stepped back away from the door. She could flee.

“What do you want?” Vicky said.

“To take you for a ride. It’s still a beautiful night. We’ll go up into the mountains. ”

It was so much like a dream. She didn’t remember to bring a coat, but the late, late night didn’t seem to be all that cold, so it didn’t matter.

At the bottom of the fire-stair well, she waited for him. “I figured you’d come,” he said softly, taking her arm.

“1 will,” said Vicky. Was she still sleeping? All in motion only slightly slower than reality.

They exited the stairwell. “I have my car out in the lot,” said Bobby.

Vicky nodded and put her free hand over his fingers on her arm. “I figured that,” she said. His fingers were warm. The excitement inside her was cold. She looked up and saw the distant, sinking moon.

They passed the mezzanine and turned toward the steps leading down to the parking lot. Vicky hesitated a split second, stared back over Bobby’s shoulder, hesitated a little longer.

At the other end of the platform, Carol Anne stood, leaning away from the city, staring back at them. Her expression altered mercurially. Vicky didn’t think Bobby had seen Carol Anne watching them. Maybe she’d see Carol Anne in the morning. Maybe not.

“Come on,” said Vicky, turning back to the steps. And at the beginning of the final descent to the outside world, she thought about the last enigmatic expression on Carol Anne’s face. Wistful?

She hoped—wished desperately—it was only that.