The Windowmaker

Johnny Terror

THE WINDOWMAKER

PREFACE

picked up the phone at three am. Confused. “Hm?”

“Ryan...its me. Oliver.”

Oliver Hage. Hearing his voice was like putting on an old jacket.

“Is that you, Hage? What the---”

“Help me, Ryan,” his voice cracked. It sounded eerie, familiar and desperate. “You gotta help me,” he said, “The window; it’s killing me. The window is killing me!”

Those were the last words I heard before the mad, arcane screaming started.

The window is killing me.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO PEOPLE

WHO LET THEIR IMAGINATIONS

RUN WILD

S

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g

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t

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!

CONTENTS

The Windowmaker (Prologue)

Playgrounds

Monsters For Sale

The Dogs

Gorge

The Doctor Is In

The Pine Bar Shower

Dead-mouse Follies

The Thought Furniture

Where Spiders Walk

The Pocket Dragons

Under the Bones of All Dead Things

Horror Stories

The Project

Scat Terbra Ins

The Shivering

The Windowmaker (Epilogue)

BOOK ONE

SEPARATION

When that new friend takes you by the hand and leads you to intimate places, private places where you can scream and answer voices and maybe shriek out some unfounded laughter, you can bet your Nutty-Buddy that you’ll be a long time coming home.

- Nile Alexis Toll, Delford Hospital

You got to get in to get out.

- The Carpet Crawlers, Genesis

Now.

It was five years since I heard anything from Oliver. There was never a word, not a written letter. Never a message, nor a hint of his whereabouts. Not a single peep. Then came the telephone call at three AM on that dark morning. Sudden thunder and lightening shocked me out of a deep sleep.

“It’s eating me up alive, Ryan! Its really killing me!”

“Stop screaming. Oliver! Stop it!... What’s wrong?”

“Window...”

“What are you talking about? What window?”

“You gotta see it, man. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“You can tell me, Oliver. What is it?”

What he told me was that I wouldn’t believe my eyes. That it was like holding Heaven and hell, and everything inbetween, in the palm of my hand. More than anything, he said it was something I had to save him from. Something taking his life away.

I made my way to his apartment building. A crimson carpet stretched across the floor of the lobby like a filthy pate of blood. It stank like ashtrays in a vomit park. In a corner there was vomit; a pool of stew emitting colour, stench and effluence. Black gum marks dotted the carpet and, in one place, the carpet was thread-wild, unravelling from a tear.

The elevator was out of order so I took the stairs. Vandals had scarred the stairwell with disgusting drawings and gross exaggerations of genitalia, obscene and hateful phrases, tags and the incontrovertible, “fuck you.” The faint wail of a crying baby infected the air with its implied message of neglect and abuse. I took steps two by two until I reached the third floor. His hall way reeked of fried fish.

“Please be alive,” I said. I knocked on his apartment door.

I could feel the bumping of my heart and I could still hear the shrill cry of the baby lost on some distant floor.

Be alive, Oliver...answer the door. I knocked a little louder.

I heard what sounded like a chair scraping across the floor. It was coming from the depths of the apartment. I thought I heard footsteps, but I couldn’t tell. Then I heard Oliver’s voice.

“Who is it?”

“Ryan. Open up.”

The deadbolt clicked and the chain rattled.

“Come in,” I heard his voice say deep within the apartment. Had someone unlocked the door for Oliver? When I opened the door and swung it open...I could not have ever imagined the horror.

“Hello, Ryan.”

The man, huddled under a boarded window in a pool of his own filth and excrement, had the ghost of Oliver in his face. Strangely familiar features, like his ice-blue eyes and wornout smile, haunted this loathsome wretch. He was grossly disfigured. Degenerated and atrophied. Emaciated. Arms once swaddled with muscle were withered to the thinness of bones. His rib cage bumped and tumbled along his bare chest like a skeleton’s heart cage under a deathshroud. His skin was mottled with pustules and scuffed with pinkish cactrix. Once brown hair was now long and grey, matted and straggled, coming off in bunches as he clutched it within his dirty fists.

I collapsed down onto a mouseshit infested couch after the initial shock of seeing him in that condition. He told me not to go near him. I assured him that I wouldn’t. He assured me that he was feeling ok. And then he coughed a deathknoll cough that rolled into a laugh. Above my head, a pale, naked light bulb burned with sick, dull light. The whole apartment was dark and unhealthy. Boards covered the window and thick blankets blotted out all daylight coming through the cracks. A mismatched livingroom set was huddled along a wall like hobos around a cigarette campfire. The kitchen table, littered with detritus, stood in a corner of the living room as if the empty kitchen didn’t want it. The place was starved of life. A handless clock ticked its senseless talk. No t.v. No radio. No books, no pencils. Nothing.

“Oliver, how can you live like this?”

Oliver wiped his nose with his hand.

“I’m not living,” he said.

Certainly mad, I thought, because contrasting the litter and disgust was a clean, gleaming smoked glass coffee table, polished like a gemstone. There was only one thing on it. There in front of me, on the coffee table, was a piece of broken glass.

“This window that you say is killing you, where is it?”

“It’s right there.” He pointed to the piece of glass.

"This?” I was sure he had gone mad.

“It’s a window,” he said, “A window to your darkest imaginings.”

I picked the piece of glass up and inspected it, rolling it over and over on my fingertips, puzzled. I looked around the apartment, wondering who had let me in. Perhaps no one. Perhaps someone hiding.

“I hope you’re not afraid of what you see here, Ryan,” Oliver blurted out. “If you are then you better leave now, before it even begins. The scary things, I mean.”

I was suddenly struck with dread. I saw what was happening...Oliver was dying. He was insane and he was really dying.

“We need to go to Emerg---”

“Look into it!,” Oliver demanded.

I was looking at him instead. His eyes were stark and bloodshot. I held up the window to my eye like the lens of a telescope and I watched him through the glass.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Oliver ran the back of his hand across his nervous smile. His lips were parched and blue. “No,” he explained, “look into it. You got to really look into it.”

I stared into the glass piece and I tried to focus. I saw nothing.

“Its a piece of useless glass, Oliver. Just a piece of glass.”

I held up the glass and clutched it. I wanted to throw it and smash it: This little piece of window, the epicentre of my friend’s madness. Then...

I opened my hand...

and was stupefied. Awestruck, I nearly dropped it. I looked into the glass and trembled. In my hand I held a tiny cinema. I saw children running rampantly on a field of snow. I was instantly absorbed. It was mad rapture. The glass conjured up a pictureshow; life on a tiny, vibrant screen...I heard voices...I saw...

PLAYGROUNDS

“Pass me the ball, Shaun! I’m open!”

Just then the bell rang and the children screamed like the clockwork shines, darting toward the two broad doors where they filed into a double line and entered the school two by two, rosy cheeked and flushed from their fun, cherry couplets under the teacher’s gun. Recess is over!

From random play areas they capered, chasing after one another’s antagonists, snatching hats from the heedless and booting snow sculptures as they ran past them in wild childhood ecstasy. It was Ms. Sanderson with her fogged up glasses, ripe red nose, and angora mittens that usually posted the office of recess duty; mediating childish grievances, sporting a close-knit following of weak or endearing disciples as she roamed the tumble yards from the teeter-totter to the round-about to the skipping rope territories. She made sure that the children didn’t lallygag when the bell rang because her opinion held that real childhood magic didn’t amount to fun and games. No. She believed that truly precious moments in a child’s life occurred when the cold, cruel world slapped them with a taste of reality now and again. She was rapt to watch her eager lambs crowd into class, she was adroit at her shepherd’s duty. Today, however, Ms. Sanderson just plain old forgot to throw that casual sweep of her wolfish eyes across the soccer field to make sure that the playgrounds were bereft of the winded and the dawdlers.

“Jeez, Shaun! You never passed me the ball!”

Shaun watched his friend fall to his knees in the snow and slam his soppy mitts into the ground. Jason was enraged! A dollop of running snot depending from one of his nostrils shot back and disappeared into the clotted lair of the sinus worm. “You never passed me the stinkin ball!”

Other children were running toward the school doors, Jim and Georgie were engaged in a playful snow fight, Tony was off retrieving the ball that was kicked aimlessly when the bell rang.

“I didn’t see you,” Shaun muttered.

“I was wide open! Wide as your gramma’s ass!”

“I never saw.”

Jason fitted Shaun with a malefic gaze. His red toque was half-way falling from his head unleashing locks of sweaty, black hair that swirled within wet tangles. The stringy jungle dangled over his face, obscuring full eye contact. But Shaun could see his eyes, dark and glossy, shining through the Medusa-works like river rocks.

He’s like an animal, Shaun thought, ready to strike.

“You’re a hog. I mean it. A shitty ball hog.”

“Come on,” Shaun said, retreating, “the bell rang.”

“No!...I’m not goin in.” The look in his eyes confirmed the decision.

Tony rushed past them with the soccer ball trapped in his arms.

“Come on slowpokes!,” he cried and a squeal of laughter skidded from his throat for no apparent reason. Jason lashed out and clasped the hem of Tony’s coat as he tried to run past. Tony’s feet and legs went on trotting ahead of himself and he landed on the seat of his pants, dazzled.

“Hey! Whattchya do that for?” Tony’s voice was small and throaty. He was the smallest in the playground crew of five who dominated the soccer fields at recess; a gang consisting of Jimmy Harlow, Georgie Black, Tony “Macaroni” Oliveira, Shaun Church, and Jason Goddard.

Shaun took a quick glance toward the school doors where the line-up was quickly diminishing. He turned toward Tony.

“Jason’s not going in.”

“What?”

Tony looked at Jason who was smiling malevolently at him. Jason’s smile always showed both top and bottom teeth in full view as if it were contrived or feigned; it rather made him look like he was absolutely insane. Jason abruptly stood up and lurched over Tony with his grim, bloated face.

“You heard him, potato ears, I ain’t going in. I’m gonna go on playing right till next recess. It’s called playin hooky. You wanna play?”

Tony started getting nervous. Jason was likely to sock you in the guts or finger you in the eye for the hell of it. He was likely to wait a week before he decided he didn’t like something you said to him. And there he was, hanging over Tony like the full moon shot down with bullet holes. His irises were cold, black circles; deep like the dark waters in madman McMurchy’s old water well. Wasn’t there stories about how that crazy freak had drowned a hundred animals in the well starting with a mewling litter of kittens and ending with a real live calf stolen from August Tandrea’s pasture? Yep. Those eyes held every drop of that same insane uncertainty, that numbing mystique that made Tony tremble because he never knew what was suspended, stirring, or kicking lifelessly within the depths of that darkness.

“Yeah,” Tony decided, “let’s all go.”

He stood up and looked across the field to where Georgie was washing Jim’s face in snow.

“JO!---”

A mitt slammed over his mouth. It was hot and salty. It smelled like a mouldy bird’s nest. Tony looked over his shoulder, wide eyed and nervous, into the full, tallowy face of Jason Goddard.

“Hush up!,” Jason farted (actually, his breath stank), “they’re too far and the teacher’ll hear ya. Let them go.”

Okay. There wasn’t any doubt that Jim would be inside before Georgie caught up with him; and with Ms. Sanderson supervising the doors, they wouldn’t be able to turn around anyways. Macaroni nodded and Jason pulled his ratty mitten free from the boy’s mouth. It gave Macaroni a wretching spell that made his eyes water.

“What about you, Shaun?,” Jason croaked, “Are you coming?”

Shaun turned to see the diminishing tail of the student body disappear into the mouth of the school.

“I’m...”

(scared)

The school jaws slammed shut. Unfamiliar sound fell over the playgrounds like a wet blanket. The playgrounds were silent. They were empty. Dead.

“What do we do?,” Macaroni asked.

“First we got to get out of sight. If someone sees us from the window we’re cooked.”

“Where do we go?” He was looking up to his commandeering friend the way a grounded bird might look to the sky.

“In there,” Jason said.

The trees. They towered ominously along the fenceless outer reach of the playgrounds like a cordon of monsters, halted, awaiting further instruction from God. There they rooted into the ground along a straight line that edged the school’s northern boundary and once crossed, you were on

(the wild side)

your way to the Principal’s office for some good chewing.

The children rushed for the woods. Tony-Macaroni-head-full-of-bologni was fitted with shrieks of laughter, the soccer ball shuffling from side to side as he fled. Jason led the way with his heavy boots clodding through the snow and his black rayon coat swishing to the rhyme in his motion. Shaun followed closely behind them, committed, although every penny in his well of better judgement was wishing him to go back.

They ran far enough into the woods so that the school was imperceptible through the growth of trees and underbrush. They fronted a fallen tree and there collapsed, Macaroni fused with sneaky giggles, trying to catch their breath.

“We’re doing it,” he said, “we’re playing hooky.”

“Yeah,” Jason confirmed and he tilted his head up and shut his eyes, smiling that terrible grin of his as if the dire notion of truancy was enthralling him with a most profound ecstasy.

Shaun looked around at the slumbering trees, the gnarls and crags of twisted wood. There was a penetrating cry about them that Shaun could actually hear moaning or whispering in a secret, silent language.

(icey yoooooou)

“I don’t think we should be in here.”

Jason opened his eyes. He propped himself up on his elbows in the snow. “What are you talking about?,” and he flagged Shaun a look of disgust.

“These woods. I don’t think we should be in these woods.”

“Why not?,” Macaroni barked. He was lying on his back using the soccer ball for a pillow, comfortable with the position of his elated soul in the Great Chain of Being; body reclined and his who-cares ass sprawled wonderf’lly under the truant sun.

“These woods...they’re haunted,” Shaun told them.

Laughter crackled through the woods. Jason had his mouth wide open, the spaces in between every small tooth showing or temporarily filled by the squirm of his rolling tongue. That was the way he laughed. One of his boots went bumping up and down from the hilarity. Tony Macaroni rolled his head-full-of-bologni from side to side on his soccer ball. His eyes were squeezed tight from the agony of laughter.

“They’re haunted!,” Shaun exclaimed.

“Say’s who?,” Macaroni bleated under a storm of laughter.

“Say’s my Gramma.”

Another jag of greasy laughter filled the forest.

* * *

What Shaun was telling them was, in part, the truth. Gathered around a blazing fire in the twilight hours of a cold, November eve’s darkening, his grandmother told a haunting tale that absorbed the imaginations of everyone surrounding her.

“He was crazy because he saw it,” Shaun’s grandmother said as she cupped her tea mug in her hands. “In those woods. Something in there. And its evil.

“He spent hours staring out the window past that school yard and into the trees. He said he saw something in them, or something saw him, looking back at him, watching him. One day he stormed out his back door and headed toward the woods. He disappeared into them. Myra watched him go. She guessed he finally decided to go into the woods to see what in heavens had him so wound up.”

Gramma placed her empty tea mug down. She folded her knotted fingers on her lap and eased her head back. “Myra seen him come outta those woods about four hours later, tearing at his own flesh. He looked as crazy as Satan. He was crying and screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘I SEEEE YOOOOOOOOU! I SEEEEEEEEEEEE YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!.’

“Later that day, Darren and his partner in crime, Officer Mills, followed up on a call. Myra heard screaming coming from next door so she called her son. ‘Darren, you better come over here and check up on Willie next door. It sounds like he’s being murdered, or something.’

“The police entered Willie’s room and nearly fainted. And it’s a fact, Officer Mills stepped back and vomited in the hallway.”

“What did they see?,” someone asked.

Gramma pulled her shawl around her arms and said, “Blood. Words written in blood. Crazy, insane things; written everywhere using his own fingers that he dipped into his own torn flesh. He wrote things like, ‘I SEE YOU! You make the unreal, real! I SEEEEEEEEEE YOOOOOOOOOOOU!’ And blasphemies, he wrote atrocities and blasphemies. He was possessed by antispirit.”

Gramma, however, never mentioned the physical nature of the entity, antispirit; freak or phantasm, she left the grandest detail, the description of the ghost, up to the imaginations of the family members sitting all around her.

“You see,” she finished, “them are hauntwoods behind your school, Shaun. Never go in there. Never! Especially with a wicked thought in your head. Those woods are evil. They are Windingo. They fulfil the atrocities inherent in the human spirit. The monster will eat your flesh. Poor, poor Willie. He wanted to see. He was a looker who went into the woods to look and in turn...he was looked upon. ‘There’s something in the woods,’ Willie told the ambulance paramedics, ‘it has fire for eyes and it smiles.’ Willie drew his last breaths getting those words out. God rest his soul. Probably saw the devil himself. On his wall, he painted those eyes and that smile in his own blood.”

Gramma looked at Shaun before turning toward the blazing fireplace. “Stay away from them,” she warned. “Those woods are haunted. Those aren’t playgrounds...They’re haunted.”

* * *

“Don’t laugh!,” Shaun demanded, “its true.”

“Yeah,” Macaroni snickered, “there’s one ghost. Boo! It’s wearing Ms. Sanderson’s shitty underwear.”

Jason howled at this. His eyes opened and shut, tears rolling from their ducts as machine-gun laughter fired from his lungs.

“I’m telling you, there’s a---”

“Hogwash!,” Jason blurted, “Enough! Lets play dogs!”

Tony’s laughter swooned to a dead gas in his stomach. “Dogs?,” he quirked, “How do you play dogs?”

“Well, we pretend we are wild dogs and we walk around in a pack. I’m the leader because every pack of dogs has one. We go into the woods and we hunt.”

Tony’s eyes lit up. He thought the idea was absolutely brilliant as he thought all of Jason’s ideas were absolutely mindsweeping.

“Yeah, dogs. War dogs. Killer dogs. Mean and psycho vicious dogs. What we hunting for, Jason? Coons? Rabbits? Zebras?”

“We’re wild dogs and we’re hunting for people,” Jason said. “They are tricky to hunt because they are smart, but they taste the best.”

Macaroni lifted himself up and hustled the soccer ball under one arm. “I’m second leader,” he declared, “because packs of dogs have second leaders.”

“Okay,” Jason agreed. He stood up.

They both looked at Shaun with shining, expectant expressions, waiting to hear him call out that useless, childish liturgy, ’I’m third leader!′ Shaun did not pronounce an interest in the game; he simply accepted his position in the scheme of things and would have the consequences of his bad decisions run their course. That was all.

“We should stay on the playgrounds,” Shaun coaxed, “somewhere where no one can see us.”

Jason’s wild eyes glistened in their sockets, “These ARE! the playgrounds, Shaun!” He glared at Shaun for a moment and then turned toward heavier woods. “Let the games begin,” Jason announced.

* * *

Sombre trees slouched from their winter drab; ice, snow, and dead light. The woody stalks of creeping vines snaked through their bare branches like stitches in a hairpiece. The cloud in the sky was one and complete, purling endlessly above them with a quitter’s laze. Snow crunched under their footsteps as Jason led them through untrodden ground, path-making, following the fly-by-night conviction that they were dogs hunting men, believing in the kill as sure as boys grow up. They hustled past a thicket of dogwood and past a decrepit, wooden shack. Boys would have stopped to see if there was any good stuff in the shack but the dogs hadn’t that course at all.

“Come on you guys,” Shaun said as he tried to catch his breath, “we’re awfully far from the school. Let’s stop.”

A blue jay cried with alarm high above them on a tree branch. Jason turned his nose up to the air. The bird flew off and Jason could smell it.

Woods merged with woods merged with endless dark woods. A chill ran through Shaun.

(icey...)

“Guys, I think we should---”

“Shut up, Shaun!,” Jason growled, “Shut the hell up. Can’t you see we’re hunting? I’m getting hungry, so just shut your mouth.”

There was also a change in Macaroni’s behaviour. Not prominent at first, but as they trampled deeper into thicker woods, Shaun could see that something was happening to Macaroni. Usually go-lucky and artless, Tony was new, keener, more alert, shambling into areas of thick brush of his own accord, following his own sharpened senses and returning from wayward tangents nettled and mottled with burrs and barbs of wild seed. It made Shaun nervous. Perhaps Jason was different too, but it was hard to tell. Jason was always sleek and sure, direct in his course of action whether he was to beat or be beaten. Shameless in his attack. Tony was different. There was something altered in his reflex; he was sharp, vulpine and to see this frightened Shaun. That fear, however, was a friendly, waggling thing that kept his mind from thinking about the gargantuan fear:

(icey yoooooooooou)

They were moving faster now. With stealth. It was as if the silly game was turning into a darker sport. Tony had discarded his soccer ball somewhere in the race. It wasn’t important any more. It slowed him down. Shaun lumbered up to Macaroni’s heels.

“Tony,” Shaun gasped, hardly able to catch his breath, “your soccer ball. You lost it. Your dad’s gonna kill you.”

“My dad’s not going to kill me, Shaun,” Tony panted, “my stomach is. Help us, would ya?” He turned toward Shaun and Shaun fell to the ground. Tony’s eyes, once pale blue and friendly, were black and deep, the whites around them almost non-existent.

Unreal. Look at his eyes. Jeez look at his eyes. He’s changing. They’re both changing. The woods are getting scarier and things are getting wild here.

Shaun caught up to them on the lip of a deep ravine. It dropped off of a bluff, red and rocky, down toward a river gurgling far below them under a plate of thin ice. The dogs paced restlessly along the embankment and they sniffed at the air. Macaroni whined.

Shaun was out of breath but his friends seemed calm, panting easily in a controlled, dogged rhythm. Jason’s tongue, salivating like a Pavlov variable, dangled precariously over his jawbone.

“Okay, guys. That’s it. This is crazy. The school is way the...” Just then, in the far away distance, the school bell sang the sirens’ song, recess. Shaun looked toward the dogs standing on the edge of the natural precipice. “By the time we get back school will be over. Let’s head back now, guys. What do you say?” He was starting to catch his breath. He sat himself on a large, flat rock. When he looked up, Jason was staring at him. Jason’s lips hiked themselves up into a snarl as he growled. His teeth were sharp and long. He stepped out over the edge of the cliff.

* * *

“Oh my God! Jason!” Shaun scrambled to the edge of the cliff and watched as Jason tumbled down the embankment. He was half scrabbling to secure a hold on dried bramble and grabbing at the tree roots springing out of the erosion scarred soil. Tony whined even louder and yelped.

“You’re not going to jump, are you, Tony? You can’t possibly think about that. Jason is crazy. He’s lucky he’s alive. I don’t think we can make it, man. We’ll die.”

Macaroni looked toward Shaun standing next to him. His eyes were as black as McMurchy’s well. He said, “Don’t you get it, Shaun? We are dying.” Tony licked his ear and jumped.

Tony crashed down the ravine, mindless and hungry. Plummeting, landing, slipping, rolling, sliding in a bed of stone and muck until he reached the bottom. He trotted up to the river and bent his neck to the water for a drink. Jason was already there. They finished lapping water down their throat and sniffed at the air.

How am I going to do this? This is crazy!

The dogs started to cross the river.

Shaun looked down at them and couldn’t believe his eyes. “Wait! That ice is too thin!”

Jason pounded across the ice with his heavy boots. He heard cracks in the ice.

“Wait!” Shaun nosed up to the edge of the escarpment and contemplated death.

Macaroni was lagging behind Jason, running across the river ice. He fell through somewhere near the middle, his right leg engulfed by the watery mouth, teeth like ice.

“TONY!,” Shaun screamed. He teetered.

He fell.

(And only just started catching the buzz.)

* * *

Macaroni’s foot came free, bootless and clad in a sopping wet sock. It dangled and flopped like a dead fish at the end of a compound fracture, ugly broken.

Shaun watched it flopping around as Tony crossed the river and ran into the snowy woods. From the bottom of the escarpment, Shaun thought he smelled wood burning. He ran up river and checked his weight on the ice. He was lighter than Jason. He stepped carefully to the other side and followed the dogs’ trail into the woods.

What’s going on?, Shaun cried to himself. Tony’s gonna get frostbite, we’re lost in the forest, he’s gonna get gangrene creeping up his leg, we’re in the hauntwoods...the hauntwoods.

Then the reality of the game crashed into his consciousness, his heartbeat hostile.

“We’re hunting. We’re hunting for people.” Shaun picked up his pace.

The dogs were running at full stride now. Trees and smaller woody things whisked past them. The snow complained underfoot, crunching: Cripes!, a gripe for every step. Jason was leading the way, following the sudden and acute awareness in his sense of smell. He had caught wind of something. Something they were downwind from. Tony had it too. He was running across the frozen wilderness with one bare bone extending from his skin, his foot still hanging tenaciously by tendons and muscle, skin and ligaments. He was oblivious to it. Losing his sock didn’t matter. Loosing blood didn’t matter because there was hunger in his belly.

Shaun caught up with them in a strange alcove. The light was different there. Darker and redder. The dogs were on their hands and knees smelling the snow. There were footprints of a small child, possibly a pre-schooler, maundering ambulantly, neither here-nor-there, certainly away from the road that led to Shabbytown.

Low, almost breathless growls rumbled from the deepest basins of their throats like guttural thunder. Their eyes were wild pools, sharp as cross-hair lenses. They both barked and ran off in the direction of the footprints.

A stinging fatigue filled Shaun’s head. His lungs were fire, his heart?, red and angry. He tried to keep up with the dogs. Even Macaroni moved quicker than he did. They reached another embankment that fell into the slope of a hill. There, trees were held up by the broken promise of a fall. At the bottom of the hill, a small, exasperated boy stood with his eyes inhaling astonishment, staring at the dogs standing at the top of the hill. The young lad was eating a half-eaten apple that he had stolen from the Foodmart when his mother turned her back. Had he entered the woods alone? It didn’t matter. He was an eater here to eat and in turn be...

“I seeeeeeeee yoooooooooooooou,” Jason howled. “See, see, seeeee yooooooooou.”

* * *

From the top of the hill Shaun dreamed of the school yard. He imagined soccer fields and snow angels and kids dressed in coats of many colours. Somewhere far away he thought he heard the school bell ring. School is definitely out!

At the bottom of the hill the dogs were howling. Laughing. The laughter filled the world. There was blood on the snow. There was blood in their hair and blood on their teeth. Their eyes were rolling back and forth, heavy with ecstasy, from side to side or in full circles. Their lips were hiked up into grotesque and unnatural snarls as thunder rumbled from their throats.

And Shaun saw something else as he stood above the violent savagery of the playgrounds. Something downwind and out of sight. A dog was crouched in the brush, sharp, low and alert. Its eyes glowed with malignant, orange light. It had jaws the size of a great white furnace, endless rows of candleflame teeth. And maybe...just maybe...the rumble Shaun was hearing was the hunger in its belly.

Jason and Tony stopped laughing when they heard something streaking through the woods towards them saying---

"I seeeeeeeee yoooooooooooooou."

* * *

It was dinner hour by the time Shaun reached the school yard. He still had a long way to-to-to-to-to go. It was freezing. The playgrounds stretched around him like abandoned body carpets. The game was over. Ghosts snickered and snorted. Stars twinkled crisply in the sky. Shaun was going to get it. He was very late. Mum and Dad will ask where I’ve been.

It didn’t matter. He was just a follower who went into the woods to follow and in turn...

He struggled briskly across the playgrounds, terrified of the end. The end of the story, the end of the street, the end of the madness. The end of the line. Hunched within his coat as if he were being brutalized, he covered his eyes and muttered to himself, “I see you… I see you… I see you… I see...”

It was more than seeing images on a miniature version of a television screen: The glass was piercing. It made me feel. It made me experience events as if I were a part of it. The horror. I dropped the glass to the carpet and, almost instantly, I felt a sickish sense of loss. In my veins or in my heart, I knew not where this glass had infected me, but a feeling of emptiness crept into me like a poisoned night fog.

I must have been in shock because by the time I was aware of my surroundings, Oliver had made it to the armchair next to the couch where I was seated.

“Leave it alone now,” Oliver said. “You don’t want to over do it, do you?”

He was staring me straight in the eyes. Now, under the lamp light and at a closer periphery, he looked even more dead.

“I...I...”

”Yes,” he said. “Do you see?"

”What is it?,” I asked, in awe of the dying light in the glass. “What have you got here, Oliver?”

“Window. A whole big piece of Window.”

“Window? I---”

“Shh. Don’t try to speak. You have just had a taste of it. You can’t deny what you have seen and felt, but your mind will not willingly accept it. Give yourself a minute, Ryan, then go ahead and pick it up again. It gets better.”

I picked up the piece of glass from the floor and held it in my hand. A moment later a man appeared in the window sitting amidst his weight...sitting in a chair reading...

MONSTERS FOR SALE

When Herman Rafferty read the advertisement in the Classified section of his newspaper, his belly giggled with laughter.

“Hey, Betts!...Guy here is selling monsters. We need any?” Herman chuckled at his own good wit.

“What’s that, dear?,” his wife asked, bellowing from the kitchen.

“Monsters! MONSTERS! Goddam deaf?! Guy in the paper’s selling MONSTERS!”

“Give him a call, dear,” he heard his wife chortle.

Herman dialled the number in a fit of snickers and he could hardly manage a straight tone of voice when his call was answered.

“Hello.”

“Hello? You Mr. Perkins? You got some freakin monsters for sale?”

Herman slapped his chubby palm over the phone as he tried to stifle some rolling ha! Shhh...

“Sure do,” Perkins voice said, “What kind are you looking for?”

Herman burst into a roar of laughter. His wife escaped her kitchen chores and sat next to her husband, already tittering in anticipation of a good laugh.

What kind are you looking for?

“Well,” Herman said, trying his most serious telephone voice, “I was looking for those big hairy ones with all them eyes; you know, the ones that hangs out in the closet all night long...”

Betts tried smothering her laughter by cupping her hand over her mouth.

“...And one of them real short ones with peepers like snails,” Herman added, “You know the ones I’m talking about...them real fishy ones that live under the bed and grabs your legs if you hang ’em over the edge.” Herman was fit to split his sides trying to finish the sentence.

“Oh I have them all, Mr.Rafferty, I guarantee you that. My monsters are nothing short of the finest. Genuinely the scariest. And!, I might add, all of them have the strongest jaws and sharpest teeth in town or your money back.”

Herman had the telephone receiver pressed into his bulging stomach as he pointed out the newspaper ad to his wife. She was already laughing out loud and he was red in the face from it.

“We’re getting two of them, Betts. Two bloody rippers! Shh!” Herman returned the phone to his ear. “Well, Mr. Perkins, I was just wondering...monsters, being how expensive they are to maintain and all...would it be possible to...umm...you know, try them out. Just for a couple of days. I mean, hey!, are they really what I’m looking for or are they just some cheap, no-good boobies that I can pick up at any of those goddam Monster Marts downtown?”

Herman cupped his hand over the telephone as laughter burst from his throat. Betts placed a pillow over her face. Every time she looked at her jolly man with his flushed, fat face, watering eyes, and goofy smile, she was tortured by the urge to howl.

When the telephone receiver once again reached Herman’s ear, he couldn’t stop his laughter. He openly spilled it into the phone.

“Waddahya say, ol’ Perky, just a couple a days to see if I finds them beasts to my liking?”

“Well,” Perkins stated, “this certainly is an odd request. I wouldn’t normally consider it because there is a problem, you see: Monsters eat meat. These monsters are voracious eaters of meat and they require a good feeding, nightly. If they are not fed on time---let’s just say that things get just a little scary.”

“Oh, yes...of course...” Herman bawled his laughter into the phone.

“Very well,” said Mr. Perkins, “two monsters for two nights. Trial basis, free of charge. I’ll trust that you and your wife will take good care of them. They will arrive at your convenience, in your home, sometime late this evening. Its been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Rafferty. Goodnight.”

Mr. Rafferty?

“Hey, how did you know my na--?”

A dial tone buzzed in Herman’s ear.

Herman spent the next hour trying to reach Mr. Perkins. He dialled the number repeatedly and it continued to register a busy signal or an operator’s recorded message stating that the number was no longer in service. He slammed the phone into its cradle.

“Give it up, dear. You’ll work yourself into a stroke or something.”

“I just don’t get it!,” Herman rumbled, “Sometimes I get a busy tone and sometimes I’m told the number’s not in service. What the hell is that?”

Betts entered the dining room and placed a small pot roast on the dinner table. “It’s a prank the college kids are pulling off. You know those kids are always pulling off stunts like that for a laugh.”

“But they knew my name, Betts. How the hell could they know my name if I was the one that made the call?”

“Call Display. Or you must have mentioned it and don’t remember. Now come sit down to eat. Forget about it.”

Herman lifted himself from his chair and sauntered to his place at the dinner table. “Did you hear me mention my name?,” he asked.

“No...I don’t recall that you did...but you must have let it slip.”

“And do you know what else?” Herman filled his plate and began to shovel food into his stomach. “Do you know what that guy said? He said, ‘I’ll trust that you and your wife will take good care of them.’ Now how on God’s green earth would he know if I had a wife or not? I called him, remember?”

“Oh, stop being so silly,” Betts said. “Shuttup and eat.”

And they ate.

* * *

At nine o’clock the telephone rang and Herman answered it sluggishly.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” said a strange voice, “is this Herman Rafferty’s residence?”

“Yeah.”

“Two Willit Street?”

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Rafferty, I’m just calling to confirm your address for the delivery. Your monsters are ready and we’ll have them dropped off by midnight.”

“Hey!,” Herman interjected, “wait just a goddam min---.”

“Oh, you can rest assured, Mr. Rafferty, we are very, very

good; you won’t even know we were there. Discreet is our claim to fame. Thank you very much. Have a good night.”

“WAIT!...”

But it was too late. Herman slammed the phone down and began to rifle through the Classified ads for Perkins’ number. He had dialled it countless times earlier that evening, but after four beers, four hours of the idiot box, and the Redial button, the information was adrift.

“What are you doing, dear?,” Betts asked as she strolled in from the kitchen with a pot of tea.

“Do you know who just called here? Some bastard just rhymed off my name and our address. He says he’s gonna deliver those monsters here before midnight.”

“Are you still carrying on about that? It’s utter nonsense. Look, we had our laugh and now they’re having theirs. Forget about it.”

Herman’s face became flushed with anger and he scattered the newspaper around his chair. “Betts,” he said, “they have our name, they have our number, they have our bloody address. I want to know why they got that information and exactly what this is all about.” Sweat was starting to trickle from his temples.

“Pranks,” Betts remarked, sipping her tea, “College pranks. They traced your call and gathered all the information they needed and now they’re sitting in some pub getting the last laugh. I mean really, dear, monsters...think about it.”

“It ain’t the monsters I’m worried about. This is an invasion of privacy. The next thing you know they’ll be monitoring our phone calls and recording our farts and taping footage of your ass whenever you squat down on the toilet seat.”

Betts started to cackle at the thought.

“And besides,” Herman added, “what if they try coming here to give us a little scare tonight? How would you like that?”

Betts put her tea down on the end table. “That wouldn’t be nice.”

“No, it wouldn’t. So lift your brains off your goddam seat and help me find that ad.”

They turned the Classified pages inside-out, reading them through and through, but they couldn’t find the ad. Herman slowly worked himself into a state of sweaty rage.

“WHERE THE HELL IS IT?”

“Relax, dear. You must have mixed it up somewhere...maybe with a different paper.”

“I did no such thing, goddam. I swear it was on this page, right here! I swear to it! In fact, I’m almost certain that it was exactly here on this spot.” He pointed to an ad on the page.

“Well, what’s that one say?,” Betts asked, giving up on the search. “Maybe we read it wrong.”

“Don’t be stupid, Betts. I dialled their number, remember? The guy was selling monsters. Monsters! This ad here is for a stupid night lamp.”

“Call them up,” Betts said, tittering, “we might need it.”

* * *

At ten o’clock Betts went to bed leaving the tiring sounds of rustling newspapers and her husband’s ceaseless cursing. Herman tore at the Classified pages and tossed them aside.

The strongest jaws and sharpest teeth in town, or your money back...monsters eat meat...voracious eaters...every night...just a little scary...

What if they really are delivering monsters here?, he thought.

No sooner had he snuffed the thought from his mind did his wife begin to scream. His heart went into a thuddering uproar and he lunged out of his chair.

Stampeding up the staircase, “BETTS!...BETTS!,” he shouted. His wife’s screaming died.

When he burst into the bedroom Betts was lying under the covers, busily sniggering with an occasional snort.

“Oh that’s a real cherry joke, Betts. A real, big, fat goddam creamy one with the cherry on top. You could have given me a coronary.”

“I’m sorry,” she chortled, “It got you up to bed, didn’t it?”

* * *

By 11:45pm all was forgotten. Herman had given up his silly vigil and was snoring soundly. So deep was his sleep that he was slow to be wakened.

“Wake up. Herman, wake up!” Betts’ whispers were frantic as she tried to jostle her husband from his sweet, dark slumber.

“Mmm?...What?...”

The closet door rattled. So violent was the disruption that Herman and his wife sat bolt upright in their places. They exchanged glances with wide and petrified eyes.

“Do something,” Betts cried.

Two black, glistening eyes on slimy stalks peeped over the edge of their mattress.

Two monsters for two nights, Herman thought. And he wondered how long it would be before the monsters needed meat and things got just a little scary.

To tell you the truth, I did not know what to make of it. There didn’t appear to be any tricks involved. There were no gizmos and gadgets, no wires; just a little thing that appeared to be nothing more than a piece of a broken window. I thought about television and radio transmission. Weren’t there reported cases of people who picked up radio signals in their fillings? Something had to explain this strange phenomenon.

”Tell me, Oliver. Tell me now.”

“No. You need to see more first. You need to experience this thing to its fullest detail before I can try to explain any of this to you. The first few times into the Window are...they are tame. Wait until the strange ones begin. Strange and fantastic things you will see; hell and horror you will feel and imagine. You will not believe your mind.”

Oliver stood up. He was slow and unsteady. Aphasia ruled as his bones took the brunt of his weakness, like crutches. “I’m going to turn out the light,” he told me, “It works differently in the dark. Like looking out your window at night. Strange how the night makes things, huh?”

The light went out. In the window I could barely see anything, but I was hearing voices...

THE DOGS

A whisper,“The dogs...”

One other,“I know.”

“I can smell them...they’re horrible.”

“They can smell you.”

“When will they be back?”

“When they get hungry.”

...“It sounds like they might be on the beach. If they’re on the beach we’ll never get out of this alive.”

“Shh.”

“I’m afraid,” Whisper 1 admitted.

“We’ll be safe,” said Whisper number 2.

“When?! When the full moon is past? When sunlight strikes their eyes? Will they wither to flakes if I show them the sign of the Cross?”

“I need you to stay calm. Don’t panic. They smell fear. They sense it somehow. Don’t give us away.”

...“I’m sorry...it’s just...I keep...Brenda.” Whisper 1 trailed into sobs.

“Here, take this. Wipe away your tears.”

“Hoh, God. Where are You?”

“I don’t think He’s ever visited hell.”

...“What it must be like. How utterly horrible.” Whisper 1 sounded broken.

“What?”

“Running for your life. Looking behind your shoulder at the approaching dogs. Seeing them gain on you until they clip you down, swarm in on you...Dogs’ eyes and black fur...teeth raging for purchase...the stench on their breath.”

Whisper 2: “I doubt you would sense all of that. I think you would feel a wave of shock, trauma and terror; and then you would be dead.”

“It would be more than that. You would see, and smell, and hear. Maybe a tooth would sink into the soft of your eye as they tore the flesh from your face, but your other eye would still be able to see. Your hands would feel the plush and heat of their coats as you tried to fend them off. You would feel their jaws crush into your hands and your arms as they ripped you apart. You would hear their savage growls roaring like thunder next to your ears. You’d smell their heated pelts and choke on the dust rising from your struggle. Perhaps you would even sense their blind fury and the fight for their survival.”

“Maybe,” Whisper 2 said, “but it would happen too fast to really know what you were feeling.”

“The clearest kind of confusion.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Whisper 2 concluded.

...“Brenda didn’t scream.” Whisper 1 sounded distant.

“We all die differently.”

...“How will you die?,” 1 asked.

“I’m not going to die. At least not this way.”

“Aren’t you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so scared. Oh God, I’m going to feel it. I know it. I’m going to see and hear and taste and smell those dogs eating me up alive. I don’t want to die that way; anything but that. I hate the dogs. I always have. I don’t mind the birds and the other animals, but I never liked the dogs. They’re too real.”

“Try not to think about it.”

“Try not to think about it? How can I help it? Jesus, how could they let it get so far out of hand? I bought a budgie when Endotic animals hit the market. I fed it and gave it water once a day, cleaned the bottom of its cage once a week. It used to shed small green feathers. It was flawless. Then I bought a real budgie and put it in the cage with the Endotic. The next day I discovered the organic one torn to shreds on the bottom of the cage. The Endotic one was perched stoically on its roost looking fat with its feathers ruffled. It had a nip just above its eyelid and when it blinked, a metallic vein surged and pulsated. That scared the hell out of me.”

Whisper 2: “I said, don’t think about it.”

“Then they came out with those Copy-Carbon models; as if the Test-Series models weren’t real enough. You can’t tell what’s real from what’s Endotic anymore.”

“I know.”

“Why do they do it? Why do they make machines with vital processes? I don’t understand!”

“It makes them alive.”

“Well what in hell does that make us?”

“Dead,” said Whisper 2.

“You’re not helping me.”

“I’m doing my best to---”

“Damn you. You’re out of it all the time. Always! Shit. We’ve been going out, how many years now?, and you have not once told me that you love me. Not once in three years.”

“I---”

“Forget it...forget I even brought it up.”

Whisper 2: “Everything will be okay.”

“No its not. Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I don’t want to feel my death. I don’t want to. Seeing Brenda was enough. Promise me you won’t let the dogs get me. Just promise me and I will know that you love me.”

“I promise... There’s one bullet left in the gun.”

“I love you too, damn you. You fucking Endotic.”

“Shh.”

“Oh God. Do you hear that? They’re coming.”

“Yes...They’re coming.”

Oliver had returned to his chair. Sitting next to me in the dark, I could smell his deathly breath. I heard him say, “It will begin to test your mind, take you to your limits. Intellectually you will be challenged. Your feelings will be absorbed. Your thoughts will be directed. You will separate from yourself and assimilate with the window.”

I held it out, my palms shaking. It was as if I had drifted through the window and into the realm of madness. Distorted thought processes invaded my very being. Into the mind of...

GORGE

Wot Im goin to tell you just myt skar you to deth or evin mayk a bubbl in yer stomik fer to push up sum vomit. Shur, it all started wen I heered fat mowth Valerie tellin Gregs rattee bruther that Greg was goin awey with Jim over to the hontid hows to put the voodoo on my good fernd Gorge. I told Gorge that them good fer nuthins was gonna fix a jinx on him and Gorge he was skared. His blud preshur went up and he taykd a hart atak. Wen he waykd up frum his hart atak he was nervis lyk jello bekaus once he saw a moovee with this laydee and she was runin frum the voodoo lyke hell all babbelin and blew with chills sayin oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez its insyde its insyde its its its eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! And she was sayin krazy stuf lyke hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah nobuddy puts a pig insyde my brayns. I told Gorge to tayke a pill and he took siks. Wot a karaktr Gorge is.

We hurreed ovir to the hontid hows and startd to prowl lyk kats and snayks and stuff all sneeky lyk a fart in church. Jim and Greg was in the bak of the hows and we kood see them frum the bush. Greg was holdin a big kross and Jim was with garlik arownd his nek holdin holee watr and a big stik fer to swing at jyant krabs and bigfoots. We kood heer them talkin abowt the jinx they was goin to fix on Gorge and wen I looked at Gorge he was wyt lyk the skin undir a old bandige.

First they was gonna giv Gorge a spel to giv Gorge the puberty lyk Jim’s sister had. Gorges fayce was goin to look lyk Jim’s sister Pizzaface with all them bumps and blud klots. Then they was gonna put the voodoo on Gorge and wen Gorge heered that his eyes rold bak and he taykd a hart atak.

I keepd my wits and I keepd my fingers crost to mess up the jinx and it werkd becaus Greg was sayin storees and it was maykin Jim nervis. Greg was sayin one dey at nyt tym he was lookin fer doo werms fer fishin in the creek and he was ryt ther in bak of the hontid hows wen he heered peepils voyses six feet under and haf alyv sayin oh oh oh yes oh yes and sumbuddy els was sayin oooooooooooooooooooh ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh all mownin and glad to be barreed alyv. Then wen Greg seen the bushes moov he saw Howie’s big bruther cum owt with his hair all messd up and his pants was haf rippt off and Pizzaface was just behynd him all nayked and comin owt of the bushs. Greg new the livin ded was rysin frum the bak yard at the hontid hows and atakin Pizzaface and Howie’s big bruther and tryin to drag them behynd the bushs to suk sum brayns.

It made Jim nervis and paranoyd and wen a grasshopper jumpt on Jims fayss he droppt his stuff and went runnin owt yellin with Greg all fraydee kat and yellin behynd him. Wen Gorge waykt up frum his hart atak I told him wot happind and he lafd so hard I theenk he tuched cloth. Well I telled Gorge to hush up becaus thats wen I seen old laydee Gunter lookin owt her window with her hair all frostee and standin up frum talkin to ghosts and the devil. Gorge sed she allreddy new we was there bekaus its instink fer witches and gypsees and peepil lyk cowboys to no stuff. I sed hogwash and I ran lyke hell was tryin to moov into my kornhole. Wen I lookt bak I never saw Gorge behynd me runnin and also I never saw Gorge evir agen.

I went home fer to have sum lunch and I had a good snoowz. Wen I wayked up frum my snoowz I went to see if I kood fynd Gorge. At ferst I figured he was hydin at the fort bot he wasnt. Then I figured he went to go fynd stuff at the dump bot I ownlee saw Chucky Chucky Chucky there with his best fernd Howie. Howie is a good gye bot nobuddy noes wen he will drop the nog in his pants not evin Miss Charell who is the teecher at skool. One dey Miss Charell was sayin to Howie Howie you hav to do sumthin abowt yer bowil moovmints bot Howie nevir heered hir becaus the vayns was poppin owt of his hed wen he was all red pushin owt sum hevvee nog in klass. I askt Chucky Chucky Chucky if he seen Gorge and Chucky Chucky Chucky he sed that Gorge was maybee at the creek or maybee at the fort or maybee evin pullin his wyr sumwher. We sat fer a long tym and thows gyes was fillin me in on evrythin I misst wen I was snoowzin.

Chucky Chucky Chucky was sayin he saw Gorge under a tree makin a god dam sownd and bobin his hed up and down and jumpin and eetin grass and bark offin the tree. Then Gorge he was doin lyke baykin fryin krispy on the grownd all shaykee with spit flyin lyk baykin fat splatter and the next minit Gorge was all rollin and screemin and flappin his arms lyk he was owt of the fryin pan and into the fyr. Chucky Chucky Chucky sayd he nevir seen nothin lyk that sins Howie put his hed in a bees hyv at the fort. Howie gived Chucky Chucky Chucky a sowwerpuss look. Then he was sayin Gorge went awey all howlin and stampin his feet and showin all his teeth and pullin his hair owt of his hed and spit was comin down frum his mowth just hangin. Chucky Chucky Chucky sed he nevir saw nuthin lyk that sins he seen Howie fytin his sister. Howie gived Chucky Chucky Chucky anuther sowwerpuss look. Suddnlee Howie was terafyd becaus sum bug was buzzin rownd his hed and Howie he was wayvin his arms lyke the bees was after him agin bot it was ownlee a fly. There was lots of flys arownd and then I noetissd Howie nevir sed much becaus his pants was reddy to bust with nog. Chucky Chucky Chucky fownd a hat and a brokin jar and Howie fownd a long wite bandige with blud on it and so he taypd it to his forhed fer fun.

I startid goin arown lookin fer my good fernd Gorge. I saw Billy, thats short fer Bill bot evrybuddy calls him the Bayker becaus wen he went on a pik nik he bernd his hair off wen he fel in the barber q and baykt his fayc. Billy was behynd the faktree where they mayk plastik stuff tryin to trap a feeld mowse in the grass. He sed he saw Gorge comin across the feeld maykin god dam sounds and rollin his eys and his tung was sqwermin owt lyk he coodnt swallow the rest of sum jiant werm. Gorge stoppt and askt Billy where Jim and Greg was. Billy he sed he didnt no and Gorge went away sreemin and howlin and powndin on his own hed. I askt Billy wot the hell is goin on and Billy filld me in.

At lunch tym Gorge was walkin and eetin sum sanwich of buloney and a lemin donut wen Jim and Greg gived Gorge a fist tastee nukil sanwich and a bust on the chops blud donut insted. Gorge went akross the street and called Jim a layzee chizzler and Greg a good fer nuthin stinkin Jewdas as he wacht Jim and Greg eet the lunch his mom gayv him. Jim and Greg ran aftir him bot Gorge got away. So thows gys sed they was goin bak to the hontid hows to finish puttin the voodoo on Gorge.

I nevir saw Gorge agin and I nevir want to. I figurd to go bi the hontid hows to see if Gorge was ther. Wen I lookd in the bak yard of the hontid hows I seen Jim and Greg. They was lyin on the grass all ded and bluddee with flys buzzin all arownd them lyk them flys fownd sum stinkin barf bag restin next to a heep of fresh dog nog. I saw that Jim and Greg had chunks missin frum their faces. They had chunks missin frum thir arms and legs and frum thir baks. Even thir neks.

I was standin in the bushs fer a long tyme and Sally kaym bi to see wot was goin on and her littil bruther folowd her on his trysikl and then Sallys fernd Janna kaym ovir and Gregs bruther evin crosst the street and soon all the god dam runee noez kids on the hole blok was standin in a krowd arownd the hontid hows. Old laydee Gunter was lookin owt her window smilin at me and winking her eye. I was so skard. I was lookin at all thows small bluddy missin chunks on Jim and Greg and I was figurin that they lookt lyk sumbuddy taykd littil byts offin them. They looked lyk byts taykin frum a apl or sumthin. Or evin a lemin donut and sum sanwich of buloney.

... Gorge.

“Put it down!,” Oliver shouted. He turned the light back on. I was awakened out of a stupor. Oliver was looking at me in horror.

“The addiction has started, Ryan,” he told me. “Put it down now. Put down the window.”

I did not. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of it. I could not resist it, I could not fight it.

“What is happening to me?”

Oliver wiped his chin and said, ”Windowmaker.”

I looked around, across the room. “What am I to do?”

“You have to destroy it, Ryan. Obliterate it.”

“How?,” I asked as ominous gravity drew me to the window once again. There was a young man sitting by himself in a library. He was studying quietly.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

It started with the faintly discernable whistling of Camptown Races that entered his brain as casually as someone might turn a street corner. Chester Best actually lifted his head from the pages of a psychology textbook half expecting a man wearing a bowl hat, walking stick, and English demeanour to come strolling around any number of book isles to wish him the top of the morning. The distraction was, in all seriousness, abrasive (especially in the self-governing placidity of the Guelph Public Library); but only God knows what number of oddball characters were scheduled to roll in for a breakfast of words at ten in the morning, just two hours before the killer Psychology final, oblivious to the unwritten laws of library protocol. The head librarian calmly bustled over the repertoire of featherweight duties behind the circulation desk. Another more sinister looking bat pushed a cart full of overnight returns across the numbness of the carpet. A senior citizen was half sleeping over a newspaper on a neighbouring table. They were remotely dreamlike, exaggerated in their circumstances like surrealistic automatons, unaffected by the obtrusive sound that was jarring the bookworld serenity.

(...do-dah, do-dah...)

Chester craned over the table with his elbows resting on his open textbook. His long, brown hair brushed across his forearms as his head ventured on a dither of baffled anticipation, waiting to see who was whistling. He couldn’t see anyone, not from either end of the library, but the whistling that he was hearing was getting louder, more prominent; it was approaching him.

Where the hell are you...?

The whistling was reaching an uncomfortable level and Chester’s doughy heart started to throttle the beat to a nervous campaign. There were times when he had abruptly awakened from disconcerting dreams in such an anxious state of panic that he immediately fingered his teeth to compose himself, to make sure that his teeth were not hooking from his gumline in wayward tangents the way his nightmares sometimes jibed him they were. Or, cramped in a deathly chill, he groped the darkness because he was drowning in cold dream-water. These were terrifying times when his nightmares would grapple with his sanity in the lucid moments of awakening. The whistling was bringing him to a similar state of duress; this time, in living daylights.

His bloodshot eyes, vexed behind silver-rimmed John Lennon glasses, flittered from one side of the library to the next. They were wide eyes, magnified, filled with strife like the shocked, yellow eyes of a panting rooster. The senior sitting at the next table looked at Chester with a bevelled, critical eye.

What’s the matter with you, Lazarus?, Chester thought, Can’t you hear that?

Chester’s expression was pleading, but the old man dreamily settled back to reading the daily. The whistling marched forward,

(...do-dah, do-dah...)

now a piercing assault to Chester’s ears. He slapped his hands against both sides of his head to no avail, wincing. The sound trumpeted. Two needles of pain were sinking deeper into his head. He thought his eardrums would surely explode and the paramedic’s shufflebed would have to wheel him out of the library, stone deaf and trembling from the cold shock of feeling blood dripping soundlessly from his ears.

Pain was overpowering his sense of propriety. The impulse for a scream flickered in his mind like an old foreign film: His scream broke silence when

(...all do-dah day.)

the song ended.

Silence. She was beautiful music. Golden. Sweet silence, she broke the pain. The rustle of a newspaper crinkled in his ears as the old man sitting across from him lowered the print to stare at Chester once again, his expression being a head-on collision of disgust. The librarian with alligator skin and ruby lipstick was poking her head out from a book isle and looking at Chester with similar abhorrence. He smiled at them with a queer uncertainty; astounded, embarrassed, baffled and afraid. The people around him returned to their private interests with reluctance. At the main desk, the head librarian was stamping envelopes with ceremonial speed and the rubbery thumping sound visited Chester’s ears like a friendly giant.

What was that all about?

Later he would find out; but for now, Chester forced the Camptown Races out of mind to cram as much of the Psychology textbook as could fit between his ears.

In time, his heartbeat returned to its usual lazy murmur, that sombre companion, and he construed the whistling he had heard as the product of a fatigued mind. After all, the final weeks of the first semester invariably rushes up to frosh students like a runaway train.

At ten past eleven (by the library’s apolune clock), a vivid scene cut across Chester’s consciousness like a mirror reflection. Consternation melted from the memory. It was a mental image that came to him without provocation, without any effort to recall, or without any triggering process in the way that a certain odour or song can unleash a flutter of memory. A guttural moan escaped Chester’s mouth and

he was in the room. He found himself looking through a window. The moon was in full dress, silently biding time until the next eclipse of the sun when he and his fiery lover will reach dark climax. Chester started to pan the sky for stars, but the alcohol in his system doubled his eyesight. His attention was turned to the sounds of creaking wood and shallow grunts. They were coming from the dark. A hulking shape stepped in front of the window light. The figure was vague and black. Another dark form joined its twin in the window light. Their shadowy silhouettes ruled and swayed like buoys in calm water. One dark form turned to the other and said, “Are you going again?”

“No,” said the other’s voice.

“I am.”

And then one of the silhouettes stepped away from the moonlit window frame. There was the sound of a belt unbuckling and a zipper unzipping.

when he snapped out of it, it was eleven thirty.

Looking at the clock, Chester wondered why such an odd and shadowy recollection (or was it just another side-effect of fatigue?) should strike him at a time that required of him his most undivided attention and sharpest concentration. By heavenly Jove, it was time to face the Psych final. He slapped his textbook shut and the old man once again looked up from his news (or, his snooze) with a countenance that reminded Chester of British Queens suffering the trite malady of a regal constipation. Chester flipped the geezer a bird and walked out of the library.

Somewhere between the library parking lot and the Guelph University reserve lot, Chester started feeling a pain in his head. It felt like the pressure of an insufferable weight inside his brain. It hurt all over and nowhere at all.

“Man, oh man, I am going to do some heavy sleeping when this is all over,” Chester muttered to himself.

He drove along the dismal, yet pleasant, winter roads in the City of Guelph and, reaching his destination, he forked out the dollars to park in the convenient Visitor’s Reserve of the University parking lot. He winded himself into the immense gut of a lecture hall where children of the books were already propping themselves stout in their seats and organizing their pencils, rubber ends up. The Professor waddled in and distributed the exams to the multitudes of bobbing first year heads with the help of clucking graduates endeavoured to aspire to the Masters or Ph.D. degree. When Chester received his paper, he did not cheat.

At twelve thirty, the exam room was roaring with scribbling pencils and howling eraserheads. The odd cough made a moot exclaim, as did a sneeze or two and the inevitable shuffling of feet. A voice from the back of the hall yelled, “Lord have mercy!,” approximately ten minutes into exam time. Teaching assistants were patrolling the isles and orbiting the periphery like painted ghosts. They were looking for cheaters and fooling themselves. Had Chester Best the notion to cheat he would have been in dovetail company, lost amongst them, sitting smack! in the middle of the lecture hall that descended by rows like tiers in amphitheaters. He wasn’t going to cheat (and neither was anyone else) but being circumspect made him edgy. Thus being, you can imagine his surprise when the Doctor spoke...

“Good afternoon, Chester.”

Chester’s heart leapt like a frog in hot water. The voice was crisp, clean. Chester threw his eyes towards the guy sitting beside him, but he recognized that guy as having a voice like Russel in the Fat Albert Show. Turning to his left, he saw a girl collapsed over her desk like a mad, jiggling rock star suspended in the private, egocentric universe of some cataclysmic guitar solo. She was too engrossed. In front of him were miasms and the occasional bald spot. And behind him, faces lost in paper. “You are a cheat! A cheat to yourself and a cheat to humanity! You, Chester Best, are a cheat to the mother who’s large vagina you squoze from!”

Chester pronounced a shriek in utter terror of the sound and in response to the pain that blasted through his head. It turned the faces of everyone sitting in the lecture hall and startled much of the audience surrounding him. The floating supervisors each regarded him with disdain or a similar contempt. The Professor of Psychology, Dr. Zeilne Fruitze, lifted his shiny head and appropriated Chester the look of ‘bad! dog...bad! dog.’ Chester’s floundering heart palpitated in uncertain murmurs. He had a heart condition and bouts of excitement often sent the muscle into spasms. He retrieved his exam paper from the floor because when the voice shouted in his head, it was loud! So loud, in fact, that Chester’s hands went flying to cover his ears and the paper was swept cleanly from his desk.

A person sitting somewhere on a loftier row behind Chester laughed at this: He could picture Chester’s face popped with the I can’t take it anymore! look of mental breakdown. Little did that fellow know that Chester’s breakdown would result from factors infinitely more complicated than the acute derivation of stress related anxiety.

“Let me introduce myself...”

A pang of anger (mixed with fear) sent Chester into a whirl. He exploded from his seat with his arms flailing around him and a duly profound look of terror on his face. The glasses that were clinging to his face magnified his brown eyes into larger circles. From opposite corners of the hall, two teaching assistants were making their way to ”the problem" and Professor Fruitze was already asking someone for the name of ”that asshole up there.”

“...my name is Dr. Whye...”

What’s going on!: Inside Chester’s head. (The class was spared the audacity of a scream.)

“...Please, do not be alarmed. I...”

Ghosts!?, Chester thought.

Chester’s eyes scoured the vicinity of faces; many mouths were agape. He was searching for the source of that clandestine voice. It sounded near enough to be babbling directly into his ears from phantom breath and lips. The faces of the people staring at him were the thrilled faces of circus fans.

“...am not going to hurt you. I...”

“This is fucking crazy,” Chester whispered.

“SHUT UP! STOP INTERRUPTING ME YOU DROP OF SHIT!”

Chester screamed with pain. The voice erupted into his skull and hammered his eardrums like a spoiled child deprived of want. Everyone in the lecture hall was watching him with their faces alight! Some students were amazed, others were annoyed by the disquiet, a slight girl with a short haircut and dark tattoos was turned on. One of the teaching assistants apprehended Chester and commenced to tug on his arms. Another, a rather delicate female who just so happened to be the Teaching Assistant running Chester’s tutorial classes, took control of the matter and fitted Chester back into his seat.

“What, are you crazy?,” she whispered, “You’re going to get yourself kicked out, Chester. Relax, would you? It’s just a stupid exam.” Her breath was sweet.

A grave pallor radiated from Chester’s face. He looked horrified and the teaching assistants debated on whether he should finish the exam. Chester’s T.A. convinced the other that he would be okay now; but she walked away from Chester a little worried for him. She signalled to the Prof that everything was “O.K.” and left Chester to suffer private, mental anguish.

His heart was beating in uproars, sometimes failing on a thup-thud, sometimes sustaining a cardio vibratta a cappella to produce the effect of a rapid (th-th-th-th-thup-thud) flutter. Faces intermittently fell back to their papers like raindrops falling from a cloud. The Professor nodded back into reading about the colossal disaster of an obscure, federally funded psychological experiment known as, The Project. Chester picked up his pencil again, and he noticed his hands were trembling like a battered dog. He started to read the next question on his exam when the voice returned.

“Try to stay a little calm, would you? You make me sick. Face the facts, you hairy germ.”

Chester slapped one of his hands over his mouth to stifle a scream. Inside his mouth, teeth were biting into his bottom lip and drawing blood. The girl with stringy, red hair sitting next to him looked him over and hissed a nasty, “Shhh!“, his way. Chester turned to his right and the guy whose voice sounded like he represented the Lollypop Twins was grinning at him and nodding his head. Chester looked down and stared blankly at his exam paper.

“That’s better. Are you feeling a spot better?”

Yes, Chester thought, answering the voice inside his head and not knowing what in hell could be happening to him.

“Good...Good as pie.”

An intense nervous fit, rumbling up from a cardiac epicentre, rocked his flesh. He rested both of his hands on the desk and watched them twitch, sporadically, of their own innervations.

I’m going crazy...This is what happens when you lose it. The Funnyman takes over and---

“Ghosts?; the Funnyman?; voices from afar?; going crazy?---Or maybe aliens, right Chester? Little horny aliens that have landed a splendid mothership in your head so that they now have a private, empty lot to screw each other in. And currently, their stereo speakers are turned up to full blast. Right, Chester? It is stereo, isn’t it, Chester? One speaker in each ear? Or maybe its a flying fuck of a tumour growing on the brain. Or perhaps a Russian clairavoyent is sitting on a toilet seat somewhere in Bosnia pushing out some real heavy shit, red on the face and straining his brains to the point of telepathic transmission all the way to your receptive bean. Hmm, maybe an irritant has gotten past your skull and a fantastic pearl is forming in that forsaken clam of yours. Go ahead, Chester, get your head examined. Get it X-rayed, for that matter. Get a whole fucking intracranial CT-scan, you fucking worm. You won’t find me, Chester. Get it? You’ll never find me. Never! You’re looking for cock in a rat’s ass, buddy. I’m not here, get it? Do. You. Get. It. Mr. Chester Best?′

Oh, God, pleasepleasepleaseplease...

“Relax---I’m a doctor.”

A doctor. Ha-ha!...Chester resisted the urge to chuckle in spite of his terror and people nearest him regarded him with glee, wondering what he would do next.

Sweat trickled along his temple. He tried to focus his thoughts elsewhere.

Well the land of Oz is a funny, funny place, all the people there wear a funny, funny face, all the---

“Shut the fuck up. Its time we get one thing straight, Chester: I will crush this filthy stye you keep within the shell of your skull like a happy bug on a crutch if you so much as THINK! about shutting me out.”

The one word in that sentence that the Doctor shouted made Chester scream in agony. The pain within his head loomed and crashed like the impending curl of a brick tidal wave. He was seeing secret fireworks blossom and vanish in his eyes. The Professor of Psychology placed his magazine on the desk and began approaching Chester, perturbed to the point of “ruffling the feathers” on his waddling ass. Chester’s heart was floundering in fits and starts and Chester was afraid it was going to stop altogether.

“If there’s one thing I detest its insubordination. Do you understand that, Chester?”

Yes, Chester thought, answering the Doctor and openly nodding his head. People around him giggled to see him behave so vagrantly.

“I am in command here. Do I make myself clear, Chester?”

Yes.

“Do I?”

Yes.

“Who is boss, Chester? Who is really the best?”

At that moment, the Professor of Psychology, Dr. Zeilne Fruitze, arrived at Chester’s desk after a laborious ascent and rested both of his palms flat on Chester’s paper. Coarse hairs, flaring from his eyebrows, brushed the thick rims of his dandruff speckled glasses as his expression collapsed into a frown. Zeilne’s breath was hot and foul. Dried spittle encrusted the corners of his droopy lips and his eyes were jammed with nascent, yellow glaucoma. He leaned into Chester’s distraught face and asked, “Are you trying to be some kind of an ass---”

“Who’s in charge here, Chester?! WHO?!”

“You are!,” Chester shouted. He goggled up to Professor Fruitze with sudden horror and realization.

Heads turned. The Professor seemed to fall back, astounded and a little horrified himself.

“Get out of my lecture hall,” Fruitze ordered. “Get the hell out!”

The hall seemed to wobble for Chester. A dressing of hot sweat was squeezing from his pores. A T.A. arrived and seized Chester’s shoulder in a tight grip. Chester shrugged the arm off and stood up, looking into the concerned and watchful faces of the people around him. His heart throttled and flurried like a boxer’s speed bag.

“Something’s happened to me,” he told them.

They all watched him like a monkey in a cage, a weird laboratory monkey that has just exhibited a wonderfully abnormal behaviour. Chester turned and ran down the descending slope of the handicap ramp, exiting the exam hall.

* * *

At the end of the first semester (which terminates at approximately the same time the new calendar year begins), when the grounds are covered with the dreary weight of snow and when the oppressive grey light falling through a filter of winter cloud colours the world bland, the University can be quite dismal. Things change with the season and the campus is exquisitely romantic in the spring. Students involved in each other’s lives spend hours lounging on the plush green grass, consuming coffee and cigarette smoke and listening to each other’s voices in a way that can only be matched by lovers sharing dreams in a pillowside conference. The air is liberal; people are quaint; the mood is that of horniness.

Chester found himself on the University grounds when he couldn’t run anymore. He felt as if his heart would burst inside its gutty pocket. He was crying when he collapsed into the snow and propped his back against the trunk of an oak tree. A passer-by gave Chester a little more mind than a sweeping glance, but she was late for an appointment and she rushed away, unobliged to comfort him. Chester was glad she hadn’t stopped. He took off his glasses and wiped his tears away as best he could.

“I’m going crazy...woob, woob, woob, nyuk, nyuk...I’ve been touched by the Funnyman---”

“Chester?”

Oh shit, Chester thought, here we go again. Round two folks! Live! from the Skull Dome, Chester “have a balloon” Best vs. the Funnyman.

“Grow up and get a grip on it,” the Doctor said. “You’ve wasted enough of my time already, you small jerk. I’m here on business.”

What do you want?, Chester asked, crying.

“Restitution. Payment for your crimes. You thought you could get away from it didn’t you, Chester? Oh, it’s buried in here all right, but I’ve sifted through your memory and I’ve found them. You do a good job of hiding things.”

What are you talking about?

“What am I talking about, Chester? What am I talking about, CHESTER!?”

Chester winced from the tremor that thumpered inside his head. He covered his eyes and whimpered.

“I’m a man of little patience, my funny friend. Infinite wisdom and little patience. Don’t barter with me for time because I don’t know how long I have. You are a special case, Chester: I may let you live. You’ll see happy days again if you co-operate.”

“What do you want?”

“First of all, I want you to remember an event. It’s in here, Chester. Let’s just suppose I dig a piece of it up for you to refresh your memory. HERE!...”

Chester cringed and

he was under the ghostly flicker of a strobe light. Speakers were blaring the bluesy sentiments of Mick Jagger on the issue of honky-tonk women. The pub was overcrowded. (“Packed to the tits,” as Matthew Janks would so eloquently state it.) The airspace was hot and had a depth of sharklike, steel-blue smoke that made distances hazy and shadows prominent along far walls. Muttled voices of party-happy barflies turned heads as their mutterings fluctuated in and out of the thickness of a murmur. Round trays, securing bottles and glasses that spilled with shaves of golden liquid, were raised high above heads like exalted, sacrificial gods only to be carried off to disenchanted lionhearts that swallowed them in a drunken pride. Cigarettes winked secretly at each other like ghostly Romeos and spirited Julietes, damned to an eternity of separation. Darts flew in a corner although their throwers had bull’s eyes on the women who were tilted on a hip, professing nonchalance, casually standing with their denim jean labels marketing their magnificent pose.

Near the bar, a gorgeous girl with straight, blonde hair was smiling ostensibly at her peers. Her eyes occasionally left her group and swept over the crowd of people cheerily celebrating heartless events or drinking to satisfy their lust for alcohol. She had large, green eyes that were inviting, and yet, they fell away on eye contact because she was shy and safe. Her golden hair fell over her shoulders in a soft, shiny silkience. Her skin was fair, natural, devoid of blemishing colours and mixtures of pasty cosmetic. The cascade of hair fell short of her bosom and curled over the virgin wool of her sweater, baby blue. She had a pair of faded Levis jeans that hugged curves, her hips and thinnish legs. Brown leather boots, small and fashionable, footed the view.

She turned and caught Chester staring at her. Her eyes fell away and then returned with a coyish smile, innocent, friendly. Chester smiled back, pleasantly surprised. He walked towards her to introduce himself and

the Doctor started shouting.

“REMEMBER!? NOW YOU REMEMBER, CHESTER! OHHHHH BOY! KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT NOW, CHESTER!?”

Chester threw his head back and screamed. His hands were planted over his ears, but it didn’t help. The voice was roaring thunder. Maddening. When it was over, Chester was crying like a stunned baby.

“What’s her name, Chester?”

Sarah White.

“Say it out loud, Chester. Say it like you know who I’m talking about.”

“Her name is Sarah White,” Chester whimpered.

“Who is Sarah White and tell me what association you have with her?”

She’s a girl---

“Out loud, Chester! Say it out loud!”

“She’s a girl I met last year at a pub!,” shouted Chester; tears were falling from his eyes in shambles and rheum dripped fluently from his nostrils.

“Oh...Is that all? Oops. So-reee. I must have mixed you up with some other Joe Fuckface Blow from Mexico. Oh well...Che sera, sera...I think I’ll just MOVE! my embarrassed ASS! right on OUT! OF! YOUR!! SKULL!!!”

“Stop!,” Chester pleaded, “Stop, please...it hurts...it hurts.”

He was huddled under the oak tree like a fingered pillbug. The pain in his head was unbearable.

“And another thing, Chester, you so much as raise that girlie voice of yours to me again and I will sing high hell in soprano ’till the cows come home. Get it?”

“Yes.”

“Good...Good as pie.”

* * *

There came a period of silence, and when it was silent, there was no pain. Chester started to stand up. The Doctor in his head seemed to have subsided into a state of silence. Chester cleaned his round glasses and fit the handlebars over his ears. He walked slowly along the path, listening to the surrealistic beauty of snow crunching under his footsteps. His head was still ringing and a headache was throbbing a steady assault; but the Doctor was presently incommunicado and the simple whirs, and chirps, and distant beeps of his surroundings took on a fresh meaning. The weather was mild and, although you could see your breath streaming from your mouth like a witch’s voice from haggard lips, melt-water was dripping steadily from icicle daggers and drooping, rooftop snow lobes. Chester was glad that the promenade was destitute of people, and he hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew---especially anyone from the examination room.

He wondered about what he would tell his Professor when next he saw him. He was aware that he had accidentally called the Prof an “ass.” But how could you explain something as bizarre as hearing voices to a Psychology Professor without seeing him discreetly pulling out the number to the Loonybin Hotline which they keep so neatly tucked away in their wallets. Forget it.

He thought about failing the exam which, in all essence, meant he had failed the course. He thought about having to repeat the course in the following semester (and he worried about getting Professor Fruitze for the return engagement). He thought about his car being quite a distance away, and he thought about different things that move, or grow, or lie motionless under the sun. He thought about everything except...

“Oh, you are a needling, little, forgetful worm, aren’t you? Chester? Aren’t you, Chester? CHESTER!? CHESTER FUCKING-MOST-KING-SHIT-FOUR-EYED-LONG-HAIRED-POMPOUS-CHICKENSHIT-SON-OF-A-VERY-LARGE-AND-EXCRUCIATINGLY-RED!-VAGINA! BEST!!”

Screaming echoed across the campus, over buildings, through narrow passages between walls, into corners, and it filled the cracks in faulty spacings---ringing. Chester went to his knees in the middle of campus. His eyes were wrenched shut, his head tilted up to God, and his hands were clamped over his ears.

“Stop! Stop it!”

“Woo, Chester, I tell you my patience is just about fizzled out and a bomb is about to blow. They will be scraping pieces of your head off of every wall on campus if I scream, Chester. You can bet on it, you paper-faced runt.”

An older gentleman ran to Chester’s dismay. He took Chester’s arm and helped him stand on his feet. Chester looked at him and started to cry.

“What is it, young man? What ails you?”

“Nothing,” Chester said, as deranged laughter spilled out of his mouth, “I just had to let that out.”

Chester ran to his car, laughing, trembling, and drooling like Creepy the Pipefitter.

* * *

“A good run is good for you...It clears the mind.”

Chester was sitting behind the wheel of his black Trans Am.

“What do you want?,” Chester asked the voice in his head.

“I gave you time to think about that, but you frittered it away on petty worries and trivialities. I told you what must happen first Chester. Do you remember that event? The event that I am enticing you to recall? It’s buried deep, I know; I had trouble finding it in that sloppy memory of yours. But it’s there. It’s repressed, maybe even obscured from all that firewater you consume. But it’s in there and I need you to pull it out for me.”

“How?”

“Think. Work it out. I gave you clues already. Remember what struck you as odd when you were in the library earlier this morning? Have you had any fleeting recollections lately, Chester? Who is Sarah White and of what association is she to you?”

“I told you who she is. Damn you.”

“I’m already damned, so save your tender sentiments. Tell me again who she is, Chester, and this time, I want to hear every little detail so that I know you know exactly what we are dealing with here. This is your Judgement Day, Chester...Oh yeah, and Chester?...Your head is a blood-bomb---hold out on me any detail and I’ll set it off with a scream.”

Chester took a deep breath and held it. He felt sick and very tired. He let out his breath and began to tell his story.

“Sarah White is a girl I met in a campus pub. It was last year at around this time. I was still in high school, but a friend of mine at the time, Matthew Janks, knew a guy named Todd. Matt ran into Todd one night, and Todd invited him to a pub on campus. Matt, in turn, invited me and Freddy Esh to come along. We met Todd and some of his friends off campus, and Matt drove all of us to the pub. We drank Canadian Club on the way there. When we got to the pub, Todd and his friends signed us in as visiting guests. We were a party of six counted altogether.

“The pub was like a phantasm. I remember standing under a strobe light and watching the flux of people churn and mingle. The sound and lights spawned an atmosphere of futuristic optimism, an electric renaissance where energy crackled from every space and corner. People, absorbed by the charge, gave off their own brand of energy. I decided right then and there that I wanted to go to University and that I would go to the one right here in my home town.”

Chester rubbed his eyes. “I was starting to get drunk when I saw this beautiful girl standing at the bar. She was the kind of girl that didn’t stand out like a flash-in-the-pan, but if you took the time to rest your eyes on her she would absorb you. She smiled at me and I nearly fell off the carpet feeling the rush that it gave me. I was sober enough to speak to her and drunk enough to approach her, so I did. Her name was Sarah White.”

“Good...Good as pie. You remember well, Chester; you surprise me. I shant scream. No, not yet. But there’s more. Right, Chester? There’s a whole bunch! more.”

Chester started to shiver. He swallowed hard and continued his story.

“Sarah and I hit it off---considering she didn’t ditch me when she found out I was still in high school. She was down to earth. Feet planted and head down on earth. I was in love with her within minutes of speaking with her. She had magic in her voice. Sweet and calm magic. She could charm the moon from the sky if she could raise her voice to it. I made her laugh a couple of times and, to tell you the truth, I think she liked me.

“It took a while but I knew the inevitable would happen. The company I was with saw me talking to a gorgeous blonde who happened to be with friends that were strikingly beautiful themselves, although in a louder way. My friends came over and names went flying around and handshakes broke the moment. Sarah’s friends were sort of on the wild side and I suppose it intimidated Sarah a little. If not, it proved to incite her drinking. My friends started buying them their drinks, round after round, and I watched Sarah White get drunk.

“By the time the pub was closing, I was staggering. The party had virtually shut me out of their folly because Matt and the boys were wilder and funnier than I was. Maybe it was because Matt had a lot of money and was spending like a movie star. Matt quit school in the eleventh grade and has been working at his father’s transmission shop since then. Money talks. Talking walks.

“I found myself trailing the group when we left the pub, too drunk to care that I had lost Sarah to the wolves and, at the same time---seeing her drunk made me lose respect for her. Up until then she was...an eidolon, a dreamgirl. Feeling jealous and dejected, I felt sorry for myself and pitied her.”

“Excellent, Chester. Dr. Whye is proud of you. You are starting to remember feelings. Very good pie. But we’ve a ways to go yet, Chester the Molester. A long. LONG! ways to go.”

“I remember discussing, or rather, listening to the discussion of where we could all go to party some more. It turned out that Sarah offered her room to throw a party in because we all lived off campus and all of us were too drunk to drive. When we got to her residence, she turned on the stereo and we started to party. I was an absolute mess by then and I had to bear ridicule all night long. At one point Sarah got on top of her desk and started dancing. It was wild, crazy fun for a while; everyone was doing a mindless boogie to “Young American” by David Bowie.

“After a while, I started to feel sick so I sat down in a chair by the doorway. The next thing I knew, it was quiet. I barely recall the complaints Sarah was getting, but I remember seeing the Residence Officer come into the room to turn off the stereo. I think it was at that moment that Sarah’s party died.

“It happened that Sarah’s friends left with Todd’s two friends. I was too drunk to go anywhere. I passed out.”

“Ahh,” Chester heard the Doctor say, “you passed out. A true, blue winner. The nervous bird of selective perception. Your subscription to the Bedfart Times, Mr. Best? Oh, no thanks, too pooped, bring me nitrous oxide. Bring me a blackout, godspeed! Bring me ignorance and bring me bliss. Shh, guys, stop making so much noise; I’m trying to pass out so that I can pretend that I wasn’t here. Shhh! Shhh!

“You faceless cheat! You chickenshit cheat! You cheated that poor girl. You cheated yourself, and me, and all of humanity by your little phony sleep. Your shut eyes and turned cheek. You didn’t pass out, you yellow shit. Now you just open up that fucking memory of yours and you think hard. What happened next!?”

“I don’t know.”

“You tiny retch. You know! What happened next!?”

“I...I’m not---”

“Think hard, you dirt hog. Dig fast or I’m going to do a James Brown in here that’ll blow your brains out.”

“I can’t---”

“WHAT HAPPENED!?!”

Confined within the glass windows of his car, Chester screamed. He threw his hands to his ears to deaden the pain. When he looked at his palms they were painted with blood. It trickled from either ear in ticklish rivulets. He started to cry and

the creaking sounds and shallow grunts started again. The creaks especially, ricketting. In the window light, one of the dark silhouettes was standing motionless. It was joined by another figure. Together their forms bonded in a dark silence.

The moonlight coming in through the window was a dull, solid shower. It turned shadows into lurking phantoms; and lurking phantoms into strange apparitions; and when Chester’s eyes were given to focus, he saw that there were real people in the room with him. They were dark people.

Somewhere nearby, grunts got loud and creaks came in quicker cadence. The room seemed to slither and the darkness writhed as if walls were made of living meat. It stank of spilt liquor and ashtrays filled with cremated Bogarts. It reeked with coffin laundry and perfume gone to dog air. And vomit. Yes, there was vomit.

The creaking noises stopped when the grunts were loudest. It was followed by silence. Long seconds of it. Then came the sound of something moving. Something sweaty and foul, shifting dank air, mixing it with a pungent, dirty smell. There were sounds of something evil moving in the darkness. Sounds of a zipper flying. Sounds of a belt buckle jiggling.

When the door opened, the dark people were no longer dark. Light from the hallway flooded in, and the ghastly faces of Todd and Freddy left the room. Matthew Janks left last with a painted grin on his face.

“Your turn, homeboy,” Matthew said, and he laughed derisively as he left Sarah’s room.

(Before the door fully shuts behind the dark men, Chester looks towards the bed. Sarah is lying there with her legs spread open and her naked flesh sprawling over rented sheets. Her face is sallow, but her hair still glows. She had a ticket to an everlasting hangover.)

The door clicked shut.

Chester vomited (again.)

The Doctor in Chester’s head started speaking: “You staggered out of there, Chester. You don’t remember, but it’s in your files. Buried deep and secure in a spot where nasty mental notes lie packed away like the bones of skeletons in a closet.”

A dark hand rocked Chester’s heart. It awakened him from a nightmare within the nightmare of recalling that criminal night when Sarah White’s humanity was bludgeoned within a whimpering breath of total dehumanization. She was beaten with the blunt clubs of rapists and spat upon with ejaculate, and abandoned to suffer and forever heal.

Within this nightmare, Chester envisioned himself meeting his soul on the edge of a high cliff. Together, they joined hands and overlooked the great abyss that smoked and fell away into bottomlessness and hell. There he stood with a wet, cold wind blowing in his face and, looking towards the eyeless shadow standing at his side, Chester began to whimper. His soul stepped forward and Chester realized that he was going straight to...

But now, his heart was gently beating.

“I’m sorry,” he cried, “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t want for that to happen.” Pitiful sobs jacked up to his throat and hot liquids dribbled from the crooks of his face including horrible sweat from every pore, and watery blood from both of his ears, snot, saliva, heavy tears. “I’m sorry...I’m...sorry...”

“You’re a cheat because you didn’t stop them. You’re alive because you didn’t rape her yourself. I’m letting you live, Chester, because I know you couldn’t have stopped those hellbound dogs. Filthy drunks have no courage.”

“What now?,” Chester asked. He took a deep, hitching breath.

“I can’t change what has happened.”

“You can. Somewhat. I want you to apologize to the girl. Do it right now.”

“How? I mean---”

“Do it. I’ll give you temporary peace of mind. Just do it. I will assess the degree of your pass or failure on the matter and punish you accordingly: As I see fit. What you don’t compensate for could mean the death of you. I’ll be waiting right here. Do it. You have twenty-four hours.”

* * *

The telephone rang at three thirty that afternoon in room 211

of the Lennox wing in the Lennox and Addington complex. Sarah White picked up the receiver and a soft, “Hello?“, melted through the wires. It was followed by silence. Again, “Hello?”

The voice was unmistakably hers.

Click. (Someone hung up on her.)

At approximately nine fifteen that evening, Sarah received another phone call. She picked up the receiver and a strange voice on the other end of the line asked her if it had reached room 211 Lennox. Without pausing to ask what the phone call was all about, she answered, “Yes---”

Click. (The voice at the end of the line died.)

When Chester finally got to bed that night, his sleep was restless and filled with a strange nightmare. He dreamed he was standing like the leg of a gnat on the face of an immense sheet of paper. Above him was a giant man of surrealistic proportion looking down at him; a stethoscope dangling from his neck. This man was clean cut, shaven, and had sharp eyes the colour of twilight skies. He was wearing a white laboratory coat that was as vast and far-reaching as the sky itself. It fell away into the horizon where giant metal hammers grew up from the earth in a towering concave edifice. Chester walked along the white paper desert and watched the man in the clouds limber up his fingers, stretching them as if he were warming up for a piano concerto. The wind picked up and swept through Chester’s hair. The foul breeze was coming from the man in the clouds; Chester could feel the hot, dry breath of his laughter blow across the land like a desert squall.

The man in the clouds dropped a finger beyond the horizon and the earth rocked under Chester’s feet. Something whisked through the sky as quickly as the fly on a bullwhip’s tail. It landed next to Chester with a thunderous clap and whisked back to the monstrous metal carriage on the horizon. Again the earth shook and this time Chester saw it coming: A towering hammer fell away from the edifice and came crashing to the earth, leaving and epic letter “h” imprinted on the ground in black ink. Chester started to run. Another hammer came and went at his back, rocking the earth under his feet. It left the letter “o” branded to the ground. Steel hammers began to shower behind him as he zig-zagged across the white desert plain. They were chasing him, trying to crush him; each one landing a little closer to his heels; each one leaving a widespread imprint in black ink on the ground behind him. A “p”, an “e”, a “t”, an “h”...

He ran for his life, blinded by fear like a rabbit stalked by hungry dogs. When a capital “D” struck the ground, Chester’s nightmare world quaked and he collapsed. Looking up towards the man in the clouds, Chester saw his death afly: A hammer, gilded with the small letter “o” was racing across the sky to crush him. He gagged on a scream and panicked, struggling...

Chester clawed his way out of the nightmare. When he sat up in bed it was dark inside his bedroom. The red, glowing eyes of his alarm clock read one thirty, A.M.

Twelve hours to get through to Sarah, he thought. And then he heard his electric typewriter humming in the darkness.

Chester reached over and turned his lamp on. He saw the stack of paper which he had been labouring over like a madman possessed. He saw paper piled next to his typewriter and paper scattered across the floor in flippant disarray. He saw paper which had been crushed into neat, little balls, littered amiss around his wastepaper basket. He also saw a sheet sticking up from the typewriter carriage which had not been there when he took to bed. He was certain of that.

He crawled out of bed and crept across the cold, hardwood floorboards that complained of warm feet with woody shrieks. Looking into his typewriter, a wave of unreality carried his imagination away as pain and laughter thundered in his head.

On the page was a message for him:

hi

I hope t s EA

wo er. I R L

rks, Chest L

Y

HOPE!

it w rks

o .

Sig

n

e

d,

The Doct r

***

When Sarah White saw the package sitting by the corner of her dresser like a conspicuous, little mouse, she jerked herself out of bed to fetch it. It was a plain, brown envelope which had been slipped under her door the way essays are slipped into the offices of easy-going Professors when time is crunchy and things are due. Sleep was still in her eyes, true, but the drowse never tainted the revelation of receiving a gift. She delighted over the surprise when she tore open the stale, brown wrap and discovered the contents held a mystery. It was a story dedicated to her; written by one, “Chester Best”, for whom she surveyed neither face, nor fancy, nor chartered recollection. She sat comfortably in the chair at her desk and tripped over the title into...

Stoneheart

Once there lived a man who fell in love with beauty and the world took her away from him. Distraught by the loss, he went away discouraged with no hope of ever finding her again. He thought of her often and wandered the countryside, not knowing where to search, not knowing how to find her until one day he came to a river and there she felt close by.

“Do not drink of this river,” a songbird warbled, “or you will surely turn to stone…”

Jonathan did not heed the warning and he drank of the river before the songbird had finished its song. His heart set, still, and he turned to stone.

Day after day the man looked out over the river and night after night he longed to see the beauty again. Alas, he could do nothing, transfixed by the curse. One day the beauty he was longing for came to the river and stood next to him.

“Do not drink from the river,” Jonathan shouted, “else you will turn to stone!” His heart broke to see her in mortal jeaopardy and he desperately tried to warn her.

She bent down to drink the water and as she lifted her cupped hands to her lips, the songbird distracted her and she looked over her shoulder. She stood up and listened. Then she started to run off, wiping her hands dry on her dress.

“I did it! I did it!,” Jonathan cried. “She heard me! I saved her from my fate.”

“Alas,” the songbird warbled, finally able to finish its song. “…if your true love drinks from the river, then will the curse be broken.”

Jonathan’s mind turned to stone.

* * *

The telephone rang four times before Chester’s groggy hand clutched the receiver and swung it to his ear.

“Ugh...” Still sleeping.

“Hello? Hi, is there a Chester Best living there?”

It was her! Chester’s eyelids bounced open and he sat up in bed, groping for his glasses.

“Hello...yeah, yeah...uh...this is he...him...me, I’m Chester.”

“Chester, my name is Sarah White. Sometime early this morning or late last night, someone dropped off a package at my dorm. The package has your name and phone number in it and, apparently it’s a story dedicated to me...Did you send me a story, Chester?”

"Stoneheart. I slid it under your door early this morning.”

“Well, Chester---I’m stunned. What’s this all about?”

“I can explain everything to you. I need to see you, Sarah. Are you free for breakfast?”

"Breakfast?" Sarah smiled in spite of his audacity. “I don’t think so.”

A nerve monkey started to jump inside Chester’s stomach. He was anticipating this response; after all, she probably remembered his name from the pub; she probably even thinks he played a part in the assault.

“Please, Sarah. It’s very important that I meet with you. I won’t take up too much of your time, I promise. I need a word with you, that is all...I implore you, please.”

“I have an exam at one o’clock. Maybe tomorrow I---”

“Sarah, wait...it has to be today...I can’t tell you why that is, but it has to be today...please?”

There was a pause in their conversation that sent the nerve monkey into a frenzy. Chester was ready to vomit the hairy creature onto his bed.

“Okay,” Sarah agreed, “I’ll meet you at Derk’s in an hour.”

“Tremendous!” A breath of relief blew into the receiver; a breath that Chester wasn’t aware had escaped his lips. “Derk’s at eleven.”

“Hold on, before you hang up, Chester...How will I know who you are?”

“I’m the statue in your story,” Chester said, “See you in an hour.”

“Well,” Sarah said as she smiled, “see you there.”

* * *

Der Keller, colloquially referred to as Derk’s, is a small campus restaurant that served as a raucous pub when (K)nights fell and drinkers came out of their armoured shells. It was designed in the theme of Ye Olde days of Squire, complete with heavy, hardwood tables, red tablecloths, candlelight centrepieces, and walls faceted with stone masonry in the style of a castle’s master chambers. The menu consisted of Ye Olde Fish n Chips, and Ye Olde Salsbury Steak, and gets as extravagant as Ye Olde Courdon Bleu. The breakfast menu, for some reason, considered Ye Olde dessert list for much of its appeal.

Sarah arrived early. She occupied a table at the back of the cafetorium so she could study, watch people come and go and fancy her romantic interloper. She was reading the story Chester had sent her for the third time because it intrigued her emotions and also because she was starting to read between the lines of the little story.

When Chester arrived, he saw her sitting alone in a corner table. Her attention was focused on the manuscript that he had sent her. She was wearing a red ski bomber, faded jeans, and a pair of hiking boots. Her hair spilled over her shoulders in a brushstroked wave.

“Hi, Sarah?” Chester had managed to walk to her table without snatching her attention from the story she was reading.

“Hello. Chester Best?” Her soft green eyes climbed over Chester’s face. Her voice was a purring song. She stood up and offered Chester a handshake, quite cordially, almost businesslike as if they were meeting to finalize a transaction. She was shimmering with the scent of sweet perfume.

“Yeah...I’m Chester. Please, sit. Have you ordered yet?”

“No,” Sarah said, “they don’t serve you in here; you have to go up and get your own.”

Sarah was looking at Chester with trying eyes, placing the face she vaguely recognized with the recollection of someone tangible. But Chester looked tired. His eyes were red and hungry looking; dark patches filled the shallow contours under his brow. He felt uneasy and the nerve monkey shivered in his stomach. More than likely, his nervousness showed in the pallor of his skin. From the way Sarah was regarding him, he felt almost sure of it.

“I know you,” she said and her eyes fell onto the manuscript.

“Yeah,” Chester managed (the nerve monkey was pawing for his tongue), “We’ve met before. Regrettably, the circumstances of our introduction aren’t likely to make you welcome me; but I needed to see you today. I have some explaining to do. This feels very awkward to me, can we grab some food?”

“Sure.”

They stood up and considered an appropriate distance between each other, a stranger’s distance. They strolled to the cafeteria-type servatorium and began choosing their breakfast, balancing it on a tray.

“I want to thank you for meeting with me,” Chester started. The nerve monkey in his stomach was shining and he wondered if the Doctor wasn’t tormenting him with a little sideshow experiment. “That’s no problem. I had to come here to eat anyway.”

“Have you read the story?”

“Yeah...” Sarah turned around, smiling. Her aqua-marine eyes sparkled. “It’s weird. I guess I like it.”

“I was hoping that you would. I was up all night writing it for you.”

“For me? Why on earth would you do that? Don’t you have any exams?”

“I needed to see you,” Chester said, “I have some apologies to make; the story is a peace offering. I’m here to entreat a pardon...to beg your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Sarah picked up a bagel with cream cheese and raspberry jam on it. “I’m not a priest.”

Chester fixed himself a coffee. “No,” he told her, “I need your forgiveness. Can we sit down?”

“We have to pay for our food first, dummy.” Sarah took some money out of her pocket to pay for her breakfast.

“No! No,” Chester said, “my treat. I insist. Don’t argue. Take a seat. Put the money away. Pass the sugar...please.”

Sarah smiled. A touch.

They took their seats near the corner of the lounge and their eyes met. Sarah dropped hers and Chester felt a wispy tingle rush through him.

“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yet,” he told her.

Sarah regarded the remark for a moment with a plain, matter-of-fact expression on her face and then said, “What...that you had something so tragically horrific to tell me that you had to charm me with a story in order to get me to see you. That maybe what you couldn’t face me with on an open, straightforward level, you had to ice-break and bush-beat with a story. That maybe Jonathan in make-believe is a better man than you for at least trying to save her.”

Chester almost dropped the coffee cup from his lips. His brain went into a state of suspension and awe, as if God, or some other omnipotent joker playing with his yo-yo, had put it to sleep. Sarah took a bite out of her bagel and regarded Chester with her eyebrows raised.

“You have figured it out.”

“As soon as I read the story twice and thought about it. I’m an English major. In other words, I discover treasures buried in literature. Your story is full of secrets, Chester; I commend you, it’s very good. It’s also very forward...and besides, you said so yourself over the phone, you are Jonathan, right? You don’t have to be a guru to figure out what’s going on.”

“Do you remember meeting me in the pub last year?”

“No. I can’t say that I remember much…faces included. I remember waking up the next morning.” She chomped into her bagel.

“I’m sorry, Sarah...It must have been horrible.” Chester felt the stormy waters of emotion rise.

Sarah’s expression turned cold and hard. “It made me hollow, Chester. Ever feel hollow? Like something inside you has been stolen? Maybe like a wasted candle or a seaside shell? How about, like something has died inside of you? It hurts, Chester; and it scars. Your story has a lot to say for how you may have felt about that night, paralysed, but I’ll tell you how it was for me: I was, seriously, dead lost. I was alive but I was only living the reality of my surroundings. The ghost of my former self wandered to and from classes. I smiled only when the order of my intimates announced the appropriate moment with open measures of inviting laughter. I was, however, no more able to recognize the time to smile than a bird is to pre-suppose its own death; and even when I did smile, I struggled against a broken will to do so. My esteem towards the matter of living was as illheartened as a battlemarch to the sound of rainfall tapping on the prosaic drum at a fucking funeral.

“But, before I start confusing the issue---because confusion is the colourful part of the package that kinda wraps it all up into a neat, little psychotic gift---I have to say that, although I felt hollow, I wasn’t left empty. If it be told that rapists rob and take away from a woman’s soul, then I beg the counter opinion. Rapists give and fill you up forever. They pour loneliness, and hatred, and anger where your heart once throbbed. They fill you up with venom and leave you to writhe from it. It’s a poor way to die, but death to the dead at heart is often welcome. I almost committed suicide, Chester...I almost...flew. That’s how it affected me. So, to make ends meet: Yes, Chester, it was horrible.”

He was in high water. Chester felt as if he was drowning in a lake of terrible emotion. He swallowed the floating lump in his throat, but it bobbled in his neck. The nerve monkey was a dead pressure floating at the top of his stomach.

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop them. I would have stopped them, Sarah, please believe me. I---but---but I--- I didn’t.” The words hung thickly in the air.

It dawned on him. A clear light cracked against a black horizon. His mind went into a daze and he turned away to avoid Sarah’s eyes. His eyes fell towards the table, the silverware and the crimson tablecloth.

“My God,” he whispered, “Why didn’t I?...Why didn’t I stop them?”

Far away, in his mind’s eye, a light was growing on the horizon. The sun rested on the horizon like a huge red ball, God’s misplaced toy, and in the distance a fog was rolling in to paint the world black. As the sun was blotted and made a washed out star, Chester saw his soul standing, eyeless, on a distant knoll. Chester’s dark soul beckoned him to join it. The desert waste land was their waiting grounds.

A tear appeared under his glasses and snailed along his cheek. “Why didn’t I stop them?”

“Filthy drunks have no courage,” Sarah affirmed and she bit into her breakfast.

Chester shuddered and wiped a tear from his cheek. He wouldn’t let himself think too long of his crime or there would be more of them. Better to stiffen up. He took a drink of coffee and saw how cool a grip had held Sarah’s emotions from the breakfast table. If they were inside her, there wasn’t anything to indicate that they were on the ebb of outpouring. She was as tight as a drum.

“Doesn’t it hurt you to think about it...to be reminded of it?,” Chester ventured.

“What do you think?”

Chester looked into the green of her eyes and something stirred behind them. It was like seeing a hellorific shadow glide through murky waters and, as you watch it, unbelieving, it turns and disappears; leaving behind a cold, rippling wave to confirm what the mind refuses to believe. He had hit the root: The live nerve core behind clenching teeth which bluff, and threaten, and block the painful truth. Inside, the feelings were still there. The pain and the hatred. And the dead emptiness where the desecrated beds of self worth, pride, and love stand expressionless and waiting, waiting for the return of their precious fillings like the empty beds in the silent rooms of lost, dead, or missing children.

As their interlude continued, a ballet of emotions danced in their auras and beyond them into the cosmic ballrooms. They found themselves on a platonic shelf, conversing, comfortable with each other’s company and, secretly (feeling something they couldn’t quite place, at least not in the present scheme of things) they were interested in each other.

“So,” Sarah began, “you couldn’t live another day without begging my forgiveness?”

Chester broke into a smile. “No,” he said glancing at his wristwatch. “Not even another hour.”

They gathered their legs from under the table and stood up.

“I’m forgiven then?”

“Yes,” she said, “but not forgotten.” She forced a smile.

They struggled with the heavy, armoured door, exited Der Keller, and the sun dazzled their eyes. Squinting at one another, Chester asked if they could see each other again, sometime.

“Yeah. I suppose we could do that...” She placed the pad of her index finger over Chester’s heart and launched herself from it. Spinning, stepping into motion, her sweet voice purled, “...if you send me more stories.”

Chester watched her walk away. Her hair was flowing in the breeze. An overwhelming flood of joy rushed to his heart. He jumped in the air with his fist triumphantly proclaiming the extent of his elation.

"Yes!,” he whispered. He started to walk in the direction of his car.

He passed assorted people as he strolled along the campus promenade. He was oblivious to their whispers, their teetering and hybrid snickers as they regarded him with curious interest and dastardly expressions, the way people regard a crazy person when a crazy person passes them by doing crazy, crazy things.

“Are you an Angel?,” Chester asked aloud.

"No. I think I’m headed the other way. I was once living, you know; but, I made a mess of terrible and unforgivable things happen. I’m hellbound, Chester. Right now, I’m floating in between places.”

“Where will you go, now?”

"I’m going to pay your horny friends a little visit. I can push people a long way, Chester. Drive them straight into their own hells and fill out applications for them to a lifetime position as the feature in a mental asylum. It’s better that way---the retribution, the restitution...it lasts longer. But, I imagine sooner or later I’ll get tired or angry and I’ll scream their heads off. I’m a man of little patience. I’m a Doctor, Chester. A psychiatrist by practice, in the field of criminal psychology. You’ll read about me soon; I’m sure the ugly cat is out of the bag by now. The Project was my baby.”

“You won’t be back then, will you?”

"No. You did good, Chester. Good as pie in the sky. Doctor Whye is proud of you...Have a good life, Chester.”

“I will,” Chester said, and he felt a weight lift from his head, heart and soul.

* * *

Several miles away, under the greasy engine and rust mottled frame of an 81 Plymouth Horizon, Matthew Janks thought he heard someone entering his father’s transmission shop whistling the melody of Camptown Races. He cheerily started to sing along.

The light flickered off and came on again. Oliver was standing near the light switch. He looked ghastly ill. He twitched and heaved. Vomit sputtered in his effort to speak. “Don’t keep it,” he coughed. “You need to destroy it. Bury it. Burn it. Give it away to someone else or leave it on a train for someone to pick up. It doesn’t matter. Just get rid of it.”

As I watched Oliver topple to the floor I was suddenly frozen by a sweeping chance glance at the window. I was captured there. I was stoned out of my mind. In the window was...

THE PINE BAR SHOWER

They called him up because he was the only plumber in town. There wasn’t even a plumber listed in the phone book; Charlotte had to call Foo Wong’s Chinese restaurant to get information on how to get her shower fixed.

“What wong?”

“The pipes are spraying all over the place. In the shower. I guess they froze over the winter and when we went to turn the water on, the whole bathroom floor flooded. I need someone to look at it tonight, otherwise we won’t have water.”

“Nobody awound hee-yah do prumbing!:” The Chinese man sounded angry.

“Oh, wait, I didn’t mean there at your restraunt. I mean anywhere in town.”

“No. I know what you saying. What I saying is nobody in this town do prumbing. Only one man, he do e-mer-gen-cy service. But peopoe don’ caw him. He naw one to caw rate at night.”

“Please, Mr. Wong...is that your name? Mr. Wong?"

“My name do naw coun’ foe nothing. I tell you...you best naw to caw him. You best have no wat-ter foe one night.”

Charlotte looked toward her husband with a look of exasperation on her face. After four hours of a satiated road hunger all she wanted to do was have a nice shower and a hot coffee.

“Please, Mr. Wong, we have a baby; she needs to have a bath.”

There was a silent pause in the conversation. Then Charlotte heard long jumbles of Chinese in the background as though Mr. Wong was talking to someone else in the restraunt.

“You look foe Creepy in the phone book. Don’ tell nobody I tell you.”

Click!

Charlotte hung up her telephone receiver thinking Mr. Wong was somewhat rude. The way he had terminated their conversation was sudden and abrupt, unfriendly.

“Sheesh, I hope not everyone around here is that congenial,” she chided herself. She went into the kitchen area where Mr. Webb was already planning renovations to their new cottage.

“Any luck?,” Ralph asked as he started to sketch the fireplace wall.

“Well, they said to look up ‘Creepy’ in the phone book.”

Charlotte took a seat on a bar stool.

“Go nuts,” Ralph said and he motioned toward the telephone directory.

Charlotte flipped open the book and there was Clarkson...Cottage Inn...one page back was Cripps, Crezno, Crew. Near the top was:

Creepy A., 2023 Bluefields Road........666-2911

A. Creepy. How appropriate, Charlotte thought. She wondered aloud, “Should we call him?”

“If you want water tonight.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said as she went to the phone in the hall, “...but he sounds, you know, creepy.” She laughed at her own pun.

6-6-6-2-9-1-1

The phone rang for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, someone picked up the phone.

“Ah, yeah, ah, Arnold Creepy here. Ah, how can I, ah, help you?” The voice was nasal and electronic.

“My name is Charlotte Webb, I’m calling about emergency service plumbing. I have a big problem here.”

“Yeah, ah. Yeah.”

“My pipes burst in the shower. If we turn our water main on we get flooding in the bathroom. Can you come over and look at our pipes?”

“Ah, ah, ah...ah, yeah, ah yeah I can. Ah, I can, yeah.”

“Wonderful. We are the Terra Cotta, 241, Route 3. Do you know where that is?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Great! I’ll be---”

“Comes with, ah, cleaning.”

“Pardon me?,” Charlotte remarked.

“My work,” Creepy fumbled. “Ah, ah, it comes with free pipe, ah, cleaning service. Ah, I clean your pipes for nothing.”

“Really? That’s great. Thank you. See you when?”

“Ah, a while. Good fucking night.”

What?

Click!

Charlotte stared into the telephone receiver, shocked. What the hell kind of town was this where everyone was so extraordinarily cordial. A Chinese restaurant owner who hangs up on you and an emergency plumber that swears over the phone: That’s good business.

Good fucking night.

And what kind of professional shows up in “a while?” What’s “a while?” One o’clock? Two o’clock? It was already ten pm. Charlotte thought this creepy guy was more than creepy, she was starting to think he was outright strange. She walked back to the kitchen and approached her husband.

“You won’t believe the freak I just talked to.”

“Creepy...right?”

“To say the least. Talk about suiting a name. Do you know what the last thing he said to me was?”

“Can you toss me that pencil eraser over there?” He pointed to the oak coffee table. “Let me guess...he told you that his dying mother was his work hog.”

“No. He said, ’Good fucking night.’” Charlotte picked up the pencil eraser and walked it over to Ralph. He chuckled at her.

“’Good fucking night?′ That’s what he said?”

“Yes. Can you believe it? Oh, I can’t wait till he gets here. Of course, that won’t be for ′a while,′ whatever that means.”

“Well, at least you’ll get your shower. I wouldn’t worry about him too much, people in these here hick parts have their peculiarities. Too much inbreeding. Like hillbillies.”

“I suppose so. After all, we’ll get our pipes cleaned for free.”

Ralph chuckled once more. “What did you say?”

“We’ll get our pipes cleaned. That’s what Creepy said. He said, ‘I’ll clean your drains, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, for ah, ah, ah, ah nothing.’ ‘Ah, ah’...he kept saying ‘ah-ah,’ every other word was ‘ah-ah’ like he was ah stupid or something.”

“Honey, do you know what that expression, ‘clean your pipes’ refers to?”

Charlotte thought about it for a moment and then gave Ralph a disgusted glance, repulsed. “You are sick, Ralph,” she told him, “You’re fuckin sick.” She walked toward the washroom to see how bad the drains looked.

* * *

A knock came to their door, four hours after Charlotte had made the call. It was two am. The Webb’s were long in bed and sleep had them both entombed. It was annoying to have to rise from it.

“For fuck sakes. It’s two o’clock in the morning.” Ralph got up and snatched a house coat. His wife sat up and wrapped the sheets over her bosom.

“Creepy,” Charlotte muttered. “I tell you, he is creepy.”

Ralph threw open the front door and instead of shouting at the idiot like he had planned to do, he gasped and stepped back, nearly losing his footing.

“Ah, ah, it’s me, Creepy, ah, at your service. Creepy the, ah, Pipefitter, ah, they call me.”

Hideous, Ralph thought.

Creepy’s eyes rested in the midway of his forehead as if he were looking out from his brains. His eyes were filmy and grey and through those cataract membranes his brain truly rested.

“You’re rather late, don’t you think?,” Ralph petitioned, robbed of his vigour.

“Ah, busy. Been busy. Ah, nother call. Ah, mergency.” Creepy pushed past Ralph and intruded into the dwelling. He kept walking in the direction of the bedroom.

Good fucking night.

“Wait...,” Ralph was helpless with surprise. “What...”

Creepy walked straight to the bedroom door and stopped suddenly. He turned back toward Ralph. “You want me to fix, ah, your fucking pipes don’t you?” His eyes blinked monstrously on his forehead.

Charlotte dashed out of the bedroom and nearly crashed into Creepy. She stopped in time to avoid collision, screaming.

“Its okay!,” Ralph shouted. “Its okay, Charlotte, go back into the bedroom.” Charlotte darted away and slammed the door behind her.

“The shower is this way,” Ralph pointed out. It was to his left.

“Ah, ah, I know, ah but the shut off valve is, ah, over here. Ah, need to turn it on, ah, to check it, ah, ah, out.”

Yes. Beyond the bedroom door was a walk-in storage closet. In the back corner of it was the main water line and shut off valve.

“How did you know that?,” Ralph asked, suddenly piqued with curiosity rather than terror.

“Long life, I, ah, guess.”

Creepy shuffled off toward the storage closet, opened the door, and disappeared into the darkness of the closet. He returned one moment later.

“The light switch is on the right hand---”

“Don’t need it,” Creepy interjected as he stepped toward Ralph.

“What do you mean you don’t need it? You just finished telling me you were going to turn the water valve on to---”

“Ah, did it.”

Ralph was starting to get angry. He wasn’t understanding the creepy fellow at all.

“What do you mean you did it? The valve is at least ten paces into the storage; you walked in and out of there doing a two yard buttonhook.”

Creepy ignored Ralph. He bustled straight past him toward the shower. Ralph was somewhat taken aback by the hermit’s tenacity. He had to give his head a shake. He couldn’t believe it. He was about to protest against the intrusion when he heard the shower running. Water was running. The valve was turned on.

How in the...?

As Ralph stood there wondering, he watched Creepy hustle down the hall toward the out-shower washroom. Creepy was carrying a tool box in one hand and a black, velvet sack in the other. Just as Creepy reached the end of the hall, Ralph saw the sack bulge outward and ripple as if some animal or creature was swimming inside it. Ralph started chasing after Creepy.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Creepy! What have you got in the---”

As Ralph reached the shower doorway, just behind Creepy, the door was slammed shut in his face. It was shut with such force that the solid wood cracked straight along the grain running from the door-knob up to the upper door frame.

Creepy went to work.

“Ralph, what’s going on?” Charlotte appeared at the other end of the hall.

“I guess Creepy is working.”

“Was that you who slammed the door?”

“No.”

Charlotte suddenly flared with anger. “You mean to tell me that creep is going around slamming doors in our place at two am? Get him out of here. We don’t need water now. We’ll call a real plumber in the morning.”

“You’re right,” Ralph agreed. He started knocking on the door. When he tried the door knob, it wouldn’t turn. The crack in the door must have jammed it shut. “Mr. Creepy? I think you should open this door. We’ve changed our minds. We won’t be needing your services tonight. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”

Ralph heard nothing for a moment, then he heard loud banging and several wrenching sounds.

“Mr. Creepy, do you hear me?”

Pipe pieces clattered and jangled. Ralph thought he heard a blow torch fire up.

“Look, mister!,” Ralph shouted. He yanked at the door to no avail. “I’m calling the police!”

Then Ralph heard a noise so strange and so out of place that a creepy chill ran over him. It sounded like a screech from a beast of some sort. Not a pig, but similar. Not a bat, but close to it. Not quite human, almost demonic. A creature.

“Charlotte, call the police. This guy has got to go.”

Charlotte scurried off to the telephone to dial 9-1-1.

“I’m warning you, Creepy, get the hell out of my cottage!”

Ralph backed up with every plan to break through the door. He was about to launch forward when the door swished open. The crack in the wood reversed its process and sealed itself, returning to the way it was before it cracked. Creepy stepped out of the washroom and stood in front of Ralph. Two feet shorter than him, Ralph looked down upon his face at close range. He was shocked by the man’s milky eyes and his cleft tongue as it rolled, making words.

“Done. Ah, it’s finished.”

“What do you mean it’s finished? Out of my way. What did you do in here?” Ralph stepped into the shower washroom.

“Ah, replaced your broken, ah, pipe, ah. Good as new now.”

Ralph inspected Creepy’s work. He turned the shower taps on. Both hot and cold flowed smoothly.

“How could you do that in a matter of---”

“Trap, ah, door near the shitter. Copper piping down there from, ah, when I fixed the pipes, ah, last time.”

Ralph turned the water off. He asked, “You’ve fixed these pipes before?”

Creepy blinked. “Like ah said, long life.”

Ralph discovered the booby hatch lid opened by sticking your finger in a knot hole and lifting the pine floorboards. He hadn’t even known it existed. Using the ceiling light, Ralph could not even see the bottom of the cellar.

“Is it flooded down there?”

“No. Ah, no. Ah was down there. No flood. Guaranteed.”

Ralph let the trap door shut. He scratched the late night shadow on his chin and looked at Creepy. “What have you got in there?” He pointed to the velvet bag.

“Ah, a snake.”

Ralph stepped back.

“Ah, toilet snake,” Creepy chuckled. He held out the sack for Ralph.

Charlotte appeared at the hall’s end once again. “Get out of here you freak!,” she shouted when she saw Creepy standing at the end of her hall way. “The police are coming!”

Ralph shouted her up saying, “Call them back, Charlotte! Cancel the call!”

“What?”

“You heard me right. Cancel the call to the police. It’s okay. We got our shower fixed. It’s fixed.” Ralph took the sack and opened it. In it was a long, winding metal coil.

It might have unravelled itself inside the sack and looked like an animal moving around in there.

Sure.

And even the strange, beastly sound, it could have been metal scraping on metal as the drains and pipes were being cleaned out. Yes, that was it.

But how could he...in such a short time fix...

“How much do I owe you, Mr. Creepy?”

“Ah...your sorry faced, motherfucking lives by the end of this weekend.” Creepy snatched his sack and hurried off toward the front door. He went past Charlotte who backed away from him toward the kitchen for a knife. He opened the front door. Autumn leaves blowing in a growing wind wished inside and Creepy granted them their whim. Then the door shut itself behind him as he disappeared into the cold night squall. The leaves fell dead on the hallway floor. Ralph and Charlotte Webb never saw the creep again.

* * *

They slept till noon. After the police arrived and the story was told, it was four am before the Webb’s were in bed once again. Charlotte was up first. She scratched her head and had to go to the bathroom.

Putting her slippers on and sliding into her house coat, she zombied to the bathroom. There was plenty of daylight shining through the skylight window, but she flicked on the light switch regardless. Her eyes were red and sinking into dark circles of skin.

“You’re a treat,” she muttered to herself and then abandoned the mirror.

She urinated in the toilet.

She swiped and wiped, you know how.

Then, as she was leaving, she noticed the pine bar shower. Specifically, the drain hole. It sparkled. When she looked at it the night before, it was tarnished and soap stained. Now, it glittered like a silver halo.

There was also the floor tiles, they looked a lot brighter than she remembered. And even the planks of pine, wainscotted above the ceramic wall tile, looked cleaned.

“Amazing,” she muttered.

She left the bathroom, impressed with that creepy guy’s work. She hit the light switch and so, exited, she failed to see one very strange detail that was visible only in natural light. A sticky, transparent film of some sort covered the tiles and walls. Some of it was on the ceiling in strange patterns that resembled footprints. These were in the shape of thin, one inch humanoid feet.

* * *

“Get up you fathead...get up.” Charlotte straddled her husband.

“I’m up, I’m up.” Ralph rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Time for a shower. Come on.” She jumped off of him and slipped her panties off. Went hunting for a towel. “Did you see how clean the shower looks? Its sparkling.”

“Yeah. Too much. He’s a freak of nature. Nobody could have done the job quicker. Nobody.”

“Well,” Charlotte remarked, “I’m going for a shower. I think I’ll test how long of a hot shower we can take without the water getting cold. Very important that you join me.” Charlotte found a towel and spilled her house coat off her back and onto the floor. “See ya.”

“‘I said see ya,’ she says.” Ralph felt a lazy erection start to long and whine. He thought he would skip the shower and wait for Charlotte in bed.

* * *

“Finally, I get to use this pine-bar shower.” The steam was rolling and billowing, the morning rather chilly. She stepped onto the slippery floor tiles and felt hot, ravenous water trickle and tickle her. Not bad, she thought, for a creepy fellow to invade her lodge and fix the pipes so quick and right. The shower was long and hot. After all the shampoo, conditioner and soap suds were rinsed away, the screaming started.

Ralph dashed out of bed. The erection he had been casually keeping alive with his hand in a fantasy fell away as he ran to the shower where his wife was screaming like crazy. He swung around the door jamb and grasped his wife who was slipping as she struggled to run from the shower.

“WHAT!? WHAT IS IT!?”

Charlotte could barely speak. She was hysterical and crying out inane words.

“Thedrain...aneye...thedrain...aneyein...the...drain...AN EYE!” She was snatching at his arms as she turned toward the shower. “Look in there...the drain...there’s an eye...in the drain hole...watching me.”

Ralph moved past Charlotte to inspect the drain. It was clean; nothing there.

“There’s nothing there, honey. Come see for yourself. Are you nuts?”

Charlotte ran out of the bathroom, crying.

“Wait a minute Char...” Ralph stuck his finger in the drain hole and felt around it, felt the smooth insides of the pipe. Nothing there. He got up and darted off to help his woman.

* * *

She was sitting on the bed, huddled up into a ball with her eyes resting on her knees. She sensed her husband entering the bedroom and sobbed, “There was an eye in the drain pipe and it was watching me shower. It rolled around and followed me when I moved, looking me up and down. It even blinked once when I screamed. It had dark eyes, Ralph; and blood red eyelids.” Charlotte looked up, her own eyes were red. “I saw an eye in there, Ralph. It was looking at me. A fucking eye.” Tears welled up and fell...her eyes, her head, and the corners of her mouth also dropped.

Ralph attempted to comfort her. “I know. Take it easy, sweetheart, there’s nothing there. It must have been a soap bubble glimmering, you know how they sometimes have psychedelic colours swirling in them. Come on, there’s no eyeball in the drain. I checked it. I checked the drain. No eye.”

“It turned pale green...it was too an eye. A human eye.”

* * *

Ralph had a shower at around one-thirty, following a slow rise, a coffee, and after a small puff on a doobieola. He had a normal shower. He looked for an eye in the drain hole, however, an eyeball never appeared. He did notice the soap bar. He latherered his whole body with shampoo because he did not want to use the soap bar. It was amazing. It was carved into the shape of a nude woman lying in a supine position, her legs spread high in the air. Even if someone had carved the soap bar, someone like Creepy the Pipefitter, they would have had to have started with a huge block of Ivory soap to have founded the dimensions of this miniature soap sculpture masterpiece. It looked perfect. Did Creepy leave it behind for them? It was fantastic.

Ralph entered the kitchen on the way to throw clothes into the hamper. Charlotte sat at the table sipping steaming coffee and watching the news on television. Ralph poured himself a cup and sat with her at the table.

“Look at this.” He handed his wife the soap bar.

“What is it? Where did you get this?”

“In the shower. Didn’t you see it earlier?”

“No, I didn’t. Where did you find it?”

Ralph’s expression gelled. “The soap dish.”

“No.” Charlotte tossed the sculpture onto the table. A leg broke from the Ivory soap figurine. “We better call the police again. That thing wasn’t in the soap dish when I was showering. That freak has been in here. He scares me. I bet you it was him staring at me from the drain hole.”

“He couldn’t have been staring at you from the drain hole. I went down through the trap door into the cellar. There’s just a dirt floor, plumbing, and a funky odour down there. The pipe leading to the shower drain is intact and I don’t think it has been leaking either. The dirt floor is dry...I could build a cool wine cellar down there.” Ralph paused for a moment to sip his coffee and added, “No eyeballs.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “No eyeballs. I know. You’re right. I’m just a silly old ditty and I’m imagining things.”

“I’m not saying you’re being silly. We’ll get some answers. Look, we’ll call Creepy back and have him deliver us a receipt for his services. That way we can talk to him.”

“How much did he charge us for this nightmare anyway?”

Your sorry-faced mother fucking lives by the end of this weekend.

Ralph looked at Charlotte and lied. “Nothing,” he said flatly. It dawned on him that they couldn’t prove Creepy was there the night before. “Nothing,” he repeated.

* * *

Creepy was not answering his phone. By two o’clock pm the day had got cloudier and colder. The wispy wind was getting bigger. Louder. Was there s-storm coming?

The day passed with relatively minor panic. Actually, it was rather a fine day. They joked about it. They made love and had steaks and enjoyed cognac with conversation. There wasn’t an eyeball in the drain. There wasn’t anything to worry about. It was just Creepy on the brain. Highway, hydro, and halelluja!, someone’s coming to fix the pipes!...

Creepy.

When Ralph had yet another shower just to make the point that there wasn’t an eyeball in the drain, it looked clean and sparkly...sure, some soapy bubbles...but certainly no human eyeball. There were no soap sculptures. There was, however, something else in the shower. Sitting in the knot of a pine plank above and behind Ralph’s head, a creature approximately three inches tall sat in eager anticipation. It sat in the knot hole as if it were sitting on a park swing, smiling, rocking its tiny humanoid feet. When it blinked, its red eyelids flickered. A smile was plastered on its face because it had its hands plastered to its own genitalia. Happenis is a warm...

* * *

Charlotte went to the bathroom later that evening, closer to bedtime. She was happy that she had gone the day without having to go in there. She wasn’t hung up about seeing a rolling eyeball in the shower drain. She suspected that perhaps she did imagine it because of all that Creepy business. Nevertheless, something else caught her eye. There was a footprint on the bath mat, clearly three times larger than Ralph’s. Or her own. She called out.

“Ralph? Hey, Ralph? Did you happen to notice the size of Creep’s feet last night?” She heard Ralph chuckle in the living room.

“No. He wore boots. About my size feet I guess.”

“Come look at this.”

Ralph put down his magazine and went into the bathroom.

“What is it?”

“There, look.” Charlotte pointed at the mat. “That your footprint? If so, what else you hiding?”

Ralph brushed past her and went to inspect the print. It looked very much like his own, only three times larger and with a more elongated look. That’s when Ralph peered into the shower and saw another print, similar to the one on the mat.

“There’s another one. Creepy.”

Charlotte went to look at the one in the shower. “No,” she said, “its scary.”

“What’s scary about it? If anything had feet this big, it would have to be---” He looked up to the high ceiling with intentions of saying ‘twenty feet high’ and was stopped by what he saw. A huge blotch covered the ceiling. A blotch of the same, clear, slimy film the footprints in the shower were made of. And there was a hand print covering the wall and mirror that could pass for the palm print of King Kong.

Charlotte was now grasping sight of the hand print and she was frightened. “It looks so real. Like a real hand print, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Ralph turned to his wife and said, “I’m calling the police. I think Creepy is trying to scare us.”

“Wait a minute...What could he have done?,” Charlotte asked. “He was in and out of here in no time last night; he couldn’t have fixed the shower and painted those marks on the wall at the same time.”

“I don’t know what he did, I’m calling the cops just the same. They can figure this all out for us. I just have a strange feeling that Creepy will be back. Last night, when I asked him how much we owed him for his service, he said, ‘your sorry-faced mother fucking lives by the end of this weekend.’ Well this weekend isn’t getting any less strange. I think Creepy will definitely be back.”

They both left the washroom, Charlotte suddenly didn’t have to use the toilet anymore. The washroom felt too eerie. Of course, above their heads, in the pine bar shower, a creature the size of an average American man was sprawled up on the ceiling like a hungry spider. Its wide-eyed blinking flashed crimson red lightning and smiled a psychotic, pointed-teeth smile. When the Webbs left, the creature released itself and shrank as it fell to the shower floor. It ran around the pine bar shower like a quick, little, happy bug.

* * *

“I don’t have any idea how he could have done it.” Ralph was starting to get frustrated with the police. He demanded immediate action. “All I know is that this nut threatened us and he’s still running around out there...” Thunder rumbled past. The wind had picked up considerably and the storm was rushing toward them all.

“I have evidence here, come and get it. Bring your cameras because you will not believe your eyes.”

“What kind of evidence, Mr. Webb?”

“A soap sculpture and some footprints. A hand print on the mirror. You have to see this. Evidence that he has been in here without us knowing it. Certainly without our consent.”

“Alright. We’ll be right over, Mr. Webb. I’ll send a car.”

“Thank you, Constable Briggs.”

Charlotte cuddled up to Ralph and cooed, “I gotta go pee. Will you come with me?”

“Yes,” Ralph chuckled, “I’ll go with you.”

* * *

The police photographer took several shots of the hand print, the footprints, and they placed the soap sculpture into a plastic bag and sealed it. They also took samples of the slippery slime left behind by whatever.

“Well, Mr. Webb, I don’t know what to make of it. Your premises looks secure enough, no broken windows or jarred doors. Unless this Creepy fellow has a secret passageway into this cottage, I don’t think he has been in here since last night. You said you didn’t hear anything?”

“No. Nothing. We never even had the television on, no radios turned up. Nothing.”

“Well, we’ll take this stuff down to get tested and we’re still following some leads. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Mrs. Webb, Creepy does own a legitimate business in these parts. We’ll speak to him about his threat, but I think this will all get sorted out. You’ll get a call from us as soon as we catch up with him. Can I have your phone number, Mr. Webb?”

“Yeah, sure...”

Lightening flashed and thunder chased it. “Hell of a storm coming.”

The police officer wrote down the number in his note pad. “Thankyou, Mr. Webb. We’ll have a car cruise by here every so often. I don’t think on a night like tonight anyone will be creeping around outside. Rain is starting to hit. Have a good night.” The police exited into the spattering of odd, heavy drops. The rain hit hard as they pulled away.

* * *

“Where are you going?” Ralph couldn’t believe his eyes. His wife was walking toward the shower with a towel and her bath robe.

“I’m going to have a shower. I’m not going to let this stuff get to me. Creepy will not get to me and I’m going to prove it.”

“Wait, I’ll go with you.”

“No!...I mean...give me five minutes alone and then you can join me if you want. I need five minutes alone in there to prove to myself that I am a big girl, that I was seeing things, and that this Creepy fuck isn’t going to ruin our entire weekend.”

“Okay,” Ralph said, “I’ll be ready.”

Charlotte disappeared into light and then the door closed behind her.

“I’m not afraid. I’m not freaking out.” Charlotte kept talking to herself as she, first, inspected the shower drain, and then secondly, turned the hot water on to play with the cold. “Just a nice, hot shower...then a nice cup of tea. No problem.”

She shook off her slippers and stepped into the spray of steamy warmth.

“Ahhhh, perfect. Look, no eyeball in the drain. No eyeball. No problem.”

She enjoyed the feel of the warm, velvety liquid glaze her skin and dared to close her eyes for a brief moment to bask her face in the shower stream.

“Look, still no eyeball. No creepy eyeball.” She poured shampoo into her palm and began rubbing it into her scalp. Lather dripped from her brunette hair. She ultimately shut her eyes, enjoying the self-massage and the water in her face. That is when a tiny bead of black liquid defied all Natural Law and creeped out from the drain hole. It trickled against the flow of water to where Charlotte’s feet were. It then started to climb her leg toward her crotch. Charlotte didn’t even notice it with the water running wonderfully.

* * *

The telephone ring came rather unexpectedly. It was Constable Briggs.

“Yes, Mr. Webb. We got your man.”

“You caught him?,” Ralph suddenly came to life; he had been doing dead-read in silence, “Where?”

“Caught him wandering around the wood lots. He had a squirrel in his hands, or something, and let it go. Came in peacefully.”

“Did you ask him about the threats?”

“Yes sir, I did. He says you asked him how much you owed him for his services and he answered, ah, ‘your sorry-faced motherfucking lives by the end of this weekend.’ Correct?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what he said. Isn’t that a threat?”

Briggs cleared his throat and answered, “Well, certainly. It can be construed to be one, however, it wouldn’t hold cold water in Court. Mr. Creepy does not intend to harm you or your wife. He did you a service and he did not charge you. Mr. Webb, he did it out of the goodness of his heart. He says emergency plumbing is his hobby and he enjoys helping people.”

“Hobby? Who the hell does a plumbing job at two in the morning for a hobby? Look, what about the footprints in the shower and the handprint on the wall and the slimy shit on my ceiling. What about the goddam soap sculpture?”

“We’ve sent the sample of that fluid, as well as the sculpture, to the labs. We won’t hear from them for another day or two. In the mean time, Creepy says he didn’t do it. He’s got alibies accounting for his whole day. We’re following through on them right now, but they appear to be legitimate.”

“Well then he’s got someone doing his dirty work. Did you show him the pictures?”

“What for?”

“In case he cracks or something, I don’t know. Put him on.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Webb. He has requested that he not speak with you. It’s his right, I suppose.”

“Well, then do something.” Ralph was ready to snap. He looked for something to throw or smash. “Can’t you hold him on what he said to us? ’...your sorry-faced mother fucking lives?,′ we owe him our lives by the end of this weekend? What the fuck is that?”

Briggs spoke to someone in the background. It sounded like the phone had drifted well away from Briggs’ face. It sounded as though it had perhaps floated closer to another person’s face. It was Creepy’s nasal, electronic voice Ralph heard laughing into the receiver. When Briggs’ voice returned it said, “He has admitted that his remark was crude, to say the least, however, he insists it was harmless. He states he is aware that he has poor social skills. He has indicated that his behaviour is often perceived as intrusive, abrasive, brash...but that’s just the way he is. He says he’s a real hermit. I tend to believe him. In my opinion, you wouldn’t stand a chance in Court.”

“So that’s it? He can go free?”

“Mr. Webb, there are no grounds to keep this man detained in jail. We’ll keep him here for a while longer, until we’ve followed up on everything, but the poor man has got to go if he’s innocent of a crime. Especially if he fixed your pipes for free. Don’t worry, Mr. Webb, Creepy will not be going anywhere near your cottage this weekend: We’re issuing a Restraining Order to keep him away from you, your wife, and property...on the grounds of the misconstrued threat---”

Ralph slammed down the telephone receiver.

Constable Briggs thought he was a fucking rude sonofabitch for slamming the phone in his ear. However, it wasn’t out of anger and frustration that Ralph slammed the phone down. It happened because Ralph heard panicstricken screams coming from the pine bar shower.

* * *

He found her collapsed on the shower floor, running her hands over her body.

“Jesus, Charlotte, are you okay?!”

A black bead liquid dripped out of her vagina and went unnoticed down toward the drain pipe.

Charlotte’s head and arms fell. She rested.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” He turned the taps off.

Charlotte looked up at Ralph and slowly caught her breath. “I’m okay...I...”

“Can you get up?”

“Really, I’m fine...I..I’m getting up. Help me.”

Ralph reached out and gave her some support as she lifted herself from the slippery shower floor.

“Did you slip and fall? I heard your screams.”

“I didn’t fall.” She wrapped her arms around Ralph and hugged him tightly. There was a hint of a smile on her lips.

“What were you doing down there if you didn’t fall?”

Charlotte slid her hand down to her husband’s crotch and stated, “I had an orgasm.”

* * *

The sex they had in the shower was the best they had on in a long time. It was terrific for Charlotte. She was glowing from it. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. She didn’t know what had ignited her desire but she was burning for it. Good sex. Ralph felt rather proud but he wondered why his wife rushed into the shower alone. ‘Five minutes,’ she said, ‘Give me five minutes alone.’

They dried off and went to bed to cuddle next to each other. Ralph had some questions he wanted answered.

“So why did you give yourself an orgasm? Is that why you wanted to shower alone for five minutes?”

“No,” Charlotte cooed, “that’s just it. I went in there to prove to myself that I wasn’t afraid, that what I had actually seen in the drain was not an eyeball staring up at me. I was shampooing my hair and then...I had one. I didn’t even touch myself down there.”

“Its not possible,” Ralph said.

“I don’t care if its possible or not, I had one. It was the biggest orgasm I have ever had in my life.”

Ralph was doubtful and suspicious. He didn’t understand what game Charlotte was playing.

“First you run out of there screaming that there’s an eyeball floating in the drain hole, and then you come out of there with the biggest orgasm you’ve ever had in your life. What’s going on?”

Charlotte nudged up to her husband. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe that Bigfoot-ghost thing that has been leaving prints in the bathroom did me. I don’t know. Its weird.”

Haunted. Yes, maybe the cottage was haunted. That would explain the footprints in and near the pine bar shower. It would explain the hand print on the mirror. A poltergeist. One that makes soap sculptures and fucks married women in showers.

“It sounds crazy.” Ralph turned the conversation, “You know they caught that Creepy guy.”

“They did? When?”

“The phone rang while you were in the shower. Constable Briggs. He’s letting Creepy go because he doesn’t have grounds to keep him. There’s no evidence that Creepy has been here and he’s got alibies on top of that.”

“Its okay, I guess. If the police say its safe to let him go.”

“They issued a Restraining Order on him. He can’t come near us.”

“Good, good.” Charlotte yawned and smiled. She was ready for sleep.

“You going to sleep?,” Ralph asked her.

“Mmmm. Yes.”

“Its not even six.”

“Goodnight,” she whispered.

* * *

Rain splattered like demons dancing on the roof top. Ralph was nowhere near ready for bed. Even if he was tired, the wind and the rain battering against the cottage was enough to keep a tired banshee awake. And if that wasn’t enough, Ralph had too much on his mind now. A weekend at the new cottage was supposed to take his mind off of worries and nagging thought barbs. It was his weekend to relax. But not now.

He looked at his wife laying in a peaceful sleep. She was out like a light. He couldn’t believe it.

Then again, she did just have the best two orgasms of her life, didn’t she?

Ralph went to the shower to inspect it. He brought a towel along: What the heck, why not shower? There wasn’t anything odd about the pine bar shower, except for maybe the drain hole. It sparkled and shined as if it had been polished with cloth. Other than that, no more footprints, no more handprints, no more soap sculptures. No more Mr. Creepy with that issued Restraining Order. No more bullshit. He could enjoy the rest of the weekend. His wife was asleep; it was early, Saturday night. Perfect. Time to get things done.

The shower was spraying hot water when Ralph stepped into it. He had to turn up the cold water and test the difference. When it was comfortable, he stopped messing with the taps. He grabbed a soap bar and started carving his body with it. The water felt good. The soap smelled and melted fresh.

This is pretty damn good, he thought. He didn’t think he would do any renovations to the shower. It was unique. Pinewood strips glazed and petrified in lacquer, real and natural above the wainscot. The ceramic tiling on the wall and floor was clean and original. It was a mosaic depicting the sun eclipsed by the moon. In the shower, Ralph contemplated the rest of the bathroom for renovations and then imagined a design for the future wine cellar. He was oblivious to the mass pulsating above him like a black heart. The creature expanded and contracted like a breathing lung or a snake swallowing prey.

By the time Ralph started shampooing his hair, the creature had ejaculated. It showered over Ralph like a black rain, but Ralph didn’t see it. Shampoo lava was coursing across his closed eyelids. The beads of black liquid started converging toward Ralph’s private parts. Ralph thought he felt a chill. He shoved his head under the jet of water and rinsed off. The black liquid collected itself into a single bead and entered him through the hole at the tip of his dick.

* * *

Charlotte woke up at around ten o’clock pm. A thunder clap had startled her out of a dream. She dreamed of her husband in a land of milk and honey and she joined him on a river raft to Heaven. But where was he?

“Ralph?,” she called out. And she didn’t get a response.

She moved out of bed and stepped into her slippers. She suddenly became aware that she was wet.

“Why am I so horny?,” she wondered. She threw her house coat on and walked into the living room to find her husband.

“Ralph, where are you?” She heard the shower running. “Oh, how convenient,” she muttered. She headed for the bathroom as she slid out of her housecoat like a moulting snake.

* * *

Charlotte screamed when she drew the shower curtain. She reached into the running water and it was freezing cold. Ralph was as pale as a horse. Dumb. Saliva drooled from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were half rolled into his skull. A smile broke on his horrible, blue lips.

“Come out of there!,” Charlotte shrieked. She bolted into the pine bar shower and assisted her husband out from the driving, cold water. He had hardly the strength to stand. Incomprehensible groans and shivers came from his mouth. She noticed he had a full erection but she turned and didn’t notice the black, heavy drool ooze out of it and fall to the shower floor. It washed toward the drain hole.

Charlotte helped Ralph all the way to the bedroom where he collapsed on the bed and shivered.

“My God, Ralph, speak to me. Are you alright?”

“Ga...aghg...”

“God, what happened in there?” She threw some covers over his trembling bones.

“Ge...agn.”

“Are you choking? What’s wrong? Do you need help?” Charlotte was on the verge of crying.

Ralph threw off the covers. Colour was starting to touch up his pallor. His erection was still on guard. “Get o-on,” he said.

Charlotte lost all expression. “What?”

“Ge-get on m-me.” He pointed to his proud friend.

Already feeling aroused, in fact, hot and downright horny, she did as he commanded.

Lightning struck. The storm lasted all night long.

* * *

He awoke on top of her, his penis aching in pain and still fully erect inside his wife. She was dead asleep. He considered letting her sleep for a moment, but then he started to gyrate his pelvis. She moaned in approval and then rolled over onto her hands and knees.

“Yes,” she whispered.

It was painful for the both of them, however, they did not care. It was pleasure. They needed it more than anything. They were poisoned in the water. She had the best orgasm of her life in the pine bar shower. He had the longest one ever: Four hours. At first it was sensational, it was ecstasy. He hadn’t even touched himself and there it went off like liquid fireworks. Then pain creeped in, then, near madness. He thought he was going to die, and, you know what?,...he might have died had his wife not saved him. Sexual intercourse with her was perfect. Beautiful and good. It saved him from those black orgasms. Those scary ones when he thought he heard Creepy’s unmistakable laughter resonating throughout the shower.

He reached orgasm and screamed with pain. She was already there...screaming. They fell away from each other like a broken thing, separate parts of one thing resting side by side.

“I’m dying,” said Mr. Webb.

“I’m already dead...and gone to Heaven,” said his wife.

“What’s happening to us?,” she added after a moment of silence.

“I’m not sure I care to find out; whatever it is...its just fuck me, please.”

They both started laughing, minding their sore stiffened muscles.

“Its Creepy, isn’t it?”

“It sure is creepy,” Ralph concurred.

“No, I mean Creepy the Pipefitter. Its him. He’s doing this to us.”

Ralph rolled onto one shoulder and faced Charlotte eye to eye. He was afraid his penis was starting to get hard again. He was right.

“Creepy fixed our plumbing problem; that has nothing to do with us having great sex.”

“I don’t know. I think he haunted the shower. That would explain the orgasm in the shower.”

“No,” Ralph insisted as he rolled on top of her, “we just needed this escape from reality. This cottage is just what the doctor ordered.” She spread her tired legs for him, pain flaring across her muscles. Yet, the desire in her sex was growing stronger, digesting away the last round of intercourse, wanting more. The pain was worth the pleasure.

“We should stay here,” he added.

They started making love. Painfully good sex.

* * *

“We have all of today and all of tonight.” It was Ralph speaking, his mouth was full of bread. Their appetites were voracious and they ate the rest of their groceries in one sitting. It was only ten in the morning.

“How can we leave here to get food?,” Charlotte worried. “We can’t even make it to the front porch without getting down and fucking on the floor.” She started to laugh. So did Ralph, and pieces of the salad he was yamming on came sputtering out of his mouth.

It was funny. In fact, just as he heard his wife talk about it, he felt his little Generals stir. He laughed even harder when he felt them prepare the canon. He finished his meal and threw his fork aside, wiped his lips with his bare arm. The tank was ready for battle. They did go to the front porch, just for laughs. No one was around. There was a Restraining Order on Creepy. The raindrops hitting the deck looked just crazy. They rolled off the porch and onto the ground. The raindrops hitting them were cold and hard. Sexy.

* * *

The river was the best, but they made it home before the lightening started again. Two naked lovers free and wild. They loved it. They found themselves like wild butterflies chancing paths, circling, rising in a dance of hungry, furious passion. They were covered with bruises and lacerations, poison ivy oil. Wow...it was six pm.

Their own refections in the mirror were strange, each other’s were beautiful. Ralph inspected the dirty cut on his neck. It didn’t look too good; people at the office will wonder how he got it.

Let them wonder.

People at the office will wonder about the bruises on his face.

I’ll tell them.

Hydrogen peroxide fizzed and bubbled like the Drano bubbles, cleaning his wound. His wife took it next and poured half of the bottle across her back and shoulders. Then she poured some on his weeping knees and all over his battered soldier. And that got it going again.

* * *

“We need to get some food.”

It was Charlotte speaking. Her throat was dry and course. She reached for a water glass.

“I know.” They lay next to each other on the bed, afraid to look at each other, afraid to touch each other for fear that their genitals will declare war once again.

“I know Creepy is doing this.”

Ralph did not respond to the comment.

“I know something really fucked up is happening here. I just don’t orgasm out of the blue and then become addicted to sex. It isn’t even an addiction, its...”

“Its poison.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “...Is it killing us?”

Ralph thought about it for a moment. He took a drink of water and looked at his wife. “No,” he said, “but we might starve to death. Let’s go get something to eat.”

“We can’t go out like this. People will think we’ve been attacked.”

“We don’t need to go out. We can order Chinese.”

* * *

Chinese food. From Wong’s. Sweet and sour chicken balls. Beef fried rice. Lemon chicken. Szechuan beef. Foo yung. Cantonese chow mein. Guy ding. Sweet and sour spare ribs. Sesame chicken. Fortunes in a cookie.

When the delivery arrived, a small, crippled man with a huge smile handed the bags to Ralph. He had a large, white bandage covering his eye.

“Here’s forty.” Ralph handed him two twenties.

The smiling delivery person was craning his head, trying to look past Ralph and into the cottage. He reached into his pocket for change and then turned his attention to Ralph’s bandaged neck and the bruises on his face.

“That’s okay,” Ralph said, “keep the change.”

“Creepy be aroun.”

“What?,” Ralph responded. He was caught off guard.

“Creepy. He was here.”

“How do you know?”

There was a glint in the Chinese man’s eye. He said, “Cawz it sticking out.” The deliverer left hobbling, laughing.

Ralph held the packages in his arms. He felt cold wind and splashy mist from the steady rain. He felt the heat from the food bags and the smell was energizing. That’s when he noticed his erection sticking out of his house coat.

* * *

They ate like crazy. Hunger drove the orgy machine of Chinese food in their stomach. It was delicious and satisfying and just perfect. Charlotte belched and they both started laughing: Charlotte never belched aloud. Never at the dinner table. She dove into her pile of fried rice.

“That Chinese man said Creepy was here.”

“No doubt,” Charlotte stated and had a drink from her red wine, “look at us.”

They were both naked. Their skin looked pale and battered. Yet, somehow they looked thinner, more fit. They sat at the table opposite each other, wolfing food through their mouths like animals.

“So that must be it. You were right all along...Creepy haunted our cottage.”

“Yep.” Charlotte finished her plate and helped herself to more.

“Yes, but what I want to know is how he did it. He left a soap sculpture of a naked woman and he left footprints and hand prints on the floor and wall. That’s it.”

“He’s an artist.”

“He’s a god damn demon,” Ralph stated. He finished his plate and went for second helpings. “And what else did he say he did?: Cleaned our pipes? Isn’t that what he is doing? Isn’t that what is happening to us, so to speak? We’re getting our pipes cleaned.”

“You’re an asshole,” Charlotte said.

Ralph started chuckling and drank his wine.

* * *

After dinner Ralph built a fire because the constant rain humming against the roof and cottage walls was making the air feel cold and damp. They had remembered to bring the thick, polar bear skin rug and they splayed it in front of the fire place, far enough away to not worry that a crackling pop! might send a fire bug reeling to burn it. They lay on top of it, feeling each other’s skin and sex. They were like two sorrowful lovers on the night they knew would be their last.

“How are we going to survive the night?,” Charlotte whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Its getting worse. I’m getting hornier and hornier. I don’t know how that is possible.”

“Me too...we got each other.” He penetrated her and she moaned from the pain in her legs and the pleasure in her sex.

“I love you Ralph.”

“I love you too.”

They made love all night long. Sometimes hail threatened to beat the cottage to the ground as lightning colours flashed in through the windows like the fluttering eyes of an angry God. They blacked out on occasion and finally fell apart into the early morning. When they woke up, there was sunshine in their faces. Shadow crosses, thrown from the window frames, decorated their bed.

“Are you alive?” Charlotte grabbed Ralph’s cheeks and shook his face.

“Ahg...wha?”

“Its morning. We got to move it. It finally stopped raining.”

Ralph struggled to open his eyes. He was very tired. “Wow...I don’t have an erection,” he said.

Charlotte threw the sheets off of them and looked. His veteran looked blue and hurt. She reached out and touched it, Ralph cringed and moaned.

“I’m sorry, it must be painful.” She was also aware that her privates were also hurt. There was definitely a little blood shed.

“It is painful. I hope we didn’t kill it.” At that moment it stirred. Ralph quickly got up and thought of nasty things, afraid that he would get another full erection. The next one would make him scream with pain.

“You look like hell,” she pointed out. He looked at her and just laughed.

“We need a shower.” Ralph started toward the closet for a towel.

“No!” Charlotte held fast to the bed. “No...how about we skip the shower. If we have ourselves one of those we will truly die. Lets get out of here. Lets go get us some breakfast instead.”

“Yeah. To hell with it. And I can do one better, lets close up. We got no work done here at all; we had one awesome fucking time, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“We got the plumbing done for free so we don’t have to worry about that.”

“Yeah.”

“We got no food, we got no beer, we got no more wine or worries in the world right now.”

“Yeah.”

“Well gall darn it, Charlotte, lets go get us some hot coffee and a big breakfast. Then we can drive around the lake, see what we got around here. Maybe drop in to see Briggs. Look at it out there, its beautiful.”

They dressed and made sure the cottage was secure. The mess was easy to clean up; besides, they planned on returning next weekend. Rain or shine.

They stepped out onto the front porch. The air was crisp and clean.

“Hurry up,” Charlotte pleaded, “I’m starving.”

Ralph stood at the door and looked inside the cottage. “Creepy said we owed him our sorry faced motherfucking lives by the end of this weekend: He was right all along.” The door was shut and locked.

“I should probably go to bathroom,” Charlotte said as Ralph started the car engine.

“Hold it in for a while.” Ralph kissed her and away they went.

Through the foyer and down the hall, inside the pine bar shower, a small black creature ran across the walls and scurried in and out of the drain hole like a happy little bug. Another one suddenly appeared on the toilet seat.

DEADMOUSE FOLLIES

(After the harvest...)

When the sickles and thrasher blades have sheared the season’s yield of grain to their beggings, leaving an endless swath of stubble prickling from the earth;

(don’t be afraid...)

as the miles and eye-reaching miles of prairie fields are turned to fallow winter barrens that cry out with desolation;

(in the witching season...)

before the first frost congeals within the cold November dark of night to shock the landscape of its colour---it was promised. It was promised for a time well before the first real chill (before the shivering) grabbed you and shook you into a numbing senselessness...

(I promise...I promise you.)

Now the nights were getting longer. The days, colder still, were threatened by dark, cumbersome clouds that drifted in slow, militant networks. Pumpkins, abandoned in their patches like unknown heroes, withered and collapsed as the days’ getting colder crushed them with a grim clutch.

It was the time of year when stories of witches and ghosts are more believable. When eerie gatherings of dying things collect themselves for a final whoop in the wind, or thump in the night, or a last chance to frighten you. The autumn fires went helter-skelter in the howl of a night wind. People often huddled like embryos, shuddering, listening to tales that they wanted to disbelieve. Tales of crucified scarecrows riveting with convulsions as they hang from rusted nails on fence-posts made of driftwood; tales of humongous fingers slipping out of the night sky and sweeping under the moon to grab you; and sometimes...creatures lurked in the dark.

The frightening thing is that there is a vein of truth running through all these stories---and the truth is never far from a beating heart. Yes, at the heart of it you sometimes find that the unsettled soul of a scarecrow consists of nesting rats; sometimes what grips you at night is the moonstruck silhouette of a brambled tree; and sometimes...creatures lurked in the dark.

The harvest is over. The promise?...

“WE CAN’T KEEP IT!”

The shout carried tremens through the walls and startled the baby.

(Sweet Lord, what have we got here?)

A baby girl with brown eyes as deep as twin souls. She had soft brown hair growing in a sparse cropping and skin that only witches in faerietales endeavour to blemish.

Mandy stormed out of the kitchen in a hostile flurry. Straggles of her hair, sun bleached from the summer’s long hot days, were falling from a tie that kept it fitted high above her neck. The summer dress she wore was riddled with flowering purple starlets that swished to the shuffle of her feet. Her steps were delivered with strident resolution.

She had command of grace and persona, a style of elegance that made the conduct of her mannerism and ordinary expression seem dramatic and poignant. There were times when her eyes would fall away, disengage themselves of focus, and she would fly on little magic carpets of fantasy, or swing on tethered ropes of memory. Being caught in these intimacies embarrassed her. “Well there’s nothing better to do around here,” she justified. It was this mystique that ultimately made Daniel tremble because it was somehow lost in her delusions like teardrops on a shattered mirror. She lifted the baby from the crib and held the new born.

“Its okay, angel,” she assured the babe, “everything is just fine...just fine. Mama won’t let anyone hurt you. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird and all that.”

Behind the walls adjacent to the nursery, Dan stood over the kitchen sink and cursed at the sight of his own blood. It dripped from a weeping gash in his hand. He didn’t notice the knife resting idle on the table when his fist came crashing down in another flight of rage. Looking at his blood gave him a queasy, sickish feeling that fed his anger.

The baby fell asleep in Mandy’s arms while she hummed gentle lullabies and rocked back and forth on a half step. She placed the child on a pleasant mound of blankets that lined a make-shift crib and she covered the child with a cotton pajama top and warmer night-night blessings. In the corner of the room a heater was burning a caged shade of red while the wind whistled through the cracks in the window sill. A somnolent womb lulled by the hush of a cradlesong wind.

A soft, glowing night light spread across a photograph on the wall when the lights went out. Within its frame, Daniel and Mandy are perpetually standing next to their wedding limo and are smiling with genuine happiness. These are images of the people the baby will learn to depend on: The surrogate mother who could not sleep because of a distant cry in the middle of a dark night; and the surrogate father who investigated the sound and discovered an angel abandoned in the dead of nowhere.

Daniel was looking pale sitting stoically at the table with his hand bandaged in a blood drenched dish cloth.

“What happened to you?,” Mandy asked when she returned to the kitchen. She could see that Dan was pissed.

“I cut myself.”

Through the window, dull lumbering bags crossed the sky. They were soon ready to spill their fillings of icy rain and flurries. Mandy went to the window. Her eyes slipped into the far away. “You should be more careful,” she garbled.

“I wouldn’t have cut myself if you would just---”

The room creaked as Mandy pushed past the side door.

This quarrelling will never end, she thought.

“Where the hell are you going? We’re not finished---”

“Yes we are.”

“GET IN HERE!”

The door was thrown back. Mandy exploded into the room and ogled her husband with way wide eyes. “You keep your god damn mouth shut or you’ll wake the baby. Hear me? I told you already, I want that baby. I am going to keep that baby, I am going to nurture that child and I am going to be a mama. Try and take that away from me, Daniel, and I swear to God, I swear to you, I swear to the goddam men that will freakin bury you, you will be sorry.”

Estranged by her insane response, Daniel left the house. The door slam woke the baby.

* * *

Spinning wheels sent a cloud of dust into the wind as Daniel drove his ’99 Chevy toward the long, dirt path that concessioned with route 621. Daniel’s thoughts were hijacked by worry. Mandy had developed a maternal bond with the baby. He should have considered that possibility earlier and realized that it would happen. Idiot.

She let the baby get under her skin and now she’s carrying it a little too far. The first decision was the most sensible: Report the baby to the police and if the parents of the child were not located, adopt it. They hesitated on that plan because the baby was so good to them, for them, and Mandy was afraid the biological parents of the child would surely claim her. They, instead, waited for news of a missing babe to make headlines. There wasn’t any news. Not one word. Local newspapers would have ranted over a story like that. The news on the radio and on the t.v. had not reported a missing child in the area ever. As far as anyone knew, the baby didn’t exist.

Things sorted themselves out of hand. Daniel and Mandy were mated in the fool’s paradise of a dark, secret game. They decided that they would keep the baby for three months. After this first sick trimester they would take the baby to the authorities.

“After the harvest...don’t be afraid...in the witching season...I promise...I promise you."

Three months was all she wanted. She pleaded for it using weapons that Daniel had little defence against. He was crushed into a mesh of emotions and he surrendered.

“Keep the baby until after the harvest,” Daniel acquiesced, “and no longer.”

In that time they pretended that the angel was truly their own, finally, because it wasn’t a child that God blessed Mandy’s womb with two years after their marriage, it was cancer.

The black fantasy was spoiled somewhere along the way when Mandy stopped pretending that the baby was theirs and actually started believing it. She had herself convinced that the child was a gift from God, restitution for plucking her womb. Eye for an eye.

“If that child was abandoned by a teenage mother frightened to death by it, or a crazed transient left it to die in a field, then it was God’s grace that willed me to have heard her crying in the night and God’s almighty Wisdom that had the child found and brought home to us alive. Halleluja!”

More than that, one good morning she resolved to keep the babe in accordance with the almighty rule of property jurisprudence---finders keepers, losers weepers.

His wife was losing it. She was losing her mind. Daniel saw it in her eyes when she crashed through the door and threatened him with his life, her eyes gone away. He saw it in the

(dead-mouse)

bizarre events that preceded the night his footsteps carried him to the baby. His wife was well on her way by then. Perhaps it started when the doctors told her that she would never bear children. Who knows, the process of going crazy cannot be placed into sensible order. Madness is re-active. It happens in measures; identified by transgressions from the spectrum of normal behaviour. You can’t pinpoint craziness. Can you?

The mice.

That’s when she first showed signs. Was she in the barn? No. In the kitchen. The sun was a soft ball of heat that sent a slanted shaft of light through the window and across the blue-grey shadow of the room. Somewhere within earshot a radio was playing the lonely homage to the crime of the century by Supertramp. Mandy had entered the kitchen riding on a happy mood and a lazy stream of consciousness when a scuttle in her peripheral vision averted her attention. The glare of sunlight reflecting from the polished floorboards struck her eyes and blinded her. The noise came again and jolted her. She shifted out of the reflection and saw something scampering toward her. It stabbed her with blades of fear.

A moment later, after her eyes adjusted from the glare, a horrible aberration was in full view: A field mouse, brown and fat. It stood on its hind legs, poised, its front paws pasted against its chest. It sniffed the air with a twitching nose. Yellow teeth tweaked from a pinching hairlip. The creature had no eyes. Claimed by freakish atrophy its mutated eye sockets were sealed by an unobstructed growth of skin and fur. Dry blood incrusted the corners of its mouth. Mandy was about to scream in revulsion when the mouse coughed up a spitlet of fresh blood. With that came the

(dead-mouse)

words: “Shut up!”

Mandy was silenced. Her heartbeat thumped in her ears.

It must be an echo. My heart has stopped.

The fact that her ears were working properly gave her even more to freak about.

The mouse started to scurry toward her feet like a runaway bouncing ball. She jumped out and away from its path, her arms frantically waving it away in disgust. She was forced onto the kitchen counter with her feet recoiled into a fetal position.

"Get down here!,” the creature stirred. Standing upright, it lolled its head to and fro, trying to capture a better whiff of Mandy.

Paralysis afflicted her. A scream was bubbling in the deep, gutsy scream factory. She didn’t bat the wink of an eye, frozen. Her skin turned a sweaty moonlight-grey. Unbelieving eyes distended themselves accordingly to meet the rodent that encroached her personal space.

"Let me touch you!"

Its shrill demands made her writhe. The expression on her face contracted as tears welled in her eyes.

"Oh I’ll get inside you yet!,” the mouse roared in a tiny voice.

Mandy tipped a scream from her throat. Her hands grappled over the counter and found a beer stein in the sink. When she threw it, the mouse had little chance for escape. The pitch was dead on, a fluke that stunned the mouse and left it lame in the brain. One of its legs shook excitedly from manic innervations. Mandy pounced on it with a knife (remember that idle knife?) and pierced the rodent’s tiny haunches where she thought its heart would be buried.

* * *

Daniel’s eyes were fixed to the flat road. The tires on his truck sang in quadraphonic monotone as they wheeled over gravel with heavy treads at a break-neck speed. He had ventured into a little daydream, thinking about that night when he found the waif screaming from exposure to the chill in the night air. He was sleeping when his wife woke him up with a Honey, I’ve-flown-into-the-sun glint in her eye. She said she heard a baby crying.

The dead-mouse follies again, he thought to himself. But then he heard it himself: A distant crying. It was a haunting sound trapped on the swings of a balmy night.

“Go see where its coming from,” Mandy insisted.

“No. Its probably just an animal. Cats sound like that when they’re hurt or ruttish.”

“Animals don’t sound like that...go see.”

He went because there was something human in that crying night wind. Under the full moon, he trekked through the fields of corn, the wind playing games with him. The sound took him beyond his property and across a barren patch of land where grasses grew wild and where crickets and night wings chirruped like musing poltergeists under the moon’s glow. The memory rushed into him: The baby, shrivelled and withered on the dirt like a dying nightstick chameleon.

“Sweet Lord, what have we got here?”

He found the baby on a drought-parched plot of ground. The babe was moonlit and ghostly, stricken with a desperate, emotionless gaze that fluxed with intermittent caterwauling. It was dying. This frightened him so he hurried the baby home like a simpleton hired for foul play. Under the silvery light of the moon the task did look sinister and strange.

An animal darted out from the fields and Daniel slammed on the brake pedal. Shit! Too late. In his rear view mirror Daniel could see something shaking in the middle of the road.

It happened so quickly...didn’t see it...too involved in thoughts. Now he stepped out of his truck and into the windy glum of the sunless afternoon. There was blood in the wheel well of his front left tire. Thirty yards behind him, on the road, something was still moving. It was shaking violently. It had brought him out of a state of worry and into one of heart-thumping anxiety. It startled him half to death.

What the heck is it?

Daniel stepped into motion. He wanted to see what it was that was doing that crazy, moribund jig to the ethereal sounds of The Dying. He could see a mass of bleeding animal flesh and ripped fur in a pool of blood. He saw that only half of the pathetic animal had been struck. The other half looked relatively intact and it was still alive.

“Fucking rabbit.”

Standing above it, Daniel’s heart started breaking its rhythmic pulse. The rabbit wasn’t shaking, it was still trying to run.

“Easy,” Daniel said, “easy does it. Jeez,...what are you running from?”

It couldn’t get away because its hind quarters were crushed within its entrails. The forelegs were clawing at the ground, trying to carry a weight that would not budge because its ass was pressed into the road. Round, stark rabbit eyes were still seeing. It was looking at Daniel with hellish fear. A tiny tongue started pushing bits of shattered teeth and sticky blood out of its mouth. Daniel shuddered. He went to his truck to get a tire iron and then he put that poor rabbit out of its misery.

* * *

Yes, all this business about Mandy and the mouse, that was all just some weird trouble that happened a few weeks prior to finding the baby. The folly, however, didn’t end there.

In the barn Mandy was pushing hay into the horse’s stall with hand fed love. She laughed when the horse farted. A moment later she was horrorstruck. She was being visited by one of that eyeless brood. It arrived from a crook in the supporting beams of the hayloft: A barn mouse.

(Or was it...?)

It twitched its nose blindly, sniffing for her scent. A few golden pieces of straw on the ground shifted under its feet. This rat was thinner. Too thin. The frame of a tiny ribcage splayed itself under the mouse’s thin skin like the eager fingers of a devil ready to tear out a heart. Its pinched head, where teeth now jutted along an exposed gumline, was baffooned with oversized ears that hadn’t withered while the rest of it shrunk from a sort of hunger. Little pockets of skin delved into the dried-out socket space where eyes never existed. Skinny bones humped and bumped along its dorsal column. (The feeling of terror wagged up to Mandy.) Across the mouse’s haunches was an infected, unhealing wound that wept with whitish pus.

It can’t be..., she thought.

The mouse grinned at her. “I’m back,” it chortled.

It scurried toward her. Mandy yelled out a shriek that startled her horse. She ran out the barn door and screamed all the way to the farmhouse as the world danced before her. When she had the door of her house locked behind her, a wave of trembles sent her thoughts awash. The window-the table-the sink-the drawer-the knife: The room swam up to her, her eyes flitting at maddening speed. She backed away from the door with her hands clamped over her mouth. Hysteria was looking up her phone number so that it could call her up on the telephone and tell her that she was going crazy. Or something like that. Ha.

From outside the doorway she heard a tiny voice:

"Here comes the cuckold maker, ready to the bone

It seems to me the lights are on, is anybody home?”

There came a scratching at the door. Mandy screamed. She grabbed the knife and screamed.

"I said shuttup you little bitch," the mouse responded.

Mandy hurried to the top of the flight of stairs that led to an upper chamber which was really a renovated attic space. The stairwell was her gauntlet. Before long the creature was snickering at her from the bottom of the steps with scrawny, impish tenacity.

"One small step for man,” it tittered, ”one giant step for mice.” It lunged onto the first stair and started to ascend the steps.

“How can you find me?! You have no eyes!”

The mouse choked and gagged. Bloody phlegm drooled from its mouth in sticky gobs as it climbed the stairs. Intermittent phrases bubbled through the gagging fits and churlish snickering.

"Come on my little love bunny, come over here...What are you waiting for?...Sure, I’ll still love you in the morning...Did you take your pill today!?”

Mandy, who was crouched at the edge of the top step, shivered from nerves. She was teetering on two separate brinks of reality. One brink plummeted into that tragic pool of madness and the other brink dropped some fourteen steps down a flight of stairs. She would have dropped off the loft into lalaland had she not panicked with fear as the rat reached her. She teetered and started an end over end ragdoll tumble down the stairs. She landed with a final innovation in the hit-carpet sound of her face smacking the floor. A deep groan creaked from her mouth. Now the gruesome varmint was above her.

"Awww...you fa’ down?"

The rat started a gleeful descent, taking steps one at a time.

That topsy-turvy world of insanity in Mandy’s head was taking recess while a single thought captured wit.

The knife.

It was three steps out of her reach. One: She had to free her arms (both of which were grotesquely contorted under her belly.) Two: She had to find the strength and the will to reach out for it. And three: The knife was three steps out of her reach.

The mouse giggled and brayed squeaky nasal sounds. Mandy tried to roll off of her arms and a jettison of pain sprayed through her right shoulder.

The knife.

She tried rolling onto her left shoulder using her legs for leverage. She had landed at the bottom of the flight with her knees buckled into her stomach, her arms twisted and pinned under her chest and her head resting stolidly on the carpet. A passing ghost might have thought she toppled forward before she could finish her prayers.

The pain in her shoulder was bearable when she rolled to the left. Her arms were ultimately freed. The right one was left with gnarled barbs of needling pain.

"If at first you don’t succeed, you wicked ditch pig, try, try, try again."

The rat lunged from the stairs two at a time. Yellow teeth forked through its hungry, bleeding snout.

Her good arm didn’t falter. She pushed her self up and managed to wobble into a clumsy stance. Trying to take a step, she fell toward the knife; her right arm independently dangling from a fiery dislocated shoulder, blood now trickling from her nostril. She clutched the handle of the blade and the mouse leapt at her. Mandy tried to move away and managed, instead, to step into it. The mouse bounced off of her shoulder and was sent scrabbling to hook its claws into the fabric of her t-shirt. It made her yelp in revulsion. The mouse landed on the steps with a spongy thud and rolled to the floor, pumping its legs in anticipation of stability. However, the mouse got a brutal surprise instead.

The leather heel of Mandy’s sandal pounded the carpet. The rodent tried to escape, but it was blind. It ran itself under a lethal footfall. It’s head was crushed like a ripe, meaty strawberry. The creature’s tail fished for some type of grounding until Mandy put the blade to work, screaming in triumph. She didn’t stop until she thought the mouse looked just like a little ball of guts.

* * *

Daniel never saw the mouse. The first time this weird trouble happened he was working in the fields. He saw his wife rushing away from the house with her arms waving mindlessly about her halo space, screaming. He went to her, bamboozled by the fact that pillows of black smoke weren’t billowing from his house and into the clean, blue troposphere.

“The mouse-the mouse-the mouse...”

“Whoa, honey. Take it easy. What mouse?”

Her fingers were splayed apart as she shook her hands with vehemence. Her eyes were stark windows; her lips, full bloodless worms. She looked as if she had witnessed a murder and just as it was all over, the murderer heard her heart beating.

“The mouse-the mouse-it tried to get me-over there-in the kitchen-over there-the mouse with no eyes-it tried-it tried---”

“Shh. Its okay...calm yourself...”

“The mouse-it tried-it tried-it...TALKED!”

Daniel, as they say, put the butter dish down.

The second time this psychotic dead-mouse stuff occurred, he entered the kitchen from a long, hot day in the fields and found his wife standing dolefully in such a dishevelled state of character that the thought of his wife being raped crossed his mind. She turned to him and started to cry. He could see that her condition was borderline hospital admittance, both physically and mentally. She cried for a long time, mumbling dejected sentences that she realized Daniel wouldn’t ever believe. He would think that she had gone nuts. A battered body and a mind to boot. A near dislocated shoulder, for land’s sake. He was careful with her when he put her to bed to, as they say, get some rest.

Daniel’s thoughts, as he approached town, rested on the third time Mandy was visited by the mouse. The third blind mouse. He found Mandy sitting on the front steps of the porch with a knife in her hands, looking like she had played her part in an asylum riot. When he pulled up to the house and saw her in a catatonic trance, a frigid crawl of flesh skated over his back. Her hair was oily from a profuse sweat that had soaked the lightness of her summer frock. Her eyes were blank, unresponsive dowels holding the world, and the world inside her head, together. The knife was stained with a thick, pasty, brown fluid resembling old or bad blood; that same pestilent gruel was also on her hands and, frighteningly enough, it cascaded over her bottom lip.

What frightened Dan the most, what scratched him from the eyes to the area of his buttocks with blackboard-screeching chills, was that the third (and last) time it happened there was a foul stench of death on her breath. The stench of rotting meat.

* * *

Town was really a collection of important buildings that included a gas station, a grocery store, a two-man police outfit, a post office/pawn shop, the General Tool and Supply Mercantile, and of course (what small town would be complete without one?), a tavern that survived on its liquor licence and cheeky waitressing. It was a town self-possessed of small scale business and the hum and rattle of gossip and tragedy. Everybody knew everybody else’s business because keeping track of a population consisting of four hundred was not beyond the group mentality of a townsfolk with little else to do but swat at flies and, as they say, set awhile.

And where would you say, other than behind the paper walls of the Jochomine Tavern, would be the best place to find out what news was slipping through the town?

Daniel parked his truck in front of the post office. The novelty of this building was that it was really a cluttered, secondhand shop with the main portion of the behind-the-counter space allocated for a postal service. It smelled like a stranger’s closet. It was filled with old aged papers, rags and furs, magazines that were once read, musty boxes infected with lost moth balls, and Pine Sol. It was there that Daniel had always hoped to latch onto some tenuous web of information regarding a lost baby. Too much time had lapsed since he found the babe within the moonlit witchgrasses and wild thorn. It was one week short of three months. Somewhere, someone was keeping the tiny bones of a skeleton in the closet. Daniel often thought about that. Who were these monsters responsible for abandoning a baby in the middle of nowhere. He hoped he would one day meet them.

He too was guilty, but he had saved the child, not harmed it. His negligence was strictly in withholding the discovery from the police as the baby was nursed back to health. That was the extent of his guilt...but circles of thought pondered about what dark currents had carried the babe and nestled it on the common graves of snakes, and insects, and curs alike.

The bell behind the post office door chingled. The familiar smell of attic space and dead-mens’ laundry greeted Daniel at the mouth of the shop. Nothing that he could immediately identify had ever changed. Ever. The stuffed white owl still threatened to stir the dank air with an outstretched wingspan; the red squirrel still endeavoured to crack that dusty nut; and the tortoise grinned, petrified by the taxidermist’s cruel and ironic touch.

Old monophonic records still leaned against the walls of their shelves, dispassionately, like heroes tilted against lamp posts in old bla-whi movies. Piles of tethered books were still stacked indiscriminately in random tiers, their authors (now ghosts!) prancing around them, ranting and raving, demanding that something be done about the injustice and mistreatment of their life’s achievements. At most, they managed to whip up a fragment of dust into the stillness. Antique clocks, gathered in a corner like senile grandfathers, still disagreed as to when time had stopped. Chairs and dishes and mats and lamps and blah blah blah blah blah. Nothing changed. The post office, however, brought people into the shop and once in a while someone feeling a little bit lavish would leave with more than what the postal service delivered.

The owner was a red faced, old Canadian born Scotsman named Elijah Maxwell who was forever in good humour. He looked and laughed like Santa Clause. He sat behind his counter reading a copy of Field and Stream and when Daniel entered the shop, he hesitated to pull his eyes from the magazine.

“Hello, Daniel.”

“Hi, Elijah. Any mail for me?”

“You haven’t been in here for weeks. Ass end of the month. Of course you got mail. How are you making out city slicker?”

“I’ve seen better days,” Daniel groaned.

“And better days have not yet seen the last of you, slick. How’s the wife?”

Oh, you know, how shall I say?...fucked...why just right about now she’s probably chasing talking mice around with a sharp knife.

“She’s fine; a little under the weather, you know. Otherwise fine.”

Elijah sorted two letters from a pile of junk mail stashed in Dan’s mail slot. A Hydro bill and a telephone bill addressed to Daniel Clarke.

Dan’s hand started to bleed again. When he went to retrieve the mail, he absently raised the wounded hand and a devilish spot broke free and landed on the glass counter top.

“Look at you!,” Elijah croaked. He was a man not too keen about being bled upon.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Maxwell, please---”

“Annie!...Annie get this man a bandage for Christ’s sake, will you dear? He’s bleeding to death.”

Elijah’s wife appeared from a secluded, behind-the-counter corner where she sat for the most part of each day drinking tea and needling yarn into beautiful winter sweaters which were in demand throughout the year. Her hair was snowy and her skin was fair and with a little stretch of the imagination she could pass for a Mrs. S. Clause. (The lovers of fun and romance always wondered where those two disappeared to every Christmas Eve.)

“Now what have we got...,” Annie was shuffling over in careful steps muttering garbled words which were interrupted by Elijah’s blitherings. From this united babble came a juxtaposition of speech that sounded something like: “here? The poor Is someone lad is hurt. bleeding? He needs Oh, goodness gracious me, you’ve something, cut yourself a bandage I’ll or go get something. cut yourself A bandage.”

“...Will you, please?,” Elijah finished off.

“Oh, I’m fine, really Mrs. Maxwell, I---”

“Hush up,” she said. She was already heading toward the back room.

“Pride will get that slice infected, son. You got AIDS?”

“No!,” Daniel expounded. He was starting to feel like an imposition.

Outside, a gust of wind rattled on the aluminum siding and vanished like city kids playing nickey-nine-doors. Both Elijah and Daniel were drawn to look at the entrance when the door chimes started tinkling.

“Weather’s bad,” Elijah stated.

“Yeah, its getting bad.”

“What happened to your hand?”

“I cut it making a sandwich.”

“You must have been something hungry; that’s quite a gash you got there.”

“No,” Daniel said, “I wasn’t hungry at all.”

Annie returned with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, gauze, and cloth tape. Without waiting, Annie took Dan’s hand and inspected the wound.

“You won’t feel a thing,” she said as she started to fumble with old fashioned, country mo-jo.

Elijah watched and muttered, “You haven’t been in town for a while.”

Daniel looked at Elijah with suspicion guised in reproach. “No, I haven’t. Did I miss anything?”

“Well, I guess you never heard the latest news. Seems they come across some weird goings-on at Angelgate. Witchy stuff. Black magic. They stumbled into things left over from a ritual or something. Also found some beer empties and spray paint cans. I’m telling you, the goddam kids around here are always fooling with the wrong stuff...Always!”

Daniel flinched when the peroxide lavage coursed into his raw flesh. He gave the sting little mind because this news was captivating him. Angelgate was an old cemetery set aside in the mid 1800′s to bury the soft, lifeless rot of stillborn babies. It was the brainchild of a religious madman named Reverend Henry Chase who held Court with the jesters running the Council meetings at a time when the town was nothing but a railroad station, a granary, and a cult phenomenon.

“They have not sinned!,” the Reverend’s voice commanded. It travelled across the center stage (wooden table) where the Mayor and his political wigs gathered for that historic Council meeting three days before the celebrated groundbreaking ceremony of the General Tool and Supply Mercantile. “Therefore they must not rest with sinners! They have not been Christened! Therefore they must not lie in consecrated grounds! They have not a soul!, for they are unborn and suckle a borrowed soul from their mother until they are delivered! Let this breed of angels rest among themselves! It is God’s will!”

The God fearing people gave Revered Chase a plot of earth which they called Angelgate because it was better to make sure that God was satisfied rather than risk the chance of upsetting Him by putting unholy babies in His garden. In time, the cemetery was abandoned of its necessity and virtue because better medical practice reduced the rate of miscarriages and better Ministrant responsibility reduced the rate of infernal ideas. The town, too ashamed of young Angelgate, allowed the graveyard to fade in the distance of repressed memories and dusty outlands better off forgotten.

“Yep,” Elijah continued, “Sergeant Needle over at the police station has been keeping it hush-hush for a long time. He’s been investigating it for months. Special investigation involving them Humane Society people. But the cat’s out of the bag. They’ve been finding animals around here with their throats carved out. Part of some type of ritual or something.”

The jitters broke out in Dan’s stomach. “Who’s doing it?” A jitter crawled up his oesophagus and nearly made him retch.

“They don’t know yet, but I’ll tell you who. Kids! Gosh-dang teenagers drinking beer, smoking that dope and calling on the devil. That’s who’s doing it!”

Daniel felt the strength in his legs give way. Annie was pulling the slit in his hand apart to check that it was clean. It seemed deep; like a second toothless mouth that had grown on the face of his hand. The room got hot and blurry. The jitters caught wind of his nervous system.

In fact, he thought of the baby. He wondered if his special night-child daughter had anything to do with the strange happenings in Angelgate. Was the baby a victim of some horrid evil? Angelgate wasn’t far from where he had found her. Now he tried to convince himself that the abandonment was an isolated incident: The result of an unwed mother’s nightmare...the product of a grave mistake...the demise of a lunatic tittering insanity...anything. Anything but devil’s play. Anything but---

The post office door swung open and a volatile chase of wind erupted into the room. Dennis Rabin stood against the back light. His silhouette was dark and ragged. Daniel saw the devil outlined against the light washing through the glass door. Elijah saw an ancient mariner.

Rabin stepped toward them. His boot heels clacked against the floor and a plastic rain parka fluttered behind his stride. When he stepped under the store lights, a sigh of relief escaped Daniel’s mouth which Annie mistook for pain and which Elijah mistook for fear. Rabin’s eyes were red and mousey.

“What’s everyone staring at? Looks like you all seen a ghost or something. Cat got your tongue?”

“No, not a ghost, Mr. Rabin,” Daniel said, “unless you are dead, and you’re not.”

“You’ll be a running old fart before I die, Daniel. You bleeding or something? Hello Annie, hello Elijah.”

Greetings.

“Bleeding. I cut my hand earlier today. Mrs. Maxwell was kind enough to bandage it up for me.”

“Ayah, bloodshed...a lot of that going around...” Rabin turned to his old friend, Elijah. His eyes were rimmed with an itchy redness. The redness seemed to wash into the whites of his eyes like a runaway watercolour rose. His brow was folded into a tired frown. “Police found a body in the graveyard.”

“What?”

“Sounds almost funny, huh? Like finding money in a bank, or finding true love on your first blind date. It wasn’t supposed to be there. They found her last night in Angelgate, deader than a bad author.”

Annie finished wrapping tape over the bandage and collected her things. She disappeared into the back room and didn’t return, wanting no details.

“Who’s body is it?”

“They don’t know yet. Must be someone from outside the township. A runaway or something. It looks like a page ripped from a horror story out there. Bound and staked over the graves of those stillborn babies without a stitch of clothing on. Blood everywhere. They dug out her throat with a spoon. Scraped and rooted out her tongue, through her mouth, would you believe? She choked to death on her own blood, you know what I’m saying? She drown in it.”

Rabin looked from Elijah to Daniel and back again. “Hell, they called me up in the middle of the night and asked me if I would drive to Yellow Grass to pick up a character named Floyd Wish. He’s an historian...supposed to be an expert in devil shit. Writes books on it. I picked him up at about six this morning and drove him to the scene. He took one look around and vomited his breakfast outright. He puked on Marvin’s great, great grandchild’s gravestone.” Rabin took off his rain coat. “Is the coffee fresh?,” he asked.

“Just made,” Elijah answered.

Rabin started to fix himself a coffee and continued, “Sergeant Needle said that she’s young, early teens maybe, no confirmation on the identity as of yet. He suspects she’s from out of township. Floyd confirms that she was part of a sacrifice to a demon. He is confident that whoever is responsible for the girl’s death is responsible for something potentially worse.”

“What could be worse than that?,” Elijah cried.

Tension squeezed around them. Elijah fidgeted with his magazine.

“Mr. Wish says that the people responsible for the murder of this girl didn’t have a clue about what they were doing. The ritual could have been performed by drunken monkeys for all the bungling they did. Those things are supposed to go by the letter; if they don’t, you stand to oppose whatever rabbit you conjure up from your hell hat. Anyway, they practised on living animals. Animal sacrifice is part of the whole mess. That’s why they’ve been coming across those animals with their throats spooned out. What does it all come to?... They fucked it up... From what Floyd can assess, the demon was summoned. Worse than that, it was never contained.”

“What does that mean!?” Elijah was getting a little nervous; but it was nowhere near the rattlebones Daniel was feeling.

“It means that the demon was supposed to have been locked up in the girl’s body. It was supposed to possess her and speak through her. That’s why the murderers tore out her vocal cords...so they could know it was the devil speaking to them. But those misfit fucks messed it up. They summoned the demon but they failed to send it back.”

“Send it back?” The words came from Daniel’s throat in dry syllables. “Back where?”

“To hell,” said Rabin. “Back to hell.”

Daniel had enough. In fact, he had more than enough. He wanted out of the shop. He was beginning to think of the place as a little shop of horrors. The tortoise was grinning at him from it’s place on the shelf with a profound, ironic lifelessness. He had to get out.

The news frightened him. It wasn’t so much because it was happening so close to his home, and it wasn’t even the fact that it had been happening practically right under his nose for months. It frightened him because he believed that there truely were disembodied spirits shambling around the earth looking to seize the bodies of weak or unfortunate souls. Somewhere, the devil was ready to take anyone. Maybe in a small village somewhere in the mountainous rainforests of South America, maybe a in a tight New York city apartment, maybe in the halls of a prim English hospital, or in a sub-level hallway where naked light bulbs hang from their necks on power cords.

The baby.

Now the thought linked onto a bigger problem. There was too much weird stuff going on and he wasn’t about to go for a ride on any kind of damnation train that had just rolled into town. He wanted to report the child to the police before something turned up, something that would get his hands sticky. In fact, he wanted to begin washing his hands of it right now.

“Well, I think I’ve heard enough. Thanks for my mail, Elijah. Mr. Rabin, do you think you can do me a favour if you’re heading out to Angelgate again?”

“Sure. I’m going there as soon as I’m finished here.”

“Could you tell Sergeant Needle to drop by my house

and remove the baby

“as soon as he can? I realize he’ll be busy with this mess and everything, but its important that I speak with him as soon as he’s got a minute.”

“Sure thing, Daniel, I’ll tell him. You take care...and say hello to Mandy for me.”

“I will, Mr. Rabin. See you later Elijah.”

“Yeah. Later. Take care of that hand.”

Images of Angelgate at dawn: They drifted in and out of his thoughts like the sound of breathing when the night is deep and the lover sleeping next to you is strange and unfamiliar. These images assaulted his nerves as he travelled away from town along the 621 toward his home. He drove the speed limit until he neared the location of the roadkill that had highlighted his drive into town. In the distance he could see the rabbit that he had massacred over the acrid oil-dust and gritty stone. With a tire iron he had opened up a crumpled hole in the rabbit’s head. One shot. Blood flew from its ears in a fine red mist that stopped its bloody nose from twitching. At that point, it rested its floppy ears on the road as if it were going to sleep forever. It finally stopped shaking.

(thump-thud thump-thud thump-thud thump-thud...)

The rabbit didn’t die.

(thump-thud-thump thud thump-thud-thump-thud-thump...)

Daniel could see it crawling across the road with a jiggling myopia of its own entrails dragging behind it. It was using its front legs to pull the dispersed weight of itself across the roadway because its hind legs (its hind end!) was an obliterated blood bomb.

“What is this?”

His heart crowded his throat. The truck was stopped some thirty feet away. He stepped onto the road where a gust of wind slapped his jeans against his leg. That same snatch of air tried to carry off with his hair, out into the lonely prairies along with the lost, broken voices of gods, and men, and

(deadmouse)

the restless dead.

Daniel clutched the tire iron and approached the rabbit with a cool stride. A gunslinger’s stride. The rabbit looked at him once and tried to hurry across the road. It was in a frenzy, scrabbling its front paws over the unpaved road and managing to inch the shawl of guts fanning from its hide along in tedious increments. As Daniel got closer to it, he suddenly felt his stomach churn. His heart, edging up his throat, was thumping, thumping, thumping. Standing above it was going to make him sick, but his stomach was only offering dry threats.

The rabbit was staring at him with terrible eyes. The hole in its head was overflowing with a sanguinary glop. Sticky trails of blood mixed with grey matter coursed along its face like meltdown. Daniel lifted the tire iron and (before it dropped through the rabbit’s skull once more) a weird gesture rippled over the animal’s chin. The rabbit’s jaw fell open and a small bulbous tongue rolled out, pushing a shred of bloody tissue from its mouth with lubricated ease. The alternative to a grin stretched away from the rabbit’s broken teeth.

"Race you home, dickshit!"

The wind carried Daniel’s yelp far, far away. Tire iron swingings cracked into the head and bones of the rabbit. It was terrific savagery until the rabbit was displaced and beside itself, a scavenger’s meal hanging from a broken neck.

I heard it.

It spoke. He ran to his truck vomiting bitter drool as vertigo pulled the world around him. In his mind he could hear the returning dissonance of Rabin’s scratchy voice saying, “They failed to send it back...They failed to send it back...” At that instant he saw a crazy image shiver through his mental eye. He saw three blind mice dancing and parading themselves in single file under a sliver of a ghost moon, miming and carrying on like fools in coxcombs or committed patients celebrating the death of the farmer’s cat.

Race you home, dickshit!

He watched the rabbit’s mouth gesticulate and freakishly pronounce a comprehensive phrase. It spoke. Now the rabbit was going to get it. Daniel jammed his transmission drive into gear and whipped dust into the wind.

“I’ll align ol’ Betsy’s tires here to crush the rabbit fuck to oblivion.” A deranged bray of laughter sprayed from his guts. He approached the rabbit with wild fire burning behind his eyes.

“Silly rabbit, post mortem kicks are for!---

(deadmouse)

“kids.”

He anticipated the slosh under his tires as he approached the animal. As it vanished from view, sliding under the thundering front end of his truck, a triumphant battlecry shrieked from Daniel’s mouth.

There were no thudding sounds. No slosh, no splatter. His expression fell apart in bewilderment. He looked in his rear-view mirror and the road fell away in a country stretch, unmarred by the newest splash of tripes, blood and eat-fresh road meat! The rabbit was gone and Daniel, suddenly aware of the cataclysmic totality of his situation,

(...follies)

started to freak.

* * *

In dour light, Mandy was sitting in a battered rose coloured armchair next to the rise and fall of her baby’s breathing rhythm. Her eyes were lost in a sliver of light which drew along the side of the blinds. Thoughts trespassed over scenic yards and foreign landscapes in her mind.

Where could Daniel be?

The wind outside ravaged the house like the caressing fingers of a ghost lover; and it made the insides wrench. A thump startled Mandy out of her day-trance. Her heart started beating wardrums. She turned to the door and watched as it swung out a little. A rabbit’s foot appeared in the doorway. Then a hideous, rabbit eared glob of shattered face, blood, fur and bones poked its head in at the foot of the doorway. An eye, dangling from a cord of muscle, rolled, and a jaw bone, lost in shatters, quivered, ”I win.”

Mandy dead fainted.

* * *

From a distance, Daniel had always thought that his farmhouse looked rustic. Under the grey skies, the house rather jutted up from the spread of dry land like a blister on a harlot. The truck skidded to an abrupt stop in the driveway. Daniel entered his house as stealthful as a snake because racing with the devil was tricky.

“Mandy,” he whispered, “where are you?”

His voice sliced through the shadowy silence. He went to the nursery where the baby slept soundly and where blood smears had been wiped clean.

“Mandy?”

Room by room, hide nor hair.

“Mandy? Is that you?”

In the barn the horse sliently shagged its head as if it understood Daniel. It gave Daniel a shudder and some goosebumps. If the demon possessed the horse, he could always shoot it. Squash the rabbit, shoot the horse. It was his wife he was worried about. If the demon took her then he was stepping around some leaping shit.

“Mandy? Are you in here?”

Nothing. Daniel exited the barn feeling despondent. He turned his head up toward the sky. Hail fell from the dark grey as if all the angels in the heavens tilted their heads to look down at the follies and lost their marbles laughing.

* * *

Inside the house, Daniel took another look around and then posted himself at the kitchen table for a vigil. He knew she would soon return. She wouldn’t have gone too far without the baby. He opened up a bottle to wait with.

She’ll return soon enough, he thought.

Sure enough, she did return. Daniel was half way through his bottle. He had fallen asleep at the table and was awakened by high toned giggling.

“Mandy.”

She appeared at the entrance to the hall, one eye peeking mischievously from around the corner. The slender blade of the kitchen knife appeared just under her eyeball. It was dirty with blood.

“Mandy?”

Her cacophony gutted the silence: “She cut off their tails with a carving knife, three blind---” She slid the knife over her eye and trailed off into whispery giggles.

Daniel thought that he had perhaps drank a little too much. He put the cap back on the bottle.

“Are you feeling okay?,” he asked. He was actually starting to feel scared.

“Oh yes,” Mandy responded. She stepped into the kitchen. Daniel retched and tasted vile liquor in his throat. She was covered in blood. Blood ran from her mouth, down her neck and into her clothes. Her belly was distended with a bloody bulge that soaked her dress. Mock maternity.

“Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, my deeeeeeeeeear!. Dinner will be served in five minutes. Its your favourite!” She put on a smile and it merged into those mad silent giggles. The knife went up into the air and then Mandy slammed it into her belly.

“NO!” Daniel rushed toward her. He was slow from the booze. His wife cut into her dress, laughing. Then the rabbit fell from her abdomen. Daniel stopped his approach.

“Here it is! Enjoy!” She kicked the carrion toward Daniel and it landed at his feet. The drag of innards and grey intestines tagged behind it. She started to waltz with her blade.

“They all chased after the farmer’s wife so she cut off their tails with a carving knife...”

She was charmed by her enchanting dance partner who was swaying and whirling, cutting across the ballroom as light as air. Looking sharp. Handsomely dressed to kill. The knife innately glimmered back at her.

“The devil is in you,” Daniel decided to say.

She didn’t hear him. She was at the ball. Dancing.

“Stop that!,” Daniel shouted. He started to back away.

She danced in circles toward the rabbit. She was graceful among the tripes. They were spread across the floor like the feelers and tentacles of a livid nightmare. She brought the knife slashing toward Daniel. It sliced his cheek.

“Mandy!” He fell back against the table. The table collapsed under his weight.

“You went into town to tell the police about our baby, didn’t you?” Mandy lifted the blade high above her head as she hovered over her husband. “Didn’t you!?”

Daniel saw the room spin. “Needle is coming.”

She stabbed him in the stomach.

* * *

The knife came down once again. Mandy was possessed with intent to murder. Daniel caught her arm on this third strike and wrenched her wrist. She screamed and pulled away. Daniel scrambled to get back on his feet again. He pushed himself across the floor with his legs and used the kitchen counter for support to stand up.

“Mandy!”

She kicked the rabbit and sent it flying toward Dan’s head. He ducked away in time. It splattered against a window.

Daniel was reminded of bloodthirsty psychopaths and deranged maniacs dressed in hospital garments. His wife was trying to murder him. He needed help. He was bleeding bad.

Needle.

Mandy shrieked, “I told you before, Daniel! I warned you, you didn’t believe me! I am going to keep my baby!”

Daniel tried to assess his blood loss. Externally he knew it was serious. He used his hands to apply pressure. The stab wound was near his belt line. He tightened his belt. He then looked at her through the blurry, fish-eyed lens of his vision. He saw her swimming there through his tears with a distorted smile ripped across her lips.

“Now Daniel,” she said, “go wash your hands. Dinner is getting cold.” She sat herself in a chair and laughed quietly.

Reality had jumbled itself. Daniel saw the image of the three blind mice gambolling through his head again. He saw himself in their parade, following the ratty entourage, whimsically aloof and equal to them in stature and profound absurdity.

Other images started to flicker in his mind. The mice...the fields...the dry earth...the dead farmhouse...the rabbit...the baby.

Daniel tried to focus his blurry vision. “Sergeant Needle will be here tomorrow to take the baby. Its over.”

Tickled by the thought of Daniel’s death, Mandy giggled.

“The rabbit,” Daniel afforded, “wouldn’t die. It had the devil in it. Now the devil is in you.”

“The devil, Daniel? The devil? This!...,” the knife punctuated the still air, “is the devil! Soon the devil will be in you.”

Daniel slipped against the counter, losing his balance. He watched his wife stand up. The doubled vision of the knife slithered closer, part of the serpent that was coiled to strike. He felt the trapped air within his lungs and prepared to scream.

“Nobody is gonna take my baby from me, Daniel. Nobody can do that. God knows I’ve suffered enough. I cut off their tails with a carving knife, remember? Remember finders keepers, Daniel? Remember? REMEMBER!?”

The trip switch sprang, Mandy lunged. Daniel moved and shifted.

“MANDY, NO!” He averted the death strike. He had shifted over to one side. The trick in his shift involved a slight of hand that left Mandy hanging over the sink in awe of its deception. The knife was buried somewhere in the vicinity of her womb. Daniel held it in her.

“I...I...” He was choked up with terror. Unreality swept over him like a flood. He eased her to the floor and gently laid her down on the floor.

“I didn’t mean to...Mandy. I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen.”

The grin had been wiped from her face. Her head was draped over his arm. Daniel ran his fingers through her hair for a few minutes and, like her hair, she was dead.

There was a stillness to the interior of the house. Daniel was also dying. Light-headedness stroked his senses with a large numb hand. The mice returned to his mind. Insane thoughts were scurrying in his brain, scrabbling and scuttling under the floorboards, behind walls, in hiding places, not really sure whether it was safe to come out.

He staggered down the hall and fell through the nursery door. From her place in the crib, the baby watched as her father struggled with consciousness. He lay under the quiet pool of night-light, semi-conscious. “The end is near,” he gasped.

Daniel turned his head to look up and saw the baby sitting in the crib. She was smiling. There was something wrong. A voice from the crib?

“Losers weepers, Daddy.”

The mice stopped playing.

THE THOUGHT FURNITURE

“Dinner was absolutely exquisite.”

“Dee-lightful!”

“Thank you. Shall we go into the living room?”

The guests shuffled their feet and complimented Martina and Ross on a fabulous meal.

“Oh stop it, guys. Let’s go have some fun.” Martina grabbed her glass of wine and waved her hand, shooing everyone out of the dining room. Dinner was great but it was over. It was time to party. It was time to try out the Thought Furniture.

* * *

They all admired the furniture as they entered the living room. Soft, thick and warm. Very absorbing, comforting, inviting to the senses. The furniture looked wholesome and satisfying. There was a love seat, a fat-boy chair, and a sectional couch that spread out over a new, luxurious rug. At the end of the shorter segment of the L-shaped sectional there was an end table with a burning candle on it, for ambiance and fragrance. Next to it was the recliner. Completing the circle, in between the love seat and the recliner, a plain, black leather ottoman appeared to have invited itself into the Thought Furniture garden like a wandering pig.

Gordy Blaine made a comment to the effect that soon the Thought Furniture Company would be making beds and perhaps clothing. Perhaps entire houses! He knew about the Thought Furniture Company. He was up to his ears in paperwork, complaints, petitions and threats; people lobbying for Government intervention to impose legislation to regulate the private manufacturing of spilled Government secrets. The Thought Furniture was hazardous to health and welfare. Gordy was a political gopher and he was very much interested in trying out the new, controvercial Thought Furniture.

“Look at it, its beautiful.” Sandy couldn’t wait to sit down. The furniture looked absolutely tempting. Cozy as hell. She brushed past her husband Gordy.

“Wait, Sandy. Not yet.” Martina held up her hand for attention. “I need to tell you all that the reason we are here is to have a good time. We can stop at any time if anyone feels,” Martina smiled, “uncomfortable.”

“Why?” It was Shawna asking. “Is it going to freak us out or something? Its furniture. What can it do to us?”

Sandy took a seat. She sat on the long end of the sectional couch and melted into it. “Oh, my. Its heavenly.”

“Yes, it really is.” Martina lifted her glass. “A toast.”

Everyone’s glass was raised high. It was automatic.

“To the future,” she declared. She downed the rest of her wine. Others followed.

“What should we expect to experience sitting in this Thought Furniture?,” Max inquired.

Martina turned to Max and stopped him just as he was about to sit on the recliner. She looked at him and then all the rest of her guests, one by one. “Choose wisely where you would like to sit, my friends. Be cautious. You may feel more like yourself than you have ever felt before.”

Everyone looked at each other. They said nothing.

Sandy’s husband, Gordy Blaine, who was into his sixth glass of wine finally added: “We’re gonna all blow our wads and wet ourselves silly.” He chuckled and drank.

“Oh, you’re a pervert,” Shawna frowned.

Ross found it funny and laughed. He started topping wine glasses up as they all stood in front of the Thought Furniture. “I’ll top that one off, Gordy, with this: You might be right. It may well happen that you blow your wad and wet yourself.”

“How does it work?,” Dhalli asked. She was her quiet, unobtrusive self. “I mean, what makes it so comfortable?” She sat on the love seat which happened to be the closest seat to her.

Ross filled Dhalli’s glass with white wine and said, “Its based on the premise that when you are comfortable, you are relaxed, and when you are relaxed, you are likely to be more yourself. Since we are made up of any number of personalities, this furniture is supposed to be so damned comfortable that your most core personality is brought forth. It highlights the latent persona in your subconscious. Pick your seats carefully, guys, you might surprise yourself.”

“I want that one,” Gordy said, and he sat opposite his wife on the cushy love seat. Sandy looked at him with a frown and an odd smile. He was sitting next to Dhalli. On the love seat. Gordy thought he picked up on the message and responded, “Its so I could watch you, honey. This is supposed to be a trip or something, isn’t it? I want to see you head on, face to face, baby. You’re right there, bang!.”

But Sandy wasn’t frowning because she felt a little green eyed monster eating her up. Oh no. She was frowning because way, way down inside, a very angry girl was loving every fucking minute of his first bloody mistake.

* * *

“Has everyone picked out their seat?” Martina grabbed the wine bottle as her husband went to turn the surround sound on.

Max fit his burly self on the recliner. His wife, Shawna, sat on his lap and crossed her legs. They fell back into a reclining position. She reached toward the end table and grabbed their wine glasses. “This is cozy,” she said.

Martina waited for her husband to return. Music filled space. When he joined her she asked him, “Where would you like to sit, sweetie?”

“On the ottoman.”

“You mean I get the fat-boy to myself?” Martina gasped. “I never sat in it before. Are you sure you won’t sit with me?”

“No, no. Go ahead. I want to be the control, anyways.”

“What do you mean, ’control?’” Dhalli didn’t understand.

“You know,” Ross stated as his wife passed him the bottle of red and took her seat on the fat-boy, “like in an experiment. There are the variable groups and the control group. Nothing happens to the control group, it is used to determine the differences among the factored variable groups. I’ll be sitting on the ottoman to observe you guys.”

Shawna frowned. “I don’t want to be treated like a lab animal. Sit with us.”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on, you’ll be like a sober fool in a crowd of drunks,” she persisted. “Are you trying to hide something from us?”

Sandy laughed at this a little too brashly.

“Okay, okay...you got me.” Ross took a drink and cleared his throat. “This ottoman...its not really an ottoman. Its actually a prototype of a different kind of Thought Furniture. Its the cutting edge of the sharpest newest technology in Thought Furniture. It is the piece of furniture that controls all of the other pieces of furniture. Sort of like the central command. Its called Power Operated Thought furniture. Get it? Think about it.” Ross started to laugh.

“You’re an ass. Forget it,” Martina said, “Shawna, if that’s the way he wants to be, just let him sit on that old farty ottoman. We’ve had that old ottoman forever. Who cares. Cheers everyone.”

“Cheers,” the guests responded.

“We all know what Ross is all about, anyways.” Martina’s black satin dinner gown slithered against the suede fat-boy.

“He’s an anal-retentive spy. This furniture is for the rest of us to enjoy.”

“I’m a computer engineer,” Ross clarified.

“Hacker. Who cares, hush up.” Martina blew Ross an endearing kiss.

Gordy was enjoying the furniture. He was feeling a little too attracted to Dhalli sitting next to him. He had never felt this way toward Dhalli. Hell, he wasn’t even sure why the sudden attraction to her. He chanced a casual glance at Dhalli’s long, silky legs and his glance was intercepted. Sandy saw it. She saw his eyes ride up her legs to the hem of her skirt and the imagined beyond. In his eyes Sandy saw lust. ”Why you snaky, sonofa..." She stopped her mumbling behind clenched teeth just in time. The party had turned their attention to her.

Shawna redirected focus from Sandy, saying, “So, is this furniture some kind of a simulator or something? Is it computerized? Is this supposed to be a spiritual experience? I don’t get it.” She was talking to Ross, her brother.

“Not nearly that, Shawna.” Ross dragged his ottoman over to the livingroom table, sat down and pulled a cigarette from his pack. “Did anybody ever hear about a thing called E-P-T or ‘EPT?’”

“What is this?” Max thought to himself, talking about the strange colours he was starting to see radiating from the people sitting around him.

“Electropsychtrotics,” Ross answered.

Sandy was staring at her husband, Gordy, through the glass she was tipping wine from. She was thinking he and Dhalli looked pretty good together. She was thinking that the pretentious slut practically sitting on her husband’s lap would probably spread her harlot legs for him in a New York fucking second!

“I did hear something about that,” said Dhalli. “It was developed by that doctor. The one on the news a few years ago. Dr. Whye.”

“Oh yeah! He was on the news alright. The Project. Anyways, he developed a sensory adapter filament that picks up electronic impulses from the central nervous system. The filament acts like a conductor, taking brain impulses travelling through your nervous system and flesh, and it absorbs them. By that I mean they are absorbed into the fabric of the furniture. The seat you sit on is simply fabric made from woven EPT filaments. What Dr. Whye did was bring the sensory adapter filament into the history books. What the Thought Furniture Company did was use it to make chairs.”

“And phenomenal profits,” Gordy added.

“Yes,” Ross continued, “the furniture, after absorbing the impulses from your brain via your nerves and through your skin, reads them. Then the impulses are modified and processed to maximize comfort levels. Sort of like biorhythm. Your body and mind tell the furniture when it is absolutely numb with comfort. By then, friends, you are a whole new person.”

Shawna couldn’t stand it, “Well, when is this freak show supposed to begin?”

“It has,” Ross answered as he exhaled a long stream of smoke into the air. “My friend, it has started.”

* * *

“I feel like I’m falling.” Dhalli was feeling the synergetic combination of wine and...

“Falling?” Martina waved it off and suggested, “Don’t worry. Its a natural sensation.” The woman in black crossed her legs and her painted toenails gleamed into view. She felt confident and alive in the fat-boy chair. “The beauty of this furniture is that it works on different people in different ways. Some people have a faster flow of energy, call it life energy, coursing from them. Rapid exchange of life energy from your body to the furniture and back into your brain is experienced more dramatically. Did it feel like a mood swing?”

“No. I feel like I am falling. I feel like a falling… angel.” Dhalli smiled and tilted her head back to the backrest. She shut her eyes. Freefalling. She felt uninhibited and happy. After a while, Dhalli sat up and put her wine glass on the coffee table. She was feeling too high. She was feeling like she suddenly had way too much to drink. The room was starting to spin. It was a good thing Ross was on the ottoman near her. He caught her just as her head was about to crack against the coffee table.

“Whoe!” Gordy reacted swiftly, startled by the accident. His attention had been on Martina when suddenly he caught Dhalli’s fall in his peripheral vision.

Ross and Gordy lifted Dhalli, assisting her to a sitting position. “Are you all right?,” Gordy asked.

Dhalli’s attempt to get up failed. Her will had abandoned her. She leaned back and tried to fan herself with her hand to keep something in control. “Fine. Fine. I feel...too much wine, I guess. I just felt a little light headed.”

“Do you want to sit off? I can get you a chair or something,” Ross offered.

“I’m fine, really. Martina, Ross, good wine. Whoo.” Dhalli smiled and sat up. She composed herself in her seat.

“There is a perfect example of what I’m talking about,” Martina suggested. “Tell me Shawna, have you ever witnessed Dhalli act like that before?”

“No, never.”

Gord’s wife was finishing her wine and she clamped down on her glass with her teeth. The glass was fogging up from her hot breath. She started squeezing her jaws.

Max was the only one that noticed what Sandy was doing. He tried to move in time, but his wife thought his attempt to get up was a cuddle. She retaliated by swarming him in an embrace.

“SANDY!,” Max shouted.

The wine glass shattered in Sandy’s mouth. Blood quickly washed down her chin.

* * *

“Are you feeling okay, Max?” Martina was concerned. The group had switched their focus onto him. Sandy placed her wine glass down on the coffee table, bewildered by the attention Max afforded her. Her glass was intact. She was thinking, Thank God the glass was empty, because he had startled her and she would have spilled wine had it been full.

“Yeah,” Max replied. “Just...bizarre.”

“What was that all about?,” Shawna asked him.

“I thought I saw Sandy’s wine glass shatter. Her bottom lip split open and blood...” He gave up on the explanation. “Nothing. I saw nothing. I’m sorry, Sandy. I didn’t mean to center you out or nothing.”

Sandy responded, “Its quite alright. You couldn’t have startled anyone anyways. How can you follow an act like that? Look at her.” Sandy scoffed at Dhalli who looked a little out of it. “She’s pathetic.”

“Sandy!,” Gord couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “that’s a fuck of a shitty thing to say to someone at a party.”

Martina moved fast from her fat-boy chair to martyr herself. “Let’s just you and me go get another bottle or two of vinho,” Martina said to Sandy and took her arm. She was surprised Sandy didn’t put up a challenge. The truth is, Sandy was on her way up off her seat to visit Gordy sitting across from her and carve her nails into his green eyes. However, as soon as she lifted herself from the Thought Furniture, those thoughts just went away like October blackbirds in flight.

“You got it,” Martina coached, “That’s the way to get up from the Thought Furniture. Tear away. Rip away.”

Sandy was stunned. She looked at Gordy and wondered why she was so enraged at her husband only moments ago. What was Dhalli doing that was making her so jealous and volatile. “I...I’m not sure I like this furniture, Martina.”

“Sure you do,” Ross erupted. “Maybe your choice of seats wasn’t the best. When you come back, switch with someone. Or sit next to someone. Mix some energy. You’re sitting on that big ol’ sectional side all by yourself. Try something else.”

“Yeah,” Sandy thought, “I will. It’s a good idea.” She already knew who she was going to trade seats with. Dhalli. She thought it might alleviate the jealous tension she was feeling. Sandy and Martina exited the living room and went into the kitchen.

Martina took Sandy’s hand. “Sandy. Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m okay. You know I’m okay.”

Martina took a step stool and entered a high cupboard. She pulled out two bottles of wine. “You seemed a little hostile in there. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. Its your furniture. I can’t explain it and I don’t like it at all.”

Martina laughed and stepped down. “It’s furniture, Sandy. You probably just have some negative life energy in you, that’s all.”

“That’s all? That’s all? What does that mean?”

“Nothing to worry about. Look, you were going to try a different seat, remember? Wait till you try something different before you knock it. The furniture isn’t dangerous. The furniture is furniture; if anything is dangerous, its coming from you.”

Its coming from you.

That worried Sandy even more. She was always a little insecure. She knew she had a bad temper and she realized that she had some very nasty childhood experiences to contend with. She would have been committed to the funny farm if it wasn’t for Gord. He meant the world to her. Martina and Sandy exited the kitchen and returned to the living room. Sandy’s eyes met Gordy’s.

“Can I sit next to you, honey?” Sandy was almost sheepish.

“Yeah, sure.” Gordy said. He was trying to rip himself off of his seat. However, he was feeling too good. It was as if his body would not respond to his will, regardless of how determined he was to move. He was trying to get over to the couch where he could sit with Sandy.

“No, wait.” It was Dhalli’s voice. “I’ll move over there,” she said. Dhalli somehow collected her thoughts in the commotion of her own desire to sit beside Gord. In one lunge she lurched from the seat, swaggered, then regained herself. “Sit here, Sandy. Wait till you try that seat. It’s too much.”

“I know,” Sandy said. She gave Dhalli a half-hearted smile and glare.

* * *

Max watched all of this from the recliner. His wife was not feeling the effects of the furniture, however, Max was maximizing on it. He thought he saw Sandy’s wine glass shatter. He was almost sure that he saw it happen. It sliced her lip and she was bleeding badly. Now he watched her take a seat next to her husband. Max could almost see her life energy surging through her aura like X-rayed blood. Tainted. Max wondered if his wife was witnessing any of this but he didn’t dare say anything. The visions he was having were indescribable.

Gordy looked a little bit wary when Sandy actually took the seat and sat next to him. Gordy didn’t want his wife sharing the same Thought Furniture as he. He was comfortable. So comfortable. He had felt warm, joyous attraction sitting next to Dhalli. That changed dramatically as soon as Sandy sat next to him. It felt like frost on the window.

As soon as Sandy sat down next to Gordy, her mood shifted too. She felt vulnerable, insecure. The way Gordy kept glancing at Dhalli was making her feel that good ol’ angry feeling again.

Dhalli had taken Sandy’s place on the sectional. There she nestled in and regained her composure. Gordy’s energy was no longer mixing with her own. She sat independently on the couch. “This furniture is wonderful, Ross. It really is something.”

“Thank you, Dhalli. How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling wonderful, thanks.”

* * *

“Ross, can you explain why I’m having these strange visions?,” Max finally stated.

Martina was returning to her fat-boy and was looking forward to it. “What do you mean?,” she asked.

“The change in Sandy’s...in Sandy’s energy. I can see her energy field.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?,” Shawna asked.

“I don’t know,” Max replied, “its like I see her doing things and they aren’t things she is actually doing.”

“What did you see her doing?,” Gordy asked.

“Scratching your eyes out, Gord.”

Gordy looked a little concerned.

“Oh, Max, you aren’t making any sense.”

“Its funny,” Martina stated, “I wonder if Shawna sitting on your lap has anything to do with what you see. Look, only part of her body is actually touching the recliner. Maybe the little life energy trickling from her and back to you has an adverse effect on your experience sitting on the Thought Furniture.”

Maybe.

Maybe deep down inside Sandy was thinking she had a hell of a better chance, now that she was sitting next to Gordy, of ripping the eyes out of his sockets with her fingernails.

She swiped at Gordy. Her nails attacked the flesh of his eyes. Gordy screamed. Martina lunged out to help Gord. Dhalli screamed and covered her eyes. Ross jumped to try and restrain Sandy from blinding her husband. Gord fell from his seat to his knees on the white rug, swearing, holding his hands to his face. Shawna was shocked to see the senseless violence. Max was shocked to see the evil red light aura shining from Sandy’s fingertips. Gordy was bleeding like a stuck...

* * *

It was a lot of blood but it didn’t bleed for very long. Gordy held a cold cloth to his right eye. More than a scratch, looking like hell. It was more the insult that hurt him.

“Stay off the furniture, Sandy,” Gordy said as he sat back in his seat. “Its fucking you up.”

By this time, Sandy was standing near the stereo with Martina.

“I’m sorry, Gord. I...I don’t...”

Shawna spoke, “What does all of this mean? Martina, you said your most core personality comes out sitting in this furniture. Does this mean something is wrong with Sandy?”

“No,” Martina said from across the room. “It means something is wrong with the furniture. Maybe there’s a defect in that love seat.”

“I don’t think so,” Max said. “I think we have something here. This Thought Furniture has not malfunctioned. Ross, you know that. You are the control. Tell them.”

Ross extinguished his cigarette. “There is nothing wrong with the furniture,” he stated. “It is you, Sandy.”

“That’s it, I’m leaving.” Sandy shaded her eyes by rubbing her temples with her right hand. She had a migraine. “Are you coming, Gord?”

“Yeah, I’m coming. God damn this publicity.” Gord lifted himself from his seat and offered a handshake to Ross. “I guess this furniture needs some attention, huh?”

“Sit down, Gordy.” Ross said without looking up from lighting a smoke.

“Gotta go man. Mind the eye.” He pointed to his sticky eye.

“Sit down, man. Don’t you want to know what is happening here? Don’t you want to get to know what is going on, Gord?”

Sandy looked hurt and insulted. “Fuck off, Ross. What are you trying to do to us?”

“Nothing you ain’t doing yourself. Think about it, people. You are what you are in the Thought Furniture. Take a seat.”

“Let’s go, Gord. We have better things to do.”

“No...” Gordy pulled the cold cloth Ross had given him from his eye and saw that the bleeding had stopped. It was feeling a little swollen now. By tomorrow, his eye would be a blood perogie. “Let’s just take another seat here, Sandy. Max and Shawna, would you guys mind if I sit where you are sitting. I think I need to try a new seat altogether.”

“Take it,” Max said. He looked at Shawna for confirmation. “Let’s go try the love seat, sweetie,” Shawna responded.

Shawna and Max got up. The strange auras and colours Max had been seeing swirling around the party guests vanished from everyone’s personal body space. Max felt withdrawal, however, Gord needed the seat more than he did. “Go ahead,” Max said to Gordy, “its a great piece of furniture.”

Max took a cushion on the love seat and his wife the other cushion. Shawna was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable the seat was. Had she known it could be this comfortable she would have chosen it as her seat rather than her husband’s lap. With her husband sitting near, it was absolutely wonderful.

“Gord, you’re not going to stay here---”

“Sandy,” Gordy interjected, “I am going to stay here. You are going to take a different seat or you can just go on home without me. I, personally, would like to test out the Thought Furniture and see for myself how much truth I can find, digging in the dirt. Now I can see why people are so dead set on shutting down the Thought Furniture Company. Look what it does. So far, I think we found ourselves some pretty ugly truths, haven’t we?”

“Come on,” Martina pleaded, “please sit down, Sandy. None of us want you to go.”

Sandy shook her head at Gord. “I can’t believe you’re not coming.”

“Relax, Sandy. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself, just take a god damn seat.” Gord was suddenly feeling a little more confident. He put more ice in his cloth and held the ice to his swelling eye.

* * *

Everyone was looking at Sandy. When she served first glare to Dhalli, Dhalli looked down. Shawna did not flinch, nor did Max, when Sandy looked at them. Martina was smiling with mild amusement.

Shawna added, “Aren’t you curious to know who you really are, Sandy?”

Sandy thought about it for a moment. A lifeflash went by her and she saw her stepfather lowering himself over her until the entire world was blacked out. She didn’t want to know what was deep inside her psyche. “I don’t think I want to sit on this furniture. No offense, Ross and Tina. It may not be the best thing for me right now. Ross, can I sit on the ottoman?”

“No.”

* * *

“Take a seat over here,” Dhalli offered. She welcomed Sandy to sit right next to her.

A flood of fuzzy warmth made Sandy blush. “Yes, thank you, Dhalli.” Sandy walked over and sat next to Dhalli. It was comfortable.

Man, how could I even think that my Gordy would want to sleep with this loose moose?, Sandy thought as she smiled for Dhalli at close range. The warm fuzzies she was feeling quickly turned hard and thorny.

Max saw a body-halo of hellfire emanating from Sandy. When Sandy looked at him, he saw through her fire and into hell itself.

“Wake up, Max,” he heard Shawna say. “Don’t look into it too deeply.” Shawna was on her way to the washroom.

Max shook his head and blinked. When he returned to look at Sandy’s blood-stained aura, all he saw was the plain skin on her face with a smile. The smile turned unpleasant.

“I saw something again,” Max muttered. “Do you see anything strange about Sandy?”

Martina shook her head. “Give it up, Max. No we do not see anything.”

“What did you see?,” Gord inquired.

“Hellfire!,” Max stated. “I see hellfire burning.”

Gordy was about to punch Ross in the face in honour of his wife when, all of a sudden, silly Sandy snapped.

“Oh you weren’t seeing no hellfire staring at me, Maximillion. You were too busy looking at THIS!" Sandy suddenly lifted her skirt up as high as it would go. Her black panties were a shocking contrast to her pale thighs.

The group was horrified. Martina, embarrassed for Sandy, went to her and helped her up from the Thought Furniture. Sandy suddenly realized what she’d done. It was as if some dry drug was wearing off very quickly. She pushed her skirt back into place. “I...I gotta go,” she quaked. “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

On the doorstep, Sandy confided to her friend. “Tina, I don’t think I will ever be able to live this down.”

“Oh, sure you will. You’re talking nonsense. We’ll laugh about tonight later on, don’t worry.”

“I am worried. I am worried, Tina. What you have in your living room is...” The look in Sandy’s brown eyes melted into tears. “It scares me.” Sandy turned away and headed to her ride.

In the living room, Gordy turned his head and looked at Dhalli. Dhalli looked very concerned for him. “Have a good night, Dhalli,” he said to her. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Don’t worry, take care of her. Mind that eye.” Dhalli was sad that he was leaving. They shared with each other a little of their souls on the love seat and discovered something attractive within each other. Something they shared and enjoyed.

“Yeah. I will.” Gord turned to Max as Shawna returned from the washroom. “Good seeing you guys again. I’m coming over to your place tomorrow. I have a huge favour to ask of you.”

“Sure, bring a sleeping bag,” Max said. They shook hands. ”Tomorrow? What do you mean? Are you leaving?” Shawna couldn’t believe the Blaines were leaving so early.

“Yeah,” Gord admitted. “We gotta go.”

“What’d I miss?” Shawna returned to her seat next to Max. She was surprised.

Gord exited the living room followed by the hosts.

“What happened?,” Shawna begged.

“Maybe we should go too,” Max suggested.

Dhalli was just thinking the same thing. “Yeah, we should go.”

“Will someone please tell me what I missed!?”

Max and Dhalli looked at each other. Uh-uh.

“I’ll tell you on the way home.” Max helped his wife up from the love seat.

The party was over. It was the Thought Furniture.

* * *

Ross and Martina stepped out onto the driveway as the Blaines were leaving. The warm summer night air smelled sweet and clean. “Drive safely,” Ross said; he added, “you’re not drunk, are you?” “No. One tends to sober up pretty quick when losing an eye. Hey, great party, man. I had a blast.”

“Yeah...I’m sure you did.”

As the car started, Martina smiled and waved to Sandy in the car. Behind the Jaguar’s glass windshield, Sandy sobbed miserably. Slipping under the streetlight, Martina caught a glimpse of Sandy through the window of the Jag. She looked cold and withdrawn. It was the last time Martina and Ross ever saw Sandy Whatever-her-maiden-name-was.

“Hey, what’s up with this?” Martina said as she and Ross turned back to see their remaining guests come out. “Oh, you’re not leaving too. All of you?”

“Yeah,” Dhalli’s voice chortled. “I’m sorry...dinner was great. Fantastic. But...we should go.”

“Are you serious? Its only ten o’clock!”

“I know,” Dhalli continued, “I know. I’m sorry. Look, its just...this furniture is way too much for one night. It gave me way too much to think about.” Dhalli nervously shook her head and slid into her Mustang.

“Aw, come on, don’t be tumbleweeds.” Martina seemed genuinely upset at the way things turned out. “Is it because of Sandy?”

“No,” Max lied. “Ross, Tina, dinner was wonderful. We gotta go.”

Ross flicked his cigarette butt onto his grass.

* * *

Martina was speechless and simply re-played the drama from the fat-boy. She analyzed it over and over, visualizing the whole scene in her heightened mind’s eye, sitting on the Thought Furniture.

“Thought Furniture is powered by nothing other than the energy from your brain and body,” said Ross in reflection. “It gets drunk. It gets hungry. It gets down. It gets deep inside your psyche.”

Martina put her drink down. “I’m going to bed. I have a huge headache.”

“Yeah, go ahead. I think I’ll just sit here for a while.”

Martina gave her husband a kiss. “I’ll see you later,” she said and went to bed.

Ross lifted his pack of smokes from the table and pulled a funny looking one from it. He was alone, sitting on the most sophisticated and technologically advanced piece of Thought Furniture ever created. He had created the next wave of Electropsychtrotic Interface using his own ottoman as the command station prototype.

Ross lit up. He smiled and then chuckled. He chuckled and then laughed. He laughed so hard he could only manage to stop long enough to inhale and cough. Power Operated Thought furniture. Ross roared and just could not stop himself as the ottoman introduced him to his core being.

The Thought Furniture ottoman was way ahead of its time.

WHERE SPIDERS WALK

“Jacob! Hurry up!”

Caught in the web, the fly struggled. Jacob put it there to watch it squirm and die. The spider ran from its web cave and made several attacks, three quick ones and then the kill. The fly became food. Jacob watched intensely.

“Jacob!”

The boy turned and ran to the Cherokee. “Where’s Snoop?”

Just then the dog barked and leapt into the open back door of the Jeep.

“Right on, Snoop!,” Jacob shouted and followed his dog into the back seat.

“Jacob, you weren’t playing with those bugs again, were you? You know I hate it when you play with those things.”

Jacob’s mom put Trish into the passenger seat by her side. Barbara didn’t want Jacob to play with her in the back seat unattended. Jacob was likely to be too aggressive or something. Jacob was otherwise autistic in only one respect. He often drifted into a private abyss and he would remain there in a state of catatonic fusion with whatever had a hold of him for episodes and episodes of time.

“No,” said Jacob.

“You didn’t bring any with you, did you? We can’t take bugs with us on the plane.” Barbara finished securing the baby’s seat in place and shut the door. She opened the back door and made sure Jacob was buckled. “Good, boy! You buckled up. Mama’s going to buy you a treat when we get to the airport.” Barb kissed Jacob. “No bugs, right?”

“Right!”

Barbara closed the door and gave the house one final look.

“I’m gonna miss you,” she whispered to her big friend.

She walked around to her side of the vehicle and Sean Osbourne waved from across the street.

“Good bye, Mrs. Lake. Maybe Dad will bring us to Canada to see you.”

“I hope so, Sean. I miss everybody already.”

“Don’t worry, Dad’ll get rich like you guys and we’ll all move to Canada. In cond-igloo-miniums!”

Barbara smiled and cried a little under her sunglasses. She wrapped a scarf around her hair after she sat in the hardtop Jeep. “Well, children, say goodbye to the old neighbourhood.”

“Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!” Jacob was being silly.

The car phone rang and Barbara answered it. “Hello...Hold on...Jacob! Enough goodbyes.”

Jacob was silenced. He saw a white spider crawl up from the darkness underneath the passenger seat. It crawled it’s slow, deliberate prance and disappeared around the corner of his sister’s seat. He went into one of his episodes.

* * *

“Sorry, honey, what was that?”

Over the telephone Martin Lake sounded pumped and agitated. “You’ll never guess what happened, honey.”

“What is it?,” Barbara turned on the motor.

“That’s not the sound of the Jeep being started is it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“No, Jesus! Shit.” Martin sounded a bit flustered. “They changed the flight schedule due to an expected storm system coming in. They moved it ahead one hour.”

"Ahead one hour? Who ever heard of that?”

“They were going to cancel the flight, but someone has an organ that some baby needs in Canada. There’s a plane waiting for it in New York right now.”

“An organ?” Barbara put the transmission into neutral and rolled past the SOLD sign on the lawn and onto the road.

“Yeah. A heart, or a kidney, whatever it is. Rumour has it the Airline is doing this out of good will. Our flight will be rescheduled for sometime after the storm system moves through. They will, however, honour anyone’s ticket if they are there on time for this emergency flight.”

“Yeah, so? I got two hours. That’s plenty of time.”

“Not if this storm system hits.”

“It won’t hit us. Weather watch says the storms will keep to the east of the valley. I’ll make it.”

“I hope so,” said Martin, “Hey, put it on speaker phone, I want to say hi to the kids.”

Barb switched the phone to speaker mode and snapped the unit into its cradle.

“Hi, Jake! What’s shaking, son?”

Jacob was distant and unaware.

Barb looked into her rear view mirror and recognized Jacob’s vacant stare. “He’s having one of those things again.”

“Is he safe?,” Martin asked from Coldorado State Airport.

“He’s buckled in. He’s fine. Why does he do that?”

“He’ll grow out of it. How’s Trish?”

“Sleeping. Its getting worse. More and more frequent. What if he doesn’t snap out if it one day?”

“Don’t be silly, he’s a young sage. He needs to start focusing.”

“Whatever.”

* * *

Different doctors had different theories. Some believed it was neurological, some believed it was mental. Dr. Werth, doctor of psychiatry, believed that Jacob’s condition is the result of a severe emotional disturbance that Jacob experienced as an infant. The baby was attacked by wild dogs roaming their residential neighbourhood. Sniffed out, mauled toward near death, saved by the grace of God. One of the canines punctured the child’s seortic vessel. This all happened in a matter of seconds when Barb went to retrieve her phone. By the time Barb returned to the back yard, Jacob’s diaper was drenched in blood.

“I think he has a subconscious fixation on death,” Dr. Werth proposed. Dr. Werth was far reaching and a quack; however, he had the reputation of being excellent in the field. “Specifically, I think Jacob contemplates being something’s food. He imagines being devoured and consumed. Post tramatic stress and disassociative disorder.” The doctor extended his arm (offering a file on Jacob Lake) to Barbara.

Barbara slapped the reports toward the ceiling and the pages fell everywhere, scattered on the floor. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing from Dr. Werth. “A medical professional giving us this kind of bullshit. What...are you crazy?”

“Calm down, honey,” Martin tried to keep Barb from going outright ballistic.

“No! He can’t be! There’s no way in hell he could possibly be re-living that horror every time he switches off! Never!”

“There are no signs of stress or fear, doctor,” Martin challenged.

“No,” Dr. Werth acknowledged, “but your son’s physical responses are shut down altogether. He doesn’t respond to his name, he won’t acknowledge physical stimulus, he doesn’t hear, or smell, or taste, or feel, or see. He, for all intensive purposes, is comatose.”

“So where the hell do you get ’he thinks he’s something’s food?′ Explain that Dr. Werth.” Barb was wiping off her tears from her face.

“Mrs. Lake, there have been similar cases recorded in the past. They document essentially the same experience your son had. The psychological phenomenon is not something new, it has to do with the fear of being eaten or consumed. A phobia. The fear originates in infancy. There are similar traits in people who have experienced living through a fire or those nearly drowned. Your son has developed a coping mechanism known as Disassociation: A relatively new term for an old way of looking at things. He acknowledges his mortality and then realizes his mortality is insignificant. His sensory perception shuts down temporarily while recorded brain impulses register acute mental activity. His pattern of brain activity corresponds with people having full blown psychotic episodes, as dramatic and as traumatic as night terrors or pavor nocturnus. Believe me, Mrs. Lake, I’m not trying to hurt you. This is difficult for me too.”

The Lake’s took their son home and did not have to worry about it for a year. Then one day, while having, A Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night, read to him, and seeing the pictures of the chicken bones and scattered feathers in the den of dogs, it dawned on Jacob. He was food for the gods. And his intermittent comas returned.

* * *

“Listen, don’t worry. Maybe the Canadian doctors have different ideas.”

Looking at her son through her rear view mirror, she said, “Yeah. I hope so.”

“Okay, listen. I’ll meet you at Stapleton. Barry is supposed to meet us there and he’ll take care of the Cherokee for us. Dine and dash, baby.”

“Honey, you’re going to break that stupid tradition of yours this year, aren’t you?”

“Too late.”

“No, not the black with patches. I loved that jacket.”

“Sorry, honey. And the tie went too, this time.”

“Damn you, Martin Lake.”

“Aw, how sweet. See you in an hour.”

“Goodbye.” Barb reached down and hit the End button on the phone call. “Jacob, are you okay, love?”

There was no response.

Barb turned on the radio. The weather watch reported the storm hitting the eastern range, hard. Power lines were down. Reports of rare tornado activity, both foreign and intimidating in the valley, generated some newsworthy sensation. Barb noticed clouds were moving in from the east.

* * *

On Route 94, Barb encountered a Colorado State Trooper setting up a road block. He was blocking her avenue to the airport. Highway 69.

Barbara put on her left indicator light and signalled her intentions to turn onto the highway. The State Trooper held out one palm and motioned her to keep moving with his other hand. Barbara turned her vehicle onto the roadway regardless. She stopped and rolled her window down.

“Mam, this road is closed. There is no access due to flood warnings. Go back and follow through to the main way bridge.”

“Don’t worry,” Barb said. “That’s in the next region.

You know, I have a flight to catch. We’ll be fine.”

“No, mam. No access. This is an official detour. There’s water coming down those mountains. The road is a wash out.”

“Sure, maybe later. I got one hour; half an hour to make it to the basin. The rain won’t pose a danger to the road for at least another hour. It isn’t even raining yet.”

The Trooper was getting short with Barb. “Mam, the rain is falling like buckets exactly fourteen miles that way.” He pointed to the black clouds moving around the mountain range, toward them. “Now, I’m telling you this road is now closed. I’m sorry, but I need to look after the safety of everyone.” He directed her eyes to the baby and then the boy. The boy attracted his attention. “What’s eating him?”

“I need to get him to the airport. He’s going to see a psychologist. He has catatonic episodes. He thinks he’s going to die.”

“Who can blame him? I would too if you thought about driving me through Hungry Hollow right about now. I say, turn around and go back wherest you came or keep moving along 94. I’m going to have to issue a ticket to you if this keeps up much longer. This isn’t the only thing on my list of things to do, you know.”

Barb was enraged. She turned the vehicle around and went back toward the diner, cursing and swearing. She wheeled into the first gas station she came to. Emma’s Dine and Gas.

“Fill her up, god damn it!,” she shouted at the attendant. It woke Trish and jostled her into a loud cry. A headache was calculating the strength of its assault behind Barb’s eyebrows. She rubbed her temples with one hand and used her free hand to give Trish a soother. “I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry I startled you.”

Meanwhile, Jacob was sitting back in his seat and dry swallowing. He was pale and sweaty. He folded his hands on his lap.

“Jacob, are you okay?” Barb caught the movement of his head in the rear view mirror.

“I’m thirsty.”

When the attendant arrived at the window for payment, Barb gave him her credit card and asked if she could also get an apple juice and an ice tea. No problem. His name tag read, “Billy.”

“Here you go, mam,” said Billy. The attendant gave her the items she wanted and a Visa statement for her to sign. He made small talk. “Watch your driving tonight, mam, storms are coming.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Barb handed him his stuff and dispatched him by closing the window. She opened the apple juice and handed it to Jake. She started her engine and pulled to the road.

The baby cried and cried. After a while, she felt Trish’s forehead. Earlier suspicions that Trish was getting a fever were confirmed by the way the baby was crying and how hot she felt. Now she was determined to make it to the airport.

What’s eating him?, the cop had asked.

“Well, you know what, Jacob? That didn’t look like no heavy road block. I think I can move it.” She lunged the Jeep forward and turned left. “I don’t think Mr. State Trooper will still be there. Do You?”

* * *

She was, in fact, correct and Officer Lauzon was not stationed on Route 94 and Highway 69. There was a huge orange detour sign and a wooden horse blocking the road. A sign in front said, “ROAD CLOSED.” Barbara turned onto the road and stopped her vehicle.

“Wait here one second, Jacob.” She left the Cherokee and went out to move the wooden horse over enough for her to drive through. While she was there, she tipped the detour sign by accident. “Oh well, blame it on the wind and rain.”

She simply made sure there weren’t any nails sticking out of it. She would drive over it. Barb returned to her car and she did. She was on her way. It wasn’t until she had been driving ten minutes that she finally felt comfortable with the whole idea. She wasn’t being chased. The weather was a little grey, not bad. Not even raining yet.

“I’m one fifth of the way over,” she said out loud.

“What?,” Jacob inquired.

“We got an hour to get to the other side of this valley.”

Trish finally fell asleep, exhausted from crying. Her fever was high.

* * *

The rain came sooner than expected. It came in droves of cats and dogs. Barbara was a little concerned. There was more to her fear than simply the anxiety of driving in shit. She hadn’t seen another car whatsoever since she got on the road. Once she passed the rocky plateau and started heading down into Hungry Hollow, private residences were scarce. They disappeared altogether when the road started to wind and snake deep toward the valley basin. The drive through the forested terrain was stressful even without hazardous road conditions. Today they were treacherous.

The thunder and the lightning ended before Trish had another chance to wake up. Then the weather cleared. Not cleared, but the driving rain stopped. The sky was lighter and the storm was more of a droning shower than something to worry about. Barbara was relieved. Was that the sun trying to peek through the clouds? The white spider was crawling on the baby’s face. It slowly creeped over from the other side of her head and onto her face. Barb noticed it and screamed.

“A SPIDER!” She jarred the steering wheel accidentally in response to being startled. By the time she finished sweeping the spider from her sleeping baby’s eyes, the 1998 Jeep Cherokee was well on a path of destruction.

* * *

It swerved toward the edge of the road and the wheels touched the soft shoulder at 80 MPH. Barbara slammed on her brake pedal and the road conditions introduced her to the guard rail. The steel cable guard rail didn’t prevent her vehicle from crashing over the edge of an embankment into the woods. The Cherokee went through it. It side swiped a tree and flipped end over end. The turbulent dance of glass, confusion and horror took the Lakes on a trip to the edge of their existence. The ordeal ended when a tree stopped their momentum.

At the top of Hungry Hollow, a responsible driver took heed of the detour and drove past the wooden horse and the toppled sign.

* * *

Ditched, Barb tried to think. She was disoriented and hurt. Her legs were pinned under the steering wheel. Beyond her hips, she could feel nothing. All she could see was bent metal and a red tide coming from her lap. She reached her hand out and turned toward Trish. Trish was wailing. The baby chair had miraculously ended up facing Barb and was within her reach. Even more miraculously was the fact that Trish did not look bloody or hurt. Barb tilted her head back to check the rear. She started screaming.

There was no back.

“JACOB! JACOB!”

The back half of the Jeep was torn away. The back seat was twisted. Jacob was gone.

* * *

“The baby is sick,” Barb said aloud to hear her own voice and to keep herself from drifting into unconsciousness. The baby’s bottle was lost somewhere in the wreckage. It was a bad scene.

Barb tried to push herself away from the steering wheel and fiery bolts of pain were volleyed from her hips. “Its okay, Trish. Shh. Sh.” Barb tilted her head toward the woods. “Jacob! Can you hear me, Jacob? I’m here. I’m here, baby. Mommy’s right here.”

There was no response. The only sound was rain on foliage. A cardinal shrieked as well.

Jacob was not far from the vehicle. He was face down on the ground, arms extended perfectly straight above his head from his roll. He was thrown from the Jeep. Now he was unconscious. Out like a light covered in shit. He didn’t hear his mother calling out to him at all. He didn’t see, or smell, or taste, or know. In his own mind, Jacob was neither food nor ’fraid. He was...

Nothing.

Thunder scored the terror. Trish felt too warm. Hot on the forehead. Her temperature was at least one hundred. No thermometer. The power of positive thinking. Barb thought about the phone, but it had went Jacob’s way. Gone. It wasn’t anywhere in her range of vision. She tried again to free herself and thought she was going to pass out. She couldn’t afford that. Trish was sick and needed help. Jacob was gone.

She reached down to the radio dial and found she could touch it. She turned it on. Her headache was now a migraine.

“...severe flooding forecast. Flood waters expected to reach record levels...severe weather watch still in effect...Highway 33 and 69 have been closed...,” the news station reported. “Again, severe flood watch for the Hungry Hollow and South Pike tributary regions.”

Barbara started to hyper-ventilate and panic. Her lightheadedness grabbed her and tried to lead her across the street to the other side. She knew she was seriously immobile, perhaps permanently paralysed. Incapacitated. Her daughter was running a fever. Her son was gone. “JACOB!”

A flood was coming. Barb did an unforgivable thing: She passed out.

* * *

Jacob wasn’t too hurt. He lifted himself through a blanket of darkness. His left cheek was on the ground, covered in wet soil. His nose was bloody. The grass and dirt obstructed his view. He did not want to move. He thought about speaking. Something was wrong with his legs. The rain was tapping his body everywhere but his legs. In the dirt under his nose, he thought he saw a tooth.

The thunder and the rain was picking up again. The showers shooshed the trees. A spider crawled on the ground near Jacob’s head. He watched it. He heard the dropping of raindrops all around him. Then he heard the sound of something travelling through the woods, approaching. The fox stopped and sniffed the air. It could see something laying on the ground. It lowered its head and moved closer. It was hungry.

Jacob knew it was an animal of some sort. He listened as it approached. Heard a soft growl. The footsteps came around. In the distance, Trish was wailing and a radio was on. Jacob remained coherent and recognized his surroundings. The fox came into view, testing the grounds, cunning. It wanted food. Jacob didn’t have to go into one of his abysmal episodes to recall the childhood horror, he was re-living it. The fox moved in to taste the first meal it had in days.

* * *

State Trooper Lauzon received a radio message that the detour sign had blown over. He decided to go do something about that. He called out to the Public Works Department and told them he would require a couple of bags of sand. From there he would go to Highway 69 and secure detour sign. Lightening flashed. Darkness was approaching.

* * *

Martin looked at a clock and was starting to get worried. He had already received a phone call from Barry.

“I haven’t seen her. Aren’t you guys cutting it close?”

“Yeah. Shit, the flight is in less than an hour.”

“Can you call her? See where she’s at?”

“Good idea, Barry. I’ll call her right now. Call back in fifteen minutes if you don’t see her. I’ll have the scoop as to why she’s late.” Martin ended the call. He immediately punched in the car phone number and pressed Send. The phone rang and rang and...

* * *

rang.

The car phone was ringing. The wild dog suddenly stopped and perked it’s ears. It sniffed at the air. It had one paw on Jacob’s wrist. Jacob was dumbfounded with terror. He saw the dog lick it’s chops, long tongue immune to the thin pointy teeth. Then the dog lifted its head high into the air, alert. A moment later it swiftly dashed off. Something frightened it away.

Trish was crying and the radio was on, perhaps it was the noise of the car phone ringing. The dog sensed danger. The news on Weather Watch reported, “...occurring in washout conditions along the Pike and Highway 69...Severe weather warning in effect...tornados reported in...”

* * *

Barbara was lifted out of her unconscious rest by the sound of the car phone ringing. “Here. We’re here,” she mumbled. She tried to lift up and she screamed. The pain in her hips and legs ballooned. Trish was awakened by her mother’s scream. The phone rang and rang.

“God damn it!,” she screamed. Lightening crashed and thunder rolled in, a sign of His disapproval. The rain was heavy now. The storm had hit. Barb tried to comfort Trish as best she could.

Her thoughts kept returning to Jacob who was probably dead.

“Jacob! Jacob, it’s mommy! I’m here, but I can’t move. Mommy’s hurt. Can you hear me, Jacob?”

There was water starting to run a course around Jacob’s body as he lay on the ground. It was cold and dirty. He tried to move and he found that he could. Slowly. He could hardly feel his legs but they worked. They were tingling. He was able to stand up and walk. He walked over to the upturned Jeep and peered in. “Mom?”

She turned her head. “Jacob! Are you okay? Jacob, thank You, God!” She reached out and touched him. Her bloodied face frightened the boy. “Jacob, you have to find the phone. Hear it ringing? We need to get help.”

Jacob understood. “Okay, Mom.” He started to scour the area. “Keep talking to me, Jacob. I want to hear your voice. Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Do you hear the phone? Do you see it anywhere?”

“No.” He found Trish’s bottle and returned it to his mother.

“You found the bottle, good job, Jake! Good job, son. Can you find the phone now? Please find it.”

“I’ll try.” He ventured forth again. The trees were dark, wet and earthy.

Barbara gave Trish her bottle and she quieted down. Suddenly the phone stopped ringing. The rain laughed loudly and the white spider crawled imperiously down the steering column.

* * *

Martin stopped trying and waited for Barry to call. When the call came, Martin became worried.

“Martin, its Barry. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “They aren’t answering the phone. Any sign of them?”

“No. What route was she travelling?” Barry was calling from a pay phone in a parking lot.

“Highway 69.”

“What!?” Barry sounded dire. “Haven’t you been listening to the news. The road is closed. They’re expecting the valley tributary routes to flood out in a few hours. Maybe less than that.”

Martin felt a chilly in his willy. It travelled up his spine.

* * *

State Trooper Lauzon arrived at the intersection of Highway 69 and Route 94. The report was correct, the detour sign was, in fact, tipped over and it looked as if the wooden horse had been shifted as well. He wondered if someone had moved it, someone who had disregarded the warning and decided to use the route. He settled to think the dilapidated detour warning may have been collapsed by the wind. It was safer and more plausible. People generally stayed home in weather like this. Then he remembered the woman in the Jeep Cherokee.

He stepped out into the driving rain and lifted two heavy sand bags from his trunk. He lifted the sign up and straightened out the wooden horse. The wind decided to demonstrate support for a wind theory. The detour sign fell over once again. Officer Lauzon could see how the base of the detour sign might have shifted the road block. He lifted the sign up again and dropped a heavy sand bag onto its base support platform. He dropped a second bag of sand on the base.

“There, that ought to do it.” By the time Lauzon returned to his car he was drenched. He dispatched a message out to the station telling them he fixed the road block and would monitor it for a little while. “Any other calls?,” he asked the Dispatch Officer.

“Negative. Keep our fingers crossed with this weather.”

“10-4.”

Lauzon felt damp and cold. He decided to fire up the heat and take a trip to Emma’s Dine and Gas for a hot coffee.

He would return to check on the sign and block Highway 69 with flashing red lights and a police cruiser. But first, coffee break.

* * *

Martin tried calling the Jeep repeatedly. No answer. “COME ON!” He squeezed the cellular phone in his hand. “ANSWER!” He let it ring and ring while he thought about what he was going to do. The first thing he did was go to the garbage can where he had thrown away his jacket and tie. It was a tradition he revelled in each year when they went on vacation. He would leave work and go directly to the airport where he would dash the jacket he had worn to work that day into the trash. It symbolized freedom. It stood for no inhibitions. It represented his total dedication to having the best time of his life while on his vacation. This time he was feeling chilled and exposed.

He left the tie in the garbage. There was spilled coffee on it. The jacket had coffee and some mayonnaise on it, otherwise clean. He looked around when he was rooting it out from the garbage container. An older woman was watching him. He stared her down and continued to listen to the dull drone of the telephone ringing.

“Come on, answer, damn it.”

* * *

Officer Lauzon pulled into Emma’s Dine and Gas and decided to fill up the tank. Billy attended to him.

“Hey, Bill. How’s it going?”

“Oh, its going pretty good, Officer Lauzon. Great in fact.”

“That’s excellent, Billy. You’re making a lot of people proud.”

Billy was a Y.O. He went through the MST Program out of South Carolina and has managed to stay himself out of custody. “Thanks,” Billy said, “Hell of a night, right?”

“No trouble so far. Say, Bill, hear anyone talking about using Highway 69 tonight?”

Billy entered the nozzle into the gas hole and did his job. “No. Not too many people been by since the rain started. Mostly people heading down. Last person that stopped here on their way up the mountain was this blonde lady and her two kids. Around four o’clock.”

Blonde lady?, Lauzon thought. He asked, “Was she driving a Jeep?”

“Cherokee.”

Officer Lauzon gave Billy a stern glare. “Did she say what route she was using?”

“No,” Billy said. “She was something pissed off, though. Its no wonder, her baby was crying like hell.”

The State Trooper exited the cruiser and went in to get three hot coffees. He had a feeling it was going to be a long, bad night. On his way back to the cruiser he stopped by the booth and handed Billy one of the cups. “Here’s a coffee. Fucking shitty out. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll be back tomorrow to pay for the gas.”

“Its that lady, isn’t it?” Billy asked. “She used Highway 69.”

“I hope not,” Lauzon stated. He got into his cruiser and turned the flashing lights on. On his way back to the road block he convinced himself that the woman with the little baby and the catatonic boy in the back seat couldn’t have been stupid enough to disregard the road block.

I need to make it to the airport.

Lauzon radioed the other side of the Hollow. He had a few questions.

* * *

The forest ground was soft and cold. Small rivulets of running water were trickling and pooling into puddles. Jacob followed the swath of destruction that the tumbling Cherokee had left. The rain was heavy and it interfered with his hearing. He was listening hard for the phone ringing. He thought perhaps it stopped ringing. He thought perhaps it was in a pool of water. But he listened hard for it anyway. In some deep, dark way, he knew he had to.

It was another small miracle. He had walked past the phone and then he heard it ringing over his shoulder. He stopped and listened, he tracked it into a bush. He plucked it from the bush and revelled in the green glow of the display window. He tucked it under his shirt to prevent it from getting any more wet than it was. The telephone continued to ring. Jacob sloshed in a trickling, shallow river as he headed to the Jeep.

“You’re back. Jacob.”

His mother sounded weak and cold. The trickling water was leaking into the Jeep and pooling around her shoulders. Jacob peered past his mother at his sister. Trish was wailing. Without saying a word he handed his mother the phone. It stopped ringing in her hands. Jacob reached in and pulled his blanket from the twisted back seat wreckage. He went over to the passenger’s side of the Jeep and pulled his sister toward him as far as the car seat would come. Then he laid out his blanket and pulled Trish onto it. She was still screaming. Jacob wrapped her up and pulled the baby out of the wreck.

Barbara was mesmerized. “Good boy, Jacob. Keep her comforted and dry. Hold her.”

Barb dialled 9-1-1 and tried to Send. The signal turned into static when lightning crashed nearby. She looked up at Jacob who had returned to her broken window. Jacob looked too young for this and he was worried. “You are my brave hero, Jacob. You know that?”

Water trickled down his face and he couldn’t wipe it. His arms were full. Barb tried 9-1-1 again. The signal was dead.

* * *

Martin tried again. He had no choice. He was relieved to see Barry walking along the corridor. He was in a state close to panic. He had called the Colorado Highway Patrol and they took all the necessary information. He received confirmation that Highway 69 was closed.

“What are the present conditions of that road?,” Martin asked.

"Right now, its hard to say how bad it is. The Pike is washed out. Highway 69 is well on its way to the same.”

Martin started to nervously pace away from Barry. “Are both sides of the Highway blocked?,” he hissed at the State Trooper via phone.

"Yes.”

“Can you phone over and see if a white 1998 Jeep Cherokee made it over to Campdom. It would have been around five this evening.”

"The road was closed at four o’clock, Mr. Lake.”

“Was there an Officer stationed at the Highway?”

"No, not all night. We haven’t got the manpower.”

“We got a problem here,” Martin said. He turned to Barry who held out his hands in what’s-going-on? fashion. Martin was oblivious to Barry. “My wife is on that road,” he told the cop.

* * *

The phone rang in Barb’s hands. Her prayer was answered. She knew with all of her heart that it would be answered. She pushed Send. “Help,” she said. Not, “Hello,” and not “Hi.”

"Help us, please."

Martin felt the fear of God grip him. ”Barb?"

“Martin, help us. We are in an accident.” Barb slowly started to cry. “I can’t move. The baby’s sick. Jacob is going to take her. I have to send him alone. Martin, I have to send them away.”

"Wait a minute, where are you?"

“Hungry Hollow. I have to send them. There’s water coming. There’s a flood coming.”

Martin was desperate for answers. ”Why are you sending them? Where exactly are you?"

Jacob heard his mother. He heard what she wanted him to do. She wanted him to take the baby away because the river was growing. The river all around them. Barb looked at him. They exchanged a long, silent gaze. Barb almost thought that Jacob switched into one of his episodes. Instead, he turned and started walking off toward the road before it got too dark.

"Barbara! Are you there?!”

“I’m here, Martin.” She watched her brave hero walk into the tempest.

* * *

Officer Lauzon was receiving a radio message as he sipped his hot coffee: ”2-4-2-9.”

“Highway 69 junction,” Lauzon responded to the code. “Blocking the road.”

"We have a reported missing person, white female and two kids in a 1998 Jeep Cherokee Special.”

Lauzon placed his coffee down. “Affirmative identification on that vehicle. Personalised license plate I-L-U-V-2-B.”

"That’s the one,” Constable Churn said over the radio. ”Husband seems to think she used that road around five tonight. Any chance of that?"

“There’s a chance she did. The road block was tampered with but it looked more like the result of this weather. It may have been her that actually moved it. She tried to get past me earlier and wasn’t successful. I’ll go check it out. Over.” Ted Lauzon dialled the phone number on his paper coffee cup.

"Emma’s Dine and Gas, Susan here."

The voice sounded hardly old enough to be responsible. “Hello, this is Officer Lauzon of the Colorado State Highway Patrol. Will you put Billy on the line?”

"Mom!,” said the withdrawing voice on the phone, ”Billy is in trouble again!”

When Billy finally got on the phone Lauzon asked him, “What time did the woman in the Jeep leave your gas station.”

"Hold on, Officer Lauzon. I’ll check the register record.”

Lauzon gulped his coffee down and removed the lid on his second cup.

When Billy returned to the phone he said, ”I got it here. It was exactly 4:45pm.”

“Thank you, Billy.” Officer Lauzon hung up the phone and stepped into the rain. He moved the wooden horse over and returned to the cruiser. His tires hydroplaned when he started past the road block and into Hungry Hollow.

* * *

"Keep talking, Barb. Please keep talking.” Martin was beside himself with worry.

“I’m pinned to the Jeep. It’s written off. I’m hurt bad, Martin. I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

"YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT! Don’t say that. How are the children?”

“Fine,” Barb whimpered.

“Where are they?”

“It’s all my fault. I ignored the road block. There was a spider on Trish’s face. You know how I feel about spiders, don’t you, Martin? I’m so sorry.”

"Barb, where are the children?”

Barbara was starting to shiver as cold running water soaked her back and chilled her bones. “I love you, Martin. No matter what happens.”

"Barbara, where are the children?” Martin looked to Barry for support. Barry was in grave, dire suspense.

“Jake has Trish,” Barb croaked. “He’s taking her to the road. She has a fever.”

"You sent Jacob out into a storm on his own with the baby!?”

“The water is rising. Its raining hard. I think both my legs a broken.”

"Oh my God.” Barry watched as Martin’s complexion went pale. ”Are you safe from the flood waters?”

There was a moment of silence. A pause that made Martin mad with fear and worry. His wife responded, “Call the Highway Patrol.”

Martin’s mind was taking flight. ”Okay, listen. I’m going to call the police and I’m on my way. I’m going to call you right back. Okay?”

“Yes. I love you.”

"I love you. I’ll be right back.”

Martin ended the call and immediately dialled 9-1-1.

“What’s going on?,” Barry asked, curious as hell.

“There was an accident. Jesus, Barb is pinned to the Jeep in Hungry Hollow.”

“The Hollow? That road is closed.” Barry’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Jacob has Trish. He’s making his way alone to the road.” Martin’s hands were shaky. “Barb is pinned to the Jeep.”

“Let’s go, man,” Barry insisted. “Let’s go.” He started to rush out of the airport.

Martin dialled on the run. He explained the situation thoroughly to the Police on the line. Fire, Ambulance, and Police were alerted immediately. He hung up and dialled the car phone. There was no answer. At the scene of the accident, Barbara had passed out. Her hair was waving in the swirling waters around her. The white spider crawled across Barb’s lips, indifferent.

* * *

Jacob carried Trish through the path of destruction the Cherokee had left. He went past the bush where he had retrieved the phone earlier and he no longer recognized it. Everything looked the same. He went past it. It was hard work. The baby was asleep or unconscious. Jacob sneezed and blessed himself.

At the top of the slope, gravel turned to asphalt. The slick, black road appeared and disappeared up into dark, grey clouds.

Hungry Hollow, Jacob thought.

The thought didn’t bother him anymore, of being food for the gods. He had found a hunger for the road. His baby sister was getting real heavy. He started walking back the way they came. Night was coming.

“Night is coming fast...,” Jacob whispered to himself.

Jacob was starting to feel drained. He drifted into the middle of the road and followed the pale line. He returned to walking on the shoulder, thinking he might get run over if he didn’t. “Mom will be proud of me,” he said wearily.

Help arrived after a bleak walk up hill.

* * *

Officer Lauzon flashed his siren on. Red, white and blue flashes of light danced in the water. Lauzon had just received confirmation of the accident over the radio. “Get the diver team over with tanks. Alert the Fire Department to get their winch ready with a line from here to fucking Kalamazoo...” He was going to be the first on scene. He put the vehicle into neutral and braked through the windy, mountain road to control his speed and ensure he didn’t fly into the trees. A racoon dared and was crushed under the wheels of the car. “And get me an ambulance from both sides of the Hollow down here right away. Stand by. Over.”

"10-4."

Lauzon couldn’t believe his eyes. A boy in shorts was carrying a bundle up the road.

The baby..., Ted thought, “and the boy.”

Jacob looked up at the approaching headlights and stopped walking. He watched the police car drive up beside him and come to a stop.

“My mom’s down there,” Jacob said even before Lauzon was out of his car. “My mom’s down there. My mom’s hurt, she can’t walk.”

“Whoa, slow down, son.” Officer picked the two children up and brought them into his car via the passenger seat. The kids were drenched. “Your mom is going to be fine. There’s lots of people coming.” Lauzon unlatched the trunk and scrambled to retrieve a blanket. He slipped into the driver’s seat and then tucked the blanket around both babies. He got on the horn.

“24-2-6 we have two victims requiring emergency medical attention. One boy, approximately six years old. One baby girl, perhaps ten months.” Ted reached over to feel Trish’s temperature. “The baby’s temperature is high. No obvious signs of trauma. Stand by. Over.”

"10-4."

Ted Lauzon looked at Jacob. “What is your name, son?”

“Jacob.”

“Jacob are you hurt anywhere?”

“No.”

“Is there any more people in the accident?”

“Just us.”

“What’s your mom’s name?”

“Barb.”

“Barb, huh?” Ted turned on the car heater for the kids. “How far down this road is your mother?”

“At the bottom, I think. Is Trish okay?”

“Yes. She’s just resting.” Lauzon reported to the Station: “Woman is hurt, likely pinned to the Jeep. Get the jaws out here. Stand by.” Lauzon turned his attention to the road. “Let’s go get your mom.”

Jacob strapped himself in and held onto his sister. The cop started going down the mountain with a baby and a boy in the front seat.

“You’re doing a good job with her, Jacob. You hold on to her and we’ll keep talking. I’ll keep driving. How long were you walking for? A long time?”

“Uh-hm.”

“Was there any water near your mom?”

“There was water coming down. There was a river starting.”

“There was, was there? How high was the water?”

“Up to my ankles. It was getting in the Jeep. It was getting mom wet but I got Trish out. I saw a fox.”

“You did? That’s strange, they usually stay away from people.”

“This one was going to eat me.”

Lauzon got on the radio again. “24-2-6.”

"Clear, 29.”

“Get us a crew down here. Get us a raft. Get us everything short of the FBI.”

"10-4.”

“I feel responsible for this mess... Over.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” The boy was looking at the Trooper.

Lauzon felt the cruiser hydroplane. He pressed on the brakes and the vehicle started to slide toward the swervy embankment.

“What about, son?”

“About the fox.”

Lauzon gained control of the vehicle and decided to slow it down. Road conditions were treacherous.

“Are you sure it wasn’t the big, bad wolf?” Ted afforded Jacob a quick smile.

“It was a fox.”

They approached some flooding over the roadway below. The dark river coursed a path over the asphalt’s basin like a snake crossing the highway in the spotlight beams. Off to the side, visual signs indicated that a vehicle had gone off the road.

Lauzon took his flashlight and shone the spot light into the basin. He turned his siren off and said over the megaphone, “HELP HAS ARRIVED. YOU’RE CHILDREN ARE FINE.” He looked at Jacob. “Jacob you have to stay here while I go see your mom. Promise to stay here and look after your sister. Help will be here shortly. Wait till you see the flashing lights, that means more help. The cavalry is coming.”

“I promise,” he said. As Ted was leaving he added, “Nothing was eating me.”

Ted stopped cold. “What, son?”

“You asked my mom, ‘What’s eating him?,’ when we saw you putting up those signs to block the road. Nothing was eating me. I just saw a spider and I was thinking about where spiders walk.”

“Where do they walk, Jacob?” This was to be the last question he asked before getting on with his job.

“To their death,” said the little boy.

* * *

Martin tried and tried his wife. He tried and re-tried and repeated that process over and over again and again and each fucking time he tried it was busy! busy!

“GOD DAMN BUSY!!! She’s not responding to my calls.”

Barry was doing his best to drive like hell in a rainstorm. It was foggy in some areas. The weather was a mixed bag of shit. “Try the police again.”

Martin nervously shook, almost unable to dial the phone number. He started to cry.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t. I should never have told her about the early flight.”

“It’s not your fault, man. Don’t be stupid.”

The telephone transmission connected.

“Tell me what’s happening with my wife and kids,” Martin cried into the phone.

The Highway Patrol Dispatcher was able to inform him that the children were reported found and uninjured. They were waiting for Ambulance.

Martin closed his eyes and thanked God. “What about my wife?”

"No report on your wife, Mr. Lake. You’re welcome to stay on the line until we hear anything further.”

“No, I’ll try my wife again. I’ll call back.”

"Where are you calling from---”

Martin ended the call and tried his wife again. BUSY! “She must not have pressed End after our call.” On the very next attempt he made at reaching her, an Operator voice message told him the caller he was trying to reach is out of the service area.

“The Jeep’s phone is cut out,” Martin informed Barry.

“Get on line with the cops again and stay there. They’ll have news soon enough.”

* * *

Officer Ted Lauzon listened as Emergency vehicle sirens creeped into earshot. He was half way down the gulley. His flashlight sent a glimmer reflecting off of some chrome on the bumper of the Jeep. As he trudged closer, he noticed the vehicle was upside-down in moving water. He scrambled even faster.

“I’m here! Help is here! Hang in there!”

He entered the murky waters flowing all around him and splashed up to the driver side window. He fell on his knees in the water and shined the flashlight in. Her face looked white and dark red from blood. He watched her lips move and the phone drop from her ear and face.

She’s alive. She was talking to someone, Ted thought.

“Are you there?,” he asked. The water was up to her ears. He reached in with his arms to check her throat for a pulse. He thought he felt one. That was good enough.

He flashed the light toward the floor of the Jeep. The steering wheel was bent over the woman’s legs. They looked unnatural.

Lauzon reached for his walkie-talkie and switched into frequency. He received prompt response.

“We need the jaws down here pronto about 20 yards off road,” he said. “We need a hydraulic jack and a flat board. The woman is alive. I repeat, vital signs present. Alive.” Lauzon took the phone from Barb’s hand and placed it into a vest pocket. He reached his hands into the Jeep to elevate Barbara’s head. The water was rising fast. He sent out another message---“We don’t have much time. By the time we get her free the water will be up to our necks, standing.”

The spider stopped motionless on the steering column.

* * *

The Ambulance arrived and Jacob tooted the police car phone. The Medics reacted quickly. One staff attended to the children. The other scrambled out the back of the Ambulance and pulled out a flat board and a very large medical case. He checked in on the children and found out they weren’t in critical condition, however, the baby’s temperature sent off some alarms. Following the Ambulance, a fire truck and a Police Rescue Team truck arrived.

“I’m going down,” said the Ambulance driver. His name was Carter.

“Okay, I’ll take care of these two. Check it out down there and then report back. I think there’s an Officer down there to assist you.”

“I got a radio,” said the Medic and converged with the darkness and the woods with a headlamp on.

* * *

"Mr. Lake, we have an emergency crew on hand dealing with the situation. We have confirmation on your children, they are fine.”

“Thank God.” Martin gasped.

"Would you like to speak with your son, Mr. Lake?"

Barry was also relieved and was better able to focus on his driving.

“I most certainly would.”

A tiny voice lost in static reached Martin’s ears. It was the best sound he had ever heard in his entire life.

"Dad.”

“Right here, son. I’m on my way to you right now.”

"Mom’s in the Jeep. They’re all running around to save her.”

“That’s wonderful, son. How is your baby sister?”

"I saved her, Dad. But she has a fever.”

“You saved her, Jake. She’s going to be fine. You’re a hero.”

"I wanna save Mom,” Jacob added.

“Hey, you did. I love you, Jake.”

"I love you.”

“Barry and I are coming to get you, okay? Jacob, can you put a police officer on?”

Jacob handed the phone to the Rescue Squad Leader. ”Lieutenant Rider here.”

“Lieutenant, my wife, how is she?”

Lieutenant Rider could not answer that. He was informed by radio communication that he better get his ass down to the scene and bring the scuba tanks with him.

* * *

Even before he first rescuer arrived, Barb’s heart stopped beating. Lauzon started Cardio-pulmonary Resuscitation, talking into the radio with every spare breath. He felt he was doing a job inadequate for life support, but he only had one hand to work with while his right hand kept Barb’s head above water. His radio was velcroed to his gun holster strap, “Get your asses down here, for Moho’s sake,” he blurted into the radio. He gave Barb another breath, sticking his head into the broken Jeep window. “The water is rising fast.

“Speedy Gonzales flood.” He gave another breath. With that, the first Paramedic arrived and assessed the situation. Officer Lauzon’s job was down-graded to that of keeping Barb’s head in air.

* * *

Martin’s phone beeped to tell him his power was dying. He thought he heard it earlier while he was running for Barry’s Ford pickup truck. He wasn’t concerned until now. The LED display flashed a message that the battery was low.

The Dispatch Officer could not explain why Lieutenant Rider hung up. He was getting flustered at Mr. Lake’s demands to re-connect the call to the accident scene.

"Look, Mr. Lake, they don’t exactly have time to give you a play by play. If you want media coverage, call the news. I suggest you don’t though.”

With that, Martin’s phone beeped and went dead.

* * *

Jacob was enthusiastic when talking to the paramedic. He was in the back of the Ambulance and had a hundred questions. After the first few he started talking instead of asking.

“There was a spider in the Jeep. That’s what got us in the accident.”

“A spider,” the Medic, John Walters, coughed. John Walters made time from attending to Trish to have a look at the abrasions on Jacob’s elbows. He held up four digits. “How many?”

“Four,” said Jacob.

“Good,” Walters said. The boy seemed fine. Alert and unhurt, the paramedic’s wish come true. As Walters cleaned the boy’s hurts, the thought of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder crossed his mind. “What kind of a spider?” He wanted to see if Jacob was coherent by returning to a previous remark he made.

Jacob did not respond. There was a vacant look in his eyes.

“Jacob, are you okay?”

* * *

The jaws were busy pushing away the steering column from Barb’s legs. There were two men on that. Two men were busy getting the scuba tanks ready. They would be useless if the Medic couldn’t restore the woman’s breathing. The Medic was more concerned with getting a heartbeat. He got both. Weak breathing and a weak heart beat.

“She’s back,” shouted the Medic. Thunder rumbled.

Lauzon watched as Barb’s eyes opened and blinked. They remained open and vacant. He had her head as far as he could take it. The water was circling her chin. “Hurry up, hurry up,” he pushed.

Two men worked the jaws of life. Two men on the victim. Two men standing by. There was a shift as metal gave way and the steering column moved. Barbara’s lips moved. Her eyes were vacantly looking up to the sky.

“Thank You,” she said.

“Get her one of those tanks!,” Lauzon commanded.

They moved fast.

* * *

Barry and Martin pulled up to the road block in Campdom. There were two sets of flashing lights and two cops. One in rain gear stepped out of her vehicle as soon as Barry pulled onto Highway 69. She flashed her light into Barry’s face.

“This road is closed.”

Martin stepped out of the vehicle and into the driving rain. That got the attention of the second cop who reacted by entering the storm. “My wife...my wife and kids are in an accident down there.”

“Step back into your vehicle, sir.”

“I can’t!”

Martin’s dirty jacket was getting soaked. He held out his arms with the phone in his hand and tossed it onto the gravel shoulder. “It doesn’t work...What’s happening down there? Please!”

* * *

The flat board was held up above the water by three of the rescuers while Lauzon and the paramedic hauled Barb from her Jeep. Barb was given some morphine to ease the pain. She was somewhat coherent. She had been breathing oxygen from a scuba tank.

“Who were you talking to, Mrs. Lake? When you had the phone.”

She was glassy eyed and limp. “Talking to God.” She looked up and saw the little, white spider crawling on the bent door frame. She abruptly reached up with her fingers and squished the insect into a mess.

Lauzon saw what she did and a chill went up his back. Lightning crashed and thunder followed. “Great,” Lauzon said to Barb, “now its gonna rain.”

They eased her out of the wreckage and laid her on the flat rescue board. Four men started carting the woman out of the river. * * *

“My babies. How are my babies?” Barb was, at least, functioning semi coherently in a conscious haze.

Lauzon said, “Your boy is fine. Your daughter is sick.”

“She’s going to live,” Barbara mumbled.

“Of course she is.”

Barbara watched the flashing lights in the trees. She saw falling stars. They were the water droplets catching the lights in cascading rain dances. The team reached the top of the hill when Lauzon was reporting to the Station via his portable radio. The dispatcher came on the radio and asked Officer Lauzon to switch to a different frequency for a minute. He requested a switch over to speak with police on the other side of the Hollow. ”We got an emotionally irrate husband who can’t get over to your side to see his wife and kids. You got her talking, right? Put her on if she is able.”

Lauzon switched the frequency and held the radio to Barb’s mouth. “It’s your husband.”

* * *

"Honey?"

Martin heard her voice and looked at Barry sitting next to him in the back seat of the Patrol cruiser. It was their first time in one without cuffs on.

“Barbara? Hello?” There was hiss. “Are you okay?”

"I am finer than fine. I talked to God, Martin. On the telephone.”

“What do you mean?”

"God. He talked to me. He’s here.”

“Barb, can I talk to the Officer?”

Lauzon came on the radio.

“Is she delirious?,” Martin asked.

Lauzon stated, ”I don’t know, but when I arrived at the scene of the accident, she was talking to someone on the cell phone. She has been given a sedative, she isn’t exactly coherent right now. Her legs are broken, but other than that she is fine. She survived. Everyone in your family survived. Its a miracle."

* * *

The family met in the back of the Ambulance through telecomm. The media had caught wind of the news. Jacob shrieked with joy when he saw his mother. She cried with overwhelming joy. Her face was bruised and her swelling showed when she smiled. Great for the ratings. Father cried with joy in back of the police cruiser. He had his brother Barry to share the joy with. They were on television sets across the nation. Lauzon removed his hat and scratched his head. He couldn’t get a smile off of his lips. People in the peripheral darkness and crew members in flashing lights were packing gear away and feeling good. All of it in the eyes of the camera and on the news channels.

* * *

Grader Form slammed his hunting knife blade into his coffee table. He watched the news from a shitty t.v. and was exceptionally pissed that his story didn’t make the news while flood survivors made the news. He peeled some dead skin from the back of a new black spider tattoo on his arm. His next murder, he decided, would be a lu-lu.

THE POCKET DRAGONS

Finally, the day arrived.

It was that time of year when the early morning mist rose above the lake and crept into the wilderness. There, trees and angry mosquitoes flourished. The northern loons called out to each other and to their solitude, gently preening, occasionally lifting to consider the stillness of the woods. The trees, standing perfectly still, were defined by their leaves hanging limply, unbrushed by any strength of air. Paradise echoed in surrounding shades of green and earthly browns, in the rich leafy soil and the cool, dew-covered vegetation. Yet, within its depth and texture, an unknown haven shelters them.

Andrew was awakened by a nightmare. Something giant was in the woods. Something giant in the sense that it was unthinkable because in his sleep this juggernaut was a thing he had not seen; it was something he felt. His heart pounded and for a moment he couldn’t breath, wouldn’t breath, he didn’t dare breath for fear that he would be detected. A mega-force had been searching through the forest on a thirsty hunt, tearing through it frantically the way a desperate thief would go tearing through a house.

The foreboding grip of the giant was the terror of the dream. The giant itself, (what Andrew imagined as a beast whose thick hurly-burly hair and terrible rolling, yellow eyes could be seen poking over the tree tops from a distance as it rampaged across the forest in a swath of destruction) was simply an underlying dream association because although he felt the landscape tremor from trees ripping out of the ground, from megalithic stones overturning in tandem, from chaotic destruction, uprooting, scouring, crushing, firing,...

the trees were perfectly still.

“Yay! Today!” Sharin filled her lungs with exhilarating air. She flailed her sheets aside and darted out of bed, into her morning routine, while thinking about boarding that great orange school bus. She never failed to work herself up to a dizzying state of jubilation when the day promised special treats, or the course of events called for outlandish travel, or when festive marvels highlighted the hours to come: Today she was promised all three.

“It finally is the day!,” she rejoiced.

Her imagination settled on the school bus lapping up her mates from all the corners of the world leaving behind the membranes of abandoned hop-scotch etchings on the sidewalks for a later time. Every day she watched the new boys and girls entering the bus to fill its belly. Then the great orange kiddie gobbler would continue through the urban labyrinth of avenues, drives, streets and ways, swallowing children until it reached Charter Road where it took a b-line en route to Sir Winston Harlow Public.

Sharin splashed some water on her face and patted her skin dry with a fluffy, orange sunburst. She squeezed a fat, green caterpillar onto a hedge of bristles and rammed the toothbrush under her cheek to file up some lather. Her eyes, stargazing into the mirror, winked back at her like two bright blue planets.

Her hair was long to the middle of her back, thick and the colour of chestnut. She would forget that her hair needed brushing because her thoughts were racing her memory. She was tracing the route of the school bus in her mind’s eye through a boggled maze of unfamiliar streets which were starting to shape themselves by familiar becoming.

Past the corn fields on the same street where all the skunks and raccoons get killed from fast cars. Where the big red barn is. Turn on the road where there’s a big, old church and a creepy graveyard. Then go over the bridge and over those bumps that makes kids in the back of the bus scream and laugh. Pass all the trees, stop, and at the end of the field...

She spat a frothy lick of toothpaste into the sink.

...pick up Phillip Crane who is standing there with his creepy looking ma and pa.

She dropped her toothbrush into the sink and scampered to the rocking chair where her new fittings were splayed neatly across the seat. Her flannel pyjamas hit the carpet with a soft crash and she was into her new dress, sliding into cotton stockings, scurrying down the stairs and yanking on her mother’s housecoat as quick as

a bunny.

“Hi sweetie, slow down. Its still early.” Leslie Courney crouched down to give her daughter a kiss. Her sandy blonde hair escaped from behind her ears and fell across her face. The grey of her keen eyes drilled over Sharin in her new dress.

“You look very pretty. Did you brush your hair?”

“I know its early but I couldn’t sleep. I’m excited, mama.”

Leslie smiled and shook her head. Her daughter was ebullient; glowing and anxious to launch into the day. “I know you are, sweetheart, its going to be a wonderful day for you. Is Daddy up yet?”

Sharin turned toward Andrew’s place at the dinner table and was surprised.

“Where’s Daddy?” A frown fell on her face.

“Why don’t you go see what that old man up there is up to. Go scare him.”

“I will,” said Sharin, “I’ll sneak.”

Leslie smiled and laughed.

Andrew was out of bed and lagging behind schedule. His shirt went over his back absently. He was detached from reality; aware only of those transcendental fibres keeping him aghast of his bad dream and bound in a sort of limbo.

What could it mean?

The dream had been too intense. Too real to be passed off as a nightmare or a hypnagogic vision. He had been dreaming, yes, but in the end, it had turned lucid. The giant was hunting for him.

Was it another premonition?

Sharin exploded into the door well with a shriek that sent a splintering ingot of fright into Andrew’s tailbone. It travelled up his spine, jostling every nerve extremity along the way. The button he was working on was torn from his shirt. Fright churned all reason…for a second it was unconditional anger.

He turned to her and found her captive in a fit of rolling laughter that beckoned his sense of humour. His anger swooned like the dying of a lamb.

Sharin came to him and surrounded him with a hug. “I scared you Daddy, didn’t I?”

“Yes!” He punished her with tickles.

“I’m sorry Daddy...I...I’m sorry Daddy!...stop, please...” She was gasping for breath through her bleating laughter. When Andrew stopped, she sprawled loosely on the floor to catch her breath.

“There! The giants win again.” Andrew finished dressing himself in front of the mirror with a fresh shirt from the closet. His eyes looked red and angry. He was thirty years old but the last few years and life, in general, scared his youthful appearance away. The white in his hair had a fresh start with this morning’s nightmare. Andrew seemed mesmerized by it.

Wow. Look at that.

The tie he had decided to wear would go on later, at the office. He stuffed it recklessly into his pocket. The bathroom light, which was burning greedily for no immediate purpose (save to attract an ill fated housefly), was expired of its power. Wallet, keys, change and cigarettes were distributed to designated pockets. He strode to the bedroom door seemingly oblivious to his daughter. She was lying on the floor, following him diligently with her eyes. He stopped at the door jamb.

“Last one down is a rotten egg.” He turned out the light.

Sharin screamed at the thought of being the rotten egg.

At the breakfast table, Leslie was stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee, black. Breakfast was served. Bacon and eggs, toast, milk in a pitcher, juice in a can, coffee for the grown ups. Andrew strolled into sight with Sharin trailing behind him.

“Found him, Mamma. I scared him.”

“You did?”

“She did,” Andrew said flatly. He leaned over her and kissed her. “Good morning,” he perked.

“Good morning. Did the Sandman bury you?”

Andrew poured himself a coffee and sat down. There was a chapter written in his complexion, in the dark circles surrounding his bloodshot eyes, and his hair. Leslie read his expression and it frightened her.

Please, not again. Not again.

He peered at her over the lip of his mug feeling the steam from the java soothe his eyes and the aroma reach to grip his stomach.

“I had a premonition again,” he said, his hand shaking slightly as he lowered his mug. “It was different this time.”

* * *

Nothing was said while Sharin was listening. The truth is, Sharin adjourned any discussion on the matter of premonitions by asking a question so shy of innocence that Mama’s gaze was suspended and Daddy’s chin dropped. She had asked, “Is our house going to catch fire?”

Andrew wiped coffee from his chin with a napkin. “No,” he said. He felt his emotions well up inside him. “Nothing like that is going to happen, sweetheart.”

But you know what? Daddy wishes he dreamed of fire last 0000night. Daddy wishes his house burned down a hundred times rather than have that invisible giant chase him in his dreams again.

Leslie removed herself from the breakfast table. Her hands were starting to tremble and she hurried to leave the room.

“Eat your toast, Sharin. I’m going to get your hairbrush, okay?” She disappeared quickly. The colour in her cheeks had drained away, possibly flooding into some hollow of a gut that had just shifted. Her nerves were bad. Real bad since Andrew started having his weird dreams at night and sharing his premonitions with her. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health.

Sharin looked at her dad with a disconcerted expression. He wondered how much of the recent past had his young daughter actually comprehended. How much of his nightmares had he unknowingly forwarded to her.

Is our house going to catch fire?

They were living in a big, farm-country estate approximately fifteen minutes from Singhampton. It was somewhat unassuming, nestled within the birch, maple and oak trees. A humble monster set at ease by the familiar chatter-chirp of the surrounding wildlife. Tall walls, because the ceilings were high with two floors, encased nine rooms and the clutter which seven years and one child of living seems to aggregate. It was exactly the house they dreamed of. Absolutely beautiful.

Then he dreamed of fire.

Fire as hot as hell. Sticky fire. Laughing fire.

He was standing in the foyer of the main hallway in his house, captivated by a sense of strange panic, watching the sun go down through a far window. The house felt as seductive as a cool, spring nightfall. Dark shades of falling blue caressed the walls where gold and white light went darkly. A breathtaking view of phantom lovers rippled in the drapes’ willingness to a sunset breeze. A crimson rose, held imperiously in a mother-of-pearl vessel, opened its velvet petals to illicitly expose its scented heart. Mirrors reflected windows showing the ember red glow of the sun as its last rays of light fought for a whimper.

Unseen photographs on walls began to snicker in the shadows somewhere out of sight. Shade was creeping in from corners and thickening the air. These were the cob-web linkings into terror that swept through him like a ghost-hand. The pulse of his dream edged him to escape, but a seeping lethargy groped his legs. Muted screams were confined to the padded asylums of his throat. There was something sinister evolving. A darkness was settling around him. The damn hellorific black invasion of the abyss pressed into his psyche.

In his dream, Andrew felt swallowed by the abysmal whale. A pall of dread curtained around him, covered him, a burial of a sort; more like a drowning. He was petrified in mortal panic due to the coming of the dark. The evil dark. Creepy wood whispers suddenly went silent. Distantly, the savage caw of crows feigned their presence. A black worm furrowed its way through the evil depth. He had been interred in it. The house had disappeared into the darkness. Into the dead.

From his impasse he could hear the roar of fire burning. He looked down and his feet were ablaze. Fire storms raged under his knees, eddying in the darkness from each of his feet like dust devils. He was consumed with the urge to scream. His head snapped back in wretched anguish. He watched the ceiling above him catch fire like a gasoline lake. Just before the scream came he felt the coming of a different hell. A black and torrid evil.

He awakened with a violent stir that sent him upright in his bed. He expelled the bad dream from his mind to the effect of vomiting a demon. A cold, slimy sweat covered his skin. His breath ran away with the doom. He thought he was going crazy.

It was just a dream, the repeated to himself. It was just a dream.

The same dream haunted him in secret visits. Sometimes, in the middle of a different dream, he would enter a doorway to find himself at home watching the dusk crawl away in snatches, the fire starting on his feet and the holocaust scream on above him. It was hell. Whenever he broke into consciousness, he was always more afraid and certain that the fire was coming. He felt it in his heart. One night it did come. Like the death of his mother came when he had bad dreams of a giant soda straw puncturing his mother’s womb while two impossible cartoon lips sucked the life from her like a drink-in-the-box. Like the cancer in his brother’s veins came when he had dreams of a streaking white demon racing his brother to a cardiograph flatline finish. Like the misery came when his dreams of a dead island, an island floating in a pelagic plane of blood littered with fleshy flotsam, ended with the miscarriage of his first child. Dreams?: They were premonitions dressed in sleep’s clothing.

Andrew’s dreams of fire ended on the night hell came home. Leslie and Sharin were at the blister-in-law’s for the evening to see the new baby. Screwy Lucy’s place was all the way in Feversham so they planned to stay the night. Andrew decided at the time of their departure that when Opportunity visited he wouldn’t just invite her in for a quiet night in front of the 666 glow. No way. He would invite her to do some ice fishing on the ol’ Saugeen River. So he deep fried a quick batch of those home fries and some onion rings, boiled a few eggs, packed his meal in Tupperware hardware to survive the nightcrawl toward the river. He left his house with his fishing gear under one arm and a six pack dangling from the other, and a nagging suspicion that he was forgetting something.

Bait?...No...Ice auger?...No...The stove on?...No...

But wasn’t he in a silly rush? Didn’t he turn the knob for the burner with the oil on it just a little too hastily? Didn’t the dial spin all the way down to Low? And then to Zero?

And then some? Back to High! The oil didn’t settle in the pan. Not with the element glowing a sickly shade of red underneath it. It burst into flames. The curtains caught fire and plumed easily in a big, bright fan shape. They licked the wallpaper with little, horny tongues of fire. It was enough to get the smoke detector going and a hunger for flames in the walls. Fire devils raced around and whispered to each other:

Fire at the Courney’s.

The house was on fire.

Burn, baby, burn!

It spread and stretched.

The fat lady sings in hell!

Everything burned, and burned, and burned, and bur...

It was a cold, fullmoon night in February. Andrew had drilled a hole through the ice and had his line in the water for less than five minutes when he detected the smell of burning wood. His eyes spanned the sky and caught the darkness of the night spoiled by a hellish hue.

Fire!

There was a moment when his mind disengaged from reality. The feeling lasted maybe one second, maybe one thousand years, but when his mind slipped back into gear it wasn’t quite right. He ran through the woods like a hunted animal, driven by blind fear. Frozen branches slashed his face as if he were in a wild storm of lashing cats. His heart was somewhere in the confines of his throat, beating like rabbit sex.

FIRE!

His mind raced. His hands stretched out into the night, breaking headway only to send branches snapping back into his head and cheeks. The lashing criss-crossed his face, sometimes breaking skin, and colourful lacerations wept with trickling blood. His breath held heavy in the air like baffled, exorcised ghosts as he shambled through the snowy moonstruck shadows of trees.

FIIIIIRRRRREEEEEE!

Before he made the clearing he released a branch from his outstretched arm that hurled back toward him. It swung into the tunnel of his vision with a breezy whish. A jagged twig entered his left eye. He screamed in pain. Messages scrambled in his mind. His hands went up to cover his injured eye seconds before his foot snagged on a branch buried in the snow, tripping him. His head cracked the frozen dead wood of a fallen tree.

Night-night.

*.*.*

The house burned but the trees didn’t catch. Lucky for Andrew. A Fire Marshal found him laced to the ground with his head leaning grotesquely against a fallen tree. When Andrew opened his eye, he was in a hospital bed. His wife was standing near him looking at the pathetic clawing board which the trees had made of Andrew’s face. He suffered a foot contortion, multiple lacerations, hypothermia, eye surgery, and a concussion at the cost of a nightmare. He lost his house and everything in it.

Oh yeah is our house going to catch fire.

Leslie returned to the kitchen sooner than Andrew had anticipated. She gave him a reassuring glance and stood behind Sharin to brush her hair. She looked at Andrew and said to Sharin, “Did you remind Dad what special day this is for you?”

“Daddy, I’m going to the old age home!”

“The old age home?” He noticed the touch of a smile on his wife’s mouth. She was miles away, no longer exhibiting the panic she was presenting him with earlier. Andrew thought of that Rolling Stones song, Mother’s Little Helper.

“Yeah, Daddy. Mrs. Wilson told us to stay on the bus when it gets to the school because we’re going right away. Mrs. Wilson says we’re havin’ lunch with old people---”

“Senior citizens,” Leslie interjected, “or elderly people. Not old people.”

“We get to spend the whole day with them reading stories and learning all kinds of stuff.”

“That sounds like fun. Can I come along?”

“Sure, Daddy, we can share a partner.”

“Share a partner...” He gave Sharin a quizzical glance.

“Yeah. Mrs. Wilson says we all get someone to spend the whole day with. They look after us and sit with us for speeches, play games and sing songs. We’re supposed to thank our partner with a card. Mrs. Wilson says that they might even have a special treat for us at the end of the day.”

“That sounds just wonderful, sweetheart.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Sharin confirmed. She finished her toast with one dive-bombing swoop of her food into her mouth.

Leslie wanted to see Sharin off early because she had the start of one good buzz to attune to. She put the hairbrush into the pocket of her housecoat and prepared snacks for Sharin and her partner at the Mill Creek Home.

“Let’s go get your shoes on, honey,” Leslie said. She flip-flopped in her slippers to the closet.

Sharin hurried to kiss her father, “I love you Daddy.”

“I love you.”

She gave her father a peck on the cheek, accepted the same, and dashed off to get her shoes on.

“You behave because pretty girls behave,” Leslie stated as she cloaked a sweater around Sharin, “and you, my love, are pritty pretty.”

“I will, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, babe. Go on now.”

Sharin kissed her mom and waved goodbye as she stepped away from the house with a little sack of apple slices and raw vegetables for her and her partner. Then she turned and ran down the long blacktop driveway to the edge of the fence where Mama could see her from the window.

Looking at his wristwatch, Andrew shovelled strips of bacon and one egg into his mouth. He swallowed the rest of his coffee as he stood up and flung a jacket over his shoulder. He met his wife at the door. A splash of worry marked her face.

“Is everything alright?,” she asked him.

“I’m fine. Just a bad dream is all. We’ll talk about it later.” He pressed a kiss onto her lips and reached into his pocket for the keys to his Jag. “Love ya.”

“Yeah, you better.” She watched him as he got into his car and pulled away. When he reached Sharin at the end of the driveway, he rolled down the window. His silhouette played on the back windshield like a Vice Lord puppet. She could hear the blunt mutterings of their distant farewell drama. The left turn signal flashed and the car sped onto the road, vanishing with the time. Moments later, at least what seemed like moments in Leslie’s driftng thoughts, the school bus arrived and Sharin went off with it.

“I love you...,” she garbled absently, and she shut the door.

* * *

The bus carrying the grade one student body of Sir Winston Harlow Public School pulled into a long asphalt drive that curved its way to the front steps of the Mill Creek Home. Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. French, and two volunteer moms escorted the train of small, bubbling children into the front foyer. They were greeted by a pale, plumpish bird of a woman who welcomed them with expert enthusiasm and directed the jittery bunch along a carpeted hall. Sharin turned her head to look at the lobby where several matching pieces of colonial style couches furnished the area near a fireplace.

That was when Sharin saw her first old person. He was sitting in an armchair with a magazine folded into his hands. He wore a pair of silver rimmed reading specs, a washed-out red flannel shirt, and a pair of green trousers. He raised his head from the print and looked at Sharin who stared directly at him. His fixed green eyes studied her for a few seconds and then a smile bloomed on his wrinkled face. His hand went up into a receding wave of white hair and then he motioned a, “hello!”

Sharin waved back at him. There was something about him that she liked.

With three living grandparents, retired neighbours, and all the other old people she knew, seniors were by no stretch of the imagination an under-exposed sort to her. Nevertheless, excitement rushed through her in rivulets as she followed the procession to the board room. She had seen her first old person. It was like seeing a squirrel perched on the gate of the City Zoo: Wasn’t there always something extraordinary about it when the anticipation to see animals was high and that squirrel was the first one you saw? Sharin turned back and the old man was gone.

The string of children collected itself in a spacious room littered with bright vinyl chairs and fresh daylight coming through the skylight windows. Other windows, blocked by a row of cedars living along the west wall of the building, were opened to a slightly scented breeze that circulated throughout the room. Professionally hand-drawn pictures of trains and locally famous houses hung on finely polished walnut panelling. The carpet on which some of the children were already taking their seats, was an autumn-speckled brown. Mrs. Wilson waited for all of the children to put their sweaters and lunch kits on designated tables at the back of the room. She stood behind a podium and introduced the flock of children to Karen Lodge, Director of Programs.

“Welcome. Welcome all.” Mrs. Lodge addressed the group and spread her arms out wide enough to hug the entire congregation. “How are all you fine young boys and lovely young girls today?”

"“FIIIIIIIIINE,” they all answered in drawn out unison.

“Oh, you are a cheery bunch...” She was waiting for the dawdlers to settle onto the floor and then she began her orientation.

A static pop! echoed from several speakers built into the ceiling and an announcement came on.

"Attention residents, please excuse this interruption, this is just to inform you that the elementary students have arrived and that the party is gathered in the Boardroom. Thank you."

Mrs. Lodge smiled and folded her hands in front of her. “Well,” she said, “I guess they will be arriving here shortly. What we have planned is this: I will be passing a bowl around and in it you with find the names of all the residents who have chosen to participate in making today special. Each of you will reach into the bowl and pick out a name. The name that you draw is the name of the person who will be your partner for the day. Does everyone understand what I’m saying?”

“YEEEEEESSSSS!”

“Good, good!” Mrs. Lodge clapped her hands together. “When the residents get here you will try and find your partner by introducing yourselves and meeting the residents until you’ve found the person whose name it is that you have picked. Your teachers and supervisors, as well as myself, will be here if you need any help or if you are feeling a little shy. When you meet your partner, it is up to the both of you to plan some interesting activities, whether it be playing games, or going for a tour of the home, or just chatting right here in this room. How does that sound?”

Dotty response.

Residents of Mill Creek Home were beginning to shuffle in through different doors and gathering near the far wall. Eager children turned their heads to watch them arrive, no longer interested in Mrs. Lodge’s ramblings. She was doing her best to keep their attention focused on the outline of the day’s events.

Sharin kept her eyes out for the man with the red shirt. She hoped that the name she picked was his. Then they could go somewhere and read stories.

Mrs. Lodge finished her longwinded speech and started to pass a bowl around for the kids. When the bowl reached Sharin she squeezed her eyes shut and dipped her earnest fingers into its well. She drew out a ballot.

Could this be him?, she wondered.

She had Mrs. Lodge read her the name, Mr. Bill Nyefore. Then Sharin skipped to the scene where curious kids bumpered to and from couching relics, trying to find their partners. Children were discovering who their daymates were and the tight jumble of young and old slowly began to disperse into other areas of the large room. Sharin was having trouble finding her partner. As more of the children wandered off with their newly found friends, Sharin felt discouraged. She was running out of old people and she didn’t know where to turn. There was a quiet swing of a door that caught her eye and she watched as the man with the red shirt made a timid entrance. A giant smile crossed Sharin’s face.

It is him! It must be him!

She ran over to the door and stood under his chin, looking up at him with leavened eyes as blue as swimming pools. “Hi. My name is Sharin. Are you Mr. Nyefore?”

The old man threw his head back and chuckled heartily. “Oh, you are a pretty one, Princess. No. I am not Mr. Nyefore.”

The sparkle in Sharin’s spirit was doused. “Oh,” she said. “I have to go find Mr. Nyefore.”

She turned her back to the old man with the red shirt who was smiling at length as he watched her trod away. One of his hands slipped deep into the front right pocket of his trousers. It fiddled about, fiddled about, fiddled about, feeling and fingering something. His focus pierced through the crowded room, intent on watching Sharin in her pretty little dress. His smile perpetuated in a trance.

* * *

“Mrs. Wilson?”

She swung around to address the tugging at her skirt. “Hi, Sharin. How are things going with you?”

“Awful. I can’t find my partner,” she pouted.

“Well,” Mrs. Wilson stated, “lets see who you have.”

Sharin passed the slip of paper to her teacher. It read, Bill Nyefore. Mrs. Wilson gave Mrs. Lodge a quick stare, looking for resolve.

“Oh, darn it.” Mrs. Lodge shucked the air, “Mr. Nyefore has come down with some sort of flu this past week and he is cooped up in bed. He must have added his name to the bowl before he got sick and forgot to ask someone to take it out. I can’t believe that slipped my mind. Sorry, Sharin.”

A pair of unhappy blue eyes fell toward the carpet.

“Is there anyone else that could fill in for Mr. Nyefore?,” Darlene Wilson inquired.

Sharin’s glow returned. “I know someone,” she edged.

“Who?”

“Him!” She pointed across the room to the old man with the red shirt who was standing attentively at the doorway. When he saw Sharin pointing him out, his hand came out of his pocket and his smile vanished. He turned away and started to drift off.

“Hmmm---” Mrs. Lodge considered the suggestion for a moment. “---Well, Sharin, he didn’t volunteer for the job but he is with us now. Why don’t you ask him if he would like to be your partner? His name is Mr. Hillary.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lodge. Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.” Sharin dashed off, gleefull and exuberant.

“An excellent choice,” Mrs. Lodge confided as she took a step to initiate a stroll with Sharin’s teacher, “Mr. Hillary is one of those unfortunate souls who wither away lonely. He’s been with us ever since I started working here five years ago and not once has a letter or phone call been forwarded here addressed to him. Not once! And would you believe no one has ever come to visit him? He’s a complete mystery.”

“What do you mean?,” asked Darlene Wilson, curious and absorbed in the conversation.

“We really don’t know who he is. We don’t know where he’s from, or what his date of birth is. He never talks about his past. We don’t have any of his personal records---legal?, social?, medical?---nothing. Just a trust fund of over a million dollars in his name of which the Mill Creek Home will be sole beneficiary when he is gone. Trouble is, he doesn’t exist on paper, or...” an absurd thought struck her at that moment and made her shudder, “maybe he has always been here.”

They watched intently as Sharin crowded Mr. Hillary. Taking her hand, he started leading Sharin away from everyone else.

* * *

The sting in Leslie’s eye from her bath soap was hard to rinse away. She held her face under the jetting water and rubbed her eyelid. When she opened her eyes she could see a figure lurking beyond the opaque discolouration of her shower curtain. It approached her like a Bijou zombie with an outstretched arm reaching to clutch through the screen and, uh oh, murder. She screamed when the pads of fingers pressed into the curtain and flung it aside.

“Good Lord, Andrew, you frightened me.” Her heartbeat was a fast trot. She found no comfort in what she saw. Her husband was beyond being pale white and was into a shade of green. His lips were dry and trembling. When he reached up to hold his wife, his arms shook like the Parkinsons had just moved into the neighbourhood of his central nervous system.

“Oh Andrew. What’s happened now?” She stepped out of the tub and wrapped her arms around him. He was crying; something she had seen him do only one other time since she met him. That was the time in the hospital after the night of fire and pain. Coming around from his eye surgery, he blamed himself for all of the troubles in their life.

She squeezed him, feeling him shiver in a cool, wet embrace. He had his face resting on her sopping hair. A frigid chill washed down her back. She was spooked by her husband’s words.

“Monsters...,” he said with a frail cry, “...monsters are coming.”

* * *

The children and their respective partners were scattered throughout the Home on tours, and walks, and visits to other, less mobile, residents. Some had even chosen to play Snakes and Ladders, or Trouble in the cafeteria to get an early jump on the lunch line. The grand affair seemed to be running smoothly: There was only one incident of misbehaviour and one case of terminal shyness that had aborted partnership. The first incident involved Billy Kingshot who had managed to give his partner the slip by entering one of the residents’ sleeping quarters. To his horror he discovered Mrs. Cliffton standing fully naked and catatonic in front of a television. She, fortunately, was too old and senile to notice Billy, but shock and embarrassment sent Billy running to Mrs. Wilson and got him a good tongue lashing. The other problem was with Melanie Forbes who had clung to her mother’s side ever since the woman had entered the bus as a volunteer supervisor.

The least crowded place was the library. It was visited frequently enough by touring partners, but was never fully appreciated: There was little to offer in children’s literature. Sharin and Mr. Hillary liked it there. They sat next to a large window in soft, white seats that reminded Sharin of giant marshmallows. Mr. Hillary read to her from a book of nursery rhymes that they were fortunate enough to come across. He was astonished at how many of the rhymes she had committed to her memory. Of all the rhymes there was only one that Sharin didn’t know at least a partial fragment of. Hillary turned to the last page in the book. The blank cover leaf.

“Its called, Magic Key,” he told her. “Have you ever heard of such a rhyme?”

“No,” Sharin replied, “...but maybe I just can’t remember.”

“Would you like to hear it, Princess?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Okay then.” His green eyes seemed to sparkle and shimmer behind his spectacles. He lifted the book and read from the depth of the blank page.

“Magic key made of magic and me

Open my eyes so that I can see

In through the key hole and what’s behind

Little black doors inside my mind

Magic key, magic key

There’s something deep inside that is locked in me

If I let it out, I just might cry

Because the magic in me will have to die.”

Sharin didn’t say anything. She was gazing into the green of Hillary’s eyes: Emeralds, glassy and translucent, in the palm of a snow-white angel’s hand; an ocean wave curling near the shore of a sun-drenched, secret place; the enchanting glow of a leprechaun’s ghost; the green of a fabled Oz; the…

“Do you like the rhyme, Princess?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Have you heard it before?”

“No,” she answered, still caught in a spell.

“Its very old. So very, very old, indeed.”

Hillary sunk his hand into his pocket again and fid-fidg-fidget-fidgeted for something. It seemed that everyone else in the library had vanished. To add to this peculiar isolation, Sharin and Hillary were situated in a corner that was completely secluded, hidden behind tiers of books. It appeared they were all alone. A crooked smile came to Hillary’s face.

The fumbling inside his pocket got progressively more erratic. It got to the point where Sharin noticed the tension and strange movement as his hand danced in his pants. He kept turning to look at the entrance to the library with quick nervous flits. A sweat broke out on his brow.

“Princess?”

“Yes, Mr. Hillary?”

“I’m going to show you something, but you have to promise me that you will never, ever tell anyone about it. Do you promise me that?” His fingers worried over the shallows of his groin.

“Yes, I promise.”

Hillary’s breath quickened. “Hope to die?”

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

Hillary’s hand emerged from his pocket concealing an object within a finger-knitted fist.

“What is it?,” Sharin asked, piqued with curiosity.

His fingers unfolded from the palm of his hand. Sharin gasped and clapped her hands together under her chin, her shoulders raised, her mouth agape. Her eyes twinkled and winked with light in a mixture of awe and joy. It was as much magic as it was surprise.

“The magic key,” she giggled. “Its beautiful.”

The key rested on Hillary’s hand like no diamond could have rested. It seemed to radiate shiny flecks of light the way the sun radiates life potential. It had the power of unknown chemistries that shivered from it in fantastic colours, reverberating intensities, and strangely captivating intimacies. Glowing hues of pastel yellows, pinks and blues formed a penumbra around the illustrious silvery metal. It was in the image of a dragon. The crown of the key was the dragon’s head, fiercely purged of expression, and glimmering slivers of light bounced from tiny topaz stones set for eyes. The long, slender shaft of the key embossed the body of the dragon; refined by intricate craftsmanship that detailed scales, wings, silver claws. It was mag(nificent)ic.

“Yes, Princess, the magic key.” Hillary could sense the swirls of delight, that eddied through her, manifesting themselves in the entranced focus of her eyes and the gleaming dimension of her smile. “Go ahead, Princess. Take it.”

Too entranced to speak, she reached out and plucked the key from his palm. A strange and delicate vibration surged into her finger tips. It tickled her and made her laugh.

“Do you remember the rhyme?,” Hillary asked.

“Yes,” she said and, surprisingly enough, she recited it with him. The key hummed in her hand and she couldn’t keep from giggling. It sent trickles through her; trickles of energy. She was caught up in the sensation for a moment and then she returned her gaze into Hillary’s eyes. “Mr. Hillary?”

“Yes, Princess?”

“Does your key open magic things?”

Hillary was elated. “Oh yes,” he said, “for certain. Worlds of magic.”

“Where did it come from?”

“From a long, long time ago. In a different place. Its from a golden time when innocence was pure and the forest was a magical wonderland.”

“There was magic in the forest?,” Sharin asked, her voice soft and mellifluous.

“Oh my, yes. For certain. In the forest, long ago, silver snails wove precious patterns about the ground with glistening trails of shiny metal. Fairies danced in meadows, tasting buttercup milkshakes, stealing from starflies hanging upside-down on slivers of grass, admiring their reflection in dew drops. Tiny elves, prospecting for jewelberries, whispered games to each other and spilt their wine. In the light of early morning, pixies faded in and out of the forest mists while curious gnomes lazing under fanning mushroom caps, nibbled on pumpkin seeds and giggled at their strange glow. It was a time when a unicorn may have licked a honey drop from your hand under the full and cool moonlight if you were perfectly still. A friendly tap on the ankle could have proved to be a elfdwarf from the South, asking you to share some news and a thimbleful of steaming blueberry nectar for two. Wishes, sailing on the wind like dandelion parachutes, could be pressed against your heart to make your wildest dreams come true. Yes, Princess, magic in the forest was everywhere.”

Sharin clapped her hands with mirth.

“Of course, not all of the magic in the forest was good, you see. Oh goodness, no. There were many dangers in the woods as well. Often times, a person would go into the forest to collect a dishfull of plump fiddleheads, or perhaps gather a hat full of berries for a Sunday pie, and that person would never return. In town you would here the whispers of grief-stricken people saying, ’Aye, the forest ‘as swallered dear Brother,’ or you would hear them say, ‘The woods, mum, have ta’en sister.’ But the truth was that the people knew something very dark had happened to their brothers and sisters. Something very dark, indeed.

“In the forest there lived terrible trolls who waited in hollow trees to break peoples’ bones and boil their skin. Witches, looking down from heavy, grey rain clouds, would shriek at the sight of lost children and turn them into toads, or salamanders, or bloated worms. Warty green goblins falling from tree tops would steal your hair to fill their pipes, while others took your teeth for charms, and others still---your eyes.

“Sly wolves crouched under sheepskin pullovers would gobble you up at the drop of a handshake. Roving giants, as tall as a house, could snatch you into a sack, fling you over a shoulder, and carry you off to a fortress in the clouds. Wizards and bee stings, poison and dark things; holes in the ground that make grumbling sounds; things full of fright that go bump in the night; and shadows, and creepers that creep in the shadows, and monsters, and dra---”

Hillary stopped short. A shroud of fear had fallen over Sharin. The pupils in her eyes had widened, adjusting to the darkness of Hillary’s tale. She swallowed and waited, anxious, enchanted by the story.

“Shall I continue, Sharin?,” he asked.

“Yes,” said Sharin.

“You’re not too frightened, are you?”

“No. Not too frightened.”

Hillary looked up at the entrance again and saw no one there. He cleared his throat and wiped his lips with the elephant skin of his hand.

“Well, Princess, I shall continue, then.” He spoke a little less formidably. “There were other dangers, but I need not mention them. This was a time and place of goodness, nothing else. Like your time, the Age, goodness triumphs over evil.”

Hillary shifted his seat and leaned awkwardly toward Sharin. “Princess?”

“Yes, Mr. Hillary?”

“You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

Sharin straightened up, surprised. “I guess so.”

“Let me explain it to you this way. Suppose you found a buried treasure on a beach somewhere. The treasure chest was filled with silvery wonders, shining jewels, diamonds and gold crowns. Let’s just suppose in the treasure chest there were melon sized pearls, priceless silver-plated storybooks, magic lamps, and all the precious secrets you could imagine. However, within the treasure chest there was something evil. A bad thing that was spoiled and very, very corrupt. Tell me, Princess, would you say that finding the treasure chest was---a good thing?”

“Finding the treasure would still be good.”

“Even if the treasure had something wrong with it?”

A tingling vibration strummed across Sharin’s fingers from the key.

“Yes. Still good.”

Hillary leaned back into his marshmallowy chair, relieved. “I hope you mean that, Princess. I really do because I believe what you believe...” He afforded effort to sitting up once again in the blob seat and then he leaned toward her ear to whisper, “and that’s what makes things come true.”

They both leaned back and relished in each other’s confidence, nodding their heads in slow, judicious agreement with silly smirks pasted on their faces. He tossed her a wink and she tossed one back. Then they both broke out into giant laughter.

* * *

“Well, that’s how it was in that golden time.” Hillary continued his storytelling. “The Kingdom of Eth was especially beautiful. In that time, Eth was surrounded by the quiet magic of the forest. It had existed there for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. About as long as the forest had been stretching toward the sun with leafy, craggy, arbour fingers. Some people said that Eth sprouted through the magic in the forest from a seed that God planted. It was not so hard to believe.

“The Kingdom of Eth was ruled by a jovial, old fellow named King Jothree. Popular was he, I tell you, and everyone trusted him with all of their hearts. It was he who ordered the great battles between his army and the giants. After the wars, a heartfelt peace settled throughout the Kingdom because most of the giants were killed off. The few that survived were hunted by the special Legion of Night travelling far into the mountains and beyond them into strange lands. That was how everyone came to love King Jothree.

“Oh, Jothree was as wise as a shrew.” Hillary crinkled up his face to look like a shrew. “He let things remain unchanged for a very long time and this fell into favour with all of his subjects. However, Jothree knew that sooner or later things would have to change. Year by year it looked as if there were more people in the courtyards, more workers in the fields, more children playing on the streets. Soon, the people of Eth would have to move into the forest to start new villages and clear land for new crops. And this, Jothree knew, could never happen unless the magic in the forest was tamed.

“The King’s wizard was summoned to a secret meeting in a private chamber. Shortly thereafter, the wizard was seen shuffling toward the deepest and darkest rooms in the castle to study his black books and conjure spells to solve his problem. He had to take away the magic in the forest. The answer came to him as a spider caught a fly. ‘Yes,’ the wiz said sinking his mind’s eye into the depth of a crystal ball, ’the sprites...the forest sprites.”

“The forest sprites?,” Sharin wondered. “What are they?”

“Spirits. They lived in the woods with all the other magical things. These were tricky, playful little demons. A sprite’s power amounted to nothing, but they could be quite a nuisance. Well, I’ll tell you, one fine Sunday, King Jothree went on a fabulous hunt for his birthday and returned with a prize turkey which was his favourite food of all. It was cooked and cured to absolute royal perfection and placed before the King at His Majesty’s feast. There, to the King’s dismay, the bird lifted itself from the dinner platter and ran on drumsticks straight out the door. A sudden roar of laughter caught Jothree’s sense of humour and his shock turned into roaring laughter. You see, a forest sprite had got itself into the oven as the turkey was being cooked. It entered the bird and overtook it. The King laughed and laughed, his wine tasted sweet, although his stomach grumbled bitterly about the whole ordeal.”

Sharin giggled.

“The wizard saw these sprites as the answer to the King’s strife. He took to his chambers and worked night and day. With his books and spells he built little, black doorways into the forest bed. Little traps, these doorways led into darkness and void. Then he summoned all of the forest sprites to a huge room in the castle. The walls shook and rumbled as if the castle was going to crumble to bits. There, the wizard bargained with the sprites.

“‘If you agree with my plan, you will have the forest to yourselves,’ said the wizard to the sprites. ‘All you have to do is block the doorways in the forest bed long enough for me to sweep away the magic of the woods into the holes. Then I will seal all of the magic into the ground so you shall reign the Everwoods.’

“The sprites agreed. The wizard cleaned the forest of gnomes, witches, dragons, and elves, sucking them into the traps where the sprites craftily held them until the last warty troll was in its hole. But before the forest sprites could escape to have the entire forest to themselves, the wizard shut the doorways, trapping all of the magic in the forest, forever. Sprites included.”

“Thats why there are no more fairies,” Sharin deduced.

“Yes, that is why.” Hillary detected sadness in the young girl’s voice and he felt a stirring in his heart. “Princess,” he told her, “that key you are holding, it will open those doors if you want them to open.”

Sharin’s eyes grew wide. “It can?”

“Yes. You see, after the little black doorways were shut and all of the magic in the forest was locked away, the wizard made a special key. He used the rest of the magic in his heart to build it in the hopes that one day the doors could be opened and all of the magical powers, including his own, would return. But alas, my dear Princess, things have changed so much and many of the doorways have disappeared under cities and highways, gone forever. The good wizard, valiantly loyal to the good King Jothree, only used the key once to open a special door, just for a second, to let the Tooth Faerie out. Never more did he open doors.”

Sharin felt a surge of electricity through her fingers and looked into her hands. “This is the key?”

“That is the key.”

“Show me, Mr. Hillary, please show me how it works!”

“That I cannot do. I am too old. So very, very old indeed. Time left for me is much too short to spend at work opening doors. Besides, there is danger.” Hillary clamped his slender, ancient fingers around Sharin’s folded hands. The key buried within her touch sang out with surging vibrations. “Those forest sprites were tricked into their little traps and I dare say that they must be terribly angry. In that Golden Time they were quite harmless. In this day and age, what with Internet and Globalvision, I think they would be disastrous. I’m warning you, Princess, they would be akin to giants!”

The key was buzzing in Sharin’s hands. Hillary could feel it.

“There is magic in you, Princess,” he said. “Do you see how the key reacts to your touch? There is magic in you.”

“There is?”

“Yes. There is.”

The doors to the library flung open and Mrs. Wilson’s head poked in. “Hellooooooo,” she bellowed, “is there anyone in here?”

“Yeaaaaah,” Sharin responded.

Mrs. Wilson appeared from behind shelves of books. “Well, hello, Sharin, how was your morning?”

“Mr. Hillary is telling me stories. I’m having lots of fun.”

“That’s great, Sharin.” Mrs. Wilson looked at Hillary. “Thank you, Mr. Hillary, for volunteering your day to us. I think Sharin would have been disappointed with her visit here if you didn’t feel up to it.”

“Its my pleasure, Darlene. No trouble at all.”

Mrs. Wilson was struck by the fact that Hillary knew her name. “Ah...I’m afraid lunch is being served in the cafeteria. Shall I expect to see you two there?”

“Right away,” Hillary stated. He got up from his seat.

In her mind, Sharin could hear Hillary’s voice. It seemed neither unnatural nor shocking. His voice said, “Hide the key in your pocket, Sharin, and remember, you promised not to tell anyone.”

“I promise,” Sharin whispered.

* * *

The blinds were pulled in Leslie’s and Andrew’s bedroom, keeping the room in a sullen darkness. They sat on the edge of the bed, Andrew swallowing Aspirins with some water while Leslie, still wrapped in a towel, leaned next to him with her hand between her knees. Her husband was broken and close to shock. Something was frightening him to pieces.

“I was picking up speed,” he told her, “coming onto the 400. I merged into the right lane and looking behind me, through the mirror, were trucks. One in each lane approaching fast. I stepped on the gas and poof...my vision went. I was totally blind, Les. I freaked and automatically slammed on the brakes. And then I remembered the trucks barrelling down on me. But that didn’t scare me, you know why?...” Andrew looked at his wife and shivered.

“Why?”

“Because I was in a forest. The woods. It felt like I was transported into another consciousness. In the forest the giant that I dreamed of this morning was after me. It wanted a silver key that looked like a dragon. It was going to release all of the giants and slobbering, hungry monsters. All of them!

“Suddenly, my vision returned as I jerked into a complete stop. The trucks blared their horns and they swerved on smoking tires. In the rear-view mirror I watched the trucks loom. My hands went white on the wheel, I froze. One truck swerved behind the other by some miracle. They blew by the Olds. Other cars raced by, mashing their horns. I pulled over to the shoulder of the highway.

Monsters.

“I managed to get the next off ramp and turn around. I made it home. I was terrified of another blackout.”

Leslie put an arm around him and hugged. She said in a soft voice, “Its okay, honey.”

“Its not okay. Its another premonition. A premonition with power and authority. It isn’t just a visit in a dream, this one is point blank in the middle of traffic! I need to see a doctor...my head is killing me.”

“What do you suppose this one means?”

Andrew rubbed a wave of gooseflesh that appeared on his arms. He looked at his wife with a spooky, matter-of-fact expression. A blankness in his voice chilled her. “Monsters are coming,” he said. He stared at her for a long, long time.

* * *

The days that followed her trip to the Mill Creek Home, Sharin secretly played with her key. Her thoughts kept returning to Mr. Hillary, the man with the red shirt who was her friend. They had gone for a walk in the woods surrounding the Home with the rest of her classmates and all the seniors that could manage the stroll. Hillary told her more stories that kept her free-falling through fantasy. Later that day, before boarding the bus to go home, everyone gathered to hear Mrs. Wilson’s speech thanking the residents of Mill Creek Home for their generous hospitality and kindness. Sharin and Hillary sat on the lawn and munched on carrot stick slivers and apple slices. After the speech, the kids singled themselves out, thanking their partners and saying goodbye: Leaving them. Sharin gave Hillary a big hug and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you, Mr. Hillary,” she said. She gave the key one final squeeze. When it quivered in her hand, melancholy trickled into her heart. She handed the key back to Hillary who looked at her with his eyes as green as the first leaves of spring.

“Princess, do you still remember the rhyme?,” he asked.

“Yes. I won’t never, ever forget it.”

He pressed the key into her hands and whispered, “Keep it. It is yours now. It will be yours forever if nobody knows you have it.”

Sharin was surprised and overjoyed.

“But be careful,” Hillary added, “Be very careful, Princess, of the doors you open. Always remember: I believe what you believe...and that’s what makes things come true.”

“Do you mean it, Mr. Hillary? I can keep it?” The key hummed in her palm.

“It is yours.”

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” She jumped for joy and wrapped her arms around Hillary’s waist, hugging him.

Hillary laughed his ancient laugh and hugged Sharin back.

There really is magic in you, he thought to himself.

Sharin was called to the bus.

* * *

From that day on, she kept the secret safe, hiding the key in the pouch of a plush toy kangaroo. She would reach for the key at night, feeling its strange power, and dream of magic things. She would run to her bedroom after dinner and wish on it, press it against her cheek to feel the warm zzzzz (life) on her skin. She talked to the key and imagined talking to Mr. Hillary, telling them that she hasn’t told anyone about her secret and that she never will. The key was her friend.

That same week, Andrew was haunted by premonitions. He understood it had something to do with the forest and a gargantuan stalker. He never saw the giant in his visions. He understood that the giant was looking for him. In fact, the Titan was hunting for a real hellraiser of a key. The drives to and from work were plagued with the fear of another blackout. He was relieved as the weekend drew closer. He wouldn’t have to drive at all. The doctor told him that his problems were stress related but Andrew didn’t buy that.

On Saturday morning, he experienced a premonition that left him with such an awesome feeling of dread, he felt as if he was being crushed by his dream. He spent the rest of that morning in bed trying to tame a savage headache.

That morning, Sharin was playing in the backyard. She was not allowed to go beyond the dilapidated shed at the edge of their lot. Beyond that, a thicket of brush turned into trees that extended itself into acres of raw government land. She skirted the shack, pretending to play house, but her eyes drifted into the woods. She was intrigued by what lay inside the forest. Somewhere in those woods were doorways she could open up and magical things only her imagination could conjure. She reached into the wide front pocket of her pullover sweater and clutched the key, feeling it murmur to the rhythm of her thoughts. She longed to enter the forest and find those magic doorways. She wanted to do that more than anything in the whole, wide world.

A moth flew into sight from somewhere out of sight. Sharin followed it with her eyes as the moth headed into the woods in a curious confusion of flight. She was determined to trace its path until it disappeared; but as it whirled and reeled, her eyes caught hold of something else. The key whirred into a life if its own. An old man wearing a red shirt and green trousers stood in the woods. He was smiling at Sharin and motioning her to follow him. He turned and started walking away.

“Mr. Hillary!,” Sharin shouted.

Her friend didn’t seem to hear her.

“Mr. Hillary...”

And head-fast into the deep dark woods, away she went, she went.

* * *

At approximately twelve o’clock, Leslie opened the back door and swung out the storm door. She called out Sharin’s name. A touch of anger flared inside her when she didn’t get a response.

“Sharin!,” she barked as she stomped across the lawn toward the shack. When she got there, she looked around and couldn’t find her child. As she threw the shack door open, a mouse skittered across the floor.

“Sharin!,” she shouted, to no avail. Her nerves started to drum. She ran along the side of the house to the front yard expecting to find her daughter dickering around the driveway.

“Sharin!,” she screamed, and fear, like a rising tide, swelled inside her.

Monsters are coming.

* * *

The woods never looked so dark. Everywhere trees as eerie and silent as the dead. They jutted from their roots. They mocked each other’s plight. All directions looked the same: God’s chamber of horrors.

There was a light in the forest that kept Sharin moving. That light was her dear friend, Mr. Hillary. She followed him long after she gave up calling out to him and long after fear was groping her. He was her saviour now, always in the distance, always out of reach; but she followed him, shambling through foliage and brush because the way home was long forgotten.

There were moments when he would vanish from her sight. Terror would seize her. When she was on the verge of a scream, he would re-appear from behind a tree with his back turned and his head bowed down like a Bijou zombie. Or a walking corpse.

When Hillary reached a place, he beckoned Sharin with ghostly calls and she raced to him, sobbing great tears and rubbing her eyes. As she approached him, a new horror filled her. Mr. Hillary was fading away, gradually thinning out in substance the way lights that dim peter out to darkness. Sharin could see the trees through him gradually becoming more defined as she stepped closer to him. His eyes washed into the colour of air. His finger lifted to a place on the ground.

“There be a doorway,” his voice said.

A moment later, a five year old was alone in the forest.

* * *

At first, the thought of being alone in the woods thundered up to her like a phantom horse. Unreality washed over her. Hillary had led her here to show her something in the forest. She crept up to the spot where he had pointed to and her breathing fell into a shallow cycle. The spot was at the base of a large, dead tree. The oak’s strength was broken by a mangled mesh of roots that brambled up from the ground. Within the tangled mesh of roots was a special garden. Shoots of sprouting seeds, folded in prayer, sprang up from the soil and unearthed the promise of new life. Cities of mushrooms harboured themselves in the crooks of wayward roots, homes for the creepy. Under a ledge of bracket fungus, solitary life forms bustled in and out of moss like Englishmen in a London fog. A ladybug bridged a path across blades of witchgrass and disappeared into the twinkle of light gleaming from a water droplet.

"A doorway,” Sharin gasped.

She snatched the key from her pocket and it reverbated her excitement. A rhyme was crossing her mind. She reached into the web of roots and dipped the key into the magic. Her tiny voice sang out in meter:

“Magic key made of magic and me

Open my eyes so that I can see

In through the keyhole and whats behind

Little black doors inside my mind

Magic key, magic key

There’s something deep inside that is locked in me

If I let it out, I just might cry

’Cause the magic in me will have to die.”

A tremendous shock wave threw Sharin backwards and she landed on her bum. There was the sound of air rushing into a vacuum and a spark arced through the air. It darted toward Sharin’s head. Before she could blink, it stopped in front of her face. It hovered inexorably inches from her nose, crackling in electrostatic ferocity. The omen hung in the air like a thumbnail

lightning bolt suspended in animation, made impervious by the cold of electric blue. Frightened or unsure of its long awaited freedom, it flew off into the trees leaving the smell of ozone to gripe with Sharin’s nose.

The sprite, Sharin thought.

The experience left an unsettled feeling in her stomach. Somewhere in her subconscious, big machines were strip mining for guilt and found precious little. Sharin stood up and wiped dirt from her seat.

“I did it. I opened a doorway.” She crouched down into the roots and peered in. There was a startling, little rectangular hole in the ground, no larger than a paperback novel. It was as black as space and seemed just as deep. Sharin waited to see what magical wonders would emerge. She anticipated fairies, pink and yellow, floating up from within the blackness, dropping trails of faerie dust the way Tinkerbell did in the classic cartoon. She expected elves as green as peas to crawl out mumbling something like, ”Its about time!," or, ”I’m very late now, don’t you know!" She was eager for gnomes that could wiggle their ears and crickets dressed in paupers’ drab. What she got instead was even more fantastic than anything she thought she could ever imagine.

* * *

The Courney house was filled with screams. Andrew jumped from his bed, startled, and felt pressure in his head pounding, pounding, pounding. He bounded down the stairs and met Leslie in hysterics. She was rushing from room to room, shouting Sharin’s name.

“She’s not here,” Leslie cried. “I can’t find her.”

Andrew ran outside into the sunshine that tapped his headache. He was in his bare feet and boxers. He searched the area, shouting out to his daughter who was miles away from home. Minutes later, he rushed into the house. By the horror in Leslie’s eyes, Andrew knew his wife didn’t find Sharin anywhere inside the house.

“I’m calling the police,” he said as he made for the phone. Leslie started to tremble and cry.

* * *

It was as if reality spread its wings and lifted itself into a dream. A timid head emerged out of the darkness of the black hole, bashful and uneasy along the side of the doorway. Its mousey snout sniffed at the air nervously. It was the head of a dragon. A tiny one. The bronze lustre of its scales gave it the qualities of polished gemstone. Its eyes were set boldly atop its head, bright and clear, the colour of a flaming red sunset. Round, black pupils contracted into thin slits as they adjusted to the light. One of its forelegs stepped into view, feeling the soil with bird-like feet ending in talons. Sharin was spellbound.

As the creature started a shy, timid entrance, another head appeared from behind the doorway.

“Two of them,” Sharin whispered without a stir.

The second little beast had eyes of gold that shimmered with the lustre of cat’s eye. Its coat of armour scales held shades of coppery-green that looked wet and slippery as it made its way into the light.

They took steps intermittently, being wary of the brave new world that they were stepping into. They were aware of Sharin, and they watched her closely with their shimmering eyes, blinking transparent, membrane eyelids. They had a mane of bony, ochre plating that coursed down the centre of their backs from the tops of their heads on down. They had wings. Wings! The fleshy appendages were folded discretely along their sides. They pulsated from the flow of blood flooding tertiary vessels that tapered toward the extremes of a four inch wing span. They would be used to lift the dragons into flight and carry the beasts into chosen horizons.

Their haunches were heavy with odd musculature that rippled at the twitch of a wing. They had slinky tails that curled under their creamy, lime belly. They stood in the foreground, protected by jumbled roots, and tasted their new world with slithery, crimson tongues that flickered in and out of their mouths like the tongues of jungle snakes.

“Hi,” Sharin whispered.

The creatures drew back a step, alerted by the sound. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” She extended her arm into the niche and thin tendrils of ice-blue smoke escaped the nostrils of both dragons.

“I promise I won’t hurt you,” she said. She stretched a little closer toward the dragons. They hissed at the potential threat, snapping at the air with jaws and rows of jagged teeth in an exaggerated, defensive bluff. But they were babies; even Sharin could see that! The dragon pups were no larger than common mice. Sharin held her hand steady, letting the creatures familiarize themselves with her presence. The dragons were as playful as kittens and easily as frisky.

Sharin looked up into the darkening sky. “Thank you, Mr. Hillary,” she whispered into the air.

Sharin dropped the key into the front pocket of her sweater. The dragons she cradled in her arms because they had surfaced from the depths of the dark abyss and they needed warmth and love. Without even realizing what she was doing, she was following the exact path she had pioneered toward her home.

* * *

The sprite that had escaped its trap rested on a fencepost near a small farmhouse that belonged to Levin Crane. Night was falling all around it as if God, peeking into a dark box at the world with one fiery, bloodshot eye, slowly closed the lid. The sprite sparkled electrically as twilight settled into velvet shades of navy blue and the first inkling of stars declared their dominance in the night sky. Contemplating life in the strange, new world, the sprite sizzled with a hostile intensity. How many years had it waited in the depth of the void, waiting aeons by the doorway for that one chance that the trap door might be opened. Waiting for a chance to escape while its powers fermented with resentment; bubbled and brewed like potato peelings gone rancid to firewater. How many years had its harmless nature churned in the empty stomach of darkness that stank of bitter poison: Trickery, deceit.

Now (mischeifshhhmurdermurder) it is free! An earthworm wriggled at the base of the fencepost. The electric reeled into it, splitting the earthworm’s skin and sending fine webs of blue, electrostatic light scrawling under the worm’s membranes. The worm writhed in faceless, screaming silence and began edging toward the Cranes’ farmhouse. Inch by inch.

* * *

The bones in Leslie’s neck cricked when she turned to see Sharin standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Mama. I’m here.”

“Oh, thank you, Lord.” The frozen shadow of worry, stress, and a thousand fears melted from her face as she fell over Sharin with an embrace. Andrew stood in the living room with the police officer who had been taking notes. Their faces were suspended in awe. Sharin had entered the house through the back door. When they saw her standing before them, gaunt from thirst and exposure, covered with the barbs and burrs of terrific wild seeds, they were surprised. She was dishevelled, bruised, weary, hungry, scratched, dirty and afraid. She held her sweater to her side like the tethered, sidekick ghost of an unspeakable tale. Her eyes were marketing tears.

“I’m sorry, mama.”

She was swept up and pressed into the comfort of her mother’s embrace.

“Where were you?,” Leslie asked, detached from reality by the feeling of overwhelming relief.

“I got lost in the forest. I saw Mr. Hillary. I followed him into the forest. Then he disappeared and I...I was by myself.”

“Sharin, you musn’t let your imagination get the best of you. We were worried sick about you. Thank Heaven, you are safe.”

The police officer folded his note pad and tucked it away. Andrew thanked him and apologized for the trouble while escorting him to the cruiser parked in the driveway.

When Andrew returned to the house he heard his wife calling from upstairs:

“Honey, I’m giving her a bath. Can you start heating up some soup and come up here?”

“Okay!,” he responded.

Leslie ran bath water while Sharin tucked her sweater under the bed with the hope that her mama would forget about it for the time being. She then hopped into the tub. It was full of soap bubble islands on an ocean of warm, sweet smelling water. Fisher Price toys dotted the seaways. Leslie sponged her down and they talked of dangers, fears, and the missing hours between twelve and nine thirty pm when Sharin was seduced by wanderlust. They spoke of imaginary friends and realistic friends, tinker-talking on safety and precaution. After the bath she dressed herself in soft, clean flannels. All the while she listened to the tick-talk that counted the minutes to bedtime.

* * *

The Mill Creek Home, like other institutions responsible for lodging elderly citizens, is not an unlikely place for death. Frequently enough, employees assigned to housekeeping duties enter a room only to find a corpse haunting the bed sheets, resting morbidly as stiff as a promenade mannequin.

Early Saturday (just prior to Sharin seeing the apparition in the woods), Molly Simms entered the room of Mr. Something Hillary to change his sheets and do his bathroom. She was a little disturbed to find Mr. Hillary dead. She was even more disturbed by the fact that the corpse was virtually withered to dust on the bed sheets. A thought crossed her mind to vacuum Hillary into the Hoover; bones, hair, teeth and all.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

She started laughing at her own sick humour.

As she inspected the flaky, skeletal remains and speculated on the bizarre phenomenon known as, ‘combustive decay’ and, ‘spontaneous combustion’ and, ‘holy-jeez-you-are-burning-in-hell-Charlie,’ she touched the corpse and a large section of the rib cage and sternum collapsed in a little cloud of dust. She brushed off a red envelope buried under the rib cage. It was addressed to,

Sharin Courney

(Grade One student at Sir Winston Harlow Public School)

Molly locked the room and pitter pattered through the long, dimly lit hallway toward Mrs. Lodge’s office. By the time she got there, the letter was sticking to her chubby, little grip.

* * *

A candle flame pranced on its wick near the musty pages of Sharin Crane’s favourite paperback. The book was tattered and worn around the edges and the pages threatened themselves to fall from their binding like autumn leaves in Halloween frailty. It was a book of short stories titled, The Windowmaker. This particular collection of tales was an endless source of fascination for her because of a spooky dimension in one of the stories. One of the stories reflected an uncanny parallel between a group of characters and her very own family. The similarity was mind boggling and the fictional grid of details was fantastically congruent to her own circumstance and livelihood.

There was a character named Marion Crane and a character named Levin Crane. They had a son named Phillip Crane. They were Anabaptists who lived in a farmhouse in Edgar. The people she read about and her own family lived identical lives.

How could there be spitting images between characters in a story and real life people? How could there be a carbon copy between facts in someone’s life and the fiction of a storybook? The author stole our lives, Marion thought, he was looking through our windows.

The Cranes were of that mindset of Cranes that were destined to enter the Gates of Heaven through birthright if not by their absolute commitment to the Evangelical Church of Ho-leee Misery. (At least that is what people of less ardent Protestant and Catholic sects called Crane’s brethren.) The Crane’s were zealous practitioners in a Mennonite denomination centrally located within a small community outside Edgar, closer to Craighurst. This group withdrew themselves from a body of Old Order Amish over questions of discipline and practice, and they established their own little colony.

However, Levin Crane supported the notion that by keeping away from all people, including their own schismatic assemblage, they could keep one step ahead of all others on their pilgrimage to God. So they lived simple, if not gruelling, lives; supporting themselves with what bounty they produced on their land. They had two strong Clydesdales and a mule to work their fields. They had a count of sheep, chickens, and cattle. A German Shepherd roamed and sported the property the way great canines do. Owning much else would be carnal and wouldn’t do right!

The interior of their farmhouse was like a well in time that bottomed out somewhere when pioneer life and the Industrial Revolution merged. Of course, some slinky modern commodities such as telephone, t.v., and Sega! nestled there quite discreetly. Levin, Patriarch and Family Management Dictator, kept a tight monitor on these vices of modern civilization to prevent the vestige of corruption, greed and sloth, from soiling their immaculate livelihood. Their devotion to God was truly serious.

Saturday evenings was the designated time for the use of these modern vices. Mrs. Crane always got on the phone with family members and close friends that were within the local-call distance. She gabbled the hours away. Phillip and Levin usually contested the video brain of the Sega game cartridges, or they sat plumply on the couch to watch adventure movies and wildlife programs. Rice pudding would be simmering on the stove, or apple cobbler would be baking in the oven, and shortly before nine o’clock Marion would hang up the heavy receiver onto the telephone cradle for the week. Phillip would be plotting prospective strategies for buying time to stay up late as the family prepared to gather at the table for a prayer, a blessing, and some sweet, homemade goodness. So by the time it was dark with night, the Cranes were cozy in the sanctity of their beds, either awake or asleep, however, safe.

Marion often stayed up late reading, The Windowmaker. When she first read, “The Pocket Dragons,” sensory creepers coursed under her skin. She began to act like she was crazy. Strange thoughts often crossed her mind on silent days at home.

The semblance of eerie coincidence was too much for her to handle. She made desperate changes in her life to shatter the mirror between what she read in those pages and reality. This mental breakdown changed her by degrees, not only because of the similitude between the story and her life, but because of the horrors the fiction portended.

In that period, Marion read from the book feverishly until Levin Crane, angry at his wife’s derelict grip on reality, threatened to send her to the funny farm in a rubber boobie full of horse shit. She showed him the book and he said, “So what. We should be proud that some person finds us interesting enough to write about.”

She read him the horrors that the author inflicted on their characters and he said, “Come on Marion, you don’t seriously believe that far-fetched nonsense could actually come true, do you?”

She argued the fact that the author was invading their right to privacy and that they could sue the pants off of him for doing so. Levin thought about it for a moment and said, “Why, Marion? Why make trouble for the guy? What does it hurt to have us in that story? To tell you the truth, I like it. It means we’ll live forever like Holden Caufield, Captain Ahab, and Victor Frankenstein.”

Marion Crane ran to the bathroom and vomited a wretched, bitter spill. She didn’t show her husband that his exact words, precisely how he uttered them, were written in the story.

Her paranoid delusion and phobic distress festered as time went on. Dragons, sprites, magic and Sharin Courney---all of it fiction. Until one day Philip mentioned the name of the new girl in his class. Philip pointed her out on the bus and each day, Marion would see her son off to school and stare at Sharin with frightened, quizzical eyes.

She was reading the story once again, enthralled by the madhouse interplay of levels and clearlight similarities between the characters and her family. She was at the point in the story where she refused to lift her eyes from the print. She was exhausted of looking around her bedroom to see if the story she was reading was actually unfolding and becoming reality.

This writer, she thought, he’s toying with my mind.

She felt that if she looked up just one more time, she would surely find herself insane from it. So, she became diligent and uncompromising in her concentration and focused on the pages.

As she read the story, the sprite entered her bedroom, dimly. It fired itself through the air, barely visible in the shadow-light offering, shining from paraffin. Levin was asleep, perhaps visiting that subconscious dream theatre. The sprite explored the room, floating freely in the air as easily as a fragment of dust. It was safe behind the book because the book monopolized Marion’s attention.

The sprite drifted to a height above a heavy, mahogany dresser. On the dresser was a gold chain splayed across a fine, linen doily. On the chain was attached a gold cross pendant. The cross depicted the crucifiction of Christ and His suffering. To the cross was nailed a little, gold man. He was pierced with teeny gold spikes through his tiny gold hands and feet. He had a golden shroud that covered his golden loins. He had a beard which was wrought in gold, a crown of thorns and hair of gold, and the intricate features on his face detailed sorrowful anguish in solid gold.

The sprite descended slowly, falling like a black angel into the heart of gold. For a moment, the world was safe. Then, the little depiction of Christ turned its precious head.

* * *

Andrew opened his eyes to a midnight nightmare. A premonition. He was in the forest. The trees were perfectly still. The giant was near. He could feel it. It had him targeted and still he could not see it. He saw, instead, his daughter in the woods. Her head was distended and gravid with...things. Horrible monsters that he could see seething under the skin of her scalp. He saw her lifting a key to her temple; a key that glittered the silvery shape of a serpent. She pressed the key into her head and split a fissure running across her skull. Her scalp rippled and split. Then, they crawled out: Two hideous forms of life that bartered with devils for looks. His mouth stretched open for a scream, still caught in his throat. From the corner of his internal eye, he caught something else moving.

The motion was alluring and stole his attention because everywhere else around him trees were preternaturally motionless. He turned his dream-eye to a distance within inches of his face and there he saw a single leaf of a tree moving.

One leaf moving?

Waving.

Waving?

The giant.

He awakened from lucidity, his mouth already agape from lost shrieks, and found himself, “Put them back!,” screaming. “Put them back! Put them back!...”

* * *

The charm tore a hand from the gold cross and pulled its other limbs free in a grave, mock parody of resurrection. The little man stood upright on the edge of the dresser and reflected candle light in glimmers of gold. Forging a step over the mahogany finish, it suddenly fell into an abysmal shadow and landed like a pin drop in a hemp-knot rug as soft as a haystack. It climbed up the bedspread onto a strange continent where two people, like gods buried under a quilt landscape, were bed-locked. A worm, it pressed itself through the quilt and into the subterranean, dark warmth beneath the sheets where flesh and bones were buried, resting in peace.

Marion was at the edge of her wits reading, “The Pocket Dragons.” She was at the part where the sprite was somewhere under the bed linen. Suddenly her husband flinched. De-ja-vu licked her memory. She set the book down as horror flooded her senses. Levin Crane woke up instantly, screaming in bedlam. Marion watched fiction become reality.

Her husband’s eyes were turgid bubbles on his face. His head rocked from side to side as if it were sticky jetsam on a rollercoaster ride to hell. His tongue poked out of his mouth, forking for air which entered his lungs in little chunks and came flying out in shrieks. His hands clawed at his chest, the area of his heart, and there, blood spurted into the air through his scrabbling fingers, over his hands. It washed down his rib cage and his belly, it spilled over his navel into the thirsty cotton of his underwear. The blood came in pulsating rhythms, sputtering into the air, landing softly on Marion’s face and chest like the scattered, crimson jewels of a broken ruby necklace.

Marion joined her husband in bedlam. The pages of her favourite story were unfolding before her eyes. It was her reality. Now she knew what was going to happen. She had read it a thousand times. Wednesday morning, a coroner’s autopsy would reveal that Levin Crane dies from a coronary occlusion. A shard of 14K gold (shaped like Jesus Christ), would be discovered lodged in the ventricles of his heart. (They would not, however, reveal that the evidence supports the fact that the gold-thing crawled its way into his heart.) Marion also knew that as her husband’s flailing arms pumped out the last of his blood, another horror would occur. A horror so imminent that she released her bowels and felt a warm wet circle form around her crotch.

Levin Crane finally dropped his arms. He was dead. Marion screamed over the body of her dead husband. Looking at the dark, red hole bored into his chest and the last of his blood drool out from it, she was frozen with horror. She knew what her last words were going to be so she said them.

“Oh. Shit.”

As the sprite squirmed its way to the top of the hole in Levin’s chest, it sizzled meat and blood. It reached the surface and fired itself into Marion’s head with such force, her head was thrown back. An electric bullet. It permeated her skin and bone. She sat rigidly, trembling with mild convulsions as the sprite injected electric needles throughout the lobes of her brain.

The dawn was not yet breaking. Anxious birds warbled in the trees, summoning their god from the black, eastern horizon with a ritual of quivers, trills, and melodic embellishments. The night air eddied and undulated in cold, crisp whispers. The silvery moon was falling as Marion walked into the night. She had lightening in her brain. From the window of his room, Phillip watched his mother step across the fields where infant winter wheat played in their furrows. Far into the distance, he saw her trodding over unyielding soil that scraped against her bare feet. He saw her nightdress fluttering waywardly as if mama were the laughing cliche of some fucked-up ghost story. And he was frightened. Frightened to the point where he slipped (fish-meat white and catatonic) into the clouds of disassociative disorder.

* * *

Beginning early Sunday morning, the people of Edgar started looking at the world with a degree of affability. They passed off many of the strange events they apparently thought they had witnessed by chuckling to themselves and convincing themselves that they had better stay off that greasy food too close to bed time. Better yet, remember not to have that nightcap.

Just before sunrise, James Ransom (once a husband and a hapless drunk, now a widower and a helpless drunk) found himself fighting for the blankets once again. He wasn’t about to complain to his wife, after all, she cooks his meals, she cleans his clothes, she puts up with his drinking every night and---

“Wait just one guard’s dong minute here,” James garbled, “...Violet is dead.”

He rolled over on his pillow and waited for his eyes to focus. In bed with him was a dwarf as tall as a banana, tugging at his blanket and curling itself under it. Mr. Ransom was reminded of Sneezy and he watched as the dwarf snuggled into position, farted, and fell asleep. James hiccuped. He rolled back on his side and promised all the Angels that he would never take a drink again.

At daybreak, Mrs. Bradbury was up fixing a coffee with sugar and yawning lethargically. She carried her coffee to the front porch and set out to retrieve the daily paper from the bottom of the front steps. The sun was sneaking its way above the clouds on the horizon as she bent over to read the headlines:

“Edgar Is Dead!”

What the hell else is new?, Mrs. Bradbury mumbled.

At the same time, a delicate sound kept tugging at her ear. She tore her eyes from the paper and searched the area near the garden with suspicious little sweeps. A cricket caught her searching for him and stopped---

That sound...that music...it sounds so much like...

She persisted in her search long after the music stopped. She detected some movement under a rose bush. Angry at the intrusion, a cricket leapt away in quick bounds being ever so careful not to damage its bow and fiddle. Mrs. Bradbury went inside, poured her coffee into the sink, and went straight back to bed.

Billy Kingshot was up early. It was naught of seven o’clock but his persistent clamouring and exaggerated whining had got him exactly what he wanted (although he felt that his mother didn’t have to throw him out.) Today was Sunday and he would be busy, busy, busy. He had a special mayonnaise jar that was stripped and cleaned if its label, a neat little stack of dried leaves in his shirt pocket, and a large, round spy glass tucked into this belt. All he needed now was a nice bug.

He would trap one in the jar and slip a leaf under the lid when he had the chance. He would then focus the sun’s rays (using the magnifying glass) into a sharp, white dot on the leaf so that it would start to smoke. The smoke would fill the jar and voila, the insect would die a slow and eventful death.

Billy spent the next hour hunting an insect for his latest torture chamber. He finally caught the perfect specimen. It landed on the picnic table to bask in the light and Billy cupped it. He quickly slipped the lid of the jar under the glass and screwed it shut. It was a wasp. Billy was surprised at the size of it. He was even more surprised when he later found out that it was made of shiny, silver metal.

The wasp’s polished oval eyes seemed to glare at Billy through the glass. Its stinger, sharp and curved like the tip of a white hot fishing hook barb, ejected and retracted from its pulsating, metal abdomen. Most insects would have searched for a way to escape the glass chamber, but the way this particular insect concentrated on Billy made him nervous. It hovered in the jar on plate-foil wings that rang like a tuning fork. The pitch was high and whiny and, before long, the glass started to reverberate in Billy’s hand. He placed the jar on the grass and ran for the door to his house. As he screamed and kicked, he heard the glass pop!

“You wanted out,” his mother shouted, barely lifting her head from her pillow, “you stay out!”

At the creek, Mr. Delvin was fishing while his beastly Irish Setter combed the terrain for wild action. The day was already warming up and Rowzer was panting heavily as he sniffed, chased, and hunted anything real or imagined through the tall grass. The dog came across something that moved. He cocked his head, bewildered by what was on the ground. He sniffed at it. The thing hopped. He licked the thing and again it tried to hop away. Rowzer was much too thirsty to be bothered by fascinations. He lapped the thing up like a dish full of beer and the thing disappeared. Just like that!

Sucker fish plagued Delvin’s luck. He wanted trout. Rowzer watched while his master unhooked a sucker from his line. The dog was standing next to him, panting with his tongue wagging heavily from heat and sport. Delvin looked up in time to see something crawl out of his dog’s throat and slide off its tongue. It landed on the ground with a wet smack.

What the...?

It was a toad...it wasn’t a toad...it looked like a...

...a freakin toad.

Delvin reached down to grab the batrachian jewel. His fingers slipped through it and they came up dripping wet. The crystalline creature started to hop toward the creek. Delvin snatched at the shimmering toad and each time he tried to clutch it, it washed around his fingers. When it reached the creek, it slipped into the water and vanished. Delvin looked at Rowzer who was similarly baffled by the toad-thing. Delvin tasted the liquid still dripping from his fingers and confirmed his thoughts, “Its...it is water.”

Dale Everett thought he would get a jump start on the day by mowing his lawn, first thing. It was eight-thirty and he didn’t imagine he would be waking any of the neighbours up. No way, not with his brand new Craftsman 22 inch rear-bagger with 5 horsepower engine. He started the machine, listening to the flavour of its engine, and then he began his fool’s parade of trotting back and forth across the lawn wearing khaki shorts, a Pittsberg Steelers t-shirt, and yesterday’s misshaven stubble on his face. The sun was sliding across the sky, promising a scorcher by mid-afternoon. Dale would have all of his work completed by then and he would fall asleep in the swinging hammock while listening to the baseball game on the radio. It was sublime.

He chanced upon a peculiar butterfly that swooped into his vegetable patch. He wasn’t a nature buff, he didn’t moon over the sight of rare wonders in the world of insects. He wasn’t a border case phobic who would do a baby bird on the lawn whenever something buzzed his ears or cricked in his hair. However, he did appreciate the fact that this butterfly had chosen his garden to perch in rather that the Livingston’s next door. He continued mowing the lawn and, as he approached the garden, the butterfly fluttered into the air and whirled to within inches of his nose. That was when Dale Everett got a good look at it and saw that it wasn’t a butterfly at all.

It was a sylph of some kind. A faerie, pink and bright. She had dainty hands and feet; smooth, glowing arms and slender legs. She smiled and blinked from pencil-point facial features that burned with vibrant, living energies. She had miniature breasts that played coy behind long, radiant curls of hair. She had shapely hips, curves that magazine Sirens and American jiggle-bunnies would envy. Large, bright wings that extended from her back tinkled as they tremoured, supporting her in flight. She straddled herself around Dale’s nose, giving it a hug and kissing the bridge of his eyes. When she flew away, Dale didn’t know whether to laugh or to scream. He wasn’t sure if he was crazy or if he was on his way to farmland. All he knew was that he had an erection in his shorts and his wife was still laying in bed.

* * *

After his premonition, Andrew lay in bed for the remainder of the night with his eyes scratching at the darkness. Afterimages of scary monsters and menacing ghost giants paraded from lost corners in the night-maria, plaguing him with sleepless delirium. The image of his daughter’s head, swollen with dreamy beasts that rippled and undulated under her scalp and forehead like a bag full of birds, burned noxiously in his mental eye. Twice, he had lifted himself from bed to check on Sharin. Groping his way along the hallway, he felt like an agoraphobic geezer. He settled his ear to her door while his hand reached through the dark and found reassurance in the nub of the door handle. There he listened for horrors and thought he heard shrill, anechoic sirens like the alien call of whale music. He pictured a werewolf moon on the ebb of a rocky bluff where two strangely terrific monsters sang out to the sea and blasted fire rainbows across the night sky. It drilled a curious fear into him.

Is our house going to catch fire? Hell knows! What other giants are you unleashing in my head, Sharin? What’s going on?

Each time he opened her door the singing would stop. He clicked on the light switch and his eyes hurt from the explosion of light. But, it didn’t matter. Everything was okay. His daughter was okay. He went back to bed and waited for the delirium to return like sugar mice to a pantry. And each time he settled into it, he thought he heard those strange sirens calling him again.

Daylight came again. He greeted it with a cigarette on the step of the back door. Leslie got up, but he told her to go back to bed. “I’m fine, really,” he told her.

Really, yeah, I’ve dropped off the loft into ha-ha land.

He would work. Work on the shed to keep his mind off of dream interpretations. Keep his mind preoccupied. If you keep your mind busy, you tend to forget about other things. Busy minds forget. They forget about dead mothers, dead brothers, miscarried babies and fire. They forget that some dreams come true, bad dreams, and lately, dreaming has become a hell night’s phantasm. Oh, its going to take a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to forget about an invisible giant sleeping somewhere very close to you; one that will hunt you down, root you out, and crush you when it wakes.

He was already working hard on the shed when Leslie came out of the house holding a thing in the crook of her fist. She called out to Andrew and when he poked his head out from the doorway and saw the weight of silver and the shimmer-light reflection from precious gems glittering in her outstretched palm---he might have screamed if his mouth didn’t suddenly feel bone dry.

Instead, his heart started to kick the walls of his lungs like a horse confined to a burning barn. Little, dizzying spots faded in and out of eyesight. It was starting. The things that were to become of his premonitions were at hand. He had seen that key before---during the blackout on the highway when he nearly became metalsauce---the key his daughter used to split her head wide open for the demons in his last dream. The key to his worst nightmares.

* * *

“Where did you get that!?” The bloodshot heat of his scrutiny made Leslie’s fingers curl over the key.

“Take it easy, honey. It fell out of Sharin’s sweater.”

The pile of laundry rumpled next to the washer was small. It was a little fortune that Leslie enjoyed every weekend. She was sorting through the laundry when she remembered the sweater Sharin had worn into the forest and how terribly it had been soiled. She searched Sharin’s room as her little girl slept and found it suspiciously concealed far under her bed. She dragged it out and when she turned a sleeve outside-in, a heavy object fell onto the soft of her comforter and glimmered radiantly there. Wonder struck, Leslie would have wakened her daughter, but Sharin looked peacefully asleep. She decided to see what Andrew would make of it first.

“Where is she?,” he blurted. He looked intense.

“Sharin?...Asleep...Stop that, you’re frightening me. Don’t act that way.”

“Leslie, the dreams I’ve been having all week, the premonitions, that key that you’re holding is part of it all. Its the key. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Whatever the premonitions signify, its becoming real! Like the fire and the miscarriage. I dreamed of monsters crawling out of Sharin’s head like the litter of a mutated cat. I dreamed of something so giant with power and evil that I was blind to it. Its been turning my hair white, look at me. This giant is going to come for the key and then it is going crush me”

A blank, topaz eye glared at Leslie. She dropped the key to the ground, bewildered and afraid. She thought she felt it surge.

Stepping out of the shed, Andrew snatched the key from the ground. Leslie tagged Andrew’s shadow as he stormed toward the house.

The dragons nudged into the tender tickle centers of Sharin’s neck; the same ticklish spots that puppies always seem to find. She was awakened and she giggled, but a door slam made her shudder. She could hear her parents approaching the end of the hall. “Shh,” she said and she shovelled the dragons under her pillow as her door swung open in a cold rush of air.

Her father stood at the entrance way. He held the key up for her to see. “Where did you get this!?,” he exclaimed.

“Daddy...” Sharin didn’t know what to say.

“Where did you find this, Sharin?”

“No...” Heightened sobs burst into a full-fledged cry.

“Did you steal it?”

“Andrew, go easy,” Leslie interjected. “She’s frightened.”

Sharin charged for the sanctuary of her mother’s arms.

“Its okay, sweetheart,” Leslie said, her voice soft and careful. “Daddy wants to know where you got the key. That’s all.”

Tears trickled down Sharin’s cheeks in long, ophidian trails, dropping free at her chin and vanishing into the cotton thirst of Leslie’s t-shirt. Her frightened voice came in uncontrollable, hitching breaths. “Mr.-Mr.-Hill-illery, he-e gave-me-it.”

“This Mr. Hillary again. The guy who she said she followed into the forest yesterday. Who is this guy?”

“You remember Sharin’s trip to the Mill Creek Home last week, don’t you?,” Leslie reminded Andrew. “One of the residents there. Sharin’s partner for the day.” Leslie shifted Sharin in her arms so that she could see her face. “Sharin, why did Mr. Hillary give you the key?”

“He-e said, he said I cou-could have it. I-he said I have ma-magic in me. I was-n’t s’posed to tell nobody.”

Leslie looked into the worried depth of Andrew’s face. Sharin continued, “He said it o-pened magic things. A world of magic. It opens doorways.”

“What do you mean, sweetie?”

She pulled away from her mother and stepped over to her bed. She lifted her pillow.

A set of dark crimson eyes and a set of amber eyes boot-started the terror machine. Andrew saw vermin and adrenalin lightened his head. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled from their gooseflesh hills like the flagstaffs on forgotten, haunted battlefields.

Monsters.

Two fabulous, hatchling lizards hissed at their intruders and spat a milky, white phlegm that smelled of sulphur and burned holes in the bed sheets. The sound of his wife’s shriek could not dispel Andrew’s feeling of dislocation. These were the creatures of the dream, borne of his daughter’s head. They were barringers of dark truths promising greater horrors.

Andrew grew cold as he thought about...

Fe fi foe fum, I smell the blood...

“Yesterday, Mr. Hillary showed me a doorway. I opened it with the key. I watched as...”

I’ve blacked out... I’m lying in the shed because I’ve blacked out again... and this key, and these monsters, and all the rest of it is just a NIGHTMARE!

Stepping over to the bed, his arm reached to touch the matter of his dream. Soon he would wake up and it would be all over. The creatures recoiled until they were caught with their backs to the headboard. Seeing the approaching menace, they threw their mouths open and jetted thin streams of fire over Andrew’s hand. He was not in a dream. The fire deflagrated his flesh in a bright orange assault, sending smoke and the smell of burning flesh wafting through the air as he shook the flame. Screaming.

Bewitched by the dragon fire, Sharin and Leslie wordlessly watched Andrew scream in pain. When the initial shock of the burning gave way to a throbbing march of pain, a clarity of focus washed over Andrew. Holding his blistering hand in the crook of his other arm’s elbow, he said, “Get Sharin dressed. We’re going to pay Mr. Hillary a visit.”

* * *

“Mr. Hillary is no longer with us.” A silence fell over Mrs. Lodge’s office at the Mill Creek Home; it was more like a stillness. “He passed away sometime yesterday morning in his bed. One of our housekeepers discovered his body in... well, in a rather disquieted condition. The cause of death has yet to be determined, but I speculate he died of natural causes---old age, you know. It happens quite often around here.” Mrs. Lodge glanced over at Sharin and returned a sympathetic sort of frown to Andrew. “Should we be discussing this...you know...with the child present?,” she whispered.

Sharin was standing at her mother’s feet holding a shoe box. Her eyes were big and blue, looking as if they might stare themselves right out of her head. When Mrs. Lodge glanced her way, her eyes dropped off towards the carpet. Her mother rested her hand on her shoulder and started to caress the soft, chestnut brown hair: A token regard of sympathy.

They had come to the Home with expectations of seeing Mr. Hillary and finding resolve to the imminent catastrophe Andrew’s dream prophesied; but now, the jags and tremors of his nightmares were jibing into conscious reality.

Dead, Andrew thought. His face was hard and robbed of colour. The thought left him errant for words. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he pictured a clock running, sounding the alarm like the cartoonish timekeeper in H.R. Puffnstuff. “Time is short! Time is short! Time is short!...” Andrew flinched. Dead, he thought, and it absently escaped his lips.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Lodge said. She fumbled in her pocket for some keys and began unlocking the flat stationary drawer in her desk. “Oddly enough, I was going to contact you through Sharin’s school, Mr. Courney. It appears Mr. Hillary has left an envelope addressed to Sharin. The housekeeper found it with Mr. Hillary when she discovered him yesterday morning. In respect of the deceased’s last wish, I took it upon myself to make sure it was delivered. You’ve made my task a fall short of funny by this unexpected visit.”

Mrs. Lodge yanked the drawer open and pulled the envelope out. “Here it is,” she said and handed it to Andrew.

A bewildered look of surprise went from face to face. Andrew’s face was marked by the same bewildered expression as he held the envelope with both hands (one bandaged) and read the address.

“Thank you, Mrs. Lodge,” he garbled. He turned and started to shuffle his family towards the door.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Courney. Don’t hesitate to call if you have any more questions. Or, uh, if you need anything in that letter clarified. Er, ahhh, we might be able to help.” Lodge dashed to the door and opened it for the Courneys. “Take care, now.”

She watched the three figures bobbing into the hall shadows and she winced.

If you need anything in that letter clarified?...Ha! If that doesn’t come across as being blatantly nosey, I don’t know what would. However, curiosity fingered through her. She fought to keep from inquiring about the contents of the shoe box. As the Courneys left her office, she thought she heard something like mice scuttering in the package.

* * *

The temperature inside the Oldsmobile was exactly one degree shy of hell: That is what Leslie was thinking as she waited for Andrew to open the letter in the parking lot of the Mill Creek Home. At least the windows were rolled down; but, the absence of a breeze bottled the heat and air. Sweat trickled down from her forehead and fell in flat, wet circles on the leather seats. She wiped her face with a paper towel.

“What do you suppose its about?,” she asked.

“I don’t know. Pray it says something about that key and those---dragons. We don’t have much time. Something is coming to claim that key.”

“Andrew, you don’t mean that. All of this is crazy...and it’s starting to get to me. How do know something is coming?”

“There isn’t a breeze in the air. The trees...they’e perfectly still. That’s the way it was in the dreams.”

“But, how do you know?”

“I just do. Like the miscarriage, and the fire. I just know.”

Leslie put her hand over her eyes. She felt a migraine coming in, behind her eyes. She shut them and listened as Andrew tore the envelope and pulled the contents out. She could hear the paper rustling in his shaking grip as he unfolded it. She could hear the heavy, quickened breathing pass his throat. Then, she heard a shout that sent pain riveting into her head.

Sharin was in the back seat sitting complaisantly with the shoe box in her lap. She lifted the lid and her pets craned their slender necks to look around. When they heard the shout, their heads withdrew and fine trails of smoke lifted out from their nostrils. The shout jostled Sharin, and she nervously covered the box.

“DAMN IT ALL!?” He threw the letter aside and started the car.

“What does it say?,” Leslie asked as she reached for the letter.

“Have a look!” Andrew threw the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator pedal.

Leslie lifted the page and flipped it over. Both sides were unmarked. She stared at the blank page incredulously.

“It’s blank,” she said.

“That Mr. Hillary sure has some sense of humour, doesn’t he?” He put the car into drive and crushed the pedal under his foot.

“Slow down. Where are we going?”

“You are going home. Sharin and I are going into the forest to find that doorway, or wherever it was that those creatures came from, and we are going to put them back. Then, we are going to dispose of that key before it disposes of me.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Look, Leslie, I don’t know what to expect. Something is coming for that key and I don’t even know what it is. Whatever it is, its big and its angry. At least that’s what my dreams are indicating. It’s like I’m standing in the shadow of King Kong or something, but no matter where I look, I can’t see it---not even when I know it’s near me. I don’t want you getting hurt. You’re staying home where you’re safe.”

“But---”

“No but, Leslie. Please. It’s my bad dream.”

Leslie folded the letter and decided not to pursue a stand on venturing into the forest. Her migraine had decided it for her. She was about to crumple the sheet of paper when she heard Sharin’s meek voice asking for it.

“Oh goodness, I’m sorry. Of course you can have it.” She reached over the seat and passed the letter to Sharin. “I’m afraid your friend Mr. Hillary didn’t have much to say.”

Sharin took the sheet and rested it on top of the shoe box. When her mother turned away she started to unfold it. Slowly, a world opened up to her and her eyes met it with breathtaking reverie. The paper flourished into a view of a meadow in living brilliance, one of pristine clarity. From corner to corner, the page she held appeared as an invisible window facing a sun drenched field of rolling forget-me-nots undulating under an unfelt wind that swept over the land. She could see distant hills and smoky-blue mountains fading into the endless depth of the image. She could almost reach into it, and pick a flower, and pull it into the car---but when she tried, she felt the paper course across her finger tips.

She saw two butterflies in a dancing flight of courtship rise and soar into the blue sky. She could hear the warble of a redwinged blackbird that was perched on a flowering purple thistle. She watched as the songbird took flight into the distance, towards the unsung audience of willows that wept bud scales into a brook. Up from a grassy, green knoll, stippled with a yellow charade of dandelion blooms, she saw Mr. Hillary appear, waving his hand and smiling. He walked through the meadow until he reached the forefront of Sharin’s view. They greeted each other through thought transference, inaudible voices that tinkled in her brain. Sharin smiled and wished she was there, wherever it was, because it was so beautiful. Hillary told her that they would meet there again, someday, because it is where all good people go. He told her that they would walk in the sun through the morning glories and demure evening shades at dusk. He told her that they would chase the moon on its dreamy race across the sky and share stories about what stars twinkled under their feet. He promised her all of this and an eternity of wonders.

He took her to a garden where (however displaced from her seat in the back of the Oldsmobile) she could somehow smell the sweet, ethereal air of peach blossom and taste from cool, running shallows of spring water. There was an old stump there that he propped himself against. Sharin could hear echoes of his voice in her mind.

“Princess, I have left you this letter because I fear that the powers you may have unleashed will heed their doorways. You must understand that all of the magic comes from you. The little black doorways are doors that lead to the inner depths of your imagination. I gave you the key to those doorways, but it is your magic that brings everything to life.”

“I understand, Mr Hillary.”

She did understand. His words tinkered in her brain and touched upon the furthest boundaries of reason, restructuring and building thought processes so that she could comprehend beyond her natural level of intellect.

“You have yet to learn that there are evil powers as well as powers that are good. Beware of the evil powers, they will try to open other doorways, all of them if they can. They will try to keep your mind open to them.”

“But couldn’t I just let out the good fairies and the good dragons?”

“Yes, Princess. In time you will learn how it is done. But by then it will be too late. Yes, as you get older, you will know what fairies and what dragons to unleash. Until that time, I leave you with this warning: You may not know what evils lie in the cellars of your mind, waiting behind locked doors. That is the danger of innocence. Evil may escape you to bring harm to others without conscious intention and without your knowledge. You have the power within yourself to keep those evils locked away. Choices will have to be made. The right choices will lead you back to this garden. The wrong choices will lead you to another place, a charred and forbidding place. Someday you will understand these choices. But by then it will be too late: The magic in you would have already died.”

“Why, Mr Hillary? Why?”

The picture started to fade. Mr. Hillary waved goodbye and started along a beaten path towards a great castle in the distance. The scent of peach blossom and the wild textures of sensation dwindled, giving way to the fabric of paper. Before the last shade of green grass and the last tinge of blue sky dissipated into the blank folds of the page, Sharin heard Hillary say, “Because innocence is magic...innocence is m a g i c . . .” Looking out the window at the passing landscape, she clung to thoughts of Mr. Hillary, the friend who died and was now waiting in a good place to meet her again. She looked at her parents whose faces were wrought with little worries that seemed to hang like torture ornaments on tiny folds of skin under their eyes, from the corners of their mouths, on their brows, sagging their faces into the look of sad old age. She lifted the cover of the shoe box and peeked at the dragons nestled together in a slumber. She remembered the fire torrent that scorched her father’s hand and she realized it had something to do with her dark wish to keep Daddy away from her magical pets. A teardrop fell onto the blank letter. She folded it and placed it next to herself, crying secretly, but not knowing why she felt so miserable.

* * *

It was mid-day when they arrived at their house. The heat was sweltering and foul like the heat trapped in the flyblown belly of a dead fish. The stillness of the air was maddening. Andrew parked his car at its station on the driveway with a feverish sense that his time was almost spent. Stepping from the car, he wiped the sting of sweat from his eyes. He looked towards the petrified trees behind his house and imagined a roaring giant brushing its way though the curtain of woods and settling large, yellowish eyes on his family with a brutish grin. He could almost see it, hunched over, approaching with a vengeful hunger, clenching and unclenching thick, filthy hands like a crazed, tongue-lagging freak that has grown as tall as a house.

“Leslie,” he said, “we’re not wasting time. I’m taking Sharin and we are going into the forest right now. You go inside the house and keep the doors locked. If anything out of the ordinary happens, take the car and drive---to a police station, to a fire hall, to a hospital, anywhere!---anywhere where it might be safe.” He opened the trunk of the Olds’ and then tossed her the set of keys.

“Right now? Well...don’t you need to take something with you? A compass maybe? Some water?”

“Got everything I need,” he said and pulled out a tight gunnysack, a survival kit that he always kept in his trunk. He flung it over one shoulder and slammed the trunk shut. It was time. Now...the hard part.

The shoe box lay discarded on the lawn as Sharin dropped the dragons into the front pocket of her shirt. Two small bulges squirmed and frolicked under the fabric. When she looked at them, their glazed eyes shimmered and winked, gazing helplessly like lost kittens in a new home. Before she realized it, her father was crouching down to meet her at eye level. He saw the dragons shifting in her shirt pocket.

They don’t hurt her, he thought.

Nevertheless, he held her at arm’s length.

“Sharin, Daddy is taking you into the forest---”

“I know,” she interrupted. She looked heartsick.

“Do you know why Daddy has to take you?”

“You want me to show you where the doorway is so you can get rid of the magic dragons and the magic key.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Daddy has been having terrible dreams about that key and about monsters. Bad monsters. Daddy thinks that the key and those dragons are dangerous. We should put them back.”

“I don’t want to,” she cried, shaking her head in protest, “I don’t want to do it.”

“We have to, sweetheart.”

“No!”

Andrew squeezed his grip on Sharin’s arm. Red anger wired through him. “Sharin, Daddy is getting upset at your testiness. Say ‘no’ one more time and I’ll take those dragons and maybe kill them. You don’t want that, do you? You want to set them free. In the forest. Now! MARCH!”

“Oh, gosh.” Leslie put a trembling hand on her mouth and winced. She looked as if she might break into tears at any moment.

Sharin reeled and started tromping to the backyard, towards the forest. Watching her, Andrew quickly regarded Leslie’s look of despair. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon. It can’t be far if Sharin found her way back yesterday. Go inside and lock up. We’ll be okay.”

“Be careful.” Leslie brushed the back of his shirt as he turned to follow Sharin. His little girl was ten yards beyond his reach and meant to keep her distance.

* * *

The kitchen was a shambles. Drawers were pulled from their tracking and their contents were thrown aimlessly in whirling disarray. Knives and spoons, forks and dishcloths, birthday candles and the lot of bric-a-brac littered the floor from corner to corner. Cupboard doors were left wide open, or left hanging ajar at the hinge. All the cupboards were stripped of their contents with shattered plates and broken glasses left to tell the sinister tale. Other appliances were aborted of their purpose by the vandal-lust. The toaster was smashed through the window of the oven. The fridge hummed, sideways on the floor, toppled over with the door wide open and its spoiled food not agreeing with the heat of the day.

After her husband and daughter had disappeared through the brambles at the edge of the woods, Leslie sat on a lawn chair in the shade of a maple tree and reflected on her loved ones. The stream of consciousness carried to her a steady flow of memories---and fears...and worries. The heat and the invasion of jarring thoughts wrenched her migraine. She decided to go inside, first to the medicine cabinet and then to the soft darkness of her bed to enjoy the solace of a good sleep. She entered her house through the back door leading into the kitchen. When the door swung open, Leslie’s heart missed a beat and then ran off.

Take the car and drive---to a police station, to a fire hall, to a hospital, anywhere, anywhere where it might be safe.

But, she couldn’t move. Her eyes surveyed the kitchen in disbelief. They were at the Mill Creek Home for no more than two hours---how could? Her eyes flittered over the glittering nonsense of knick-knack, everything marred, cracked, or destroyed altogether. A fork stuck out of the clock, its hunted cuckoo bird stabbed and petrified at a twelve o’clock fixation. The goldfish floated in its fishbowl, decapitated, as if someone chewed off its head and decided that the taste was off. Leslie’s eyes swept all of it in.

Oh. My. God.

She stepped into the kitchen and crept across the floor of broken glass like a fawn, eyes wide and listening, ready to dart at the slightest creak of wood or crunch of glass. In the hall, an antique chippendale table was disarranged and the contents of its drawer were scattered over the hall carpet. She peered into the living room. Sofa cushions were pulled. Drawers in the wall unit and the end tables were emptied and smashed against walls. The china cabinet was ravaged and thrown in ruin over the dining room table.

Run, you fool! What’s the matter with you?!

She couldn’t. A part of her was pleading with her to get in the car and drive like hell; but, another part of her had to see more. When your house and all your belongings go to fire and ash, you lose a little sanity. When you build your life from scratch to start again, the loss of sanity is trumped by a resilient strength. When everything you build is once again destroyed, you start to play fifty-two-pick-up with a few cards short of a full deck, not really giving a small god damn about the coming of the Ace of Spades.

She placed her hand on the banister and peered up from strangely contorted and eerie angles towards the silent upper floor. There was a chance that whoever did the damage was hiding somewhere upstairs, waiting. Waiting with shallow breaths behind a door with the blunt, impassable weight of a hatchet in his clutch. Waiting with the pungent smell of sweat trapped in the greenish underarm circles of a t-shirt and counting down his range by the approaching footfalls.

Run, you crazy fuck! Run away from here!

However, she didn’t. The upstairs called. She stepped up slowly; one hand worrying over the bannister, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were leavened by adrenalin and her heart beats flooded rhythmic pressure into her migraine. If one creepy wood whisper sounded, she knew she would scream and run. Or, drop dead in fright.

One slow step at a time. Now, the upper floor met her at eye level. The body carpets of the linen closet were lying in one rumpled heap, slouched on the floor like a rape torn virgin. The bathroom door offered an open house to a cascade of broken mirrors. Pills, dressed in plastic casings for every occasion, sprayed into the hallway like runaway teenagers making the scene. Sharin’s room, at the end of the hall, was broken of it’s Mickey Mouse theme by slashed-puppet overtones, the upturned bogeyman undercurrents, and the nuance of perte d’innocence that unsettled the upper floor. It was a damaged level in a house of damage. Opposite all of it, at the height of the stairs, a corner turned into one last room. Leslie reached the top step, committed and afraid, and peeked into the cool dark of her bedroom.

The shades were drawn and the snatch of light that escaped the day dissipated thinly through the room like the shadows behind a veil. This room was also ravaged; damaged to maximum potential. Clothes from drawers and closets dressed and coated the floor in shreds. Mattresses were wrung up against the walls like sleepy guards. Everything that was made of glass shared the floor in countless pieces. Leslie’s steps into the room were deliberately cautious. A tiny squeak escaped her throat, muffled by the nerve-ticked hand that plated her mouth. Tears wallowed up to the ducts of her eyes, but she quickly wiped them away. If she was near a shade of white from facing the threatening unexpected, she turned to the colour of desert bones when her eyes happened over the sight of Marion Crane sitting in her toilet seat, staring at her with the eyes of dead-men and the verge of a smile.

* * *

The pain that thrummed over the nerve endings in Andrew’s crispy fingers played to the beat of his heart. Sweat and the heat of the day didn’t make the matter any better. Fear and Sharin’s insolent disregard for him hadn’t made the situation any easier to cope with, either. Things were really rosy.

They trampled over the desperate, late-fall foliage of the forest with Sharin leading the way to a magic fairyland doorway in the forest bed---or the possible naught. Andrew had tried several approaches to consort with his little leader, however, these endeavours proved futile. Sharin was bitter. Hillary had given her the magic key. She had used her own magic to open the doorway. The dragons were her friends. She kept a pressured pace, almost jogging at times, to avoid seeing him lumbering next to her. Oh, she resented him for everything he was forcing her to do and she hated him for everything he was forcing her to give up. She was a bitter little pepper. Mama would have called her Peppersauce Sally if she was there to suffer her temperament.

They walked for a long time. Was it such a long time? Or was it the heat and the stagnant air that made the minutes thicken and drag like a dip in molasses. Andrew wondered and wished he brought some water. The forest was indifferent to his thirst and Sharin pushed onwards.

* * *

Leslie didn’t run. If it had been a brutish fiend sitting in her bathroom, she probably would have fainted. As it was, the world seemed to wobble out of focus. But the woman on her johnnie looked more like a victim than the perpetrator. A scene flashed through her mind: The woman was abducted, assaulted, raped, brought here by men who ripped through the house (the same men who ripped through this poor, helpless woman in her nightdress), and she was left here to collect her thoughts for future nightmares.

But that grin. That leering half grin painted to her face.

“Who are you?”

No reply. Just Marion’s grin.

“Are you hurt!?”

Just the grin.

“Can’t you speak!?”

Grin.

Leslie shifted her eyes around the rest of the room. It appeared to be safe. The men were gone. She remembered a time outside her York University days when a woman had watched her fiance’s head snap at the neck because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. This woman was traumatized to the point where she was braying laughter. The rescue unit had to free her from a front end tangle of metal between a transport truck and her boyfriend’s Dodge Celebrity. They used the jaws of life to pull free the mangled excuse for legs that crumbled from her hips. She was tattered, bloody, and laughing in hysterics. Leslie had witnessed this---she could rationalize Marion’s leering grin.

Leslie took slow steps towards the bathroom. The woman needed help. She was traumatized. She was in shock.

Wipe that scary grin off your face.

The woman sitting on the toilet didn’t flinch. The spider in her brain didn’t flinch. Leslie got close enough to the door to see the shape the woman was in. Her hair was matted from sweat. It hung in black, wayward strands like a thing growing at an undersea depth. Her sullen, dusty-blue eyes hid behind those tentacles, seeing and unseeing, focused and unfocused, drifting in and out of the fringes into consciousness. She sat hunched with her elbows resting on her knees and her hands dangling limply from their wrists. Her body wavered and swayed threatening to fall, somehow remaining upright. A dollop of saliva hung from her lips; it clung sickishly to her chin and then dropped like a glistening, web pendulum, unyielding. Her skin was shiny and pallid, embalmed with oily sweat. She smelled of shit, and urine, and hard work. Nettles clung to her night dress. On her legs were welts and bruises, some fully open and oozing sticky blood. Her feet were battered, blue and black, and pink with open sores that unfolded, inviting infection.

And that unreasonable grin.

Leslie approached and entered the bathroom without shifting her eyes. She turned on the tap and began to rinse out a facecloth in cold water. She was absently preoccupied with the activity. So, when she heard the woman speak, she was horror struck.

“What did you say?”

Leslie shut the tap off and felt herself backing away although her feet hadn’t yet moved.

Gritty dissonance creaked itself from the woman’s throat. “Where is the key?,” it sounded.

Run! Drive!---to a police station, to a fire hall, to a hospital, anywhere!---anywhere where it might be safe.

A hand gripped Leslie’s wrist before she had a chance to escape. It locked her in her tracks like a beartrap. She fell to the floor, screaming, writhing, trying to set herself free; but the grip on her wrist was one of iron, unyielding to her frenzied efforts. The woman possessed an unnatural strength and rigidity. Now, the grin seemed more horrible than ever.

“Let me go!!,” Leslie shouted. “Let go of me!!” She was pulling and kicking.

“Where---is the key?”

“I don’t have it! Let me go!”

Inside Marion’s head, electric threads snaked in and out of channels within the grey matter of her brain, sending slave impulses to the rest of her body. One could almost smell her brain sizzling.

“Where---is the key?”

“My...OW!...my husband is returning it to the forest...the doorway...your hurting me...it’s in the forest, damn you!”

The torturous shackle unlocked itself from around Leslie’s wrist. She scampered to her feet and ran to the stairway, screaming as she approached the descent. In the bathroom, Marion’s brains were frying. A billion hairs of electricity, drooping down from a central backbone like a new age fireworks expose, were stabbing at brain matter. Marion’s arms threw; her legs caddied; her jaws swam; her lips fluttered; her eyeballs coughed; her fingers played and drummed; sounds uttered from her throat in choppy cadence like a car stereo with a loose wire somewhere; overload; haywire; the cue ball struck the eightball pyramid; sc r amb les!

Marion dropped to the floor and her head cracked two of the ceramic tiles. A tail of black smoke curled out of her ear...the stench of charred brain matter...it climbed in the air.

The sprite exited Marion’s head via her nose. It crawled on eight tiny, electric legs, still the improbable spider. There was a dead housefly cringed in its death cramp on the floor near Marion’s face. The spider pounced on it and disappeared within the arthropod’s shell. Then life slowly returned to the fly. It crabbed its legs with sluggishness until it caught wind of itself and, so doing, buzzed in furious circles. Magically it bounced and landed upright on six legs. In that prissy fly fashion, that consideration for upmost hygiene and etiquette, it preened its face and wings, rubbing its forelegs as if a dinner plate of shit was being served. After the ablution---it took flight!

Leslie made it through the front door (leaving it wide open for flies to get out) and burst through the aluminum storm door towards the car with DRIVE!DRIVE!DRIVE! screaming in her mind. The fly also escaped the house: This happened moments before the pneumatic arm pulled the storm door shut to the jamb.

* * *

They were nearing their destination, although Andrew hadn’t the slightest inclination that he would be practically stepping into the doorway if the roots of the fallen tree weren’t there to prevent him from doing so. He was trailing behind his daughter who had been sulking and brooding contempt. She wouldn’t speak to him, however, he wasn’t too concerned about that. In time she would forget. He discovered that if he tried to walk beside her she would increase her pace to avoid him. Although it bruised his heart, he had nightmares to contend with. He used Sharin’s psychological state of mind to move through the forest godspeed. Time was short. He felt the hot, savage breath of his premonitions breathing down his neck.

The giant is coming.

The thought prodded him, pushed him, kicked him from behind, and he was grateful that Sharin had the boundless quality of energy to maintain the pace.

She suddenly halted with her head lolled towards the ground.

“What’s wrong, Sharin?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are we? Is this the place?”

Sharin nodded.

Andrew started to search. He wasn’t sure of what he was looking for, but he knew that if it held dragons there would be no mistaking it.

“Its in there,” Sharin said, pointing to a mass of roots scrambling from the end of a tilted tree trunk.

His approach to the location was stealthy and careful. There it was---in a fertile niche small enough to house a salamander. It was square, the shape of a brick or a paperback novel, with well defined edges and sharply cut corners. It was if some omnipotent engineer had cut a block of earth, a block of reality, with an Exacto knife and had sliced through a layer to another dimension. Beyond the hole was a deep, black space that seemed to beckon and call the way the sea calls its unloved sailors. It was enticing. He dunked his arm into the passage. It soothed his burn. The space was cool, almost cold, and felt as if it had a hidden, mysterious depth that fell into the light years beyond the last star in the universe. It made Andrew shudder. He imagined the other side looking in at a tiny square of light by day, perhaps a moonstruck glow by night.

A little window.

From the other side looking in, it would be like a peephole to a lush and fabulous forest and only a glimpse of the wondrous Earth beyond. He leaned closer still, his head sticking in the ground, and he called out into the hole. The sound was sucked in and smothered by depth. Andrew didn’t like the depth of the hole and decided to get on with the business at hand.

“Sharin?”

“What?” She was watching him the whole time.

“It’s time.”

Time for what, he wasn’t sure. Maybe just rustle the dragons through the doorway and drop the key into it like a mailbox deposit and then groove home like nothing ever happened. Sure. That would eliminate his stake in it, even if the hole was left open. Thaaaats it!

“Oh Daddy, can’t I keep ’em? Can’t we---?”

“No! We can’t. They belong where they came from. They will be happiest there.”

“But Daddy, they came from here! The forest. They were trapped in the doorway, and I let them out. They belong out here!”

Angry tension stretched his nerve endings.

“Well then, what were they doing in that hole in the first place?”

I got her this time, he thought.

“The wizard put them there. King Jothree told the wizard to take away the magic in the forest so the wizard built these doors and got the sprites to guard them while he did magic to collect all the fairies and dragons and magic things in the forest and put them all in the traps to lock them away forever. The wizard made the magic key because he was hoping that someday the doors could be opened again. Mr. Hillary had the key and he gave it to me because he said I had magic in me, and I did. Really, Daddy, they belong out here in the first place. Can’t we let them go?”

He was taken for a loop. Everything but the last part of it flushed past him in a whir. The throbbing pain in his fingers was at a conscious, biting level.

“Sharin...they are dangerous! You saw what they did to me.” Andrew held out his hand and Sharin saw three of his fingers were white, each of them oozing clear or yellowish fluids. “It hurts, Sharin, and I don’t want the dragons hurting anyone else.”

A pang of guilt bumped through her. It was her own fault that Daddy got burned: She realized this. She tried to appease her conscience.

Daddy doesn’t know, she thought to herself. The thought eased her mind. She wanted to keep the dragons, regardless, and she resented him for denying her that wish.

Andrew reached into his breast pocket and took out the key. “Here,” he said, “you put them back now. In the hole. If you don’t want to, I will.” He placed the key in Sharin’s shirt pocket and the dragons shifted position to accommodate their inatimate kindred.

Little rage fired up in Sharin. She had never felt it burn so. She was beaten, and it inflamed her. “Can I say goodbye to them for a minute, at least?,” she scoffed.

The stillness in the trees was starting to take on a familiar presence. His premonitions were unfolding.

“Hurry up, Sharin,” he said as he started to scope the woods, “Hurry.”

She looked at him from hateful eyes that cursed the very sight of him. Absently, he backed away, listening for a rumble in the forest. He sat near the branching throws of the fallen tree, wiping sweat from his forehead. He was feeling like he had been in that exact same spot before.

“I’m gonna miss you guys.” Sharin reached into her pocket and lifted the dragons into sight. They were looking at her from the palms of her hands. Their eyelids blinked and flashed over the wet lustre of their eyes. Their slinky tails wrapped around her wrists and their wings fluttered intermittently. “I have to put you guys back where I got you. My Daddy is making me do it. He says you’re dangerous, but I know you’re not. You guys are my only friends. I’m gonna miss you and I love you very much.”

The sulky rumblings reached Andrew’s ears on the other side of the fallen tree. He was losing patience.

“...I don’t want to do this, but I have to. I hate him for making me do it. I hate him. I wish he was dead...”

Andrew turned his head to a leaf that tremored preeminently on the end of a branch, inches from his face.

One leaf moving?

A fly landed on it.

A fly?

BLACKOUT! He was in the forest. The trees were perfectly still. The giant was here.

PUT THEM BACK!...PUT THEM BACK!...PUT THEM BACK!...

The dry shell of the fly cracked open and a worm wriggled out. An electric maggot. It fell to the ground and wriggled furiously towards Andrew like it was starving for him. It touched his foot and burrowed itself into the leather toe of his shoe. Once inside it penetrated his skin and furrowed a course through his central nervous system to his brain. There, a thousand hungry roots branched, searching his memory for the location of the key. His body shivered with convulsions as if he was experiencing the electric chair.

“Sh-sh-sh-sh-sha-a-a-a-a-r-r-ri-n-n-n-n.”

Sharin looked up and saw her father shaking violently. Waxen fear hardened white inside her. It was her fault. Something was happening to Daddy because she had wished death on him at some subconscious level. I hate him, she had said with malice and the intent to injure, I wish he was dead...

Whether it was a sudden realization of guilt, or the horror of seeing her father contorted out of frame, she was driven to a state of panic. She shovelled the dragons into the black depth through the window.

“Look,” she shrieked, “I put them back, Daddy!”

Her father never heard her. He was fitted by the grotesque body English of a seizure that rocked his flesh. The cords in his neck were tightly strung, like tension cables. His eyes bugged from his head while slivers of vision registered the horrors of imminent blindness to his brain.

Sharin dug in her pocket for the key. It came to life in her hand with quivers and hums. “Look! Daddy! I’m putting the magic key back! Look!” The effort was a desperate attempt to expiate the course of events that she suddenly felt responsible for. She was frantic with distress, shedding tears and trying to absolve herself of the grave sin she had committed. “Daddy! Look!”

His head wrenched slowly on cramped, flexed muscles that seemed to tear and pull---but he did not hear her. There was a giant running amok in his head, trampling over his cerebral landscape, crushing him. There were instances when he was aware of it, or at least semi-conscious of the fact that something humongous had invaded his brain; and then his mind would scatter into a state of profound dislocation that made insanity seem like a bookstore in Southern Ontario.

“I’m putting the magic key away forever! Daddy!”

These words exorcised the worm from Andrew’s head. He fell like a crumpled bag, gasping for air. At first, Sharin didn’t know what was happening. Her father fell. The key in her hand suddenly stopped vibrating. There was a moment of detachment when the metal started to writhe in her palm. The dragon key was flexing silver muscles and stretching its metal jaws. Sharin didn’t equate her father’s sudden collapse with the surreal awakening of the key. The sprite had expelled itself from Andrew’s brain, leaving him for the heart of the key to a million doorways. The sprite entered the key and was bringing it to life. When she felt movement in her palm, she released the key and watched it as it started to flex and move of its own accord.

Sharin’s eyes were fixed on the key. It was alive. The most beautiful dragon of all. It walked to another area under the fallen tree and partially buried itself in the soil. The ground shook. Another doorway was opened. From the new hole in the ground, a deep roar surfaced and two huge fingers emerged. A giant’s fingers with fingernails like cracked wood. The fingers frantically tore away at the earth, trying to make the hole bigger. The roars of the giant rumbled the ground.

Sharin screamed and ran to her father. “Daddy!” His unconscious body lay slouched on the ground. “Help me!”

The earth rumbled again as another doorway was unlocked next to the giant’s fingers. The giant’s entire hand emerged from the larger space. The hand was frightening: Humongous, filthy and hard. The giant roared with anticipation of its imminent freedom. The earth shook again. Another doorway opened. The metal dragon was not wasting time.

“Help meee!,” Sharin cried, “help me, Daddy, please.” She was starting to panic. Tears and fright came to her like stampeding cattle. Then, suddenly, a peaceful calm washed over her. She heard the voice of Mr. Hillary tinker in her head.

“Princess,” said the voice, “you can stop this from getting worse. There is magic in you.”

The earth shook and the giant’s arm came up from the ground. It reached and searched for purchase, trying to find something solid to clench. Sharin’s father was not far from it’s reach. Sharin watched the silver dragon move methodically, immersing itself into the soil to open doorways one next to the other. It would unleash the giant. And each time yet another sprite was unleashed to join the force within the dragonkey.

Sharin approached the animated key, wary of the giant’s arm which was trying to seize anything it could find purchase of. The dragon probed onwards, head trying to push through the ground and each time the earth shook a black doorway opened up. One more space. One more sprite. The silver dragon stretched and grew, each time turning to move onward. Sharin put her foot down directly on top of it.

“Its my key,” she said, talking to the thing that had spoiled her magic key with evil, “but if you want it, you can have it.”

She kicked the silver dragon and sent it into space, through the doorway. It was engulfed by the dark depth. Metal wings unfolded and the silver, glimmering ship was returning. She started chanting her own little rhyme:

“Magic key made of magic and me

Lock these doorways so that I can’t peek

In through the keyholes and what’s behind

Any dark doors inside my mind

Magic key, magic key

There may be something very dark inside of me

If there really is, I don’t want to see

Keep it locked forever.

And

Forever it will be.”

The rhyme simply came to her and the earth trembled under her feet. The doorway was being swallowed by the earth. The giant roared. It’s arm had stretched as far as it could and its thick hand found purchase on something. Andrew’s skull was engulfed by huge, dirty fingers. The giant was about to crush it when the earth closed up over the doorways. Roaring yells were smothered underground and the giant’s arm fell lifeless to the ground, severed and dead.

As Sharin watched, a tiny stem sprouted, blossomed into a strange and whispering flower, and withered away. It was the last of the forest magic to escape the dark side of the doorway. Sharin turned to her father.

“Daddy?...”

* * *

The sun pushed the collage of shadows further along the forest bed. Andrew was slouched against a tree, sitting like a unencumbered marionette while his daughter waited on the ground next to him. How long had his mind been a blank movie screen waiting for pictures to show?: Three hours?...Six?. It was getting dark. Sharin looked up and afforded her father a pathetic, little smile. Tears tracks marred her cheeks. Her father didn’t return the smile. He returned a catatonic nothing because in his mind the movie conductor had long taken off the picture reels and run away, screaming, into the abyss.

* * *

Tuesday’s paper fluttered in the wind: It was yesterday’s news. A man wearing a grey shirt and dirty jeans left it at the bus stop as he boarded the 5:15 Grey Coach into Coldwater. When the first page blew free from the tabloid, it was caught by a gust of wind that carried it sailing into the sky. The paper leaf travelled through the air the way a young genie might fly a magic carpet on a joy ride. It was lifted far into the great blue, flipping and whirling, crossing the township limits until it gradually fell into a farmer’s field. There it was snagged by the teeth of a barb wire fence and there it’s words eventually crumbled into dust:

EDGAR---“Police investigating the deaths of Marion and Levin Crane are still looking for Andrew Courney and his five year old daughter, Sharin, who disappeared near their Edgar home on Sunday afternoon. Police say that they may be the key to solving the mysterious deaths of local residents, Levin and Marion Crane. The only other lead in the investigation is Mrs. Leslie Courney who insists that her husband and daughter went into the forest behind their house to, “get rid of the magic key.” Mrs. Courney is currently undergoing psychiatric assessment at the...”

Another page of the newspaper broke free and tumbled across the street. It looked as if it had somewhere to go. It stopped in front of the Pharma Plus drug store (possibly pausing to read the face of a business man who happened to be standing on the corner) possibly pausing to mingle in a whirlwind with other garbage. Then, it carried on. Out towards the train tracks where it followed the rails until it hit a bridge. From there, it dropped into the slow waters of a shallow river and floated (indifferently) away:

“...in the related case of Levin Crane who was also discovered murdered in the bedroom of his farm house miles away from the Courney’s place, a coroner’s report states that Levin died from a coronary occlusion. Further investigation is being undertaken but inside sources say that a piece of a gold pendant was found lodged in the right ventricle of his heart...”

The last few pages scattered around the bench at the bus stop. They would eventually be carried off by the wind to tell their own little stories, elsewhere. One page drifted from the roadside curb and found an alley-way to take refuge in. It shambled to a dark corner where it crouched, in waiting, for another time:

“John Wrest, a local resident of Edgar, was admitted to the Coldwater Memorial Hospital following a freak hunting injury. After shooting himself in the foot, Wrest told reporters, “I felt something tugging on my pants and when I looked down I saw a dwarf standing on my boot. It asked me if I wanted to share some ‘news’ and some ‘blueberry nectar.’ My firearm discharged.”

When reporters asked the area resident whether he thought the “dwarf” had anything to do with the mysterious Crane murder cases, Wrest told reporters, “There’s been a lot of strange things happening in Edgar lately. Someone should take the time to look into them.”

UNDER THE BONES OF ALL DEAD THINGS

Timothy Lafontaine took a shot on net and hit his brother on

the leg with the hard puck.

“OW! My shin! You little shit!”

“I...I didn’t mean it!” Timothy was afraid. His brother was rolling on the ice holding his leg and cursing like hell. That meant a good licking if he didn’t act fast.

“You wait you little puke, I’m going to...”

Timothy learned one thing being the second youngest of four boys and two girls; and that was you don’t wait around to receive a shit-kicking. He skated to the embankment of snow and quickly put on his boots. His brother was already skating after him; an injured, angry hockey player.

“I’ll get you later, you asshole!,” his brother, Werner, shouted. He couldn’t keep up with Tim who fled on foot.

Timothy circled around to the other side of the house and decided to keep running. He laughed as he ran, hoping his brother would not hear him and give him a few extra shots just for laughing at his expense. Timothy ran in heavy boots and decided he would catch wind at the old well. He sat on the well wall, watching his breath in the wind, but mostly trying to stop laughing.

“I’m dead,” he said to himself. “I’m dead.” Timothy smiled and then looked up to the unforgiving grey sky. The winter was marching onwards like W.W.II Nazi footage.

The ice in the well cracked. Timothy turned his head and peered into its mouth. The ice was at least two inches thick in the old well. There was still water underneath it. The ice came up in an explosion of ice water. Something was trying to surface through it. Timothy screamed and ran to the house. In his boots he managed to run straight past Werner and past his mother. He ran straight to the washroom to decide what he was going to do with his soiled underwear once he finished cleaning up the collateral damage in his snow suit.

* * *

“What did you see?”

Timothy’s youngest brother, still older than he by one year, loved to hear tales of the strange and macabre. He had even taken a trip to the old well the next day to confirm the story. Indeed, he did discover that the ice had ruptured and had frozen solid since. But it could have been Timothy throwing a heavy stone into the well and making up the story.

“I saw...I saw a...I’m not sure what I saw. I guess the ice cracking and shattering and erupting was enough.”

“What do you think did it?”

“Dad says that it was probably a gas bubble or something. The septic bed is leaking into that old well and Dad says that maybe there’s organic activity going on down there.”

“Really? But that ice is two inches thick. A little gas couldn’t break that ice and besides, not much organic activity happens in this kind of cold.”

“Okay, science guy, whatever.”

“You saw something else, didn’t you? Why aren’t you going to tell me what you saw?”

“Look,” Timothy said. He was on the lower bunk and had access to the night light. He switched it off. “If you want me to tell you what I saw, promise not to tell anyone?”

David promised.

Timothy told him what he thought he saw and later that night David slept restlessly. He moaned and shifted in his sleep while Timothy lay under his blankets wide eyed and afraid his brother was going to fall off the top bunk.

I shouldn’t have told him, Timothy thought to himself. “Why did I tell anyone?”

Moments later, Timothy felt the hand of the devil stroke him. He heard and felt something like drops of liquid hitting his bed sheets. Then he heard a strangely unfamiliar voice coming from the top bunk. It was not the voice of his brother. “Slide down my rainbow...”

“David?”

“...into my cellar door...”

“David, are you awake?”

“...and we’ll be jolly friends.” The liquid dripping through the upper bunk was David’s warm piss.

* * *

The urine incident was fun talk for a while and then it eventually died off. In the family of six kids, something new and even more stupid, more deserving of wit and attention, continuously evolved in the dynamic family life. Two weeks after the “shower” incident (which is what the kids called the bedwetting episode in jest,) Werner hopped on the wrong bus and ended up on the other side of town. Two weeks after that, Marion tripped down the stairs at school and “broke her ass!" In fact, Marion landed on her tail bone and fractured it. The “shower” became old news to, “Marion broke her ass!” That was life in the Lafontaine household.

Mr. Larry Lafontaine was hard working and funloving. He was often the one to initiate the popular family headlines. “What? Marion broke her ass?,” he shouted into the phone in his heavy French-Canadian accent. Werner and David were home and heard him say it. He was talking to the Principal at Marion’s school. They laughed and laughed and told the next person that came home what Dad had said, then laughed and laughed again.

“Now, come on children.” Larry didn’t want to let it get too far. “Dat was my mistake to say dat. Marion is ’urt badly.”

When Marion came home, they all lined up in the hallway, smallest to the tallest-and-oldest, Richard, at age fifteen. The door opened and when the kids saw Marion entering the house using a walker, repressed snickering slithered out.

“Ahm, ah...welcome ’ome, Marion,” Larry said in a rough, nervous voice. The kids started to howl at their father’s disposition. He had started the whole thing rolling.

“Oh, come on, children,” Mom said as she held the door open for slow Marion. “Its not funny.”

“Marion broke her ass!,” little Stella cheered and the whole line of children broke out laughing. Even Larry chuckled by accident.

“It’s not funny!,” Marion screamed. “How would you like it if you fell down the stairs and landed on your tail.”

The children roared. You can see how the “shower” incident, with its dark and scary avenues, would be smothered by this episode. Everyone else forgot about David pissing his bed and Timothy never, ever told anyone about the rhyme he heard a spirit say. He didn’t forget it and David didn’t remember saying it. Timothy often thought about all of this until one day he was stalked by a graver interest. The cellar.

* * *

Timothy hardly ever went down to the cellar. The cellar was dirty and off limits. Mom’s rule. However, he had a tiger to wrestle.

“...and we’ll be jolly friends…”

Timothy ventured down the vertigo inducing stairs. The cellar pit was lit up by a hanging lightbulb. The floor was uneven and the acrid air stung the nose. Timothy didn’t like the dusty webs and didn’t want to imagine spiders. He would, however, wait to actually see one before committing himself to freaking out. He was smart for eight years old.

He poked around an old shelf where dirty and rusted gizmos lay dead and abandoned. He did see a spider, but it cowered away into a web tunnel. It was the first time he had been in the basement alone. He had been downstairs only twice before. This time he could feel the cellar in his skin. He directed his flashlight beam toward the opposite corner of the cellar, and then to the other side. There was an old dresser chest in the far corner. Timothy approached it and pulled on the handle to the top drawer. It creaked and gave. In the drawer was empty space.

All the drawers housed mouse turds and dust. Nothing. On the other side there was a grate on the stone wall. Timothy shined his light on it and went to it. He shined the light into the hole. The sound of water trickled to his ear. There was a slight cool draft that smelled, too, of acrid dust and mold. It may be a shaft, or perhaps it led into another room. The cellar did seem a little tight and, wasn’t there a window to the basement at the back of the house? Timothy shined his light around the whole cellar and did not see a window.

“There must be another room,” he whispered.

The dry, roughly spoken voice that Timothy heard on the night his brother wet the bed returned, once again, to haunt him.

“Forever more.”

Timothy thought he heard something. The cellar floor under the hanging lightbulb started to move. The dirt was lifting and breaking. Timothy screamed and jumped over the shifting dirt. He ran up the stairs as quickly as he could. He met David, who reacted to Timothy’s screaming by spilling milk in the hall.

“What is it?!,” David shouted.

“There’s something coming through the basement floor. Just like what I saw in the well. Something with eyes!”

“You’re not going to start that again are you?,” David complained. “Look what happened last time. Look what you did now!” Milk was spilled everywhere.

“You asked!”

David thought he heard a noise from the basement and a goose crossed his grave. “What’s that?,” he asked.

“I told you, something is coming up from the ground.”

They both ran out of the house, afraid and relieved to be outdoors. “We should have locked it in the basement,” David said, “What if it comes upstairs and hides in someone’s room?”

Timothy did not want to discuss such possibilities. He wanted to do one thing at a time. “Dad will be home soon. He can go check it out. He’s the one with the guns around here.”

“Is it something you can kill?”

“I think so. I don’t know. How do you kill the devil?”

“There’s Dad!,” David declared. He ran to the minivan. “Dad! Hey, Dad! You gotta go to the basement! There’s something in the cellar!”

“Why all da ’ist-air-ricks? Where da ’ell is Richard?” Larry exited the minivan.

“Dad, come quick, there’s something in the cellar. Its coming up through the ground,” Timothy grabbed his father’s hand and yanked at it.

“Timotee, da only ting coming up true da ground is going to be your ’ead stone. Don’t rush me. And your mudder will ’ang you up to da breeze to dry for going down dere."

They all went down to the cellar together. Larry didn’t bother to bring a gun despite Timothy’s pleading. “Look dere, son, you are right. Looks like someting come up from da ground. Looks like someting big. Tell me wat you did saw dere in da ground?”

Timothy looked at his father wide eyed and nervous. He looked around to the shadowy corners of the room. “I saw...I don’t know. It wasn’t anything real. It was...it was like something was after me. I don’t know what.”

“Did you get a good look at it? You better ’ave or your mudder is going to spank dat ass of yours for going to basement. You better make it wort’ it.”

David didn’t say anything and he sat down on the dirty stairs, biting his nails.

“It was the same thing that was after me in the well when I saw the ice break.”

“O-kay, enough wit dat nonsense. Go back up stairs. I’ll set a trap for dis rabbit, dis gopher. I show you boys ’ow to make a nice fur ’at wit dis one we gonna catch. Go on before she catches you down ’ere and ask you what ’ell you get yourself into. Go.”

Larry stayed and when the kids were gone, he got down on his knees and inspected the ground more carefully. He reached down and his arm easily delved into the loose, fluid soil. He was able to sink his entire arm’s length into the ground. “Je-sus cries, dis is like sand-quick.”

He spotted a broom handle and fetched it. He poked the stick into the ground all the way to his armpit again. “She’s deep, tabernac.”

He was startled when he heard his wife shouting down at him from the top of the stairs.

“Don’t turn out da light, I’m coming!” He pulled out his arm and the stick. He knew what he would do. Drop a bottle of poison onto the dirt and cover it with a steel plate. “If dat rat want to fuck wit me, ’ee better ’ave some balls.”

* * *

Larry monitored the basement each day, and when nothing new appeared to be developing after he had covered the problem, he chose to focus his attention on other tasks. The spring was warming up and the snow was turned to water, mud, and then dry land. Timothy had taken to extra-curricular activities to avoid spending time at home. He felt haunted, at times, by the thought of the cellar floor and the old well. He kept his mind and body active to facilitate forgetfulness.

David Lafontaine quickly turned to books, fiction and non-fiction, to explain the events that he interpreted were going on. He was convinced something was after his brother. He often told his brother his views and Timothy listened, wondering, saying nothing but silent prayers.

One day Timothy arrived from baseball practise early due to rain. He decided to detour out to the old well to sneak a wad of chewing tobacco from some packet he’d picked up in the dugout. He pinched a bit and tucked it under his bottom lip. He fixed his baseball cap and crossed his arms, imagining he looked like those pros on t.v. He turned his head and spit into the well. He could see an oily film on the water and it rippled from his juice. When the concentrical rings stopped, he saw his refection come into shape. And then a big, black bubble surfaced. It appeared right under him. He waited for it to burst, and it didn’t. The bubble was dark, lustrous and deep. When Timothy decided he wanted to see it burst, he readied a good dollop of tobacco juice. He took aim and spit. It hit the top of the bubble, but the bubble didn’t pop! It blinked instead. Then something started to thrash in the black well water and Timothy started to choke on his tobacco.

He ran to his house, choking and trying to yell and starting to vomit. By the time he reached the door, his mother screeched.

“Timothy, you devil’s own. Wait till your father hears you’ve been chewing tobacco!” She pulled him in by the ear and he ran to get some water from the tap.

“There’s a monster in the well!,” he rasped. “A monster in the well!”

Larry entered the kitchen and so did all of his brothers and sisters. Word went around that Timothy was chewing tobacco and now they wanted to see Dad’s wrath.

“Wat, now, Timoty!?,” Mr. Lafontaine charged. “Wat in ’ell now!?”

Timothy’s eyes were lost in tears. He wiped them away. “In the well. Go look. A monster.”

“A monster, ’uh? Same one from da cellar, you tink? Show me.”

The whole family went out to the well. It was going to be Timothy’s grace or his grave. “Whoa, you got someting dere.” Larry looked into the well and all but Marion ventured to have a look. Larry turned to his son, Timothy. “It ain’t no monster in dat well. Wat you got dere is a goddam moose.”

“A goddam moose!,” Stella cried.

“Did I say goddam? I mean to say baby moose, my mistake. A baby moose. Werner, go get on dat phone and call da ’umane peoples. Richard, go get some rope and da barrel ’arness from da garrage. Tim, drive da tractor over. We get dat one out of dere.”

“What can I do, Daddy?,” Stella asked.

“You better stay ’ere and keep talking to dat moose. Tell ’im someting to cheer ’im up.”

“Okay.”

Larry walked away and ordered David to come with him. The little girl started telling the moose the story about the Three Wise Men. Marion followed her dad toward the house and thought she would stay inside.

“Mary, I am going to get da shot gun. I don’t want to see dat big mudder moose ’ear ’er calf and come to da res-cue.”

“You just be careful. Mind the boy. David, listen to your father but think for yourself.”

“Okay, Mom,” David said.

* * *

It was the first time Timothy ever drove the tractor. He couldn’t believe he was asked to drive it (unlike his three older brothers who had waited until they knew their father would not be home to test out the beast.) Timothy’s experience operating the vehicle was what he learned from watching his father drive it and what he knew of driving standard transmission. He sat in the large, dusty seat on the back of the dinosaur he was going to operate. He remembered to open the barn doors and then returned to his chair. The bucket was on the ground. The machine was in neutral. He fired up the monster’s breath.

He studied the levers by their operation diagrams and lifted the bucket into the air.

“Ha!,” Timothy smiled. He put all of his weight on the clutch pedal, put the shifter into first gear, stepped on the gas and eased slowly off the clutch. He rolled.

“I’m doing it! I’m driving!”

The tractor was driven out of the barn and into the grey daylight.

* * *

“Now, David, you are da most responsible of da boys. I’m telling you because I mean it. I am giving you a serious job to do. I am not kid-ding when I say dat you can’t fuck up. I mean, you better be care-full.” Larry reached up into the dresser and brought the shot gun down.

David’s mandible dropped. He didn’t even know his father had a gun.

“Don’t be so surprise. See ’ere. Dis is da trig-ger, dis part is the base, is where you ’old da gun up and you cock it like dis.”

David blinked at the action.

“You rest dis part on your shoulder like dis; dis is da butt. Always rem-em-ber...what you point de udder end at is dead. You killed it. Understand me?!” Larry took David’s arm and shook him. He wanted to make sure David was paying attention.

“Yeah, Dad. I get it.”

“Who ever you point dat gun at is dead. Just tink of dat. And I pray to God we raise you kids right.” He handed David the shotgun. “If you see da mudder moose come, you shoot ’er! Aim for da moose face. Get it in da ass wit your udder shot. I trust you can do dat, my son. I’ll tie da baby moose legs. We get da ’umane peoples to find ’er to a good ’ome, ungh?”

“Sounds like a plan, Dad.”

“Is a plan and a ’alf. Let’s go.”

* * *

Richard returned with the barrel harness to see his younger brother driving the tractor and, better yet, David holding a shotgun. He was more offended by this than Werner was. Werner went one step further with his assignment. Instead of calling the Humane Society, he called 9-1-1.

“A moose! A baby moose! We got one trapped in our well, a real live moose! Now why don’t you drop your cards and get out here to save this moose. My Dad might decide to make soup out of it if you don’t hurry up.”

The police dispatched a car but they didn’t bother with the Ambulance. The Fire Department Rescue Team was on its way as well.

“...Please stay on the line---”

Werner hung up the phone when he saw David walk past him with a gun. His father was right behind him.

“Hur-ry, Werner, tell dem peoples to ’ur-ry up! We need your ’elp out side,” the Frenchman barked.

When they stepped outside, Timothy had the tractor all the way up to the well. He was lowering the bucket to use as a break and he depressed the clutch, put the shifter to neutral. He turned the engine off.

“Woohooo! I did it!” Timothy jumped off of the tractor and ran to the well. The moose was no longer thrashing. Its nose was above the water line.

David immediately stepped past the well and distanced himself away from the rest of his family. He walked toward the brush line and started his vigil.

“Way to go Timoty. Good job, you didn’t kill some one. Richard bring me da ropes and ’arness.”

Larry was an expert lumberjack. He had learned a thousand and one tricks and trades along the way. He knew how to create a noose large enough to wrap around the belly of a horse using a barrel harness. They had even used his technique to rescue cattle by air after the Red River flood of ’97. The preparation was slow and careful. The family had a million questions and he was trying to focus on the task at hand.

“Dad, how come David has a shotgun?” Richard could no longer stand it. He was angry.

“’e going to shoot down mamma moose. Once we start to pull dis one out of dere, ’e is going to sing for ’is mudder. If she ’ears, she will try to save ’er baby.”

“Why didn’t I get to do that? I’m the oldest.”

“Yeah, and you also da one who says you would clean your room and do your ’omework from class. You da one who says, ‘No, papa, I don’t smoke.’ Wat you say and what you mean are two tings dif-ferent. Now, move to da udder side, I need your strengt’.”

Larry lowered the ropes with the harnass on it. The moose started to thrash once again. “See da way ’is front legs are coming up? Get on da udder side of me and get da ’arness under ’er. We fish her out.”

The harness hit the water in front of the moose and submerged. Larry let it sink several feet. The moose started thrashing once again. “Now I pass you two rope, Richard! Make sure you see da moose legs above da ’ar-ness. Pull on da red rope when I say to. First we catch da moose front legs wit dis green rope. You rea-dy?”

“Yeah!” Richard exclaimed, suddenly feeling a little more worthwhile and responsible. Dad didn’t want him for guard duty, he wanted him for muscle and brains. He thought he understood his father’s plan.

“Wer-ner! Get dat tractor go-ing. Lift da buck-et all da way up and bring ’er for-ward.”

Richard and his father timed it perfectly. Both the moose’ forelegs were up. “Pull ’er back now, Richard! When you feel pressure on da green rope, pull dat red one. Run wit me, Richard!”

They pulled the moose to the well wall and pinned it there. Its legs were still walking. “Okay, Richard, meet me! Come. Take dese two green ropes, mine and yours. Give me da red ones. Pull dem ropes ’ard! GO!”

Timothy watched his brother pull and swing over to his father who met him where the tractor waited. With all of his might, holding the green ropes, Richard held strong. His father pulled the red ropes and then looped them around the green ones, tied a weird knot. “Now ’old on! Wer-ner! Lower da bucket down ’ere to dis loop.”

Werner was careful and accurate. His father looped the red ropes to a hook on the tractor bucket. When he was sure the red ropes were secure, he peered down into the well. “O-kay, Wer-ner. You lift da buck-et up ve-ry slow. Slow-ly...slow-ly.”

The family watched as the moose was lifted up through the surface of the well water. It started to make frightening calls that resonated in the well.

“Mama! Look!,” Stella was overjoyed to see the moose. “See?!”

“Yes, baby,” mama said.

Just then the wilderness beyond their property line started to rattle. In stampeded not the mother moose, but the bull. It bullhorned its way through the distant brush and appeared, full blown enraged!, on the lawn.

“Daddy!” David took one shot and it hit the moose in the face.

One in the face and one on the ass, he cried to himself.

Stella screamed when she turned and saw the big moose. She started to run toward the house. Screaming.

“Stella! No!” Mary looked back and saw that the moose had its sights on the little girl. It lowered its horns and charged.

* * *

“Daddy?!” David didn’t know what to do. The second shot was for the moose’ ass.

“Shot dat moose! Da-vid!” Larry started to run toward his daughter who was screaming. He didn’t notice his wife start to run toward the moose with her arms frantically waving in the air. The moose changed course.

David took his other shot. The projectiles hit the moose along the side and neck. Werner lowered the baby moose back into the water.

“Unhook the ropes!,” Werner shouted to his brother, Timothy.

Timothy untethered the beast.

The bullmoose trampled Mary under foot. Several of the shot pellets had hit the moose in the genital area. It was disoriented. It didn’t hear the cries of it’s young; its ear was shot. Confused, the moose turned to face the woods using the sense of smell. The first shot had blinded it. The roar of the approaching tractor suddenly capped off its decision. The moose trampled blindly into the woods.

* * *

Larry ran toward his wife. “You kids get inside in case he decide to come back! Go! Richard, take Stella.” He handed the desperate girl to the oldest son. She had witnessed her mother attacked and trampled by a moose. Now her mother lay motionless in a bloodied clump.

Werner stayed on the tractor and readied it for war. He placed himself between his mother and the woods. “Come on, I dare you,” he said behind clenched teeth.

David followed his older bother inside the house where they met Marion’s screams.

Timothy stood next to the well, stunned. He watched his father run to his wife and test for vital signs. He was more frightened than he had ever been: From the well he heard that strange, feathery voice say, “...my playmate...come down and play with me...” He watched the baby moose get dragged, or pulled, into the depths toward (what?)

* * *

The police arrived with flashing lights after they heard the gun fire. They had their guard up when they stepped out of the cruiser and approached the well. “Over ’ere!,” Larry shouted. “Call an amb-u-lance right away! My wife, she is ’urt bad!”

“What happened?!,” demanded the Officer.

“A moose run ‘er down. We tried to shot dat moose, da fuckin bastar’ trample my wife. ’elp ’er, please!”

The Officer had a quick look around and then ran back to his cruiser. He wasted little time calling an ambulance. He drove his cruiser closer to the victim and proceeded to get a blanket for her.

“Timoty!,” Larry shouted, “leave dat baby moose! I need you to ’elp. Get da flat board from da cel-lar. Dat old one on da far wall down dere. Get Richard to come out. Go! Now!” Larry looked at the Officer who was now crouched next to him and added, “Get on dat rad-i-o of yours and tell dems we meet dem ’alf-way. We got no time to waste.”

“Wait a minute, Mr...? What’s your name?”

“Lafontaine. Lar-ry. We have to try, look she’s bleed-ing bad.”

“The Ambulance is---”

“Da Am-bu-lance is ten minutes away. Dat’s twenty dere and back. You goddam right we move ’er. She is dy-ing.”

The Officer assessed the situation and radioed the Ambulance direct, Emergency channel. They would take Highway 29 and meet the Ambulance along the way, straight up, no chance of missing each other. They had no time to waste. There was blood being lost, pumping from a hole in the injured woman’s abdomen.

In the woods, a blind moose lay down to die. One of it’s horny tines was covered in blood. The cries it had responded to were a thing forgotten in the animal’s state of confusion.

* * *

“Richard, get out there. Dad wants you.” Timothy rushed past his brother heading for the stairs to the basement.

“Where are you going?,” Richard asked.

“To get something Dad wants from the cellar. Hurry up! Mom is hurt bad.”

“Marion, watch Stella.” Richard ran out of the house.

“Need any help?,” David meekly asked. He didn’t really have a role anymore.

“No. You have a job. You have to take care of Stella until Dad comes back. You need to watch Marion, too.”

Timothy flicked on the dull, basement light and entered a new realm of webs, mold, and terror.

* * *

“Slide down my rainbow...”

Timothy’s heart started pounding. He felt the feathery whisper on his neck.

“Into my cellar door...”

The hair on Timothy’s flesh went up in arms.

“And we’ll be jolly friends...,” said the cold breath.

Timothy started to cry. His mother was dying. She was run down by a moose in plain sight. He had watched the baby moose be sucked under water by a strange...a nothing. He heard the same dark voice in his head, that voice his brother made, that voice from the well.

But his mother was dying and Timothy saw the flat board in the corner. He started to run for it. He felt eased by the fact that his father had covered the hole in the middle of the cellar floor with a steel plate. He ran like hell but it wasn’t quick enough. He grabbed the board and turned to head back, however, the steel plate bounced and moved as if something was trying to move it. Something strong enough to move heavy metal. Timothy started to panic as the plate was actually being dented. Something was trying to come up.

“Forever more,” said the devil.

Timothy ran. He jumped over the steel and dashed up the stairs, crying.

* * *

“’urry up, Timoty! Run!” Larry was hardly in control of his emotions. He was trying to keep pressure on his wife’s wound. The blood was soaking through her sweatshirt.

My God, this house is haunted, Timothy dared say to himself.

He crashed through the door and ran toward the well.

“’urry!”

He was gasping for breath by the time he reached his Dad. His father took the board and laid it next to her. He rolled her over to her side. Blood flowed from her mouth.

“Jesus Christ, why’d you do that for?,” the Officer questioned. “What if her neck is broken? Or her back, you idiot.”

Larry rolled her, on her back, onto the flat board and said, “She go-ing to die from blood loss, never mind suf-fer a bro-ken back. Get ’er in dis cruiser, now...Youidyot.”

The engine fired, the tires screeched, the Rescue Squad arrived. They went around the Rescue Team as they drove up the drive way with the sirens and the lights a flashing.

The Emergency Rescue squad leader in the passenger seat said, “What the fu...”

The kids were in the yard crying, watching, being abandoned.

“Look after dem!,” Larry shouted at the Fire Marshal. “I send my sister to take o-ver!”

* * *

“What exactly happened back there?,” the Officer looked at Larry through his rear view window.

“We was fish-ing a baby moose from da well and she cry out for ’er mud-der. My son, ’e try to shoot da mud-der when she attack. My wife, she save our baby but she pay for it too. Maybe wit ’er life.”

“Why didn’t you wait for the emergency vehicles to arrive?”

“What e-mer-gen-cy? We was try-ing to save a ba-by moose. We did not ex-pect da fodder.”

“But you were prepared.”

“Of course we was prepare! But we not prepare for dis.” Larry looked at his wife laid out in the back seat, unconscious.

“Who called 9-1-1 and told us you were about to pull a moose from the well?”

“What?”

The Officer flipped open his note pad. “I received a call at 4:35 pm from your address and this person said you were about to pull a moose out of a well. We heard a gun shot. When I pulled into the driveway, I heard a second gun shot. How do you think I got to your place so quickly?”

“Tanks God. It must ’ave been Wer-ner. I told ’im to call ’umane Peoples.”

“How is she doing back there?”

“She ‘as breat’, but its get-ting wea-ker.”

“Look up there,” Officer Daryl Ruins nodded through his windshield. Up ahead the Ambulance lights were flashing. The Ambulance pulled a U-turn in front of them, stopped, and its rear doors came flying open. One man jumped out to set up emergency flares. The Ambulance driver directed the police cruiser to pull along side of the Ambulance.

“Dey rea-dy for ’er. She still alive, t’ank goodness.” Larry prayed for God’s intervention and grace.

The police cruiser stopped and Larry waited for the police Officer to let him out. When Officer Ruins stepped out of the police car, the Ambulance paramedic was already asking questions.

“...who authorized this transport?”

“The woman is barely alive, this saved her ten minutes. I suggest you get very busy so we don’t loose that time, Mr. Hanley.” Officer Ruins let Larry out.

The paramedics swarmed the police car and started to take control.

“Whoa, boy. Looks like we have internal haemorrhage...a suckhole wound under the left ribcage, possible lung collapse. Get me 400 cc of Juicy Fruit. What’s her name? What happened?”

“Mary Lafontaine,” said Larry. “She got a moose ‘orn in da ches’, dere.”

“Heart rate weak. Let’s pull her out of here. Bring the bed over.”

Mary glided out of the police car and was lifted onto a bed by strong professionals. That was the very last moment of semiconsciousness that she had.

* * *

Larry arrived late. It was two o’clock am. He had called his kids once on the phone, before dinner, since he left home in the police car. The light was on in the living room. Richard was sleeping on the couch, asleep before he could report back to his father. Larry looked at his eldest son and rubbed his nose.

“Rich-ard! Wake up!”

Richard woke suddenly. “Dad...I...”

“All da kids o-kay?”

“Yeah, everyone’s in bed asleep. The Fire Marshal made us dinner. Bacon and eggs. Sent us all to bed early. He said I looked responsible enough and he left me in charge. He said you would probably be late.”

“He was right.”

“Auntie Cathrine wasn’t home. How’s Mama?”

“Your ma is fine. She’s fine.”

“Where is she?”

“At da ’os-pit-al. She stay dere a few night. We do okay to welcome ’er back ’ome in good ’ealt. Go get some sleep.”

“Dad?”

Larry looked at his son with bloodshot eyes. There was whiskey on his breath.

“Tim is saying some weird stuff. He says he saw something pull the moose into the well. He’s scaring Marion and Stella. He says there’s something in the cellar. I mean, with Mom getting attacked and everything, you better talk to him, okay?”

“Okay. First ting. You did a good job, son.”

“Sorry I wasn’t awake when you walked in. I had coffee ready to go.” Richard collected his blanket and dragged his feet all the way to his bedroom. He was exhausted.

* * *

Timothy was in utter horror. He was wide awake. His brother’s voice was cold and feathery.

"Timothy...come play with us...come play...forever."

Under his blankets Timothy was shivering. He c/would not make a sound.

"Timothy, your mother is with us. Don’t you want to play with her? I’m here, Timmy.” The sound of his mother’s voice came last. Timothy screamed and screamed.

* * *

Larry ran to Timothy’s bedroom and barged in. David was rudely awakened and joined Timothy in screams. When Timothy saw his father, he burst out into tears and ran to him. “Daddy, is Mom alright? Where is she?”

“Now calm down. She at da ’osp-i-tal, dey take good care of ’er. Don’t wor-ry.”

“Daddy, there’s something in the basement. Something is calling me. Its behind the wall down there. It pulled the baby moose into the well---”

“Wait one min-ute, Tim-o-ty. Slow down.”

Timothy looked at his brother. “David was talking in his sleep, but it wasn’t his voice. It was the voice from the cellar. Its the voice of that thing that was starting to come up through the cellar floor. It lives behind the wall down there. It says Mom is down there playing with them. What do they mean, playing with them?”

“Ah, you must ’ave ’ad a bad dream. I cover dat go-pher ’ole wit steel! Your mud-der is going to be fine. Get some rest.” Larry smacked his son on the bottom, urging him to return to bed. Larry looked at David sitting up on the top bunk.

“Wat are you screaming for up dere? Af-raid of ’eights?”

David rubbed his eyes. “I...I heard Tim screaming.”

“Wat do you know of dis voice from da base-ment?”

“I haven’t heard it, but Tim is starting to freak me out. Can I sleep in your room?”

“Sure. Just for tonight. Your ma will be back in ’er own bed tom-mor-row or da next day. God ’elp ’er for dat.” Larry looked back at Timothy who was crawling back into his bed. His expression was signalling fear. “Look, Tim-o-ty, you can sleep as well wit us on da big bed if you’re scare. To-mor-row we talk about dis voice and we go see your friend in da base-ment. To-mor-row we go see your mud-der and bring ’er flow-ers, ungh? Good idea, ungh?”

“Sure. Its a great idea. Thanks for offering your bed but I’ll try sleeping here, just the same. I’m not afraid. As long as Mom is okay, I’m not afraid.”

“Dere’s my boy! You tough it out to-night. Don’t feel too bad if you change your mind and join us dhough. ’ave a good night.”

“Goodnight, Dad. Goodnight, David.”

“Good night,” David said. He added, “Say goodnight to your ghost for me.”

“Ha,” Larry said. Larry switched off the light and it wasn’t remotely funny.

* * *

Timothy wrestled his fears late into the early hours. The periods of silence were interrupted by house creakings and weirdness which the imagination played out. All night long a rhyme replayed itself over and over in his head.

“...and we’ll be jolly friends forever more...”

Long ago this night, he had listened to his father’s snoring dive-bomb into a ripping night saw. He was glad he had chosen to sleep in his own room. It wasn’t so bad. Nothing had visited him. He had not heard the strange voice since his brother left the room. That was a good sign. It was okay to fall asleep. Everything was okay.

Larry was deep in a cavernous sleep. There was no way he would have noticed David’s voice, let alone the strangeness in it.

"...and we’ll be jolly friends forever more..."

Larry didn’t notice David’s papery weight leave the bed and walk, bare footed, along the dark hallway toward his own room.

Timothy drifted into a wave that would carry him into sleep. He was thinking of his mother. It was a memory of his mother playing with him in the backyard. He was about six years old, his mother looked more vibrant, somehow. She was laughing and having fun. He was having the time of his life. A red ball bounced toward the old well. Mother ran to it and peered into the well. She looked back at him and smiled. She had a beautiful smile. He found it odd that the plastic ball should sink when it fell into the still depths.

Timothy was jerked out of this dream by the sound of his bedroom door opening. It was his brother.

“David, what are you doing?”

David stood in the doorway and urinated in his pyjamas. His voice was ghastly raw, “Come play with me or we’ll keep her here. We’ll keep her here with us forever.”

Timothy thought it was too late in the night to scream. He didn’t want to attract too much attention. There were probably ghosts with some available time on their hands travelling through the neighbourhood. There were probably black cats, mummies and zombies, skeletons and devils. They all had to be worse than whatever was in the cellar. They had to be worse because he was going down there in the morning.

He didn’t scream. He had to come out into the dark to face the darkness. He had come to terms with what he was dealing with.

“Tomorrow,” Timothy managed.

David continued to smile as he turned and pulled the door shut behind him. The night was over.

* * *

Sleep never came to Timothy that night. He cried for most of it, terrified by the voice’s words. His mother was with them. They. The evil ones. The tricky ones. Timothy asked his father about them, first thing. As soon as he heard his father get up he accosted him in the hallway.

“Dad, the thing in the cellar has Mom. It says they are playing with her. They say they have her.”

“Dat’s it. We wash up and go down dere to save ’er, right now. I bring a sledge ’ammer and we mash a ’ole in da wall, ungh?”

Just then they heard David laughing a strange and uncharacteristic laugh. Then the telephone rang. Larry answered it right there in the hall.

“’ell-o?”

"Its Dr. Bandon. Is this Larry?.”

“Yes.”

"You better come down here right away."

“Wat’s up?”

"We have a problem. Your wife is suffering acute trauma. She seems delusional."

“You mean to tell me she been awake in conscious and you did not call to tell me?!”

"No, Mr. Lafontaine. She is not conscious. Our problem is a little more complicated than that. She has been..."

“Wat...she wat?”

“She has no vital signs, yet she is animated. Please come immediately."

“You fuck-er! I’m going dere right now and I’m gonna tear your fuck-en face off wit my slap shot!” Larry slammed the phone down. He grabbed his jacket and started to storm toward the front door. He would grab a hockey stick past the porch.

“RICH-ARD!”

“Yeah, Dad?” He greeted his dad at the top of the stairs as his dad appeared in the foyer down below.

“I’m go-ing to see your mudder. Take good care of ev-re-ting ’ere. I phone you later. Try to get Auntie Cat’rin”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Dad?” Timothy was following him to the front door. “What about me, Dad? What about the basement?”

“You stay away from down dere or your mudder will kill you. Wait for me to go wit you. Right now I ’ave to go see ’er. O-kay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

Larry put his hat on and exited the house.

* * *

Timothy washed up and put on his shoes and jacket. He was intercepted by Richard.

“Where are you going?”

“Outside.”

“Eat something first or I’ll hear it from Dad. Have an apple at least.”

“Okay. Richard?”

“What?”

“Mom’s gonna be all right, isn’t she?”

“Of course she is. What are you going to do outside?”

“I don’t know.” Timothy grabbed a banana and then left the kitchen where Richard was planning a sandwich. “Slide down a rainbow, I guess.”

Richard found cooked bacon!

* * *

The window to the basement was filthy, inside and out. He wiped the outside glass with the end of his sleeve and still he could not see through it. He tried to pull the window open and had little luck. He thought of smashing through the glass with a good stone. Instead, he just kicked it in with his foot and ran away, afraid Richard would come running out and throttle him. Richard didn’t come out. He was lucky, no one heard the window smash.

Timothy edged over to the broken window and peered in. It was dark and acrid. There wasn’t enough light to see anything clearly in the shadows. Tim resolved to get a flashlight from his bedroom.

* * *

Larry arrived at the hospital with a manic look in his eyes. He wanted Dr. Bandon.

“Mr. Lafontaine? Mr. Lafontaine?!” The Nurse at the main desk of the Emergency station skirted her desk and followed Larry storming up the hall carrying a Cooper hockey stick.

“Larry, listen to me.” The Nurse grabbed Larry’s arm and he halted. He drove a stare into her.

“W’ere’s dat ass’ole, Ban-don?”

“Your wife isn’t in this ward anymore. She’s upstairs. In quarantine.”

“Quarantine? For wat!?”

“Mr. Lafontaine...Larry, please, follow me to the desk. I’ll get someone to escort you and they’ll take you to her.”

“Dat fuck-en ass’ole tell me my wife is dead.”

“She is and she isn’t. Listen to me. You will see for yourself and you will understand.” The Nurse scooted behind the main desk and buzzed for Security. She wasn’t taking any chances. “Larry, your wife is alive and...”

“She ’aving psychotic epi-sode! Da doc-tor tell me so! ’ow can she be dead, ungh? May-be you guys all ’ere ’aving psychotic episode, ungh?”

Security arrived. The Nurse mustered the jam to say, “Take him to her, guys. He won’t understand all of this until he sees for himself.” This left Larry dumbfounded. “Larry, you will have to leave that stick here with me.”

He was met in the hallway near the elevators by Dr. Bandon and he started…

* * *

“If you don’t believe us, Mr. Lafontaine, feel free to view the video footage. We have quarantine monitored by video surveillance. It is now a standard procedure.” Dr. Bandon motioned a Nurse to have the viewing room terminals displaying the video footage of Mary Lafontaine’s corpse enacting a paranormal display of post mortem seizures.

“She is dead!”

“Yes!, Mr. Lafontaine. She’s dead! I’m sorry. She’s been dead for hours, but what I’m trying to tell you is that she was moving. She was kicking and screaming. It was as if she was trying to warn somebody about something. Does the name ‘Timothy,’ ring a bell?”

“Dat my son, Ti-mo-ty.”

“Watch the footage, Mr. Lafonataine. Watch it for yourself. The time of this footage was exactly forty minutes ago. You were likely on your way over here. Watch.”

The video display read 9:02am. His wife was being wheeled into the camera’s view and was stationed in a clinical observatory. She was tied down and rolling her head back and forth.

“The time, as you can see, Larry, is just past nine this morning. She was confirmed dead at eight fifty six. Then this.” The doctor pointed to the computer/television screen.

“Timothy! Don’t do it! Don’t go in the basement! Don’t do it!”

“Wat she say dat for?” Larry was starting to lose his grip. His wife’s long hair was flying everywhere as if she had her head in the wind. “Wat’s going on dere?”

“It may be static electricity or plasma-magnetic field of some sort. All of our electronic equipment crashed. Watch.” On the video tape, Mary kept screaming, “Don’t, Timothy! Don’t do it!” Then the picture went dead. It returned a moment later reading 9:10am. Mary lay still. The signs of life had returned to her.

* * *

Timothy disappeared into the cellar and went missing there, forever. Larry got home at a later time than usual and even more helplessly drunk than the night before. At least Auntie Cathrine was there to care for the children. She greeted Larry at the front door.

“Larry, you’re drunk.”

“I’m drunk, Cat’rine. I’m drunk. My wife is almost dead and I am drunk.” Larry brushed past his sister.

“Larry, I’m sorry.”

Larry took off his boots and started for bed.

“I have other bad news.” Cathrine was in tears. “Timothy is missing.”

“Wat!?”

“Timothy. He’s gone.”

“Where!?”

Cathrine broke down. “I don’t know. The basement window is broken. Should we call the police?”

“Show me,” Larry stated.

Cathrine grabbed a flashlight and lead Larry around to the side of the house where the window to the basement was broken. She said, “Timothy told Richard he was going outside. He was going to ′slide down a rainbow.′ We tried shining the light down there into the basement. All we can see is darkness. There.”

“Timoty!” Larry shined the flashlight beam in through the basement window frame. “Are you dere?!” Larry wasted no time kicking in the window frame and he squeezed in through to the cellar. The room was bare. Nothing but dank odour and the wall. Packed dirt for a floor. Padded center. Grave site. Larry shined his light closer in order to check for evidence of his son ever being down there.

“Cat’rine!” Larry looked for an exit. “Cat’rine, get me my step-lad-der! I can see dat I am stuck down ’ere. I need a shovel. Get Richard.”

“Richard!,” Cathrine shouted knowing that Richard was up late watching television, wide awake worried.

Larry heard his sister’s voice calling out to Richard. He shined his flashlight beam everywhere. There was no evidence that Timothy had been in the basement. Even if Timothy had broken his way in, he would not have been able to get out.

Unless ’e wen down dere.

The grave site. He dropped to his knees and sunk his hands into the dirt. He frantically started digging. When Richard finally arrived at the entrance, Larry shouted, “Get on da phone and call da cops, right now!”

* * *

The police did everything they could. The family, held together by love and faith in God, mourned the tragic loss of mother and brother. They were told that sometimes life didn’t provide answers, nor did life try and explain that which sometimes needed explaining. They learned that life is without mercy. They were taught truth and knowledge through Jesus Chist, the Lord.

“God is saving Momma and Tim for us in Heaven. Right, Daddy?” Stella was brilliant and brave.

The police investigation was wild and noteworthy. The cellar was scrutinized. Buried in the packed, cellar dirt was the bones and flesh of a baby moose. And underneathe it lay a horror so profound, it made headlines world wide.

Under The Bones Of All Dead Things!

* * *

Larry withered a bit. Some of him had been lost, forever. His vigour perished and his health wintered. The other kids grew up healthy and strong, although sometimes a meloncholy distance between siblings was treated as respect for one another’s privacy. They were keen and took over tandem life skills as Daddy got old within his skin. The family survived. Larry was hurt but he was also strong.

He missed his wife dearly. He thought of her every day and when he thought he forgot to think about her... He did not fret over it at all because he knew he would always be in love with her. She died a cruel death to save her youngest. Larry worried, every day, that Stella would internalize the death of her mother. She was the one who grew up the fastest. She was the one that was always sure to carry her share and more. Stella was one of the last generation and she knew it.

Timothy, his son, was missed terribly. He was never found. The investigations turned up nothing more than more puzzles and questions. The baby moose in the cellar had abrasions and tissue damage laced with fibres matching the barrel harness allegedly used by Larry in his attempt to rescue the moose. That same dead moose had lungs both filled with the basement soil and test-positive water from the old well. No convincible theory as to the method of how the moose made it from the well to cellar was determined.

When the police entered the main cellar and investigated the hole, they ordered a full fledged excavation. They dug up the powdery soil and found that it went deep. They discovered that the soft soil pit covered by the steel plate merged together with the grave on the other side of the wall. Then the subterranean channels joined and sunk deeper underground to where the moose was discovered. It was nowhere near the well.

* * *

Some say Larry was slowly going crazy. He often thought about the huge, underground mystery in his house. There were never any answers to his questions. There were no criminal charges laid. The investigation was handed over to...

“Scul-ly and Moul-der, god dam you! You are like da goddam X-File. You can’d e-ven give me one clue about my son, Timoty. You call yourself cop?!”

They later found the bull moose, shot and dead, with Mary Lafontaine’s blood on a tine jutting from it’s rack. The investigation turned up a huge mess. The baby moose discovered in the cellar had been exsanguinated. Below it was a shaft full of bones. Human bones. Animal bones. Bones of every sort and nature. Bones both ancient and fresh, intermixed. The digging continues.

* * *

Larry once heard a strange voice whisper to him in a drunken dream, ”The Body Shufflers."

It said that the dead do move. It explained a lot of things. Werner moved out that day. He accepted the mark of the beast shortly afterwards.

HORROR STORIES

When Sebastian Faith fell from the sky, nobody heard him scream. He was just a wild, country howl too far from any city or prominent suburbia in a province where wolves still prowled the backlands and the odd wildman still hooted his existence to insomniacs and sleepless romantics. At that time, there was only one person awakened in distraught temperament, disturbed from the dead of sleep by the sound of screaming. That screaming, however, was her own startled scream as she jostled out of a nightmare where paper scorched her fingertips.

Her name was Julie Nethers. She got out of bed and drifted to the large bay windows where a night breeze harped silent notes on the curtain. Brushing them aside---the miles of silky, moonlit, summer hills rolled toward distant city lights and---still feeling dreamy---she rubbed fatigue from her eyes. In the sky she saw a gameboard of stars where the full moon was being pushed into Aquarius by an omnipotent hand directing its uncomprehensible strategy in the Heavenly games. She also thought she saw moonstruck butterflies fluttering on the night wind. They swooped and tumbled, hundreds of them drifting down to earth.

She rubbed her eyes again, unbelieving. What she had mistook to be butterflies she now recognized to be sheets of paper. Hundreds of them were falling to earth; some end over end in summersaults, others sweeping back and gliding forth, others twirling, whirling, or spiralling in circles. All of them falling, falling. They were tumbling acrobats of paper descending from the sky like autumn leaves from Heaven’s trees. More of them were being blown on a current of wind like night wings across the countryside, further, toward the city lights like a trailing sprinkle of moonlit faerie dust.

Beautiful, Julie thought, I wonder where they came from?

The clock chimed eleven. She sat on the edge of the window sill knowing sleep would not come to her again that night. She had gone to bed at seven in the evening, trying to sleep her depression away. Now, she would pay for it with sleeplessness. She supposed she deserved it. Trying to suppress confused emotions was like repressing memories and undressing regrets. She felt dejected and worthless each night. It haunted her every day. However, the nightmare was something new.

Of course, her nerves were bad. Reaching thirty nine and recently divorced is a good way to disturb some juicy, wriggling nightmares from all that subconscious ordure. But the dream that awakened her that night was horrible.

Look at the falling pages.

She was standing under a midnight sky on a hill she recognized as the rolling hump of earth on the southeast corner of her property. In the dream, she was being overwhelmed with trepidation. It was like an invisible artist was painting doom into the world all around her. Doom not only for herself, but doom of apocalyptic proportion.

“Gary!,” she cried, “help me!” The shout came from her throat in mewling kitten notes. “Gary! Help!”

A strange voice bumped into her dream night: “Gary divorced you, honey, remember? You took off your panties for his best friend and then you hiked up your mini skirt for a cheap thrill. You know it.”

“No!,” Julie tried to turn away. She couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Her attention was attuned to the omen blazing in her hands. She held a sheet of paper that shimmered in a roaring cocoon of flames. She thought she might be holding an invitation to hell. The fire swept over her fingertips and swished its tail in her face as it devoured the page. She tried to release the paper, but her fingers would not respond. They were welded to the page.

“Help me!”

“You’re on your own now. You played trivial Sex Pursuit with your husband’s best friend and got the winning piece of the divorce pie. But that’s not all you get!, baby. What was the winning game question?...Oh, yeah, under Infidelity: ‘Wait...Henry...do you think he’ll hear us?’ You know it!”

Her eyes were glued to the burning, fiery page that she could not dispatch from her deflagrated hands. Some letters were typed on the page. The words shimmered indiscernibly in the waves of heat and flames. Trying to read them, her hair touched fire and caught. Flames spread across her scalp and danced on her head: She was a human candle with a wig of fire. Her hair dribbled flames onto her shoulder and torched her night gown. Flames raced down her back like matchlight on a gasoline river. Dream pain scourged her flesh.

Ho to

Faith

“...YOU KNOW IT! YOU FUCKING KNOW IT! I GUESS I JUST GOTTA FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE TO GET IT THROUGH TO YOU, DON’T I? YOU KNOW IT! GET ’ER, GIRL... GO GET HER...SIC HER!”

The fire ate and charred her back. She heard a horrible growling noise approach her. It might have been the sound of her own flesh being fried by roaring fire. Flames were encroaching her cheeks from the back of her head, making her vision blurry. Nevertheless, she could almost read the words written on the paper:

Hor Stori

bast F

“EAT HER!...EAT HER UP!...KILL THE BITCH!”

or ories

B ast n Faith

“KILL HER!...KILL HER!”

The paper exploded in her hands and a great ball of red heat mushroomed toward her face. It was a bitch-dog with fur of fire. Pincer ears tapered off to flames. Its eyes were windows to a furnace. Teeth, snapping in front of her face, depended from deadly, barking snarls. The flaming jaws snapped at her, chomping surrealistically and shouting at her at the same time: “YOU KNOW IT! YEAH, YOU FUCKING KNOW IT! YOU SCREWED HIS BEST FRIEND AND HE LEFT YOU BECAUSE OF IT! TIT FOR TAT! AND YOU CAN MOAN IN AN EMPTY BED WITH THAT INTO YA!”

Every pore was opened wide, singing to an orchestra of dream pain. She escaped her nightmare through a scream.

Julie shuddered. Reflected in the window glass was her own dim refection, smoking, the tip of her cigarette glowing red at her fingertips. She snuffed her cigarette out on an ashtray. She turned on a nightlamp and searched through her night table for a pen. She knew that before long her dream would start to fade---they always did. As with all of her dreams, the clockwork of consciousness slowly overcomes the receding subconscious tide. The life of her dream washes away, leaving behind empty shells of its vivid wonder. This time, she was determined to remember the life in her nightmare; even if the rest of it slipped from her memory. She wanted to remember this bit of wonder because elements as particular and as terse as this one were extremely rare in her dreams. On a pad of paper she wrote:

Horror Stories

By Sebastian Faith

Outside her window, the pages were falling like snowflakes.

* * *

Mrs. Birdy Goldwin was Julie Nether’s next door neighbour. She lived alone in her big, country home furnished with sentimental antiquities and silent voices from days gone by. She had a creaky, green couch with an ochre blanket crumpled around her favourite cushion. Bulbous lamps with wooden stands and orange-gold glass were stationed at either side of it, buzzing a faintly electrical hum. Plants crouched in every corner---they were easy pets to look after. A very square outmoded television set was strategically staged as the focal point of the room. Birdy liked it there. She once said, “Some religions remain unchanged.”

However, everything was old. Everything said, ‘Remember me? Remember me? Remember?...Me?,’ with dusty auras of recollection. Birdy Goldwin loved all of her things. Those items and misplaced antiquities were her sanity. Her world was one of platitudes and memories of reminiscences. Her husband, God rest his soul, died from the stealth of cancer in old bones. The funeral was a sombre service in the fog. A dismal day of pathetic fallacy and teardrops. Will, Mary, Joy and Yes Goldwin escorted their mother home and while she slept most of the afternoon away, her children and their respective spouses and children all agreed that her days were now numbered. She proved them all wrong.

She was seventy six in a family that had genes for short life spans. She was skinny and wore thick glasses on hard, dark frames. She was God fearing and disciplined...oh, but she was feisty. This one got up every morning at six and bustled about the house on weakened knees every single day, cleaning, dusting, sweeping, wiping. She would stretch and reach and hustle her heart into staying strong. It was her exercise. After tea and scones she would read, mostly magazines and newspapers. If the weather was fine, her proud garden was tended to. And on daring days she snatched her easel, paints and brush; canvass, chair, and thermos, hot; cloak and kilt and dagger eye and to the hills she would journey to create from the wild what others cannot see in nature---things that she was sure to find.

A page fell from the sky. It landed in Birdy’s garden as the grandfather clock struck the eleven thirty pm mark. The page had tumbled in the air and did a funny loop before landing on the soil. It was covered with print, coherent sentences comprised of interactive words and ideas; a page from a story, perhaps. As soon as the page touched the ground, some things started to happen.

The corners of the sheet began to melt. Liquid rivers of white paper spilled into the soil; and their tributaries henceforth possessed the qualities of things alive. Things unstill. Crawling over the ground, these colour-starved worms and white vipers with a hunger for space ate and infiltrated. They began to branch arbitrarily, sprawling in different directions, rooting themselves into the ground in different places, endlessly sprouting and shooting limbs from their creeping stems.

Other trunks extended up into the air as the weird vines slithered through the garden. Branches sprouted out of stems, each growing snaky extremities which, in turn, branched out themselves. Before long, the creeping corners and worming ends intertwined, enmeshed, and formed a spaghetti jungle tangled like monkeybars made of fish bait.

From the veins came colours bleeding out into the moonlight. Great sheets of red draped invisible carpetways and walls. A stem blasted off toward the sky in a rocketing sine wave and, reaching a height of one hundred and forty feet, it split in four, diving at steep equal angles in straight vectors. Splitting again in symmetrical tangents, smoky white lines fired across the night sky, building a colossal frame of what looked like a church with a mighty steeple pointing out the Heavens. Other stems raced, one meeting the other to drop a curtain of colour and depth. Colours took on textures and textures took on nuances and nuances took on qualities of things concrete. Spaces in between lines solidified. Walls appeared. Places inbetween frames were coated with glass, painted with brick, coloured with wood, glazed with magic realism. It was a weaving process. The weaving of different reality.

The strange page that fell from the sky was imposing its fictional reality on the concrete world. Before long, the squiggling lines and running roots of the strange night seed had reached their limits. They dissipated and created the effect of yet another detail written on the page---a slow, undulating ground mist. The weaving was complete.

Outside Birdy’s back door was a smoky graveyard with tombstones tilted like the teeth of beasts. Faceless, moonlit nameplates drowning in ground fog whispered inaudible invitations to the living as the crickets cried. Not more than ten yards from the porch, a gothic cathedral dwarfed Birdy’s house. Its steeple tried to pierce the sky with the pointed end of a broken cross. Boarded windows blocked out light. A wrought iron fence ran, fell, crumbled and resurrected around the graveyard. Along the side of the cathedral, scraggled needlebush scrambled like manic nerve endings along the walls, threatening, although the nests of thornbirds or unimagined nightwings were pitted within their thorny interiors.

It was re-creation of everything written on the page (one of the hundreds) that fell from the sky. Imagery alive. It was only one aspect of the true horror. There was more written on that particular page. Inside the cathedral, a long, black coffin rested on a catafalque where an alter had once been. It was a polished, ebony casket with deep and dark letters engraved on its panel. The letters formed words from a language now ancient or forgotten. Vampire bats fluttered and raced to their roost in a steeple chase: Daddy likes all of his children home when he wakes up at night. In the church, the coffin lid creaked on its hinges as a cold hand pushed it slowly open.

Inside her bedroom, Birdy Goldwin was restless in her sleep.

* * *

By the time the clock chimed the eleven thirty mark in Julie Nethers’ bedroom, depression had a bridle through her mouth and was riding her into the ground. Already she had gone through a bout with crying and a fit of rage and now she sat cooly on a chair by the window looking at the naked finger where her wedding band was once fitted with the promise of love and honour till death did its part. Nightmarish torments were visiting her again. They returned as soon as she opened her eyes from sleep and they danced with her until the night shifts took over in her sleep. Guilt and sadness liked the intimacy of slow dances when they had her. Anger and the overwhelming feeling of loss liked to slamdance with the intent to induce self abuse. Thoughts of the future preferred her hand in doing the jitterbug.

It was all her fault. That is what her tormented mind was convinced of. She loved Gary. Gary who married her out of romantic love. Gary who was good looking enough to raise an eye when he was well dressed. Gary who worked his ass off selling life to heart patients for the price of seeing their smile (and the nominal going rate for open heart surgery) while she befuddled herself in a writing career with novels that just wouldn’t sell. In the end she tossed Gary a dirty bone.

Why did she do it? Why did she throw everything away for the short pump of Henry Oslick’s thing inbetween her legs? It wasn’t even what she expected it to be like. It wasn’t even what she wanted. She wanted Gary’s style of lovemaking from a surrogate lover because after ten years of plain old marriage, hot and vital sex had given way to routine complimentary fucks under the blue moon. Sad. It was a shame but it was a part of their life.

It was, nonetheless, a part of life that Julie had a problem contending with. She admitted it bluntly to herself in times of woe---‘I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t help it.’ So came the big barbecue. Gary’s friends and their wives (who were by natural association, Julie’s friends) flooded their backyard patio wearing dapper summer attire and great smiles, each laughing a little too loudly and louder as the drinks went babbling down their throats. One of the guests was Henry Oslick, Gary’s best friend. He was a lawyer for big time corporations that needed big time charlatans to keep their noses clean. Moreover, Henry Oslick was the only member of the Derrywood Golf and Country Club (other than the resident pro) that could match Gary’s skill and give him sound competition. It was through this association that Gary and Henry’s friendship evolved.

To say that Julie liked Henry would be a laughable understatement. She was attracted to him in every lustful way. Everyone liked Henry for his cunning wit and his straightforward charm; however, Julie would find herself a little more than comfortable in his presence. She would find herself staring at him, admiring his fit and masculine build, fantasizing. On several occasions over the years she would excuse herself from the annual social gathering and she would escape to her bedroom to slink into a new pair of panties because the ones she had on were as wet as the S.S. Minnow on that three hour tour. More often than not, she just slipped into the bathroom to glide an expert finger over her wetness until that shudder of ecstasy shook her being. It would come easy when she thought of Henry. Usually she had to bite her lip to stop herself from being heard outside the bathroom door.

The barbecue was a grand meat party featuring steaks, burgers, porkchops and, for Julie... Henry followed her into the house at one point in the early evening. He had caught her staring at his crotch for the last time. She was into the freezer compartment of the refrigerator getting more ice for the guests. As she shut the freezer door, Henry stepped in her way, grabbed her hand and tugged her into a shadowy corner. He smiled into her eyes and both of their hearts pumped with lust. He was so damn forward that Julie was taken aback, a bit, but as he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, speaking french with words of taste and touch, Julie surrendered.

With a moan she pulled back. His face was carved of strangeness. She had loved him many times over in erotic fantasies and the face that was shining directly in front of her was exactly how she imagined it. Intimate, familiar.

“Say ‘Yes’ if you want to,” Henry said. Then he ran his hand up her skirt and lightly stroked her heat before turning away and joining the patio-happies.

That one definitive stroke did it. For the rest of the evening she kicked herself, consulted her devils and had brief consultations with her conscience, and was torn again whenever Gary threw her a wink or patted her bum. For all the mental hardship she suffered, she knew exactly what her action was going to be.

"No way!”

She could hardly believe herself when she approached Henry with an icecube in her hand and plopped it into the screwdriver he was holding. She simply said, “Yes.” She stepped away toward a crowd.

* * *

By the time guests were leaving the party, Gary was being his lovable drunk self. He had people laughing in stitches at his antics and jokes, not to mention his liquor-induced body language. The people that left last were always the ones who laughed the most but remembered the least. What they were sure of two days later was that they had a hell of a good time and looked forward to the next Nether-Nether land party.

Gary was entertaining a comfortable club of friends when Julie stepped out of the upstairs bathroom and found Henry standing there. She wasn’t surprised to see him; in fact, she almost expected him there. It was uncanny. Henry stepped toward her.

“Shh,” she whispered. Her hands were trembling. “Not here. Go into the bedroom.”

They left the bedroom lights off. Henry pressed his lips into hers and she willingly accepted his tongue. There was a moment of hesitation and then Julie’s arms wrapped around his back. He skipped one of his hands down to her leg. It was smooth and sensual. Without hosiery her skin felt like warm silk. Sliding his hand up to the round of her buttocks, he discovered she had taken off her panties. It drove him mad with desire. He started hiking up her black mini and found Julie unbuckling his belt, pulling his zipper down, tugging at the catch of his pants.

“Wait...,” she said as she pulled her lips free from the engagement of tongues. Her hands were shaking. “Henry, do you think he’ll hear us?”

“No.”

Henry’s erection was in her hands. Such a big man but... It didn’t matter. It was ready. She’d been waiting for it all night long. One of his hands delved into the sloppy joy between her legs. It was warm, deliciously wet. He pressed her over to the bed and her legs spread for him as she laid herself down and pulled her mini skirt all the way up to her belly button. He stood at the edge of the bed and brought her legs up onto his shoulders. He leaned into her, the crooks of her knees bending slightly around his neck as she clasped her feet behind his head. What happened next came easy from there. You know it.

* * *

Gary Nethers had one more joke to tell. “This one will break your balls and curl your clits, ladies and Germans,” he said.

However, he needed a prop for this one. A dildo to be precise. He knew there was one somewhere in his bedroom because he had bought Julie one as a gag. He could testify, however, that he had caught her using it on more than one occasion. He darted up the stairs. He felt nimble when he was drunk. He felt splendid and agile. His motor abilities seemed to improve with alcohol consumption. So very light on his toes and so very, very numble. When he switched the bedroom light on both Julie and Henry were utterly exasperated. Henry instantly lost his erection. Julie kicked her legs and sent Henry on his ass. Her face was boiling with shock, embarrassment, and guilt. She stood up, pulled her skirt down and simply stood there with such an idiotic expression on her face that Gary burst out laughing. Howling. Roaring at the scene where his best friend sat on the floorboards trying to pull his pants over his thing while his wife stood above him as stunned as a kid standing under a horse fart. Killing himself with laughter, he shut the light off and scoobied down the stairs to tell his friends the funniest thing he had ever seen in his whole entire life...

The divorce came quick and sure. It was almost as if Gary had staged the affair himself, paying his best friend to seduce his wife. In fact, two weeks after the divorce settlement, Gary and his pal, Henry, were seen banging holes on the Derrywood greens. Alas...the escapade was neither planned nor imagined...and what evolved on the night of the Nethers’ last barbecue was something created out of a creature called Lust. The other truth was this: although needling anger twisted its vengeful hook in Gary’s heart, he almost felt like thanking Henry. The last few years of his marriage was a thing in motion, surviving on inertia. That energy, however, was dying off. More and more, Gary secretly thought about a situation involving the termination of co-habitation and separation with his estranged relation. In other words, Gary wanted a divorce.

Of course, things turned out peaches and cream for the Dr. Gary Nethers. He got his divorce and, more importantly, he didn’t have to be the bad guy through the whole ordeal. All things done, he was the good guy following a normal course of action after discovering his bad guy wife screwing his best friend in their own bed. He was a red blooded, normal, I-can’t-let-that-bitch-get-away-with-that-kind-of-bull-shit man. His wife, on the other hand, was regarded with contempt, if not pitied, for her idiocy. After all, Gary:

“...is such a nice guy. How could she do that to him?”

“...is one of the good ones. His wife is a fucking lunchbox for being so stupid.”

“...is a surgeon. He saves lives! He’s got money, he’s not bad looking---Hell, I’m available if he wants a real wife.”

“Gary was my best friend. His ex wife is a tramp and she seduced me. I was drunk, she came on to me and wham!, before I knew it I’m throwing her the big salami. Hey, don’t get me wrong...I’m sorry it happened...I wish I could make it up to Gary because he didn’t deserve that. Not from that sultry whore.”

The result of this ongoing slander, this crooked farce, was that Julie lost her friends. All of them! because they were really all of Gary’s friends. Her friends were thousands of miles away in Whistler, B.C. She lost her husband whom she sincerely loved. She lost the reputation and the respect of being the lovely wife of Dr. Nethers, heart surgeon and protector of life. Now she was acquiring the reputation of a scarlet happy-home-wrecker. She lost everything that she could identify herself with in one foul swoop. She could now look forward to living a lonely, aching life withstanding a loser career which brought her absolutely zero income. She could look forward to...to...

nothing.

Her emotions were swinging battlegrounds. The ghosts of longstanding memories haunted her at every edge. Pain. Regret. Lonliness wrenched her will to live, and of late, only one escape looked promising. It was through that pale door called suicide. Julie sat near the corner of the room and watched the improvisation experts take the stage under the lamp on her night table. They were the ultimate tragic comedians for an audience of one. The funny bottle of gin was there to soften the mood and crack some insane jokes about cheating wives and country whores. The sidekick bottle of Valium was there to cut the edge in the jokes. Together they were the comedy team that just kills you. Julie listened to their silent voices and thought she might just die laughing at her madness.

“I’m not going through another night of this,” she said aloud. She reached for the bottle of gin and poured herself a full glass. She didn’t like the hard stuff, but tonight she was feeling reckless. She popped the bottle of pills open and poured a palm load of Valiums into her hand.

It won’t be easy being green, she thought and guffawed. She lifted the pills to her lips and reached for the gin. Through the corner of her eye she saw a flickering glare through her window. She went to the window and there was fire on her property. On the southeast hill. There wasn’t any wood or brush on her back fields, just rolling hills of grass. So she wondered where the fire was coming from. Then rage mushroomed inside her. She threw the pills on the floor and went storming out of her bedroom.

“If those bastard friends of Gary think they are going to try and run me out of town with pathetic acts of terrorism like some goddam pariah movie then they just stepped into some exploding, sticky shit!”

She threw her runners and a coat on, grabbed the nine iron from Gary’s old set of clubs in the garage, and started across her backyard toward the isolated, grassy hill where fire waved (hello) in the breeze.

* * *

In Birdy Goldwin’s dream, a young man held her hand. They ambled along rusted railway tracks which lay away through a springtime grove of blossoming crabapple and black walnut. He had dark hair and although he wore glasses, his face possessed some inexpressible quality of natural beauty. His handsomely constructed features were, in Birdy’s eyes, so distinctly remarkable that her heart thundered to see him. The man was her new boyfriend, a University student named Mark Goldwin who was studying business and economics in London’s Queens University. They strolled along the quiet rails, smelling the air and listening to each other’s voice whenever they weren’t listening to the singing songbirds. They reached a bend in the tracks and Mark Goldwin kissed Birdy Tait for the very first time. She blushed and fell in love.

Tall grasses were growing in between the railroad ties. Birdy followed the race of her heart with thoughts of marriage as Mark disclosed his hopes and aspirations to her. He wanted to share his life with someone who had inner beauty, someone giving, someone who knew what true love meant. He wanted a wife who was strong enough to raise a large family under God’s Laws. As the sun smiled on them with its brilliant love, Birdy was confident that Mark Goldwin was the man God had sent her. She stopped abruptly in her footsteps, turned to Mark, and asked him to make love to her.

Though the request came as quite a shock, Mark didn’t stop to buy tickets for reservations to a waiting line, if you catch my drift. His eyes made one solid sweep of the meadow and he led her to a patch of grass near a hillside facing miles of summer fields. The bed of grass was sweet smelling and ethereal. They lay under God’s warm eye and they sealed their destiny with passion.

He unbuttoned her summer dress and her perfume was given to the breeze. He cupped his hand over her breast and she wrapped her arms around his neck, lost in the moment. Birdy’s nervousness and inexperience kept her rigid although she was willing. Mark encouraged her hand to the swell in his pants and she, either frightened or unsure, returned her hand to his face. The custom of undressing was to be his trial in error.

He took off his cloths and opened her dress which was fastened by buttons straight down the front. Brushing the airy cloth away, her body lay before him like a sinful angel; pale, nervous breasts heaving easily with the rise in her breath. Her hips were flowing with feminine contour, legs long, white panties cupping the mysterious hill where secrets Mark had only heard of, were buried. He pulled away her panties and climbed onto her. The flesh on flesh was a miracle of wonders. Even more wondrous was Birdy’s beauty: Her jet-black hair, illustrious in the sun’s glare, was splayed over the ground. Her ice-blue eyes were wide and terrible with beauty. His eyes, Birdy felt, were everything she had hoped and dreamed would be looking down upon her when this moment came. He pressed...her face collapsed with pain. Pain and desire. Pain and need. Forever their love began.

In the dream there was blood. It was as it happened many years ago. It was the first time for the both of them. However, in the dream, there was a lot of blood. Blood seeping into the hungry soil and blood never ending. There was blood dripping from the sun and blood washing across the miles of open meadow as if a different Moses had touched his staff to the earth and turned the landscape into blood. Bloody birds were flying under blood clouds. And what awakened Birdy from her dream was not the horror of this frightening image, but a deathly chill in her flesh.

She opened her eyes and shivered. Her room was as cold as October waters. She looked to her window and she saw that they were blown open.

“My goodness...,” she muttered to herself as she slipped away from her bed and went to the window. “How did that happen?”

From the window she could see a strange, white fog floating over the ground. Under the full moon it looked like her house was resting on a cloud. She shuddered and pulled the windows shut, clasping them tight, sealing out the night. She turned around and then her heart suddenly felt truant. There was a pale man sitting on top of her dresser with his knees tucked into his body and his arms hugging his shins close to his chest. His eyes were glowing like dying penlights in the dark. His lunatic grin showed eye teeth that were long and sharp. In the dresser mirror, which he leaned so impishly against, his reflection was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

What made it scary was that there was nobody around. The fire burned steadily and Julie skirted the hillside with the nine iron tightly gripped in a batter’s position. She was ready to brain anyone who should be foolish enough to startle her.

“You sons of devil bastards, come on out! If you think you’re gonna run me out of my own house like some bad t.v. movie of the week, you are crazier than belfry bats on the Holy Easter Sunday! Did Gary put you up to this?! Come out!”

The more she prowled the area, the more she became sure of the fact that whoever lit the fire was now too far fled to kill. The moon was full and there weren’t many places to hide on the rolling, open hills. She suspected those spineless, crouching maggots could hide behind a bug’s ass for all the gutless wonder they possessed. She lowered the club and started to feel a little disappointed that she didn’t get the chance to drive Bill Wyman’s fat head into the ground, or bash Terry Haye’s teeth into place.

Next time, she thought to herself, and laughed at her lunacy.

She stepped up to the crest of the hill. The fire wasn’t very big but it was fiercely intense. It looked like the flames were shooting up straight from the ground because there was no fuel at its source.

A window to hell, she blurted.

As she approached the heat, her mouth tasted dry and foul. What was burning on her property was a sheet of paper. The memory of her dream sunk its frightful talons into her and carried her off. She was drawn closer, her eyes wide, sweat starting to trickle and slide down her temples.

“It isn’t possible...,” she muttered.

Her heart tapped against her ribs. She didn’t flee. In fact, she was wholly entranced by the spectacle. The psychic mystery that burned in front of her was the page she dreamed of. The letters written on it were familiar. She got close enough to read the words:

Horror Stories

By Sebastian Faith

* * *

Sebastian was crazy. He dreamed and willed his dreams into existence. He had an insatiable need to write the most realistic horror stories possible. What that meant was Sebastian always wanted his stories to come true. He dreamed of a world where all those creatures, monsters, and fairy tale wonders actually existed. So when he wrote his horror stories he tied in elements of the truth. Pieces of rituals and seances were often incorporated into different stories. Words from magic spells, elements of ju-ju and simple, if not random, sentence structuring. By the time he was finished his collection of horror stories, the fluke juxtaposition of all of his research into magic spells summoned a great and powerful god.

“You have me, Master,” said the titanic wishbringer. “What shall it be?”

Sebastian fell from his seat. The god’s eye radiated from Sebastian’s computer terminal.

“What are you?,” Sebastian summoned.

“I am your wish.”

Sebastian whimpered. “I have no wish.”

The god’s eye went out with a flicker. The television in the bedroom turned itself on. “Everyone has a wish,” a voice from the t.v. said. “It may be dark, but a wish nonetheless. Your wish.”

Sebastian thought about it momentarily. He stood up and went to the bedroom, following the sound. There was huge eye on the television screen. The eye was on him.

“I want my stories to come true,” Sebastian said.

The eye blinked twice and then squinted. Laughter rumbled from the television speakers. Sebastian’s manuscript papers collected itself on his desk and flew toward him in a stack. It struck the ribs under Sebastian’s arm and he collapsed to the floor, the manuscript spilling. The walls surrounding him, the walls of his house, were ripped upwards. Sebastian attempted to collect his manuscript pages in spite of his horror. The upper level of his house was lifted like the lid on a jar of nuts. Up above him, the black sky was exposed with its stars twinkling coldly. A gigantic hand reached down from over the lip of the house and grabbed Sebastian by the torso.

Sebastian was lifted into the night. His body first floated, then it was thrown across the sky. He tried holding onto what he had collected of the manuscript as best he could. Nonetheless, by the time a falling sensation suddenly registered in his brain, he began to panic that he had lost most of his pages. Plummeting toward the earth, Sebastian screamed and screamed. He saw the dark window he was falling toward. A giant man-made lake at the center of a quarry, mirror of the stars.

And his manuscript sprinkled across the sky falling delicately onto the earth.

* * *

The landscape was mutating with infected phenomenon and diseased realities as all the pages falling from the sky landed and sprouted into evil gardens. In the night, things shifted and reshaped themselves. Properties were altogether absorbed by the strange reality taking shape across the region.

A page touched down on Justin Kirby’s barn and the white vipers went into motion, slithering, painting, creating. In the end, a wind whipped tree as disarranged as a petrified baobab was tilted on the rooftop peak of the barn. A long, tenuous limb jutted from the helter-skelter of branches like an arthritic finger. On its tip was a rope with a hangman’s noose curled around the throat of a beastly creature. The thing bounced on the end of the line like a puppet. It had wayward, wiry hair that flapped like there was wind in it. Its hands were scrabbling around its throat, trying to loosen the noose, trying to unhang itself.

When the thing pulled free, it blew in the light breeze as if it were made of straw. It landed on the roof of the barn and then jumped to the ground, landing on solid feet. The creature’s round straw eyes rolled and its laughter startled the livestock.

Another page landed on Old School Road. The creeping vines built a living room in the middle of the through way. Dead center in the middle of the road. A t.v. flickered images over the setting which consisted of a small, filthy couch, a lamp and end table, a battered rug littered with beer cans, food wrappers, cockroach refuse and other shit, and a goldfish bowl. The goldfish was floating in yellowy water.

On the couch sat a dirty, old pork of a man. A deep South hillbilly. His skin was greasy and the bloated pudge of his bulging, hairy gut pushed itself out from under his t-shirt. He shouted over the sports commentator on the tv. He was drinking American Bud and gorging on potato chips, handfulls at a time. Behind him, locked in a steel cage, was a naked sixteen year old girl with a swollen face and broken teeth. Her ribs could be counted under her starved flesh and her skin was sallow, badly bruised. Lately her eyes have been taken to glowing with red heat and her strength has been much enhanced---you could tell by the way she was bending the steel bars. She smiled at the fat man as her fingernails were husked off, giving way to talons.

In the air there were screams.

* * *

One of the screams came from Birdy’s Goldwin’s frail voice. She staggered back toward the window with one hand placed over her racing heart and one hand trembling over her mouth. She would have fallen if she didn’t brace herself on the window sill. Her legs were feeble, a touch of arthritis in her knees. Morning exercises were hindered by frequent stumbling; but she never let that get in the way of keeping her heart strong. That was well fated because if her heart was not strong it would surely have stopped this night.

“Who...who are you?”

A vampire smiled.

“What do you want?”

His eyes were demonic chasms of dull light that never shifted from the windows to Birdy’s soul.

The vampire lifted himself up so that he was standing on the dresser top, hunched over with his hands resting on his knees. “Your world is mine again,” the vampire embarked.

A queer emotion boiled in Birdy’s heart. The blood that raced in her veins was charged with red, hot fear. A profound feeling of warmth roiled up from her stomach like a cloud of sediments. Thoughts of love and romantic lust seemed to pervade her reasoning. A stranger was in her room...and yet...

Desire. A growing desire. His frightful eyes seemed more captivating than terrible. His voice was calm, majestic law.

“Who are you?,” Birdy’s voice quavered, spellbound.

“A fantasy. Some have called me vamphyre. I am desire.”

A pain akin to the pain of sorrow was aching in her heart and throat. She could hardly speak words.

“Please...get out of my house...you were not invited.”

The vampire sat on the dresser. Birdy could see her own refection in the mirror. Yet, the devil was not there. The vampire’s smile collapsed.

“In your dreams you have fed me and kept me alive. In your dreams you summoned me.”

Birdy was absolutely sure that the man in her room was a vampire. She was absolutely sure of this not because his eyes were glowing like toy headlights and not because his teeth looked like embryonic stalactites, but because her body craved him. She knew enough about vampires and a vampire’s ability to seduce and enchant their victims...to make them believe in the instinct for physical contact...to know an awful thing was in her chamber.

“Get out,” Birdy cried.

The vampire began to dismount the dresser. “So violent is the heart,” it said, “beating! Beating until wings the watch of this darkest hour.”

The vampire leapt at Bridy. She did not faint. However, her knees failed her. The vampire had intended to take Birdy with him crashing through the window, but Birdy’s legs folded and he missed her. Not a moment sooner than the sound of breaking glass had Birdy cringing on the floor, was there a sound of flapping wings. The sound of wings batted off to a quiet flutter and then the sound circled like a boomerang, returning, louder.

Birdy crawled to her night table and opened the drawer. In it was the Holy Bible. She reached further into her drawer searching frantically for something that might save her. She lifted the heavy book out of the drawer. Under it was the real hope.

A bat fluttered through the window. Before it landed on the floor it was taking the shape of the vampire man. The horror of the transmogrified demon made Birdy hysterical with panic. She glanced up at the fiend and her hand went rummaging frantically through the drawer. She found her cross in time. When she touched it, courage ignited her soul. The blood sucker stepped toward her and she flashed it the cross, putting her faith in between the vampire and her throat.

The vampire withdrew in steps. His eyes dimmed and the darkness in them surfaced like crude oil on glassy water. Birdy made an effort to stand. She filed the Bible under her arm and propped herself up using the bed. She pushed herself up onto her feet.

“I believe in the Holy Lord, Our Father, the Almighty. I believe in His son, Jesus Christ, who was sent to save our souls from temptation. I believe in the Holy Ghost and the Life Everlasting...”

The vampire hissed and cringed at the sight of the cricifix. His shape was crushed into that of a bat. The bat fluttered helplessly on the floor like a torpid devil’s wife. Before it could get itself airborne, Birdy had a good idea.

* * *

One page fluttered into a churchyard. In a matter of moments the church was incorporated into the belly of a Titan. The Titan was staked to the ground by the church spire jutting through its giant sternum. Its eyes rolled against the night sky and it roared. It’s black, stumpy teeth gnashed and the cords in its neck were tightly strung in the effort to free itself. Two miles away, Tim Livey was awakened by a monstrous roar.

A page sailing on the wind was carried into the city. It landed on a small house in a rural neighbourhood, a quiet community of streets where quiet people lived quiet lives. When the paper touched 117 Howsen Street, an explosion of white, squiggling vines blasted (quietly) over the rooftops of the houses. From there the branchings vigorously went to work weaving a jungle over the suburban community. Towering trees knitted by dense foliage covered the houses and lawns in this residential district. The jungle was occupied by terrific beasts and man-eating flowers. Somewhere within the jungle was a hideous monster on the hunt for fresh meat. Its teeth chattered as it stalked the night jungle with pantherlike strides and green eyes as full as the fifteenth letter of the alphabet. The chattering monster slunk up to a window in one of the houses and peered in. A night lamp was shedding weak light over a small boy in hockey pro pyjamas, asleep in his bed. The monster chittered its teeth as it’s mouth began to water.

By the time the last of the pages falling to Earth had touched the ground, the region looked like a petri dish experiment. Pockets of phantasmic spectres infected the countryside. To put the catastrophe into perspective, it was a zoo park where no walls kept the wild beasts captive. But these beasts were different. They were unleashed from the confines of horror stories.

Already screams were bellowing across the hills.

* * *

Birdy’s personal Bible was a goliath publication. The paper was course, the words were written in big, bold type and the Bible, being the Bible, was huge regardless. It had mass. She lifted the Book above her head like a disturbed fundamentalist about to pray her sleeping husband’s erection out of existence, and she slammed the word of God over the rolling bat. The creature shrieked and fluttered.

“I BELIEVE IN THE WORD OF GOD AND I BELIEVE...,” Birdy crouched over the writhing bat and she held her wooden cross to it, “THAT THE NEXT TIME YOU VISIT SOMEONE, YOU BE INVITED IN, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!” She stabbed the bat with the corner of the wooden cross. She aimed to break it’s back. Instead she pierced it’s heart with wood. It died with a weak twitch and foul liquid was excreted from between its ratty legs. It smelled like flyblown carnage.

Birdy cried. She got herself dressed and thanked God for the strength. She put her jacket on and had to look for her car keys. She had to put on her shoes in order to get the hell out of there.

“The Nethers’ place. Please, oh God, get me there.”

Birdy staggered when she opened the back door. The sight that erupted into view when she opened the door was almost heart stopping. A gothic church. She stepped into the cold ground fog and started making her way through the graveyard. Tiny sets of red, glowing eyes winked in the shadowy darkness of the cathedral.

* * *

Julie waited for the fire to perish, but it refused to die. It burned and burned. Julie thought she heard a roar in the distance and then another strange sound. She wasn’t sure why she imagined something enormous had flown through the night sky above her. It made her shiver. The whole night was making her shiver. First suicide plans; then murderous tendencies; now interminable fire from paper, and...

Julie thought she heard something like a distant scream coming over the northwestern hill. It was desperate and lonely. It sounded like her own scream, one she imagined she would afford if she was suddenly attacked. Cold air brushed by. It was strangely delicate...like a ghost.

“This is getting too weird for me,” Julie muttered to herself. She resolved to get the garden hose and douse the fire. On her way to the patio for a hose head, she thought she heard another odd scream. It was the scream of a frightened man. She turned the tap on and walked toward the burning paper. In the distance, she saw a block of the city lights black out.

Julie stopped. “Is there something wrong with me!?,” she cried out, scared. She thought she heard another huge roar and then she worried about classic case insanity.

* * *

On 117 Howsen Street, a hideous, chattering noise stirred Taylor Garland from his sleep. When a beast put its head through the window, the five year old awakened with a screaming start. Mr. and Mrs. Garland looked at each other and then flew out of bed. When they opened the door and saw the head of a green eyed water-cat scoping their boy’s bed, they lunged into a panic.

Mrs. Garland screamed and clasped her husband’s night shirt. Mr. Garland called to his boy and threw the first object he could grab into the monster’s face. The night table did nothing to hinder the beast, it’s blunt snout chittering as it tried to press its haunches through the window frame.

“TAYLOR!”

Mr. Garland lunged toward his boy who had curled himself into a fetal position and was shaking like a freak lithopedion. The monster chattered and withdrew its head, venturing, instead, a large, webbed paw with balehook claws into the room. It caught the edge of the bedsheets and it pulled Taylor toward the window.

“TAYLOR!!”

The child was frozen with fear. Mr. Garland scooped his son into his arms and the boy swaddled him like an infant monkey. As they raced toward the door, the monster swiped a wet paw at Mr. Galland and caught half of his calf. A swatch of flesh peeled away from his leg. The muscle hung impotently from his femur like flapping meat stitched to bone. Garland scrabbled away and met his shrieking wife at the door. Mrs. Garland snatched her son away and ran down the hall.

“To the basement!,” Garland shouted.

The chattering beast intensified its efforts to squeeze through the window.

* * *

“Its the end of the world,” Birdy said.

As Birdy turned from her long, hilltop driveway, the countryside was covered with strange and horrible scenes: She could see them in the distance and she saw some up close as she passed them in the moonlight. She averted a large red, splot of meat squashed near the roadside and didn’t notice the multi-legged creature with compound eyes crouched behind the meat with its jaws protectively clenched into it.

She saw spectres and elementals floating around the land like fallen, misshapen clouds come to life. Skeletons marched across the fields on lurid missions. Babbling demons shambled over hills. Goblins and trolls trolling and gobbling. Animals from hell, elephants with wings. “Wicked things have this way come,” Birdy cried.

Up ahead, in the distance, a lamp burned light over the middle of the road. Birdy saw a hairy, witchlike thing clinging onto one heck of a gross man. It was gnashing its pointed teeth into the neck of the man. The witch looked up at the approaching headlights and threw herself into the air, taking flight. Birdy swerved around the living room set on the road way. The fat man was dead. His couch and his carpet were spattered with his blood. A cage with bent bars stood on the scene as if something monstrous had escaped.

“Please, help me, Father.”

She passed the scene and watched it shrink in her rearview mirror. Not far from that scene, as she approached The Nethers’ driveway, she was followed by a squat, croaking monster slobbering after her with cold eyes and a taste for organs.

* * *

The paper would not extinguish itself of fire when water was poured over it. The paper continued to burn. Julie threw the hose down and backed away, slowly.

“What’s going on?,” she said to herself.

She ran and turned the tap off. Then she rushed into her home, slammed the door and locked the deadbolt in place. As she made her way into and through the hallway in the dark, she caught headlights in the window. Somebody was coming.

Julie grabbed the 8 iron from the front closet and waited behind the door with her eye to the peep hole. The headlights were bright and high; she didn’t recognize them. When the vehicle pulled up near the front steps, the engine was turned off and the headlights went out. Julie opened her front door and held up the club. She shouted through the windows of her storm door:

“Who’s there!?”

Birdy blessed herself with the sign of the Cross and said a short prayer to the Lord for helping her survive the trip through hell’s zoo. She didn’t hear Julie’s command.

“‘Who’s there!?,’ I said!”

Birdy also didn’t see the monster with the cold eyes coming up to her vehicle from behind her. Julie saw it.

“WHAT’S GOING ON!?” Julie threw open her storm door and stepped out onto her porch. “GET OUT OF HERE!”

Birdy saw Julie coming at her with a raised golf club and fright starkened her face.

The end of the world, thought Birdy. The Nethers were her only hope for survival. They were her only hope. Now, death was a fly, upon her. It kissed her with its proboscis on the lips. She brushed it away. Birdy thought about being bludgeoned with a metal club. She closed her eyes and kissed her Cross.

“GET OUT!”

The shout came from the side of the vehicle. Birdy prayed.

“THEN, DIE!”

The club struck something soft like a pumpkin shell. A great croaking noise erupted from behind her car. Birdy turned her head and saw Julie drive her golf club down, over and over again, onto the skull of a horrible monster. It was slobbering and its tiny arms, like those on a T-Rex, waved like crazy ECG results. Birdy shrieked.

* * *

The Titan broke the church spire and was free. It got to its feet. It was punctured through the back with splinterings of timber and crumblings of stone. It grabbed the spire with both hands and roared when it pulled the structure from its torso.

Tim Livey was at the window by the time this was happening. He looked outside and saw the hills move. Then he saw the shape of God stand up in the moonlit sky. When it roared, the glass rattled on his windows. Tim fell away from the window. The Titan stepped toward the house. Livey scrabbled his way to the hall and then ran to his back door. When he exited his house, he freaked. There was a giant after him.

Far away, Julie heard him scream.

* * *

Julie yanked the golf club out of the monster’s head. She looked at Birdy and went to the door of Birdy’s vehicle. “Its okay. Is that you, Birdy?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Julie opened the door for the old woman. Julie was awkward and shocked by what she saw. “Come on, lets go inside the house and lock the door.”

“I’m sorry,” the old lady said. “It seems I’ve made a mess of myself.”

“What happened? Are you okay?” Julie reached into the vehicle and unbuckled Birdy’s seatbelt. Birdy’s arms were lifeless.

“Hobgoblins,” she said.

Birdy was lifted out of her vehicle. She was glad to breath the clean air. She was sickened by the smell of her own urine and her own shit. She could smell grass and trees, the land, and taste the air.

“Like the one that I just killed,” Julie said.

“No. Worse.”

Julie carried the old woman inside. She had difficulty getting through the doors, but she made it in and rested Birdy on the livingroom couch. Then she bolted to the front door to secure it shut. “I hate to break it to you, Birdy!,” Julie shouted back from the hallway. “I just killed my husband’s friend wearing a costume!”

“Oh, no... its much worse, Mrs. Nethers. Much worse.”

Julie returned feeling safe. Birdy continued.

“Wicked things have this way come.”

* * *

The window to the sky was actually the reflection from a stillwater lake. Sebastian crashed through its glassy surface and didn’t break his neck. He didn’t black out when he hit the bottom, but most of his air was squeezed out of his lungs. Sebastian scrambled for the surface. Nearly drowned, he broke into the air and gasped. The full moon watched him clamour to the shore. He was on someone’s private property. Perhaps a quarry. Sebastian couldn’t think straight. He was alive.

He was alive.

He stood up and started walking along the rocky shore, clutching his damaged ribcage. In the moonlight, the white limestone cliffs and walls towering in the distance looked alien and cold. He had to find the road that led out of the festering earth wound he had invaded. Sebastian walked the rocky beach with bare feet. His pants were drenched. He had lost his shirt as he flew through the air. God appeared to be on his side.

Sebastian found the road and started ascending its slope. His feet were comforted by the packed gravel, where the heavy trucks trod, and the light of the full moon. What he wasn’t comforted by was the deep, guttural growling he heard invading the air.

Guard dog.

Up ahead. The growling suddenly thickened as a second and a third doggy growl joined the chorus.

Guard dogzz.

A wasp of a feeling made Sebastian shiver. The gODD had told him that he had one wish and he wished for his horror stories to--_

He recognized the growls. They were strangely familiar, horribly real. He was wrong about thinking that there were at least three dogs. There was one dog.

Sebastian could hardly believe his eyes. He said aloud, “Are you serious?”

* * *

The Titan stepped down next to Tim Livey and Tim fell when the earth shook. The Titan lowered its head to look at Tim. Tim screamed, not noticing the warm, watery farts washing down his legs. The Titan heard the familiar scream. The scream that came from its food. The Titan hunched and bowed over to pick up its olive.

* * *

The beast was desperate now. Worked up to a savage hunger. The window frame was long splintered. The water-creature was moving brick now. Pushing in the window sill and wall.

“GET DOWN STAIRS! NOW!!” Garland held his calf muscle in place. The bleeding was immense. He would not survive.

Little Taylor Garland was blanketed by his mother and she slammed the basement door shut. “COME ON, WILLIAM!,” she screamed, “COME ON, WILLIAM! COME ON!”

William tied his muscle to his leg with a towel. He was starting to feel light-headed. He went to go get the gun but when he turned around he heard the wall crumble. The sea tiger chittered. William was living off of adrenaline. He turned back and the beast needed little more to squeeze through. William picked up Taylor’s baseball bat and went over to the beast to kill it. He got two good swings in before his head whirled away somewhere and he fell at the feet of the beast. With that, the smell of blood entered the beast and it broke through the wall with all-consuming hunger. Dinner was served.

* * *

What kind of wicked things, Birdy?

Julie brought Birdy a basin with warm, soapy water and a cloth. “I’ll get you a change of clothes. I hope you don’t mind a track suit?”

“A track suit would be wonderful, thank you.”

As Julie turned away to retrieve Birdy some comfort wear, a change out of her soiled pants, Julie asked, “What kind of wicked things, Birdy?”

Birdy undressed and tossed her slacks into a crumple. She used the perfumed, soapy water and cleaned herself. She felt ashamed and embarrassed. “There is a church in my backyard,” Birdy said.

Julie didn’t think she heard that right. “What?,” she called out.

“A cathedral. A huge, towering Medieval church with a grave yard garden and vampires.”

Julie thought the old woman was in bad mental shape. “Did you say a cathedral, Birdy?”

“Yes. I did. The devil’s church.”

Julie opened a drawer in her bedroom and pulled a grey sweatsuit out. She started to run a warm bath for Birdy. She wasn’t sure how to respond to the situation. The old woman was fully nude when she returned with the spare clothing. Birdy was helpless and hurt. Julie wrapped a house coat around her. “There is a bath running for you. It is off of the bedroom. Birdy, are you okay?”

“No,” Birdy cried. “No. I’m not.”

Julie wrapped her arms around Birdy to comfort her. “Don’t cry. Its okay.”

“And I saw a man being eaten by a banshee. I saw a skeleton army marching toward the city. I saw death and the devil. I saw horses...and legion.” She stopped there and clenched her cold hands around Julie’s wrists.

Julie pressed Birdy’s sweaty head into her shoulder. “Horses,” Julie said with compassion. Tears welled in her eyes for the poor woman. She didn’t know how to feel and she didn’t know how to deal with the situation.

“The Four Horsemen!” She burst into sobs. “Horrors! That thing you killed. Its real, Julie. Its not your husband’s friend.”

“It will be okay. Why don’t you go fix your bath?”

Birdy wiped her eyes with her hand and then looked at Julie’s face. “Gary isn’t here, is he?,” she asked Julie.

Julie moved away. “No. We’re divorced.”

“Julie, I’m not kidding. Go check it out. That thing that followed me up the driveway is not a man in a costume. There is something wrong out there. Its happening.”

Isn’t that what I thought? Isn’t that what I felt deep inside my bones when the city lights went out and when the fire window on the lawn could not be shut?

Julie looked toward Birdy, “We need to call the police.”

“Yes. We do.” Birdy turned away and followed the sound of running water to wash herself.

* * *

The water cat licked blood from its face with a double tongue. It wasn’t quite full yet. It could sense fear, like heat, radiating from behind the basement door. More food. The cat finished with William and went to sniff the hallway. The cat was large. It chittered and ran its huge claws into the wooden door leading to the basement.

* * *

Justin Kirby was taking a shit when he saw someone pass his window.

“That’s why the cattle are going nuts.” He pulled up his pants and went to get his shotgun. He loaded it and sang a snatch of Cypress Hill, ”Cock the hammer, its time for action.”

Justin saw the man again through the side door window. His haggard shadow played on the curtain.

“Back the truck up, mister.”

The scarecrow smashed in the window and reached for the doorknob. A black glove filled with straw was clutching at---

Justin squeezed the trigger. The window was blown out and the straw hand searched for the doorknob. Justin fired again. He saw dirt and straw fly from the scarecrow’s head. The hand found the doorknob.

Justin started feeling fear unlike any he had previously felt. His mind started racing. A scarecrow was entering his home. He shot at it twice and still it comes. Carrying a balehook.

* * *

In one of his stories, Sebastian Faith stole a very ancient literary idea and brought it to life once again. Sirius, the mythological dog from hell, had three heads. It was staring him in the light of the full moon. Growling.

My wish come true.

Sebastian was amazed at how real the mutant dog appeared. It was just how he imagined it.

It can’t hurt its creator. Can it?

The dog(s), six jawbones in all, six hundred and sixty six teeth...attacked!

Now you know.

* * *

Julie stepped out of her house and onto her driveway. She had a bat with her this time.

“If there’s anyone out there I am going to bash your brains out, I’m not kidding take a look right there laying on my driveway.” She approached the back of Birdy’s car. She took a boo at the thing. There was black blood flowing down the driveway.

Julie went to the monster and touched it lightly with her whole hand. There didn’t look to be any kind of head gear on the guy, it must have been a pro make-up job.

Boy, the extent to which those bastards will go just to scare me.

She wanted to see who was under the mask. She tugged at the neck, trying to lift up the face made of latex rubber and she found that it felt like flesh. The monster reached up and grabbed her face.

* * *

Only one dog could bite at a time, but they worked together, like one very wide mouth. One mouth chewed into his rib cage. The other mouth his left arm. His stomach was being invaded by the third doggie. Sebastian could feel his already feeble life leaving him. He tried to yell and tried to fend off the dog. His struggle was useless. The mouth is quicker than the hand. He was being eaten alive. Siriusly.

* * *

Justin Kirby did the one thing that made absolutely the most sense in his current state of mind. He ran. He ran like hell. The balehook swooshed by him and stuck into the door frame. The rustling of straw was disturbingly soft. Kirby didn’t scream. He wasn’t running away as much as he was running toward something. He had a pretty good idea about how to kill a scarecrow. What he had no idea about was his own sanity.

He grabbed a candle filled with lamp oil and removed the lid. He baptized and blessed the approaching fiend with flammable liquid. The balehook went flying. It missed Justin just in time. It went through the kitchen table and was caught there. Justin reached into his pocket and pulled his lighter out. It worked on the first try and Justin touched it to the straw man.

The fire ballooned toward the ceiling. The hair on Justin’s face and bangs singed off, smelling like torched chickens. Justin fell away. The scarecrow crackled and popped. Pieces of it fell away to floating embers. The kitchen table was on fire and the smoke detector started crying. Justin thought of getting the fire extinguisher, but then he changed his mind. The scarecrow started to chase him. The air fanned the flames, blowing them from its body. Justin ran through the house and the fire chased him. He ran up the stairs to the washroom and locked himself in. By then the scarecrow was close to being ashes. Nevertheless, his house was already burning.

* * *

Julie screamed and karate chopped the forearm of the monster that grabbed her. The monster had no fight left in it. The reflex to kill was dead along with its taste for organs. Julie crawled away and then scrambled into her house. Birdy was standing at the top of the stairs. She said nothing.

“Birdy!, you startled me. We need to call the police. We got to call the police.”

Birdy started down the stairs. “No, we can’t. The phone lines are down. I’m surprised we still have hydro.”

Julie tested the phone line. Birdy was right. “What’s happening, Birdy?”

“I don’t know. I went to bed at nine o’clock. When I woke up there was a man in my bedroom. A vampire.”

They entered the recreation room facing the backyard patio. “A vampire.” Julie drew the blinds to the back yard. She told Birdy, “I woke up at eleven. There were papers floating down from the sky. One of them landed in my backyard and it was on fire.”

But there was no fire burning in Julie’s back yard. They both looked and didn’t see anything. It had burned out.

“It must have blown away. Let’s go see.”

“No,” cried Birdy. “We musn’t leave.”

“Birdy, we need to find answers.”

“Wait until morning, Julie, don’t leave me. I’m frightened. With daylight we can see much better. I had a terrible dream.” She was thinking about the planet of blood. “I dreamed of blood and I woke up with a vampire in my bedroom. I don’t want to go out there. I don’t want you going out there. Please, don’t go. Let’s stay here and pray.”

“I dreamed that I was on fire. That a piece of paper burning in my back yard torched me. Then I went out because there was a paper burning on my property. I thought it was one of my husband’s friends playing a mean joke on me, but when I saw the paper, when I read what was written on it, I knew there was more to it. Now we’ve got no telephone and we’ve got monsters at the doorstep. We need to go find out what is happening here.”

Birdy was distraught with worry and fear. “What did you read on the paper?” She sat on a couch to brace herself.

“‘Horror Stories By Sebastian Faith.’”

The name was familiar to Birdy. “Sebastian Faith,” she repeated.

“Yes,” said Julie. She watched Birdy because the look on Birdy’s face was puzzled and curious.

“I know him. I know Sebastian Faith.”

* * *

Sebastian was getting eaten alive. His blood sprinkled into the night like stray water fountain droplets. He was at the point of losing consciousness when the dog simply vanished. The horror was over.

Let it be over.

Sebastian fainted. Several very desperate things were already tracking the scent of his blood.

* * *

The Titan chewed Justin’s boots. Justin’s flesh was nothing more than a taste in the Titan’s mouth. Ahead, in the distance, lights came on in a small box where food was often located. The Titan started to walk toward the Nethers’ home.

* * *

Julie shut the drapes and turned on a couple more lamps. Birdy was entertaining Julie’s curiosity.

“Sebastian Faith is a writer.” Birdy and Julie sat down next to each other. “He lives somewhere out on Shaws Creek Road. He writes horror stories for a living.”

“Is he popular? I haven’t heard of him.”

“Not sure.”

“So that page that fell from the sky is his? Is everything that is going on around here because of him?”

“I don’t know.”

Julie and Birdy heard a numbing roar coming from outside the walls of the house. The thunder sounded distant, yet unsettling, on such a clear and eerie night. Julie quickly got up and turned off all of the lamps she had on. She went to the drapes and peered out from behind them. Her eyes were fierce with terror. The ground was starting to tremble in a rhythmic sequence, like footsteps approaching.

“What’s there?,” Birdy whimpered.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Do you feel the house shake? Its like those dinosaur pictures in the movie theatres. Something is coming.”

“What? What?” Julie was starting to panic. She ran to another window.

“Don’t leave me! Please, don’t leave me now!”

Julie turned around and stopped dead in her tracks. A roar rumbled the house and rattled windows. The thunder was immediate. Outside, the Titan was standing above the house, looking down at the brick oyster that held a morsel or two of meat.

* * *

The water cat stuck its head through the hole it had carved in the door. The grisly chittering echoed down the hollow stairwell. In the basement, Taylor buried his head into his mother’s breasts. Mrs. Garland backed herself into a cobweb shrouded corner and hid there in the shadows. She was buying time before she had to try and be a hero.

The sleek feline crashed through the door, pushing through the splintering wood. Mrs. Garland covered her mouth. Taylor saw the monster coming down the stairs and fainted.

* * *

Sebastian was awakened by something gnawing at his toes. He screamed and the swarm of rats encroaching on him receded into the darkness like a floating cloak. The rats were not startled by the screams which Sebastian wailed. It was something else. There was something approaching ever closer to Sebastian by air. Something with a silent cry and wings of mist. According to Sebastian’s story, it was a thing that would drive you insane with poison and pain.

Sebastian tried to get up. He felt cold and weak, disoriented and dizzy. The serpent swooped down to strike. Sebastian stumbled and unwittingly averted the bite. The dragon landed at Sebastian’s back. Sebastian got up and started walking away. Then he heard breath that sounded like wind and a shriek that sounded like a whooping monkey. When Sebastian turned toward the dragon, he was paralysed by the horror. It cocked its serpentine neck and then delivered a death strike. Sebastian fell onto the gravel road and the dragon’s jaws caught him. Its teeth pressed into Sebastian’s shoulder. As the poison was injected, Sebastian went unconscious. The dragon shrieked a death cry. Then it dissolved into white worms of smoke that dispelled into nothingness.

* * *

Julie opened the drapes a crack. She looked outside and saw the full face of the moon peering into her house from above. Then it was blocked by the face of a giant. Julie was in awe.

I must be dreaming. This must all be just a bad dream.

The Titan saw Julie’s tiny head poking out of the curtains and it smiled. It reached down and took hold of the roof. The house rattled as the walls were wrenched and the windows blew themselves out. Julie reacted quickly, “Birdy, get under a door jamb.” But everything stopped just as suddenly. Julie heard a distant cry, like an exotic bird. Then the house stopped quaking. The Titan roared as its arm burst into a shower of smoke worms that fell to the ground, wriggled like leeches on salt, and then dissipated in thousands of tiny puffs of smoke. The Titan howled and covered his exposed shoulder socket. It was bleeding white smoke. It ran off into the hills, injured.

* * *

“It stopped.”

Birdy and Julie were standing together in the doorway to the hall. “I heard it run away. I felt it.” Birdy was in shock. “What was it?,” she asked.

“A giant.” Julie couldn’t believe the words coming from her own lips. The truth.

“What are we going to do?”

“Now we need to leave. There’s no windows, anything could get in. Maybe that giant will come back. We got to go toward the city where we can find help.”

Birdy searched around. “Where did I put my coat?”

“Its in the living room, dear. Now listen, Birdy, everything is going to be fine. Whatever is happening is happening for a reason. There’s a reason why all this is going on. We’ll find help and everything is going to be okay.”

“Yes. Yes, I hope.”

They prepared to go outside, the old woman wielding a filet knife and Julie sporting a bat. They planned on taking Gary’s---Julie’s---Bronco. The garage door opener on the keychain was activated. The garage door opened, light spilling onto Birdy’s car and the darkness. From where the Four Winds came, grisly and deathlike things alive were attracted by the light, the noise, or the scent of human flesh.

* * *

Justin couldn’t wait any longer. He prepared a wet towel to place over his mouth and nose. The smoke alarms were crying throughout the house. Smoke was seeping into the washroom and Justin let himself grow too much sideways to fit through the bathroom window. He felt the door. He felt the doorknob and it wasn’t warm. He would risk the balehook, after all, death by fire was even more a horrible way to go.

The scarecrow was long away in ashes. Justin tripped over the balehook as he stepped through the ambiguous black. The smoke was thick but Justin knew his way. He knew he could get through the large window of his bedroom. The smoke was thinner there and Justin felt the notion to grab his rifle. He slipped the strap over his shoulder and went to the window. There were no fire truck sirens approaching. He slipped through the window into a deep, moonlit night. He skidded down the slope of his roof to his preordained escape route. An explosion blasted the side of his house away.

Lucky for Justin, he was on the other side of his home. His Dodge was blown away in a rupturing fireball and it landed on his roof.

RUN!

Justin sprained his right ankle jumping from the top ladder rung.

I gotta lose some weight, Justin thought as he scrambled and winced. His ankle could hardly support him and the pain, the pain firing from it. He hobbled far enough away from his house to avoid being dissolved in shrapnel from another explosion. There he collapsed near the woods.

“I’ll wait for an ambulance,” he told himself. “Someone will see fire and call 9-1-1. Jesus, they won’t buy a crazy story like this.”

* * *

By two thirty in the morning the police would believe just about anything. The Caledon East O.P.P. were a single minded bunch that responded reluctantly to a disturbance call at 11:15 pm. Respite was their motivation. This one call came in for armed back up. There was a wild animal attacking some kids at a field party. Trouble also came over the radio as Wilson Range tried to manoeuvre his car around what looked and smelled like a monstrous, road-blocking pile of hot shit on the road. Further, Highway 410 was on fire.

“Come again? Did you say the highway is on fire?”

The radio clicked and hissed. The frequency was unstable. ”Switch to -mergen-y band chan--l.”

Wilson followed the order and tuned into the strangest radio conversation he had ever heard.

“What do you mean something has crashed to the earth, what is it?”

“It looks like a flying saucer, Sir.”

“A what?”

“Like a space thing, Lieutenant. A god damn mothership. Burning the highway. There’s no way around it. Good Lord, its the size of---”

Wilson cut into the conversation: “This is Caledon Ontario Provincial Police Constable, Wilson Range. Please identify yourselves.”

The radio conversation continued as if Officer Range’s message was not acknowledged. Wilson banged the radio panel. “What the fuck?” The static washed in and out.

“---she’s opening up, she’s opening up!”

“What in Christ’s name is happening out there?”

“The side of the ship. The bottom. There’s things coming out of them. They’re firing at the people, flashes of light!”

Wilson thought he was listening to some illegal version of the War of the Worlds scandal. He picked up his radio. “Broadcasting on this frequency is illegal. This is an emergency channel. I repeat, this is an emergency channel. Cut the bullshit and get off of it.”

But the shouts he heard and the screams in the distance and his dying radio made him nervous. He was approaching the Forks of the Credit Road where the disturbance was. He entered trouble even before he made it to his destination. A wooden rack, used in Medieval times to torture prisoners of the State, was being pushed and pulled over the hillside toward the city by a crew of skeletons. When Wilson Range saw the skinny men of bones abandoning the rolling rack, coming at him like hungry savages, he nearly lost his mind.

* * *

Justin waited and waited. He heard weird things that were really starting to freak him out. Soon he would not be able to believe his own eyes because approaching him was a gruesome madman who thought he was the Grim Reaper. He wielded a plain old spade, sharpened to a razor’s edge. Justin saw him coming and called to him.

“HELP!,” he shouted. “OVER HERE!”

The psycho paced quickly toward him. He had a strange look in his eyes. He did not say anything; in fact, as he approached, his body language was threatening. He lifted the spade into the darkness above his head. The sharpened edge of the spade glimmered from light cast by the burning house.

“WHA---?”

The spade came slicing down on Justin.

* * *

Some people died that horrible night. Many people survived it. Most never saw or heard a thing as they slept soundly through the dark hours.

Mable Denninger had a good sleep and dreamed of a snowflake falling down to earth; she thought how oddly it had changed into smoke. Bonnie Clove didn’t dream and she farted loud enough once to wake her husband: In the time that he was awake, Dale thought he heard a scream but it could have been his wife’s goddam Crone’s Disease. He swiftly slid into sleep. Marjorie Blathwort Ingleson, on the other hand, had a hell of a time trying to get to sleep and couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why. Outside her home was a spider the size of a house waiting at her door.

Of the dead, it could only be said that private funerals, home video equipment, media publications, and XPY Stories accounted for most. Some of the dead could not be identified. Others simply disappeared off of the face of the earth that night, mysteriously.

Survivors were the most frightening thing about that night. Each with their tale of horror and heroism. Each with their wildly configured perspectives. They verified the physical evidence and they provided the eyewitness’ truth. They were all that was left of the most modern example of mass hysteria. Some survivors just continued quietly and carried on with the business at hand.

* * *

Justin swerved his body and the razor spade caught his shirt He fired a shot at the psychopath’s stomach. The madman was blown backwards and he fell. He tried to get up and could not. Justin didn’t even feel his ankle as he ran into the woods behind his house. He decided not to wait for help after all.

To the next side road, Justin thought. And then he said, “Through the valley of rock with a screaming ankle.” Justin, of course, was talking about cutting through the rock quarry over to the next concession side road. He moved as quickly as he could considering his ankle was firing pain pellets up his legs. Nevertheless, he held the uncanny sense that something was following him. He was very correct. There were, in fact, many things following him.

* * *

Julie and Birdy made it to the road along her driveway without a problem. She turned right. Toward the city. Over the first hill they encountered their first obstacle.

“What’s that?,” Julie wondered.

Birdy fixed her glasses and said, “Turn your lights off, Julie.”

“What is it?”

“Slow down and turn your lights out.”

“Why? It looks like a train.”

“Julie, turn off your lights and stop.”

“Its still far away.”

“Ever touch a battery to an earthworm in biology class?”

Julie looked at Birdy and a wave of fear tightened the skin on her anus. She turned her lights off immediately and slowed down to a crawl.

“An earthworm has light sensitive skin. We don’t want to alarm it. It may curl back and sweep us away.”

The Neptune bait wormed across the road and the fields like a silent tornado, tipping barns and crushing livestock. It was the size of a freight train.

Julie turned her radio on. The local radio station was pure static. Toronto’s Q107 came in loud and clear. What Hurts the Soul, was playing on the waves.

“They don’t even know what’s going on. They are carrying on like none of this is even happening.”

“Who is?,” Birdy asked. She took off her glasses to clean them.

“The rest of the world. There are gigantic...that!---WORMS! And vampires, monsters, giants and god knows what else and I bet when we hit those lights...”

She was referring to the Toronto Skyline twinkling magically on the horizon. Better than L.A.

“I’ll bet we find sanctuary.”

“Yes. You’re right.” Birdy took a sip from a water bottle they had brought. “Julie, if I may be so bold, is Gary gone?”

“Who knows.”

“Oh,” said Birdy. Nothing more.

They sat nervously in the darkness, in the safety of Julie’s Jeep. Clouds were blowing in from the breeze. It appeared to be changing into a steady wind. Julie looked around, making sure they weren’t being stalked. “I cheated on Gary,” she told Birdy. “He caught me in bed with his best friend.”

Birdy folded her hands in her lap. “Life’s a bitch.”

Julie looked at Birdy’s old and serious face and went into hysterics. “Yes. It is.” Her laughter died when she noticed that Justin Kirby’s place was on fire.

I JUST GUESS I GOTTA FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE TO GET IT THROUGH TO YOU, DON’T I? YOU KNOW IT!

“Look!” Julie pointed behind Birdy and startled her. She was expecting another creature. Instead, there was a house on fire in the distance.

“Mr. Kirby’s place,” Birdy stated.

“What if someone is hurt?”

Birdy looked at her friend. She was silenced by the thought.

“We’ll cut through the quarry,” Julie asserted, “over to the next concession. We’ll see if Justin needs help. Maybe he can help us.”

“Can we make it?,” Birdy asked.

Julie backed up the truck and turned around to head for the quarry road.

“We got to fight fire with fire, Birdy. I think that’s what this is all about.”

The worm crawled on behind them slow and determined.

* * *

Sebastian was dragged along the gravel road toward the water’s edge by a slimy, under water creature resembling a scorpion. He lay on the rocky beach of the limestone lake. It was a very dead lake. Just a pock mark on the face of the earth. The waters were still. Sebastian slowly returned from a void. The poison in his veins vanished with the dragon and his consciousness. Now that he was regaining coherency once again, he was able to appreciate the irony of this horror. He wanted his stories to come true. He wanted monsters to erupt from the crust of the earth like Godzilla in the classics. He wanted a world where dinosaurs were walking the Canadian forests and prairies. He would settle for virgin land, before roads, before anything, and buffalo masses flowing over the Prairie Provinces.

His stories were unusual and festered with traditional themes and obscure horror style. In one story, an alien from another planet landed on Earth. The reproductive organ of this being had a mind and instinct of its own. If the being neglected to use it for its reproductive purpose, it instinctively dropped off it’s host and went on a mission to reproduce itself or die. In another story, a black fluff was offered to a Chinese king who caged it, until one day, someone opened the gift cage. The chittering kitten-otter emerged.

He who lets the cat out of the bag must eat words.

The kitten grew into a water panther and had an appetite for human flesh. It killed and was killed in Sebastian’s story. He got the idea from the tape in his fortune cookie one time.

He who lets the cat...

In another story, a scorpion-like freakish monster had a tendency to wash its food like a racoon. Sebastian was dragged from the gravel road to the dead lake by the creature. He was abandoned as the scorpion entered the water for a swim before dinner. A cleansing. As it disappeared under the water’s surface, Justin Kirby was at the top of the roadway. He was hoping to make it over to the other side of the quarry and onto the road. But he heard a snarl and then he heard a splash. He cocked his rifle and approached the dark eye that watched the sky. The dead lake.

On the rocky shore, Justin’s ankles complained and retaliated. Justin moved slowly, cautiously. He saw a dark blotch on the white, rocky shore. Concentric circles in the water indicated movement. But what?

He approached the dark spot. Then, in the moonlight, he saw a serpentlike monster arise from the water. It glistened and dripped. It had jaws on its thin head like a deadly fish with legs. Justin watched the creature approach the dark splotch on the beach. As Justin got closer he recognized a form. It was a person lying on the beach.

The scorpion went to the body and picked it up. Justin was shocked.

The monter’s tail swished in the air as it began to wash the body in the lake. Sebastian’s screams were soundless, his voice was long gone. His silent screaming continued until Justin could hear his breath. Justin took aim and fired at the monster. The monster dropped Sebastian into the water and turned around. It started to run toward Justin on lizardlike legs, screeching.

Two shots fired were followed by one more to the head of the beast. Then it burst into a ball of white smoke that drifted with the wind.

Justin stumbled to the lake shore and then clearly identified the form as a man. A man face down in water. Justin hopped into the water and waded to the floating body. He held his rifle high in the air to avoid getting it wet. When he flipped the man over, the face was pale and battered...he was probably dead. Justin dragged him out of the water as quickly as he could for fear of the unknown dangers getting hungry. He dragged the man up the rocky shore. The man wasn’t breathing, but his body was limp and warm.

Go on, you heard his breathing.

Justin looked around and then started C.P.R. on the man. He was not prepared for all the mayhem going on but he started the life saving procedure automatically.

It was a miracle when he saw the light. The light of an approaching vehicle. In addition to the rhythm and focus of his lifesaving efforts, he attempted to get the attention of the driver. The headlights were at the top of the quarry edge and turning onto the windy back road. Justin did his best. It was hardly enough to keep Sebastian Faith alive.

* * *

Everywhere in and around the Region of Halton Hills and toward the greater Metropolitan Toronto area, the horrible stories would end in a cloud of white smoke as the spectre within each outrageous story dissolved into smoke. The smoke would dissipate into the air and become part of the clouds. The clouds would build. The rain would send seeds of destruction.

On 117 Howsen Street, Mrs. Garland was triumphant in killing the chittering water-cat. She left little Taylor on the basement floor as she disturbed spiders and frantically searched for a weapon. She found an old fireplace poker of all things. When the chittering panther stepped along the basement floor toward the feeding corner, it saw the point of a black spike enter its eye. It swished a paw out at the assault and managed to rip Mrs. Garland’s hand off with its claws. The poker must have killed the monster. The fireplace poker fell to the basement floor with a clang and a noxious cloud of white smoke appeared where the panther had been standing. The panther was gone.

This happened at the same time that the worm burst into a huge tunnel-cloud of vapour. The Titan, running blindly over range and land, suddenly took the shape of a running cloud and then abruptly stopped and floated away in the wind. Smoke.

Other horrors vanished in a cloud of smoke. All, in fact, but one. It lay waiting in the electronic desert. To Bethlehem it slouches. All of Sebastian’s other stories were done. Sebastian Faith...his wish and his life...was over.

* * *

The Jeep did drive toward the beach. Julie was cautious and turned her high beams on. “It looks like two men,” Julie finally said. A white cloud appeared above her windshield. Birdy didn’t see it, her eyes were useless in the dark without glasses.

Justin removed his rifle from his shoulder strap and raised his arm to flag the vehicle down.

“There’s...it looks like Justin Kirby.” Julie thought she recognized the man waving her down near the water. He was one of Gary’s other acquaintances that she often fantasized about.

“Justin Kirby? Is that you!?”

“Yeah. Julie?” Justin went down to breath another breath of life into Sebastian’s lungs.

“Who’s with him?,” Birdy asked. “Does he look hurt?”

Julie parked the Jeep. “Birdy, stay here. I’ll just go see if he needs help.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Birdy was grateful. There was already too much excitement in her evening and she was exhausted. “Is he okay?,” Birdy heard Julie say.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you okay? We saw your house on fire.”

“I’m fine,” Justin afforded. He blew another breath, then added, “We need to take him to a hospital. He was attacked and drowned.”

“My God, who is it?” Julie crouched down to help.

“I don’t know,” said Justin. “Listen, we need to time this right so I don’t break the resuscitation cycle. Help me lift him into your vehicle.”

Julie took hold of Sebastian’s arm. “Ready after next breath,” she retorted.

* * *

In the sky, the ultimate horror story was coming true. It was a horror story Sebastian was thinking about writing. An idea he had kept only in his mind, only in his dreams. The asteroid that was hurling toward the earth entered the planet’s atmosphere and lit up the hills with fire light from above. The asteroid was larger than a mountain. Birdy made the sign of the Cross as she looked up from her seat. It was lighter and felt warmer than midday for a moment and then the light went out. The moon disappeared behind a massive white cloud. The light had changed to smoke. The asteroid, a ball of fire, exploded into smoke. Justin and Julie assisted Sebastian into the back seat.

“Got a blanket?,” Justin requested of Julie.

Lake water started sputtering from Sebastian’s mout as he suddenly coughed. Justin turned Sebastian’s head to its side. Sebastian gasped and choked, tears rolling from his eyes.

“He’s alive!,” Julie exclaimed

“You’re going to be fine, buddy,” Justin said to the stranger. Justin looked up at Julie. “Thank goodness you showed up. Its a miracle. I hope its a miracle.”

Sebastian coughed and choked and attempted to speak. His words were infused with watery spit. “We are all dead.”

* * *

But they didn’t die. Everywhere, at the exact moment that the asteroid exploded into smoke, Sebastian’s wish was dead. Sebastian was also dead, clinically dead for a moment of time, and his horror stories went up in smoke.

Then, by some miracle, life returned. “We are all dead,” Sebastian said.

“Who are you?,” Birdy said. Julie started driving the Cherokee up the back road.

“Faith.”

Wacko, Julie thought as a cloud of white smoke dissipated in front of her.

“Sebastian Faith.”

Goosebumps rolled over Julie’s back. “You know I dreamed of you this evening,” she said to Sebastian.

“Did you?” Sebastian’s voice was tired.

“Horror Stories by Sebastian Faith. A cover page perhaps?”

“My manuscript, my deepest desire...all my dreams are coming true. I was granted a wish and my stories are coming true. You must have all saw it.” Sebastian looked at Justin sitting next to him.

“That’s exactly what happened, I saw something. It was a scarecrow come to life. I shot the damn thing and it turned into white smoke.”

“A vampire invaded my bedroom earlier,” Birdy added. “Another monster followed me up Julie’s driveway, but she killed it with a golf club.”

Julie looked at Sebastian from the reflection in her rear view mirror, eye to eye.

“We are all dead,” Sebastian repeated.

Perhaps he is in shock.

He added, “The asteroid is coming!”

“You mean that old thing from the sky? It came and went. Its just smoke now.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, just about the time we thought we lost you. Just prior to you catching your breath.” Justin was worried the stranger wouldn’t make it: He was now amazed that the person he had saved was Sebastian Faith.

“Look above the city there.” Julie had made it to the top of the quarry and was turning right along the sideroad toward the city. The city lights had returned.

Everyone kept sweeping the landscape with their eyes to look at the wicked, white cloud formations floating in the moving air. The clouds were awesome.

“Is that smoke?,” Sebastian wondered.

“You bet. Looks like your manuscript went up in smoke,” Julie said.

Sebastian understood the irony. He had died and returned to life. He had been beyond and back. His wish to have his stories come to life materialized and then the wish died when he died. Fr

They drove toward the city without a problem. They felt nervous and ridiculous but they were huddled together and united in storytelling, recounting their night’s tale to each other. By the time they were reaching the nearest Hospital, Sebastian finished relaying his experience and concluded, “Maybe I won’t write horror stories anymore... Maybe I’ll write about people needing people and peoples’ lives intertwining and people impacting other people. People like us.” Sebastian turned his battered head to Julie and Justin.

“Oh, we’re impacted alright,” Julie said.

The vehicle wheeled around a corner near the Hospital. There was a mob outside the Emergency Departmentat. A great many people were being brought there and waited outside for triage assessment. It would be a very busy and difficult night for everyone.

THE PROJECT

“Are we still falling?,” asked Tommy Moore.

“Yes,” answered the holograph image.

“Will it ever end?”

“Never,” said the holograph.

The two of them, the madman and the holograph image, fell together through the black of space. Falling, falling, forever. The universe was perpetual. The stars were billions of miles away. Tommy’s heart stopped. The holograph image petered out like a dead firework. Tommy Moore’s corpse lay in the middle of the Project pod. The twinkling stars and the darkness were slowly replaced with dry, clinical light. Dr. Whye and his associate, Dr. Juda Milne, stepped onto the floor toward the dead Tommy Moore.

“It had him fooled. The damn thing works,” said Dr. Juda Milne.

“Yes,” said Dr. Whye, “it works like a dream.”

“His vital sign readings register acute distress, panic, and fear. Cardiac arrest. We killed him, didn’t we?”

“I would say so.” Dr. Whye kicked the dead prisoner’s leg. Limp. “This is not going to look good. We got to get him to Medical. An immaculate autopsy might save us. Administration is going to blow their shit fuckhouses when I report these results to them. He shouldn’t have died this quickly.”

“He shouldn’t have died at all.”

Dr. Whye looked over to Juda and snatched the paperwork out of his hands. He read the computer readouts and shook his head in disbelief. “He actually scared himself to death.” Whye shoved the papers back into his assistant’s hands. “Look,” he pointed to the corpse, “the poor bastard even wet himself.” Dr. Whye chuckled in amusement.

“Want me to confirm his death?”

Dr. Whye: “No.” He looked toward his associate. “I’ll do it myself.” He crouched down and checked for vital signs.

“I doubt they’ll axe the Project over this,” Juda decided, “Moore was scheduled for execution in two days, regardless. What they’ll want is answers. How did the prisoner die? What was the cause of death? Why is this prisoner dead before his scheduled time?”

“He’s not dead.”

“What?” Juda looked up from his papers.

“He’s not dead. You deaf or something? Put him in quarantine.”

Juda looked into Dr. Whye’s piercing twilight eyes. “The readings indicate he is---”

“Do we have another test subject selected, Juda?”

“What? Yes, but we have to answer to---”

“We have to answer to no one. Don’t you get it? We are in control here. We run the freak show. What we spell out on the reports is what’s happening here. If Tom is in quarantine, then Tom Moore is in quarantine. Do you think any of those asshole Administrators would risk checking out a prisoner in quarantine? Especially a sicko diddler scheduled to die in two days? My guess is, ‘no freakin way.’”

“Tom Moore is dead.”

“Damn you, Juda. We are going to bullhorn the Project ahead before they decide to abort it! In the mean time, Tommy Moore is not dead. He is in quarantine. We’ll blame the Disease Control people upstairs for giving him a bug.”

“We can’t lie about his death.”

“Autopsy. Now! Post date it. We can’t have the Project held back because some psychotic child molester finally got his just punishment. We will lie. Administration will bring heavy rain to Shitsville, Mr. Milne. Ever live in Shitsville? We will lie and we will carry on! Who’s next? What’s his story?”

Juda flicked on a computer terminal and punched in highly confidential codes. “Nile Alexis Toll. California Psychiatric State Pen. Scheduled execution: 2:22 pm, Tuesday, February 22, 2222. Judge obviously had a sense of humour.”

“What was he convicted of?”

“First degree murder.”

“What is his psychiatric profile?”

“He believes he can travel through dimensions.”

“Good,” Dr. Whye said with a smile. “Good as pie.”

* * *

The metal catwalks vibrated under the feet of guards and prisoner. Toll’s chains rattled from his ankle cuffs. The screws had him in deadlock.

“You ready for your night flight to Venus?” The ugly guard laughed.

“Ready for anything,” Toll mumbled. His face was expressionless and hard.

“You better be ready for anything, asshole. I heard Two-Tone was annihilated in those labs. In those machines that butcher your mind.”

“Bring them on. I’ll be a free man this time tomorrow.”

The fat guard looked to his ugly partner. They both started to tighten their grip on the prisoner.

“You’ll be a dead man this time tomorrow.”

“No I won’t.” Toll smiled at the fat guard. “I’ve got a contract.”

The ugly guard twisted Toll’s arm and drove him into the grate walkway. He rested his knee on Toll’s neck.

“What you’ve got is a fucking lucky extra day of living, that’s what you got. You sonofabitch, you are going to a pan fry to die in ways you can’t imagine. This is gonna be your last day alive. And just so you have something to remember your last day by, I’m gonna give you a goodbye present. Johnny, get his pants off.”

“What?” The fat guard looked around and didn’t like the situation.

“You heard me, you fat fuck, get his fucking pants off. Its time to give him his goodbye present. Last day on Earth and all.”

Fat Johnny Barquey messed up. Fat Barquey always did what he was told.

* * *

They physically escorted Nile through locked passageways and down the stairs to Room 101. It was Dr. Whye’s office.

“Now you better remember what just happened today once more before these crazy fucks mash up your brains in that electric room.” The ugly guard smiled his nasty, yellow teeth at Nile. “They just don’t give you the chair anymore. They give you a whole entire room to fry around in.” He laughed and knocked on Dr. Whye’s door.

“Come in,” said the doctor.

The guards led Nile into the office and stood him in front of a big black desk. Behind it sat a man in a white doctor’s frock. “You guys are late... Explain.”

The ugly guard looked to his partner, about to trip into lies and storytelling.

“It was my fault,” Nile interjected. “I had to go to the bathroom. To take a real shit.”

Dr. Whye looked upon Nile with his piercing blue eyes the colour of twilight skies. “Get the chains off him,” he ordered the guards.

“Yes, sir,” the fat guard said. “Old Nile Alexis here was feeling a little bit nervous about the Project. It was either take him to the john or shit would be flowing down his ass right about now.”

The cuffs came off the end of his arms and the chains fell free from his ankles. Nile stood there rubbing his wrists.

“You worthless fat hunk of shit,” Dr. Whye said to Johnny, “the only thing dripping from his ass is Carlson’s powerless sperm. You idiots! Don’t you know the fourth quadrant is visual sensitive. Cameras 3, 7, and 808 picked you guys up with Mr. Toll there smiling at the 808 camera. I’m sure the Board will review the video content most definitely by mid-morning. You’ll meet individually with Management by mid afternoon. You’ll be notified of your dismissal by three. You’ll both walk out of here into a pool of reporters by five. And home to watch your sorry, fucking asses on the six o’clock news! You guys are finished here.” Dr. Whye pointed to the door and then dropped his finger. “There’s the door. And guess what, Carlson, I will personally see to it that your wife gets a copy of it. The video, I mean. I’ll give it to the Press if any of you two chickenshit, assfucking atomotons try any monkey business around here with me. Or anywhere for that matter, do you understand what I’m saying?”

The guards looked at each other in shock.

“Take your filth, take your thoughts, take the bed that you’ve made to sleep in with you and go. Have your last look at the inside of this room.” Dr. Whye once again pointed to the door.

Carlson stepped forward with his hat in his hands. “Dr. Whye, Sir, I---”

“GET YOUR FUCKING PILLOW BITING, HOMO ASS SUCKING, FAGGOT FUCKASSES OUT OF HERE!...NOW!”

The guards backed away and then turned to walk. Carlson saw the look on his partner’s face as they headed for the door. Johnny couldn’t wait to get Carlson in the guards’ room to beat the living snot out of him.

* * *

“Take a seat, Mr. Toll.” Dr. Whye stretched out his arm, offering a chair.

The prisoner sat down.

“My sincere apologies, Mr. Toll. Those two idiots are finished here. We will support any criminal charges you may wish to pursue. We have it on video, you know.”

“If the cameras were rolling, why didn’t anyone come out to save my ass?”

“The cameras were rolling, Mr. Toll, but nobody was watching. Abad Crone will be the other to lose his job over this incident. I caught him sleeping on the---”

“When do we start?,” Nile interjected. He was referring to the experiment.

Dr. Whye smiled and grinned. “Can I get you a drink, Mr. Toll?”

Nile said nothing.

Dr. Whye reached into a pantry and pulled out a bottle of Scotch.

“The finest,” said Toll.

“Absolutely.” Dr. Whye poured the liquid into a tumbler. “Ice?,” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Nile.

Dr. Whye pressed a button on his phone and a moment later a pretty voice responded.

"Yes, Doctor.”

“Ice cubes...A cigar.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

Dr. Whye took a seat in his chair. Seconds later, a tall, exotic brunette in a nurse uniform appeared with an ice bucket and a Cuban cigar.

“This here is your nurse, Mr. Toll.” The nurse dropped some ice cubes in Nile’s glass and handed him the drink. “Miss Kaufman will be tending to your personal needs. The Project gets under way in three hours. Are you prepared for this, Mr. Toll?”

Nile swirled the ice in his Scotch. “Those guards said Tommy-Two-Tone died in this experiment.”

“Miss Kaufman, that will be all for now. Prepare test lab for Mr. Toll’s physical. We’ll be there shortly.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Naiomi Kaufman said. She left the office.

“Tommy Moore is not dead. He is in quarantine. The fucking disease control idiots upstairs gave him something.”

“Its one way or the other. Government ways of killing behind closed doors.”

“This experiment has nothing to do with killing, Mr. Nile. It has nothing to do with death. It has to do with your mind.”

Nile didn’t buy it.

“If we had wanted to kill you we would have left you to mind your schedule. What?...February second, two-twenty-two pm? Wasn’t that it? That’s today if you hadn’t known. Its almost that time, Mr. Moore. But we gave you another chance. You play with our toys and you get to stay alive.”

“What kind of toys are we talking about here?,” Nile asked. Nile swallowed his drink and set his glass down. He lit his cigar from a light that Dr. Whye had produced.

“Expensive toys. Toys of the future.” Dr. Whye filled Toll’s glass again. “The Project is the cinema of your mind. Your thoughts, what you perceive to be reality is played back to you in a test pod. The pod translates your thoughts into sensory effects. The accuracy of these effects is stunning.”

“So that’s how you do it? Kill a crazy man by putting him in a room that makes his madness become reality? You tell him he is going to live another day so that he will willingly enter your chamber of horrors. Then you kill them in the name of...what do you call it? The Project? Dr. Whye, or whatever your name is, I got a contract. Tomorrow, I am a free man. I will be alive.”

“Let me explain what this is really all about, Mr. Nile.” Dr. Whye handed Nile another drink. “At the turn of the century, June 14, you were sentenced to be executed by the State of California for assaulting, raping, torturing and killing the Governor of California’s ex-wife. You signed a legal contract with the State that got your Sentence changed from that of being executed, to that of being committed for life to an institution of mental health in return for being a guinea pig for this experiment. You signed yourself over to me in other words.”

Dr Whye took a seat and folded his hands on top of his desk. “In two hours you will enter what is known as the Project. A room much larger than this one. In it you will journey into your mind. What you think will occur all around you. Not what you imagine, not what you wish, but what you think. This is a probe.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Of course you don’t get it, Mr. Toll. You’re not supposed to get it. That’s my job. Your job is to be yourself. That means you just have to be a low life lying shitface criminal that tried to plead insanity but got the death penalty regardless. Oh, what’s your angle?...You travel through dimensions? Mr. Nile, I am going to say this once and you are going to remember it forever: I will, with such expert precision, suck every ounce of blood in you out myself if you ever try to lie to me. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” said Nile.

“Good. Good pie. Now, tell me, what is your story.”

* * *

Dimensions. True dimensions. Colour and theme fantastic.

The madness was real.

* * *

“I see through dimensions. I see other worldly things. Fantastic things. I see wondrous, glorious, beautiful things.”

“What you see is bullshit.”

“What I see is beauty.”

“Beauty in murder?”

“Beauty in its fullest detail.”

“We shall see, Mr. Toll.”

Nile blew the doctor some smoke. From behind the cloud of smoke he’d created he said, “Let’s get the show on the road.”

Dr. Whye touched the telephone again. A moment later, Nurse Kaufman stepped into the office. Her uniform was flawless. She pushed a wheel chair in front of herself. She said, “Mr. Toll, we’ll need to get you prepped. Please take a seat.”

Nile looked at her and then took the seat. He smiled. “Life is good, Dr. Whye. Life is good.”

“Good as pie, Mr. Toll.” Dr. Whye watched Nile sit himself into the chair he was offered.

Nile Alexis Toll was wheeled away.

* * *

Johnny Barquey slammed and lifted Carlson into lockers. His face was red and furious. “Now you’ve gone and done it. Now we’re finished. Where the hell are we going to work?” Johnny slammed a fist into his partner’s stomach. “The media is involved, don’t you see?”

Carlson was choking. He gagged out a syllable, “Ha---”

“How are we going to support ourselves and our families?” Another fist hit the ugly guard’s stomach.

“Hav---”

“Oh, have you? Have you a fucking solution to make? Let’s have it.” Johnny was winding for the face now.

“Havoc,” Carlson gasped. It saved him from a punch.

“What the fuck you talking about Carlson, you bloody ghost. I’m going to kill you.”

“Havoc... Seb...Sabotage! We take it down, we bring it all down to the ground.”

Johnny smashed his fist into Carlson’s face.

“Wait!,” Carlson shrieked. His tallowy, yellow teeth were rimmed with his blood. “The Project gets exposed as a failure! Something really bad happens to it. Something in the Test pod blows up. Boom. There’s chaos. Some fuckers get killed. The videos go missing, we escape here with our lives… Boom!”

Johnny Barquey’s fist tightened into an iron doughball. “What are you suggesting, Carlson?”

“Let’s sabotage the Test pod, you dumb fuck. Get the video tapes back. Blow that Dr. Whye and his goddam Project sky high. Now let me down, you idiot!”

Johnny Barquey released Carlson from his clutch. Fat Barquey always did what he was told.

* * *

“We want your mind, Mr. Toll, that is all. We want to see who you are. In the Test pod, everything will be real. Your mind will be opened.” Miss Kaufman placed latex rubber gloves over her hands. “Take off your prisoner’s uniform, Mr. Toll, and lie down on your back.”

“Nothing underneath,” he said.

“I don’t care, I’m only doing my job. Fortunately for you, Mr. Toll, I have to rub warm oil all over your body.”

“Serious?”

“I’m as serious as they come. Your whole body, head to toes. Hurry up and undress please, we are on a schedule, if you know what I mean.”

“What’s the oil for?” Nile started to undress.

“It assists the transfer of impulses.”

“Impulses. What impulses?”

“Your brain impulses. This oil helps the transfer of your brain impulses go through the receptor tiles and---”

“So, the doctor is telling the truth.”

“Lie down, Mr. Toll. I’m honoured by your erection, but this is strictly clinical.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Nile got up onto an examination table and looked up into the fierce halogen lights.

“Nile. Boy, that’s a name for a killer...Nile...” Nurse Kaufman dipped her hands into a vat of warm oil and scooped a chalice-full out. When it fell over his groin, he laughed and smiled. In the halogen brightness he saw a beautiful thing. He had entered an episode of his madness.

“You want a real experience, hold that thought,” Miss Kaufman stated and she started with his genitals. “Save it for the Test pod. It’ll be the best sex you ever had.”

* * *

Abad Crone left the parking lot, furious and nervous. Fuck, he had slept on the goddam monitors a thousand times. What the hell! Why all of a sudden get caught!? You dumb fuck. Why, Whye! Abad screeched his tires to a complete stop. He reversed into the opposite lane and turned around.

“Whye. You mother fucker. I know where Tommy Moore is, you fucking asshole. I’m sure I’ve got it on candid camera. I just gotta find the tape.”

He swerved into the entrance to the parking lot. Jerked into a parking slot. He slammed his car door shut and stormed toward the office building. He was surprised his access card worked. That was the lucky break he was waiting for all day. Unfortunately and unlucky for him, Carlson and Fatso were waiting on the other side of the door.

* * *

“Where do I go?”

“Mr. Toll, you step into the pod.” Miss Kaufman had removed her latex gloves.

Peering through the doorway, Nile was awestruck. “Its huge. Its the size of a stadium.”

“Yes. Almost the size of Toronto Skydome. Just through the doorway there, Mr. Toll. Don’t be afraid.”

“There are no exits.”

“Mr. Toll, if that is what you really think, then you are absolutely right.”

Nile stepped through the doorway and into the Test pod. The walls immediately sealed themselves up behind him.

Nurse Kaufman switched the Test pod monitors on and watched as Nile started walking toward the center of the room. The floor he walked on faded into pure, white marble. The video screen above him turned to overcast sky. As he walked, a solid black line appeared under his feet. It stretched across the floor and into the horizon. Forever. An equator line on a white marble planet.

* * *

“Mr. Barquey, Mr. Carlson...wha?” Crone was startled by the fat lip Carlson was fashioning.

“Abad,” Carlson said, “we’ve been looking for you. We, meaning me and Johnny here, we need a personal favour. We need a real personal favour, we do. We need your keys. Right now.” A chain length rattled free and appeared from behind Johnny’s back, gripped tight in his fist. Carlson pulled his length of chain from deep in his pocket.

“Wait a minute, guys! Take the keys, I don’t care! I don’t work here anymore. And guess what!? Its your goddam fault I don’t work here anymore. What are you doing fucking up like that in the fourth quadrant, don’t you know its t.v. land in there? This is a Government job, you assholes. Take the fucking keys.” He threw them his set of keys. “Just let me into Records and then let me into Disease Control. The blue key there opens cash access, by the way.”

“You mean to tell us you got fired today?,” Johnny squawked. He was red and sweaty.

“Yes, I got fired today, you dumb fat fuck. Ten years of black and white monitors showing empty hallways. Wall-to-wall monitors full of nothing. Then, on the one day I drowse out for a minute, you guys are fucking someone up the ass. You idiots, I got caught sleeping on the job!”

“Yeah, right. You expect us to believe that? You’re the rat that squeaked. You caught us on your fucking monitors and pressed video record on your stinkin terminal.” Carlson’s chain rattled like a snake.

“What are you talking about? I didn’t catch you! Those cameras are always on. Dr. Whye caught you. He caught me sleeping through your goddam escapades, didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Dr. Whye, huh?” Carlson dropped the length of chain back into his pocket and started to chuckle.

“Then what business do you have in the Records department?,” Fat Johnny asked, looking a little more relaxed.

Abad shifted his eyes from one guard to the other. “Sabotage,” said Abad Crone.

Carlson continued to chuckle and said, “We’ll have this Dr. Whye in his own goddam electric room by midnight, we will. Mr. Crone, welcome to cabal.”

It was 6:30 pm. Outside the building, it was a crisp, black January night.

* * *

The sky was overcast in the pod. The horizon merged with white cloud. Mr. Toll walked mile after blinding mile along the straight path of the equator. He was being drawn to a dot on the horizon. The dot on the horizon turned to a shimmering ball of fire. The ball of fire into the head of a blow torch. Finally, into the back end of a fabulous vehicle. Nile stopped near the centre of the room. He had been walking for weeks. Perhaps years. From Nurse Kaufman’s perspective, he had been walking for thirty nine minutes. She admired how the antigravity floor worked. Like walking on a rotating sphere.

The car was shaped like half of a flying clown. The front end of the vehicle consisted of the clown’s arms which were extended outward at straight lengths. Silver, metal fingers were clenched into fists at the end of each arm, clutching the front tire axle. Behind tinted, windshield eyes and the glare of smiling, ruby red lips painted on the body of the car, the driver’s seat was latent: In the empty chamber of the clown’s head. The rest of the vehicle, up to where the amputated legs ended and atrophied, dual exhaust pipes concealed a mystery under its hood: An engine with enough power to continue accelerating indefinitely.

* * *

Dr. Juda Milne checked the vital statistics on Nile Toll, Test Subject 0002, EXIT #2222222222 UB5OHAHA. His heart rate was normal. No signs of anxiety. It was almost as if this is what he had been waiting for all along.

“Dr. Whye, have a look at these readings.”

“No, Juda. Have a look at the Test pod.”

Juda went to the window and looked out. The clown-car’s hair shimmered and smoked.

“What is going on?,” Juda asked.

“I have no idea,” said Dr. Whye.

“Look at him. He’s getting into it. Where’s he going with that?”

“Call Nurse Kaufman! Her shift isn’t over. Tell her to get Infrascope through the left driver’s seat window, 20 degrees; and through the front windshield, 10 degrees.”

Dr. Milne stepped to the phone and called Nurse Kaufman.

“Hello.”

“Miss Kaufman, have you got the monitors on?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“We want Infrascope 20 degrees on driver’s window and from the hood of the vehicle, 10 degrees.”

“That’s a hood? It looks more like a nose and some lips to me.”

“Amazing, isn’t it? Where do you suppose he’ll take the thing?”

“Infrascope on, Dr. Milne. I think I know where he’s taking it.”

“You do? Where?”

Nurse Kaufman adjusted the camera angles and pressed Play-Record on her terminal. “He’s going to drive that thing to freedom. Isn’t that what they all want? Freedom! All of them. From madness...and reality.”

“No,” Dr. Whye interrupted, “some want certain death. Lower the goddam camera on the hood, I want to see his face.”

Juda Milne turned and stared at the Viewscreen facing him. He could not believe the clarity and focus of the visual images in the Test pod. All coming from the mind of a killer.

“He’s stepping in,” Kaufman remarked. “Unbelievable. The room has him fooled.”

“Perhaps he really is mad,” Dr. Whye said. He took out a note pad and started scribbling words. “I think he’s going to travel, friends. The man says he travels through dimensions. Oh, we’re in for a treat. Kaufman, switch every goddam camera to video record mode. We’ll want to see it again from inside the Test pod, from his perspective. From the place in the mind of that psycho killer.”

* * *

“Take the explosives, you twit.”

“I don’t want to take the fucking explosives. I want no part of this end of the deal. No physical damage pinned on me after all is said and done. No dead government employees in my closet. None of that for me. I’m looking for Tommy Moore. And that’s it! No fucking bombings. This is a Government building, for chrissake. I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“Oh yeah,” Carlson said as he reached for a lighter to light his cigarette, “That’s why you gave us the keys, right?”

“You bastard.”

“And you don’t even have a clue about what is going on here, do you?”

“Yes, I---”

“No you don’t, you stupid fool, because if you did you would have stopped me from trying to light this goddam cigarette and potentially sending us all to kingdomcome. Take the fucking explosives or my ash might fall on it, okay? Who knows how unstable this shit is. I found it in Maintenance Vault while you looked for your goddam imaginary video cassette.”

“Its not imaginary. I’ve seen it. Trust me, when any movement occurs on those monitors, I see it.”

“Yeah. Like this morning.”

“Shuttup, Barquey! They moved Tommy Moore through pod apex and into quarantine. The thing is...he looked a little dead to me. I think Dr. Whye got to the video cassette before I did. The man is cunning.”

“No he isn’t,” Carlson said as he tried to push two bricks of plastic explosives into Abad’s arms. “He’s dead.”

“You’re crazy.” Abad moved away. “I want revenge, not murder. I just need proof of what I saw. Tom Moore is dead. I know there’s a video somewhere.”

“Look, man, there’s no video.” Fat Barquey leaned against a stairwell wall and found a pack of smokes in his pocket. “There’s no dead guy in quarantine; there’s no Inspector-Gadget-type-Dr. Whye slinking off with your insipid video cassette cartridge; there’s no more bullshit. You lost your job and you gave us the keys. Revenge is an indictable offence in your case. Several explosions are going to take place. Maybe someone dies in the havoc, who knows? But I can guarantee you who’s fault it is...not yours, nor mine, nor his---” Johnny Barquey pointed his finger to his partner, the ugly one. “It’s Dr. Whye’s fault. Its his project. The killer he has in the electric room goes mental and blows the Project sky high. On the other hand, we could kill you, mister.”

“Ding-dong,” Carlson giggled when he saw the look on Abad Crone’s face, “somebody’s answering the door. The light comes on and somebody is home.” He slammed one brick of plastic explosives into Abad’s arms. “One for the computers...” Another brick was slapped onto Abad’s arms, “and one more for the camera eyes. One is for the little boy who lives down the lane.” He pushed the third brick into Abad’s arms. He held up the fourth and last block of explosives and smiled. “This one here is for protection.”

Carlson suddenly drew back a couple of steps and smiled at Barquey. “Readaaaaaay!?,” he bellowed. He and Fatso Barquey both shouted in unison, “BREAK!”

Carlson bent forward and held the plastic brick on the floor in front of him at arms length.

“Blue 52!...,” Barquey yelled, “Blue 52!...Hutt!...Hutt!”

Carlson snapped the brick under his legs like a center-lineman. Shotgun.

“Kennedy style,” Fat Johnny Barquey said as he received the snap.

They moved four bricks of explosives through halls, afraid of guards and tackles.

* * *

In the Test pod, Nile stepped into the vehicle and shut the door. There was a steering wheel and an accelerator pedal. That was all. The engine fired up when Nile Toll took the driver’s seat. Outside, the clown-vehicle’s grin turned into a smile. White, shiny teeth glimmered perpendicularly across the front of the car’s hood toward and over the doors. Inside the vehicle, there were no door handles.

Nile looked up. The horizon and the overcast sky merged into each other. It was the same all around him, from either window on each door: Sky and land, together the same. Except for the solid black line in front of him. He placed his foot on the accelerator pedal and pushed. The car lunged forward. He was doing about twenty-thirty-forty, there was no way of judging. There was no way of stopping. Nile pressed a little harder on the accelerator pedal.

* * *

“He is crazy,” Naiomi Kaufman said. She wondered why Nile focused on keeping the vehicle parallel with the black line. “What will happen if he moves off of the line?”

Dr. Whye continued to write notes and said, “Its black and white, isn’t it? If he keeps accelerating, there will be a decreasing margin of error for him to keep the vehicle on the line. Once he slips, perhaps a twitch, the steering wheel moves a touch, he slips from the line forever. He can’t stop and he can’t go back. He’s setting himself up to fail.”

“His heart rate and blood pressure are up,” Juda added, “I don’t know how long he can hold up. Look at the smile on his face.”

Dr. Whye’s hand moved to a switch on the computer terminal and flicked it.

“Dr. Whye?,” Kaufman said in the silence if her own room. “Dr. Milne?”

“Yeah?,” Juda said.

Victoria Kaufman didn’t hear him. The power in her audio set was cut off.

“What is it, Kaufman?,” Juda pumped.

Dr. Whye spoke out loud; he said, “She can’t hear you. Technical difficulty.”

Juda looked to his partner, confused.

“Dr. Milne,” said Dr. Whye, “Mr. Nile Alexis Toll is going to take us to another dimension. Whatever that is, it is going to kill him. Do you understand me?”

“Are you nuts? What do you mean, kill him? We can’t kill him. You’ve gone mad. Jesus, Tom Two-Tone is laying in the freezer, you are lying to the Government by saying he’s in quarantine, and you want to kill another one. What is this?”

“He deserves to die.”

Naiomi turned off the video cameras in the Viewscreen Room and then turned them back on. She thought there might have been a power surge or a glitch or something.

Juda turned to Dr. Whye and faced him. “What are you thinking? It isn’t a death chamber. The Project was developed to study madness. Why do you think these guys were given a second chance to live? Put them in a room where their madness becomes reality...not death. This isn’t a study on death.”

Dr. Whye flipped the sound switch to Naiomi’s headset and said, “This study is on retribution. If the man in the chamber takes us to his madness and shows us he is mad, then we are content not to kill him after he had killed. After all, we can’t simply kill a real crazy person, can we? It is unethical and inhumane. My personal prognosis...they will usually end up dead from their own mad demise. The experiment will kill him because his own mind will design for it. We cannot help that.”

“Dr. Whye, I think you need to get the circuits checked. The audio on my---”

“Miss Kaufman?”

“Yes, Dr. Whye?”

“Check your AC switch on your panel. The red light has been off, turn it on, please.”

Naiomi frowned when she checked the light on her panel. It was off. She flicked her switch and the light came on.

“Thank you, Dr. Whye,” she said.

“Batteries don’t last forever, baby. Know how to live?”

Juda looked into Dr. Whye’s eyes and just couldn’t speak. In the chamber, Nile Alexis Toll was starting to laugh. The vehicle’s lips grinned even deeper on the body of the car.

* * *

The Good, the Fat and the Ugly found their way into Dr. Whye’s office. They ransacked his desk. In the files, Mr. Crone found exactly what they were looking for. There were several drawings, the construction plans and computer blueprints of The Project. “Here they are,” Crone smiled.

Fat Johnny Barquey sat in Dr. Whye’s seat and put his feet on the desk. He lit up a cigarette and it was snatched from his lips by Carlson’s quick fingers.

“Are you fucking stupid, Mr. Barquey?” Carlson crushed the cigarette out in his fingers.

“Hey, whatchya doing?”

“We have enough explosive packed under our jackets to implode a black hole, you idiot. You don’t want to blow out the stars, do you? If one single ash hits that plastic packed around your fat gut...boom, boom, boom. Out! go! the! lights!”

“Cut out the bullshit, guys.” Mr. Crone knocked Barquey’s feet from the desk top. He needed the space. He laid out a computer printout and drawings of the Project pod. “Look. Right here. Just above the apex of the frame, guess what that room is?”

Crone licked his lips and pushed his glasses up to the top of his nose.

“The brains?”

“Yeah,” Crone said, “Precisely. Computers. The highest tech sons of bitch things ever tested and taking over. This is top secret stuff here. You’ll want to plant them there.” Crone pulled his explosives bricks from inside his shirt and placed them on the table. “And take this, I’m not doing the planting around here. I did my end of it. I showed you where and how. You guys do the rest.”

“Whatchya talking about, Abad?...That’s a bad joke.” Johnny was turning a hot shade of red.

“Oh, don’t you worry, John-John. Don’t get up. I’ll handle it.” Carlson smiled and nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you tell Johnny here what you are talking about.” Carlson’s hand went into his pocket.

“I’m talking about I’m not a murderer. I’ll have no part of death. You get yourselves over there and destroy the pod. You know as well as I do that there’s an experiment going on. When that bomb goes, that roof falls. Nile Alexis Toll, you guys remember him, don’t you? He’s inside the pod as we speak.”

“How do you know that?” Johnny’s fingers were curled into fists of dough.

Abad flipped open the computer printout of a schedule. “Guess what, guys? Nile is scheduled in the pod right now.” Abad was going to say, “The Project...,” but his voice was cut off by a length of chain. Carlson swiftly belted it over his neck. When Abad Crone’s body finally went lifeless in Carlson’s arms, Johnny was still sitting in the chair, expressionless.

“Get your fat, fucking ass off of that chair,” Carlson stated as he began to drag the dead weight.

“We leaving him here?,” Johnny asked.

“No, I plan to take him out dancing all night then take him home, get him drunk and fuck him. Of course we are, dummy!”

Carlson dropped dead Crone into Dr. Whye’s black, leather chair. He fixed a detonator timer to a plastic explosive and set it for twenty minutes, left it on Abad’s lap. “Here’s where Bomb number one goes. Two more bombs, twenty more minutes.” Carlson switched the detonator on.

Johnny Barquey grabbed the blueprints and started moving, moving; he started moving, moving. In his mind the countdown began. In reality, it was the most exercise he had in ages.

* * *

Nile put the pedal to the metal.

* * *

Carlson and Johnny Barquey took the maintenance elevator shaft straight to the top floor, deep inside the building. They resolved to plant Bomb #2 on a guard they had to kill on their way through the hall ways. They dragged him into the computer room. The countdown clock read seven minutes.

In the computer room, terminals bleeped and flashed. Carlson removed Bomb #2 from the fat guard’s jacket and, wasting no minutes, clocked it for six mins.

“Six.”

“Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Fat Johnny Barquey

started running. He was in such an aggravated state, sweating and panting for breath, he didn’t even acknowledge the fact that a little brick of plastic was placed back in his jacket pocket.

Carlson clocked Fat Barquey for six as well.

* * *

“Look, he’s laughing,” Kaufman said.

“He’s going too fast and he can’t stop.” Juda looked alarmed.

“Yes,” said Dr. Whye, “soon the texture of clouds in the sky will blend and unify. The sky will match the ground and the horizon will disappear. When he diverges from that black line, he will lose all bearing. He will be driving his crazymobile straight into oblivion.”

Juda checked the computer readings and vitals. Nile’s lifesigns showed little stress, zero pain. “Perhaps he’s challenging himself. To see how long he can control his madness. As soon as he deviates from the line he’ll snap.”

“How fast is he going?” Kaufman was in awe of Nile’s control on the wheel in spite of his jagged laughter.

Kaufman’s audio, video, and electrical circuitry went dead.

“What the...? Dr. Whye? Dr. Milne?”

* * *

“Dr. Whye, Miss Kaufman’s monitor just went dead.”

“Its not dead. I killed the power to her lab. Its time.”

“What are you going to do?” Juda wasn’t prepared for omnimutiny.

“Kill him.”

“What? How?”

“I’m going in there.”

“You can’t.”

“I CAN!” Dr. Whye slammed a closed fist onto a desk top. “Mr. Milne, we are criminal psychologists paid to conduct studies on the criminally insane. We are supposed to be studying their minds. How better than to study them from inside their own mind. I’m stepping into the test pod.”

Juda grabbed Dr. Whye’s arm. “Need I remind you this is a Government experiment we are conducting here, not some mad scientist type shit. The machine needs to be fully tested. We haven’t even done enough testing to ensure its safe for one person, never mind two people. Look what happened to Moore. The machine killed him.”

“The machine didn’t kill him, Juda,” Dr. Whye pulled his arm free from Juda’s grip. “Tom killed himself. Just as Nile will kill himself. Tom Moore died because his madness became his reality and he couldn’t escape it. Nile will try to take us into another dimension. Before we get there, I’ll have something else for the Project to observe. I want retribution.”

“Retribution? What for?”

“For what he did to Governor Brownridge’s wife. For the god damn wool that he pulled over the Justice System’s eyes. I am going in there to teach the little mother fucker that his candy-coated, perfumed shit doesn’t stick with me, no not one single bit. He may have tricked the Judge into believing he was insane, but he doesn’t fool me. Now he thinks he is receiving asylum from the death penalty by volunteering for this experiment. What he volunteered for is a whole lot worse than death, my friend. A whole lot worse.” Dr. Whye took off his socks and started rubbing the oil lubricant on the soles of his feet. He was preparing to enter the test pod.

“The Project is about psychology and scientific technology. You are jeopardizing future funding of this experiment.” Dr. Milne picked up the telephone receiver and started to dial a number. “There’s a fucking corpse in the freezer. You are stepping way out of line.”

“Am I, Dr. Milne? AM I!? FUCKING AM I WHEN I KNOW THEY ARE GOING TO AXE THIS PROJECT? AM I WHEN MY LIFE’S WORK GOES STRAIGHT OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW? AM I WHEN ALL THAT THERE IS LEFT TO DO IS TAKE THIS EXPERIMENT AS FAR AS IT CAN GO BEFORE IT IS TERMINATED!!?”

Dr. Whye coated his hands and face. Juda watched and could say nothing. The telephone line to Miss Kaufman’s lab was dead.

* * *

The fat one was just behind the ugly one. Running down hallways the way they had come to avoid being spotted.

“In here,” Carlson gasped. He opened the office where Abad had often snoozed.

“What for?” Fat and out of shape, Barquey questioned but he didn’t hesitate. When he barged into the Security office, he noticed that Carlson wasn’t following him. He heard the keys jiggling from outside the door. “What are you doing, Carlson?”

He saw Carlson’s face for one brief moment in the window and then it was gone.

“Hey!”

Johnny Barquey went to the door and confirmed the notion that Carlson was locking him in there. “Hey! Come back here!” The detonator on his plastic brick bleeped. Barquey found the lightweight brick and looked at the LCD readout: 2:58...57...56...55...

Poor Johnny Barquey. He shouldn’t have always did what he was told to do.

* * *

Victoria Kaufman literally smashed into Carlson as she dashed her way toward Dr. Whye’s observation window...she mashed him. Her arms flung and her face cracked against Carlson’s skull. She split her lip and screamed, falling to the floor.

Carlson received a gash on his head from Kaufman’s teeth. He was thrown back and his protection flew out of his grip: The brick explosive slid along the polished floor.

Naiomi Kaufman recognized the material. It was part of a project she had worked on for her PhD. Explosives that detonated by sound waves, major disruptions in the air waves. Sonic detonation.

“Where did you get that!?,” Naiomi demanded. She was picking herself off the floor and pulling herself together. She went for the brick.

Carlson grabbed her arm and squeezed. Naiomi screamed. Her wrist felt as though it would be crushed.

“Wait just one little minute, Miss Kaufman.” Carlson stood up and kept Naiomi’s arm under arrest. He went to the brick and picked it up.

“You are going to jail, Carlson, to jail!”

“Shut up!”

“You broke into Records and stole that material. It was under lock up, sealed and protected. That stuff is unstable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a plane taking off triggers it, sometimes a sneeze. What are you doing with it?”

Carlson started to drag Naiomi to the nearest office. He opened up the first door he came to.

“This is Disease Control, you fucking idiot.” Kaufman struggled to yank her arm free. “If the shit you are holding blows up in here you are likely to introduce biological disaster to America, do you know that?”

Carlson, not thinking properly, turned and faced Naiomi. He blazed an ugly snarl her way. “You just better keep your---”

Naiomi kneed Carlson in the groin with as much force as she could muster. Carlson cringed and bowed, but he never let go of her arm. Naiomi stifled a scream looking at the brick.

* * *

Dr. Whye slipped into the Test pod. His feet touched the anti-gravity floor. The receptor tiles absorbed his brain impulses. All hell broke free.

* * *

Carlson pulled Naiomi down until her face was directly in front of his. His breath smelled like tangy cheese.

“Now why did you have to go and do that for, huh?” His voice was also off.

Naiomi moaned and tried desperately to break free.

Carlson grabbed his chain and with one hand, managed to get it around Naiomi’s throat. He twisted her arm around her back, restraining her momentarily, giving him just enough time to release her wrist and grab the available end of the chain. Her sounds were cut off.

“Now we can talk, Miss Kaufman. Now we can talk.” He manoeuvred his victim through the offices of QUARANTINE to the central security block where Tommy Two-Tone Moore was apparently

being detained.

“You go in there.” Carlson launched Naiomi into one of the cells and locked her in. He had to be speedy. His timer read nine minutes. He had one minute to get out.

As he ran down the hallway toward the closest exit, he remembered he had left the plastic explosive on a desk. He’d forgotten to set the detonator.

“That’s okay,” he muttered as he ran. “The sound waves will trigger that one off.”

* * *

Nile twitched. The steering wheel moved just a touch. The black line turned solid white. Nile laughed and laughed.

Dr. Whye was overtaken. The white disappeared and turned to black. The black universe. They were falling. Falling through infinite space. Nile swung around in his vehicle and started jetting toward Dr. Whye. The clown’s expression turned evil.

Dr. Whye calmly walked toward the vehicle. He was going to stop Nile. He was going to walk up to his phantom car and kill him somehow.

The clown’s eyes bulged with surprise when the collision took place. The two minds finally reaching base identity in the computers. The centralizing merged on video. The images on the test pod changed. There was a flash of light. An explosion from the celestial core. A rush of adrenaline. Down came the rain of fire. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Out go the lights.

* * *

Naiomi stared through the multi-pane window. She stared at the brick and realized Carlson had probably set it to go off at any moment. She knew she was trapped, but she was strong. She watched through the window, wanting to meet her maker face to face. Then she heard a distant rumble and then felt the tremble, heard the explosion. She stared at the brick. It was time. The sonic disruption would surely trigger the explosive. Her time had arrived. 222 pm.

* * *

Dr. Milne saw the explosion blasting down from the top of the Test pod. He felt other tremors in the floor. The power failed and the emergency lights came on. An evacuation light flashed above the exit point. Juda ran to the test pod entrance. He watched the fiery maelstrom crash toward Nile and Dr. Whye. They were buried in it. It looked like burning air disaster wreckage. He had to try to save his colleague and the prisoner. It was his duty.

Juda ran to the wreckage on solid receptor tiles. The power was out. His flashlight beam danced through the smoke.

“Dr. Whye! Mr. Toll! Make a sound, please, god damn it!”

Nile did not make a sound. Juda pulled up his shirt to cover his mouth and then removed his doctor’s frock, coughing. He tried smacking out some flames by beating them with his garment.

“Nile, are you there!? Dr. Whye!?”

His flashlight beam highlighted a white glare. It was a lab coat. Dr. Whye. Juda ran to him, coughing and rubbing his stinging, watery eyes.

“Dr. Whye! Speak to me!”

Dr. Whye could not. A red stain was slowly cascading down his frock as he lay on his back. A metal girder was impaled through his stomach. There was a smile on his face. Just before he died he had merged with the madness. His mind and that of Nile Alexis Toll were one. Minds of a madmen.

* * *

Nile was free. He crawled through the wreckage that had fallen from the sky. Half dazed, half returned from his episode: He was starting to understand his insanity. He was in recovery. He managed to exit the test pod the way Dr. Milne had entered. As Milne got closer to the fiery damage, he was lost in smoke. Nile found his way into the observation room and watched as Juda pulled Dr. Whye’s corpse from the wreckage.

“Pie in the sky, Dr. Whye,” Nile said. Nile exited the room and into the hallway.

* * *

Sweat trickled down Naiomi’s brow. The sonic booms had not triggered the explosive resting on the desk. She was alive.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH, CARLSON!” She laughed and started to scream. The scream turned into laughter. She faced death and death had backed away. To the victor, the spoils of war. Naiomi laughed in reverie, cheering.

* * *

Carlson counted the booms almost in sequence. One was missing. He felt it in the vibrations of the tremors and the... “The distant sonic disturbances,” Carlson laughed to himself. He was shuffling down a dark hallway. The power went out and the eerie emergency lights opened their whitelight eyes. His shadow followed and led him everywhere he went. He would take the stairs now, the power was out. He would merge with anyone who may be evacuating the building. The damage was done. Records was gone. Dr. Whye’s office, gone. The test pod, Nile Alexis Toll, Dr. Whye, gone, gone, gone. Fat Barquey, gone! Witnesses, tapes, and evidence, GONE!

But what about Kaufman?, Carlson thought. “Did Bomb #4 go off?”

His third flight up the stairs and with many flights yet to go to reach ground floor, he met an old friend on the stairs. Nile smiled. His face was black from sweat and soot. Blood trickled from various contusions on his brow and neck.

Carlson stopped dead in his steps.

* * *

“So, we meet again,” Nile said.

Thinking he was quick, Carlson stated, “Get out! Now! Don’t you know there’s an evacuation going on. Leave the building immediately.”

Nile laughed. “You got to be kidding, aren’t you?”

“No,” Carlson stated.

“Well, Carlson...is that your name? That’s what Dr. Whye called you. Oh, now I remember, its weak assfucking automaton, that’s it. You see, I was just on my way out. Just my luck running into you. I almost forgot who you were after all I’ve been through these last few hours. I almost didn’t even recognize you with your dick in your pants and everything. So here we are and guess what?” Nile took slow steps descending upon Carlson.

“What?”

“I do remember your goodbye present. It was special.”

Carlson regretted leaving the last brick of explosives in Disease Control. That had been his protection. Now all that he had left to protect himself was his length of chain. And bullshit.

“Wait,” Carlson said. He could see intent to murder in Nile’s eyes. “Wait! Don’t move! I’ll give you Kaufman if you let me go.”

Nile maintained his approach.

“Where is she? What have you done to her?”

“You can save her!” Carlson started to retreat backwards down the steps.

“Take me to her or I will kill you right now,” Nile said.

Carlson had no choice. He kept his length of chain concealed. It was his only hope.

* * *

Naiomi stared at the brick. Waiting. Time was a silent snake slithering toward its prey. The fire alarm would go off. If the explosions hadn’t triggered them, the resulting smoke would. If that was the case...

“If you come to me still, I will meet you face to face.” She patronized death. She taunted it. She thought she frightened it away. In her mind’s eye she saw the ball of fire engulf the glass and imagined her body blown away into infinity. Rock, glass, heat and death.

In her drawings of the future there was certain death. This she believed until two men entered the Disease Control quadrant. Then she believed in miracles.

* * *

Carlson reached for the brick as soon as he stepped through the door. Nile was foolish enough to let Carlson enter first. Carlson was fool enough to take out his lighter and hold the explosive hostage.

“Okay. Okay, don’t fucking move.” He held the lighter up against the plastic brick, ready to spark it up.

Naiomi’s voice could not be heard from behind the glass. In fact, she mouthed the words to Nile, “DON’T MAKE ANY NOISE.”

Nile stopped moving. He just stood there like an actor and calmly asked Carlson, “What’s that you got there?”

“Know that roof of that Test pod you were in? How do you think it fell down?”

Nile took a small step and said, “You killed Dr. Whye.”

“Yep, I did. Woe be gone. Hey, watch your step. Don’t you be movin in on me now. Wanna see stars?”

Nile stopped and stood there. He read Naiomi’s lips.

“DON’T MAKE ANY NOISE."

“Kaufman…let her go now.” Nile maintained his cool.

“No,” Carlson said. “I have a better idea. You get in that cell with her.”

“No. I have a better idea. I am a convicted murderer who was scheduled to die at the most ridiculous time ever scheduled by mankind and was nearly killed by a sonofabitch that fucked him up the ass earlier today. My idea is that you get your fucking fuckhole self in there yourself.”

Carlson backed away to the cell door. Slowly. He was afraid. “That’s right,” Naiomi said from inside the glass, “you low life, screwed up asshole, open up. Let me out of here.” Her voice was audible and succinct behind the window. Carlson opened the cell door and out whooshed Naiomi. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. Keep it moving.”

“Now step inside there yourself,” Nile suggested to the ugly guard.

Carlson stepped in. Naiomi locked him up.

Another madman was contained.

* * *

In the cell, Carlson had to sneeze and held it back. He remembered what Kaufman told him about setting the damn stuff off.

Sometimes a plane taking off triggers it, sometimes a sneeze.

He rubbed his nose and he had a plan.

“Blame it on the criminal. Blame it on Toll. Toll made me do it. He made me come into this cell with this explosive. He planted the bombs and killed Dr. Whye.

"RAMPAGE!

"He blew up Records and he blew up guards.

"BLOODY MAYHEM!

“He blew up tapes.”

The explosive didn’t go off. He still wouldn’t risk sneezing. When he thought he had everything figured out, a voice came over the intercom. It was the voice of Nile Alexis Toll.

“Ah, guess what? The emergency power is being drained to bring you this special presentation.”

Carlson stared up at the speaker on the ceiling.

“Quad 4 is also audio sensitive. And I have the video tape, in case you were wondering. The following broadcast is being played to you from the main floor security office and brought to you by me. You wanna here my muffled screams on the tape? Your grunting and curses? The screams, grunts and cursing from the present you gave me? Here, I’ll turn it right up for you.”

On the intercom speaker Carlson heard his own voice roar into play.

"You heard me, you fat fuck..." Carlson dove onto the explosives to block the direct sound waves showering down from the ceiling.

"Its time to give him his goodbye present...,” the intercom speaker rumbled.

Carlson started to freak out.

* * *

"It being your last day on earth and all."

* * *

Naiomi and Nile made their way through the last dark hall, swiftly. As they stepped into the lobby of the tower, they saw white light. It was the grace of God.

* * *

Boom.

* * *

“Mothership has landed,” Nile said. They exited the tower and stepped into the bright, white light.

SCAT TERBRA INS

The puzzles were everywhere. Her room was filled with them. Boxes and boxes of them, hundreds of thousands of inividual puzzle pieces in all. Every individual piece (each with their picture faces peeled clean off) was similar to the others. Each piece was cardboard grey. And she played with her puzzles all of the time since her twin sister started having seizures. It was truely amazing...she could fit together a puzzle in minutes, sometimes running across her room fetching far out pieces from featureless counterparts in obscure piles, arranging them in perfect match to produce a dull cardboard window in front of her. Then she would turn her head up and laugh as she ran off into her puzzled world walled by boxes.

“She’s got slithers...”

A maze ran through her room. Cathrine always sat in the center of the maze, concentrating blindly into her puzzles. Doctors said it was everything from an autistic response to dysfunctional parenthood, but they were wrong.

“...and I hate her so much!”

Her twin sister, Tina, suffered from a strange neuro-muscular disorder for most of her infant life. Just around the time when Cathrine was starting to say, “mama,” and “dada,” Tina thinned out and lost control of her muscles. The condition gradually worsened and by the time she was five, Tina was in danger of losing her life. At that age, her motor abilities were out of control. She frequently went into convulsions and to this the doctors scratched their heads and looked to the books. They had no answer as to the cause of Tina’s violent condition; what Cathrine called, “the slithers.”

“I hate her,” Cathrine gibed to Sharlene Richardson, “and yes she has the slithers.”

Sharlene was the live-in housekeeper. She looked after Tina, for the most part, because Donald Tinsin had too many important clients and Hellen Tinsin had too many important appointments. They sold politicians.

the slithers...?

“What’s that, sweetie...what are slithers?,” Sharlene asked as she got Cathrine ready for school.

Cathrine slipped on her stockings. She said, “The way Tina moves in her chair all the time, she slithers like snakes and new born things. Then she shakes like crazy.”

“Cathrine!,” Sharlene exclaimed, shocked, “Tina is sick. She doesn’t have control over her movements like you and I do.”

“Well, you know what? I have the slithers too,” Cathrine remarked.

“Oh? I don’t think so. And for your information, they are not called slithers. Cathrine, they are called ‘involuntary body movements’ and ‘convulsions.’ That’s just a big way of saying she can’t help it. Tina can’t help having them.”

“I don’t care. I don’t like them. I’ll shake them out of her if I have to.”

Sharlene frowned at the little girl. “Oh, stop it.”

“I do so have slithers, Sharlene! I do so have slithers. Watch!” Cathrine started running toward the puzzle maze when...

...the beeper alarm went off. Sharlene jumped to her feet and ran out of the room as Cathrine danced through her maze, alive with joy.

* * *

Sharlene darted down the hall and into Tina’s bedroom.

Little Tina was thundering in her wheel chair.

“Tina,” Sharlene whimpered. She rushed to comfort Tina through the ordeal of spasms and contortions. She was having another seizure. Sharlene’s heart started beating faster. It wasn’t her first experience with Tina’s unnatural episodes, however, she feared that Tina was getting worse. In fact, Sharlene was worried that one day soon, Tina would actually die.

It took approximately five minutes before the convulsions stopped. Tina sat in a puddle of her own urine, saliva, and feces, not moving. She sloughed over her armrest like a flaccid, drooling corpse. Sharlene lifted her from her chair and started to carry her over to her bed when the sound of pattering feet padded toward the bedroom door. It was Cathrine in her stockings. She appeared at the doorway as Sharlene lay Tina down on the bed.

“See,” said Cathrine, “I told you I have slithers." Then the girl larked off through the hallway.

* * *

By the time Tina was all cleaned up and ready for school, Cathrine was eating a Pop Tart at the kitchen table. Sharlene wheeled Tina up to the table and set out to get some orange juice. She had been thinking about Cathrine’s comment.

See, I told you I have the slithers.

Sharlene had thought that to be a very odd thing to say; especially since just before Tina went into convulsions, Cathrine had told her to, “Watch.”

Watch what?, Sharlene wondered. Cathrine raced off through her maze entrance when Tina had started to spasm.

“Cathrine,” Sharlene poured some juice for Tina, “when you told me to watch you in your room, remember?, just before the beeper went off? What was it that you did?”

Cathrine looked up from the Pop Tart she was gnawing on. “I was having the slithers and I was playing with my puzzles.”

“Sweetie, what are these ‘slithers’ you are talking about? You told me they were the shakes. Do you shake like Tina?”

“No. I run through my maze and I pretend to shake. Me and Tina have shakes at the same time now. I used to have to wait for hers after I already started. But not no more.”

Sharlene was fascinated. “Does Dr. Tory know about this?”

“No. I don’t like to tell Dr. Tory much anymore. I don’t think he knows what he is doing.”

Sharlene gave Tina some juice and then commenced to assist Tina with her breakfast. “Tell me, Cathrine,” she asked as she spooned some cereal into Tina’s mouth, “do you know when Tina is going to have her convulsions before she has them?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I give them to her,” Cathrine scoffed.

* * *

Dr. Tory’s office was Tina and Cathrine’s school for the time being. It was a soft, plush room full of colour and bright, clinical light. There were many toys scattered about the room, but they were never handled very much. There were also a great many puzzles in the room. Those were all that Cathrine played with. Dr. Frank Tory spent more than half his time working with Cathrine each day. He kept records and videos of Cathrine’s development and behaviour. It had only been about a month since Cathrine demonstrated a strange habit of tearing off the pictures of mountain peaks, or sailboats, or cartoon characters that blanketed the puzzle pieces. More baffling than the question of why she was doing this, was the question of how she managed to put the puzzles together effortlessly when all the pieces looked virtually identical.

Cathrine and Tina got to school each day at nine o’clock am. They usually exited the special, blue bus with one other child, Billy Thistlerow. Billy Thistlerow had his own special problems and was being looked after by another doctor, Dr. Gunn, in the same building. On frequent occasions, however, Billy was allowed to play with Tina and Cathrine in their playroom school. The doctors felt it was healthy for the children to play together and it also provided the doctors with an opportunity to observe the interactions of these very unique children. They watched from behind the two-way mirror for anything new in their behaviour and listened to each other’s comments and analysis.

Things had pretty much boiled down to a peculiar routine when Billy entered Dr. Tory’s schoolplay area. Cathrine would look up from her puzzles and then returned to them while Billy paced directly over to Tina and started playing with her, talking to her, giving her his full attention. That was because he was terrified of Cathrine.

The doctors did not have the answers to that bit of strange behaviour either. The first day Billy entered the classroom he started to cry. When Cathrine approached him, he screamed and fought to get past the doors which Dr. Tory and Dr. Gunn stood blocking.

“Its okay,” Dr. Gunn kept repeating, “no one is going to harm you.”

Cathrine immediately backed away and retreated to her puzzles. When Billy finally calmed down, he slowly tested his surroundings. He nonchalantly approached Tina and started to play with her, placing a red ball in her hands and helping her toss it into the air and catch it. Tina smiled and laughed often when playing with Billy. Billy understood her. Dr. Tory reported to Mr. and Mrs. Tinsin that at the end of the first session, Billy and Tina had become good friends.

* * *

Sharlene picked up the phone and dialled Southside District Hospital after the bus picked up the twins.

“Hi, I’d like to speak with Dr. Tory. Has he left the hospital? This is an emergency.”

“I don’t know. Can you hold and I’ll page him?”

“Yes. Sure.”

Sharlene tapped a fingernail on the kitchen table. She was hoping to catch Dr. Tory before he left the hospital. She had to tell him about slithers and Cathrine’s crazy comment.

I give them to her.

Crazy. And that one about pretending to have the slithers just as Tina’s own body started to violently wrench itself in her wheelchair. Weird. And if Cathrine isn’t telling Dr. Tory all of this because she has decided she didn’t like him, then someone better clue him in on it.

“Dr. Tory here.”

“Frank, its Sharlene Robertson, I’m glad I caught you...How are you?”

“If I was any better I’d be ten again. How are you?”

“Wonderful...thanks.” Sharlene was picturing his face. The black rimmed eye glasses that he wore did no justice to his grey eyes. He had dark hair and gentleman’s charm.

“How can I help you?”

“I needed to talk to you about the girls.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I’m not sure if you’re aware of Cathrine’s maze, the one in her bedroom, but I have some news on what she claims she does in it. Wait...let me back up a bit. This morning Cathrine told me that she hated her sister. She stated that Tina had something called, ‘the slithers.’ This was her word for Tina’s erratic movements. Cathrine told me that she also experiences these slithers. Well, she heads toward her maze and guess what? At the exact same moment that she enters her maze, Tina goes into a seizure.”

Tory absorbed all of this information into his mind and did not know what to make of it. He cleared his throat and started talking.

“You say she runs through a maze? What kind of a maze?”

“Like a maze, a labyrinth, one of those things where that Minotaur thing roamed. It is made from her puzzle boxes. It covers half her bedroom floor and its walls are eight feet high. God knows how she got those boxes way up there. Anyhow, she said that she is the one that induces Tina’s seizures. She says she ′gives them to her.′ Do you know anything about that?”

Dr. Tory scratched his head. “No...No, I don’t...Not proof positive. Listen, you are aware that any information on these girls is highly confidential and I’m not exactly at liberty to share anything with anyone other than the pare---”

“I know,” Sharlene interjected, “I am the parents. If you review the admissions paperwork you’ll find me tender to the temporary legal guardianship of the twins. Only in this case, ‘temporary’ means indefinitely.”

“Wow. Where are Hellen and Donald?”

“Who knows. The vagina of America, perhaps.”

"Vegas? Really? Hmm. Well then, I’ll save myself some work and trust you. The tests we’ve conducted on the girls have determined that there is some type of psychokinetic link between the two of them. The extent of their mental capabilities is not certain, however, we think that the twins can, and do, communicate to each other. Telepathically, through thought transference.”

“Is that possible?”

“It’s happening. Our tests have shown it. We have evidence. Listen, can I come by and look at this maze? I can’t pass this up. And you say Cathrine says she gives these slithers to her sister? Did she say why she would do that?”

Sharlene looked at her wrist watch. “I told you, she says she hates her. Lately she hates a lot of things.”

“Okay. How about today sometime? I’ll drive the twins home myself.”

“That would be just fine,” Sharlene said with a smile. “Don’t forget to bring dessert...you are staying for dinner.”

Frank was caught off guard. “Thanks, but I---”

“No buts about it, mister. See you around four. We need to talk about this.” Sharlene hung up the phone.

* * *

When Dr. Tory got to his private practice, Cathrine was working on her puzzles. She was given a brand new puzzle. It had an excellent close up of Tweety Bird on the cover of the box. Cathrine tore the box open and one by one she started peeling off the coloured picture face off of all the pieces until she was surrounded by a hundred yellow shavings of paper and a hundred pieces of cardboard jigsaw shapes.

Dr. Tory stepped into the schoolplay and greeted Tina first, making sure that he told her Billy Thistlerow was coming to play with her today. Tina smiled and her head jerked back. Some incomprehensible syllables escaped her throat.

“Yes, Tina, Billy will be here after Session this morning. Isn’t that great?” Dr. Tory felt Tina’s cheek with his hand. It was a human gesture, done out of affection more than anything. Then he went away to greet Cathrine.

She had completed the one hundred piece puzzle in the time that it took Dr. Tory to say ‘hello’ to Tina. It lay on the carpet, dark like a dead computer monitor. Cathrine was gazing into it.

“Hello, Cathrine,” Dr. Tory said, “What are you seeing?”

Cathrine didn’t answer. She stared coldly into her monotone puzzle.

“Cathrine?”

“I don’t want Billy to come here. I don’t want him here.”

Dr. Tory crouched down and removed his glasses. “Cathrine, that’s not nice, your sister enjoys playing with Billy. You don’t even have to say hello to him if you don’t want to, like all the other times. We don’t force you to play with him.”

“I don’t want him to play with my sister. She has slithers.”

Involuntary muscle contractions, Frank realized. “Tina has never had the slithers here and I hardly think that would matter to Billy. They are good friends.”

Cathrine leaned forward in a frog position until her nose was inches above the flat, rectangular puzzle. “I hate you, Billy Thistlerow. I hate you,” she hissed. “I hate you!”

Frank Tory stood up to go turn the video camera on. He walked over to get the remote control bar and during that time Cathrine continued to spit, curse, and swear, displacing all of her anger and hatred at the puzzle. Tina was in her chair, decidedly vocal and chanting her four sylable incantation.

“What are you looking at?“,” Dr. Tory asked, concentrating on Cathrine’s violent tantrum. He pressed the button to record on his remote. “Do you see Billy?”

Cathrine sat up and pointed directly at the puzzle. “Here! This is Billybrains! This is Billybrains!” Then she scattered the puzzle pieces in a frenzy of hostile emotion. In the background, Tina continued to utter a four syllable chant, happy that Billy was coming.

* * *

“Frank? Its Gunn. I got some bad news.”

Dr. Gunn was similar to Dr. Tory in the fact that they were both conducting studies on children with very special attributes. Gunn specialized in neurological surgery and psychological development. When he heard about Billy Thistlerow and his special gift, he was sceptical; until the day he caught Billy chortling to himself, “I’m special,” as a glass ashtray hovered by itself in the middle of the air.

“What is it?”

“Its Billy. He’s dead.”

An army of gooseflesh soldiers retreated across Frank’s back and into his hair. “Dead?”

“Died one hour ago, can you fuckin believe it? He’s still here. You should come and see this.”

“Why? What is it?”

“He died from a brain haemorrhage. Damage beyond recognition. I was watching him make a paper airplane without using his hands. The paper just started to fold itself right there on my desk in front of me. He was talking about Tina, saying that Cathrine was hurting Tina, controlling her seizures. Then Billy went as far as sending the paper airplane to himself from across the room, to where he was standing. He reached up to catch it when he suddenly collapsed. He had a mild seizure and was dead on the spot.”

“My God,” Frank said as he looked toward Cathrine, “What caused it?”

“Unknown. And there, too, is a freaky thing,” Dr. Gunn told his colleague, “X-rays show his brain mass was scrambled. Like scrambled eggs. Like someone took a fucking fork and mashed up his mind somehow. Look, I haven’t seen anything like it before. His skull is intact. I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it.”

This is Billybrains! This is Billybrains!

“I’ll talk to you later,” Frank said. “Thanks for calling.”

“Yeah, listen, his parents are coming, you might want to give me some support down here. Are you going to tell the twins?“,

“I guess I’ll have to. Tina was expecting him...Hey, Gunn, before you go, what was the time of Billy’s death?”

“God damn doctors,” Gunn muttered, “always details. It was one minute past ten when the seizure occured.”

“Okay. See you later.”

“Yep.”

Frank walked over to the video camera and rewound it to the image of Cathrine hovering over the puzzle.

“Do you see Billy?,” barked Frank’s voice from the television speakers.

Then Cathrine sat bolt upright and pointed to the puzzle.

"Here! This is Billybrains! This is Billybrains!”

As she scattered the pieces of her puzzle, the recorded video time display on the television screen flashed 10:01 AM.

* * *

Dr. Frank Tory fixed the twins together in front of him to tell them some important news. It was bad news. Billy Thistlerow will not be coming to schoolplay session today. No, not ever again.

One girl loved her friend and one girl killed him, thought Dr. Tory.

Tina jerked her head and her wrists came up to greet her tongue involuntarily. Cathrine just stared.

“He died today. He died downstairs in Dr. Gunn’s lab.” Dr. Tory pulled his seat closer to where the girls were situated. “He will not be coming to schoolplay ever again.”

Tina started to crouch down and her sobs were frightening. Cathrine stared. She stared directly into Dr. Tory’s eyes.

“I have a feeling, Cathrine, that we need to have a little talk,” Dr. Tory stated. “A boy was killed and I want to know why. I want answers. What did you do to Billy Thistlerow?”

* * *

Holly Green was preparing to leave the office for lunch when she walked in on Dr. Frank Tory and Cathrine in the schoolplay. They were both sitting on the floor and Frank looked scolded.

“Dr. Tory, what is going on here?”

Frank pulled Holly aside and whispered calmy. “Hi, Holly, I’m glad you’re here to have a seat with us. You know about Billy Thistlerow’s death, right? Of course you do, he’s your department.” Dr. Tory waggled his pointer finger at the twins. “Well, it would appear that one of these girls is guilty of a very serious crime.” His finger pointed to Cathrine.

He went, on to say, “I think she murdered Billy. With her mind. Using the puzzles. I think she did it intentionally. Look, we need her to talk about this on record. What is scheduled for Session tomorrow, Miss Green?”

Holly um-um-hummed and said, ”Love. That’s our topic for tomorrow.”

“Cancel it. You need to find out what she did to Billy. What she is capable of.”

“No!,” Cathrine interjected. She heard everything that was said.

“What Cathrine means by that is that she is not willing to tell us anything.” Dr. Tory brushed the air and turned. As he walked away he said, “See what you can do with her, Holly...She won’t tell me a god damn thing.”

“You will have to brief me later,” she said to Tory. “Right, for now, get up off the floor Cathrine. Let’s go to lunch. We’ll leave the big bad wolf behind.”

“Yay!,” Cathrine exclaimed. She threw fistfuls of jigsaw pieces into the air and stood up. She ran to the video control bar and pressed the button to rewind the video of her temper tantrum. She raced around the room as she danced with the remote control bar. Frank and Holly watched the ballet with wonder. She started to press the record button. Dr. Tory dashed over to her and snatched the remote from her grasp, saving the video from destruction.

“Stop that!,” Frank ordered.

Cathrine started to laugh and darted toward Tina. Cathrine got behind Tina’s wheelchair and whirled her around. She pushed toward the front doors. She was jubilous. Tina, on the other hand, was still crying over the fact that her best friend was dead.

* * *

After lunch, Holly decided to push Session one day early. It was easy to schedule because play school had been cancelled today. All of Billy’s fault. Cathrine was with her puzzles again while Holly met with Tina. They sat in a warm corner and Holly faced Tina. They were friends. But Holly was her teacher as well.

“Today’s Session is about Love, Tina. Well, you know, Love.

Love is that special bond people have for their family and friends, their children and soul mates.”

Tina started to rock forward and squawk. Billy.

“Yes, Tina. Like the way you loved Billy. He was a very good friend.”

Tina started to cry again.

“Its okay, dear child,” Holly said as she ran her fingers through Tina’s short hair, “Love is something that no one can ever take away from you. Billy is gone now, but he will always be with us in our hearts.”

Intercom speakers came on and Frank Tory’s electronic voice blurted out, “Like the way you feel about Sharlene, and Mama and Dad. Yes. Now tell her about what we know, Holly, see if we get any response from her.”

Holly turned her head toward the two-way mirror and gave Dr. Tory an unsavoury glare. “No, I will not! We know nothing. I will not use this child as a seismograph for your scientific interest. Have you no sense at all? Any compassion whatsoever? She has feelings, Frank. Emotions. We’ve established that. We know that they communicate telepathically. If Cathrine was harming Billy, Tina probably already knows. If she doesn’t, damned if you think I’m going to share your theories with this poor child at this time.” She turned to Tina and said, “Ignore that old fart. He wouldn’t know about Love if it hit him in the face.”

Cathrine as watching Holly and her sister communicate. The teacher and Little Miss Slithers. Cathrine was not impressed. They were talking too often. Someone is going to get hurt. Cathrine grabbed a new puzzle from the floor and commenced to rip away the picture facets from the pieces.

“...And love is warm inside...” Holly continued.

Cathrine raced to get the pieces of her puzzle ready. She shrieked with anger.

Holly purposely ignored Cathrine. She was in the middle of Session with Tina and did not want to lose focus. Tina was listening to her.

“...And love is beautiful, like sunshine on your skin and birds singing songs in the breeze. And if you tell someone you love them, they feel it jingling inside them like Christmas bells all day long...”

Cathrine was enraged! She started fitting the pieces together. She shrieked again, in anger. There was one piece missing from the puzzle. Dr. Tory clutched it secretly in his palm as he watched Cathrine’s tantrum from behind the two-way mirror. She scoured through all of the hundreds of pieces available to her at her feet, looking frantically for the missing one. She was progressively losing it.

“...And when you tell someone that you love them, you feel good about yourself...you feel...”

Tina started to moan a three syllable phrase.

Cathrine shrieked and screamed in frustration and then threw herself at the puzzle on the floor. ”This is Hollybrains! This is Hollybrains!” She started to scatter the matter.

A peculiarity in Holly’s voice scratched Session, “...you f-fee-ee-ee-eel-l-l-l-l...” Holly faded into a convulsion and was dead in seconds. Tina, sitting directly in front of her, started to freak out. Her sister screamed with joy!

* * *

“Sharlene?”

“Yes.”

“Its Frank Tory. Listen, I have some tragic news. I need to get the girls home a little bit earlier today. We have a crisis on our hands here. Two people have died today. Here, at the hospital. Billy Thistlerow is dead.”

“No,” Sharlene gasped. “How?”

“That remains undetermined at this time, but both victims suffered severe brain haemorrhage causing death. You know Holly Green.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“She’s the other person who died today on site. The reporters are on their way and I don’t think getting the girls involved with the media is such a wise idea right about now. I believe Cathrine is a part of this mess. Can we come over?”

“Yes. Yes, most...immediately. Immediately.”

“How does within the hour sound?”

“Please. As soon as possible”

“Okay. We’ll be there as soon as I can get the girls out of the facility without being noticed. Keep your fingers crossed.”

“Okay. Hurry, Frank.”

* * *

In the rear view mirror of his truck, Frank watched as Cathrine eyed him intensely from the back seat. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him.

“So why don’t you do it?” Frank asked Cathrine (as opposed to having her rape his mind telepathically to find out what he’s thinking,) “Why don’t you kill me like you did Billy and Miss Green? Why haven’t you done me in yet?”

“I didn’t kill them.”

“You did. You did kill them. You killed them both.”

“I did not! Tina did it.”

Tina was slouching in the seat next to Frank. She was withdrawn and weepy.

“Oh, I see, Tina did it. She killed her best friends, she did. She wasted no time murdering the people who love her. You are unbelievable, Cathrine. How can you sit there and say something like that? How can you do this to your sister?” Frank shook his head with disgust. “How could you kill someone?”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Yes. You did. With your power. You pictured Billy and Holly in the puzzles and then you jumbled their brains. ′This is Billybrains! This is Hollybrains!′ Remember what you said? You did it because you hated them. You hated them because they loved the person you are destroying.”

“I did not! I hate you. I hate you, Mister Tory. If I could, I would so kill you right now.”

“Sharlene told me about what you are doing to Tina. Why don’t you just kill her too? Put her out of her misery.”

Cathrine suddenly screamed, enraged. Dr. Tory hit a live nerve. Tina went into serious convulsions.

* * *

Sharlene ran out when she heard the truck screeching to a stop in the driveway. She saw Tina shaking in the front seat of Frank’s 4-Runner. “Is she okay?,” Sharlene cried as she made for the passenger door.

Frank was exiting the truck. “She’ll be okay, I’ll bring her in. You look after Cathrine. Look, there she goes. She’s hellbent.”

Sharlene watched as Cathrine ran around the back end of the truck and headed to the front door. “Cathrine!” She heard the front door slam shut. Sharlene stopped and gave Frank an exasperated glance. Then she took after Cathrine like the doctor had ordered. When Sharlene entered the home, she heard Cathrine’s bedroom door slam.

The bedroom door was stuck when Sharlene tried to open it.

“Cathrine? Its me. Open the door.”

“Go away!” Cathrine’s voice seemed distant and cavernous.

“Cathrine, please. Open.”

“Its open!”

The door knob suddenly gave and turned. Sharlene swung open the door and peered into the room. She did not see Cathrine at first glance.

“Where are you?”

“In the puzzles.” The voice sounded buried and tunnelled.

“Come out, please. You didn’t say hello to me. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m playing with my puzzles, just leave me alone.”

Sharlene walked to the entrance of the maze.

“Are you coming out? I’m coming in to get you if you won’t come out,” Sharlene bellowed.

“You’ll never find me. Go away.”

Sharlene turned her head toward the entrance to Cathrine’s bedroom. She heard Dr. Tory shouting: “She’s still in seizure here! Where’s her bed?!”

Sharlene ran from Cathrine’s room and into the front foyer.

“Here,” Sharlene shut the front door behind them. “Follow me. Tina’s room is over here. My God, she’s drenched in sweat.”

“Where’s Cathrine?”

“In her room, Frank. She’s inside her maze.”

“Tell Cathrine to stop doing this to her sister.” He held up Tina’s shaking body. It was rigid and contorted. “Demand that she do it right now. She must stop it right now.”

Sharlene turned on the light in Tina’s room. “Here’s her room. I’ll go.” Sharlene ran off and barged into Cathrine’s room.

“Cathrine? Cathrine, you have to stop it. Stop what you are doing. Come out, please. Cathrine. Stop it!” Flustered, Sharlene went back to Tina’s room. Tina was resting flaccidly in Frank’s arms.

“She just stopped in my arms,” he said. “Jesus, I thought she had died for a moment there.”

Tina shut her eyes and drooled. Asleep.

* * *

When Sharlene was in the kitchen preparing a stew for dinner, Tina was asleep in her room and Cathrine was somewhere in her maze. Dr. Tory took the opportunity to fill Sharlene in on the details of the day, mayhem at the clinic.

“Billy Thistlerow’s brain was scrambled like eggs. Miss Holly Green’s brain, eggs! Both times Cathrine was working on the puzzles. She would tear away the pictures from each individual piece, one at a time. She would fit together the blank cardboard pieces in minutes. Then she would point to the puzzle. ‘This is Billybrains! This is Hollybrains!’ and each victim would drop dead when she scattered the pieces of the puzzle.”

“My God. It’s not possible,” Sharlene said. “Have you told any of this to Tina?”

Frank placed his drink down. “Come to think of it...no. No, I haven’t.”

Sharlene smiled and said, “Well why don’t you?”

Frank watched her move to the stove and remove the lid from the stew. “I’m going to,” he said to Sharlene. He then turned his head toward Tina’s room. “But I have something more pressing to contend with first. I believe they call it kidnapping.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ve got an idea. I don’t know if it’s a good one or a bad one, but we need to try it. I think we need to separate the girls for a while. Have they ever been separated before?”

“Separate the twins?,” Sharlene withdrew her focus on Frank. “No. Not ever.”

“Listen. I think Cathrine is hurting Tina. I think that what she told you this morning is absolutely true: She is giving her sister the slithers. She is in control of Tina’s physical development and she has been hindering it. I want to separate the girls to see what it does to Tina’s health.”

Sharlene was looking at Frank with a solemn look. “You cannot be serious,” she said.

“Dead serious.”

“When were you going to tell me this?,” Sharlene inquired, suddenly worried.

“I just did.”

“Separated,” she muttered, unbelieving. “For how long?”

“When did you say the Tinsins return?”

“Next month.”

“That may be just what we need.”

Sharlene returned to the stove top to throw pepper into the cooking meat. “Frank, why is she doing it? I mean, if what you say is true, why is she doing that to her own sister?”

Frank shook his head. “Who can say? Madness? Survival? Evil?”

Sharlene tasted the stew for salt. “You said survival, what do you mean?”

Frank picked up his glass of wine and held it to his nose. “Ever watch those nature shows on tv? The shows on wild animals? Birds, for example. When eggs in a nest hatch, the strongest one will often try to push the other hatchlings out of the nest. They are born with an instinct to kill. They sometimes push the other eggs out of the nest before the others even get a chance to hatch. This ensures that it gets more food and this increases its own chance for survival. Survival of the fittest. Perhaps Cathrine’s behaviour is a twisted version of that.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then its one of the other reasons. Perhaps madness. Perhaps evil.”

“This is turning into a witch hunt.”

Frank sipped his wine and stated, “No, we are trying to save Tina’s life.”

They both heard Cathrine approaching from the hallway. Cathrine entered the room and sat at the counter on a barstool. “Hey, guys,” she said, “What’s cooking?”

* * *

“So, you’ve finally decided to come out of your maze, have you?” Sharlene placed a bowl of green beans in front of Cathrine and showed her how to break them into pieces. “I’m upset with you, you know. I think we need to talk about a few things.”

“Dr. Tory thinks I killed Billy and Miss Green. I didn’t. Tina did it.” Cathrine started to snap the beans in half.

“Well, right now we won’t worry about that. Right now Dr. Tory and I need to know about your puzzles. What do you see when you tear the pictures off and put the puzzles together? What do you see in them?” Sharlene went to the stove and added some water to the stew.

“Nothing. I don’t see anything in them.”

This! is Billybrains! This! is Hollybrains!

“I don’t believe you,” Frank responded. “Why do you tear away the pictures from your puzzles?”

“I like to make the puzzles harder. They’re too easy if I don’t.”

Dr. Tory looked at Sharlene and shook his head. He was not convinced. He was having difficulty getting any kind of information from her. He thought he would try a different approach.

“Cathrine,” Frank said, “Sharlene tells me that you have a maze in your room. Will I be able to see it?”

“Sure you can,” Cathrine said, “I’ll let you in. Come inside.” Cathrine dropped her beans and went to her room. From the entrance down the hallway she turned back and added, “We can play a game.”

“What game?,” Frank inquired, trying to remain composed in light of his negative thoughts. He suddenly realized where the situation was headed.

“Scat Terbra Ins,” Cathrine laughed. Her door slammed shut.

* * *

Frank was piqued by the invitation...and terrified by it. It was an invitation to study Cathrine’s mind. An invitation to find answers for her behaviour. To find a way to save Tina from her torture. Or was it his turn. Was he the next victim to have a telekinitic twister rip through his cerebral cortex. Was he going to die?

“I have a game plan.”

Sharlene turned the stove down to simmer and tuned herself into Frank’s voice and instruction.

“Cathrine will stay with you. I’ll take Tina to my place. I will personally attend to her health. We’ll call it ‘intensive care.’”

“The Tinsins will want explanations.”

“The Tinsins aren’t here. Not for another month. You said so yourself.”

Sharlene shut her eyes and then returned her gaze to Frank. “Yes.”

“There you have it. In one month we can determine if Cathrine is hurting Tina. It’s worth the try, don’t you think?”

“What about school? What about Tina? What will she think?”

“Both will continue to go to school. I will still be able to work with the two of them. I will work with them individually rather than collectively. Tina will go to school in Dr. Gunn’s schoolplay, Billy’s old room. The girls will be on separate floors at all times.”

“What about Tina? How do you think that will make her feel, being in Billy’s old room, never being able to see her own sister, moving into a strange environment and living with her doctor.”

Frank rubbed his eyes and put his glasses away. He gave Sharlene a pleading, serious look, “We need to try. We need to try and save her. How long do you think Tina can last before she finally gives in? One year? One month? We need to try.” Frank took a big swill of his wine. “I think you better tell her. Wake the poor girl up and tell her what we’re doing. Be honest. Tell her that we want to help her.”

“Okay.” Sharlene’s hands were starting to shake.

“Before I go, is there anything I should know about the maze? Is there anything I should expect?”

Sharlene turned the stove off. Dinner was close enough to being ready. She said, “No, nothing really, except maybe you might get lost in it. Have you an idea of the size of Cathrine’s bedroom? It is absolutely huge. See the size of this kitchen? Well, the maze itself is at least ten of these, can you believe it?” Sharlene’s voice was soft.

“Who helped her to build it?”

“Nobody.” Sharlene switched the stove light on. “The weird thing is that there is nothing in her room high enough to stand on that would enable her to reach the scale of its walls. She won’t tell me how she did it. It nearly touches the ceiling.”

“Have you ever been inside it?,” Frank asked, captivated.

“Of course. I’m the maid. I find clothes and toys in there all the time.”

“Have you ever been in it when Cathrine was in there?”

“Come to think of it, no.” She switched the kitchen light off. The room was now strangely electric and silent.

“What about this game?,” Frank pursued. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it before. It must be stared at him in the warm light. “We better go. Dinner’s almost ready to serve, we don’t want to be eating too late.”

* * *

Sharlene led Frank to Cathrine’s room. She held his hand along the way, innocently, like a brave, nervous child. Standing in front of the door, she gave him a whisper on the cheek. “Good luck, Frank.”

He looked at her. “Thanks. Let’s hope I won’t need it.” He was apprehensive about entering the room. “If she starts to build one of those puzzles with my name on it...”

“Don’t think about that. Go on in, she’s expecting you.”

Frank squeezed Sharlene’s hand and their eyes were drawn together. Sharlene tried to smile and said, “Go on. You run along and play.”

“Sure.” Chills ran along his back.

play

Sharlene let Frank’s hand slip away as she went off to change Tina’s life forever.

* * *

At the doorway, Frank called out to Cathrine.

“Come in,” the girl’s voice said from inside her bedroom. She was sitting on her bed playing with make-up. She had painted a dark clown’s face on: White foundation; large, red lips; black nose and black eyes. Blurred, smudged and scuffed, a child’s rendition of a child’s antihero.

Frank’s astonishment while first seeing the child’s face was stomped out by the maze. He was awestruck. It stood colossal in the middle of her room: Walls made of thousands of puzzle boxes, bricks structuring a room within a room.

“Do you like my maze?,” Cathrine asked, leaving her bed and walking toward the tall entrance to her maze.

“It’s fantastic. How did you do it? How did you build it so high?”

Cathrine bent over with one hand on her knee and one hand over her mouth as she giggled. “There’s a dark cloud above your head, Dr. Tory. It looks like rain.”

Frank tilted his head back and his chin dropped. There above his head was a cardboard puzzle box suspended in mid air. Cathrine giggled some more and the box slowly tilted. The puzzle pieces dropped down on Frank like rain from a cloud. Cathrine laughed and laughed.

* * *

Sharlene gently woke Tina up from her deep rest. Tina was startled into consciousness.

“Oh you poor baby.” Sharlene lifted Tina up from her bed and held her. “You sweet child. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about today.”

Tina wailed for two long minutes and then went limp in Sharlene’s arms, not with a bang, but a whimper. Sharlene lay Tina down in a chair. “Tina, listen to me.” Sharlene clasped Tina’s hands in her own hands. “I need to tell you something very important. What happened today at school was terrible. Those horrible things should not have happened.” Sharlene could not bring the news to Tina. The child had been through too much already. A bad, bad experience. She didn’t need to be told, now, that she was going to lose her sister as well.

We need to try.

“Tina, Dr. Tory thinks Cathrine is hurting you. He thinks that Cathrine is controlling your growth and development. Dr. Tory wants to take care of you. He wants to try something.”

Tina’s head rolled back and she hurled sounds from her throat.

* * *

“Follow me,” Cathrine told Frank. She turned around and stepped through the entrance way to her maze. Frank started to follow. He made his way to the entrance and stopped. He had not seen which way Cathrine had ventured. Either left, or right, or... The passage heading straight ahead had multiple possibilities, hallways boxed by puzzles, puzzles forming a maze.

“Where are you?,” Frank called out. He chose to turn left and he walked down the narrow passage. There was minimal light. She had ceilings built into the maze as the puzzle boxes reached the height of the room. It was tight and claustrophobic. He felt his way along, his fingers sliding over the puzzle boxes. He could barely see the small, square pictures on the side of each puzzle. “Am I going the right way?”

He heard giggling buried deep within the maze. It sounded muffled and distant. The pictures on the walls started to merge and blend. The horse running in the summer field became the church spire. The kites in the sky became balloons and then piglets. The end of the passage-way disappeared in the darkness. He was getting the impression that he was walking for a long time. He came along a doorway and peered in. Left or right. He entered and turned left. The light seemed even more dismal. The pictures on the puzzle boxes began to change. He saw pizza, but it looked as if it was made with parts of the human anatomy, blood for sauce. He saw a cartoon figure scurry off, dragging the head of a man.

He turned around, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. He would have leaned against the wall if he thought it would support him. “My head.”

The giggling came again.

“Cathrine. Where are you? You come here now.” Frank started walking the other way. He would back track, follow his path backwards and get out. He didn’t like the maze. The pictures on the puzzles made the halls seem endless. He started to pick up his pace and a feathery flutter of panic struck him. The entrance.

He turned right and followed through. The walls seemed to pulsate from Cathrine’s giggles. A rocket ship in one of the pictures crashed and burned. In another picture, a fly lay eggs in a pig’s decapitated corpse. In yet another, a man put an hammer through another man’s skull.

“Cathrine! Where are you?”

The giggles seemed more sharp and clear. He didn’t stop hearing them as he felt his way along the hallway. He had lost sense of direction when he started to panic. The walls were frightening. The pictures on the puzzle boxes had become little windows. The images he saw in the windows were horrific. They were getting more graphic. Less and less innocent. Louder. The giggling was louder.

“Where are you?!” He saw wild animals eating flesh. He saw drowning infants in clear pools. He saw machines spurting cold blood. He saw poison drip from fangs.

He turned and shambled, feeling the walls with his hands. His perspective defunct, he started scrambling. He turned again, refusing to mind the pictures on the puzzle boxes, refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead. His hand felt another doorway and he skipped into it. Almost running, he thought he should just burst through the walls. Tear them down. The thought was being reviewed when he shouted out, “Cathrine!”

Another outburst of the giggling rattled Frank.

I’m going to run through your walls if you don’t help me! He heard more laughter, turned to run through the walls, to smash them down! Instead he stepped through the entrance to the centre of the maze. The area opened up. The ceiling was dome shaped with an open circle at its apex. Dull light was shining through. A puzzle box igloo. Surrounding Cathrine were piles and piles of plain, brown cardboard pieces. Mountains of them. Cathrine rolled in the valley of the shaggy, white rug, fused with giggles. Her face was ghastly in the sick light.

“Why don’t you come in here and play?,” Cathrine suggested.

Frank stepped onto the rug. His confusion and anxiety dispersed. The pictures on the puzzle boxes were no longer attacking him with gory visions. The walls were strangely white as snow. Soothing to the eyes. He looked at Cathrine. She was making him feel panicky in the maze.

“Is that part of the game? Scat Terbra Ins?”

“Here, sit down. Let’s play. I have a puzzle for you. We both get a puzzle.” Cathrine reached behind her and placed two cardboard boxes down on the rug. Frank took a seat in front of a treasure chest. Cathrine’s puzzle was Meadows and Mountains.

“What do we do here? How do we play?,” Frank asked. He crossed his legs and stared past Cathrine’s melting make-up into her eyes.

“Open your puzzle,” Cathrine said and she commenced to open her own. “Then you take out the pieces of the puzzle one at a time,” she picked up a piece, “and you rip off the picture.”

Frank was watching her while opening his puzzle box. “Wait. Why do you do that?”

“Because it makes the puzzle harder, dummy” she responded. “It makes it more fun. And, you know what?, the game has started. So get going.”

Frank started to rip the picture from a piece when he

looked up at Cathrine. She was muttering. Her face looked angry. She ripped at the puzzle pieces, tearing the pictures from piece after piece.

Frank took out a pen and started writing notes on his puzzle box. “What are you thinking about, Cathrine?”

“Play the game, Doctor.” Her teeth were clenched and her hair was getting wild from the way she shook her head. “Scat.”

“I don’t know how to play.”

“Rip off the pictures and think about someone whose brains you want to mash up.”

Dr. Tory swallowed a dry bit of nothing. “And who are you thinking about right now, Catherine?”

“You, Dr. Tory. You!”

* * *

Sharlene brushed Tina’s hair away from her face. She took Tina’s face in her hands. “He wants to try and separate you and Cathrine for a while. You will have to live with Dr. Tory until we can find out if Cathrine is hurting you.”

* * *

Frank started peeling his puzzle pieces with fervour.

I must win this game or I’m dead. The thought permeated his mind. It was as if someone had taken control of his brain. He was compelled and confused. All he knew was that he had to win, or die. “Cathrine, you gotta slow down there. I’m... This is my first time playing.”

Cathrine ignored him. She was going through puzzle pieces, expertly ripping off the pictures, working herself up to a state of emotional frenzy.

Frank gave up on ripping the pictures from the puzzle pieces. He started, instead, to fit the puzzle together. He turned the pieces upside-down, allowing it to look plain and pictureless.”

“No! That’s cheating!” Cathrine screeched. It enraged her even further.

“No. It’s not cheating. I’m just playing your game. What do you call it?”

Cathrine screamed in outrageous fury.

* * *

Sharlene changed the topic away from Frank and onto Cathrine. She was being as careful with Tina as she knew how. She was doing a good job in keeping Tina’s attention. “It won’t be for very long. It will be just a series of tests. Perhaps, a couple of weeks.”

Tina’s face was dry of expression. She was white. She looked dead.

* * *

Frank had an easy puzzle. He nearly had it complete before Cathrine had all the pictures peeled off of her puzzle pieces. Nevertheless, her hands started flying to fit piece after piece together. She moved like a machine, snatching shapes and snapping them into place. Frank kept a monitor on her speed. He was amazed.

“Slow down there, Cathrine. Whoa. Whoa.” He knew it was futile. He had tried to steal a piece from her puzzle earlier. It didn’t save Holly, it wouldn’t save him.

Cathrine was more than half finished. Her puzzle had 100 pieces. His had fifty. Looking at the same colourless pieces made it seem impossible to do. Frank was cheating by fitting pieces together and then flipping them over. But she was catching up fast. Too fast. Frank’s hands started to shake.

“Cathrine!”

* * *

Tears started to roll down Tina’s cheeks. They were drawn out and long to fall away. Sharlene wiped them from Tina’s face. She, also, started crying. “Its okay, sweetie. Its all right.” The sobs came when Sharlene hugged Tina. It was terrible to hear Tina cry. Then her voice. Her language. Four syllables started to hum in Sharlene’s ear.

“Yes, Tina. I know. I know you love Cathrine.”

* * *

Frank flipped his last piece over and snapped it into place as Cathrine screamed and shook her head in a violent tantrum.

“This is Cathrinebrains!,” Frank shouted in panic. “This is Cathrinebrains!” He started the matter of scattering.

Cathrine’s fists came up to her ears as her head shook. Her face was red. She screamed and her whole body went into convulsions.

I win, Frank thought.

Cathrine had given up on completing her puzzle. She was too furious. Her tantrum was wicked and loud. And then she fell silent.

She was dead.

* * *

The chanting went on and on, humming in Sharlene’s ear. She continued to hold Tina and give her support. Tina’s chanting rhythm stopped and Sharlene stopped rocking the small child. Tina looked up, directly at Sharlene. Astounded, Sharlene gasped. It was crude, but it was there. For the first time ever, Sharlene heard Tina speak.

* * *

Frank felt for a pulse and listened for a heartbeat. Cathrine had collapsed and showed no other responses. No vital signs. Frank looked at the puzzle pieces and then back to Cathrine.

“I won,” he said. “Shit.”

He picked up the child and decided to crash through the walls of the maze. He exited near Cathrine’s bed with the puzzle maze collapsing on him as he protected the corpse from falling bricks. Frankenstein and his daughter. Then he heard Sharlene crying out his name.

* * *

"I love Cathrine.”

Those were her exact words. Sharlene was crying with joy. “Frank! Hurry!”

Frank laid Cathrine down on her cold bed and ran off. When he knifed into Tina’s room, he was greeted by Sharlene’s tears and her smile.

“She spoke, Frank.”

Mesmerised, Frank’s response was, “What?”

“Tina spoke. She said, ‘I love Cathrine.’”

Frank reached his hands into his pockets, suddenly frustrated by the more pressing problem: Cathrine is dead. He was planning to call for an ambulance and get Tina out of the place. He felt he had to cover up something he had done. He killed Cathrine Tinsin. He scattered her brains inside her skull like...

Frank found something in one of his pockets. It was that puzzle piece he had stolen from Cathrine earlier in the day. At that moment, it dawned on him. The processing of his thoughts was slow going at first, then he pulled the puzzle piece out of his pocket and looked at it. On it was the picture of a cartoon key.

“Of course,” he said aloud. ”Tina did it.”

Sharlene looked at him, baffled.

“Put her down, Sharlene. We need to talk.”

“I can’t leave Tina now. She just---”

“She looks tired and she is going to sleep. Look at her.”

Tina was already rolling her eyes and drowsing off, exausted.

“Okay.” Sharlene lay Tina onto her bed. Frank led the way out of the room taking Sharlene by the hand. He stopped in front of Cathrine’s room, turned to Sharlene, and said, “Cathrine was right all along.”

“What in Heaven’s name are you talking about?”

“Cathrine didn’t kill those people, today. Billy and Holly. Not Cathrine… Tina did it.”

“Have you gone mad? Where’s Cathrine?”

“She’s in there. Sharlene...”

“What is it?”

“Cathrine is---.”

“Let me through right now!” She pushed past Frank and opened the door to Cathrine’s death bed.

* * *

“When Billy died, I just finished telling Tina that she was going to have a visitor. Her best friend Billy was coming to see her. She started her rocking motion and her chanting. It was her expression of love, her own unique expression. She was saying, ‘I love Billy.’ Then imagine, Billy dies.

“When Miss Holly Green died, I believe she was in the middle of Session with Tina. The Session topic was Love. Miss Green was likely comforting Tina, it being just after the death of her best friend and in return...‘I love you, Holly.’ Then imagine, Holly dies.

“If Cathrine was manipulating Tina’s mental and physical processes, then we must obviously believe that she has been distorting them. If Tina sent out a telekinitic message, it would have been one damaged and manipulated by Cathrine. The result? An angel’s message with the kiss of death. Tina said, ‘I love Cathrine,’ and Cathrine fell down, dead. I am positive on this: When they cut her scalp and hack her skull open, they are going to see scrambled eggs. Just like Billy’s; just like Holly’s.”

Frank tried a smile and then continued. “It wasn’t Tina’s fault. Her message was true. She really did love Billy and Holly; but, Cathrine corrupted it. Tina will be free now.”

Sharlene turned her eyes away from Frank’s and listened to the distant ambulance sirens approaching. “Here they come,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I have to phone the Tinsins.”

“I know. We better wake Tina up.”

Frank stood up off of the floor where he and Sharlene had collapsed, holding eachother in horror. He held out his hand to assist Sharlene. She accepted his help. “Thank you, Frank.”

“For what?”

“For saving Tina. She’s going to be special, isn’t she?”

Frank smiled and ventured to whisper to Sharlene, softly, on the ear. “She is special.”

They woke Tina up from her sleep, comfortably, rather than have the obtrusive commotion of the paramedics on scene scare the bjesus out of her. Frank smiled at the girl. Tina’s movements were a little different now. They were free.

“Tina,” Dr. Tory lifted Tina into his arms and looked at her. She returned a look and he smiled at her, “You can say, ‘I love you,’ to anyone you feel you want to. No one else is going to get hurt.”

She was carried into the dark hall toward the red and white lights on the driveway, flashing through the window. There were to be no more dead people. No more.

THE SHIVERING

I saw him on a park bench, sitting by himself well away from shouting kids and quiet lovers. I had chanced upon a call coming through radio control that there were reported screams coming from the park gazebo. I was on my way to the gazebo when I noticed him. He was wearing a long coat although the sun was blistering hot. He wore dark sunglasses and a thick toque. His skin was pale and greasy like warm butter. He looked strange; the pigment of his skin pallid in the sun. Hands as long as a professional basketball players’ hands were covered in blood. I noticed this as I circled him from a distance. There was blood on his shoes. He was rubbing grass into them with his long fingers, trying to cover up and clean the stains.

“Put your hands on your head. Slowly,” I said. I had my gun pointed on him.

He looked at me and sat back, tossing the grass into the summer breeze. He rested his arms against the backrest of the park bench, his face fully basking in the sun.

“I said put your hands on your head!” I had moved closer and was standing above him with the gun pointing at his heart.

He smiled. His teeth were ferociously ugly and yellow. Blood seeped through the spaces in his teeth and circled his gum lines. The suspect started to chuckle and then laugh in hearty, full breath. I immediately reached for my handcuffs. Then the suspect spit some bloody thing into my face. I wiped my mouth in horror. I tasted blood on my lips. At first I thought it was the madman’s tongue. I realized later, it was something much more grisly.

* * *

The park was closed off for police investigation. A man had been murdered in the Men’s Room. The man was a john who got more than he bargained for when he paid for sex under the gazebo in Cage Park. The victim’s name was Joe Blow. His wife and children were horrified by the act of violence and ashamed at the nature of his infidelity. Mary Blow thought her husband was at work, getting caught up on overdue accounts. When she received a call from Borrow Regional Police she rolled her eyes into her forehead and dropped down, fainted.

The police sent a car to her house after receiving no further response from her on the phone. It arrived at the same time as twelve year old, Jerry Blow, was riding his bike home from an afternoon swim. It was not long afterward that twenty-three year old, Ellen Blow, said eldest daughter, arrived. The family sat at the kitchen table and listened to some grossly ironic and tragic news.

Joe went down the dirty, dark steps to the Men’s Room. He had heard that there was more going on in that room than the general public would like to hear. He, himself, had heard about it through a shaky voice at the other end of a phone number he had copied off of a Men’s Room wall and followed up on it. He went through the door and there was an albino looking fellow looking at himself in the mirror. He was shaping his yellow afro. The man smiled at Joe. Joe was shocked and revolted by the man’s ugly, yellow teeth. He walked in and pretended that he was down to use the washroom facilities. The weirdo wearing dark, new wave sunglasses finished his hair and put on a thick black hat.

“The first one is free.”

Joe was staring at the aged tiles on the wall facing him. He was at a urinal.

“What did you say?,” Joe asked the stranger.

“The first one is free,” said the man in a long coat and sneakers. “I usually keep the hat and glasses on. You don’t have to look at me that way. It will still feel...like you’ve died and gone to Heaven.”

Joe’s piss finally started to flow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The albino approached him. “Yes you do. Did you expect Apollo? This is a Men’s Room.”

Joe tried to force his piss out quickly. “I...I’m not quite sure I know---”

“Look in the mirror.”

Joe turned and saw the stranger in a trench coat, a black hat and sunglasses standing behind him. He stepped up to Joe from behind and reached his hands around Joe, reaching for his dick.

Joe was scared and thrilled by it.

“Turn around, the first one is free,” the stranger said and went down on his knees.

Joe was still dripping urine when the stranger took the thing into his mouth.

“This is too freaky.” Joe’s voice sounded dissonant in the hollow men’s room. He started to enjoy it.

And free, he thought to himself.

The stranger was doing wet and wonderful things to him. His entire sexual reproductive system was swallowed in the stranger’s abnormally large mouth. He worried someone would come in. He was about to suggest going into a stall when the urge to scream overtook all his senses. Joe felt his entire crotch being bitten and torn away. Joe started to scream. The stranger sucked and sucked, ever more ferociously, holding Joe’s crotch to his mouth. Joe could not overcome the strength of the man holding him. The closed-fisted punches to his head and face did nothing to daunt his thirst. The sensation of grave pain gave way to a numbing lightheadedness. His screams were slowly wont. Joe collapsed and the vampire finished eating.

* * *

“It’s a fucking mess down there.” Stewart Drew crossed the police tape toward me. He was just exiting the crime scene. I was just getting there. “Where’s the suspect?”

“Lock up at Grant. I’m heading there now.”

Stewart shook his head. “Man, this guy is going to fry in his own piss. D.A. is going to push for the death penalty. Guaranteed.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” I said.

“Whatever.”

Stewart walked on and I entered the crime scene once again. There were a few blood smears on the floor tiles near the urinal. In all, there was not much to note.

The police photographer was taking photographs from every angle. She was very involved and kept fixing long, blonde hair behind her ear as she moved. “Strange. Isn’t it?,” she asked me.

“What is?”

“I’ve seen a lot less injury on murder victims and a lot more blood. Look around. This place is clean.”

“I’m here to go through the place with a fine tooth comb.”

“I know,” said the photographer. She took a picture of me just for fun. The sunspot left behind by the flash started a headache behind my eyes.

“Where do you suppose the blood went?,” she asked as she popped light toward the sink counter. There were some yellow, curlies there.

I told her, “He drank it.”

“Is he a vampire?,” Officer Owens questioned as she took various shots from above the urinals. “A modern day vampire-freak who gets off on sucking blood? Uses sex as a lure? Look at that.” She pointed into the urinals. There was a testicle in each one. “He must have spit them out,” she added.

I ran into the toilet stall and vomited violently. The sick taste of blood on my lips returned to haunt me.

“Way to go, Sherlock,” Officer Owens said, “you may have flushed evidence down that toilet.”

She took another photo of me vomiting into the toilet and one of me exiting the stall.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. Another explosion of light blasted in my face. “Okay, enough. Film at eleven.” I washed my hands and face.

“Shit. Vampires? You smoking that funny stuff before coming in for a job like this...do you?,” I asked her.

She blasted me with light.

“Would you fucking mind not blinding me with that fucking---”

“Why else would anyone drink blood?,” she interjected. She also added, “And you, Ryan, are in my way.” She walked past me and took a close-up of the bloody hand print on the back of the door.

I took notes on the items in the urinals when I worked up enough...

“Vampires,” I said, “Next thing its Frankensteins. Before you know it an epidemic of hopping little hobgoblins.” I folded my note pad because my head was throbbing. I walked toward the exit.

“Leaving so soon?,” Officer Owens declared.

“See you tonight,” I said.

I left the deodorant infected Men’s Room and crossed the park to my car. The park was closed. Nobody but me and the birds owned it for a while.

* * *

I arrived at Grant Corrections and spoke to the Warden. He reported that the suspect had broken his handcuffs and pushed a guard’s head into a wall. The guard was presently in critical condition with a fractured skull. The prison forces converged on him and, with difficulty, managed to restrain him and place him in lock up.

“Can I see the prisoner?”

“Only thorough bars,” the Warden said.

I went through a battery of doors and corridors that blinked and buzzed and rang loud bells. In this Maximum Security Prison Hospital wing there was only one caged room at the end of six long halls. There were five other similar prison cells at the end of long corridors that spread out of a central lounging area like a spiders legs. In each cell were one of the Six Mister Smiths.

I entered the long corridor passing electronic eyes and approached the orange man in an orange prison uniform. The freak wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. I was surprised to hear him speak.

“Where you been?” His voice was deep. It echoed down the corridor toward me.

“That’s none of your business,” I said.

“Your schedule is everything but my business. Get me out of here.”

I laughed out loud. “Are you crazy? You spit a man’s dick into my face.” I entered the light in front of his bars.

“I need to get out.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “you look a little pale.”

The prisoner leapt up to the bars and shouted, “I’m not fucking kidding around! You don’t understand!”

“Enlighten me.”

The monster opened his mouth and pulled his lips up over his grotesque teeth. A repulsive show, huge and frightening like a lion’s yawn. “Look at me,” he said, “Take a good look. I am going to starve in here. Not like you would; the hunger I will die from is worse and it is evil. I die as long as it takes for me to drink blood again. I’ll die forever in here. A Judge...how long before I even see one? Even if I plead guilty we are looking at, the earliest, maybe three months. Then what? How long on Death Row? How many years?”

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders.

“Get me outta here.”

“I can’t.”

“You fuckin can if you want to stop some killings!”

I looked into the monster’s drugging red eyes. “What do you mean?,” I asked.

“Killings,” he toyed. “Only one kind isn’t there? It’s gonna start. Some real freaking freakouts,” the monster retorted.

“What kind of killings, Mr. Smith? I’m not here to play games with you.”

He smiled and then he said, “Like my killing...maybe worse... maybe just...different. A killing just the same.”

“You can prevent some murders---”

“Not murders! Officer Owens, I said killings. You must understand one thing in order for any of this to begin making sense to you: I’m a vampire.”

“You are a worm fucking itself.” I turned around to leave. He was obviously demented. Another psychopath for the public to carry.

“One eeze gonna happens too-night,” the wacko said in a butchered Mexican accent.

I slowed down and stopped. Then I started pacing again toward the exit.

“Not too fars from heres,” he says, still faux Mexican.

“What time?,” I asked him.

“What time have you got?” His voice returned to its regular deep chasm sound.

I looked at my wristwatch. “Six o’clock.”

The albino sat back on his cot. “Woops! Too late.” Ignoring the madman, I exited the corridor.

* * *

I received a phone call at twelve AM from homicide detectives nearing the end of a crime scene investigation. A man had been murdered in a hacienda motel near the outskirts of Loco-Mexico, a name given to a slummy neighbourhood where drugs and crime frequently loom. I was called because Mr. Smith had been ranting the fact that I knew about the murder at the Mexi-Casa Motel.

“I know nothing of the murder. Mr. Smith told me someone was going to get killed. I thought he was shitting me. Who died?”

"We haven’t identified the body. Seems well to do. Rolex, gold rings, expensive toupee.”

“How was he murdered?”

There was a pause. A voice returned, “Decapitated.”

“Holy shit.”

“And guess what...no weapons. Shaky says the guy’s head was chewed off.”

“What!?”

"There’s something weird going on. You would think...a decapitation...that kind of a murder would result in a flood-fest of blood, well, guess what? There wasn’t much blood on the scene. It’s freaky. I’m not exaggerating, but it looks like what blood was spilled may have been licked from the washroom walls and floor. And toilet. Any of this ring a bell?”

“Mr. Smith,” I said

"You got it. Listen, get some sleep. I just thought I’d call to let you know what’s happening with this. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day for you.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I hung up the phone. Sleep ran away with my thoughts. The night was too long.

I got dressed and went to the Mexi-Casa Motel. I identified myself to the patrol officer guarding the murder site. I entered the room alone. It stank and it was gloomy. A 40 Watt light bulb in a lamp burned inconspicuously away in a corner. Light was flooding from the open washroom door. I went into that light. The police body art on the floor indicated that the man’s corpse was resting in a corner near the toilet. His head was dropped in the bathtub. The floor and walls were impressioned with thousands of red smears left behind by tongue strokes. There wasn’t a spot of blood left intact.

Another cop entered the scene. He was there to dust the place for fingerprints. He didn’t seem too pleased to be there that early in the day. “You like coffee?,” he asked me.

“Yeah, I like coffee.”

He poured some coffee from a large Thermos into a paper cup. “You ever have white coffee?”

“No,” I said.

“Here.”

He handed me the paper cup. It looked like milk.

“The Creative Cafe,” he said. “They got the best coffee in town.”

It was good.

We introduced ourselves and I thanked my copious friend. I asked him if there were any witnesses to the crime.

“No witnesses,” he told me. “The owner didn’t even see who Mr. London brought into the room. The man next door thought he saw a very pale looking woman in London’s car.”

“You found out who he was?”

“Yeah. Jack ‘Scat’ London. If you want real horror, not the writer’s body, but the quality and style of the slaughter, look at the content here. Turns out his wallet was left in his car. His keys were still in his pocket. No evidence of resistance, no other signs of injury on the corpse other than his fucking head was ripped clean off. See that trail of tongue strokes on that wall?”

“I see it.”

“Whoever did it obviously licked every single drop of blood that splashed on the wall and the floor. Look at the toilet. Somebody actually drank all of Scat’s blood and licked it clean. In a fucking dive motel washroom. What kind of sicko freak would do that?”

“Vampires,” I said.

“Maybe,” I heard. “California cults. End of the world prestidigitators, whatever they call them. Magician’s of the Apocalypse. What are they calling them...one of the Six Mister Smiths or something?”

Before I could say anything he added, “Scat is a well known drug dealer in these parts. He was involved in some real weird shit.”

“What kind of shit we talking about Mr. Oldsmoke? Weirder than vampires?”

“Oh yeah. Ever hear of Windowmaker?”

* * *

The monster was lying down in his cot. It was mid afternoon. I had spent hours being interrogated by indians and chiefs at the station due to his alleged raving. I walked to within arms length of the cell.

“Okay, worm, what’s the deal?”

He turned his head and then sat up on his cot. “Officer Ryan Owens, what are you doing here?”

“There was a murder at Mexi-Casa Motel last night. They figure it happened around five or six. What’s going on?”

“A whole lot of killing going on. I told you.”

I noticed his chin was trembling. He stood up and kept the blanket around him.

“How do you know about the killings?”

“Trust me.”

He was looking chilled and even more pale than when I had apprehended him.

“What do you want?,” I finally asked him.

“I want you to get me out of here. I want out of here yesterday. I can’t survive in this.” He reached out his arms through the cell bars. His long fingernails just brushed at my tie.

“You have no choice. Did you know that the guard you pushed into the wall is dead? Brain damage.”

“I had to do it. It is a matter of survival.”

“Look!,” I shouted. I swiped his pathetic reaching hands away. “Stop it. You’re fucking bull shit. I think the best thing for you is keeping you right in here to wait for Death Row.”

“I can help you stop the next. The next killing.”

I looked into his eyes. I felt a chill and a sense of fear.

“It is going to happen very soon,” he added.

“Who are you, Mr. Smith? Who are you?”

“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you something that will freak you out.”

I turned to walk away and the albino screamed a terrific, piercing cry. It was animal and part monster. I was startled and had to look back. The monster was reaching out a hand. “I’m cold,” he said.

I had no response.

“After the next murder, you will want to talk. You will want it to stop. Tell them not to bring me any dinner, I can’t eat that shit. By then you will see why I can’t stay here, why I am going to die in here.”

“Why is that, Mr. Smith?”

He took the sheets and blanket from the upper bunk and wrapped himself in them. He looked at me and said, “The shivering.”

The words lingered in my mind.

* * *

Alex Coco Bouchard went into the restaurant for a bite. Actually he wanted a piece of ass and the Yellow Submarine was known to port good seamen. He took a table and ruffled through the menu, ordered a hot meatball sub and decided to go to the washroom for the main course. The washroom was downstairs and was situated at the end of a hallway, one washroom, co-ed. Alex entered and there was a woman sitting on the toilet. She was pale, not old, but her hair was bleach white.

“Oh shit. Sorry lady. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

The woman didn’t respond at first. As Alex backed away he heard her say, “I need your help.”

“Pardon me?,” Alex ventured.

“I need your help,” the woman’s voice said.

Alex laughed and asked, “Doing what?”

Her voice was meek and sexy. “I need you to...I need toilet paper.”

Alex laughed even harder but he tried to keep it to himself. “Um. Okay. I’ll get you some toilet paper.” Alex walked up the hallway and passed an anonymous door. He backed up and abracadabra. He reached for a toilet paper roll from the shelf.

He returned to the washroom. “Okay, lady. I’m your hero. I’ll leave it outside the door here.” He bent down and was going to leave it on the floor for her.

“Well I need you to...I need a hand.”

“Lady, I just seen you sitting there and you got both your arms.”

“No,” she cooed, “I need you, your strong hand, to do this for me.”

Alex was starting to get aroused by all this intrigue going on in the basement of the Yellow Submarine. “Well, I do have my Red Cross Emergency First Aid Certificate.” He reached for the door knob. This wasn’t at all what he had expected.

What the hell, he thought as he entered the washroom, if it tastes like fish, it’s a tasty dish!

The young woman smiled at him. Her jaw was large and her hair was white, but she was pretty in her own right. Alex Coco asked, “So, what can I do for you?”

She spread her legs for him. “I need a hand,” she said.

Alex smiled and ripped off the toilet paper wrap. He located the start of the roll and wrapped it around his hand several times.

The woman’s mouth was watering. In her eyes she imagined the contrast of crimson red on white toilet paper.

Alex raised his eyebrows and widened his smile. He started to reach down to wipe her---

As his hand went by, the woman unhinged her jawbone and the muscles rippled on her cheeks. She snapped and clamped onto Alex’s wrist. He started to scream but the woman punched the wind out of him. As he collapsed to the floor, silently, she wrapped her mouth around the severed bunt end of his arm, that five fingered bit she had off and spit out, and started sucking madly.

* * *

“Okay talk.”

I brought a chair with me this time. I unfolded it and sat in it backwards, resting my arms on the back. The monster was in his cot. He did not initially respond.

“You awake there?”

“Yes.”

“You’re shaking, are you cold?”

“No,” said the stranger, “just hungry.”

I looked around and saw a tray of untouched food inside his cage.

“You got food right there.”

The monster was huddled into a ball. He said nothing.

“Another murder. Just like you said. What’s going on?”

“I’m really glad you came by, you know?” The prisoner moved and cautiously sat himself upright. He looked pallid and sick. “Are we ready to talk now?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow another murder will take place. A weird one, just like the others. If you don’t want that to happen, get me out of here. Put me in general population, at least. I can’t live like this. Do you see what’s happening to me?”

He was wrapped in his blankets like a battle victim.

“You’re shivering.”

“Yes, Mr. Owens, I am shivering. And do you know what?...This is nothing. This is just the beginning. Save me.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’m telling you, Officer Owens, it won’t stop. It won’t stop now. The killing has started and you have absolutely no idea what that means. Officer Owens, there will be killings sweeping this city. Then there will be killings sweeping the country. Then onwards. I know, you don’t understand and you can’t imagine. I don’t expect you to. I just need out of here. I’m shivering.”

“I see that. Are you a drug user?”

“No,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

“Your dinner awaits you.” I pointed to the tray.

“I can’t survive on that.”

“Why not!?,” I shouted. “Do you need blood or something?”

It was right there that the dark dawned on me.

The missing blood from each victim confirmed the vampire theory. The washroom of the Yellow Submarine was something else. Alex Bouchard’s body was by far the most immaculate, not a trace of blood. The blood had been drained right out of his left arm, a straw to his heart. Tests conducted on the monster’s hair and saliva samples showed the most shocking bit of evidence to date. The genetic material in the sample’s DNA is foreign. Composite of healthy genes and a mutated strand of superunknown. Saliva and hair samples found in the Mexi-Casa Motel showed similar evidence.

“Who is doing the killing?,” I asked the monster.

“Different murderers. All vampires.”

“Like a cult, or something?”

“No,” the monster told me, “we do it to survive. We need human blood in order to survive. It is the only thing that stops the shivering.”

I was feeling the first numb pangs of fatigue. “Fuck off, Mr. Smith. Fuck you.”

“Don’t believe it. Its just a matter of time before you figure it out. Fuck you too.” The monster returned to his cot. “Not this one, you fucking prick, but the next one...the next killing... Its going to hit close to home, Ryan. You’ll know what I mean. Tomorrow we will talk about a deal. Tomorrow I will see some sunlight for a change.”

The vampire lay down and said no more. His teeth could be heard chattering.

* * *

I waited for a call all night. Planes and stars moved across the sky through my bedroom window. The monster had said there would be... Tonight. I was afraid for my family and watched over them, listening for sounds in the dark. There was nothing save the sound of a Mourning Dove before sun up.

I thought I shouldn’t go to work but I convinced myself that I must have slept. There was a period between three and five which I could not account for and reasoned it to be sleep.

I must have slept. I remember my dream.

I dreamed I entered my own bathroom and found the bodies of my family members piled high like the war’s dead. They were ripped, torn, shredded. There was no blood.

I got up from bed and showered, washed the night’s dust from my face. I had a bad feeling about the day. The telephone didn’t ring at all throughout the night. I phoned into the Station.

“Action? What action?,” asked the voice coming through the telephone wires.

“Any homicides last night?”

“No. I’ll have you know there was a rape and a burglary. Anything else you want to know?”

“No. I guess not. Tell Wilson I’m not coming in. I feel like shit.”

"10-4.”

“Maybe I’ll get some sleep after all.”

* * *

Two blocks away, Ranbdhald Singh Whatever-his-last-name-is, the paperboy, noticed a plain, white van sitting in front of his house. He hopped on his bicycle and wheeled over to the windows. He peered in.

Ranbdhald Singh didn’t see anything strange. It was just someone’s old work van. Shelves, tools, and an arm. It dangled over a shelf. The rest of the body was on the floor, shaking from innervations. Ranbdald thought it was a bad joke. Then a face suddenly appeared in the window, full blown. It was hideous. Singh singed. He screamed and screamed. The back doors of the van opened up. Ranbdald deserted his bicycle and ran to his house. He never looked back. He was too afraid.

Two suspects escaped from the rear of the van and fled on foot. They disappeared into neighbouring back yards.

* * *

In my dream the phone was ringing and I wakened to the same coincidence.

“Hello.”

"You know that homicide you were bragging about?"

I was awakened instantly. “What about it?”

"156 Pluto Avenue."

“Is it April first?”

“One victim, female, about thirty nine. In the back of a plain, white van. We have a witness.”

I flew out of bed. “Who’s the witness?”

“Some kid. A Rabdhald Singh Bhalt-ahh, I can’t pronounce it. Van was parked outside his house when he started on his paper route. He saw something."

I wanted answers quick. I was probably sounding a little pushy. He kept answering the questions without his usual smartass answers so I kept on firing questions. “What did he see?”

"He saw the face of the suspect."

“I’m there.”

"Hold on to your honchos there, stylish. About the victim. Both arms severed. No blood.”

I drifted off and hung up on Boshco. A shiver ran through me.

No blood, I thought. But the murder didn’t match the others. It didn’t take place in a washroom. I knew I had to visit the monster once again. It was a bad day after all.

* * *

“Okay, let’s talk.”

I was in The Spider. Mr. Smith’s corridor was starting to smell. He did not respond. I could see his body trembling.

“Why is your shivering so violent?,” I asked him. He was sitting on his cot. He looked very ill.

“I need blood.”

The horrible taste of blood haunted me once again. I thought about his last victim. “What’s going on, Mr.Smith?”

Mr. Smith looked up at me, his eyes red and fiery.

“I need out,” he said.

“You are facing the chamber, Mr. Smith. You want me to help you and I haven’t heard anything other than you want out. How about you tell me if, where, and when the next murder is, and I will be in a better position to help you.”

Mr. Smith exposed his teeth.

“Ryan Owens,” he said, “the blood extracted from the next victim will be your own blood: Your daughter is the next victim.”

* * *

“You are a fucking degenerate.”

“Listen to me,” the vampire asserted, “I’m deadly serious. You’re gonna listen to me. I belong to a growing race. We are back!...We have returned.”

I wanted to believe he was mad, he was mad, however, there was the body of evidence definitely pointing at blood sucking methods in murder. “What do you mean you have returned? From where?”

“We have returned from the Dead One. The one with the wooden stake in his heart. We are his clones. The Dead One lives!”

There was madness and reality. I wanted to leave and yet, I was drawn to the monster’s words.

“Vampires are being cloned, my friend. They are being genetically manipulated to live in daylight. You are able to see our refections in mirrors, we eat garlic if we like it, we wear crucifixes around our necks, they don’t affect us. Our teeth have been altered to avoid suspicion, otherwise, we are just like you.”

I wasn’t sure of what to make of this story. It was obviously an unbalanced tale from a maniac. Still.

“If you are what you say you are, who is doing it? Who has created this---

monster

---vampirism?”

“We ourselves are creating it. At first it was one man, the Dead One. The vampire’s heart was severed from his black soul and passed on through the centuries by the early conspirators of the Apocalypse. Until one day, a lowly scientist took the dried, black jewel and extracted genetic information from it. The Edinborough Sheep success was an investment to many other experiments. It was done! It can be done and we are doing it. To ourselves. I am the result of a cloned clone’s clones. Each generation is genetically manipulated to better survive; like you and me. Darwinism, right? Only we have come out of the darkness from the Dead One’s heart. Look what’s happening here,” the vampire’s haunted voice chattered, “we survive in sunlight. We live just like you. We’re just like you. We are a growing number. Its the end of the world.”

“WHY DID YOU SAY MY DAUGHTER!?” The shout rang in the hollow corridor. I felt like shooting the monster down.

“She’s next because I set it up. Killing is a legitimate business for me and others like me. Where do you think missing persons go? Missing children.”

“You can eat shit. That’s what you fucking beasts can do.”

“I deal blood.”

“You will rot in hell!” I threw my chair to the wall and it rattled and clamoured. I started walking away once again, confused.

“Go… entertain yourself,” I heard him say. “There’s killing going on.”

* * *

I drove home to my family. Fatigue was finally taking over. I bought a coffee and thought of the white coffee from The Creative Cafe. Coffee was the only thing keeping me alive. I had not had anything substantial to eat since the day in the park.

A call came through the radio.

"Ryan? Listen, its me, Johnson. Were you at the crime scene on Pluto Avenue?"

“No, why?”

"We found a wallet size picture of your daughter in the white van. Was your wife here taking pictures?...”

The voice droned out. I saw red. The red of blood.

"Ryan? You there?"

I broke every moving violation written. It didn’t matter. By the time I got home I was a box of nerves. “Honey! Where’s Violet?”

“In her room, why?”

“We have to go away for a few days. We must leave immediately. Mr. Smith has threatened us.”

“What are you talking about?,” Officer Owens, the police photographer, said.

“You know those pictures you were taking at Cage Park? The suspect from that crime scene, Mr. Smith, said Violet will be the next victim. He told me Violet will be murdered by vampires. So, we are going to Denver.”

I ran up the stairs and never before felt so happy to see her. My daughter, Violet. My wife, Lori, was right behind me.

“Pack her some things,” I said to Lori as I picked Violet up and hugged her.

Lori answered back, “Are you crazy? What’s going on?”

“Mr. Smith. The man arrested for the Cage Park murder has also predicted the Mexi-Casa murder, the Yellow Submarine murder, and the murder on Pluto. Each time he was correct. He told me the next one would be a violent one...like the others.” I was gesturing to my wife, directing her toward my daughter.

Lori understood what I meant. Violent one meant Violet.

“How?” Lori wasn’t numb.

“He’s a---” I cut myself off.

Vampire.

“A psychotic.”

Lori said, “He’s in prison.”

I sent Violet into the bathroom to collect her toiletry stuff. When she shut the door, I whispered, “There was a picture of Violet in the van where the murder took place on Pluto Avenue. Mr. Smith predicted the murder will happen. He predicted all of them. He said Violet was next and Johnson informed me that forensics found a photo of Violet in the van.”

“Oh God...Do you believe him?”

“Strike two, ball three. It doesn’t matter what I believe, what matters is eliminating the possibility and the odds. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re a mess. You should get some sleep.”

Drive.

* * *

I imagined the monster lying in his cot in the prison cell. He was shivering terribly. He was moaning and cringing.

“Try and get her now, devilshit! Try now deadtooth. Come on, try...” I shouted to the beast.

I imagined Mr. Smith suddenly stop shivering for a moment. He turned his neck and then slowly sat up, looking at me. The shivering returned. When he stood up, his body was shaking violently. “Well, Ryan Owens, you are back.”

“I’m back.”

“Yes. It’s been two weeks. Two whole weeks. I did you a favour, now you do me one. Get me out of here or it never stops. You missed the balehook murder out near City Hall while you were away. Two in Los Angeles Airport. Inside the Airport and they are getting away with it. All those murders and I’m the only suspect. I’m the only one you could catch because I didn’t ever know the shivering could get this bad. The shivering never stops. I would never have let you arrest me. My body is on fire. I feel like I am burning but I can’t stop shivering.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Get me out of this place!”

“I can’t!”

* * *

I did manage to visit Mr. Smith two weeks later. Los Angeles was in a panic due to the rash of eerie murders. The City of Angels was becoming the City of the Angel of Death. People were not taking to the streets for fear of being murdered and drained of their blood. I had saved my wife and daughter...my daughter. The rest of L.A. and the rest of the world was in still peril.

I entered the gates of Grant Correctional Institute and made my way to the Spider. The more I thought about the men at the end of each corridor, the more I became frightened. Six people, each perfectly anonymous, each insane to perfection, each with their own profound reality decaying society. Six Mister Smiths. I saw the monster at the end of Cell Hall 3.

The leg that guides the web, I thought.

Mr. Smith was standing up with his arms dangling over the cell bars. He was smiling his huge yellow teeth.

“You stopped shivering,” I said.

“Yeah. It feels great. Intoxicating.”

“You killed another guard.”

“I caught his wrist when he was reaching for my food tray. I had what we vampires like to call a ‘shake.’ His arm is a straw and actually, they do shake. Get it? I feel alive. Refreshed. How about you, Mr. Owens? How was your little trip to Denver?”

I thought I would just kill him. I reached for my gun and remembered I was not allowed to enter the prison with it. “Why do you say Denver?”

The monster looked at me. “I have money. I bought information a long time ago on you. I could have your daughter picked off anytime. But you know I won’t do that. I’m not that kind of vampire. Are you ready to talk business?”

“I’m ready.”

“I want sunlight. I want to feel it on my face.”

I stood there, staring at him for a long time. Staring quietly, enraged. The latch on the big steel door clanged at the end of the corridor. A steel cage was rolled toward the prison cell.

I didn’t look. I had arranged it. “Here it is, Mr. Smith. You’re wish is my command.”

The monster was delighted and laughed a deep, heavy laugh.

They docked the mobile cage to the prison cell and then unlocked the cell door. Mr. Smith entered the cage and then the cage door slid shut. They detached the cage from the prison cell. “Yeah! Its about time, Owens. You know it. Long overdue. Yeah! Woo!” His calls echoed as he was wheeled down the corridor. “Next time I want a seat in here. A soft, red velvety one. Like a throne.”

“Don’t push your luck,” I said as I walked along beside the cage.

“I ain’t pushing anything. Demands are like dollars and sense, Mr. Owens; the more you earn, the more you create. Unfortunately, I will not be suffering alone. When the shivering starts again, the City of Angels will begin to fall. You cannot stop it. The end of the world is near.”

“If I can’t stop it, why are we wasting our time taking you out on this lovely day trip.”

“To stop some killings. You want to save lives, don’t you? You want to fight it out, right? Well, here I am. We’ll work together on this. I think next time, in addition to the throne, I want to be carried on the shoulders of men. I don’t mind this cage at all. It’s quite safe in here from all those crazies.” The doors opened and sunlight blasted glory and life. “No, I don’t mind this cage at all.”

I didn’t feel the sunlight. I was starting to shiver.

Epilogue

I did not put the window down for a long, long time. When I suddenly became aware that Oliver was collapsed on the floor, I went to him and stared at his corpse. I kicked him gently. He was a little stiff and very pale. Definately dead and starting to smell. There was no more for him, days ago.

In his hour of need I had abandoned him and left him to die and rot. How many days had it been since I arrived here? The entire police force would be searching for me. I knew I was addicted. I squeezed the window in my fist and felt it penetrate my hand. I screamed as blood escaped my clenched fist. In the distance the city beeped and hummed. It buzzed. I ran off into the hall and down the greasy stairs. Something had taken over me; something powerful from the fabulous piece of shiny glass. My blood was on it; it was in my blood. I ran blindly, swiping my own blood off of the glass, looking hard into the window. In my mind I could almost hear Oliver’s voice saying…

the window is killing me.