Avenue X - Nancy A. Collins - V1

This book represents a watershed for me. While it is not my first collection of short fiction, it is my maiden voyage into the world of self-publishing. For someone who has made her living largely by following the traditional professional literary scenario (I write, a publisher pays me an advance, and, hey-presto, a book miraculously appears anywhere from six months to two years later), I find myself writing this introduction with feelings of excitement and trepidation.

I have long admired those creators who, weary of the caprices of major publishing houses, had the gumption to strike out on their own. However, until recently, following in their footsteps was not an option for me, as the price of self-publishing can be prohibitively expensive. But then came the computer, electronic typesetting, and the concept of Print On Demand publishing, and suddenly self-publishing was a far more viable alternative than ever before. Thus, with a little on-line research and a few phone calls for cross-references, Scrapple Press was born.

As for the stories themselves, I picked those that have either never been reprinted before or are those that represent the various aspects of my fictive styles. Those of you who only know me from my Sonja Blue series will probably be surprised to discover that I've also written weird westerns, Lovecraftian pastiches, tall tales and suspense stories. But don't worry—I've included a Sonja Blue story, to keep everyone happy.

Should Avenue X And Other Dark Streets prove successful (i.e. I don't lose my shirt), I will continue to self-publish in this format as it enables me to place many of my novels back into print in affordable editions that are readily accessible to the reading public. And, in the end, what is the point of being an author when your books are all out of print?

In closing I would like to thank my husband, Joe, for supporting me in the decision to self-publish; Ardath Mayhar for her frank discussion about the pros and cons of doing it yourself and her recommendations on which services to use; Dan Henderson for allowing me to use his amazing artwork for the cover of this book: my dog. Scrapple, for allowing me to name my imprint after him: and, lastly, the good people at Xlibris for helping to make Scrapple Press a reality.

The Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra V Tryphaeana, entered the suite of rooms belonging to her third daughter and name sake, glancing about apprehensively. It was the first time she had set foot in her child's private chambers. The Queen and her husband-brother, Ptolemy XII Auletes, lived in a different wing of the royal palace, far removed from the quarters of the princes and princesses, separated from their children by, it seemed, far more than physical space.

The Queen was quite dismayed to find her daughter's suite decorated with pottery, fabrics, and statuary of native design. To her shock, there was what looked to be a shrine to the gods Re and Isis beside the one dedicated to Serapis, the household god of the Ptolemies.

A native servant girl appeared, blocking the Queen's entrance to her daughter's bed chamber. The servant, little more than a child herself, raised her hands to show that admittance was off-limits. The Queen scowled, her eyes darkening.

"How dare you! Don't you know who I am?!? There is no room in this palace forbidden to me!"

The servant girl, cowed by the Queen's indignation, said something in Egyptian, which provoked the Queen even further. "Hades take you. wretch!" she spat, pushing the frightened child aside. "Speak Greek if you have something to say, not that barbaric tongue of yours!"

The decor of her daughter's sleeping chamber was similar to that of its sitting room, except that the room was dominated by a large gilded bed. swathed by finely woven linens and silks to keep biting insects from feeding on royal blood. It was there she found her daughter sprawled face-down, her sobs muffled by a pillow.

Upon seeing her child in such a state, the Queen felt her anger fade, but she knew she could not let what had transpired at the dinner table go unpunished. It was important for her daughter to understand the duties her position demanded of her.

Cleopatra VII stalled, rolling over to stare at the Queen with swollen, tear-reddened eyes.

The Queen smiled gently as she settled herself onto the corner of the bed. resting one hand on her daughter's young shoulder. "'You needn't look so surprised, my sweet. I just wanted to see if you were feeling well."

The ten-year-old princess' features took on a wariness the Queen found disconcertingly adult. "You know perfectly well how I feel, mother! So does father! I'm not sick, if that's what you're suggesting!"

"Are you sure, my pet? After all, what you said at dinner sounded more like the notions born of fever, not a well mind—"

"I m not sick! I just don't want to marry Ptolemy! He's my brother!" Cleopatra punched the pillow for emphasis.

"But you and father are different! He's your demi-brother! Besides, he's the same age as you—even older!"

"True, we had separate mothers. Mine was the Queen, his a concubine—but I don't see how that has anything to do with you not wanting to marry Ptolemy."

"He's too young! He's four years old! When I'm eighteen, he'll only be twelve! Besides, I'm not the oldest daughter! Why aren't you making Berenice marry him?"

"Because Berenice is ten years older than Ptolemy. By the time your brother would be able to sire an heir, Berenice would be too old to safely bear one. However, she is useful to the House of Ptolemy in other ways. Your father's already making plans to marry her to one of King Mithradates of Pontus' sons."

Cleopatra could not contain her disgust. "Mithradates!?! But father hates him! The Pontics are the ones who kidnapped him and Uncle Alexander and held them for ransom to the Romans!"

"I know how your father feels about the Pontics, young lady! But that still doesn't exempt you from your duties as princess!"

"But all our grandfathers since him did," the Queen countered. "And as distasteful as you might feel it to be, it is the one concession the Ptolemies have made to the culture of this land. Since you are so fascinated by their barbaric language and religious practices, I thought you, of all my children, would have the fewest qualms as to following the rituals of the ancient pharaohs."

"It's just that Ptolemy is such a baby! And he's cross-eyed! Why does it have to be me?"

A flicker of sadness crossed the Queen's eyes. "Because your older sister, Cleopatra VI, died too young. Had she not trod upon the asp in the garden that day, who knows what the Fates would have bestowed upon you? I was carrying you in my belly when it happened, just as I now carry my latest child." The Queen touched her gently swelling stomach. "Her nurse brought her limp little body into the palace, so that she might die in my arms. I then had the same nurse killed and entombed alongside her, so she would not go into the afterlife unattended. I prayed then to Hera that my unborn child would be a girl, to replace the one I had lost. I know it was wicked of me to pray for a daughter when my husband so desperately needed an heir, but I was weak. And when you were born, I knew the gods had heard my prayers and I named you in honor of the daughter lost to me."

''She and Ptolemy are twins. While marrying brother to sister is one thing, marrying twin to twin is still another! It would be like wedding self to self. Such unions breed monsters."

"But Geb and Nut were twin brother and sister, and their children were Osiris and Isis."

"And of what importance are barbarian gods to our family?" the Queen scowled. "And speaking of which, your father and I do not approve of your learning Egyptian! It's unbecoming for one of your station to speak such a crude tongue! Besides, I don't like it when you talk to the servants. I always feel you're conspiring with them!"

The Queen got to her feet, her features rigid with displeasure. "Hear me now, young lady! I will tolerate no more foolishness, even if you are the daughter of my blood! I may be the Queen of the Egyptians, but they are certainly not 'my' people. In the three hundred years since our illustrious forefather, the great Ptolemy, came to this land, our family has yet to allow native blood into its lineage. We are Macedonians, not Egyptians. And with your marriage to your brother, the future king, so shall it remain! You should feel honored, daughter; you are to be the Queen of Egypt! Your father could have offered me no greater tribute than to make me his queen!"

"But father can't rule without you. You're the full-blooded heir to the throne, not him! He was born of a slave, not a member of the royal family; without you, he would be deposed by his enemies."

"Where have you heard such treason? All Egypt loves your father!" The Queen's eyes blazed with anger and Cleopatra inwardly cringed. Her mother Avas indeed formidable when enraged. But Cleopatra was very much her mother's child, and she was not about to back down. She might be trapped by her station, but that did not mean she had to surrender to destiny without a fight.

"They say he's a puppet to the Romans—that he will make Egypt a protectorate of their empire for fear of losing his hold on the throne! That's why he surrendered Cyprus to them! They say that's why he's going to Rome—to bribe Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus into backing him against his enemies in Alexandria!"

She was surprised when her mother slapped her. Her cheek stung and glowed red as an ember, but she refused to cry. She stared up the Queen, who looked as if she wanted desperately to vomit. She had dared to speak the truth—something rarely uttered aloud amongst members of the royal family. After a long pause the Queen finally spoke—her voice knotted tighter than a noose.

"You are to marry your brother, Ptolemy XII Theos Philopator. There will be no further discussion concerning this matter, just as there is no discussing whether the sun will rise in the morning. And I expect those Egyptian idols to be disposed of immediately. Good night, Princess Cleopatra."

Cleopatra waited until her mother had left the suite before bursting into angry tears. She did not want to give the Queen the satisfaction of knowing how upset she truly was. It just wasn't fair! Berenice was going to be married to a handsome prince, while she was stuck with stupid, funny-looking cry-baby Ptolemy! She rolled off the bed and stomped into the sitting room, motioning curtly for her servants to leave her. It was not fitting that slaves see the tears of a princess.

Dusk had turned into early evening, although the moon had yet to make its climb across Alexandria's night sky, the torches that lit the royal gardens outside her window cast a dim, flickering light, filling the room with febrile shadows. She stood before the small, ornately-carved table that housed her shrine to the god Re and the goddess Isis.

Although she was by blood and tradition Macedonian, Cleopatra had been raised by her Egyptian nursemaid, not her biological mother. This was hardly unusual—it was common practice for royal children of all kingdoms to he farmed out to wet-nurses, to protect their mothers from child-bed sickness and to facilitate rapid replacement, should infant mortality strike. Still, the Queen had been far from attentive to the little princess. Even though she had named her in memory of her lost daughter, Cleopatra knew that her mother still grieved and, for some reason, seemed to hold her responsible for her elder sister's untimely death. As she knew from past experience, and this evening's argument had so roughly proven, she could expect no help from the Queen in thwarting her father's plans for her future.

Her alienation from her mother's affections had forged a bond between the tiny princess and her Egyptian nurse, which resulted in her learning the Egyptian language and hieroglyphs and her interest in their ancient pantheon of beast-headed gods. Her father snubbed his people's deities because they resembled animals, not humans, unlike the gods of his forefathers. Some, like Re, were simply disembodied body-parts. Cleopatra knew he was a fool to dismiss the ancient lords of Karnak and Thebes. There was power in their mummified hands—for those brave enough to use it.

Cleopatra took a cone of incense and placed it onto the back of a bronze burner mafic to resemble a scarab. After lighting the incense, she knelt before the shrine she had erected, raising her hands in supplication. The idol of Re showed the solar god as a squatting man with the head of a falcon, the golden disc of the sun balanced atop his head. In one hand he held the Ma'at, the solitary feather that symbolized Truth. Beside him stood a small statuette of Isis, carved from a single piece of ivory, the eyes outlined with kohl from the princess' own paint-box. In the goddess' right hand she held a tiny ankh—the Egyptian symbol of life after death.

"Oh, great Re, you of the unblinking eye. I beg you: hear my prayers. Oh, mighty Isis. sister-wife of the eternal Osiris, mother to the glorious Horus, heed my words. Help me to find my true love, just as you sought for the body of your beloved along the banks of the Nile."

She repeated the prayer a dozen times, yet the idols showed no signs of springing to life or offering auguries. She repeated the prayer another dozen times, but still the graven images remained mute. Dispirited, the young princess returned to her bed chamber, where she quietly cried herself to sleep.

She started awake with a gasp, uncertain whether the voice she'd heard calling her name e was actual or one born of her dreams. She lay on her back, staring at the night-shadows through the canopy of insect netting that covered her bed. Sometime after she had cried herself to sleep, her servants had come in and changed her out of her clothes and into a sleeping robe and tucked her in. She was so accustomed to being physically attended to she no longer woke when they administered to her. Still, she was certain that whoever—
or whatever—had called her name was still in the room. And whoever it was, he or she was certainly not a slave.

"Who's there?" she whispered, trying not to sound frightened. "Answer me or I will call the guards and have them take your head!"

"There is no need for such threats, little princess—empty though they may be."

The intruder was suddenly there, emerging from the darkness at the foot of her bed as sudden and quiet as blood from a wound. Cleopatra gasped aloud at the sight of the strange figure, but more out of amazement than fear.

Whoever this pale, ruby-eyed stranger might be, it was clear from his elaborate dress that he was far from common-born, as he was outfitted in a manner unseen since the Middle Kingdom, over a thousand years past. He wore a transparent outer skirt of fine, unbleached linen over a loin cloth, the hem chased with golden thread. Nude from the waist up, his hairless alabaster-white chest was decorated by a heavy pectoral made of solid gold in the image of a vulture clutching the sun in its claws. On his feet were sandals decorated with enamel and semi-precious stones. His long dark hair fell past his shoulders and he wore a Horus lock at his right temple, braided with a blood-red ribbon. Atop his head he wore a claft, the ceremonial headdress of the Great Sphinx, a golden asp resting on his brow.

"My, you are a brave one, aren't you?" the stranger smiled, his eyes gleaming like new wine in the moonlight. "The auguries were correct. You will serve us well—provided yon survive your childhood, that is."

"I asked you your name!" Cleopatra struggled to keep the fear out of her voice as she sat up, clutching her bedclothes to her chest. "I am to be queen—and I expect an answer!"

The stranger's smiled widened, although not enough to show his teeth. "I am called Sek. And I am here in response to your prayers."

Sek nodded, motioning with a milk-pale finger in the direction of the vanished sun. "The gods in Heliopolis heard your prayers and sent me to help counsel you."

"Not as you understand the word. Once I was a living man—a prince of ancient Thebes. Now I am a messenger in the service of Re."

"Oh." Cleopatra looked somewhat disappointed. "I was hoping you were a god. Why didn't Re come himself?"

Sek shook his head, scowling at her blasphemy. "If Re was to appear to a mortal—even a princess as noble as yourself—the power of his glory would reduce you to cinders within a heartbeat, as Zeus inadvertently destroyed Semele, mother of Dionysus."

Sek shrugged indifferently. "When one is dead, one knows all things—even the gods of the conquerors."

"The eye of Re sees more than one path. It sees the end of all journeys, even those unmade."

"Forgive me, princess. I do not mean to be oblique. What I meant to say is that there are numerous futures, as there are spokes on a wheel. The trick is to pick the correct path and avoid the ones that lead to emptiness or despair."

"Yes. But it will be a marriage in name only—true love will come to you under the sign of the wolf."

The princess made a face as if smelling something bad. "A Roman? My true love will be a Roman?!?"

"Not just any Roman, sweet princess—but the greatest son born of the Republic. Together, you will unite East with West and rule an empire undreamed of since Alexander! From your union shall emerge a new race of pharaohs, who will build monuments to your glory that will put the Great Sphinx to shame! At least, that is what the future holds in store for you, provided you are willing to make sacrifices."

"B-blood?" Cleopatra echoed, her demeanor suddenly that of a ten-year-old girl, not a haughty princess.

"No other sacrifice is worthy of gods," Sek explained. "If you wish to enjoy the protection and council of Re the All-Seeing, it is necessary that a human sacrifice be made to him at the dark of the moon."

"But Re is a sun-god—why must the sacrifices take place in the dead of night?"

"While Re spends the day traveling the skies, observing all that transpires in the mortal world, it is only during the night that the wisdom gained during his ride across the heavens can he learned. Re speaks to those he favors in their dreams, but to receive these dreams requires the spilling of human blood. All you need do is have a slave sleep at the foot of your bed and I will escort them to where Re's priests shall attend to them and send them to their god in the proper manner."

He held up a necklace from which dangled a tiny bronze asp. "Have them wear this, so that I might recognize them as sacrifices." With that, he dropped the bauble onto the foot of the bed. As he turned to go, the dead prince lifted a hand in blessing. "You have been given the chance to steer your destiny by the foresight of Egypt's gods, Cleopatra. Choose wisely." And then he was gone as quickly as he had appeared, swallowed by the shadows that filled the corners of the room.

When Cleopatra woke that next morning, she remembered the strange dream of the pale stranger and the prophecy he made of her finding true love in the arms of a Roman. It was almost preposterous enough to make her laugh—except for the necklace she found curled on the foot of her bed. It was a black silken cord, from which dangled a bronze asp.

She didn't know whether to be frightened or excited, so she hid the thing in an unguent jar and placed it under a loose flagstone in the corner of her room.

"Why aren't you crying?" Arsinoe asked in between her own sniffles. "Mother's dead and you're not even trying to be sad!"

Cleopatra glanced over at her four-year-old sister, who sat on a wooden stool painted gold and fashioned to resemble the royal throne of the Ptolemies. The play-throne was one of several elaborate toys littering the royal nursery Arsinoe inhabited with her twin, Ptolemy XIII.

"Things are different now! Father's in Rome, not here. Berenice is the queen now, not mother! Berenice says father is betraying Egypt to the Romans! She won't let him be king anymore."

"Berenice is the queen! She said Ptolemy would be my husband!" Arsinoe made a face and stuck her tongue out at her older sister. "You may be ten, but Berenice is fourteen! She knows more than you!"

Cleopatra looked away from her younger sister. Arsinoe was the same age as Ptolemy XIII, but was far more intelligent—and aggressive—than her twin brother. And now that their mother was gone—dead of child-bed fever from delivering her sixth and final child, Ptolemy XIV—Arsinoe was beginning to test her kitten's claws, challenging Cleopatra for power.

Princess Cleopatra hurried down the corridor towards the throne room. The halls echoed with the sounds of Roman legionnaires cursing, the clatter of shield on sword, and the screams of the dying. Four years had passed and now father was home.

A tall, burly figure lurched out of the shadows, grabbing the princess roughly by her upper arm. It was a Roman, smelling of rank sweat and worn leather, his eyes blazing with battle fever. In one hand he held a naked short sword, its blade wet with blood. Cleopatra was so terrified she could not find the voice to scream.

"Here she is, sir!" the Roman boomed, dragging the frightened girl in the direction of an officer.

"Unhand her, you fool!" snapped the commander. "It's the queen we want! She's just a princess!"

Chagrined, the legionnaire let go of Cleopatra as if she'd suddenly metamorphosed into a scorpion. "I'm sorry, Commander Antony! I didn't realize—!"

"Of that I have no doubt, Silanus!" Commander Marc Antony replied tartly. He turned and smiled as soothingly as he could to the trembling girl before him. His Macedonian was flawless. "A thousand pardons, princess! Silanus is a good soldier—if somewhat overzealous in some matters! I'll have one of my men see that you're safely escorted to your father's side."

Cleopatra stared up at the handsome soldier towering over her, too surprised to do more than nod her understanding. Within seconds he had disappeared into the swirling smoke and chaos of the palace coup, leaving her with one of his retainers. As she was taken to her father, she realized it had been four years since she had been told her future love lay in the arms of a Roman. Cleopatra wondered if it might not be with one as dashing and handsome as the young officer who had so gallantly come to her aide.

Ptolemy XII Auletes was seated on the throne he had vacated four years before, the horsehair flail and scepter of his office once more in his hands. Before him lay prostrate the entire royal court, including his eight-year-old son Ptolemy XIII and Arsinoe, and the four-year-old son he'd never seen, Ptolemy XIV. Cleopatra could not see Berenice anywhere.

When Auletes saw Cleopatra, he smiled and held out his hand to her. "Come, my daughter. Come sit by your father's side. I have missed you, my child."

Cleopatra knelt before her father, and although she knew she had nothing to fear, she could not help but tremble. After four years of civil war with his eldest daughter, Auletes had succeeded in bribing Aulus Gabinius, lieutenant of the Great Pompey, into supporting his return to Egypt. And now the time had come for those had opposed his rule to pay.

"She will be with us soon, my child—ah! Here she comes now!" Auletes gestured with his flail.

The Roman soldier who had so roughly grabbed Cleopatra was striding towards the throne, picking his way through the field of prostrate courtiers. In one hand he held his bloody sword—
and in the other Berenice's head, still dripping gore from its neck.

Cleopatra quickly looked away, but found herself meeting Arsinoe's eyes. The eight-year-old stared at her older sister with an intensity that transcended mere sibling rivalry. Cleopatra could not help but smile as she thought to herself: I told you not to become used to Berenice being queen. I told you.

"You are to marry your brother Ptolemy in a fortnight, my child," Auletes announced to his daughter over a meal of crocodile eggs and hippopotamus steak.

Auletes lifted an eyebrow and regarded his daughter intently. "I am surprised, my dear. I suspected to hear you railing against the match."

"You have been away a long time, father," Cleopatra replied evenly. "Your memory of me is that of a ten-year-old child throwing a temper tantrum because she could not have her way. I am almost fifteen years old now—I am a woman. And I have come to realize you and mother were right—I must accept my responsibility as queen."

Auletes eyes saddened at the mention of his wife. "It grieves me that I was not here with your mother when she died. You must believe that, Cleopatra. I loved her dearly. She was my sister, wife, and queen. Perhaps that she died delivering a half-wit is my punishment for surrendering Cyprus to Rome."

He glanced up from his plate at his daughter, his demeanor brightening somewhat. "Child, you know as well as I that Ptolemy is not strong enough to plot Egypt's fate. Were that yon were born a man, then I could die secure knowing I had a son worthy of the Ptolemy name to carry on! All I ask of you, child, is that you keep Rome from swallowing us whole. The wolf of the Tiber is a hungry beast, intent on devouring the world, if it can. While it is true that I promised great riches to h Caesar and Pompey so that they would reinstate me on the throne, that does not mean Rome has the right to interfere in the affairs of Egypt! We are still a powerful, independent kingdom—and I want you to swear to me that you will never allow Rome to annex Egypt, as it has done with so many of its adversaries over the years."

Cleopatra took her father's aged hand in hers, squeezing it gently. "Have no fear, father. No such fate shall ever befall Egypt as long as I and my children draw breath."

"It does my old heart good to hear you speak such words, my dear," Auletes sighed. "But what is this I hear of your handmaiden disappearing?"

Cleopatra's smile flickered for a moment, then reappeared. "Not disappeared, father. Dismissed. Her mother died of the fever, leaving several young sisters and brothers behind. I gave Asma her freedom so she might raise them."

"Cleopatra, you are far too soft-hearted when it comes to your slave-girls," Auletes sighed, shaking his head in admonishment. "You treat them far too kindly than they deserve."

Cleopatra watched impassively as the golden sarcophagus containing the remains of her father, King Ptolemy XII Theos Philopater Philadelphia Neos Dionysos Auletes. was sealed away in its marble tomb. Although the Ptolemies prided themselves in remaining aloof from the people they had ruled since the days of Alexander the Great, they had whole-heartedlv embraced the old pharaoh's burial rituals. Although barely eighteen, Cleopatra had already approved the plans of her own tomb. And although she had been married for over three years, the fact her tomb had no place for a husband's bones spoke much about the state of her marriage.

She was but fifteen, Ptolemy XIII only nine, when they were wed. Although Cleopatra's desires were those of a normal, healthy young woman, as far as Ptolemy was concerned bed was a place to play with his toys. Frustrated, Cleopatra had been forced into a celibate life, waiting for the day her husband-brother would be old enough to discover his manhood. However, now that the boy was finally entering puberty, he seemed far more interested in spending his seed with his twin, Arsinoe, and not his legal wife. Auletes had repeatedly scolded his son about neglecting Cleopatra, but the youth had fallen under the influence of Pothinus, a particularly loathsome eunuch, and ignored his father's request that he sire a legal heir as soon as possible.

Since his return from Rome, Cleopatra had served as Auletes' queen, as the ancient traditions of their adopted people demanded that a man and woman should rule side-by-side, in honor of the gods Osiris and Isis. Now Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopater was the king, and as she pretended to listen as the priests of Serapis recited the prayers for the dead, she watched Pothinus stroking the boy-king's hair and whispering in his ear. She did not need to hear the eunuch's words to know he plotted against her. But as to the nature of his plans—well, that too could be divined.

Cleopatra's gaze fell on the young slave beside her, tending the jug of water should the royal thirst require slaking. What was his name again? Naeem? Nahir? Little matter. Come the evening she would present the lad with a small token of appreciation for his loyal service—a necklace in the shape of an asp—and give him the honor of sleeping at the foot of her bed. What greater honor could a slave ask?

Cleopatra rose from the bed, careful not to disturb Caesar. Her bare feet glided across the rug that, hours before, had hidden her from her brother's soldiers. As she looked out at the night-garden, she reflected on all that had happened in the three years since her father's death.

Shortly after Auletes' death the surviving members of the Roman Triumvirate, Caesar and Pompey, had a falling out. Ptolemy XIII, counseled by his pet eunuch, had chosen to help Pompey by providing him with ships and troops. Cleopatra, who, even without her gift from Re, was a far more astute politician than any of the men in the court, had quarreled mightily with her co-ruler over his decision. The upshot of which was Ptolemy ordered her expelled from Egypt.

Lucky to escape with her life, the exiled queen promptly set about raising an Arab army in the northeast frontier. It was then that Pompey the Great—fleeing his defeat at Pharsalus—arrived, seeking refuge and expecting to be welcomed with open arms as an ally of the king. Ptolemy marched down to the coast, ostensibly to welcome the Roman general, but he and his counselors had chosen not to risk offending the victorious Caesar. Pompey was executed within moments of setting foot on Egyptian soil. Shortly thereafter Julius Caesar arrived, seeking his enemy. But the great general had not been overjoyed when Pompey's head had been placed before his feet. And it was in so sorely misunderstanding Caesar that Ptolemy and his clique had made their fatal mistake—as Cleopatra had known all along they would. Caesar was a far cry from the fifteen-year-old king. Although he had hunted Pompey as one would a wild boar, he had not desired to disgrace his former son-in-law in death. It was the Roman way to offer men of noble mien the honorable solution of suicide. Ptolemy, however, had assumed Caesar would want Pompey's head to ride upon a pike when he returned to Rome to celebrate his triumph. But as it turned out, Caesar was far from eager to return to his homeland. He had marshaled a mighty army to come to Egypt and put his enemy to rest once and for all. But since Pompey was dead, he had to do something with his legions. So he elected to stay and put an end to the civil war between brother and sister so that he could be paid what their late father owed him, thereby paying off troops that would otherwise return to Rome empty-handed and more than a little angry. Having arrived in Alexandria and seized the palace quarter, making the Princess Arsinoe and Prince Ptolemy XIV his captives, Caesar ordered the warring the factions to submit to his arbitration. Grudgingly, Ptolemy had left his army and traveled to Alexandria in the company of Pothius. However, he left strict orders with his troops that should his sister try to make her way to Alexandria, she was to be seized and killed.

But as Sek had warned her of her brother's treachery, Cleopatra decided to smuggle herself into the palace by hiding within a Persian carpet that was intended as a present for Caesar. And so the twenty-one year-old queen of Egypt presented herself to the fifty-one year old Roman dictator, rising at his feet clad in a diaphanous gown and the finest of her jewelry. Needless to say, Caesar had been impressed. He had been even more impressed when the Queen of Egypt proved herself to be a virgin.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the bloody stain on the bedclothes that marked her deflowering, then smiled to herself as she imagined the look on her brother-husband's face come the morning when he found her already in Caesar's presence.

She studied the aging warrior's sleeping face, and remembered the promise that Re's messenger had made to her over a decade ago—that she would find her true love with the Republic's greatest son, and that her Roman lover would make her the queen of queens. Surely who else could he have meant but Caesar, the undisputed ruler of the Roman Republic, soon to be named its emperor? Still, Cleopatra felt a dissatisfaction tugging at her heart. True, Caesar was indeed dynamic—he was even attractive, in that way that power makes even the homeliest men desirable.

And it was evident by his love-making that Caesar certainly knew what pleased the ladies. But there was something about him that failed to make her heart race and her breath grow shallow, as she had always imagined it would when she finally met her true love.

Perhaps she should call one of the slave girls and have her sleep at the fool of the bed—?

She shook her head. Not with Caesar here. That would be too much of a risk to take. Plus, she had discovered over the years that often Re's prophecies were as obscure as they were useful. Many times they were so vague that she had only a general idea of which of destiny's paths was the safest to tread. And, sometimes, as with the death of her mother and Berenice's execution, the future she glimpsed was too painful and personal. Sometimes it was best to trust to her own instincts which, as her father had said, were far sharper than most men's. Besides, she did not need the help of the gods to tell her that Julius Caesar would be more than willing to settle the differences between herself and her brother-king to her satisfaction.

"Hurry, child! Hurry!" Cleopatra gasped as she dragged her child to the awaiting boat.

"But, mother," Caesarion protested. "Why are we leaving in the middle of the night? Where is father?"

"You—your father is unable to come with us," Cleopatra explained, trying her best to control the tears welling in her eyes. It would not do for the boy to see her cry just yet. Better he not know his father's fate until it had come about.

Three-year-old Caesarion glanced at fifteen year old Ptolemy XIV. Although Ptolemy was married to his mother, and was therefore his stepfather, Caesarion thought of him as his uncle and nothing more. His real father was Julius Caesar.

Ptolemy smiled vacantly at his nephew and pointed at the harbor. "Boat," the King of Egypt said, then clapped his hands, pleased with himself.

Caesarion had no real memory of Egypt, as he had come to Rome when he was little more than an infant. Caesar had commemorated the arrival of his mistress by dedicating a golden statue of her and his newborn son in the temple of Venus Genetrix—a far grander greeting than the one Aunt Arsinoe had received, dragged behind his chariot in chains after he had helped destroy Ptolemy XIII's troops.

His father had placed all three of them, Caesarion, Cleopatra, and Ptolemy, in one of his villas on the Tiber, outside the walls of Rome, and he often came there to get away from what he called the "noise and schemes of the Senate". The last time he spent the night, he promised Caesarion that he would bring him a wolf cub for a pet—"as befits a Roman prince".

When Caesarion heard his mother talking to someone in the villa garden, he automatically assumed it was Caesar returning with the wolf he'd promised. But when he looked out the window he saw his mother talking to a strange man dressed in even stranger clothes, his skin whiter than milk. Caesarion could not hear what the pale stranger had said to his mother, but whatever it was, it was enough to upset her and make her decide to flee Rome in the middle of the night.

"Caesarion, you must be quiet, child! No one is to know we're leaving!" Cleopatra whispered.

"The one in the garden. The one you were talking with. He was dressed very strangely mother. Was he one of father's slaves?"

Cleopatra's face grew rigid, as if it had become a mask. She bent down and grabbed her son by his shoulders, her fingers digging deep enough to leave marks. The boy cringed and tried to pull away, but he was held fast. "You saw nothing, is that understood? It was a bad dream, do you hear me? It was a nightmare, nothing more."

Ptolemy XIV Theos Philopator II sat on his bed and played with his toys, oblivious to his sister-wife as she mulled over the latest dispatches from her spies in Rome. She had fled the city in the nick of time, as it turned out. Before the blood was dry on their daggers, several of the assassins had arrived at the villa she had shared with Caesar, only to find the place deserted. No doubt that wretch Cassius would have delighted in tearing free Caesarion's heart from his breast, all in the name of the precious Republic. Murdering bastards. At least the heirs to Caesar's power were taking care of the assassins. However, the true danger to herself, her kingdom, and her child lay in these self-same avengers.

The Second Triumvirate that arose from Caesar's death was composed of Marc Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus. Cleopatra already sensed that Lepidus was of little concern to her. But the other two—that was a different matter. Marc Antony was Caesar's friend and military protégé, having served under him in Gaul. When Caesar first introduced them, Cleopatra immediately recognized him as the young staff officer who had come to her rescue years before. At thirty-nine he was still quite dashing and virile in appearance. Octavian, Caesar's great-nephew and legal heir, however, was little more than a youth. At nineteen he was spindly, gangly, and plagued with uncertain health. He also seemed unduly dependent on a low-born lout called Agrippa. Cleopatra remembered, with a shudder, the one time Octavian, in a fit of drunken passion, attempted to seduce her while his uncle was away from Rome. He reminded her all too much of Ptolemy XIII for her liking. She also suspected Octavian of destroying Caesar's original will, which named Caesarion as his heir.

Still, which one should she side with? Which one would prove the strongest, and thereby take Caesar's place? Her heart told her Antony, but then she had thought the future secure with Caesar, too. No, she needed more than her native wiles to decide which was the right man to seduce.

She turned from the dispatches to her cosmetic table, with its impressive collection of unguent jars, mixing bowls, paint boxes, and wigs. Her hand dropped onto a tiny lacquered box, the lid of which was marked with the sign of the asp, then glanced back at her brother-husband, still busy playing with a toy crocodile.

She had taken Ptolemy XIV as her husband and co-ruler upon the death of his elder brother, as the laws of Egypt demanded. At least he'd proven far more tractable and easy to control than her first husband. Cleopatra held no true ill-will towards the boy, although her father had held him responsible for the death of his beloved queen. Ptolemy XIV was harmless, forever locked within the mind of a young child. Still, if she was to someday present Caesarion as the legal heir to the Roman Empire, he would need the experience that can only come from holding the scepter and learning the ways of court intrigue, and the sooner the better. And the only way that could happen was if she named him her co-ruler, as Auletes had done with her, years ago.

"Come here, Ptolemy. I have something I'd like to give you," she said, gesturing so that he might come closer.

Ptolemy hopped off the bed and hurried over to his elder sister's side. Cleopatra was always nice to him—nicer, anyway, than Arsinoe and Ptolemy XIII had ever been. As it was, Ptolemy XIV's memories of the twins was becoming fuzzier with each passing day. Arsinoe was no longer living in Egypt, having dedicated herself as a virgin priestess to Artemis somewhere in Asia Minor, while Ptolemy XIII was dead. In any case, they were no longer around to pinch his ears and dump salt in his porridge.

"See what I have for you, my sweet? Isn't it pretty?" Cleopatra said, holding up a necklace whose pendant was shaped in the form of an asp. "It is a gift, my husband," Cleopatra said as she placed it about his neck. "Something to wear to keep the nightmares away from you as you sleep."

Ptolemy plucked at the necklace; he was a little disappointed. He'd hoped it would be a toy or a sweet of some kind. But necklace's pretty and shiny.

Cleopatra sat within her mausoleum, contemplating the lifeless body of her lover, his head cradled on her lap, as she awaited the arrival of a pale messenger.

"Milady," Sek said, stepping from the lengthening shadows as if he'd been there all along. Cleopatra did not look up. She knew that the messenger appeared just the same as he had the first night she saw him, twenty-nine years ago.

"Why? Why would Re treat me so cruelly—have I not always honored our contract?"

Sek shook his head and smiled crookedly, revealing a flash of ivory fang. "Re is merely a god created by men to explain the passing of the day, the changing of the seasons. I serve forces far older—and darker—than those of a mere sun-king, my dear. While my name is indeed Sek, I never was a prince. I was a Theban wizard who surrendered my art for the power and eternal life offered me by those that dwell in shadow. Since that day, I have served my masters well, operating as a shadow within the hearts of mortal men. And women."

"But if you are not Re's herald, how is it you could have known such things as my mother's death? Caesar's assassination?"

Sek waved a languid hand in dismissal. "Scrying the near future is nothing for one versed in the darker crafts, little queen. And it was necessary to make you believe in my abilities."

Cleopatra reached out and smoothed Anthony's hair, still damp with sweat. "You prophesied that Antony and I would defeat Octavian and Agrippa, and that the empires of Rome and Egypt would unite and that I would be made Queen of Queens and become immortal, my beauty undying."

Sek shrugged. "Such a future could have been yours—but not in this world. My scheme was to cripple and destroy the Roman Republic, not elevate you to empress. My masters find the concept of the Republic quite—distasteful. It worries them. A government without kings and princes? Civic power granted to elected officials? Such ideas are dangerous. Humanity is troublesome enough to deal with without rational thought and logic becoming common characteristics. No, those who I serve have decided that the Republic is far too—evolved—a concept for human society. I was elected to help defuse the situation—just as I was picked to demolish that wretched Hellenic fad called democracy by encouraging the rise of your kinsman, Alexander the Great. It did not matter to me if I destroyed the Republic by creating a world where you won or Octavian did, as long as the demolition was assured. As I once told you, Destiny walks more than one path."

"Once the little wretch returns to Rome, he'll prove tenacious when it comes to releasing the reigns of power, no matter how much he claims to be a Republican. It will take decades, hut the Republic will wither on the vine as Caesar after Caesar takes his toll on Rome."

Sek moved forward, his wine-red eyes glittering in the dim shadows like those of a serpent. "But grieve not, sweet queen. I may have lied as to the future of your mortal plans—but the immortality I spoke of was not an idle promise!"

Cleopatra looked up then, only to cringe to realize how close Sek was. She tightened her grip on Antony's corpse. "What do you mean?"

"I am prepared to make you an offer, Cleopatra. One that I have made only once or twice in the long centuries since I became as you now see me. I would give you the same gift . All I ask is that you give freely to me your life's blood, which I will replace with a drop of my own, from which you will arise immortal. Your beauty will never fade and Time will be forever at a stand still. I do not offer this rashly, my child—only those mortals who impress me with their strength of mind and character, who display unusual aggression, ambition and courage: only these do I consider worthy of the gift that is mine to give. Over the years I have watched you grow from tender princess to iron-willed queen. You would make a worthy bride, daughter of Auletes."

"But what of Anthony?" Cleopatra whispered. ''Can your sorcery return him to me?"

Sek shook his head. "He is beyond my reach—even if I was disposed to help him. No, Mark Antony is as cold and lifeless as the Republic he once fought so fiercely to defend."

Cleopatra raised her head, meeting Sek's cold stare with eyes as dark and hard as onyx. "Before I make my decision, grant me one last boon. Tell me what fate holds in store for me and mine, should I refuse."

"As you wish, my beauty." Sek's ruby eyes rolled back into his head, revealing blood-tinged whites. "Within moments of reaching Alexandria, Octavian shall put your son, Caesarion, to the sword, and he will also order your sons by Antony, Helios Alexander and Ptolemy Antonius, slain as well. He will then return to Rome and drag both you and your daughter, the Princess Selene, behind his chariot, draped in chains. He will then put you to service in the temple of Venus Genetrix as a temple harlot. Egypt will become Rome's granary, and the Ptolemies shall disappear from the face of the Earth as if they had never been."

Cleopatra shook her head wearily. "Such a choice!" She laughed without humor. "Either to be dragged as a slave through the city I where was once borne aloft as a queen, or to spend eternity the consort of a monster! Life and Unlife. Neither holds much interest for me. So I shall turn my back on both, if it's all the same to you."

Sek crossed his hands over his chest, mimicking the attitude of the god Osiris, Lord of the Dead, and bowed stiffly at the waist. "As you wish, great queen."

Cleopatra wiped at the tears in her eyes, and when she opened them again Sek was gone. In his place was a small, plain wicker basket, inside which something rustled and hissed quietly to itself. As she placed her hand inside, Cleopatra reflected on the immortality she had rejected. She could have lived forever, beautiful and unchanging, like the goddess Isis before her. But Isis at least had her husband, Osiris, to accompany her throughout Time Never-Ending.

Better it end like this, even if meant being swallowed by the sands of the great desert and lost to history and the memory of mankind. What use is immortality without love?

He struggled to lift his head and gauge (lie time by the sun, although it made the crown of thorns jammed onto his brow to bite even deeper. It was as he feared: only a few hours had passed since the centurions had driven the nails into his hands and feet.

Joshua slumped wearily, his weight pulling against the nails that held him in place like a butterfly pinned to a board. He fought to right himself; if he did not keep in a standing position he would eventually suffocate.

His vision was starting to go. He could barely make out the blurred image of his mother huddled at the foot of the hill. Her lamentations had ceased and now she merely wept and prayed for her condemned son. The others, the ones he had deemed his followers and friends, had not even bothered to show up. That was when he understood the depth of his betrayal.

The plan had been flaring, but ingenious. Joshua would stage a small, but effective, riot in the temple, inciting the Jews to rise up and acknowledge that the Kingdom of God was at hand. When the centurions came to arrest him and bring him before Pontius Pilate, his disciples would stage a token resistance. The Pharisees would want to see an upstart rabbi punished, and he knew full well what that punishment would be.

But he was willing to suffer the scourging, the interrogation and the humiliating march to the Place of Skulls, burdened with the instrument of his own demise, just as he was willing to endure the spikes driven through his spread palms and the balls of his feet. For it was planned that his disciples, with the help of the faithful, would storm Golgotha and take their Messiah down from the cross by force.

He knew something had gone horribly wrong when he'd glimpsed Peter at that mockery of a trial held before the Pharisees. One of the priests had approached the first and foremost of Joshua ben Joseph's disciples and handed him a coin purse.

Betrayed. Betrayed by those he trusted as brothers and left to die in the blazing sun like a pariah dog.

Joshua coughed and a bubble of bloody saliva broke on his cracked lips. His thirst was unimaginable, but he'd learned not to cry out for water after one of the centurions presented him with a sponge soaked in vinegar on the tip of his spear.

Hate fanned inside his laboring breast. What angered him most was not being played for a fool, but that for all their claims to faith, in the end, none of them had believed. He had worked miracles, casting forth demons and raising the dead, and they had called him "master", "teacher", "messiah". But when the supreme test was put before them, they had proven themselves unworthy. None of them had truly believed that he was the one true son of Yahweh.

Joshua ben Joseph lifted his eyes to the hard, hot sky and invoked his Father's name, calling for a sign.

A dark speck appeared in the heart of the sun, growing larger as it dropped earth-ward. It was one of his Father's heavenly host, the Arch-Angel Michael, armed with the fiery sword of righteousness used to banish Mankind from the Garden.

The angel's face lacked eyes and nose, having only a mouth, and its wings were made of fire. It was nude, and Joshua could see it was without nipples, navel, genitals, or anus.

Even without eyes or eyebrows, the arch-angel managed to look surprised. "I'm afraid you don't understand, godling. You are destined to die."

"What? That's impossible! How am I supposed to bring about my Father's kingdom on Earth if I'm dead?!?"

"You shall die. Your body will be placed in a tomb not far from here. In three days you shall rise from the dead, make your resurrection known to those you treasured most in life, then ascend into Heaven to sit at the right hand of your Father. From there you shall help rule over the races of Man—at least the ones that recognize your divinity."

"But who will lead the Jews out of bondage? Who will break the yoke of the Caesars?"

"That will all happen—in Time. You are half-mortal, Joshua. You mustn't be confused by such petty human increments of Time as centuries. You are a child of the universe. It was not meant for you to remain in the world of flesh. You risk corruption and decay should you stay."

Joshua shook his head in denial, sending blood and sweat flying. "Have I no choice, then?"

The arch-angel shrugged, its featureless face unreadable. "Thy will be done. But remember this, son of the Father: the Lord helps those who help themselves."

Quintus Severus looked up from his dice-cup at the dying man suspended from the rough-hewn cross. "He's at it again. Babbling to whatever those damned Jews call Jove."

"Give him credit, Quintus," replied Otho. "He's lasted longer than the other two thieves. After Titus gave him the vinegar to suck on, I'm amazed he can muster more than a croak!"

"He's not a thief," grunted Quintus, getting to his feet. "He's the King of the Jews." He gestured to the piece of parchment nailed to the head of the cross, fluttering in the hot afternoon wind. "Can't you read?"

"Vulcan's Hammer, man, you are dense! This is the upstart rabbi who claimed to be the living son of the Jews' god. He's another one of those cursed messiahs."

"That makes the thirtieth this season," grunted Titus Frontinus. "It's all foreign madness to me. I can't wait until I get rotated back to civilization! Now are you going to cast dice for these wretched robes or are you going to lecture me on Semite culture?"

"Hold your water, Titus. First I'm going to put this poor bastard out of our misery. Hand me that spear, will you?"

"Piss on Pontius! I don't see him squatting in this godless heat waiting for a half-starved Jew to die, do you?"

Quintus Severus hefted his spear and squinted up at the thin, near-naked man hanging from the cross. It was hard to believe that the local priests had been so worried by this pitiful specimen they would condemn him to such an ignoble, painful death. Well, he was doing the hapless creature a favor.

As the Roman soldier thrust the spear into his right side, Joshua ben Joseph screamed out : "No!"

A surge of occult energy traveled down the shaft of the spear, searing the Roman's flesh and killing him instantly.

His gaming companions gaped at the blackened, smoking corpse then raised their gaze to the man on the cross.

Every muscle in Joshua ben Joseph's body went rigid. The pupils of his eyes dilated wildly as the power of his birthright coursed through his frame. The nails pinning his palms and feet vibrated as if tugged by invisible longs.

Otho drew his sword, uncertain whether to stand his ground or run for reinforcements. The nail driven through the Jew's feet suddenly shot forth as if propelled from a slingshot, burying itself in the soldier's unprotected throat. Otho fell to the ground, clutching at the spurting hole in his neck.

The nails in Joshua ben Joseph's palms shot forth and he descended from the cross as if helped by unseen hands. Titus dropped to his knees, groveling before the wild-eyed, blood-smeared god.

"Look at me," commanded Joshua ben Joseph. When the guard continued to grovel, he smiled and softened his voice. "Fear not. Look upon the face of the One True Lord and experience the mercy that Rome shall know at my hand."

Titus hesitated, lowering his hands and lifting his face so that he looked into his erstwhile prisoner's eyes.

Joshua took Titus Frontinus' head between his bleeding hands, and bent so that his cracked lips were pressed against the Roman's ear: "This is for the vinegar."

Joshua ben Joseph yanked, pulling Titus' head free of his shoulders. He then stood and regarded his handiwork and found that he was well pleased.

He turned to stare at the woman cowering on her knees before him. He extended a maimed hand to his mother, helping her to her feet.

"The time has come to dispose of the pretense of humanity, mother of my flesh. Call me Messiah."

The twelve sat in the upper room, the same one they had observed the Passover with their master not a week gone.

"Do you think he's dead by now?" asked Simon the Canaanite, nervously chewing his thumbnail.

Peter massaged his aching eyes. He had promised the Pharisees he and the others would remain out of sight until Joshua's death was common knowledge amongst the populace, but he wondered how long he could stand listening to the others' squabbling and recriminations.

"Our Master's spirit may be strong, but his flesh is weak. I do not doubt he now sits at the right hand of his father, Yahweh the Almighty."

"Maybe there's still time—maybe he's not dead yet—" suggested James the Lesser for the twentieth time.

"I realize this is hard on you, James," sighed Peter. "What with Joshua being your brother . . ."

Peter shrugged. "Be that as it may. But this is how it must be done. Joshua's plans for the realization of the Lord's kingdom on earth were . . . highly unorthodox. He shall serve Yahweh better as a martyr than a living prophet. Sacrifices must be made. He would have agreed."

"That's why we didn't tell you of our plans until the last minute. We knew you would be tempted to warn Joshua or, if not him, your mother or the whore," sneered Matthew.

"Mary Magdalene doesn't do that any more!" protested James. "She's as much a prostitute as you're a tax-collector!"

"How dare you compare me to that harlot!" snarled John, brandishing a clenched fist in James' face.

"Tsk-tsk! I'm not martyred more than a few hours, and you're already at one another's throats! How did any of you expect to carry My Word into the wilderness?"

The twelve halted their squabbling and stared at the apparition invading their sanctum. A rail-thin man, naked except for the stained linens wrapping his loins, stood framed in the doorway. His beard and long, oily hair was matted by blood oozing from the crown of thorns seated on his brow, and his eyes glowed like banked coals. His hands and feet dripped blood and a long, angry wound ran the length of his right side.

"Who is this mad man?" snapped John. "Leave this place, lunatic! Can't you see that we're in mourning for our master?"

"Don't you recognize Me, My disciples? Surely I have not been away from you so long My image has already faded from your memories?"

James the Lesser swallowed and the goblet of wine he had been drinking from fell from his fingers. "Joshua?"

Thomas shook his head vigorously. "No! That can not be! Joshua ben Joseph is dead!"

"That is true, dear Thomas. Joshua, the son of the carpenter Joseph, is dead. But the Messiah, the One Whose Coming Was Foretold, yet lives!"

Thomas and the others exchanged wary glances. "If you are Joshua ben Joseph, prove it to us."

Joshua laughed humorlessly and gestured for Mary to stand by him. "Tell them who I am."

Mary spat at her younger son. "Do not call me that! My womb bore no son who would betray his elder brother for a handful of silver!"

James extended a trembling hand to his mother "You don't understand—! I didn't have a say in what happened!"

"Silence!" snapped Mary. "I have no son but the one who stands before you; Joshua, sired by Yahweh, the God of All!"

Thomas snorted in derision. "The old woman is mad! Or, worse, envious of our power! Unhinged by her grief, she has deluded herself into believing this—this—creature is her firstborn son, our Master!"

Joshua's smile was thin and hard as a knife. "If that is the case, Thomas, come forward and judge for yourself. Come, and settle your doubt once and for all." Joshua held up his arms, assuming the stance of the crucified. "Place your hand in My side, Thomas."

Thomas exchanged nervous glances with Peter, John, and Matthew. Peter nodded curtly and Thomas stepped forward, eyeing the gore-streaked stranger for signs of trickery. The wound in his side yawned wetly, as if inviting violation. Thomas fought the nausea churning in his gut as he slipped his right hand between the glistening lips. The lunatic claiming to be Joshua rolled his eyes back in his head and breathed a sigh of orgasmic pleasure. Then the wound bit off Thomas' hand.

The disciple staggered backward with a dreadful scream. He stared at the shredded stump as his life's blood pumped onto the floor. Joshua spread wide his arms and a mighty wind entered the chamber, swirling the dust and blood and grit until it stung the gathered disciples like the lash of a whip.

"Dogs!" His voice was like that of a thunderstorm, puncturing their eardrums and making their eyes and ears bleed. "You are naught but dogs! I took you to My heart and taught you the ways of the Lord, My father! And how did you repay Me? By conspiring with the Pharisees and the Romans! You planned to alter the Living Word until it was cold and dead and served no purpose but to bolster your own beliefs! You would make Me a martyr and pervert that which I taught you!"

"Forgive us, Messiah!" wailed Peter. "Forgive us poor sinners! Our faith was weak and we knew not what we did!"

"The time for forgiveness is over! I have wasted enough time with parables and minor miracles! The Kingdom of the Lord shall be won by the sword, not words! I shall give you this, the final test of faith! Those of you who believe in My divinity shall survive the test, but those who doubt will I smite!"

Mary's hard scowl suddenly disappeared, replaced by fear. "Joshua! No! At least spare your brother!" She grabbed her son's arm, but he pushed her aside.

Of the twelve, eleven burst into flame, burning bright and hot like new-born stars. The only disciple left standing, whole and untouched, when the fires died down, proved to be Judas Iscariot.

Judas threw himself at the Messiah's wounded feet, kissing the blood from his toes. Joshua bent and pressed his right thumb between his remaining disciple's eyebrows, leaving a bloody imprint.

"Stand, Judas Iscariot, first and foremost of My disciples. There is much that must be done before I begin My jihad."

Joshua smiled, pushing back his crown of thorns with one finger. "Aye. After I reveal My Self to the Pharisees, I would go to Rome."

After Joshua ben Joseph manifested his divinity to the Pharisees, those who survived the experience emerged from the temple and proclaimed him the one true Messiah as foretold in the scriptures. As the gathered crowds sang hossanahs, the sky turned the color of fresh blood.

Riots swept the region as far as Egypt. Tax collectors were stoned, Roman officials scourged and pelted with offal. Shrines dedicated to the god Augustus were demolished and turned into public latrines. Herod Agrippa, the Roman-appointed King of the Jews, was dragged from his palace and stoned as a collaborator.

Within a month of revealing himself, the Messiah had massed an army a million strong. They called themselves Soldiers of the Lord and wrapped their upper-arms in thorny vines to demonstrate their devotion to the Messiah and daubed their brow with paint mixed from the blood of their enemies. These troops, under the command of Judas Iscariot, swept through the provinces, slaying all who did not denounce the old gods and embrace Joshua ben Joseph as their savior.

At first the Roman governors were certain an army of such magnitude was doomed to dissolve once its food supply was exhausted. After all, how could a leader—even one as charismatic as the Nazarene—hope to feed a million men? Then reports appeared, telling how each Soldier of the Lord was outfitted with a special pouch that kept them miraculously provisioned with loaves and fishes. Further reports of battlefield miracles—slain Soldiers of the Lord casting aside their winding sheets, some even regenerating lost limbs—threw the Imperial bureaucrats and nobles into a panic.

Romans and those who had collaborated with them during the Empire's occupation rushed to the harbors, eager to abandon their appointments and accumulated riches in favor of the safety of Rome. But the seven hills could only provide a limited amount of sanctuary for the thousands of refugees pouring through its gates.

A pestilence was visited upon Rome in the form of stigmata. Blood poured from the palms, feet and brows of those afflicted until they became weak and collapsed in the streets. The priests opened scores of sacred oxen and rams, searching the entrails in vain for favorable signs. When the Emperor Tiberius sacrificed a snow-white ox to Jove it was full of pus and maggots, as if the beast had been dead for days instead of freshly slain. The barbarian chieftains of Gaul and Germany took advantage of the confusion, burning outposts and looting the provinces.

By the time the Galilean navy sailed into Ostia, the empire was hanging by a thread.

When Caesar's hand-picked legions saw a blood-smeared man, naked except for his wounds and the linen wrapped about his loins, walking across the blue waters of the Mediterranean, a hundred ships massed at his back, they threw down their shields and swords and fled into the countryside.

When news of what happened reached Tiberius at his retreat at Capri, the old soldier fell upon his sword. His last words were that he had no desire to meet the Jews' notoriously wrathful god face-to-face. His nephew and heir, Gaius Julius Germanicus, screamed in horror when he learned that he was now emperor and tried to flee Rome, but it was too late. The Soldiers of the Lord were on their way, marching inexorably onward.

The city was lashed by torrents of clotted blood, serpents, stinging insects, and frogs. Lions were seen running through the streets and alleys, wolves were spied devouring their own young, and eagles dropped dead from the sky in great numbers. Rome's days were numbered, and that number was writ in fire on the side of the Temple of Mars: 0.

The Praetorian guards manning the walls could see the Messiah's army's dust a day before they spotted the first advance runner. The invading force pitched its huge camp within a mile of the city. The Senate sent three of its most revered and respected patricians to address the leaders of the Galilean army.

The old men, dressed in their finest ceremonial togas, bearing tastefully narrow bands of purple on their hems, appeared before Judas Iscariot, general of the Galilean army and the Messiah's mortal representative.

"What can we, the people of Rome, expect from your Messiah?" asked the senior of the triumvirate.

Judas Iscariot looked up from the maps he was studying and regarded the patricians with the dark, hard eyes of a zealot. The bloody thumbprint of the Messiah glowed between his brows like a tongue of fire.

The Messiah walked unaccompanied into the Imperial Palace, leaving bloody footprints in his wake. He found the Emperor in the throne-room, surrounded by several of his fiercely loyal German guards.

Caesar was outfitted in a general's uniform, complete with armored breastplate and greaves made from hammered gold. Upon his thinning curls rested the laurel garland that was the sign of his office. He stared in disbelief at the creature standing before him.

Caesar studied the malnourished, blood-smeared Jew, naked but for a befouled loin cloth of rough linen and a crown of thorns. Was it possible this frail, ghoulish apparition was the cause of all the Empire's troubles?

"For you to fall on your knees before Me and acknowledge that I am the one true son of God, and for you to surrender the Empire to Me."

Caesar went purple and spluttered indignantly. "You are mad! Guards, seize the Jew!"

The first guard who placed his hands on Joshua ben Joseph's flesh screamed and the smell of ozone filled the chamber.

Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, who would later be known throughout history as Pope Caligula I, promptly prostrated himself before the Messiah's bleeding feet.

Joshua ben Joseph looked up from his afternoon meal at the sound of the Major Dome's staff rapping against the palace's marble floor.

"The General Judas Iscariot to see Your Holiness." Mary Magdalene, the first and foremost of his brides, motioned for a slave to refill her wine goblet. "Ah, Judas has returned from the Rhineland!"

Judas Iscariot entered the throne-room, resplendent in his ceremonial armor. With him was a Nubian slave and a woman swaddled in a cape, her face veiled and feet shackled.

"Greetings, Judas. I am well-pleased with your work spreading the Word amongst the heathen tribes of the North."

"Yet another of the barbarian chieftains has converted, Master. He sends "You this present as a token of his devotion." Judas removed the veil from the woman's face. The barbarian girl's eyes were blue and trembled with fear and confusion at the sight of the half-naked man with the holes in his hands and feet and the crown of thorns on his brow.

Joshua ben Joseph, God-Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, nodded his approval. "She will make a fine addition to My brides. Have one of the eunuchs escort her to the seraglio."

Mary Magdalene rolled her eyes. "Another one, Joshua? Must you have so many brides?"

"Indeed. And which of Your sons, yet to be born, will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth?" Mary Magdalene asked coyly, taking Joshua ben Joseph's blood-stained hand and pressing it against her swollen belly.

The gods of Mount Olympus were dead, their marble bodies reworked into the likenesses of the new religion's prophets and heroes: Kronos with his scythe became Abraham; Jove of the punishing thunderbolts was metamorphosed into Moses; Apollo turned into the youthful David; while Hermes transformed himself into John the Baptist.

It was rumored that in Alexandria the death-scream of Pan. Lord of the Woodlands, had echoed like the last note rung from a gong.

And shortly thereafter, Mary Magdalene was delivered of a child in the harem of Imperial Palace.

A slave entered the Messiah's private chamber, placed the tiny, squalling bundle at its sire's punctured feet, and hastily retired. It was up to the Messiah whether he would denounce the child as a bastard or claim it as his legitimate heir by picking it up.

Joshua ben Joseph stared down at his first-born son and contemplated what he should do. So much had changed since he had come down off the cross: multitudes had died, even more had converted, and the face of the known world had been permanently altered. Hebrew now replaced Latin as the language of the Empire. Synagogues stood in the place of temples. The Jews, who had suffered mightily under the hands of the Egyptians, Babylonians and scores of other once-powerful enemies, now ruled the world. He had succeeded in doing far more in his Father's name by following his own course of action than he ever could by allowing himself to die.

Already some of the more orthodox rabbis were complaining about Joshua's decision to headquarter himself in Rome instead of Jerusalem. Others took issue with the shrines dedicated to the prophets, kings, and judges of Judea that used slightly altered versions of the old Roman gods, claiming they were flirting with idolatry.

And then there were lessons to be learned from his predecessors. The House of David fell due to the contests for power amongst the myriad children of David and Solomon. Each son had desired to see himself king at the expense of his brothers. But what if the royal father never grew old and died? Would not a nation of princes, each with the diluted blood of the Creator in their veins, grow weary of awaiting an inheritance that would never come?

Gods never die, but they can be unseated. Just as Kronos deposed Uranus and Zeus ousted Kronos. Just as he would, in time, replace Yahweh.

The god-emperor picked up his first-born son and held the pink, mewling thing upside-down by its ankles, studying it the same way a farmer does a suckling pig. The wound in his side smacked its lips and salivated.

Robert Fitzooth, Earl of Huntingdon, Master of Locksley Hall, known to Saxon and Norman alike as Robin Hood, stood atop the ramparts of his castle and surveyed his forest. Not a year ago he had been an outlaw, an enemy of the state, hunted by the Sheriff of Nottingham's men like a fox in the wood. He had been stripped of his lands and chattels, his ancestral home given over to that Norman codswallop, Sir Guy of Gisborne; he and his men forced to make their home amidst the sheltering bowers of Sherwood Forest.

There had been much blood and suffering along the way. He had lost his closest and oldest friend, Will Scarlet, to Prince John's treachery. And he, in turn, had snuffed out Gisborne life's in repayment for his companion's death. But all that was over now, erased by a wave of King Richard's royal hand. Robin was once more master of Locksley, and legally married to the Lady Marian. His outlaw band, the famed "Merry Men", had disbanded to the four winds—save for the most loyal of his followers, who now served him as stewards.

Still, Robin had hoped that King Richard would have remained in England longer, keeping his heel firmly planted on his younger brother's neck. But three months had not passed before the Lion-Heart was once more on the road to Damascus.

Robin tried to be philosophical about his protector's flagrant distaste for the more mundane aspects of being king. While he did not care for the yoke of Norman rule: if he had to submit to a Norman king, one that was never around was preferable to one that was. Still, it worried him that Richard had yet to sire a heir. Should a heathen arrow find its mark, England would once more find itself in Prince John's ungentle hands. But next time he would not be regent, but king.

Robin turned to look at his wife, who had joined him on the rampart. The wind ruffled the white silk wimple and cover-chief framing her heart-shaped face, and Robin was once more amazed that a woman of such loveliness had consented to be his.

He smiled wanly and shrugged, returning; his gaze to the forest. "I guess I'm just . . . homesick."

"Homesick? But you are home, my husband! Locksley Hall has been in your family since before the Conqueror!"'

"Ah." Lady Marian slid a slender arm about her husband's waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "I know what you mean. Sherwood was as much home to us as any house built of stone. It sheltered us and fed us, like a mother does her children."

Robin pulled her closer. "I am pleased you understand. It is not that I am unhappy here, with you . . . It's just that I miss the old days. In the forest."

Lady Marian's voice was gentle but firm. "Those days are gone now, Robin. you have won all you fought for."

Robin hesitated for a moment. "You know. I was born in those woods. Or so I was told."

"As sure as Christ died and walked again," the forester replied, wiping a hand across his lips. "I left my oldest boy to watch the spot, least someone disturb it."

"Come with me, then." Little John's huge, callused hand clamped around the forester's upper arm. "We'll soon get this madness straightened out."

Little John dragged the nervous forester through Locksley Hall's winding corridors until he came to Robin and Marian's private chambers. He rapped his knuckles against the heavy oak door, using a code devised during their days spent in Sherwood Forest.

The door opened a crack and the Lady Marian peered out at them, frowning first at the forester then at Little John.

Marian was about to say something when Robin Hood appeared behind her, pushing open the door. "John! Is something wrong? Please come in."

Little John brushed past Marian, dragging the frightened forester in after him. "This is Ned, one of your foresters. He claims ... well, it's best that he tell you."

Ned stood transfixed, gaping at the famous outlaw lord. "Well, get on with it, man!" roared Little John, thumping the awe-struck forester on the side of the head with one bear-like paw.

"Leave the fellow be, John!" scolded Marian. "He'll tell his tale in good time!"

"Nay, milord. I've seen the good friar in church, taking confessions. This priest was tall and thin, where's Friar Tuck is short and fat. He was resting on the side of the road, dressed in a cassock the color of ashes. When he sees me and my son, he lifts a hand in greeting and asks if we were in the service of the Earl of Huntingdon, known as Robin Hood. When I says yes, he says there's something I should see off in the woods, just off the footpath. Something of importance to you, milord."

"Me?" Robin scratched his chin-whiskers and exchanged glances with Little John. "Did you do as this monk asked?"

Ned the Forester turned pale and licked his lips. "Aye. Although now I wish we hadn't! When we returned to the path, the strange monk was gone. I hurried here as fast as I could."

The forester closed his eyes and for a moment Robin wondered if the man was going to swoon. "It was horrible, milord! Too horrible to speak of in milady Marian's presence."

It was a hour's ride from Locksley Hall before they came to the spot where the mysterious priest had spoken to Ned the Forester and his son. The boy was still standing by the side of the road, looking pale and anxious.

Robin sniffed the late afternoon breeze. The reek of death was heavy on the air. He dismounted and gave the reins of his horse to Ned's son to hold.

"You did well, lad. Don't worry," Robin murmured, clapping a hand on the boy's shoulder.

The forester lead them away from the road, along a narrow pig-path through the brambles and undergrowth. The farther they went, the heavier the smell of death grew. Five minutes walk from the main road, they found themselves in a small clearing.

The first thing Robin noticed was the cold campfire in the center of the clearing. Then he saw the corpses.

There were three of them; man, woman and child. Each had been nailed, spread-eagled, to a tree. The man wore the tattered remnants of an abbot's gown. He had been throttled by his own rosary with such violence the beads had become imbedded in his flesh. He'd also been gelded prior to being disemboweled.

The outrages done to the woman made those inflicted on the abbot look mild. She, too, had been on the Church, judging from what little remained of her habit. She had been nailed to her tree upside down, her privates cut out and her torso split open like a dressed deer. Her breasts were missing, the abbot's severed member shoved in her mouth.

The final victim was facing the tree, as if embracing it. Countless shallow cuts marred the dead boy's naked back and buttocks. Whoever had tortured the unfortunate child had finished his work by taking a burning branch from the campfire and thrusting it between his victim's hams.

"How dare they?!?" roared Robin, turning his back on the carnage and kicking at the remains of the murderers' campfire, scattering ashes everywhere. "How dare they defile my woods with such evil! Sherwood is my province, and I shall not tolerate such wanton cruelty and bloodshed while I still have breath and strength!"

"Prince John may be a vicious bark-biting ferret, but he's not fool enough to molest the Church in such an outrageous manner! Whoever did this—and judging by what's left of their camp, there were several of them—swears allegiance to none, neither State or Church."

"Don't look so heart-stricken, my friend. The outlaws who committed these atrocities were never Merry Men."

It was then that Robin spotted a piece of folded parchment amongst the litter of torn garments at the foot of the dead abbot.

"What is it, Robin?" Little John asked, looking over his leader's shoulder. While he could sign his name, John Little was as illiterate as every oilier farmer's son.

To Robert Fitzooth, The False Earl of Huntingdon, Usurper of Locksley Hall, Known As Robin Hood

I weary of living the life of a shadow, dear lost brother. I feel now is the time for me to come forward and claim my rightful inheritance. You, little brother, are a pretender. I am the firstborn son of William Fitzooth and the Lady Joanna, not you! If you do not promptly relinquish your claim to my lands and title, I shall wreak upon your house the same fate these worthless fools suffered. And if you do not believe my tale, go to our uncle, Sir William Gamwell, and ask him the truth. If you then decide to deny me what is mine, then woe to you and yours, my brother!

"Nothing, my friend. But perhaps it would be wise for me to pay a visit to my uncle, Sir Gamwell."

Sir William Gamwell, Lord of Gamwell Hall, sat and studied the grim letter his nephew had produced, stroking his white beard. "I have heard tales of this so-called "Tamlane". He is a most foul and black-hearted brigand."

Robin stared at his hands for a long moment before blurting out his question. "Why was I never told that I had a brother?"

Sir William heaved an old man's sigh. "It happened such a long time ago, my boy. And, besides, talk of it upset your mother so." He motioned for one of his servants to pour wine into his and his nephew's goblets before dismissing him from the room. "But my poor sister is fifteen years in her grave, and I see no point in keeping silent now. It is a long story, Robin. And not a pleasant one, I'm afraid. You are, no doubt, familiar with the tale of how your mother and father came to be such?"

Robin laughed "Of course! Mother never tired of telling it! Father was the son of the Baron of Kyme, a Norman nobleman. Mother was the only daughter of Sir George of Gamwell, a Saxon knight. Grandfather George forbade them to see one another, but they were married in secret.

"When my mother became great with child, she begged my father to hide her in Sherwood Forest, for fear of what Sir George would do. When Sir George realized what had happened, he went into the woods to search for his errant daughter, determined to have her Norman lover's guts for garters. But when he came upon them at last, my mother was busy bringing forth their child. The moment Sir George saw his grandson—that is, me—he lost all interest in wreaking vengeance on William Fitzooth and welcomed his son-in-law into his home and family."

"Most of that is true," grunted Sir William. "The bit about your parents hiding out in the woods and my father being madder than a baited badger is right enough. But you were not the babe that turned Sir George's rage away from your parents. That was your twin brother—your elder brother—Thomas.

"In those days Sir George kept a young priest at Gamwell Hall as confessor for the family. He was a tall, lean fellow by the name of Garth. Garth was an odd one, even for the clergy; always keeping his hooked nose buried in scrolls. He was learned though, and my father respected him for that. He could read and write in Latin, Greek, French, Hebrew and a few other heathen languages. Still, there was something . . . odd about him.

"As for you and your brother . . . why, you were identical as two peas in a pod! Even your wet-nurse had trouble telling you apart! So she took to tying a bit of ribbon about your ankles: green for Robin and black for little Tarn.

"On your first birthdays you were to be taken to the nearby abbey, as is the custom, so the abbot could baptize you properly. But the day Sir William and Lady Joanna were to leave, the wet-nurse found only one child in the cradle! And to make matters worse, the ribbons had been removed from the infants, so there was no telling which child had disappeared!

"Well, Sir George had Gamwell Hall turned upside down, but no trace of the missing twin was found. It was soon noticed that Father Garth was nowhere to be found. Sir George ordered that his rooms be searched ..." Sir William shook his head sadly. "It seems my poor father had been playing host to a serpent at his bosom. Inside Father Garth's rooms were found occult artifacts of unwholesome origin. It was evident by what was found that the priest had become a necromancer, turning his back on Mother Church in favor of the dark arts.

"Your mother took the news very hard. As everyone knows, witches and warlocks use the rendered fat of babies to anoint themselves for their midnight meetings with Satan, the Prince of Lies. It was obvious that poor little Thomas—at least the wet-nurse insisted that was the twin missing—had met such a cruel fate at the hands of the debauched priest.

"Your father, grandfather and I decided to make things easier on your mother by not dwelling on little Thomas' kidnapping. In time, Joanna got over her grief and came to focus her love and attention on her remaining child. If she ever mentioned little Thomas' name again after that first year, I never heard it. Still, I know she kept a place in her heart for her lost boy, up to the day she died.

"Since then, no one has seen or heard of Garth for well over thirty years. Now you say he was spotted creeping about Sherwood. I don't like this, Robin. Not in the slightest. Perhaps we underestimated Garth's perversity. Indeed, if a simple infant sacrifice was all he wanted, he could have stolen some hapless peasant woman's brat, and no-one would have been the wiser. If this Tamlane the Dragon is indeed your long-lost twin, then that bastard of a priest has indeed raised up a monster deserving of Hell."

"You say you've heard of this 'Tamlane'. Why have I not learned of him before now?"

Sir William gave a dry laugh. "The past year or so have been rather busy ones for you, have they not, nephew? Between dodging the Sheriff of Nottingham's men and outfoxing Prince John, I doubt you have had time to keep afoot with the latest gossip. "What little I have heard of this brigand has been grim, though. Tamlane the Dragon is a murderer, rapist, thief, poacher ... In short, everything you and your Merry Men chose to shun, he has embraced wholeheartedly.

"It is said that he and his band of cut-throats, who call themselves The Dragon's Teeth, raided an anchorage, raping the holy sisters. When they were finished, they then sewed the nuns shut, so that they would be unable to deliver themselves of whatever issue might have been spawned on that black day!"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. There is only one way you shall ever find out the truth, Robin. You must go and meet this Tamlane. And. if it is true that he is of your blood—you must kill him."

Sir William leaned forward, his eyes hard as beads, and thrust a bony finger at Robin's chest. "This is no time to be fainthearted, boy! If Tamlane is indeed Thomas Fitzootli, he is the rightful heir and master of Locksley Hall, not you! And I would fain suffer the stones of the Vatican be washed in my blood than suffer such a creature tarnish the family name!

"I loved your mother as only a brother can. It would have broken her heart to discover that her poor lost little Thomas had been twisted into a murdering ogre! And as to you; the threat he makes in this letter to you and your loved ones is quite clear. Could you suffer their falling into the hands of this monster, knowing you could have prevented it?"

Robin was silent for a long time. There was much for him to contemplate: the discovery of a twin brother he never knew he had; the threat to his family and friends; the possibility that he might soon find himself contemplating fratricide. But what else could he do?

Robin squatted in front of the fire, feeding tender to the struggling flames while chewing a strip of jerked venison. He had been gone from Locksley Hall for two solid days, and his bones ached and his spirits were weary. Normally, traveling the woodlands gladdened his heart, but he had long since left the familiar bowers of Sherwood Forest.

He was in Modred's Wood, and it was as different from Sherwood as night is to day. Where Sherwood was full of deer and other game, Modred's Wood seemed bereft of anything but predators. Earlier that day he'd spied a wolf between the trees lining the path. Had he not been handy with his bow, the beast would have set upon his mount. Even now he was aware of the eyes of myriad wild things watching him from outside the ring of light cast by his camp fire.

So this was where The Dragon's Teeth made their home: a place of stagnant bogs and vicious beasts. Perhaps it was just his frame of mind, but it seemed to Robin that Modred's Wood was a blighted place. The smell of fungus was strong, as was another, less recognizable, odor.

Robin heard an owl calling to its mate in the darkness. AT first he thought nothing of it; then he realized that he had gone all day without once hearing the song of a bird. He got to his feet, his hand resting on the sword sheathed at his side. But it was too late.

They came out of the woods, as silent and quick as a pack of wolves on the hunt. There were at least six of them, armed with short swords and cudgels. Before Robin could make a move, the largest of their number hurled a net over him, pinning his arms to his sides.

Robin cursed and struggled to free his sword from its scabbard, but it was no good. The bandits descended on him then, whooping and screeching like wild animals. One of them struck Robin behind the knees with his quarterstaff, knocking him to the ground. Dozens of blows rained down on the helpless man, the bandits yowling their delight at the sight of blood and the sound of his groans.

Robin's attackers froze at the sound of the voice and turned their faces to the tall, hollow-cheeked man dressed in the ash-gray cassock who strode from the shadows.

Father Garth smiled down at Robin Hood the way a butcher smiles at a well-marbled slab of beef. "Take him to The Dragon."

The next thing Robin knew a damp cloth was being pressed against the swelling over his right eye. He groaned and lifted his right hand to probe the wound, only to find a woman's fingers laid against his brow.

Robin Hood opened his eyes and stared into the face of a dark-haired woman with pale skin and eyes the color of polished night. She wore the tunic and hose of a page, dyed the color of a raven's wing. Her dark hair hung over the right side of her face, obscuring most of it from view. Her hands were callused, the nails chewed to the quick. She licked her lips anxiously and peered at Robin as if he was a two-headed calf in a miracle show.

Morag's chapped lips pulled into a knowing smile. "Ah, but you are, ain't you? Tarn said his brother was Robin Hood. And if you ain't Tarn's brother, I'll fuck Dim bowlegged!"

Robin flinched, unaccustomed to hearing such coarse language from a woman. His surroundings were humble, bordering on squalid—a wattle hut with dirt floors, lit by tallow candles and smelling of rancid fat and unwashed men. So this was how Tamlane the Dragon lived.

Black Morag laughed and spat at the dirt floor. "A husband? Me? Tamlane is my leader, nothing more! And I only follow him because he's the biggest, meanest, blood-thirstiest bastard there is! I respect that in a man." At that she grinned, displaying stained and crooked teeth.

Robin decided to say nothing. Allowing his attention to wander from the woman, he noticed for the first time that he had been stripped of his lincoln green tunic, hose and boots and dressed in a black robe.

The blanket that served as the hut's door was thrown aside and a man dressed in black entered the foul-smelling hut. Morag scuttled away like a dog fearing a boot in its ribs, leaving Robin alone with his new visitor.

"Greetings, brother," said the man in black, lifting one of the candles and holding it so its feeble light fell upon his face. "Welcome to Modred's Wood."

Robin gasped at the sight of his own face exactly replicated in someone else's flesh and blood. The resemblance was closer than any captured in a mirror; yet, there was something different—something wrong with the other man's face. The shape of their features were identical, but there was a hard edge to the set of the stranger's mouth; a cruel gleam in his eye that discerned Thomas Fitzooth from his brother.

"Yes, the likeness is exceeding close, is it not?" remarked Tamlane the Dragon. "I'm told not even our mother, the Lady Joanna, could tell the two of us apart."

"Do not mention my mother's name again, knave, or I'll drub you until the blood rises!" snapped Robin.

Tamlane casually struck his brother in the side with his booted foot. "Mind your manners, brother-dear! You're no longer in Sherwood!" he smirked.

"Stop calling me brother!" snapped Robin, struggling to his feet. "And where are my clothes?" Before he could continue, the cold metal of a dirk was pressed to his throat.

"My, aren't we used to giving orders?" purred Tamlane. "In that we are very much alike, brother."

"Tarn!" The bandit turned and glowered at the tall, gaunt figure dressed in an ash-gray cassock standing in the doorway. "Remember! No edged weapon is to taste his blood!"

"Yet," hissed the Dragon, returning the priest's dark gaze. "And don't you forget, Garth," he said, pointing his knife at the older man. "Although you may have raised me from a pup. I take no orders from anyone—man or devil!"

"As you wish, milord," responded Father Garth. "Perhaps once you have finished with him, you would bring him by my cell so I might prepare him." With that the priest turned his back on the brothers and disappeared into the night.

"Shouldn't I be one asking that question?" sneered Tamlane. "After all, it was you who trespassed on my domain."

Robin's face darkened. "Trespass?!? How dare you speak of such things to me! It was you who tortured and murdered three helpless people in Sherwood! Even the dimmest of village idiots knows that Robin Hood allows pious clergy, honest women, and innocent children safe passage through Sherwood Forest! And any who dares molest them must answer to me!"

"What a self-righteous prig you are, little brother!" laughed Tamlane, genuinely amused. "Here you dare to call yourself the robber-prince of England, yet are unwilling to dirty your hands with the meat of brigandry! What is the point of being an outlaw if you observe laws?"

"I am a law-abiding Englishman, and always have been so! My rebellion was against unjust laws and corrupt rulers!"

This seemed to amuse Tamlane even further. "Ah, I think you and Dim should talk, as it appears you and he are equipped with the same intellect!" He grabbed Robin by the forearm and dragged his brother after him. "Come! Why don't I introduce you to the rest of my little band, eh?"

Outside the hut was a large campfire, around which huddled a half-dozen men dressed in filthy rags, worrying greasy gobbets of half-cooked meat like starving flogs. They looked up from their meal as their leader approached, the gleam in their eyes fearful and suspicious. Robin had seen its like in the eyes of the half-wild dogs commanded by his Master of Hounds.

One of the men stood and came forward. Robin had fancied Little John the biggest man he'd ever seen, but this hulking stranger made the notorious John Little look like a tubercular old woman. The giant stood nearly three ax-handles high, and was at least a handle wide at the shoulders. His arms were covered with coarse red hair and the seams of his leather jerkin groaned with every flex of his muscled torso. But what Robin noticed most of all was the man's hare-lip and drooping left eyelid. By the way the simpleton grinned at him, Robin doubted he was a harmless village idiot.

The giant moved with surprising speed for someone his size, grabbing Robin's lower jaw in his huge, sausage-sized fingers. "Can I play with him?"

Tarn's voice was firm but smooth, like a master speaking to his favorite hound. "Now, Dim, you remember what Father Garth said, don't you?"

Dim blinked a couple of times and sucked on his lower lip for a moment. "Uhhh . . . That he's your brother?"

"No, not that, you dullard!" snapped Tamlane, slapping the giant across the face with the back of his hand.

Dim let go of Robin as if he'd been scalded, rubbing a rough palm over his stricken cheek.

Robin turned his attention from Tamlane and his underling, scanning the faces of the men watching them. What he saw made his heart sink; there was a hardness in these men's eyes that reminded him all too well of the hired jackals who'd done the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisborne's dirty business.

These were men who knew nothing of the nobler emotions: they would as soon kick a dog to death as offer it a scrap of food. What loyalty they felt for their leader was that of feral beasts acknowledging the fastest and strongest of their number. That Tamlane could cow such a behemoth as Dim only further proved his innate superiority in the minds of the rest. He had indeed fallen amongst dragons.

What impressed Robin the most about Father Garth was how he proved the reverse of the Merry Men's own good Friar Tuck. Where Tuck was squat and stout, Garth was tall and thin. Where Tuck had been reminiscent of the ancient Roman god of revelry, Garth had the look of an ascetic saint. Where Tuck was plain-spoken and earthy, Father Garth was a scholar. Most of all. Tuck was a warrior-monk, where Garth was a wizard-priest; a hybrid to be feared and seldom trusted.

The defrocked monk made his home in a rough hut with a thatched roof, built across the front of a cave in a low cliff. Compared to the filth the other members of Tamlane's band lived in, Garth's hermit's quarters seemed luxurious.

Garth scowled at Robin and motioned for Tamlane to tie his brother to a chair while he poured over a collection of yellowed manuscripts. Robin wondered what this devil-worshipping priest had planned for him, but he was afraid to ask. After a whispered discussion, Garth rolled the scrolls back up and placed them in a rosewood box the size of a child's casket. With that, Tamlane the Dragon left, pausing at the threshold long enough to sneer a farewell to his brother.

Garth busied himself with lighting candles and placing them about the interior of the cave, speaking all the while to his captive. "I'm afraid I can not offer you much in the way of hospitality, Sir Robert. Although I have long since abandoned my vows of poverty, my lifestyle is far from extravagant."

"Oh, but they are! However, they are not your average band of footpads, my dear Robin Hood; no more so than the Merry Men. The Dragon's Teeth are feared because they will attack anyone weaker than themselves: peasants; palmers; widows; children and the like. They never attack knights or tax-collectors. There is no 'rob the rich and give to the poor' here. The poor are their livelihood."

"Indeed," smiled Garth, as he lit the final candle. "That is as it should be." He turned and pointed a finger at Robin. "Have you not wondered why I stole your brother from his crib, those long years ago?"

"In part. But there was more to it than that. Much more." The priest drew closer and leaned forward, fixing Robin with his dark, feverish eyes. "I was there when you and your brother were brought to your grandfather's home. You were only a few hours old, but I could already read your destiny. It surrounded you like a tiny halo. I knew then that you would grow up to be a hero.

"There can be no light without darkness. No good without an opposing evil. This is the way of Nature. And so it was with your brother, Thomas. When I looked at him I saw a dark light. It was considerably weaker than your own, but definitely there. But you were a bad influence on him. Although you were not yet weaned, I could see Thomas's evil genius begin to fade and flicker, like a candle in danger of being snuffed by a strong wind.

"I realized that if I did not take action, Thomas would fall under your sway for good. So I decided to steal the child and raise him here in the dark heart of Modred's Wood. I must say, he proved himself an apt pupil! He was torturing animals by the age of five. He raped his first woman at the age of twelve. He committed his first murder before his fourteenth year. He has done me proud! Out of tine raw material of Thomas Fitzooth I have fashioned Tamlane the Dragon; a villain with a soul blacker than soot, a stranger to conscience, shame, and love."

"You claim my brother loves nothing in this world. What about you? Aren't you his mentor? Surely he feels something for the man who raised him."

Garth laughed without humor. "Oh. yes. Dear Thomas feels something for me! If it was not for certain . . . connections I have developed over the decades, my foster-son would have had my vitals long before his first whiskers sprouted. Here, allow me to show you."

Garth straightened his back and produced a small brazier, which he lit and began sprinkling various powders from a selection of stoppered jars scattered about the hut, all the while muttering aloud in Latin. Robin's eyes swam with tears from the overpowering odor of burning myrrh and sulfur. Then Father Garth spoke a name and the fires under the brazier turned green, then blue.

Something in the back of the cave that had not been there before grunted and opened its eyes. Robin felt his scalp lighten and his bladder ache as the solid shadow moved forward, sniffing the rank air.

In many way it resembled a bear, although it had hands. Its golden eyes gleamed like newly minted coins as it stared at Robin down it long, squared snout. Its face was painted like a carnival buffoon's and it revealed huge, curving tusks when it peeled back its lips. The demon drooled and whined like a hungry child.

"Not yet, Lucullus," smiled Father Garth, resting one hand on the demon's matted head while he scratched it behind the ears. "You must wait until the signs are right."

"What are you doing, summoning forth that wretched hell-demon?!" Tamlane stood in the door of Father Garth's hut, staring in undisguised fear and repulsion at the thing squatting at the priest's feet. Upon espying the bandit, Lucullus bared its tusks and stood on its hind legs, exposing a wickedly barbed erect penis extending from its furred pouch.

"I was merely demonstrating a point, Thomas. Nothing more." Garth made a complex hand gesture and the beast disappeared like a mist caught in a high wind.

"Stop calling me Thomas! My name is Tamlane!" snapped the Dragon, still visibly shaken by the demon's appearance.

Now that the demon was no longer around to distract him, Robin noticed that Tamlane had changed from the black garments he'd worn earlier into a lincoln green tunic, hose and boots.

Robin's guts tied themselves into even tighter knots. "What evil are you planning, Tamlane? Tell me, damn you!"

"Can't you figure that out on your own? Surely you're not that dense, little brother!"

"Why? Should they suspect otherwise? I have no doubt you did not bother to divulge the true reason for your trip North to any of your friends—not even your lovely wife."

"Please, Robert! Don't get so excited! You're apt to accidentally strangle yourself if you struggle too hard," sighed Father Garth.

Tamlane grinned and for a fleeting second Robin realized how Sir Guy of Gisborne must have felt, time and time again, looking up into his own taunting smile. "My birthright, for one. And perhaps a kingdom or two, to boot!"

"No, he's not," said Father Garth. "There is a change coming. And when it is finally here, kings will be made—and broken—in the space of a few short weeks. And I mean to see Thomas on the throne. As King Robert I."

"England will be in sore need of a king, brother-dear. When that thick-skulled sodomite Richard is finally claimed by his Holy Crusade, there will only be Prince John to succeed him. Not a popular choice, don't you think? There will be a brief chance for a usurper to claim the throne, as The Conqueror did a century past. But the usurper must be someone of noble lineage! Someone of heroic mien! Someone popular with the Saxon nobles and the peasantry! Someone who can rally an eager army of knights and hod-carriers, with just a whisper of his name! And that name is Robin Hood."

"We're well-aware of that, little brother. Despite your avowed hated of the Normans, you are still subservient to the status quo. You would never dare step out of your rightful place in the pecking order—unless it was to right wrongs and see justice done. What a fool you are!"

"You'll fail! Little John and Friar Tuck—they'll be able to tell you're not me! And you haven't got a chance of deceiving Marian!"

"Are you so sure, brother?" leered Tamlane. "After all, a change is as good as a rest."

Tamlane reined his horse to a stop, staring up at the distant turrets of Locksley Hall. It was coming true, just as Garth had planned it. He would quietly usurp his younger brother's place as the Earl of Huntingdon, claiming his lands and titles—and wife—as his own. And why not? Except for the wife, they were rightfully his to begin with—

A deer stepped from cover and stood staring at him before bounding away, its tail lifted in warning. Tamlane had spent most of his adult life in the dismal groves of Modred's Wood, a place notorious for its poor game. Sherwood was a virtual paradise in comparison; everywhere there were birds, fat rabbits and squirrels, and a seemingly endless supply of venison on the hoof.

Tam envied his brother such lush and prosperous land, then laughed. What did he have to envy Robin for? After all, it was all his now, wasn't it? He, Tamlane, was the master of Sherwood Forest now, even though he was obliged to hide behind his brother's name.

Still, he could not help but worry. After all, he was riding into an enemy camp alone. It was up to him to make sure that Robin Hood's servants had no cause to suspect that their master had been replaced. He had everything to gain if he could pull off the masquerade—and his soul to lose should he fail.

At the thought of Garth's pet demon, Tamlane shivered uncontrollably. He only allowed himself to do that when he was certain no one else was around. The Dragon's Teeth watched him for signs of weakness like jackals waiting for a lion to abandon its kill.

Garth alone knew how deep and real Tamlane's fear of the demon was. It was the leash he used, in place of familial affection, to control his foster-son. Tamlane was still uncertain as to the wizard's personal agenda—but that was nothing new, either. He'd never fully understood his mentor, and was not sure he really wanted to. The one thing he was certain of was that the moment he was proclaimed the King of England, he'd have the old man's head stuck on a pike.

"Hail, Robin of Locksley!" bellowed a voice that boomed like good-natured thunder.

Tamlane did his best to keep from grabbing his sword and turned to stare at the short, squat man dressed in a common monk's cassock striding out of the woods. The monk was ruddy-faced and carried a quarterstaff like other men handled a walking stick. Despite his girth, it was obvious the good friar was more muscle than fat.

The monk strode right up to where Tam sat perched on his brother's borrowed stallion and smiled up at him, as would a friend and equal. Tam realized this brash, buffoonish creature was none other than Friar Tuck, one of Robin's boon companions from the days of the Merry Men.

Tuck boomed out a laugh and gestured at the turrets of Locksley Hall with his quarterstaff. "As if you didn't know! 'Tis time for me to leave my hermitage and hear your lovely lady's confession! And yours too, lest you forget!"

"No! No, of course! Of course I didn't forget! You are welcome as always, good monk!"

Friar Tuck's smile waned and his demeanor grew more serious. "I only just heard of your uncle. I'm deeply sorry, my friend. He was a good man."

Tamlane tried to keep his confusion from being too obvious. "My uncle? What of him? I have been on the road for the past few days and only just returned ..."

The priest blushed. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew. Sir William died at Gamwell Hall, not two days ago. It was quite sudden, or so I'm told. He ... He was your only living family, was he not?"

Feigning grief, Tamlane lifted a hand to his face in order to hide his smile. "Yes. There is no one else."

For the hundredth time since they'd left him tied to the chair, Robin tested his bonds. And, for the hundredth time, his bonds held. The frustration made the fear for his life seem trivial. Robin Hood was not a man to suffer captivity lightly.

Cursing mightily, he strained against the rawhide thongs that held him fast. This lime, all he succeeded in doing was overturning the chair, with him in it, and crack the side of his head against the hard dirt floor.

He continued to squirm, his breath growing heavier as rage eclipsed his rationality. This couldn't be happening! He'd escaped from worse death-traps than this dozens of times! The Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy had concocted far more devious ways of ensnaring and disposing him than this, and he'd always managed to free himself!

But back then he'd had the Merry Men at his side; good friends and true who would realize his predicament and do all in their power to help him. Now he was alone, and no one knew where he was—save for his uncle, Sir William. He cursed himself for worse than a fool. He should have at least told Tuck! If he couldn't trust a priest to keep a family secret, who else was there? Now he lay, bruised and bloodied, trussed-up like a Christmas goose waiting the butcher's knife.

He froze at the sound of someone entering the tiny hut. He was afraid it might be that drooling hulk of a half-wit, Dim, again. The moment Tamlane had quitted the bandit's compound, Dim had taken the opportunity to pummel his leader's look-alike into unconsciousness. If Father Garth hadn't intervened, the idiot might have well beaten him to death. The fact that he had Garth to thank for saving what little was left of his life galled Robin.

He recognized the woman Morag's voice. While he had his doubts concerning her, so far she'd shown him nothing but kindness—in her way.

Black Morag hurried over to him and righted the chair with a grunt. She peered anxiously at his swollen, bruise-dappled face. "Are you hurt?"

Robin laughed and spat out a loosened tooth. "Now I know how the wheat feels at threshing time!"

"Bastards!" she growled, slinging a wineskin from her shoulder. "Here, drink this. It'll help the pain."

Robin gratefully drank from the proffered skin. He was too thirsty to wonder about Morag's motivations for helping him. In any case, it was hard to tell what thoughts might pass through the girl's head. Her hair seemed to perpetually hang in her face, making eye contact difficult. The way she moved reminded Robin of a dog whipped once too often.

She seemed surprised by the suddenness of his question and for a moment he thought she was going to run away, like a rabbit flushed from cover.

Morag giggled and Robin felt his bowels turn to ice. It was not a sane woman's laugh.

"Oh, yes. I had a family, once. My mother died when I was too little to remember. My father and I, we lived in the woods. He was a charcoal-maker. He would go and chop down trees while I stayed home and made dinner. He took care of me and I took care of him. We loved each other very much. After awhile, he loved me like he loved my mother.

"Then . . . then there was a boy. From the village. Matthew. A nice boy. A handsome boy. He would come to see me when my father was away chopping down trees. Then one day father came home early. He found me with the village boy and he hit him with his ax. After he chopped up the village boy, he turned on me; calling me names. He said he'd make it so no one would ever want to look at me again. Mark me so everyone would know I was a whore."

Morag brushed aside the hair hanging in her face and showed Robin her scars. He'd seen worse in his time, but those wounds had been inflicted by the royal torturer, not by a father on the flesh of his flesh. He winced and looked away.

"You see?" Morag said sadly, letting her hair fall back into place. "After he marked me, he raped me. Really raped me. After he was finished, he went into the woods and hanged himself. When the village found out what had happened, they said it was my fault. That I had tempted my father into sin. That I was a fornicator and marked by God. I was chased away and wandered for a long time. I finally ended up in a brothel. That's where I met Tam. He was there with some of his men, selling novice nuns he'd stolen from an anchorage he'd pillaged. He said he liked my looks."

Morag nodded, chewing one of her thumbnails. "He said I could be his Maid Marian."

The thought of this poor, abused mad-girl playing the part of his beloved made Robin ill.

"I thought so." Morag's tone had grown cold. She studied Robin with eyes that had suddenly become remote. "Tam's not coming back, is he?" When Robin said nothing she revealed her stained, crooked teeth in what seemed more like a rictus than a smile. "You're not fooling me. I know what he's up to. He's going to become you. He doesn't need me anymore, now that he has the real Maid Marian." She frowned at the sight of Robin's anger and tickled his beard with her chewed fingers. "Don't look so upset. If I can't be your Maid Marian, perhaps you can be my Tamlane the Dragon."

Tamlane started at the sound of Marian's voice, surfacing from his thoughts. He smiled weakly at his brother's wife. Yes, something was wrong, but there was no way he could explain it to the Lady Marian, much less himself.

Marian knelt beside her husband's chair, placing her hand atop his. "You seem so ... remote, my love. Is it your uncle's death?"

"I suppose so," he answered, staring hard at her fair white hand resting atop his callused one.

Yes, there is. The, ballads did not do you justice, thought Tamlane the Dragon.

He had never seen such a woman before in his life. The Lady Marian's beauty was not limited to her face and form. She radiated a serenity and self-confidence that transcended that of the uncounted "wives of Christ" he'd defiled. Her presence was as soothing as a cool cloth pressed to a feverish brow. No wonder his brother had gladly faced such overwhelming odds reclaiming her from Prince John.

But there was more to his ill-ease than his unprecedented reaction to this woman. It had been with him since he'd met the friar on the road the other day. As they had made their way to Locksley Hall—Tamlane on horseback. Friar Tuck keeping easy pace alongside him—he had found himself actually beginning to like the well-fed little monk. The thought made him shudder.

Still, Tamlane found it difficult to remain aloof from the jolly priest's ribald jokes and jests. In all his days as a robber-lord, Tam had never known such closeness with a fellow human was possible. The Dragon's Teeth were not his equals; they were a feral band of outcasts who followed him solely for the crumbs dropped from his table. He knew they feared and hated him, and that they'd gladly stab him between the shoulder blades the moment his back was turned. He had expected and accepted such treachery because—well, because he'd known no other way.

He'd been brought up to believe the concepts of love and friendship were weaknesses that the human race deluded itself into thinking were strengths. Along the way, Garth had been careful to crush any incipient signs of affection in his foster-son. Tam was only four or five when he'd made the mistake of telling Garth that he loved him. That was back when Tam still thought the heretic priest was his real father.

Garth showed him the error of his ways by summoning forth his familiar, Lucullus, and allowing it to sexually abuse the boy. The lesson had not been lost on the child: love nothing; trust no one.

But now he found himself surrounded by people who truly and honestly loved him. At first he'd looked into their eyes and tried to spot the hidden hate and secret envy Garth had assured him all men harbor in their breasts, but he could not. This shook him to his very marrow. It was as if he'd suddenly discovered the world not flat, as everyone knows it to be, but actually round.

Shortly after his arrival at Locksley Hall he was approached by a broad-shouldered fellow with a bristling beard. Tam had come close to boxing the bigger man's ears, just as he would have done Dim, before realizing this was no other than Little John, Robin's right-hand man. Before he could react, the taller man swept him into an embrace, all the while professing how sorry he felt about his friend's recent loss. And, to Tam's surprise, he realized Little John honestly was sorry.

He'd done his best to respond to the questions put to him by his "friends", while his brain reeled. It was proving too much for him. He felt like a starving man given a chalice of the king's wine. The wealth of emotion surrounding him was threatening to make him lose what little control he possessed. He'd never dreamed impersonating his brother could be so difficult. . .

Just as he was about ready to scream like a madman and draw his sword, the crowd parted and the sun given human form approached him.

Tam shook himself from his reveries once more and looked at Marian, seated beside him while she busied herself with her embroidery. Even in the most domestic of scenes, she radiated the nobility of one born to the purple. If ever there was a woman deserving of being made England's queen, it was she.

The night before he'd come to her as her husband, and she'd accepted him. At first his lust had been fired by the thought of cuckolding his twin, but as his passion increased, Tam became aware of something different, something alien, in the consummation. Then it occurred to him that in all his adult years, this was the first time he'd lain with a consenting woman he had not paid to do so. He had raped, fucked, swived, and fornicated countless numbers of times, but this was the first time he'd truly been made love to.

As they lay together in each other's arms, Marian had smiled at him and Tamlane felt the ice surrounding his heart weaken. There was so much love there . . . and all of it was his.

Aye. At there was the rub. None of the love, friendship and adulation he'd so far enjoyed was rightfully his. While Locksley Hall and the titles and lands that went with it might be rightfully his, the loyalty and support of those around him belonged to his brother.

Father Garth had been fond of telling his ward : 'In the Country of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King.'

Yes, but what did the One-Eyed King become once he entered the Land of the Sighted?

"You needn't worry that your death will be meaningless," Father Garth assured his captive, tapping a large, unwieldy tome resting on the table between them. The book seemed to be bound in some kind of animal skin, but whether reptile, mammal, or some ungodly hybrid of the two was impossible to tell. "In fact, your ritual slaughter will insure that a Saxon king will once more rule these lands." He smiled at the startled look on Robin's face. "Your brother wasn't spouting a madman's delusions of attaining greatness. Given my knowledge of the rituals in this book—the fabled Aegrisomnia—I can assure you that Tamlane will succeed in his bid for the throne. All I need is the blood of a hero."

Garth laughed dryly. "In a way. You Christian dullards seem to think all a warlock needs to summon power is dance around naked, sprinkling dog's hair and powdered eye of bat on anything that stands still! It's much more complicated than that!" Garth produced what looked to be a small bedroll and laid it on the table next to the book. "Ritual cleansing and purification rites much be observed. The signs must be right; the stars in alignment." He opened the bedroll, showing Robin the assortment of knives and torture implements kept within.

"For instance, the particular ritual I'll be following requires that you die by flaying. And not just your simple tanner's job, either! First must go the outer layer, then the fatty tissue, then the muscle. And different parts of the body must be stripped at certain times, so that you remain alive and conscious as long as possible. I have a special herbal brew to make sure of that. Granted, it's time consuming, but quite potent magic, or so I'm told."

"You're not scaring me with this talk! I've heard it all before, and from far better men than yourself!"

Father Garth did not seem insulted. "Indeed. But the tricky part about all this are the pre-ritual precautions. The victim's blood can not be let by an edged weapon prior to the ritual itself. Nor can any seed be spilled. The ritual is quite specific about that. But in the end, your hideous, agonizing death will make it possible for your brother to reign as Good King Robin."

"He might be the true Earl of Huntingdon and the rightful Master of Locksley Hall, but my name he has no right to!"

Garth's smile grew even nastier. "Oh, but he does! He has all the right in the world!" He leaned forward, bringing his face within inches of the captive Robin Hood's. "You see, when I stole him from the nurse's cradle that night, I untied the ribbons on your ankles—the ones that made it possible for even your own mother to tell you apart—to make things even more complicated for your family. It wasn't Thomas Fitzooth I took with me; it was Robert!" He gave short, sharp bark of laughter at the look of confusion in the younger man's eyes.

"Yes! That's right! You are Thomas, not Robert! You are indeed, the true Earl of Huntingdon. But you are not Robin Hood!"

"It doesn't matter what a man is called! It's his deeds that make him who he is!"

"Ah, yes. Just as Tiberius was a honored general, Caligula a darling of the vox populi, and Nero a skilled musician and thespian. King Robert will do down in history as an idealistic freedom-fighter who once he was upon the throne, became a ruthless despot of monumental cruelty and depravity. And I will have attained a favored seat at the left hand of my infernal master's banquet table."

After Garth wearied of taunting his captive with detailed descriptions of the upcoming ritual sacrifice, he returned to his own hut, leaving Robin alone in the foul-smelling gloom.

The rats, like everything else in the camp, seemed to know he was helpless. He could see their tiny eyes glittering like filthy gems in the dim light provided by the candle guttering on the table. The biggest of the park—one-eyed and with a matted black coat—edged forward, sniffing the air hesitantly. The beast stood on its hind legs, fixing Robin with its one good eye as if challenging him to a duel.

"Get away!" Robin was tempted to try and kick at I he rodent, to try and scare it off. but was afraid of overturning his chair again. The rats would be all over him in seconds. But then, might that not be preferable to the death lovingly described to him by kindly Father Garth? Surely the Lord would forgive a suicide, as long as it was committed to keep the victim from flying in a satanic ritual?

Before he could continue along that particular track of theological thought, Black Morag entered the hut. She bared her teeth at the rats and rushed forward, snarling and waving her arms. The big one-eyed rat hissed in return, waiting until the last moment before fleeing with its fellows.

Morag shuddered as she returned her attention to Robin. "Hideous creatures! I hate them! I can't see how the others can bring themselves to eat them!"

She paused, chewing her ragged thumbnail in contemplation. "I'm not sure—I suppose it's because you're a hero. I've never seen one before. Wanted to know what one was like."

Morag clapped her hands over her ears. She shook her head from side to side and made a strange, droning noise, as if trying to drown out something she didn't want to hear.

"Morag! Stop that! Listen to me! You don't belong here! not with these murderers! Set me free and I'll take you with me to Sherwood! Where you can live free and happy!"

"I belong here! I can't fit in anywhere else! I killed my father! I killed Matthew! I'm unclean! I deserve this place! I deserve these people! I'm nothing but a whore, who allows murderers and thieves to climb on top of her!"

Before Robin had time to react, she'd fallen to her knees before him and was busily unlacing the front of his hose. Robin was still in a state of shock as her hands closed on his member.

If Morag heard him, she gave no sign. Instead, she lowered her mouth, taking his flaccid penis into her mouth. Robin was at a genuine loss as to what to do. Tied hand and foot, he really didn't have any say in what was happening to him. Yet, he was married to—and honestly loved—the Lady Marian. Never, during their long and difficult courtship, had he indulged in the favors of tavern whores, nor had he ever seduced a peasant's daughter for sport. But what Morag was now inflicting on him—doubtless a sin in the eyes of Church—was something he'd never experienced before, in or out of marriage.

Whatever her mental and emotional state, Morag was certainly adept in the tricks of her profession. Within minutes Robin felt himself rapidly approaching climax, mortal sin or not. Just as he was about to empty his seed, there was a noise from behind Morag and Father Garth's gnarled hand dug its bony fingers into her malted hair.

"Bitch!" he shrieked, his voice quaking with rage. "What have you done? What have you done!?!" He jerked Morag head free of her work, just in time to send Robin's seed arcing through the air.

Father Garth emitted a shrill, almost womanly, scream and producing a curved knife from the folds of his robe. Morag saw the death blow coming but did not offer to escape. Garth opened her throat from ear-to-ear, just like the way a butcher would dispose of a suckling pig. Her lifeblood shot forth, spraying Robin. He gagged as it struck his face. Morag smiled and tried to lift her hand in farewell, then collapsed onto the floor. Somewhere in the shadows the rats squealed in anticipation of a meal.

Father Garth stood over the dead whore's body, still clutching the murder weapon in a trembling hand. He seemed to be babbling to no one in particular. "Meddling whore! I knew she would cause trouble the moment Tam bought her from that brothel! Stupid cow! Now she's ruined everything! The incantation was quite specific about keeping the sacrifice pure!"

"So your little magic ritual has been broken, is that it?" Robin sneered. "All your plans for my brother to take over my place and become king have been dashed, eh?"

"It can still work! The ritual would have made it a certainty, that's all! But I can still make it happen." The priest advanced on Robin, his knife still wet with Morag's blood. "Provided that there is only one Fitzooth brother left alive!"

Both Father Garth and Robin gaped in amazement at the sight of Tamlane the Dragon standing in the doorway, an arrow pointed directly at the heretic priest's heart.

Garth frowned and shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Don't you understand, Tam? He's got to die! That's how it must be if you are to succeed!"

"What magic has been worked on you? These are not the words of the Tamlane I know!"

"Damn you, boy! Don't stand there and bandy words with me! You know what's at stake here!"

"Yes, I do. And I've decided I don't want it! Now stand aside, Garth! I don't want to shoot you, but I will if you give me no choice!"

"It was that woman, wasn't it? That bloody Marian! She did this to you, didn't she? I thought I raised you better than that! Women are no more than fields to be plowed—or salted! Your moonstruck, Tam! Now leave off this nonsense and I'll get back to my work at hand!" Garth turned his back on his foster-son and raised his knife in preparation of burying it deep in Robin's chest.

The bow sang and an arrow blossomed from the middle of Garth's narrow chest. The old priest stared in dumb wonder at it for a moment before dropping the knife. The look on his face was that of a man bitten by a dog he believed cowed into obedience. He staggered backward, knocking over the table, extinguishing the one candle that illuminated the hut. He pointed a long, skeletal finger at Tamlane and murmured something in a strange language, a bubble of blood forming on his trembling lips, then collapsed atop Morag's corpse.

Robin sat and silently waited for a second arrow to take his life as well, but to his surprise, Tamlane freed him instead. Robin's arms and legs tingled as if beset by a tiny army of fairies wielding needles, but the pain soon subsided as his circulation was restored. He stared at his brother's face, half hidden by the shadows, as he massaged the feeling back into his wrists, unsure of what he should say or do.

"It's best you leave as fast as you can," suggested Tam. "He was trying to summon his pet demon as he died. I'm not sure, but I think he spoke enough of the charm for it to work."

"But—why? Why did you come back? You could have had everything; my name, my property, my chattels, my wife. You could have even become king!"

"Believe me, I was sorely tempted to leave you here to face whatever fate Garth decided to mete out to you! But I realized there could only be one Robin Hood. Not because no one is your equal at swordplay or archery—but here.'' He struck his breastbone with the flat of his hand.

"As far back as I can remember. Garth had been twisting me . . . stunting me . . . like a freakmaster creates dwarfs . . . so I would come to manhood thinking his was the true way. The only way. He told me I was evil and it never occurred to me to wonder if that evil was mine by nature—or thrust upon me.

"But now I've seen how humans live—fine humans, not the twisted, brutalized things I'd been raised to believe were men. I saw how even the simplest peasant was twice my equal. I was shamed—and angered. Angered that I should have been denied the right to be able to love and know friendship and everything that comes with it. I felt cheated. And I knew who was responsible."

"Brother, please—I realize your sins have been many and severe. But the Church assures us there is such a thing as redemption! Come, leave this place with me ..."

Tam sniffed the air, grabbed his brother and roughly shoved him toward the door. "There's no time for that! Besides, I'm as much a cripple as poor Dim! A one-eyed man might miss the sight he once had, but he still can not see through a glass eye. Go back to your castle and lands! Go back to your friends! Return and live out your life as history sees fit! But whatever you do, never let the Lady Marian slip from your grasp; for without her you'll be lost! Now go!"

Robin opened his mouth, prepared to argue his case even further, but he stopped at the sight of tears coursing down his twin brother's face.

"I know I shouldn't weep for him," whispered Tamlane the Dragon. "But—good or bad—he was the only father I ever knew."

Robin wiped the hot tears from his brother's eyes and for one brief second he could remember what it had been like in their mother's womb, pressed belly-to-belly with his brother, legs and arms intertwined as they sucked one other's thumbs.

Without further words between them, Robin turned and left the hut. Within seconds he mounted the horse his brother had left for him and was on his way back to Sherwood and his wife.

Tamlane the Dragon seated himself in the chair his brother had recently vacated, crossed his arms and waited. It wouldn't be long. The electrical-storm smell of approaching demon was growing stronger by the second. He glanced down at the bodies sprawled at his feet and something resembling regret flickered in his heart as he studied Morag's twisted body. Like him, she had been more a victim of her father's evil than her own. Perhaps that's why he'd fancied her in the first place.

Tam felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to prickle, and with a sound of a thousand angry honey-bees, the air was split and Lucullus appeared. The demon shambled from the shadows, quickly scenting the thick odor of spilled blood. The beast shuffled over to where Garth and Morag's bodies lay in a tangled heap, snuffling like a bear. When it saw Garth's pale, blood-smeared face it halted and emitted a low-pitched whine.

Lucullus swung its fierce, fang-filled snout in Tam's direction. It's brow furrowed and lips curled in a snarl. Tam stood up, kicking the chair aside as he rose. He pulled a long, sharp dirk from his belt and motioned for the demon to approach him with a beckoning twitch of his fingers. His grin was almost as wide and sharp as his adversary's.

When they first rode up on the town, it looked as if the streets were full of hanged men.

As they drew closer, what had at first been mistaken for bleached bones turned out to be paper-mâché mannequins painted to resemble skeletons, grinning an idiot's welcome to all comers.

"Dia de los Muertes," Alvarez replied, gesturing to the locals in the town square, busy buying and selling fruits, flowers, and gaily colored masks. "Day of the Dead," he added, when it became clear the others still did not understand.

Big Luther turned in his saddle to fix Hop with a baleful glare. He sniffed the air and his eyes narrowed. "You ain't been smokin' that chinaman trash again, have you, Hop?"

"No, Luther," Hop said, shaking his head for emphasis. "I left my pipe back at the camp, like you said."

"Good thing. Last thing I need is you with your head in a cloud when Dixie Jim and his boys come ridin' in." Big Luther turned back around in his saddle to address Alvarez.

"Over there," Alvarez said, pointing to a squat adobe structure with a porch nearly twice as large as the building itself. A few rough-hewn tables and chairs were scattered amongst its dusty shade, along with a yellow dog with ribs like barrel staves sprawled under a bench made from planks. Across the side of the cantina that faced the square was plastered a broadsheet depicting a skeleton, sombrero crowning its skull and serape draped over one bony shoulder, eagerly chugging a jug of tequila.

"Again with the damn bones," Luther grunted. "What is it with you Meskins, Alvarez?"

Big Luther looked thoughtful. "Big fiesta, huh?" He glanced at the cantina then back at market place. "You think Dixie Jim and them are likely to show up for it?"

"Si. It is a big party, with singing and fireworks—like you Yanquis have for Fourth of July."

"It ain't likely Dixie Jim's one to celebrate the Fourth of July," Clell snorted, "him bein' a Vicksburg boy and all."

"Couple of days. Tonight is La Noche de Duelo—the Night of Mourning. Tomorrow begins the big celebration in the square."

"Well, this seems as good a place to wait for them as many. Better than some. Let's go get us a drink."

As Hop tied his horse to the hitching posts outside the cantina he wondered, not for the first time, what exactly he had gotten himself into. He didn't particularly enjoy Big Luther's company or Clell's, for that matter. Alvarez was friendly enough, but hard to know, just like the coolies back at the camp. Not that there was much in the way of chatting in the opium racks.

They had come to this nameless little town to kill the bandits called the Wolf Pack. The Wolf Pack, lead by a former Confederate who went by the name Dixie Jim, had managed to become enough of a nuisance to the Golden Rule Mining Company that they had seen fit to hire bounty hunters. And in Big Luther Tatum and Clell Yoakum, they had found the kind of men needed for bloody business. Alvarez, however, was harder to figure out. Hop reckoned he was riding with them because he knew the area and needed the money. Besides, Alvarez was the one who knew someone who knew someone who heard that Dixie Jim was sweet on some little mamacita in this flyspeck village.

As for Hop ... he had been drafted into the posse more-or-less against his will. Big Luther had recognized Hop from his wanted poster, so he knew Hop didn't have any problems with killing. Even less for doing it for money. Hop had tried to tell him that the man who had done those things wasn't him anymore—that's why he was working in a mining camp.

Hop didn't want that part of his life anymore. That's why he was hitting the pipe; so he could forget the faces that came to him in the night. But it seemed no matter how hard he tried to run away from that part of his life, it always seemed to have a way of catching up with him. In the end he had agreed to ride with them because it meant he would be finally able to buy himself enough opium to make him forget who he was and what he had done.

The cantina owner was tending a small table decorated with a faded tintype of an older woman dressed in a mantilla, bouquets of marigolds, sweet breads and fruit. "Tequila or whisky, senor?" asked the cantina owner as he lit the votive candles that framed the picture.

"Tequila," Big Luther replied, tossing a silver coin onto the bar and holding up two fingers.

The cantina owner nodded and went behind the bar, where he produced a stone crock. Big Luther picked up the container and ambled back out to the porch, where Clell and the others were waiting. A second later the cantina owner followed with a pair of smudged shot glasses, which he placed in front of Big Luther.

"I figger we got until nightfall before they show," he grunted, slopping the golden liquor into the shots.

Hop knew better to ask where his glass was. Big Luther had made it clear from the start that while he was willing to ride with Hop and Alvarez, and even split the bounty, he drew the line at drinking with them. Alvarez fell silently in step alongside him as Hop ambled over to the market place.

"Is it true?" Alvarez spoke very fast, as if by rushing out the words were the only way they could be said.

A gnarled old man was selling paper-mâché masks fashioned to resemble leering devils and snarling animals arranged on a blanket spread over the cobblestones. Hop wandered over to another vendor, who had circular breads that smelled of cinnamon and anise and a selection of elaborately decorated skulls made from sugar paste.

As he paused to study the macabre treats, a crocodile of children, each outfitted in a skull mask, twined its way through the crowd, laughing and singing merrily, toy wands tipped by brightly painted eggshells held in their free hands. As Hop watched, one of the children smashed his wand against the head of a playmate, setting free a shower of confetti.

Alvarez smiled and nodded at the youngsters. "It begins already. There will be much calaverada the next few days."

"'Calaverada. It is what you call—" Alvarez trailed off, wrinkling his brow to try and find a proper translation. "High spirits. This is the one time of the year where the dead are given back their former lives, and are welcomed back by their friends and family. That is why they are selling pan de los muertos and marigolds ... so the living may build ofrendas—altars and make gifts of food, drink and flowers to the dead."

Hop scratched his head. "Do the spooks or what have you, do they actually eat the food folks set out for them?"

Alvarez laughed and shook his head. "No, they can only consume the spirits of the ofrendas. It is up to the living to dispose of the physical food and drink."

Hop nodded. "Sounds reasonable to me." He stuck his hand into his pocket and withdrew a handful of coins. "I reckon I better get started. I got a hell of a lot of dead to remember."

Big Luther didn't have much use for Mexicans, save for tequila and tamales. Then again, Big Luther didn't have much use for anyone besides himself. The one exception being Clell, up to a point. If it had been up to him, it would be just the two of them riding after the Wolf Pack. They'd been through hell and high water together for going on three years, and had gotten used to watching one another backs. But the president of Golden Rule has insisted that they take on a couple of men from the camp with them.

Big Luther had been against it at first, but when he saw there was no budging the old man, he agreed, but only if he got to choose the men he rode with. He'd been surprised to find Hopper listed on the camp's roles, and even more so to find him smoking opium with the coolies. He didn't seem anything like the gunfighter Big Luther had read about, hut you didn't get a reputation like Hopper's without just cause.

It was twilight, and the vendors removed their blankets and went home. As Big Luther and Clell watched, the villagers left their houses carrying lighted candles and bundles of food and flowers and made their way to the cemetery at the edge of town.

"Damn fool meskins," Big Luther muttered aloud between mouthfuls of tamale. "Don't they know they'll be in the grave soon enough?"

Clell shrugged and helped himself to another shot of tequila. That was another thing Big Luther liked about Clell: he didn't talk much.

Big Luther looked up at Alvarez and Hopper high-tailing it across the square towards the cantina. "What is it?" he asked, wiping tamale sauce from his mouth onto his sleeve.

Big Luther exchanged a look with Clell before returning his attention to the others. "Where are they?"

"The bawdy house on the other side of the village," Hop said. "We saw them ride up not five minutes ago. Ain't that right, Alvarez?"

"Si," he replied, nodding his head for extra emphasis. "The girls came out to greet them—I heard one call the leader Jim."

Big Luther fished a pocket watch out of his vest and studied its face. "We wait a little longer. Give 'em time to get comfortable, drink some mescal and some pulque, maybe get themselves a little of curry. Give 'em time to get drunk and careless. Then we hit 'em fast and we hit 'em hard."

Hop untied the sack and emptied its contents for the others to see. Several sugar skulls and a couple of braided loaves of bread with what looked like skulls and crossed bones emblazoned on them rolled out onto the table top.

Big Luther stared at the candied skulls for a moment, then glanced back up at Hop.

"They ain't for you," Hop replied, sweeping the calaveras and pan de la muertos back into the bag.

They couldn't have gotten better conditions for an ambush if they'd set it up that way. Nearly everyone in the village was out at the cemetery, weaving garlands to adorn the graves of their dead, leaving the town practically deserted. The only living souls left were the outlaws whooping it up at the brothel on the edge of town . . . and the men sent to kill them.

Hop and the others were hiding in the shadows near a small copse of trees, listening to the sounds of their prey's carousing in the form of raucous shouting and the laughter of women. A man's voice could be heard lustily singing 'Dixie'. Bored, Hop fished one of the candied skulls out of the sack and bit into it. His mouth was instantly filled with sugar and saliva, and for some reason his mind flashed to the story of Samson and the carcass full of honey. He turned his eyes towards the cemetery. There were dozens of candles flickering like fireflies in the cool autumn evening, and the wind blowing from that direction was redolent of marigold and copal incense. He could hear the strains of a mariachi band moving from grave to grave, singing the favorite songs of the deceased.

When Big Luther gave the sign they went in through the front door easy as you please, since no one had bothered to bar it, and caught the Wolf Pack with their pants literally down around their ankles.

Hop didn't remember a whole lot about the attack, except at one point there were women screaming, then suddenly they stopped.

When he came back to himself, he was staring down at a naked female body laying face-first on a blood soaked straw mattress. One of the bandits lay sprawled half-in, half-out of the bed, his bare chest punctured by bullets, an unfired pistol still held in his dead hand.

Big Luther stood in the doorway behind him, looking like he'd been dipped in a slaughtered pig. In one hand he held a machete, in the other he gripped Dixie Jim's head by its blood-soaked hair. "What are you waitin' for, Hop? It's a thousand in gold per head."

Hop licked his lips, fighting to keep the sick down. His mouth still tasted of sugar skull. "The woman—what about the woman?" he croaked.

"Meskin whore-heads ain't worth a plug nickel," Big Luther snorted. "Leave 'er be."

Hop nodded dumbly and reached for the machete sheathed at his side. It took three good chops to completely sever the outlaw's head from his shoulders. He stuffed it into his saddlebag without really looking at it. There had been a time, not that long ago, when such bloody business would not have turned a hair on his head. He kept telling himself that when this was all over and done with, when he died and they cut him open, all they would find inside was opium smoke.

Hop stepped out of the bloodied bedroom and was surprised to see the others still standing in the main room. He was even more surprised to see Alvarez was shouting at Big Luther.

"Shooting up a bunch of gringo outlaws is one thing, but killing the only whores in town—and before a big fiesta! They'll have the Federalis on us!"

"Crazy gringo!" Alvarez spat on the floor, narrowly missing Big Luther's boot.

Big Luther, however, did not miss Alvarez's head. The machete buried itself in his skull, directly between the eyes.

"Damn Meskin," Big Luther growled. "You would have thunk he'd knowed better than to do that."

They rode off through the hills and into the desert to throw off pursuit, saddlebags stained and bulging with their grisly trophies. Now that the deed was done and all that stood in their way was sand and rock, Big Luther and Clell became more relaxed—or as relaxed as Hop could remember ever seeing them. They did not seem terribly concerned about the possibility of pursuit from the Mexican authorities. Nor, for that matter, was Hop. But he kept looking over his shoulder anyway.

It was well after midnight when they finally pitched camp. The sky above was clear and cold and full of stars, like jewels poured from a burglar's bag. Hop made a fire from deadwood and brush while Big Luther and Clell unsaddled the horses. As they settled down for coffee, neither bounty hunter seemed to care, or even notice, that Hop had moved away from the flickering ring of light cast by the campfire, until it was time to draw lots for the first watch.

"Where did that sumbitch get off to?" snarled Big Luther, squinting into the dark. "Hop? Hop! Where are you? Answer me, damn your eyes!"

Hop's voice came from behind a collection of small rocks roughly fifty feet beyond the campfire. The two bounty hunters exchanged looks and got to their feet. As Big Luther and Clell drew closer, they could see Hop hunkered down on his haunches, his attention focused on something before him on the desert floor.

"What you doing behind them rocks, boy?" Clell sneered. "Having yourself a shit?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?" replied Hop, moving aside so the others could see his handiwork.

An ofrenda made from a loaf of pan de la mitertos, a couple of sugar skulls, and the wanted poster for Dixie Jim, held in place by a small flat stone, was lit by tiny flickering flame from a candle stub taken from the cantina.

Big Luther's eyes widened until they looked like they would pop right out of his head. "What in the name of hell do you think you're doing?" he roared.

Hop looked up at Big Luther with eyes the color of smoke. "Alvarez told me that tonight The Dead walk among the living—and if you wish to keep from being dragged back to Hell with 'em, you gotta honor 'em."

"You're out of you cotton-pickin" mind! Now pack that shit up and take the watch!"

Hop looked down at the makeshift altar, then back up at Big Luther, but did not offer to move. "What are you afraid of, Luther? You, of all people, should come to terms with The Dead."

Hop did not answer, but instead turned his attention back to the altar and began to hum 'Dixie'.

Big Luther stepped forward, throwing back his duster so the holster was clear. "Fill your hand, Hopper!"

Hop glanced up at the man towering over him and began to slowly rise, still humming 'Dixie' under his breath.

Hop suddenly feinted with his right hand. That's all Big Luther needed to open fire. His Colt took off the top of Hop's head like it was a hat, sending brains and blood and bone flying across the desert floor. The body hit the dirt like a bag of feed thrown off the back of a wagon. Hop's right hand opened as he struck the ground and a sugar skull rolled out, grinning sweetly up at Big Luther and Clell.

Big Luther stared down at the dead man sprawled, at his feet, his face gray and sweaty. "Shit," he whispered, licking his lips with a dry tongue. "I could've swore he was drawin' down."

"Crazy damn fool," Big Luther said, bolstering his gun. "Shoulda knowed better than to do that. Man was clean out of his mind, that much is for certain." The bounty hunter stepped forward and, with one kick of his boot, obliterated Hop's altar. "Going on about dead walkin' and all that Meskin hogwash." He shrugged and turned back to face Clell. "I guess it just means more for us, don't it?'

"Hear what?" The moment he said the words, Big Luther caught the sound of horses headed their way. Whoever it might be was riding hard and fast from the direction they had come from. There was also something else mixed in with the drum of beat the riders, something that began more distinct the closer they came. Someone was singing. Singing in English.

Big Luther turned to face the oncoming riders, choking on the scream rising from his guts, the sound of hooves and Dixie thundering in his ears.

The Federalis found the bounty hunters sprawled amongst the cold ashes of their campfire like broken dolls. There was no doubt in the authorities' mind s that these were the men responsible for the massacre at the brothel. However, there was no evidence to point to who was responsible for the slaughter in the desert. All three had been decapitated, although a quick search of their saddlebags revealed they contained the bounty hunter's missing heads.

The Federalis who came upon the bodies had their own opinions as to who or what was responsible, but they were not given credence by the higher ups. However, all concerned agreed that it was odd that they never found the heads of Dixie Jim and the other four members of the Wolf Pack. Stranger still, they had found a sugar skull resting atop the chest of one of the bodies. It was missing a bite.

Lester McKraken was a miller who lived in the town of Monkey's Elbow, Kentucky, which is somewhere's near Possum Trot, which is a hundred miles north of Paducah, more or less.

Now Lester had himself two sons he had to raise on his own when his wife fell to her death after the neighbor kids moved the McKraken outhouse back ten feet one moonless night. The older of the two boys was a fine young figure of a man, with a good head on his shoulders and a strong back and the gumption to make something of himself. The younger boy was—well, let's just say he was Billy.

Now, there weren't nothing seriously wrong with Billy upstairs. He wasn't feeble-minded, not like the washer-woman's young'un. It's just that Billy, well, Billy tended to take things at face value, regardless of the face. I guess you could say he lacked imagination, more that anything else. Old Lester saw it as a case of being mule-stupid. And maybe he was right. But one of the strange side-effects of Billy's thick-headedness was that the boy was immune to fear.

From the day he learned to crawl, Billy was always getting himself into some fix or another, like the time he came home leading a dog on a leash thinking it was in need of a shave because of the foam on its jaws. It wasn't long before his school-mates were coming up with all kinds of outlandish tasks to try out on him, which Billy would dutifully perform. By the time he was nine years old he'd gotten the nickname of "Billy Fearless", which most folks called him more than his rightful name of McKraken. Much to Old Man McKiaken's relief.

Billy's father had tried his best to school the boy in common sense. When Billy was no bigger than a grasshopper he told him that there were things he should never do, for fear of his life.

Unfortunately, Billy didn't know what a shudder was. He was under the impression it was something not very nice, but he wasn't sure. He was afraid to ask his father for fear of the old man's temper, so he never did find out.

When Billy turned sixteen he was put out of school, like most boys his age. Billy figured he'd end up working at the mill, just like his elder brother had before him. Bui Old Man McKraken. while he loved his son as a father should, had pretty much worn out his worrying bone on Billy. He figured it would be better if his younger son found himself employment somewheres beside the mill. So Billy went knocking door to door, looking for work. When no one wanted to hire him in Monkey's Elbow, he walked the ten miles to Possum Trot and knocked on doors there.

One door he knocked on belonged to the town gravedigger, a fellow by the name of Shanks. Shanks looked Billy over and saw that he was young and strong and eager to work. But he also knew that even strong men often turned weak when it came to digging graves in a lonely cemetery late at night.

"You seem to be a right enough sort," Shanks said. "But I have to ask you one thing before I can hire you—are you skeered of ghosts?"

Billy blinked and thought and blinked again. "Ain't never seen a ghost, I reckon."

Shanks wasn't sure if Billy was putting on being brave or was out-and-out lying to him, so he decided he would test the boy to discover the truth. Later that afternoon he handed Billy a shovel, a pick and a Coleman lantern and pointed to the most remote section of the cemetery, where the grave markers were old and leaned at strange angles.

"Billy, I just got word from Reverend McPherson that there's to be a funeral the day after tomorrow. I need you to dig me a grave six long and six deep over yonder, near the weepy willow. I have to go to town to see to some business and I might not be back till the morning. I want you to work on that grave until midnight, understand?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Shanks," replied Billy. And without any word or complaint, the boy took up his tools and set off to do as he was told.

Shanks went into town and sat at the local bar, drinking with a couple of his friends until it got dark. Then he snuck back to the cemetery, where he dressed himself in a cast-off shroud and whitened his face, hair and hands with flour. Then he snuck out to where he could see the light from Billy's lantern.

It was very dark and the night air crisp with the coming autumn as the gravedigger darted from gravestone to gravestone. The cemetery smelled of dead leaves and lichen, with the ever-present odor of rot lurking just under the surface. Somewhere up in the weepy willow an old hoot owl cried out. Shanks had to bite back a drunken laugh as he thought of how frightened the new boy was going to be when he laid eyes on him, white and ghostly, standing on the edge of the freshly-dug grave.

As he reached the plot where Billy was working, he could see that the grave was almost finished. Indeed, Billy—smeared with dirt and sweat—was in the act of boosting himself out of the hole.

Shanks waited until the boy was reaching in his pocket for a bandanna to wipe the sweat from his face, then stepped out from his hiding place, moaning like a lost soul.

Billy looked up from his labors and frowned at the white-faced stranger who stood on the opposite side of the grave he had just dug. "Who's there?' he called out.

"Whooooo!" Shanks replied, waving his arms a little to give his performance a most ghostly effect.

"You better answer me proper or you better git," Billy said, getting to his feet with the aid of his shovel. "You got no business here at this hour, mister."

Shanks wasn't sure whether to be pleased or irked. He'd been expecting the boy to turn white and wet his pants with fear or, at the very least, flee, as any sensible person might do when confronted by a ghost. Still, the boy's bravado might not be as strong as it looked, so he decided to continue his little masquerade.

"What do you want here?" Billy demanded, this time starting to sound angry. "Speak if you're a honest man, or I'll whup you upside the head!"

Shanks was convinced that Billy's threat was mere bluster, so he stood his ground, waving his arms and moaning and groaning to beat the band. So Billy hefted his shovel and struck him upside the head with the flat of the spade, knocking him into the grave. Billy then packed his tools and headed for the gravedigger's shack to await his employer's return from town so he could show him the nice new grave he'd dug and tell him about the strange fellow who'd pestered him.

The next day there was a knock on Old Man McKraken's door. When he answered it he found Shanks standing on his front porch with a plaster on his head and two black eyes. Sitting in the back of the gravedigger's mule cart was Billy.

"I'll have you know, McKraken, that boy of yours ain't nothing but bad luck on two legs!" Shanks snarled, wincing as he spoke. "He whopped me on the head with a shovel and left me to lie in an open grave all night long! I'll be lucky if I don't get the rheumatism from the damp!"

Aghast, Old Man McKraken promptly grabbed Billy by the ear and yanked him from the back of the mule cart. "What kind of mischief are you up to boy? The devil must be in you, child, to play such unholy pranks!"

"It weren't my fault, Daddy!" explained Billy, fighting back the tears as his father gave his ear another twist. "He stood there in the night, all covered in flour, and wouldn't talk when I asked him to. I thought he was some rascal, out to do me harm."

Old Man McKraken might have had his doubts about his son's mental strengths, but he knew the boy was incapable of lying. So he gave Shanks five dollars for his trouble and brought the boy back into the house. After a couple of days he called his son to him and sat him down in front of the fire.

"Billy, I'll be blunt, son; while I love you as the flesh of my flesh, I can't take any pride in you. Its time that you went out into the world. I'm giving you fifty dollars cash, a cart and horse, a turning lathe, and a carving bench so you can go forth and master yourself a trade. But tell no one where you come from or who your father is, for I am ashamed of you."

Billy didn't seem to take his father's words badly. He simply shrugged and said; "If that's all you want out of me, Daddy, I reckon I can do that."

So that very same day Billy, dressed in overalls and a red flannel shirt, wearing his only pair of brogans, took the fifty dollars, the cart and horse, the turning lathe, and the carving bench his father had promised him and rode out of Monkey's Elbow, never to be seen again.

During his sixteen years Billy had never gone any farther than Possum Trot. Although he knew there were other towns and villages outside the valley of his birth, he never once visited them. He'd also heard tell of other states besides Kentucky, although he had a hard lime picturing them. Hut now, true to his father's wishes, he found himself heading into the world.

By dusk Billy was two valleys away from his home, passing through scenery that was both strange and familiar to him. He came to a cross roads with a huge oak tree in the middle. As he was tired and his horse weary, Billy decided this was as good a place as any to stop for the night.

Billy made himself a small fire at the base of the tree and set about making himself comfortable for the night. As he ate his simple meal of cheese and bread, he heard a creaking sound coming from the branches over his head. Looking up, he saw a man hanging from his neck by a rope.

"It looks to be a chilly night," Billy observed. "Ain't you gonna get cold up there?"

The dead man didn't say anything, but a gust of wind blew him to and fro, making the rope creak all the more.

"Lordy! Look al how you're shaking and shivering!" Billy said. And because he had a good heart, he shinnied up the tree and used his knife to cut the hanged man down and lower the body to the ground, so it could share his fire.

Billy had hoped he would have some company to while away the hours before he fell asleep, but the hanged man didn't seem very appreciative—or talkative. In fact, all he did was stare at Billy with his tongue sticking out black and bloated. He also smelled a tad high and was missing an eye, which looked to have been pecked out by a bird.

"You don't seem to have a lot to say," Billy sighed, poking the fire with a stick.

As if in answer, the one-eyed corpse fell head-long into the fire, setting its hair ablaze.

"Watch out!" Billy cried. When the dead man made no move to pull his head out of the fire, Billy quickly leapt to his feet and yanked the body clear, stomping out the burning hair.

Billy clucked his tongue in reproof, much the same way his father used to do. "Teh! If you can't do no better'n that, friend, I'll put you back up in the tree."

The hanged man just lay there and smoldered, looking the worse for wear after Billy had stomped out the fire. Disgusted, Billy went to sleep.

The next morning the dead man still hadn't moved. Billy had been thinking of offering the stranger a ride to the next town, but decided not to, seeing how unfriendly the fellow had turned out to be. So he hitched his horse back up to its cart and headed on his way.

After traveling most of the day, Billy finally came upon a little town on the edge of a big lake. In the middle of the lake was an island dominated by a huge mansion made of gray stone.

It was getting on to late afternoon and Billy was hungry and thirsty and didn't cotton to the idea of spending another night under the chilly stars, so he decided to stop at the inn near the lake. The sign over the door said The Ghost Lake Tavern. When he entered every one turned as one to stare at him, their faces showing a mixture of curiosity and dread. When they saw it was just Billy, they let out a collective sigh and returned to their drinking and tiddlywinks.

Billy eased himself into a seat and signaled to the bar-keep that he wanted a drink. In the wink of an eye a pretty young girl with hair the color of a new penny set a tankard of ale in front of him.

Billy nodded, his cheeks coloring. He couldn't help but notice how pale and fine the barmaid's skin was and how her hair shimmered in the lamplight. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on in his short life.

The barmaid nodded sagely. "A fortune is a good thing to have if a man wants to find himself a wife. Youth and good looks play their parts, as well—but a fortune is the most important of the three."

"Do you have a room for the night?" Billy all but blurted, his face now so red it felt as if he was hiding live coals in his mouth.

"You'll have to ask my father," she said, gesturing to the heavy-set man behind the bar.

Billy cleared his throat, hoping his voice would not crack. "Do you have a room to let, innkeeper?"

Billy glanced out the window at the island in the middle of the lake with its huge house.

"What about that place?" he asked, pointing in the direction of the lake. The entire tavern had fallen quiet as a church, their own drinks and conversations forgotten.

The inn-keeper looked up from rinsing out the tankard, frowning at Billy. "What place?"

"Aye, they have rooms enough, I suppose," the inn-keeper replied slowly. "For those foolish enough to stay there."

The inn-keeper looked at Billy as if his head was made of mattress licking. "Son, haven't you ever heard of the House On Ghost Lake?"

"I'm from Monkey's Elbow," Billy replied, as if this explained everything. Perhaps it did.

"There once was a man named McGonagil who sold his soul to the devil for the riches of Croseus. Once he got his wealth, he started worrying about people stealing it, so he bought himself that island and built himself a mansion, so's he wouldn't be bothered by thieves. When Old Scratch finally came for him, he refused to go unless the devil promised to protect his gold for all eternity. So the devil granted his dying wish and dragged the old bastard to hell.

"McGonagil's treasure is still somewhere in that house. The story goes that anyone who can spend three nights in the house shall claim the gold for his own. But the house is haunted by all manner of ghosts and goblins and of the dozens of fortune-hunters who have braved the island, none have survived the first night!"

Billy listened to what the inn-keeper said and looked back at the empty house standing on the island. He then looked at the barmaid, who was smiling at him. "Would you marry me if I had a fortune?"

Billy looked back out the window at the island, then stood up and announced to the tavern; "I really don't like sleeping in the open this time of year. It don't agree with my bones. I'd be more than happy to pay someone to ferry me and my belongings to the island yonder."

There was a rumbling of excited voices and a broad-shouldered man stood up. "I'll ferry you over and back, lad, for three dollars. But its got to be cash on the barrel-head, as I don't cotton to taking money outta dead folk's pockets."

"Fair enough," replied Billy, handing over three silver dollars. He turned to the inn-keeper and said; "Can I keep my horse and cart stabled here? I'll pay you for their keep—"

The inn-keeper shook his head. "I won't take your money, son. If you live to the third day, then you may pay me. If not, I'll keep them for my own. Before you go—tell me your name, so I can send word to your family of your death."

As Billy followed the ferryman out of the tavern, the barmaid hurried to him and threw her arms around his neck.

Billy blushed even deeper than before, muttered thank you and hurried away, leaving the barmaid to watch after him, a tear glimmering in her eye.

Billy had the ferryman load his carving bench and turning lathe into his launch, along with enough food and drink for three days. By the time they reached the island it was near dark, and the ferryman was loathe to do more than unload Billy and his things at the old wharf.

The front door of the house was unlocked and Billy placed his carving bench and turning lathe in a large room on the first floor that had a fireplace at one end and an old canopied bed in the corner. While the house was very dusty and smelled of mouse shit and mildew, it didn't seem to be in such bad shape. So Billy set about building a fire in the old chimney, found himself a stool, and prepared a simple dinner of black bread and sausage. As he sat in front of the fire, chewing on the last of his bread, there came a sound like a tormented soul.

"Teh! Such a noisy wind," Billy said, shaking his head. Just then the fire in the grate blazed incredibly high, filling the room with exaggerated shadows, then fell to a tiny flicker. Billy jumped up and grabbed the bellows and began fanning the flame. "Teh! Such a drafty room!"'

There was a noise in the far corner like that of someone crackling paper and a strange, high-pitched voice cried out; "Meow! How horribly cold are we!"

Billy, who had returned the fire to its former strength, turned in the direction of the voices and squinted into the darkness. "If'n you're cold, come sit with me by the fire."

Out of the dark corner paraded two coal-black cats, walking on their hind-legs as nice as you please. The cats had huge yellow eyes and little red boots on their feet. They sat themselves down on the stool next to Billy and warmed themselves by the fire.

After awhile one of the cats turned to Billy and said; "It looks to be a long night, friend. How about a nice game of cards?"

This didn't take Billy aback none. He reckoned if a cat could walk on its hind legs and wear boots, not to mention talk, why shouldn't it want to play cards?

"Boy-howdy, y'all sure got long nails!" Billy exclaimed, grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks. "Here, let me shorten 'em up a tad before we commence to playin'!" With that he placed them on his carving bench and screwed down their paws very firmly.

The cats began hissing and spitting and cursing him in cat-talk, which isn't very pleasant to the ears. Billy picked up one of his carving knives and with four clean strokes, severed the cats' legs. Instead of blood, a substance that looked and smelled like tar boiled forth from the wounds and the cats vanished in a cloud of foul-smelling brimstone.

Billy looked about and scratched his head. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and said "Teh! Well, I didn't really want to play cards with them, anyways!"

As Billy returned his attention to the fire, there was a horrible commotion—as if the gates of hell had been thrown wide open and all the attendant demons sent forth. Suddenly the room was filled with huge black dogs with eyes the color of fresh blood. The hounds launched themselves at the fire, digging at the burning logs with their great paws and snatching burning embers between their massive jaws and worrying them like rats. Billy stood and watched the dogs, not sure what to make of what was going on. Then, one of the hounds started digging at the hearth, sending hot embers and soot flying. One of the cinders got into Billy's eye, making it water and burn.

"That's enough! Now you've gone beyond a joke!" Billy said, and seizing the poker from the fire, cracked one of the dogs across the head, killing it instantly.

The rest of the pack came to a dead halt and stared at their fallen companion, whose crushed skull oozed the same foul-smelling tar as the cats. Then, as one, they raised their heads and fixed their blood-red eyes on Billy.

"Git, you mangy critters!" Billy yelled, raising his arms and waving the poker at the hell-hounds. "You heard me—go on and git!" With that he took a swing at the nearest hound, who yelped and promptly turned tail and fled the room. The other dogs followed suit, leaping out windows and even climbing up the chimney in order to get away from Billy and his slashing poker.

After the last dog had disappeared, Billy carefully picked up the pieces of his scattered fire and put them back in the fireplace. He then caught himself yawning and decided it was time to go to bed. He kicked off his shoes and climbed, fully-dressed, into the four-poster bed in the corner. The bed was made out of solid wood, with little clawed feet clutching carved balls, and although the bedclothes were a tad musty, he was quite comfortable.

As he drifted off to sleep he fell into a dream that he was riding a horse. At first the horse would only go slow, clip-clop, but soon it was going faster, clippity-clop, then even faster still, clippity-clip. Billy opened his eyes and was surprised to find the walls and ceiling of the mansion speeding past him. Sitting up in bed, Billy discovered it wasn't the house that was moving—it was him. The bed's legs were moving as fast as they could, hurrying him from room to room, up stairs and down, over thresholds and around corners as if it was drawn by six strong horses.

Billy clung to the mattress the best he could as the bed shot down the long, dark corridors, sheets flapping behind them like pursuing ghosts. Finally, with a great bound, the bed flipped over on itself with a crash, landing atop Billy. He struggled out from under the tangle of blankets and pillows, rubbing his bruised rump and shaking his head. The bed's feet were still peddling at the air, like a turtle trying to right itself. Billy laughed and patted the bed appreciatively.

"Thanky kindly, old thing! That was the damnedest ride I've had since I rode the Flyin' Jenny at the county fair last year!"

And, with that, he gathered up his pillow and blankets and made his way back to the room on the first floor, where he curled up in front of the fire and fell sound asleep.

Early the next day the innkeeper, at the prodding of his daughter, paid the ferryman to take him to the island to check up on this so-called Billy Fearless. In the thirty years since old McGonagil was given his just reward, he'd seen the house take its share of victims. Most were young fools like the boy, all of them with dreams of treasure. Each and every one of them had been removed from the old house feet-first, stiff as boards and whiter than milled flour, the very life scared out of them. He figured the same would prove true of the latest boy. It was too bad his daughter had taken such a shine to this one. It was going to break her heart.

The inn-keeper entered the mansion and opened the nearest door off the great hall and saw Billy sprawled before the fireplace. He shook his head sadly. "What a pity!" he sighed.

The inn-keeper was so surprised to see Billy move he clutched at his chest. "Lord A'mighty, boy! I never thought I'd see you alive again!"

"Why shouldn't I be? Granted, I had some bother with cats and dogs and my bed disagreein' with me, but I had a nice enough night."

The inn-keeper could only shake his head in disbelief. Maybe there was something to this Billy Fearless, after all.

The second night began uneventfully enough for Billy. He set up his fire and fixed himself a simple meal from the sausage and cheese the inn-keeper had been kind enough to leave for him, believing it to be his last meal. It was nearing midnight, and Billy was settling down to a pipe of tobacco before going to sleep, when, with a horrible, blood-curdling scream, half a man from the waist down fell from the chimney and landed on the hearth at his feet.

Billy craned his neck to look up the chimney and yelled; "Hey, up there! There's another half wanted down here—that's not enough!"

Presently there was a second, even more hideous scream and the top half of the man dropped from the chimney.

"There, that's better," Billy said. "Here, let me stir up the fire for you." So he got off his stool to prod the fire. When he turned back around the two halves had somehow joined into a whole man with a ugly face. Actually, ugly was being kind. The stranger's skin was the color and texture of a mushroom, the nose whittled down to nothing and the lips withered and black. One of his ears was missing and the other was hanging by a flap of skin. But to make matters worse, the ugly man was sitting on Billy's stool.

"Here now! You're silting in my spot!" said Billy. "Get up and find your own place to sit!"

The ugly man growled something in a low, liquid voice that sounded like his chest was full of honey, and shoved Billy away.

"There's no point in being rude," Billy admonished. "And I am the soul of human kindness, taught to turn the other cheek as the Good Book says. But I was also raised to defend what's mine and stand up for myself." And with that he grabbed the stool and yanked it out from under the ugly man, sending him sprawling.

The ugly man got to his feet, rubbing at his rear end and looking at Billy as if he'd just jumped over the moon.

Billy, having reclaimed his seat, settled back down to smoking his pipe. But before he had time to take a decent puff, another man dropped down the chimney. And another. And another. Within a couple of minutes there were six men, each uglier than the last, sitting in front of the fire. One of them got up and opened a closet door and produced nine skeleton legs and a human skull and began setting them up like ninepins.

Billy watched with great interest as the six ugly men rolled the skulls at the leg-bones. While he did not hold with their manners or their looks, he did have a fondness for ninepins. After a couple of sets he asked the ugly men if he could play.

The ugly men looked at one another then one of them smiled, displaying rolling teeth and blackened gums. "You can play if you have money."

"I've got money enough." Billy pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and showed it to the ugly men, who muttered amongst themselves.

"Very well. You bowl first," the leader said, and handed Billy the skull. The others stood aside and tittered amongst themselves, wailing to see what Billy's reaction would be.

Billy hefted the skull and frowned. "Teh! Your ball ain't very round. I think I can fix that, though. "He went to his turning lathe and worked the skull until it was completely smooth.

"There!" he said, holding it up to admire his handiwork. "Now it'll roll much better."

So Billy played ninepins with the six ugly men until the break of dawn, losing a dollar or two along the way. When the cock crowed morning the ugly men seemed genuinely startled, as if they had lost track of the time, and rushed about the room in a panic. Then, as the first light of morning broke through the window, they set up a racket like a gaggle of frightened geese and disappeared in a foul-smelling gust of wind.

Billy, glad his strange visitors had finally left him alone, yawned and curled up by the fire. As he drifted off to sleep, he wondered what he might expect in the way of guests for his third and final night in the house.

His third day at the old house had proved uneventful, although the inn-keeper had stopped by again and was even more amazed than before to find Billy in the land of the living. This time he left behind a roasted chicken and some wine for his dinner. As night fell, Billy sat by the fire and whittled a toy whistle to bide the time. He had almost finished putting the final touches on his whistle when he heard what sounded like footsteps in the hall outside his door. He looked up from the fireplace to see the door swing slowly open on squeaky hinges and six skeletons dressed in the top hats and black crepe of pall-bearers, march into the room carrying a coffin. The skeletons carefully lowered their burden to the floor then, without a word, turned around and filed back out of the room.

Billy, curious to see what the skeletons had brought him, got up and opened the coffin. Inside was a man his father's age, dressed in his best Sunday suit, his hands folded atop his chest, his mouth stitched shut with black thread and his eyes covered by gold coins. Billy touched the body and quickly drew his hand back.

Billy reached into the coffin and lifted the dead man by his arm pits, dragging him free. As he did so, the coins fell from the dead man's eyes, causing the lids to fly up like window shades. Billy paused in his labors long enough to scoop up the coins and stick them in the pocket of his overalls. "Teh! That's a funny place to keep your money, cousin. Here, I'll keep track of it for you until you're feeling better."

After some considerable grunting and groaning, Billy managed to wrestle the dead man over to the fire. He lay the corpse on the hearth, thinking the warmth would unfreeze its joints and put the color back into the stranger's cheeks. Satisfied he'd done the best he could, Billy resumed his whittling.

A hour passed and the dead man was still as cold and stiff as when Billy first touched him. Billy frowned and thought on what he should do. He recalled how his daddy had once said how two people laying in bed together could make enough heat to spark a fire, so he decided to put the stranger in his make-shift bed and warm him with his body.

Billy took the body and placed it on the pallet he'd made for himself after the bed had run away, lay down beside it, and drew the covers over the both of them. Presently, he felt the body beside him grow less and less stiff and began to move. At first Billy didn't think much about it, but then he felt the dead man's hands creeping about below the covers, feeling up his thigh.

"Here now!" Billy cried, sitting up. "I'll have none of that! I stopped that foolishness when I was twelve!"

The dead man cast aside the covers, his eyes staring wide and sightless. "Give me back my gold!" the corpse wailed, tearing loose the stitches that held his mouth shut. "Give me back my gold!"

"Are you accusing me of being a thief? Is that all the thanks I get after trying so hard to make you warm and comfortable? Then you can have your old gold—and you can go back to where you came from!" With that Billy grabbed the dead man by the hair, forced open his mouth, shoved the gold pieces under his tongue, and threw him back inside the coffin.

As suddenly as they had first arrived, the six skeletal pallbearers reappeared, marching two abreast, picked up the coffin and left the room. Billy watched them leave and scratched his head. People sure acted different outside of Monkey's Elbow.

Just as he was ready to shrug it off and go back to bed, a cold wind came rushing down the chimney, extinguishing the fire. Billy dug around in his pockets and found a book of matches, which he used to kindle another, smaller fire in its place. As the light from the fire grew stronger, Billy saw that he was no longer alone in the room.

Standing in the corner was an ogre. He was taller than Billy even though his back was hunched, and he had a hooked nose with a wart on it and horrible crooked teeth that stuck out of his mouth like the tusks on a boar. His arms were so long they almost touched the floor and his legs were bowed and ended with feet as broad and callused as a bear's. The ogre glowered at Billy with an expression of the utmost hate.

"I am the haint in charge of skeerin' folks away from this place. You are a troublesome man-child." the ogre said in a voice that sounded like two rocks being rubbed together. "You've given me more problems than all the others of your kind put together. What is you name, human?"

"You sound like you been talking to my pappy. "You ever been to Monkey's Elbow, mister?"

The ogre shook his head in disgust. "Old Scratch put me in command of the ghosts and ghouls that haunt this house more than thirty years ago. Up until now there ain't been a soul that survived the first night! Why, if the hell-hounds didn't do 'em in. the bed finished 'em off! But you—you! You kilt my cats, skeered my dogs and wore out my bed! If Old Scratch hears of this, he'll have me back in Hell muckin' out the harpy nests! I worked hard to get myself a nice, cushy job hauntin" the upper world—I ain't about to let some no-count hayseed such as yourself ruin it for me! Say your prayers, boy, because I'm going to choke the life outta you!"

The ogre straightened up as best he could, lifted his arms, and advanced on Billy, grimacing and growling like a beast. And, to his surprise, Billy commenced to laugh. This nonplused the ogre something awful.

"What in tarnation are you laughing about, boy? Can't you see I'm going to kill you?"

"That's a good 'un!" chortled Billy, wiping a tear from his eye. "A wretched old thing such as yourself thinking he can kill the likes of me."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Billy warned. "I'm stronger than you might think. So don't go boastin' you can kill me."

"Oh, is that so? Well, we'll soon see if'n you're stronger than me or not. I'll show you a thing or two, you pesky turnip-seed!" Grabbing Billy by the straps of his overalls, the ogre dragged him through the house to the stable around back, which had once, judging from the stone-cold forge and the anvils laying about, boasted its own blacksmith.

"See that anvil lying yonder?" the ogre asked, pointing at a particularly large specimen. "Watch this, boy." Spitting in his palms, the ogre grabbed up a nearby ax and, with one mighty swing, split the anvil in two as cleanly as a hot knife through butter.

Chuckling to himself in anticipation of rending the smart-aleck country boy limb from limb, the ogre handed his victim an ax. "So what are you gonna do, boy?" he sneered.

"Gonna do the best I can," Billy replied, and promptly brought the ax blade down on the ogre's head with all his strength.

The ogre fell like a pole-axed steer, brains leaking from the huge split in the middle of his head. The foul, tarry material that had oozed from the dogs and cats in place of blood now bubbled out of his ears, nose and mouth.

"Maybe now a fellow can get some decent shut-eye," sighed Billy, dusting off his hands as he returned to the house.

The next morning Billy woke up to find a huge chest of gold at the foot of his humble bed. He took the chest, along with his carving bench and turning lathe, and carried them out to the dock, to await his passage to the mainland. He was sitting on the treasure chest, smoking his pipe, when the ferryman arrived at noon. When he saw Billy waiting for him on the dock his jaw dropped clean to his chest.

"What about the treasure?" the ferryman asked quickly. "Did you find the treasure?"

The ferryman scratched his chin and eyed the chest Billy was sitting on. There was no one here to see what would become of a nameless young man, or to discover the truth of what had happened to the miser's treasure. But what thoughts he might have had concerning disposing of Billy and shanghaiing his gold quickly disappeared. Any man, no matter how young, who could spend three nights in the company of ghosts and hobgoblins and come out off it with both his wits and life intact was not a man to tangle with, no matter what the reward.

So Billy Fearless returned to the Ghost Lake Tavern and showed the barmaid his chest full of gold coins and asked her father, the inn-keeper, for permission to marry her. Of course he said yes. They put on a real big do and the whole valley was invited to dance at the wedding.

Billy had a nice big house built for his wife and the family that was soon to follow. His father-in-law, now one of the richest men in Ghost Lake, bought the old haunted mansion and, after some renovating, turned it into a big fancy hotel that attracted visitors from far and wide on the strength of it being a "real, live haunted house". Ghost Lake became a fat and happy little resort town, with everyone ending up with electric lights and indoor flush-toilets. And they all had Billy Fearless to thank for their new-found prosperity.

Still, Billy was still Billy, no matter how rich and famous he might be. And although his wife was a patient soul, she was only human. One day, after he'd brought home yet another wolf as a pet, she asked, as they lay in bed, how it was he didn't know enough to recognize danger when he saw it.

"Well, I was told by my Daddy—the Lord keep him—that I'd know when to be scairt of something because it'd give me a shudder. And to this day I have yet to shudder—or even know what such a thing as a shudder is."

"Is that all?" Billy's wife kicked back the covers, slipped on her shoes, grabbed up a coal shuttle and trotted own to the creek that ran behind their house. Once back in the house, she crept up on her husband as he lay in bed and dumped the scuttle full of minnows down the flap in his longjohns. "Now, Billy, do you know what a shudder is?"

After that Billy Fearless was renowned throughout the valley as the soul of prudence and common sense. And if his wife knew better, well—she lived happily ever after anyways.

Simon Alexander eased his wheezing Oldsmohile up the drive that lead to a four-story mansion set atop a low hill. He didn't need to check the address against the letterhead to know he was in the right place. The giant "B" on the wrought iron gates blocking the way told him that. The neighborhood was one of the ritziest in the city, and a far cry from Alexander's usual stomping grounds. But then, multi-millionaire industrialists like Rayford Blackman usually didn't hang out in Chinatown or the Bowery.

Following the instruction in the letter he'd received that afternoon, Alexander leaned out of the driver's window to press the button on a call-box set near the gate. After a long moment the gate made a buzzing noise and slowly swung inward. Alexander gunned the motor, heading for the house on the hill. He could see the gates swinging shut behind him in the rear view mirror.

Alexander had no idea what a high-roller like Blackman could want with a penny-ante gumshoe like himself, but he wasn't going to question his good fortune. Blackman had made reference to something "of the utmost sensitivity and importance", and nothing else. Not that his curiosity needed satisfying. The fifty dollar bill tucked inside the letter he'd received was incentive enough to drag him halfway across town in the middle of the night. Work had been slow the last few weeks—slow enough to make the idea of re-enlisting with Uncle Sam look almost tempting.

He parked in the turn-around in front of the house, next to a working fountain with a cement replica of some ancient water god spurting away in the center. The entrance to the house was as big as a two-car garage, with a smaller version of the driveway's iron gate in front—making it look more like a factory—or a prison—than a home. A man in his early thirties, dressed in the formal livery of a butler, was standing just inside the entrance way.

"Mr. Blackman has been awaiting your arrival, Mr. Alexander," the butler announced stiffly as he opened the gate.

"I'm sorry if I kept your boss-man cooling his heels, Jeeves, but I got a little lost on the way over. This isn't exactly my neighborhood."

As they entered the grand foyer, Alexander had to fight to keep from whistling in amazement. The place could have passed for Grand Central Station, except for the wood paneling. The floor looked to be a solid chunk of unbroken Italian marble, burnished to a high polish, with a handful of Persian carpets tossed down for good measure. A double staircase curled up and back, leading to the house's east and west wings. Set at the center of the arched roof was a stained glass window that was a replica of the ones in Notre Dame. He recognized it because he'd seen the original back when his battalion liberated Paris, a few years back.

Alexander grinned and gestured with his hat. "Some digs, Jeeves—I mean, Williamson."

"Mr. Blackman is in the study," the butler sniffed, moving to open a door off the grand foyer.

The study was as big as his third floor walk-up, not including the toilet at the end of the hall. The walls were paneled in oak and the maroon carpet was thicker than most people's mattresses. The heads of animals unlucky enough to have crossed Rayford Blackman's path in the past hung on the wall, looking either surprised or pissed-off. Seated behind a huge mahogany desk, puffing on a hand-rolled Cuban cigar, was none other than the lord of the manor himself, watching Alexander much the same way he imagined he'd looked at the animals on the wall when they came down to the water hole.

Blackman was an older man in his early sixties, but he was far from elderly in appearance. At six foot two, with shoulders wide enough to put Knut Rockne to shame, he looked little different from the virile young man who single-handedly put Amalcor at the top of the New York Stock Exchange.

"Who the hell else would you expect sitting here, Gary Cooper?" snarled Blackman, tapping the end of his cigar into a large glass ashtray. "I don't like being kept waiting, Alexander."

"Uh—sorry. Like I told your man, I don't get up to this neck of the woods that often ..."

"I can believe that," Blackman grunted, eyeing the private investigators ragged cuffs and rumpled raincoat. "Take a seat."

Alexander eased himself into a high-backed leather chair that faced the desk. Blackman stood up and fetched a cut-crystal decanter from the sideboard. He poured himself a drink then turned to his guest.

Blackman poured the whiskey into a highball glass and handed it to the detective. "You might not be punctual, but you know how to appreciate good scotch. I admire that in a man."

"Thank you. I think. Look, Mr. Blackman—it's not that I think I'm a putz, but one thing's been bothering me since I got your letter. What the hell does a guy like you want with a guy like me?"

Blackman sighed and perched on the corner of the desk, staring down at the highball glass he held in his hand. He seemed to age right before Alexander's eyes, his face collapsing into worry-lines and crows feet. "What do most men want with a guy like you, Mr. Alexander?"

Blackman nodded wordlessly and drained his scotch in a single gulp. When he lowered his glass, the weariness he'd displayed a moment before was gone, replaced by a steely resolve. "Two years or so ago you did some work for an old acquaintance of mine, Hank Shearer, concerning a young lady who accused him of fathering her baby."

"Yeah, I remember." Actually Shearer had been as far from a paternity suit as Porky Pig was from Kosher. The "young lady" was actually a young man who liked to wear high heels and panties and take incriminating photographs of his older admirers in similar attire. If Shearer wanted to tell his friends otherwise, that was his prerogative. Alexander certainly wasn't going to contradict Blackman, whatever the case.

"Hank said you were reliable and discreet. I appreciate discreet, Mr. Alexander. You see, I'm sixty-four. My wife is twenty-nine. Lately I've felt a certain . . . coolness on her behalf. You see, Mr. Alexander, although there is thirty-five years between my wife and I, up until recently we'd enjoyed a vigorous love life. Probably better than most couples, regardless of their age. For her to suddenly have become so unresponsive—I'm not a fool, and I refuse to be played for one, Mr. Alexander. If my wife is seeing another man, I want to know about it."

"Certainly, sir. Nothing personal. It's just that, well—if you're planning to divorce her, I have to gather certain kinds of evidence that'll hold up in court. You know—photos, copies of motel ledgers, that sort of thing."

"Yes, I understand. It's just that I'm not a hundred percent certain she is having an affair, mind you."

"So, let me get this straight—you want me to shadow her for a couple of weeks to see if she's meeting someone. Then I can leave it up to you as to what you'd like done. Do you have a photograph of you wife. Mr. Blackman? It would make it easier for me when I follow her."

Blackman handed a 5x4 picture frame resting on his desk to Alexander. "Here. This was taken at the reception. We were married in Mexico. I have a villa down there. It was a spur of the moment thing. I chartered a plane and invited a dozen or so friends to come along. It was a wild weekend."

The picture was black and white and looked like the kind of souvenir snapshot made by nightclub photographers, only blown up and cropped so only two people were visible. One was Blackman, dressed in a tuxedo with a white carnation in the buttonhole, wearing an oversized sombrero and grinning like a drunken idiot. Beside him, her slender arm looped through his, was a woman half his age, the right side of her face obscured by a fall of blonde hair. She was wearing a white satin strapless gown that looked like it'd been painted on her and a strange half-smile that seemed out of place on the face of a new bride. There was something familiar about the woman, and it took him a few seconds to place where he'd seen her before.

Alexander blinked at the photograph, then looked back up at Blackman. "You're married to Celine Marchand?"

"Recognize her? Hell, half my battalion had her picture up on the walls of the barracks!"

"She did this USO show in London, and half the U.S. forces stationed in England turned out to see her! She sang that song of hers—you know the one?"

"Yeah, that one. Afterwards, she signed autographed pictures of herself. I didn't get one, but a few of my buddies did. That's how I recognized her. She has a wonderful voice."

Shadowing Celine Marchand was hardly the toughest assignment he'd ever pulled. The biggest problem he had was trying to blend into the background at the posh restaurants and shops she frequented. He was hardly the Daddy Warbucks type, after all.

The retired chanteuse usually didn't get out of bed until well after ten, and it was a rare day when she left the house before two in the afternoon. Sometimes Williamson drove her around town in a black Bentley that gleamed like the shell of a scarab. However, she often left the house on her own behind the wheel of a Dusenberg.

Outside of her choice of automobile, her routine away from the house seldom varied. Mondays she went to the country club, where she played tennis—doubles, usually with the wives of other club members. Then she'd go shopping at Bloomingdale's. On Tuesdays she had lunch at the Egret Club, a pricey downtown eatery that attracted show biz types and where she had her own table. Then she'd go shopping at Macy's. On Wednesdays she went to the beauty parlor—if you could call a spa that specialized in mud baths, seaweed facials and Swedish massage a "beauty parlor". Then she'd go shopping at Tiffany's. On Thursdays she went to the movies. Alone. Depending on whether the bill was a double or triple feature, she'd then go shopping for shoes. On Fridays she met her husband for lunch at the Crimean Tea Room, a toney uptown joint known for its samovars and Cossack waiters.

As far as Alexander could see, Celine was keeping her nose clean. Her weekly routine of luxury and excess didn't give him much in the way of dirt, but it did give him a chance to look at her up close, if not exactly personal. Blackman was one lucky old man, that much was for sure. Celine was one of the most luscious babes he'd ever laid eyes on, and that included some mighty fine lookers in Paris and Rome.

She was a statuesque blonde, with the right kind of curves in the right kind of places, with skin as pale and unblemished as a magnolia blossom. Her eyes were big and expressive, and her lips shaped for kissing. In fact, her lips were the first thing you noticed when you looked at her—they were always painted bright red, as if she wetted her mouth with fresh blood instead of lipstick. Whenever she moved it was with the fluid grace of a big cat. Even the smallest gesture on her part seemed fraught with erotic undercurrents. No wonder the old man was worried about keeping her down on the farm. But if Celine Blackmail was stepping out, he couldn't find any evidence of it. As far as he was concerned, the lady had a clean bill of health and nothing to wory about—if you didn't count a jealous older husband.

It was his last night of surveillance, and he was parked in his usual spot, just outside the mouth of the cul-de-sac, which gave him a view of the front of the Blackman estate, when he saw headlights curling down the hill in the direction of the entrance gate. He checked his watch. Eight o'clock. Normally the Blackmans went nightclubbing on Saturday nights. It was Saturday night, all right, but if he wasn't mistaken, Mr. B was off at a shareholder meeting in Chicago. Maybe there was something to the old man's paranoia, after all.

He slumped down behind the steering wheel, narrowly dodging the lights of the Dusenberg as the beams swept across the windshield. He then popped back up and put the car into gear, following the Dusenberg as it left the ultra-ritzy suburbs and sped towards the freeway. Alexander did his best to follow her without getting so close she'd grow suspicious, or lag behind so far he lost her in traffic. It soon was obvious that wherever she was going, it wasn't anywhere in the city.

After a half hour's drive, the Dusenberg pulled off the highway and parked in the crowded gravel parking lot belonging to a roadhouse that claimed to be, in pink neon atop its gabled roof, The Hideaway. Celine quickly hopped out of her car and hurried to the door. He could see she was wearing a cobalt blue satin Dior gown with matching shoes and clutch purse. Pretty fancy get-up to go grab a burger and some suds. Alexander drummed his fingers against the wheel for a few seconds, deliberating on whether or not he should follow her inside. Judging from the number of cars in The Hideaway's lot, there was a good chance he could mingle with the regulars and not draw any undue attention to himself. Besides, it was Saturday night, and he could use a couple of drinks. After all, Blackman was buying.

After straightening his tie and running a quick comb through his hair, Alexander strolled across the gravel parking lot and entered The Hideaway. As he opened the door, he wondered how it was he'd never heard of the place before. Normally he prided himself on knowing every jumping joint in the tri-county area. Then he got a good look at the clientele and realized why he'd never heard of the roadhouse.

The interior was no different from any other, except for the dance floor, which was jam packed and jelly-tight with men—dancing with other men. Most of the revelers wore evening suits, but there were several dressed in drag as well. Alexander stared in amazement as a man he recognized as the District Attorney tangoed with a heavy-set drag queen sporting a Carole Lombard wig and a too-tight red taffeta gown. He was suddenly aware of several sets of eyes on him, and he hurried over to the bar.

The bartender, dressed in a starched white jacket and neat black bow-tie, was shaking up a daiquiri. He gave Alexander the once-over but said nothing except; "What can I getcha, pal?"

The bartender nodded and poured the daiquiri he'd been shaking into a glass and garnished it with a little paper umbrella and a maraschino cherry. A waiter appeared out of nowhere and snatched the drink up on a tray and disappeared into the crowd.

Alexander cleared his throat as the bartender set his scotch in front of him. "I wonder if you might be able to help me."

Alexander's face purpled. "Thai's not what I mean! I'm looking for a woman! Her name's Celine."

Alexander smiled nervously. "Well, not exactly. More a fan, really. I heard that sometimes she comes here."

The bartender was really giving him the fisheye now. "Really? Who told you that?"

He had to think fast on this one. Alexander scanned the crowded dance floor for a second then turned back to face the bartender. "Hank Shearer."

The bartender's face relaxed from tight suspicion into an open smile. "You know Hank?"

"Any friend of Hank's is okay with me!" He leaned forward and stage whispered into Alexander's ear. "You're in luck tonight, pal! Celine's about to go on stage! We never know when she'll show up, but whenever she does the boys in the band are ready for her!"

Just then the house lights went down and the six-piece band on the stage stopped in mid-note. The Hideaway's patrons halted whatever they were doing and turned to face the darkened stage. A baby blue spot sprang into life, illuminating a tall, willowy man dressed in a floor-length silver lame ball gown, white opera gloves and a hat that would have done Hedda Hopper proud.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Mistress of Ceremonies announced in the dulcet tones of a familiar radio actor. "The Hideaway is proud to present—Celine Marrhand!"

The crowd applauded enthusiastically as Celine swirled onto the stage in a flash of blue satin and ruby red lipstick. Her previous languor was nowhere to be seen. The woman on the stage crackled with enough energy to run a dynamo. She shot a sly glance in the direction of the bandleader, who nodded and took up his baton again. The band swung into That Old Black Magic, and Celine began to sing.

Alexander had only heard her live once before, near the back of an auditorium full of anxious, horny servicemen, singing through an army-issue public address system, but even then he'd recognized her voice as beautiful. Now he realized it was awesome. She sang with the skill and range of a whiskey-drinking angel, going from pure as a bell one moment to bluesy and heartfelt the next, as she made her way through Don't Get Around Much Anymore, You'll Never Walk Alone, Baby It's Cold Outside, and Lavender Blue. The audience ate it up, applauding and whistling after every song with genuine pleasure. After she finished I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair, the spotlight went from blue to red, and for one disorienting moment it looked as if she was standing in a pool of blood. Then she launched into her signature piece: "Firetruck Number Five".

It was a jazzy little swing number—a strangely upbeat song about a woman setting fire to all number of things, finally her own house, so the fireman she has a crush on would come rescue her because he's too shy to ask her for a date. It was a nutty little novelty song that hit a chord with wartime audiences, and for several months she was all over the celebrity magazines, posing in fireman's hats and riding on the back of a hook and ladder with captions like "torch singer hits big with hot song about lovestruck pyromaniac". But hearing her sing it live, Alexander was struck by the undercurrent of longing in her voice. And for the first time he realized the song was about a woman willing to destroy everything around her—including herself—in the name of love.

After she finished the last song the audience broke out in a final, thunderous round of applause, and the Mistress of Ceremonies came back on stage to hand Celine a bouquet of red roses. Alexander decided now was a good time to make his exit, and hurried out the door.

He slipped back behind the wheel of his car and fished his notebook and a pencil stub out of his breast pocket. So this was what the missus was up to when the old man was out of town. Blackman had nothing to worry about from his wife's admirers, but something told Alexander that the industrialist would not be pleased to find his wife pursuing her career on the QT.

Suddenly the passenger side door was yanked open and the odor of White Shoulders filled the car's interior. Alexander gawked as Celine Marchand slid in beside him. She was still wearing her Dior gown and clutching her purse to her like a shield. Her lips seemed to shimmer in the dim light from the roadhouse, as did her eyes.

"You're him. The man my husband hired to follow me." Her voice was soft and far from accusatory.

"Please don't play games with me," her voice hardened, as did her eyes. "You've been following me for the last two weeks. Your name is Alexander. Williamson told me."

"My husband thinks he owns a lot of things that aren't his," Celine replied acidly, fishing a cigarette out of her purse.

She glanced up from her purse, and Alexander found himself looking directly into her eyes. They were the same color blue as her dress. He'd never been close enough to her to notice that before.

"You're an astute man, Mr. Alexander." She opened a platinum cigarette case and lifted a Kool to her glossy, blood-red lips. "Light me," she said. It wasn't a request.

Alexander thumbed his Zippo and she leaned forward to catch the flame, her eyes never leaving him the whole time. "It's my job to notice things, Mrs. Blackman."

She studied him for a long moment, then blew out a streamer of smoke with an exasperated sigh. "I'm not cheating on my husband, Mr. Alexander."

Celine looked at the glowing end of her cigarette then back at him. "Don't tell him what you saw tonight. Please."

"Mrs. Blackman, your husband hired me to do a job—I'm just doing what I'm being paid to do."

"You don't understand, Mr. Alexander. As far as my husband is concerned, what I do here is as bad, if not worse, that sleeping with another man! He's insanely jealous, not just of who I might give my favors to, but of every aspect of my life. I've been a virtual prisoner since we married two years ago."

"I've seen your jail. It's pretty swank for Alcatraz, sister," Alexander replied, lipping a Lucky Strike.

"Don't be fooled, Mr. Alexander. They might be gold bars—but its still a cage."

"Because I'm afraid. Ray's a ruthless man. Far more than you realize. Once he buys something, it's supposed to stay bought. Unless he gets mad and breaks it—then he has to get a new one."

"I'm not the first Mrs. Blackman, or didn't he tell you? His first wife broke her neck falling down the stairs. She had all kinds of bruises on her."

"I'm saying my husband is a brute, Mr. Alexander." She stabbed out her cigarette and reached for the door handle. "I really must go now. Ray will be calling the house soon. He likes to call the house in the middle of the night to make sure I'm there alone."

As she got out of the car, Alexander caught a glimpse of her calf. She was wearing blue hose, but even the dark stockings could not camouflage the large bruise discoloring the back of her leg. Alexander winced. The last time he'd seen a bruise like that it was on the leg of a Bowery hooker whose pimp had gone after her with a belt.

He tried not to think of her as he lay on his bed, staring at the cracks in the plaster with a half-empty whiskey bottle clutched in one fist. He lay there fully dressed except for his tie and his shoes, alternating hits of Luckies and the bottle. The stuttering neon from the all-night beanery across the street flashed on and off, bathing the room first in shadow, then pink, then shadow again. The more he tried not to think of her, the more her voice echoed in her head.

He knew he was falling. Falling big. And for a dame who belonged to one of the most powerful—and dangerous—men in the city. Hell, in the country. It had been a long time since anyone had gotten to him the way Celine had. When he closed his eyes he could see her face hovering above him, with its flawless white skin, piercing blue eyes and red as blood lips. Then he thought about the bruise on her leg and he knew what he had to do.

Blackman studied the typed report, peering over the tops of his reading glasses every now and again at the detective. "Is this all there is?" he asked.

Blackman grunted and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin. "I'm greatly relieved to hear that, Mr. Alexander. But I'm still bothered by Celine's change towards me ..."

Alexander shrugged. "Maybe she's got the blues. Women are like that, you know. Maybe she misses show business. You know what they say about old race horses and the track."

"I seriously doubt that, Mr. Alexander," Blackman responded tartly. "Celine has no interest in the stage anymore."

Blackman pushed himself away from his desk and went to a small oil landscape, which hid a wall-safe behind its canvas. After spinning the lock for a few seconds, Blackman opened the safe and retrieved a thick sheaf of twenty dollar bills. He peeled off fifteen and returned the remainder to the safe, then turned to Alexander.

Alexander palmed the bills as neatly as magician. "No need. I trust you, Mr. B."

"You're the only one I've met lately!" Blackman laughed humorlessly. "Are you sure Celine never caught on? I'd hate to have her find out I was having her followed."

"I swear on my mother's grave, Mr. B—she never knew I was there. Not once." Alexander wondered if Blackman would be able to tell he was lying. Then again, Blackman had no way of knowing Ma Alexander was still alive and kicking, either.

"Good. I'd hate to have her think I didn't trust her. I'll have Williamson show you the way out—"

"No need. I can find my way," he said, heading for the door. "It was a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. B."

He waited for Blackman to say "likewise", but the industrialist was already preoccupied with some paperwork on his desk. Alexander shrugged and left the room.

His footsteps echoed in the grand foyer as if he was walking through a church. Halfway across the cavernous hall, he got the distinct feeling he was being watched. He turned and looked towards the twin staircases .

She was standing on the landing that lead to the east wing, dressed in a red silk kimono, her hair pulled to one side so that it spilled over her right shoulder. Alexander touched the brim of his hat. Celine dipped her chin in acknowledgment, then turned and disappeared into the shadows at the top of the stairs.

Three days had passed since he'd last seen her. And, to be honest, he thought he never would again—except in his dreams. Then the phone rang at eight o'clock. Normally he was out of the office by that time of night, but he'd been held up by some paperwork that evening. The "paperwork" consisted of clippings he'd gotten from a source at the daily paper concerning the death of the first Mrs. Blackman, who died from injuries sustained in a fall back in '43.

He picked up the phone on the third ring. There was a lot of static on the line, and at first he didn't recognize the voice.

"The Blackman estate. It's urgent." He recognized the butler, Williamson's voice just before the line went dead.

Alexander shrugged into his raincoat and put on his hat. As an afterthought, he took the Smith & Wesson from his desk drawer and put it in his coat pocket. He wondered what the old buzzard wanted with him on such a crappy night, but he assumed there would be money in it for him. There damn well better be, if the bastard insisted on dragging him out in such weather.

The storm was going full force by the time he reached the gates leading to Blackman's place. Judging by the winds and the lightning, there had to be a tornado somewhere in the county. No doubt the tornado sirens were going full blast in the city proper—not that you could hear them out in the suburbs.

Just as his eggbeater coasted to a stop in the turn around, there was an eye-searing sheet of lightning, followed immediately by a massive, ear-splitting crash of thunder, and all the lights in the Blackman mansion winked out.

Alexander turned up his collar and dashed for the front door. He could hear his knocks echo inside the house. He shouted Williamson's name, but there was no response. After a few seconds of repeated pounding on the door, he tried the handle. To his surprise, it was unlocked.

He stepped into the foyer, rainwater pouring off his sodden coat and hat. The interior of the house seemed, if possible, even bigger in the dark.

Another crash of lightning flash-lit the foyer, making the stained glass eye glow for a brief heartbeat. Alexander cautiously made his way across the hall in the direction of the study. Halfway there his attention was snared by a glimpse of white at the head of the stairs.

Lightning filled the hall with its blue-white glare, as if the world's largest flash-bulb had just been triggered. Standing at the head of the stairs, dressed in a floor-length ermine coat, was Celine Marchand.

"My husband's not here, Mr. Alexander. I'm the one who told Williamson to call you."

Before he could ask her what she wanted with him, she smiled and opened her coat. Underneath the white fur she was completely naked. Then the darkness returned, plunging everything into shadow. Still, her pale flesh seemed to glow, like a beacon drawing a lost ship homeward—or to destruction on clashing rocks.

He was moving up the stairs as if in a dream, and even though he knew that what he was doing was incredibly dangerous, there was no turning back, no breaking away. The smell of her perfume filled his senses, erasing everything except his need for her.

She lead him to the east wing. It was too dark to see anything, but he could tell the sheets on the bed were satin. When she came to him, it was like being wrapped in the heart of a flower. She tasted of honey and ginger and her kisses tingled against his flesh as if electric. He was drunk with her, his head swimming as if he'd just taken a hit off an opium pipe. It was good. No. It was better than good. It was real.

Dawn found the storm long past and Alexander alone amongst the satin sheets.. The first thing he noticed upon opening his eyes were that the sheets were bright red. as was the carpeting. Disoriented, he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Celine turned from where she was standing in the window, looking out past the crimson drapes to the yard beyond. She was wearing the red silk kimono he'd seen her in a few nights before.

She returned his smile and nodded in the direction of the window. "The storm played hell with the grounds. There are tree limbs everywhere."

"I suspect power lines are down all over the county. But that doesn't really matter. There's a generator out in the shed. Williamson's seeing to it."

As if on cue,. there was a sudden hum and all the lights in the room surged back to life. Celine turned from the window and moved back to the bed. Alexander reached for her, but she slipped out of his grasp.

"I trust him implicitly. We have history." She frowned and pulled away as he tried to embrace her again.. "You better leave now. Ray will be back tonight. I don't want him to smell you on me. Or my sheets."

"He had to leave town to talk to some very important people. He's trying to arrange a deal."

Celine smiled humorlessly. "He received word a few days ago that he's being brought before a senate hearing committee."

"Be serious, Simon!" Celine muttered. She leaned across Alexander and took a cigarette from a cut crystal canister on the night stand.. "One of the senators received documents proving Amalcor knowingly sold substandard machine parts and other materials to the Defense Department during the war, defective ammunition in particular. An entire battalion was wiped out by the Nazis in '44 because of faulty ammo. Some of the soldiers were killed when their own guns exploded in their hands."

Celine lit her cigarette and exhaled, watching the smoke rise for a moment before speaking. "Of course it's true! Who do you think sent the senator those documents? My brother was one of those soldiers. His head was nearly ripped off his shoulders when his gun blew up! Johnny was only twenty-two when he died."

Alexander stared at her for a long moment. In the cold light of morning Celine was still beautiful, but now he could see the pain and the anger in those electric blue eyes of hers. "Did—did you know that when you married him?"

She nodded and stubbed out her cigarette. "When I saw those papers, something inside me died. To think I'd been sharing a bed all this time with the man responsible for my kid brother's death! The very thought of him touching me was enough to make me sick!"

"No. He was more worried I was fooling around. Ray doesn't think I can do anything except spend money and screw. Besides, he doesn't know about my brother. If he suspected me of being involved in this, I'd be dead even faster than if I was cheating on him."

"He's gotten to a couple of the members of the committee. That's where he was this weekend—meeting with them to work out a deal. They want one hundred and fifty thou apiece to clear his name. I'm sure he agreed. Ray's very good at keeping himself out of real trouble."

Celine suddenly got up and went and sat at her make-up table. Although her back was to him, he could see her face in the vanity mirror. There was genuine concern in her eyes as she nervously sorted through the collection of cosmetics in front of her. "I shouldn't have told you that! If he ever finds out you know about his first wife—"

"But he won't find out, will he?" Alexander replied, sliding out of bed. "You're not going to tell him, are you? And I'm sure as hell not going to—so what are you worried about?"

Celine picked up a tube of lipstick and began to outline her lips, her hands as steady as a heart surgeon's. "Ray has his ways of finding things out, Simon. He's a ruthless son of a bitch—and he's not afraid to hurt people. Even the ones he loves." She set aside the lipstick tube and pulled a sheet of tissue paper out of a nearby caddie to blot her lips. "So imagine what he'll do to someone like you!"

Alexander shrugged his shoulders, trying not to look intimidated. "I used to know a girl who always wore this shade of lipstick," he commented as he picked up the lipstick, idly turning it over in his hands.

"Was she pretty?" Celine was staring at his reflection in the mirror. There was a strange intensity in those blue eyes of hers that made him not want to meet her gaze, even indirectly.

He shrugged and tossed the lipstick back onto the vanity. "I guess so. She was just a kid, really. She died back in '4-0. I signed up with the Army the day after she croaked. I was drunk as a skunk, but that didn't keep Uncle Sam from taking me. But you've got nothing to worry about—she was nothin' like you, babe!"

Alexander leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her as he nuzzled her neck. "You really are something, Celine! I don't know if I could ever get enough of you!"

She returned his kisses then pulled away. "You better go. Like I said, Ray is due back today. I can't run the risk of him finding out about us—"

"When I think of him touching you—hurting you—it makes my stomach clench like a fist," he whispered, running his fingers through her silky hair. "It's not right, Celine. It's just not right."

The look on her face was so cold and far away it made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. "I learned early in life that there's a lot that's not right in the world. My old man was a no-good drunken bum who used to treat my mom and me and my kid brother and sister like we were his private punching bags. Mom died when I was ten. I spent most of my childhood looking after the others and trying to keep Dad from spending what money we had on booze. He died five years later of cirrhosis, leaving us kids to shift for ourselves. That was fourteen years ago. And now I'm the only one left."

The smile on her fare was the same one she'd worn in the wedding photo sitting on her husband's desk. "Yeah—aren't we all?"

He couldn't get her out of his head. No matter how hard he tried, every time he looked inside himself, there she was. He never thought about a broad for more than a flay or two, tops. But here it was a going on a week and she was still lodged in his brain like a catchy melody that won't let you alone. He found himself brooding over how Blackman treated her like she was some kind of wind-up music box, like the kid's story about the emperor and the nightingale. That the old bastard thought he had her voices under lock and key bothered him the more he thought about it. And he thought about it a lot, as he lay in his unmade bed, staring up al the ceiling instead of sleeping.

On the rare occasions he would drift into sleep, he'd start awake, convinced he had caught a whiff of White Shoulders or fell the caress of satin sheets. He'd frantically look around the room, but all he saw were piles of dirty laundry and ashtrays full of cigarette butts.

It was after midnight when the phone pulled him out of a drunken slumber. He clawed the receiver off the hook and mumbled something into the mouthpiece that might have been "hello", but was more likely "who the hell is it?"

The sound of her voice, distorted by sobs and hysteria, was enough to snap him into full wakefulness. "Simon, you've got to help me, Simon! He's out of his mind! He found out! God help me, he found out! He started hitting me and hitting me! Williamson tried to make him stop, b-but Rayford turned on him instead!

Oh God, I think he killed him, Simon! I think Rayford killed Williamson! I was able to get away and locked myself in the study—that's where I'm calling you from, but I don't think I can—" There was a splintering crash in the background and Celine screamed once, then the line went dead.

Alexander leapt out of bed and grabbed his gun and his shoes. He drove to Blackman's estate in record time, all the while trying to force the visions of Celine's battered body being hurled down the stairs out of his head. He wasn't going to let the bastard kill her like he had his first wife.

The gates to the mansion were standing wide open, but he was too concerned for Celine's welfare to notice. He was halfway out of the car before it came to a halt in the drive, yelling out her name as he dashed for the front entrance. The huge oaken door was unlocked and the grand foyer as dark as it was the night of the storm, the only illumination coming through the stained glass skylight. And there, in a multi-colored pool of moonlight, lay a ominously still figure.

Alexander rushed forward to where the prone figure lay sprawled. His heart was hammering so fast it felt as if it had stopped beating altogether. He had felt such panic only twice before: the day his buddy, Carlo, caught a sniper's bullet at Anzio, and the night Lilly died. As he knelt beside the body, he was relieved to discover it was that of the butler, Williamson. Blood still leaked from the corner of his mouth onto the marble floor. The poor bastard had apparently given his life for his mistress—but where was Celine? And, more importantly, what had Blackman done to her?

He got his answer in the form of a scream from Blackman's study. The door was hanging off its hinges, the lock splintered, as if someone had used a battering ram against it. Alexander leapt to his feet, pulling his .38 from its holster, and ran in the direction of Celine's voice. He prayed he wasn't too late. If that murdering rat bastard had hurt her, he'd pay with his miserable life!

The interior of the study was in shambles. The only light was from the desk lamp, which lay on its side on the carpet. Papers were scattered all over the desk and floor, books tipped out of their cases, and the wall safe was sitting wide open. Celine was in the far corner of the room, dressed in her blue Dior gown, pressed against the bookshelf and the wall, one hand raised as if trying to shield herself from a blow. Her hair was tangled and there were bruises on her lovely face. Alexander's brain was filled with a rage as red as the blood smearing her perfect lips. She had yet to notice him, her fear-glazed eyes focused on something Alexander could not see.

"Celine," Blackman said, his voice strangely calm for a man who'd just killed his butler and beaten his wife. He stepped out of the shadows, looming before his terrified wife like one of the beasts whose heads decorated the walls, dressed in red silk pajama bottoms and holding a gun in one hand. He took a step toward her, his tone still eerily calm. "Don't be afraid, sweetie. I'm not going to hurt you—"

The older man spun on his heel, bringing the muzzle of the .45 up faster than Alexander thought possible. There was the sound of thunder and the stink of cordite and he was slammed against the expensive wood paneling. As he slipped to the floor, all he could think was how it felt as if someone had put out a cigar on his shoulder while hitting him with a baseball bat at the same time. Everything went gray around the edges for a moment, then he was revived by the fragrance of White Shoulders.

She was hovering over him, her face filling his vision like the moon. He was slumped against the wall, his right shoulder a throbbing mess of pain. His collarbone was shattered, but otherwise nothing vital had been hurt.

"Like they say in the movies, sugar; it's just a flesh wound," he groaned. "Blackman? Is he—?"

Celine went over to where her husband's body lay sprawled in a pool of red. She knelt beside him, picking up his gun.

"Lucky me." He struggled to stand, but fell back, dizzy. The pain in his shoulder was making his mouth dry and his head swim. "Honey, could you phone for an ambulance? I need some medical attention ..."

Instead of going to the phone, Celine drew back her foot and kicked Alexander squarely in the balls with her high-heel shoes. Alexander cried out in pain as he clutched himself. Celine quickly snatched up his dropped gun and moved back out of arm's reach.

Alexander stopped rocking back and forth, the agony in his shoulder and crotch telescoping down to nothing. He looked up at Celine, who stood holding Blackman's gun pointed at him.

"I told you there were three kids in my family. I was the oldest. My brother Johnny was two years younger than me; my sister, Lilly, was four. I believe you knew Lilly, Simon—quite well, actually."

"Marsh?" Celine finished for him, sneering in contempt. "You're a private detective, Alexander—haven't you heard of aliases—or stage names? When I started working nightclubs in '39 I changed my name to Celine Marchand. Sounds a lot classier than Selma Marsh, don't you think?"

"Lilly was only sixteen when she met you, Alexander. She was working as a waitress at some greasy spoon, trying to save up enough money so she could go to night school. But you know that already, don't you? What I bet you don't know is that she wrote me about you. You weren't a detective back then, were you? You were just a lousy truck driver. But you were older than her. You were twenty-two—I know that doesn't seem like much now, but to her you were King Solomon and Clark Gable rolled into one! You were her world, damn you!"

"Celine—I'm sorry—It was an accident! I swear to god, never wanted to hurt Lilly."

"What was an accident? Her getting pregnant? I don't blame you for that—Those things happen. But what about later? It was your idea to take her to that butcher, wasn't it? Answer me! Wasn't it?"

"Even that I can forgive. But not what came later. What happened, Alexander? Did she start to hemorrhage before or after the doctor left the hotel room you rented for the job? Was she dead when you left her? Or was she still alive?"

The tip of her shoe caught him in the ribs, knocking him onto the floor. "What I understand, you miserable son of a bitch, is that you left a sixteen year old girl to bleed to death alone!"

As he rolled onto his back, she brought her high heel down on his wounded shoulder, grinding the point into the bullet hole. Alexander screamed until the thought his lungs would burst. Celine stepped back, the gun remaining level with his head. "Is that how she sounded, Simon? Is that how my sister screamed when that quack perforated her uterus?"

"Shut up! I don't want to hear your pathetic excuses! They're nine years too late, anyway. God it was so long ago, and it seems like yesterday! I still remember how the cops smirked when Johnny and I came to identify the body. Like it was her fault she was dead. One of them even asked me if she was a prostitute or just a whore! They wanted to know the boyfriend's name, but I didn't give it to them, even though I knew it was you. Johnny and I were going to take care of you ourselves. But when we stopped by your place, the landlady said you had left with no forwarding address.

"We had to get on with our lives after that, Johnny and me. But just when things finally started to look good for us, Johnny's number came up. The next thing I know it's '44 and I get this telegram from the War Department telling me that's Johnny's been killed. A couple of years later I find out about Blackman's dirty little secret. That's when I began working on my little scheme.

"You weren't supposed to live, you know. The plan was for you and Blackman to blow each other away. I guess the old fool's age was creeping up on him, after all. That was the beauty of it all—that the two men I hated most of all would conveniently kill one another, each of them thinking they were defending me!"

"You know, the funny thing is—Ray actually was a good husband," she said with a smirk. "He doted on me, waited on me hand and foot."

"Appearances can be deceiving, Simon." Celine grinned, pulling a hanky from her cleavage and wiping the bruises off her face. "Geraldine did die from falling down the stairs—but it was because she was a souse! Ray covered it up because having a dipso wife would look bad in the papers. And as for the bruises—well, he never raised a hand against me—unless I wanted it that way."

Alexander closed his eyes, more to try and deny the horrible reality of what was being said than to block out the pain. Celine only laughed and kept on talking.

"I got Hank Shearer to introduce me to Blackman at a party back in '46. Getting the old goat to marry me was a piece of cake. Getting you involved was a little tricky, though. It was important to make it seem as if I had no connection to you whatsoever. I didn't want Ray to get suspicious—at least not for the wrong reasons. Then, when Hank had his problem with that blackmailing little nellie, I recommended that he go to you, knowing he would drop your name with Ray when the time came. It's pitifully easy to manipulate men—even homosexual ones.

"Men accuse women of being controlled by their emotions, all the while being lead around by their egos and dicks! You know something, Simon—? I can understand how Lilly fell for you. You're good-looking, a smooth talker, and not bad between the sheets. But I'm not an innocent, lovestruck sixteen-year-old."

"Isn't it obvious? I needed you to kill Ray! And you can't set a trap without laying down some bait. Once you had calmed my husband's fears and assured him I was a good little wife, I set about arranging this little scenario. Ray always goes to bed early on the week nights. That's why we had separate bedrooms. He was sound asleep when I called you. He didn't even wake up when I wrecked the study to make it look like it was ransacked by burglars! I waited until I saw your lights coming up the dive—only then did I scream loud enough to wake him. I knew he kept a gun in his night-table. He came running to my rescue, just as you were pulling up in the drive."

She shrugged. "Window dressing, really. I needed both of you to think I was in genuine danger, whether it was from bloodthirsty intruders or a jealous husband."

"You're crazy if you think you can get away with this," he gritted through his teeth. "How do you expect to explain all this to the cops?"

"Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. And I'm not planning on explaining anything. I left in my car for a two week stay at a health farm in New Mexico a few hours ago. At least that's my story. They can check with the spa—I booked myself a room over a month ago. Maybe someone will find Ray before I get back, maybe not. I know how cops like their cases handed to them on a silver platter. If it looks like Rayford Blackman died protecting his home from a burglar, then that's what they'll write in their reports. You're a shady customer, Simon. Everybody knows that."

She walked over to where Blackman's body lay, looking down at his dead face as if studying a mildly interesting sculpture. "My husband hired you for a little detective work. You saw where he kept his money and got the bright idea of helping yourself. The rest is simple enough for the stupidest flat-foot to piece together."

"Except you forgot one thing," Alexander grunted, as he staggered to his feet. "I'm not dead."

"Oh, yes you are, Simon," she smiled, turning back to face him, pointing Blackman's gun at his chest. "Didn't you know? You've been dead since 1940."

Once the gunsmoke cleared, Celine carefully wiped her fingerprints from both her husband and Alexander's guns, and placed them in the dead men's hands, making sure their cooling fingers were wrapped about the triggers. She then went to the safe and took out a fistful of money and some jewelry—she decided the blue diamond necklace Ray had given her for their second anniversary would do nicely—and shoved them inside Alexander's raincoat pocket.

The rest of the three hundred thousand Blackman had set aside for buying off the senators she scooped into a satchel. There was no record of the money, and normally Blackman never kept more than ten thousand cash in the safe at any time. Still, for a gumshoe like Alexander, ten grand would be seem a big score. One worth some risks. At least that's what the cops would think. If they bothered to think at all.

She stepped over Alexander's body, careful not to track his blood out of the room. She made a mental note to ditch the Dior and matching shoes before crossing into New Mexico. She could always get new ones later. Her high heels tapped against the marble floor as she strode across the empty foyer. As she opened the heavy front door, she noticed the lock had been expertly jimmied. She smiled to her self and hurried to where the Dusenberg waited, its engine idling.

"Would I be here if it weren't?" she laughed, tossing the satchel full of money into the back seat. "There was a little trouble, but I cleared it up. You did a good job on the door—what about the front gate?"

"I didn't have to do much. Most of the relays were fried during the storm and hadn't been fixed yet."

"Good. That'll make it easier for the oops to figure out how he got in. I don't want any clever dick puzzling things out for himself."

A grim satisfaction crossed the butler's face. "They can rest easy now. Johnny, your sister, my buddies—they're at peace. I can feel it. When I came to your dressing room back in '46. all I was looking for was someone to hear me out—to listen to what I had to say about what happened that day we went up against the Krauts and not tell me I was lying or crazy. And when you told me your plan to get back at Blackman, I never dreamed you'd be able to pull it off. But I should never have doubted Johnny. He said you had the smarts and the guts to get whatever you wanted, and he was right."

Celine smiled and touched his face. "I couldn't have done it without you, Jim. We make a great team, don't you think?" Her brow suddenly creased and she pulled a hanky from her cleavage and daubed at a red stain at the corner of his mouth. "Hold still. You've still got some raspberry topping on you."

Celine laughed and tucked the soiled hanky back between her breasts. "I think you better put this chariot in gear! Remember, I have a reservation at a health spa to make!"

As Williamson eased up on the clutch he shook his head and shot her a look of pure admiration. "You're a good sister, Selma."

"Is that us, or is it really that foggy out there?" Carol Anne giggled, pointing to the Chevy's steamed-over windows.

"I'd say it's fifty-fifty," Billy replied, wiping clear a spot on the windshield with the heel of his palm. To the casual observer, the world beyond the hood of the car seemed to have disappeared. "Boy, that fog crept up pretty fast, didn't it?"

Carol Anne plucked a lipstick cylinder from her purse and angled the rear-view mirror so she could fix her make-up. "What do you mean 'fast'? We've been parked out here for over an hour!"

Carol Anne dropped the lipstick back into her purse. "Of course not! I'm just saying that, y'know, time flies where you're, y'know, having fun."

Billy grinned crookedly, smoothing back his blonde duck tail. "So, that's what you call it, huh?" His grin grew bigger as he reached across the front seat. "C'mere, sweetie-pie; y'wanna have some more fun?"

Carol Anne blushed and giggled again as she wriggled against Billy's leather jacket. She liked the way it smelled in the close heat of the car—like something alive. But even as she responded to his caresses, she really did think it was time to go home. She wasn't afraid of what might happen—they'd gone all the way once before, after all. No, she was afraid of screwing up her alibi. She told her parents she was going to the double feature at the Bijou with Phyllis Tarkington. The movie let out at midnight, and that meant she had to be home by twelve-thirty, or else her folks would get worried or, worse yet, suspicious.

Her father didn't approve of boys like Billy. Billy emulated tough guys like Marlon Brando and James Dean and liked Elvis and was into hot-rodding. Billy smoked cigarettes and drank Iron City Beer. None of which were things that went over big with Mr. Fairweather. Which suited Carol Anne just fine.

All her life her parents had been on about how she was their "little angel" and how important it was for her to always be on her "best behavior". It was important to be pretty. Important to be nice. Important to be popular. They were so happy when she became a cheerleader. They were even happier when she was voted Homecoming Queen. As if being the Homecoming Queen of a Nowheresville like Misty Valley really meant anything!

Daddy was always coming home late, too tired to do anything but watch the Dumont and bitch about Eisenhower. On the weekends he shut himself away in his office and drank martinis, except for when he was out mowing the lawn or mucking out the rain gutters. Mom spent most of her time getting tranquilizer from her doctor, playing bridge, and harassing Daddy for new kitchen appliances. The more electric the better. Last month he got a new electric dryer to replace the old gas-powered one. Carol Anne guessed that appliance buying was what passed for sex between her parents nowadays.

Aside from getting excited over her making the cheerleader squad and being the Homecoming Queen, her parents didn't seem that interested in what was going on with her life, except to remind her to be a "good girl". If they found out that she was out parking with Billy Mahan, they'd really flip! But she wasn't in the mood to deal with Mom's hysterics and Daddy's bluster. Tonight wouldn't be a good night for them to find out about Billy.

Then again, it wasn't exactly like they were necking on the park bench next to the band shell. Lover's Lane was really an old logging road on the side of Goat Hill, which overlooked Misty Valley. On a clear night, you could look out and see the entire valley spread out, with the lights of the town reflected in the Miskatonic River, which wound through the center of the village like a dark ribbon. But tonight wasn't one of the clear nights, that much was certain, as Misty Valley was definitely living up to its name.

Suddenly there was a sound from outside and the whole car shook as if someone had jumped on the rear bumper.

"What th' hell—?" Billy twisted around to glare out the back window of the car. It was fogged over.

Carol Anne sat up quickly, rearranging her clothes as best she could. Her lipstick was smeared. "Billy, what was that?"

"Some dumb-ass is messin' with us, that's what!" he snapped. "I bet it's that dickweed, Schaumberger!" He opened the driver's door, peering into the heavy mist that surrounded the car. "I know that was you, Marky!" he yelled into the night. "You don't fool me!"

There was movement nearby, and the sound of someone moving through the woods, away from where the car was parked.

"You better run, Schaumberger! 'Cause when I catch you, I'm gonna kick your butt over your eyebrows!" Billy shouted, and set off in the direction of the noise.

"Billy! Don't!" Carol Anne cried out, grabbing at his sleeve, but it was too late. As she watched Billy disappear into the surrounding fog, tendrils of mist crept into the car. She shuddered and yanked the door closed behind him, hammering the lock down with her fist.

Billy saw the tree after crashing headlong fifty feet into the woods, just before he hit it. One minute he was running through the fog. threatening to tear Markie Schaumberger a new asshole, the next he was sitting on his bull, his nose bleeding and lip swelling up like a balloon. Hell, it almost seemed as if the damned thing leapt in front of him! He was definitely going to make Schaumberger eal his jockstrap this time!

As he sat on the ground, gingerly fingering his swollen lip, it suddenly dawned on Billy that whoever interrupted his make-out session with Carol Anne, it sure wasn't Schaurnberger. Markie would never let an opportunity as ripe as this one go without his patented hee-haw laugh. In fart, the surrounding woods were ominously quiet, except for the sound of the fog dripping from the trees.

He slowly got to his feet, suddenly uncertain of his bearings. He knew he couldn't be far from the car—but he was now completely turned around. He'd never parked this far down Lover's Lane before. In fact, most of the kids never parked down here. Billy wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe it was posted or something. Normally he wouldn't have come here, except Carol Anne was afraid of their being together getting back to her parents.

There was a sound off to the left—or was it the right? Billy spun around like a child playing Blind Man's Bluff. He'd completely forgotten about his split lip and bloody nose. He was thinking about what had jostled his car. And how it might not have been human, after all. He remembered his old man telling him about how he used to hunt bear up the hills before the Second World War. Sure, his old man was a lush, and the war was fourteen years ago . . .

There was a smell—a rank, animal stench—and Billy could feel whatever was in the mist. It was big and it wasn't human. And then it was on him. and there was nothing but darkness and the stink of wet fur.

Carol Anne fidgeted and pulled her letter-jacket tighter. She peered out the windshield, but all she could see was gray nothing. She couldn't even play the radio, since Billy had taken the keys with him. She frowned and drummed her heels against the floor of the car. She wondered if he'd caught up with Markie Schaumberger and if he was kicking the little creep's butt. Probably not, though.

No doubt they were having a good laugh at her expense out there. Billy was probably telling Markie how much he'd managed to get off her. And once Markie knew something, it was all over school! Damn Billy!

Muttering under her breath, Carol Anne got out of the car. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted: "Billy! Billy, where are you?"

Carol Anne's anger faded, to be replaced by concern. Something was wrong. Billy might be immature, but he wasn't an utter jerk. He wouldn't leave her stranded . . . Something must have happened. Maybe he fell down and hit his head on something. What if he got lost and fell down the side of the hill?

Carol Anne moved in the direction Billy had gone. "Billy? Billy—are you okay? Billy?"

There was a sound of something moving in the mist. Something coming her way. But whatever it was, it wasn't Billy. For one thing, it was too big. And, for another, it smelled funny. Carol Anne was too scared to scream. She wondered if it was a bear. Then she saw it.

Old Gooney always had beans for dinner. And he cooked them the exact same way each time. He cut open the top of the can and stuck it in the fire until he could see the bean juice bubble, then pulled the can out with a pair of tongs he scavenged from the town dump. When the beans cooled down, he'd eat them with an old tin spoon some hunter left behind a couple of deer-seasons ago.

Old Gooney didn't hold with people much. Never had, even as a young man. He grew up on Goat Hill, born in the three room farm house his ancestors built two hundred years ago. It never had electricity or running water.

His folks kept to themselves pretty much, too, so when they died. Old Gooney didn't see any need to change his ways. So he kept living in the old farm house, until five years ago, when he got drunk and set the place on fire. Since then, he'd been living out of the old chicken coop. He slept inside the shack, but did all his cooking outside. On nights like this, he usually kept the fire burning all night long, not daring to go to sleep until dawn broke over the valley. You never knew what might be abroad on nights like this.

Something in the woods roared. It startled Old Gooney so bad he dropped his can of pork-and-beans. Old Gooney got to his feet, clutching Pappy's old squirrel rifle to his chest. He rarely spotted the thing that roared in the woods, but he knew its name. He'd glimpsed traces of its passage every now and again, as had Pappy, and Grandpa, and Great-Grand before him.

Old Gooney's heart stopped beating for a half minute, then kicked back into gear at twice its previous speed. He was no longer standing in front of the chicken coop. He was cowering inside a farm house that no longer existed. It was thirty years ago and he was listening to the screams of a woman trapped in the fog. But this time he had to try and stop it.

He found the girl not a quarter-mile away, near the old logging road. She was lying face-down on the ground, covered in mud and dead leaves. Her poodle skirt, with its layers of petticoats was torn shreds, as if made of tissue paper. At first he thought she was dead. When he rolled her over onto her back he realized she was still breathing. The insides of her thighs were smeared with a mixture of mud and other things, and Old Gooney took off his jacket to cover her shame.

The girl was in a bad way, but she wasn't dead. He got back to his feet. He'd have to fetch the pick-up and bring her into town. Normally he only went into town once a month, to cash in all the sody bottles he collected along the road sides. He didn't have much use for folks, but he wasn't going to let some poor little gal die by herself on Goat Hill. Not this time.

As he was preparing to leave to get the truck, Old Gooney saw something moving in the mist. Something familiar. He pointed his squirrel rifle at the thing, his face twisted into a knot of hate.

"You git away from here! Git, or I'll blow you so full of holes you'll look like a lace curtain!"

Sheriff Mayhew received a frantic telephone call around one from Maynard and Blanche Fairweather, reporting their daughter missing. He had a bad feeling about that one. His years as an infantry soldier in Korea and a police officer in the States had fostered a sixth sense for impending tragedy. Misty Valley was no Pork Chop Hill, but it wasn't your average little town, that much he'd learned in the five years since he'd taken the job. There was something strange about the whole area that he could never really put his finger on. He'd heard wild stories, no doubt inflamed by hard drink and country bumpkin superstition so dense you couldn't drive a nail through it, but if even a fraction of what the locals gossiped was true—well, at least he wasn't the sheriff of Dunwich or Innsmouth.

His suspicions concerning the Fairweather girl were confirmed when he got the call from Doc Wagner a hour later, reporting that the old hermit that lived on Goat Hill had delivered her to the Municipal Hospital, and that she appeared to be the victim of a rape.

When he got to the hospital, the Fairweathers were already in the lobby. Blanche was in hysterics and Maynard was standing there, holding her up by the elbows.

"My baby! My baby!" Blanche Fairweather blubbered. "How could this happen? How?"

"You're gonna catch the bastard who did this to my little girl, aren't you, Jim?" Maynard asked, although he made it sound more like a threat.

"I'm going to do my damnedest, Maynard. Excuse me, but I need to speak to Doc ..."

Doc Wagner was still in the emergency room, talking in low tones with a nurse. Carol Anne Fairweather lay unconscious on the examination table, covered by a clean sheet. Her eyes and mouth were bruised, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

Wagner nodded his understanding. "Betty, why don't you administer Mrs. Fairweather a mild sedative?" he said, motioning with his clipboard. "I need to speak with Sheriff Mayhew."

Mayhew waited until the nurse left the room before turning to face the doctor. "So—what have we got here, Doc?"

Wagner sighed as he scratched the back of his head. "Well, sexual intercourse did take place."

"It's just—well, it's just that this is completely unlike anything I've seen before."

"It's the amount of semen, Jim. Judging from what I've found, there must have been at least ten of them. Possibly more. But there's no sign of the physical trauma a multiple rape inevitably produces ..."

Wagner shrugged. "Her vital signs are all very strong. Her unconsciousness is more the result of emotional shock than physical damage."

"I had Betty fix him up with a cup of coffee and a sandwich. He should still be in the staff lounge."

Mayhew could smell Old Gooney the moment he opened the door. The hermit was sitting at the break table, clutching his coffee in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. His face was seamed with wrinkles and dirt, his chin covered by whiskers the color of chewing tobacco. He wore several layers of tattered cast-offs and a discarded hunter's cap that made him look like a demented Elmer Fudd.

The hermit scowled. "Pappy was Mr. McGoohan. Everybody calls me Gooney. You'd know that, sonny, if you was from here."

"Five years!" Old Gooney snorted his derision. "Nobody's from here unless they got three generations buried in Forest Glen!"

The hermit's rheumy eyes glistened for a second and he stopped chewing his sandwich. "I heard her screamin', out in the woods. When I got to where she were—she was like she was."

Gooney nodded his head soberly, his eyes fixed on something inside his head. "I sure did. I seen what did it to her."

Mayhew leaned forward anxiously, no longer mindful of the old man's stink. "Who was it, Gooney? Who did you see?"

Mayhew rolled his eyes. Great, his one eyewitness was not only an old coot, he was crazy as well. He felt his patience begin to melt. He took a deep breath and tried to keep the anger out of his voice. "Come on, Gooney, you don't have to be afraid of some young punks coming after you! I'll see that you're protected ..."

"Your damn right I'm scared! But it ain't of no hoodlums! I know what I seen, and it weren't no man!"

Mayhew straightened up and wearily massaged him eyes. "Okay. Whatever you say, old timer. But I'll need you to show me and my deputies where you found the girl..."

"It'll have to wait until dawn, sheriff," Old Gooney explained. "My ol' pick 'em-up truck ain't got but one headlight workin', and that's stuck on high-beam. The fog's too thick t' try and make it back up the hill tonight. Besides, I wouldn't go back out there even if you drove me!"

They found the Chevy parked on the side of the road just after dawn. They found the owner not long after. He was lying unconscious in the woods, with a large bump on the back of his head, a split upper-lip and a bloody nose. It was hard to say whether he'd been knocked unconscious or simply lost his footing in the dark.

Mayhew spat when he rolled the boy over. Billy Mahan. What the hell was a girl like Carol Anne Fairweather doing out on Lovers Lane with Billy Mahan?

The boy groaned and his eyelids fluttered open as Mayhew nudged him with the toe of his boot. "C'mon, Mahan! Get your ass up!"

Billy sat up slowly, massaging the back of his neck. "Ohhhh! My head! Where am I?" His eyes widened and he looked around anxiously. "Carol Anne! Where's Carol Anne?"

Billy staggered to his feet. "Hospital? What's she doing in the hospital? What happened to her—?"

Billy eyed the surrounding woods and shuddered. "There was—there was something in the mist. It was looking inside the car at us. I thought it was, you know, some of the guys, trying to scare us. I followed it into the woods—"

"You left the girl sitting in the car by herself?" Mayhew shook his head in disgust.

"I-I thought it was friends—" Billy swallowed hard, trying to keep himself from breaking into tears. This was bad. Real bad.

"Maybe it was. Maybe your friends were waiting to have themselves some fun. Was that it, Mahan? Was that your game? Were you supposed to lure Carol Anne out here, so you and your no-good punk friends could have some 'fun'?"

"I'm saying I'm arresting you for the rape of Carol Anne Fairweather, punk," Mayhew snarled.

Billy sat hunched over in the back of the squad car, his manacled wrists attached to an eye-bolt screwed into the floor between his feet. The car didn't have protective mesh separating the front and back seats, so this was how Mayhew transported his more dangerous prisoners. Mayhew sat next to Billy, a drawn pistol aimed at the boy's mid-section, while his deputy served as chauffeur.

The deputy passed the radio receiver to Mayhew. "It's for you. Harlan says Doc Wagner just called."

Mayhew shifted his grip on his service revolver as he took the mike. "Yeah, Harlan. What is it?"

"Doc says she tried to kill herself. Stuck herself with a knife. He says he needs you over there pronto."

Mayhew stared through the window of the Intensive Care Unit at Carol Anne Fairweather. The room was no bigger than a broom closet, and most of it was taken up by the hospital bed and the respirator beside it. Carol Anne looked even worse than before, only this time her hands were bound to the metal railing on the sides of the bed with pieces of soft cloth.

Doc Wagner shook his head and turned away from the view. "Damnedest thing I ever saw, Jim! We were in the examination room—the girl wasn't conscious more than a minute or two, I swear! Next thing I know she's screaming at the top of her lungs "It's in me! It's in me!' and somehow snatches up a scalpel and starts stabbing herself in the belly, like she was trying to cut herself wide open!

"I don't have the facilities necessary to help her here. I called an old medical school chum of mine over at Arkham. He's agreed to admit her to the university's Medical Center for me. There's an ambulance on its way to pick her up."

"Did she say anything before she went under, Doc? Anything about who attacked her?"

"She wasn't making much sense, Jim. But from what little I was able to understand, the Mahan boy wasn't the one responsible."

"Somebody's responsible, damn it! And if it's not him, then he probably knows who is!"

"Jim—just because the boy greases his hair back, wears a leather jacket, and likes to drag race doesn't make him a criminal."

They held Billy for two days without officially charging him. On the third day he was released after Sheriff Mayhew received a phone call from Doc Wagner, who had traveled to Arkham to check on Carol Anne's condition. She had regained consciousness and spoken to him at length, all the while insisting that Billy was not the one responsible. An important piece of physical evidence also helped clear Billy of the rape charges. Doc Wagner had taken a smear of the rapist's semen and analyzed it in the Miskatonic University's laboratories, in hopes of discovering just how many attackers there were and what their blood types might be. Billy didn't know what the exact results were, but they completely exonerated him.

So, on Tuesday afternoon, Billy found himself walking down Main Street in the direction of the house he shared with his father. The cops had towed his Chevy to the impound yard, next to the Miskatonic River Bridge, and he needed his dad's signature to get it out, since he was underage.

As he headed home, he could feel the eyes of the town on him, following his every move. As he walked down the sidewalk, merchants stared out at him from the shadowed doorways of their stores, like cavemen fearfully watching the passage of a dangerous animal. As he neared Hank Emerson's barber shop, a woman grabbed her toddler by the arm and hurried across the street, glancing over her shoulder at him as if he was a pursuing bear.

He'd never been very popular in Misty Valley. His family had always been fairly low on the town's pecking order—his dad was the village boozer and his mom, before she split three years ago with a traveling salesman, had held the position of the drunkard's slatternly wife.

Billy had cultivated the rebel outsider image as a way to deal with the embarrassment and stigma of being white trash. He'd always told himself he was bigger than Misty Valley. Destined for better things. He didn't care if the bastards who lived in Misty Valley liked him or not.

The fact that Misty Valley's precious, perfect Homecoming Queen had picked him to give it up to had made him feel like he'd managed to pull one over on the whole stinking township. But now he no longer had what few friends he'd managed to cultivate, since Mayhew had dragged them all in for questioning. Nothing had come of it, except the destruction of Billy's friendship with Markie Schaumberger.

Billy was drawn from his reverie by the sound of tires squealing and the next thing he knew a large, fleshy man with a florid face and receding hairline was charging at him, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs.

Before Billy could react, the fleshy man smashed his fist into his face, bloodying his nose. Billy staggered backwards, too surprised to do more than blink in confusion.

"Maynard! Stop! Stop it, Maynard!" A middle-aged woman threw open the passenger door of the Buick that was in the middle of the street. Billy recognized enough of Carol Anne in Blanche Fairweather's face to figure out who the fleshy man was.

Maynard Fairweather shrieked, aiming another blow at Billy's face. "My princess! My baby girl!"

Billy stepped out of the way of the swing and grabbed the older man's arm, twisting it behind him. Fairweather's face suddenly went white with pain.

"I didn't do anything to her, Mr. Fairweather!" Billy said from between his teeth. "You got the right to hit me that one time, cause I did something stupid and I wasn't there to save her when I shoulda been. But I didn't hurt her! Why would I? I love Carol Anne! And she loves me!"

Billy wasn't exactly sure if that last part was true or not, but it might make Carol Anne's old man less likely to try and kill him on the street again.

"You're lying! Carol Anne would never have gone out with someone like you!" Fairweather spat, his breath redolent of vodka martini. "My daughter's a good girl!"

"Maynard, you're embarrassing me!" Blanche Fairweather hissed. She was looking around nervously, no doubt keenly aware of every eye in Misty Valley being focused on them. "Stop this fighting right this minute!"

Billy pushed Fairweather away from him with a single shove. Fairweather staggered a few steps then landed heavily on his well-padded butt.

Billy shook a finger at Fairweather, whose wife was clucking over the grass stains on his slacks. "There's only one drunk asshole who's ever kicked my ass, and that was my old man! And the last time he tried it, I cleaned his clock! You try and take a swing at me again, square-nuts, I'm gonna forget you're Carol Anne's pop and smear you but good—dig?"

With that, Billy stormed off in the direction of home. His old man better be at least half-sober when he got there, because the lush was going to spring his wheels even if it meant he had to drag him down to the impound yard by his short-hairs.

Billy had been driving with no particular place to go for the better part of two hours, trying to figure out what had happened to him and Carol Anne that night. While he was stuck in the jail, he'd overheard the sheriff talking to the deputies and the doctor about the old hermit, the one called Gooney. Apparently he'd seen whoever it was that attacked Carol Anne. Or at least claimed he did. In any case, the old man's refusal to finger Billy was another reason they'd been forced to cut him loose.

He followed the old logging road up Goat Hill. In was getting late, but Billy doubted that Lovers Lane would be seeing much action for some time to come. After what had happened to Carol Anne, the kids in town were too scared to park there for their "inspiration".

It took him awhile, but he finally found the rutted turn-off that lead to what was left of the McGoohan farm. The pastures had been allowed to go fallow, although he could make out a few low walls made of natural stone that once marked off the fields. The farm house itself was a burned-out husk, the roof collapsed on itself. There was a ramshackle pick-up truck parked next to what looked like a chicken coop. The outside of the coop was covered by dozens of old license plates scavenged from derelict cars. Sitting in front of the shack, tending a small camp fire ringed by white-washed stones was the filthiest old man Billy had ever laid eyes on. The hermit didn't move to greet Billy when he left his car, but neither did he reach for the ancient .22 leaning against the shack.

Old Gooney grunted and nodded. "You're the one who was out here with that lit'l gal. See the sheriff let you go. I told that damn fool you weren't the one to blame. I'm fixin' dinner, boy. Only got one can of beans."

Billy hunkered down next to the fire, opposite Old Gooney. The old man smelled like he hadn't seen soapy water in a season or two. Underneath the pungent reek of body odor was the smell of squeeze. Billy's dad drank it every now and then, when he didn't have the money for store-bought alcohol.

Old Gooney cackled, exposing a mouth that was mostly wrinkled gum, except for a couple of teeth jutting sideways, like the tusks of a wild animal. "Cause I'm crazy as a bed-bug, sonny! Can't you tell?"

Old Gooney stopped laughing and gave Billy a strange look. It encouraged the boy enough to keep on talking.

"I mean, somebody like you, living alone out here, you must see a lot of things most folks don't know about..."

"That's the Lord's Truth," Old Gooney muttered, pulling his moth-eaten jacket tight against his shoulders.

"Why don't you tell me what it was you saw—or thought you saw—that night? The sheriff might not have believed you—but I will. Something tells me you and I—maybe we saw the same thing."

Old Gooney sat there for a long moment, sucking on what remained of his teeth, staring into the fire. When he finally spoke, it sounded more like he was clearing his throat than talking.

"I said goats. That's what we used to raise out here. McGoohans always been goat-herds, since the day they come over from Scotland, back in the 1750s. Guess we was goat-herds over there, too. That's why this place is called Goat Hill.

"This here's a real strange patch of country, boy. Right strange. Even though I ain't never been so far as to Aylesbury, much less Arkham, I know that for a fact. There's something about the countryside hereabouts—something about it that draws evil to it. Misty Valley ain't had the troubles like some of the other townships—
such as Dunwich or Innsmouth. But maybe its time is coming round at last.

"My Granny used to go on about such things all the time. About how some of the early settlers carried on with the Indians that was here before 'em. They used to dance round nekkid under the full moon on top of The Devil's Hop-Yard, or pastures, like The Grove, calling down gods—or demons that called themselves gods—doing things no Christian would dream of.

"Granny would go on at length about it—but then, she was a Whateley. The Whateleys was turned that way, you know—no, I reckon you wouldn't. That was awhile back, and most folks around here have made sure to forget about what happened over in Dunwich.

"Anyways, Granny's first cousin was involved in that mess. Folks called him a wizard, and I reckon he was, in his way. In any case, he got hisself mixed up with things older an' meaner 'n the Snake in the Garden. But that don't have anything to do with what happened to your girlfriend—not directly, anyway.

"As I was sayin', there's always been strange things afoot in the Miskatonic Valley. Always will be, I suppose. When I was a boy, I used to walk the pasture with Pappy. He was always lookin' for breaks in the walls and keepin' an eye out for wild dogs and the occasional wolf or bear that might be after his herd—oh yes, and panthers, too. Every now and then—especially after one of the heavy fogs—we'd come across goats that been attacked.

"Most times it was a bear or a panther had got 'em. But some times . . . Some times we'd find a billy torn to shreds, like someone had yanked its legs off, one-by-one. And the nannies—sometimes the nannies would be dead, but just as often they'd be alive, bleedin' outta their hindquarters. Whenever we'd find a nanny goat that way, my pappy would take his rifle and put the poor thing outta its misery.

"At first I thought he was doin' it out of kindness, on account of the animal being all ripped-up inside. But one day he told me mercy had nothin' to do it. He killed the nannies for fear of "the thousand-and-first'. When I asked him what that meant, he warned me never to allow "the Goat's seed to grow". Which I thought was fair strange, seein' how we was goat-herds. But it wasn't until later that I realized he weren't talkin' about no ordinary goat.

"It happened back in '28. Shortly before the Horror over in Dunwich. Folks never knew the truth of what happened out here that day, and after what became of Wilbur Whateley and his twin brother, folks were more than ready to forget what happened that season. I weren't but sixteen. No older than you."

Billy grunted and tried to hide his surprise. Old Gooney was a year younger than his own father.

"It was getting on dusk. Me and Pappy was walkin' the herd back from the north forty, when the fog came up sudden. I could tell by the way Pappy got anxious that it weren't no natural thing. As we got close to the house, there was this scream—"

Old Gooney closed his eyes and grimaced, no doubt still hearing the echoes. He produced a glass milk-bottle filled with squeeze and took a healthy swig. When he opened his eyes again, they seemed to burn in the flickering light from the campfire.

"Pappy set out for the house in a dead run, me on his heels. When we got there, Maw was nowhere to be found. Everything was in its place and there was no sign of a struggle. Then there was another, louder scream. It came from the woods. Pappy grabbed up his rifle and told me to stay put. I told him no, I was gonna go with him to help Maw.

"To my surprise, he hauled off and punched me full in the mouth! Knocked out two of my front teeth! He seemed more scared than mad, though. He said he told you to stay put. and I meant it! The Goat's in the woods, boy!' And then he was gone. That was the last I saw Pappy alive.

"I didn't witness what happened that night—I didn't have to. I heard my Maw scream Pappy's name. I heard the gunshots. I heard whatever it was Pappy was shootin' at give out a roar so powerful it was as if all Creation had been given throat. Then I heard Pappy scream. I was scared piss-yeller. I spent the whole night burnin' the lamp and prayin" behind locked doors and shuttered windows.

"I found them come the dawn. They weren't more than a stone's throw from the door yard, as it were. Apparently. Maw had gone to the edge of the wood to pick some wild mushrooms for dinner. Pappy always had a hankering for them things. Pappy looked like one of his billy goats, tore limb-from-limb and scattered about like a scarecrow. Maw was a different story, though.

"Her dress was nothing but tatters, her face was all bruised, and both her legs was broke, but she was alive. I reckon she was in what they call shock. She lay there in the mud, all bloody and nekkid, moaning Pappy's name over and over. I tell you, no boy should ever see his mama in such a state . . .

"As I was standing there, starin' at what was left of my folks, I hear this noise from the woods. I look up and I see it. I see the thing that done it. It stood taller'n a man. and it was dark and hairy all over, the eyes shining red like a deer's caught in a headlight. The dew was shinin' on its coat, and it smelt just like a wet dog. Only it weren't no dog."

Old Gooney shook his head and his mouth bowed into a fierce rictus, as if he was uncertain whether to laugh, cry, or vomit. "I seen the Goat, boy! Shub-Niggurath: the Father of Nightmares; the Black Goat of the Wood; He Of A Thousand Young: the Lord of the Grove! That's what I seen! And the shaggy bastard gives me this look like I ain't worth worryin' over, an' disappears back into the forest.

"I look down and see Pappy's rifle lying right at my feet, along with some ammunition. I pick it up and all the while I'm loading the rifle, I'm rememberin' them nanny goats. And how Pappy told me the thousand-and-first must never be born. And I recalled how Granny used to go on just before she died, the whippoorwills calling outside her window, about the Old Ones and how their time was coming round again. I kept thinkin' about them things and thinkin' about them, so I wouldn't have to think about what I was about to do.

"I buried my folks in the north pasture, where it's sunny most the time. I told the folks in town they'd died of the influenza. Most everyone believed it. If anyone was suspicious, what went on over in Dunwich ended up drawing their attention away from me. I kept up the farm the best I could, but I got to drinkin' and I could never bring myself to take a wife, knowin' what I know about Goat Hill.

"The livestock finally died out in '36—too many of the billies was gettin' killed, and the nannies were as liable to end up bein' shot than drop a kid, and I had neither the money or inclination to replace 'em. So I made do by leasin' parcels of land to the lumber companies, but that petered out a few years back. Now all them loggin' roads is good for is for kids to come up and smooch in their cars."

Old Gooney spat into the fire. The flames flared brighter for a moment, then died back down. "If you'd parked down the road a piece, it would never have bothered you. Just like it's never bothered any of the other young'uns who park there. The stone walls keeps it in, y'know. That's why Pappy was so keen on keepin' them up. It's the only thing I still bother with, round here. Don't know who'll see to it once I'm gone.

"I'm the last, you know. The last of the McGoohans. The last of the goat-keepers of Goat Hill. You're right lucky, you know that, boy? I know you might not feel that way, but you are. It decided not to kill you, for some reason. Maybe because you didn't attack it, tryin' to save your mate. The girl though—that's another story. Luck's turned its face from her.

"I should have killed her when I found her. I should have. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not again." The old hermit began to cry, the tears trickling down his cheeks, cutting trails through the dirt and grime. "It's up to you, boy. It's up to you to see that the thousand-and-first ain't born. It's up to you to see that the Goat don't roam the woods beyond this cursed valley."

Billy left old Gooney to his bottle of squeeze and his can of pork-n-beans. As he headed back in the direction of Misty Valley, he looked into the rear-view mirror one last time. The old man was still squatting in front of his shack, muttering to himself about Black Goats and the return of forgotten gods.

Old Gooney felt better after he got the beans in him. He wasn't sure if it was the food that made him feel different or if it was talking to the boy. He'd never told a living soul about what had happened to his folks. He hadn't known such inner peace in thirty-one years.

He smiled and took another pull on the squeeze. Although it was a touch cool and the mist was already starting to rise, it looked to be a nice night for sitting out under the stars. Then he noticed the whippoorwills. Judging from their calls, the woods had to be full to overflowing with them. He remembered what his Granny had said about the whippoorwills calling to the souls of the damned, and how their escorted the dead to hell.

There was something moving in the woods, and it sure wasn't a whippoorwill. Old Gooney reached for his rifle and got to his feet rather unsteadily. He'd finished more than half the squeeze since the boy left. He peered into the shadows beyond the meager ring of light cast by his fire.

"I didn't tell him nothing!" he shouted at the darkness. "There's nothing he can do to you—nobody will believe him!"

The something in the dark moved closer, and the smell of animal threatened to overpower even Old Gooney's potent stench. He took an involuntary step backward. His hands trembled as he lifted the rifle.

"I've served you! I served you as my Pappy served you! And his before him! Is this how you repay us—by rapin' our wives and daughters? By murderin' our fathers and sons?"

Old Gooney fired the rifle, but the thing swatted him aside as if he was no more than a stinging gnat. He landed in the cook-fire, his clothes igniting with a dry cough. His voice rose as a scream, the words a mixture of English and some strange, unholy language unheard since the days of the witch-hunts: "Ia! Ia! Shubb-Niggurath flitagn!"

But before Old Gooney could finish, his seven-times great grandfather brought a cloven hoof down on his head, crushing it like an over-ripe melon.

The sheriff showed up at Billy's house the next day and arrested him for the murder of Silas McGoohan, better known as Old Gooney. According to Mayhew, Billy had gone out there to silence the old man for fear of him "telling the truth" about what happened to Carol Anne. There was absolutely no proof, except for his tire tracks at the scene of the crime. And after Billy's public fisticuffs with Maynard Fairweather, the town was ready to believe him capable of anything—including stomping a helpless old coot to a bloody pulp and setting both him and his shack on fire.

The hearing was exceptionally quick and the decision to try Billy as an adult was protested by only two people—his public defense attorney and his father. Billy's trial was scheduled for later that year. The judge refused to set bail, fearing Billy would flee the jurisdiction, and he was forced to spend the three months preceding the trial in the jail over in Aylesbury.

As for Carol Anne, the weeks following her attack proved to be equally unpleasant. After she recovered from her stab wounds, she was transferred from the Medical Center to the Arkham Institute for the Mentally Ill, where she was placed under round-the-clock supervisor for the first month of her stay.

Despite repeated visits by her parents, Sheriff Mayliew, and Doctor Wagner, Carol Anne refused to talk about what happened that night, except to deny that Billy was involved. During her second month at the Institute, it was discovered that Carol Anne was pregnant. Despite pleas from all concerned, she refused to terminate, even though Doc Wagner had secured permission from the state for a therapeutic abortion. She was convinced the child belonged to Billy, and Doc-Wagner, when pressed, confessed he seriously doubted the child to be the product of the rape.

Carol Anne was released into the care of her parents the week after Billy was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Her parents watched her closely, but outside of the occasional nightmare and a suddenly acquired phobia concerning fog. she seemed her old self again. Except for the pregnancy, of course.

Mrs. Fairweather frowned at her husband, who was massaging his lower jaw as if trying to force his facial muscles into something besides a grimace. They sat opposite each other at the dinner table, with Carol Anne forming the final point of the triangle. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Mrs. Fairweather pushed a color brochure across the table towards her daughter. "Are you quite sure that's what you want to do, dear? I mean, you didn't even look at the pamphlet. I mean, the home and its grounds look quite lovely, and I'm sure the staff will be oh-so nice to you, dear ..."

Carol Anne shook her head firmly and wadded up the brochure for the Miskatonic County Home for Young Mothers without looking at it. "I'm not putting my baby up for adoption, Mom, and that's final!"

Mrs. Fairweather shifted about uncomfortably. "That's all well-and-good for you to say now, sweetie. But what about school? Principal Strickland says that having a girl in—well, in your condition, is bad for morale. Carol Anne—you're the Homecoming Queen! What kind of standard are you holding up to the other girls? If you keep the baby, I'm afraid you won't be allowed back into class come the new school year!"

Mr. Fairweather's face went from bright red to purple as he slammed his fist onto the table, making his wife jump. "Damn it, Carol Anne! We've put up with this foolishness long enough! You stalled the doctors until it was too late, and now you're backing out of your agreement with us! We told you we would bring you home and not press charges against that lousy Mahan kid if you agreed to put the baby up for adoption!"

Mrs. Fairweather leaned forward and grasped her daughter's clenched fist. "Carol Anne—please, listen to reason! You keep insisting that Billy is the father. But what if he's not? Do you want that kind of reminder staring you in the face every day for the rest of your life? And what about the child? How do think he'll feel, growing up with people whispering behind his back? It'll be bad enough that his mother is unmarried—but to have that on top of it? Carol Anne—what will people think?"

Carol Anne tore herself away from her mother and stood at the end of the table, her voice trembling. "I don't care what anyone thinks! And despite what you and Daddy think, I know what's good for both me and my baby! And for the last time—Billy is the father! He has to be!"

"You don't understand, Daddy! You've never understood! All you care about is what the neighbors think and what they're gossiping about you at their stupid bridge parties!" Carol Anne sobbed, clutching her swollen belly the way she used to hug her teddy bear. "The only person who really cared about me was Billy—and now he's going to die, because of something he didn't even do!"

Before the Fairweathers could respond to their daughter's outburst, she turned and fled to her room, slamming the door shut behind her.

The prison where Billy was sent to wait his time before his execution could be carried out was on the outskirts of Arkham. Although confined to Death Row, Billy soon learned he had special privileges denied the rest of the prison population, one of which was unrestricted access to the library. He'd been thinking about a lot of things since the night he spoke to Old Gooney.

Although he'd never been one for books, there wasn't a hell of a lot to do on Death Row, especially since his father, the useless boozer, managed to kill himself by burning down the house during a drunken bender shortly after the sentencing.

The prison library, as it turned out, was quite extensive and had a rather esoteric selection of books. Perhaps Miskatonic University being nearby had something to do with it. Billy soon found himself pouring over books detailing the dark and arcane history of the surrounding countryside, some of which dated back three centuries. While the accounts chronicled in the various texts were far from graphic, what they hinted about reminded Billy of what Old Gooney had rambled on about the night he was killed. Stuff about witches and sacrifices and things that lived in the wild spots that watched and waited. And the more he read, the more he worried about Carol Anne.

The week before his rendezvous with the electric chair, Billy wrote a letter to her, begging for one last meeting. He wanted to tell her goodbye and ask her forgiveness for "not being there when you needed me most".

Carol Anne showed the letter to her parents and pleaded with them. They had to let her go. They just had to. At first they were against it, but after conferring with Doc Wagner, who feared a relapse into suicidal depression, they grudgingly agreed to drive her to Arkham so she and Billy could see each other one last time.

They arrived within a hour of Billy's execution. Although it was highly irregular to do so, Carol Anne was allowed into the prisoner's cell unsupervised. Billy was sitting at a small metal desk that was built into the wall. He was busy writing something, and there were books piled next to his elbow, all of them bearing the stamp of the prison library. Billy's last meal—consisting of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cornbread and strawberry ice cream—sat untouched on a its tray next to the single cot, the gravy and the ice cream running into one another.

He turned in his chair and looked at her. It was the first time they'd laid eyes on each other since that night on Lovers Lane, eight-and-a-half months ago.

Billy's hair was no longer greased into a ducktail since the prison barber had been by earlier that day and shaved his skull in preparation for the electrodes. His leather jacket and pegged jeans had been replaced by institutional denim. Carol Anne was no longer the nubile cheerleader, her figure obliterated by her distended belly and maternity dress.

Billy got up, nodding silently. His eyes were focused on the mound of her belly. "How long?"

"Doc Wagner says the baby should be due a couple of weeks from now—a month at the most.'' She stepped forward, pointing her belly at him. "Feel it, Billy. Feel your baby."

"Like hell I don't! It wants you to think I'm the father! That way it's safe for it to be born!"

Carol Anne took a hesitant step backward, the look of hurt on her face replaced by fear. "Billy—you're talking crazy. You're talking like the baby is controlling me!"

"Sorry I wasn't there to save you. But maybe it's not too late. Maybe I can still save you. Maybe I can save the world, too."

The guards came running at the sound of the scream, only to find Billy Mahan standing over Carol Anne Fairweathers battered body. Although they had been alone for less that two minutes, the prisoner had used the time to pound the girl's head into a pulp, hammering her skull against the toilet in the corner of the cell.

The prisoner was dragged off to the chair laughing and crying and shrieking something about goats being loose in the woods, the blood and brains of his former girlfriend congealing on his clothes. If the governor possessed any doubts concerning the execution of the troubled delinquent, this certainly erased them. Billy met his fate at the hands of the Massachusetts penal system at exactly midnight.

A huge number of whippoorwills—the largest mass sighting in the Arkham Audubon Society's records—was later reported to have taken flight at exactly 12:01.

"We are gathered here today in the sight of God to bid farewell to Carol Anne Fairweather ..."

Maynard Fairweather stood at his daughter's grave and wondered where they went wrong. The minister's words turned into droning as he lifted his eyes from the hole in the ground and scanned the assembled mourners.

There were quite a few of them—most were Carol Anne's school mates. Unused to the concept of mortality, they looked more scared for themselves than grieved for their friend. Doc Wagner was there, of course. He kept sneaking looks in Blanche's direction, no doubt checking to see how she was holding up. Sheriff Mayhew was also in attendance, looking uncomfortable in his dress uniform. The rest of the faces were unfamiliar to him, belonging to Blanche's bridge club biddies, or, worse, simple curiosity seekers come to get a look at the coffin of the Girl From Lovers Lane. The one who was raped and then murdered, her brains hammered into suet by her juvenile delinquent boyfriend. The boyfriend her parents didn't even know about until it was too late.

Unable to bear the speculation in their eyes, Maynard lifted his gaze higher, scanning the surrounding headstones and vaults of Forest Glen Cemetery. Many of the monuments dated back before the Revolution. His eye wandered to the woodlands that ringed the graveyard and continued up the side of Goat Hill, then was arrested by an unfamiliar sight.

At first he was at a loss to place what seemed so odd—then he realized that the hillside facing the town was in the process of being cleared. He vaguely remembered hearing something about the old hermit's farm being bought by some land developer out of Boston. Something about a housing development—Shepherd's Meadow Estates. Even as he stared at the hill, he could see a tiny bulldozer knocking down what looked like a stone wall.

Thinking about Goat Hill made him think about Lovers Lane, which made him think of Carol Anne again. Maynard lowered his eyes, blinking at the tears. He reached out blindly, groping for his wife's hand at his side, but couldn't find it. Then he remembered her hands were full. He glanced at Blanche from the corner of his eye. He was really proud of how she was taking it. She'd even stopped taking those damn pills of hers. She told him that they'd made a lot of mistakes with Carol Anne. Mistakes they couldn't afford to repeat, now that they'd been given a second chance. Maynard wiped his tears on his cuff and reached over to pull back the edge of the blue blanket his wife held cradled to her breast.

Carol Anne had lingered on life support for twenty hours at the Miskatonic University Medical Center. She'd remained alive just long enough for an emergency cesarean to be performed.

Doc Wagner was amazed. "It's like Nature itself bent the rules so this baby could be born." Despite the trauma associated with its delivery and being premature, Carol Anne's baby was an otherwise healthy boy.

Maynard's grandson—as yet still unnamed—yawned and regarded him silently with an eye the color of cigarette smoke. Although both grandparents had searched the child's face for signs of their daughter, it appeared he took after his father. Whoever that may have been.

Doc Wagner had insisted that the child could not have been conceived as a result of the rape. He claimed that the sperm samples he'd had analyzed weren't human. Which was complete and utter hogwash. After hearing that, Maynard was convinced that Wagner was addicted to the same pills he was so quick to prescribe to all the housewives in his care.

After the casket was lowered into the ground, Sheriff Mayhew came forward. He coughed nervously as he shook Fairweather's hand. "I'm real sorry about all this, Maynard . . . Uh, I hear you and Blanche are moving to Boston."

"I put in for a transfer. There are too many memories here, Jim. Blanche and I thought we'd be better off somewhere else, what with the baby and all ... "

"Doc Wagner tells me some girl got attacked over in Dunwich the other night. That true, Jim?"

Mayhew's face twitched when he spoke. "You heard right. One of the Bishop gals got herself raped."

"Looks like it was the same fella. Or fellas. Look, Maynard—I better get goin'. Good luck in Boston, okay?"

Blanche Fairweather joined her husband as they walked back to the car. "What did Jim Mayhew have to say?"

"It was a nice service, don't you think? I mean, I thought it was sweet that Carol Anne's little school friends came, didn't you?"

"And the baby was so good during the whole thing! Why, he didn't cry once!" She smiled down at her grandson. "You were a good wittle boy, weren't you, lamby-pie?"

"Blanche, we're going to have to give the boy a name. We can't keep calling him lamby-pie'," Maynard sighed as he opened the car door for his wife.

"I know, honey—It's just that Carol Anne never really brought up any names while she was expecting. She said if it was a boy, she'd name it after his father. But I don't want to name him after a murderer..."

"I guess not—" Mrs. Fairweather froze as she was about to get into the car, frowning in the direction of the nearby woods.

Blanche shook her head as if to clear it. "Nothing. Must have been my eyes playing tricks on me. I could have sworn I saw something moving over there. As if someone was watching us from the trees."

Blanche Fairweather tightened her grip on her grandson as the car pulled away. She didn't dare look back in the direction of her daughter's grave, for fear of discovering what she'd glimpsed had not been an illusion after all. The baby gurgled, distracting her from her train of thought.

She smiled down al him indulgently. He was going to make a handsome man, of that she was certain, although he did seem a tad swarthy. But then, women always responded favorably to the dark. Mediterranean types.

And from the sheltering shadows, the Black Goat of the Wood lifted a hand in silent farewell as his thousand-and-first get, its time come round at last, sped off into the world of mortals, to begin his father's work.

There are some personal milestones that have a way of cementing themselves to your gray matter. One of these is your very first apartment. You might be laid up in a nursing home, a tube up your nose and one out your ass, tranked out on heavy meds, your brain so scrambled by Alzheimers and strokes that you can't remember your children's names—but, for some perverse reason, you still can remember the color of the wall-to-wall in your swingin' bachelor pad. Go figure.

The name of the complex was Del-Ray Gardens. Don't ask me why. I never saw anything that even vaguely resembled a growing thing—much less a garden—the entire eighteen months I lived there, unless you count the dismal courtyard dominated by cracked swimming pool that bred mosquitoes and scum.

The Del-Ray was old. It had been built at least a decade or two before my own conception, back when the school had been a simple state college. No doubt the Del-Ray, with it's double-decker motor-hotel layout and muckleturd stucco exterior, was initially designed for the tide of G.I. Bill-funded married students who began to pour into the campus just before the Korean War. By the time I moved in, during the fall of '79, the only thing the Del-Ray had going for it was its proximity to the campus. It was literally a three minutes walk to and from school. And for someone like myself—who found attending classes the bitter pill one has to swallow if you want to enjoy college life—the situation was ideal.

I moved in during my junior year. I'd spent my freshman and sophomore in one of the dorms and was sick to death of having to share the bathroom with three other people and not being (technically) allowed visitors of the opposite sex after nine in the evening. The Del-Ray was nearby and at one-hundred a month plus utilities, definitely within my budget.

I moved myself in all by myself—since all I owned in the world was a couple of plastic milk-crates full of paperbacks, a double mattress (no box springs), a manual typewriter, a blow-dryer, a digital alarm clock, a portable black & white television set, and a popcorn popper, it was hardly a Herculean task. So what if I didn't have a chair to sit in? I was on my own! I had my very own place to party in! Although what I found waiting for me quickly dampened the kibosh on my youthful high spirits.

For one thing, I discovered that the previous tenant had left a half-dozen eggs in the refrigerator before pulling the plug a month or so back. Needless to say, the clean-up experience was unique. After getting the kitchen straightened out, I walked down to the Hit-N-Git on the corner and bought some macaroni and cheese and a couple cans of tuna for my first meal in my new home. My mother had been thoughtful enough to endow me with some of the old pot vessels and dishes she'd been meaning to replace, so there was a strange feeling of domestic déjà vu as I spooned my evening's repast onto my old Daffy Duck plate.

As I sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the living room, my back resting against the cheap plywood paneling, I smiled contentedly and imagined the empty walls covered with blacklight posters and lined with bookcases full of paperback SF, the bedroom doorway draped by a glass-bead curtain, while a stereo system cranked out Alice Cooper and Kiss at volumes loud enough to put even more cracks in the Del-Ray's crumbling stucco facade. I imagined all my friends nodding their heads and checking out the decor, toking weed and swigging beer and saying "This place is really cool" or—

The voice was so loud, so close, I actually jumped, thinking someone was in the room with me.

"LIKE FUCK YOU WERE! HOW COULD YOU BE WATCHIN' THE FUCKIN' TEEVEE WHEN YOUR FUCKIN' EYES WERE CLOSED?"

By this point I realized I was, indeed, very much alone in my apartment. What I was hearing was coming from next door. Both voices were male, more than a little intoxicated, and seemed to belong to older people—guys my dad's age, if not older. Although the television in question was indeed turned up fairly high—something I'd grown used to in the dorm and had learned to ignore—I was unused to people yelling at the top of their lungs.

I crept to my front door and opened it, peering out into the courtyard. To my surprise, none of the other tenants were visible.

Was it possible no one else could hear what was going on in the corner apartment, the one next to mine?

"DON'T YOU TOUCH ME, YOU QUEER PIECE OF SHIT! I'LL FUCKIN' KILL YOU IF YOU FUCKIN' TOUCH ME. YOU QUEER MOTHERFUCKER!"

Suddenly there was a loud thump, as if someone had just thrown a duffel-bag full of dirty laundry against the other side of the living room wall. Then another. And another.

I yanked the door back open and headed to the apartment across from mine, intending to borrow the phone to call the police. My heart was hammering away in my chest as I knocked on the door. After a few seconds I could hear the boll being opened and a man I recognized as one of the English Department teaching assistants peered out at me.

The T.A.'s eyes flickered over my shoulder to where my apartment door was standing open. "You in 1-E?"

"You can use the phone, if you like, but I'll warn you right now—they're not going to come. At least, not right away, and only then if two or three other people call in to complain."

The T.A. laughed the same way my dad laughs whenever he talks about the IRS. "Believe me, I know."

Over the next few months, I got to know quite a bit about them, although I never learned their last names. Most of the information was absorbed unintentionally, as there was no way I could avoid listening to their nightly harangues. During the day and afternoon they were usually quiet—although dormant might be a more accurate term. I quickly learned that their screaming matches, while loud, were usually brief and seemed to follow a schedule. They would start arguing about the time the Five O'Clock News came on, building to a crescendo around Johnny Carson's monologue.

I had signed a lease, like a fool, and I knew that I'd never be able to find anything as close to campus and as cheap as the Del-Ray, so I gritted my teeth and decided to ride it out as best I could. I spent a lot of time going to double-features, timing it so I wouldn't get home until Dez and Alvin had finished their alcoholic kabuki theater for the night.

Although I heard them on a daily basis, I didn't lay eyes on Alvin and Dez until my second week at the Del-Ray, and that was by complete accident.

It was about two on a weekday afternoon. I had gone to the Hit-N-Git, the twenty-four hour convenience store down the block from the Del-Ray. There was a tall, thin man dressed in cranberry-colored synthetic pants—cheap Sans-A-Belt knock-offs—and a synthetic silk shirt with pictures of sailboats lithoed all over it, trying to microwave a burrito.

He reeked of cheap perfume, bologna and gin so strongly I could smell him from two aisles away. Although he was probably forty-five, he looked a lot older than my dad. His hair, which had once been red but had faded to an unattractive carroty orange, was arranged in that style peculiar to older white trash homosexuals; one part bouffant and one part rooster comb. As he headed for the cashier to pay for his burrito, I glimpsed a bruise under his left eye, covered by liquid foundation make-up that was a shade darker than he was. It suddenly dawned on me, then, that I was staring at one half of the notorious Dez and Alvin. Probably Alvin. Dez's voice was deeper, heavier, and seemed to belong to a much older man.

While at the counter, Alvin bought a pint of gin—the kind with the yellow label that just says "gin" in big block letters—and a pint of equally generic vodka, then lurched out the door, leaving his microwave burrito sitting on the counter. The cashier, a Pakistani exchange student, simply shrugged and tossed the food in the trash.

I didn't spot Dez until that same weekend, when I made the mistake of inviting a couple of friends over to my groovy new pad. The last couple of weekends Dez and Alvin had gone out drinking at some bar, and I made the mistake of thinking this was something they did every week-end. Nope. Just those immediately after Dez's Social Security and Alvin's Welfare checks arrived.

I managed to round up a kitchen table and enough chairs to attempt a dinner party, of sorts. So I invited George and Vinnie over. George and Vinnie were a gay couple I'd known since my freshman year. George was a Theater Major studying set design, while Vinnie was interested in architectural engineering. Really sweet, funny guys. Loads of laughs.

I made spaghetti and garlic bread (one of the few things I knew how to cook) and George and Vinnie brought a bottle of Chianti. I'd just cleared the dishes and we were sitting around discussing the latest gossip when the living room wall shook so hard it dislodged the Jagermeister mirror I'd bought at the Spencer's in the mall the day before and sent it crashing to the floor.

"DON'T YOU TOUCH ME, YOU QUEER MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TOUCH ME AGAIN I'LL KILL YOU IN A FUCKIN' MINUTE! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHO YOU ARE! I'LL FUCKIN' KILL YOU, YOU FUCKIN' PIECE OF SHIT!"

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH YOU FUCKIN' QUEER! YOU'RE A FUCKIN' PIECE OF SHIT, THAT'S ALL YOU ARE! HELL, YOU AIN'T EVEN A PIECE OF SHIT! QUEERS AIN'T HUMAN!"

George pushed back his chair, his eyes never leaving the living room wall. "We'd—uhmm—like to stay a chat awhile, but Vinnie and I really need to get home ..."

"I AIN'T GOT NO USE FOR FUCKIN' COCKSUCKERS LIKE YOU! ALL YOU QUEERS OUGHT TO DIE! LEAVE US NORMAL PEOPLE ALONE!"

"Honey, not as sorry as we feel for you," Vinnie whispered, hurrying to follow George to the door. They both kept eyeing the wall as if they expected Dez and Alvin to come busting through it like trained tigers jumping hoops of fire.

Just as George opened the door, Alvin and Dez's slammed shut. All three of us stood on tip-toe and peeped around the corner of the jamb. A short, thick-set man in his sixties with what was left of his grey hair in a military-style brush-cut was weaving towards the parking lot and the general direction of the Hit-N-Git's late-night liquor supply. He wore a short-sleeve dress shirt and a pair of badly wrinkled slacks that, from the back, looked like he was smuggling well-fed bulldogs.

"You don't think he's gay, do you?" I wondered aloud. "I mean—I know Alvin is ... But Dez looks like one of my dad's old army buddies. Maybe they're just room-mates."

George gave me a look he reserved for particularly dense straight people. "Honey, are there any two-bedroom units in this dump?"

"Besides, I've heard stories about this couple. No one's ever mentioned their names or where they live exactly, but I'm pretty sure these are the same guys. They're hard-core alcoholics and they've been living together since the early Sixties."

"You've gotta be kidding! How could two people who hate each others' guts so much stay together under one roof that long?" I shuddered. The very idea was impossible to visualize—kind of like my grandparents having sex.

Vinnie shrugged. "Hey, my parents spent the last ten years of their marriage like they were fighting the Viet Nam War, not raising a family in suburbia."

"This whole scene's too much like my own folks," George agreed. "It's weirding me out. Why don't you come visit us next time? I don't think I could handle having to listen to those closet queens screech at each other again."

As you may have guessed, that was my one and only attempt at having friends over to my new place. Thanks to Dez and Alvin. I never once got to throw a wild and crazy college student-type party while I lived there. The possibility that they might crash the party in hopes of scoring free booze was enough to deep-six any plans I might have entertained.

I was amazed at how quickly Dez and Alvin had become a part of my life, even though I had yet to say anything to them and didn't really want to. Frankly, Dez scared the hell out of me. As far as I could tell, neither of them worked, and the only time they left their apartment was either to go to Hit-N-Git to buy liquor and cigarettes, cash their Welfare checks, or go to the hospital emergency room. I soon realized that the long-term residents of the Del-Ray viewed Dez and Alvin as elemental forces outside the ken of Mankind. You stood a better chance of controlling the weather than changing their behavior.

Still, I often wondered what kind of hold Dez and Alvin held on the landlord. Surely enough people had complained about them over the years? I finally got an answer to this question when Dez nearly burned down the apartment complex one afternoon.

I arrived home after classes to find a couple of firetrucks pulled up outside the building, the smell of smoke and chemical fire-extinguisher heavy in the air. A group of fellow tenants were gathered in the courtyard around the scum-pool, watching from a safe distance as a couple of firemen outfitted in heavy waterproofed canvas coats filed out of 1-D.

Dez was sitting on the staircase that lead to the second floor apartments, looking like a pickled fetus poured out of its jar. He was blinking in the afternoon sun and staring at things like he didn't know where he was, his face grimed with soot, but not so much that I couldn't make out the gin blossoms covering his cheeks and nose.

"Found what started it," one of the firemen said, holding up a smoking piece of debris that looked like a cross between a frozen pizza and a hockey puck. "Apparently he put it in the oven without taking it out of the box."

Just then an older man shouldered his way through the crowd. He was dressed in slacks and a golf shirt as if he'd just hurried off the seventeenth hole. "What's going on here?!? I'm the owner, somebody tell me what's happened—?"

As the fire chief explained the situation—pointing in Dez's direction—the man who claimed to be the Del-Ray's owner rubbed his face the same way my Uncle Bill used to wherever he was trying to hold his temper in front of company. The moment the firemen left, the owner stalked over to where Dez was sitting and began yelling at him, although at nowhere near the volume I knew Dez was capable of. It was only then—seeing them face-to-face—did I realize they were blood kin.

"For the love of God, Dez, what the hell did you think you were doing?!? You're gonna put the insurance on this Hump through the roof! I promised Ma I'd make sure you always had a place to live, but I've had about all I'm going to outta you! You fuck up one more time, and you're out on your ass, you hear me? And that goes for Alvin, too!"

I expected Dez to start shouting back at him, but to my surprise he just sat there and took it. His head wobbled on his neck and he began blinking his eyes real fast. I couldn't tell if they were tearing from the smoke or the chewing-out. After the Del-Ray's owner left, Dez levered himself off the steps and shuffled back into the apartment. A couple of minutes later Alvin showed up. Apparently he'd been out cashing a Welfare check.

"I DIDN'T FUCKIN' DO ANYTHING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! YOU'RE ALWAYS ACCUSIN' ME OF DOIN' SHIT AND I DONT DO NOTHIN!"

"DONT YOU LIE TO ME, OLD MAN! LOOK AT THIS PLACE! LOOK AT IT! WHAT DID YOU DO, DEZ? WHAT DID YOU DO?"

"YOU FUCKIN' RUINED DINNER DIDN'T YOU? RUINED IT FOR EVERYBODY! SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?"

That particular argument got so violent that Alvin ended up in the emergency room and Dez in the lock-up. Alvin was out of the hospital in two days, but Dez was sentenced to thirty for resisting arrest when the cops finally showed up. The entire apartment complex heaved a collective sigh of relief and the Del-Ray became—for a time—a relatively quiet place.

I don't know where Alvin found Deke. I wouldn't rule out the underside of a large rock. Deke was considerably younger than Alvin and a few years older than myself. I guess he was twenty-five, although he didn't look particularly youthful. He was medium height, skinny, with shoulder-length greasy hair and a droopy mustache that did little to help his weak chin. He was ferrety-looking and had all the twitchy mannerisms of a crank addict. He had one pair of filthy ragged jeans and an infinite number of sleeveless T-shirts and gimme-caps that promoted either Jack Daniels, Lynrd Skynrd, Copenhagen, or Waylon Jennings.

Where Dez had been somewhat scary, Deke gave me the out-and-out creeps. At least I knew Dez only left his apartment in times of extreme duress, such as the kitchen catching fire and the vodka running out. Deke, however, seemed the type who could suddenly manifest in the middle of my bedroom some dark night, steak knife in hand.

One day I came home early to find Deke hanging out in front of the Del-Ray, apparently waiting for Alvin to get back from the liquor store. When he saw me he grinned in that way guys who they think they're a ladies' man do.

I grunted something noncommittally affirmative and tried to move past him, but he attached himself to me like toilet paper to a boot heel. He loomed over me as I stood by my front door, keys in my hand, exposing yellow, crooked teeth in a disturbingly feral grin.

"I been noticin' you, y'know. You live here alone, right? I thought you might wanna go out or something—?"

I maneuvered my keys so that they jutted from between my knuckles. Since there didn't seem an easy way out of the situation, I decided to take the bull by the scrotum, so to speak. "What about Alvin?" I asked. "Won't your boyfriend mind?"

Deke's face colored and he sputtered for a minute. "I like girls! I ain't no fuckin' queer!"

"That's not what I hear," I replied, determined not to open my door until Deke had cleared the vicinity.

It was then I realized what Alvin saw in Deke. No doubt he reminded him of Dez as a young man.

Deke jumped like he'd been bit. Alvin was headed towards us clutching a grocery sack and he didn't look at all happy to see Deke standing so close to me.

"Get in this house right this fuckin' minute and leave that girl alone!" he hissed.

Deke complied instantly, going in ahead of Alvin, who lingered on the threshold long enough to fix me with a venomous stare.

When Dez came home after his thirty days, I expected Deke would disappear. No such luck. While Deke didn't exactly live with them (I'm not sure if Deke actually lived anywhere), he sure as hell was over there a lot. And. to his credit. Dez didn't like Deke any better than I did. For one thing, Alvin obviously preferred the younger man to Dez, always deferring to what Deke wanted to watch on television or—more importantly—the kind of liquor Deke liked. This, apparently, was a big sore spot for Dez. Dez was a vodka man. Deke. on the other hand, favored rye. Once Dez came home from jail, every fight more-or-less began like this:

"DONT YOU START THAT AGAIN. DEZ! YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL THERE IS RYE IN THE FUCKIN' KITCHEN!"

"THEN DON'T DRINK IT! I DONT CARE! I DIDN'T FUCKIN' BUY IT FOR YOU, ANYWAY! I BOUGHT IT FOR DEKE!"

"I AIN'T DRINKIN' NO GOD-DAMN RYE! RYE IS FOR NO-GOOD FUCKIN' PUNK COCKSUCKERS!"

"I WANT MY VODKA, GOD-DAMN IT! VODKA'S WHAT REAL MEN WHO ARE NORMAL AND LIKE WOMEN DRINK-NOT FUCKIN' RYE! RYE IS A QUEER COCKSUCKER DRINK, YOU GOD-DAMN PIECE OF SHIT!"

It was the end of the semester and most of the Del-Ray's tenants had already bailed for the summer when the sad and sordid love triangle finally collapsed. I knew it was destined to come to a bad end, but I was rather surprised by it none the less.

I'd been out late, partying with some friends at one of the local dives. It was almost three in the morning by the time I got home, only to find a couple of squad cars and an ambulance outside the Del-Ray, their sirens silent but the bubble-lights still spinning. I sighed and rolled my eyes. No doubt another quarrel about the rye and the vodka.

The door to 1-D was standing wide open, light spilling out into the courtyard. In order to reach my place I had to walk past theirs, but the way was blocked by a beefy patrol officer with a walkie-talkie squawking to itself.

I was fumbling my keys out of my handbag when I heard the officer clear his throat. "Uh—excuse me, miss? I know its late, but Detective Harris wants to know if you could step inside for just a moment?"

What the hell. I shrugged and followed him into Dez and Alvin's apartment. It was the first and only time I'd ever set foot in it. It was exactly the same as my own one-bedroom, except that the floor plan had been flipped over. The only furniture in the living room was a sway-back red velveteen sofa, an overstuffed easy chair that sported tufts of horse-hair from its split seams, and a huge wooden Magnavox "entertainment center" that looked like a coffin with a picture-tube inside it.

Dez was sitting in the easy-chair, wearing a pair of baggy khaki pants and a dirty undershirt. He was staring at the snow rolling across the television screen, muttering darkly to himself. If he noticed that the room was full of uniformed police officers, his eyes didn't acknowledge it.

A weary looking man in a rumpled suit and a equally rumpled raincoat, a badge fixed to its lapel, came out of the kitchen. "Excuse me, miss. I'm Detective Harris. I'm sorry if we're keeping you from going to bed, but I need your help."

"Well, he had at least one. We were wondering if you could tell us his name—?" Detective Harris pointed to the bedroom. I pushed open the door and peered inside. There were a couple of paramedics packing up their gear and discussing the upcoming baseball season. There was only one bed in the room, and it was surprisingly narrow. Sprawled across it were two nude bodies. Deke's head looked like a dropped pumpkin, while Alvin had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck tighter than a Christmas ribbon.

"Do you happen to know the name of the younger man?" Detective Harris asked, pulling a much-used notepad out of his coat pocket.

I blinked and looked away from the murder scene, feeling oddly disjointed. "I—I don't know. All I ever heard him called was Deke."

Detective Harris nodded and scribbled the information down in his notepad. "Thank you, ma'am. You can go now."

"Looks that way. He used a steam-iron to bash in the younger man's head, then strangled his partner with the cord."

That part kind of surprised me. Not that Dez had done it. But who would have imagined Dez and Alvin owned an iron?

The beefy patrolman escorted me back out of the apartment. As we passed in front of the television, Dez suddenly stopped mumbling and lifted his hands to his face. I could see now that his wrists were cuffed together.

"Darling." I was surprised by the sound of his voice at normal volume. It was a little bit like Walter Cronkite's. Dez's blood-shot eyes wandered the walls for a second before settling on me. "He was calling him darling." Dez's meaty ex-marine's face looked like it was in danger of collapsing in on itself. His eyes grew unfocused and began wandering again. "Who's gonna fix my dinner now?"

I got to read all about the tragedy next door in the local paper. According to the confession he gave the police, Dez had passed out in front of the television after a couple pints of vodka, so Alvin and Deke decided to have sex in the bedroom. Dez woke up unexpectedly and staggered in, surprising them in the act. Apparently the sight of Alvin and Deke together threw Dez into a murderous rage. The rest I already knew. The newspaper didn't say if Dez claimed he "despised all queers", but I don't doubt it came up in the conversation. It did give Dez and Alvin's last names, which I've long forgotten, and mentioned that they'd been sharing the same apartment since 1958, a year before I was born. The mind boggles.

Alvin wasn't even in the ground (or cremated or whatever the hell the county does to people too poor and unpopular to be given a real funeral) before Dez's brother had workmen in to renovate the apartment. By the end of the month there was a elderly retired couple living in Dez and Alvin's old space. They were real sweet and clearly devoted to one another and were complete tea-totalers. They had a wiener dog named Fritzi that barked now and again, but outside of that they were polite, quiet neighbors.

When my lease was up I decided to move out. It just wasn't the same anymore. End of an era, you could say. It definitely gave me an unique yardstick for measuring my future neighbors, that's for certain.

But sometimes I can't help but think of Dez and Alvin. I'm pretty sure there must have been something like love between them, a long time ago. Maybe I think that because, all the swearing and screaming and threats aside. Dez and Alvin rarely came to actual blows. That, and the narrowness of the bed they had shared for over twenty years. Despite all the hate, self-loathing, and mutual resentment, in the end there was something between them, even if it was the companionship that exists between fellow alcoholic burn-outs.

I try to imagine what it must have been like when a virile, younger Dez walked into a bar that a self-respecting man, much less a Marine, was supposed to know about, much less enter, and saw the red-headed youth who was destined to be the love of his life. Back then they must have though they had everything ahead of them and all that mattered was their love. And, like all lovers, they believed themselves invulnerable, protected from the harsh realities of Life by the strength of their shared passion.

But society, with all its rules and expectations, always finds a way of eating through that protective bubble. And if you're not careful, it's real easy for love to curdle into resentment, happiness into misery. But at least that way they would have known something like happiness before they turned into two bitter, miserable excuses for human beings, snapping and snarling at one another like animals sharing a cage that's way too small. Or a bed that's way too narrow.

As to what kept them together all those years, that's anyone's guess. Maybe they were simply too used to their routine to try and start fresh—or maybe they were simply afraid of being on their own.

Love sucks. It makes fools and slaves of us all. But being alone and unloved is worse.

(Author's Note: The above story was inspired by the "Raymond & Peter" underground tapes (the "Best Of..." collection from Ectoplasm Records) and her own experiences with the late-great "Mr. Snoopy" of Memphis.)

The Red Raven is a real scum-pit. The only thing marking it as a bar is the vintage Old Crow ad in the front window and a stuttering neon sign that says lounge. The Johns are always backing up and the place perpetually stinks of piss.

During the week it's just another neighborhood dive, serving truck drivers and barflies. Not a Bukowski amongst them. But, since the drinks are cheap and the bartenders never check id, the Red Raven undergoes a sea change come Friday night. The bars clientele changes radically; growing younger and stranger, at least in physical appearance. The usual suspects that occupy the Red Raven's booths and bar stools are replaced by young men and women tricked out in black leather and so many facial piercings they resemble walking tackle boxes. Still not a Bukowski amongst them.

This Friday night is no different from any others. A knot of goth kids are already gathered outside on the curb as I arrive, plastic go-cups full of piss-warm Rolling Rock clutched in their hands as they talk amongst themselves. Amidst all the bad Cure haircuts, heavy mascara, dead-white face powder and black lipstick, I hardly warrant a second look.

Normally I don't bother with joints like this, but I've been hearing this persistent rumor that there's a blood cult operating out of the Red Raven. I make it my business to check out such rumors for myself. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing—but occasionally there's some far more sinister at he heart of urban legends.

The interior of The Red Raven is crowded with young men and women, all of whom look far stranger and more menacing than myself. What with my black motorcycle jacket, ratty jeans, and equally tattered New York Dolls T-shirt, I'm somewhat on the conservative end of the dress code.

I wave down the bartender, who doesn't seem to consider it odd I'm sporting sunglasses after dark, and order a beer. It doesn't bother me that the glass he hands me bears visible greasy fingerprints and a smear of lipstick on the rim. After all, it's not like I'm going to drink it.

Now that I have the necessary prop, I settle in and wait. Finding out the low down in places like this isn't that hard, really. All I've got to do is be patient and keep my ears open. Over the years I've developed a method for listening to dozens of conversations at once—sifting the meaningless ones aside without even being conscious of it most of the time, until I find the one I'm looking for. I suspect its not unlike how a sharks can pick out the frenzied splashing of a wounded fish from miles away.

I angle my head in the direction of the voice I've zeroed in on, trying not to look at them directly. There are three of them—one male and two female—apparently in earnest conversation with an young woman. The two females are archetypal goth chicks. They look to be in their late teens, early twenties, dressed in a mixture of black leather and lingerie and wearing way too much eye make-up. One is tall and willowy, the heavily-applied makeup doing little to mask the bloom of acne on her cheeks. Judging from the roots of her boot-black hair, she's probably a natural dishwater blonde.

Her companion is considerably shorter and a little too pudgy for the black satin bustier she's shoehorned into. Her face is painted clown white with an ornate tattoo at the corner of her left eye, which I've been told is more in imitation of a popular comic book character than as tribute to the Egyptian gods. She's wearing a man's riding derby draped in a length of black lace that makes her look taller than she really is.

The male member of the group is tall and skinny, outfitted in a pair of leather pants held up by a monstrously ornate silver belt buckle and a leather jacket. He isn't wearing a shirt, his bare breastbone hairless and a lad sunken. He's roughly the same age as the girls, perhaps younger, constantly nodding in agreement with whatever they say, nervously flipping his lank, burgundy-colored hair out of his face. It doesn't take me long to discern that the tall girl is called Sable, the short one in the hat Tanith, and that the boy is Serge. The girl they are talking to has close-cropped Raggedy Ann-red hair and a nose ring. She is Shawna.

Out of habit, I drop my vision into the Pretender spectrum and scan them for sign of inhuman taint. All four check out clean. Oddly, this piques my interest. I move a little closer to where they are standing huddled, so I can filter out the Marilyn Manson blaring out of the nearby jukebox.

Shawna shakes her head and smiles nervously, uncertain as to whether she's being goofed on or not.

"We told him about you, Shawna, didn't we, Serge?" Tanith looks to the gawky youth hovering at her elbow. Serge nods his head eagerly, which necessitates his flipping his hair out of his face yet again.

"His name is Rhymer. Lord Rhymer. He's three hundred years old," Sable adds breathlessly, "and he said he wanted to meet you!"

Despite her attempts at post-modern death-chic, Shawna looks like a flattered schoolgirl.

I can tell she's hooked as clean as a six-pound trout and that it won't take much more work on the trio's part to land their catch. The quartet of black-leather clad young rebels quickly leave the Red Raven, scurrying off as fast as their Doc Martens can take them. I give it a couple of beats then set out after them.

As I shadow them from a distance, I can't shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong. Although I seem to have found what I've come looking for—something's not quite right about it, but I'll be damned (I know—I'm being redundant) if I can say what.

In my experience, vampires avoid Goths like daylight. While their adolescent fascination with death and decadence might, at first, seem to make them natural choices as servitors, their extravagant fashion sense calls far too much attention to them. Vampires prefer their servants far more nondescript and discrete. But perhaps this Lord Rhymer, whoever he may be, is of a more modern temperament than those I've encountered in the past.

I don't know what to make of this trio who seem to be acting as his Judas goats. Judging by their evident enthusiasm, perhaps "converts" is a far more accurate description than servitors. They don't seem to have the predator's gleam in their eyes, nor is there anything resembling a killer's caution in their walk or mannerisms. As they stroll down the darkened streets their chatter is more like that of mischievous children out on a lark—say t.p.ing the superintendent's front lawn or soaping the gym teacher's windows. They certainly aren't aware of the extra shadow that attached itself to them the moment they left the Red Raven with their fresh pick-up.

After a ten minute walk they arrive at their destination—an abandoned church. Of course. It's hardly Carfax Abbey, but I suppose it will do. The church is a two-story wooden structure boasting an old-fashioned spire, stabbing a symbolic finger in the direction of heaven.

The feeling of ill-ease rises in me again. Vampires dislike such obvious lairs. Hell, these aren't the Middle Ages. They don't have to hang out in ruined monasteries and family mausoleums anymore—not that there are any to be found in the U.S., anyhow. No, contemporary bloodsuckers prefer to dwell within warehouse lofts or abandoned industrial complexes, even condos. I tracked one dead boy to ground in an inner-city hospital that had been shut down during the Reagan administration and left to rot. I suspect I'll have to start investigating the various military bases scheduled for shut-down for signs of infestation within a year or two.

As I watch the little group troop inside the church, there is only one thing I know for certain—if I want to know what's going down here, I better get inside. I circle around the building, keeping to the darkest shadows, my senses alert for signs of the usual sentinels that guard a vampire's lair, such as ogres and renfields.

I reach out with my mind as I climb up the side of the church, trying to pick up the garbled snarl of ogre-thought or the tell-tale dead-space of shielded minds that accompany renfields, but all my sonar picks up is the excited heat of the foursome I trailed from the Red Raven and a slightly more complex signal from deeper inside the church. Curiouser and curiouser.

The spire doesn't house a bell—just a rusting Korean War-era public address system dangling from frayed wires. As it is, there is barely enough room for a man to stand, much ring a bell, but at least the trapdoor isn't locked. It opens with a tight squeal of disused hinges, but nothing stirs in the shadows at the foot of the ladder below. Within seconds I find myself with the best seat in the house, crouched in the rafters spanning the nave.

What pews that remain are in disarray, the hymnals tumbled from their racks and spilled across the floor. Saints, apostles and prophets stare down from the windows, gesturing with upraised shepherd's crooks or hands bent into the sign of benediction. I lift my own mirrored gaze to the mullion window located above and behind the pulpit. It depicts a snowy lamb kneeling on a field of green and framed against a cloudless sky, in which a shining disc is suspended. The large brass cross just below the sheep-window has been inverted, in keeping with the desecration motif.

The only light is provided by a pair of heavy cathedral-style candelabra bristling with over a hundred dripping red and black candles. The goth kids from the Red Raven gather at the chancel rail, their faces turned towards the pulpit situated above and just behind the black-velvet draped altar.

"Where is he?" whispered Shawna, her voice surprisingly loud in the empty church.

As if on cue, a gout of purplish smoke, accompanied by the smell of ozone, arises from behind the pulpit. Shawna gives a little squeal of surprise and takes an involuntary step backward, only to find her way blocked by the others.

A deep, highly cultured masculine voice booms forth. "Good evening, my children. I bid you welcome to my abode, and that you enter gladly and of your own free will."

The smoke clears revealing a tall man dressed in tight-fitting black satin pants, a black silk poet's shirt, black leather English riding boots, and a long black opera cape with a red silk lining. His hair is long and dark, pulled back into a loose ponytail by a red satin ribbon. His skin is as white as milk in a saucer, his eyes reflecting red in the dim candlelight. Lord Rhymer has finally elected to make his appearance.

Serge smiles nervously at his demon-lord and steps forward, gesturing to Shawna as Tanith and Sable watch expectantly. "W-we did as you asked, master. We brought you the girl."

Shawna stands there gaping up al the vampire lord as if he was Jim Morrison, Robert Smith and Danzig rolled into one. She starts, gasping more in surprise than fright, when Rhymer addresses her directly.

"Y-yes." Her voice is so tiny it makes her sound like a little girl. But there is nothing child-like in the lust dancing in her eyes.

Lord Rhymer holds out a pale hand to the trembling young woman. His fingernails are long and pointed and lacquered black.. He smiles reassuringly, his voice calm and strong, designed to sway those of weaker nature.

A touch of apprehension cross the girl's face. She hesitates, glancing at the others, who close in about her even tighter than before.

Rhymer narrows his blood-red eyes, intensifying his stare. His voice grows sterner, revealing its cold edge. "Come to me, Shawna."

All the tension in her seems to drain away and Shawna's eyes grow even more vacant than before, if possible. She moves forward, slowly mounting the stairs to the pulpit. Rhymer holds his arms out to greet her.

"That's it, my dear. Come to me . . . Come to me as you have dreamed of, so many, many times before ..." Rhymer steps forward to meet her, the cape outstretched between his arms like the wings of a giant bat. His smile widens and his mouth opens, exposing pearly white fangs dripping saliva. His voice has been made husky by his lust. "Come to me, my bride. Shawna grimaces in pain/pleasure as Rhymer's fangs penetrate her throat. Even from my shadowy perch above it all I can smell the sharp tang of blood. I feel a dark stirring at the base of my brain, which I quickly push aside. I don't need that kind of trouble—not now. Still, I find it hard to look away from the tableau below me.

Rhymer holds Shawna tight against him. She whimpers as if on the verge of orgasm. The blood rolling down her throat and dripping into the pale swell of her cleavage is as sticky and dark as spilled molasses.

Rhymer draws back, smiling smugly as he wipes the blood off his chin. "It is done. You are now bound to me by blood and the strength of my immortal will."

Shawna's lids flutter and she seems to have a little trouble focusing her eyes. She touches her bloodied neck and stares at her red-stained finger for a long moment.

"Wow ... "is all she can say. She steps back, a dazed, post-orgasmic look on her face. She staggers slightly as she moves to rejoin the others, one hand still clamped over her bruised and bleeding throat. Tanith and Sable eagerly step forward to help their new sister, their hands quickly disappearing up her skirt as they steady her, cooing encouragement in soothing voices.

"Welcome to the family, Shawna," Sable whispers, kissing first her cheek, then tonguing her earlobe.

"You're one of us, now and forever," Tanith purrs, giving Shawna a probing kiss while scooping her breasts free of her blouse. Sable presses even closer, licking at the blood smearing Shawna's neck. Serge stands off to one side, nervously chewing a thumbnail and occasionally brushing his forelock out of his face. Every few seconds his eyes flicker from the girls to Lord Rhymer, who stands in the pulpit, smiling and nodding his approval. After a few more moments of groping and gasping, the three women begin undressing one another in earnest, their moans soon mixed with nervous giggles. Black leather and lace drop away, revealing black fish-net stockings and garter belts and crotchless underwear. At the sight of Shawna's pubic thatch—mousy brown, as opposed to her fluorescent red locks—Serge's eyes widen and his nostrils flare. He looks to Rhymer, who nods and gestures languidly with one taloned hand that the boy join the orgy.

Serge's fumbles with his ornate silver belt buckle, which hits the wooden floor with solid clunk! I lift an eyebrow in surprise. While Serge is thin to the point of emaciation, I must admit the boy's hung like a stallion. Sable mutters something into Serge's ear that makes him laugh just before he plants his lips against her blood-smeared mouth. Tanith, her eyes heavy-lidded and her lips pulled into a lascivious grin, reaches around from behind to stroke him to full erection.

Serge breaks free of Sable's embrace and turns to lift Shawna in his arms, carrying her to the black-draped altar, the other girls quickly joining in. There is much biting and raking of flesh with fingernails. Soon they are a mass of writhing naked flesh, giggling, moaning and grunting, the slap of flesh against flesh filling the silent church. And overseeing it all from his place of power is Lord Rhymer, his crimson eyes twinkling in the candlelight as he watches his followers cavorting below. To his credit, Serge proves himself tireless, energetically rutting with all three girls in various combinations for hours on end. It is not until the stained glass windows of the church began to lighten with the coming dawn that it finally comes to an end. The moment Rhymer notices the light coming through one of the windows, the smile disappears from his face.

"ENOUGH!" he thunders, causing the others to halt in mid-fuck. "The sun will soon be upon me! It is time for you to leave, my children!"

The goths pull themselves off and out of each other without a word of complaint and begin to struggle back into their clothes. Once they're dressed they waste no time hurrying off, taking pains to not look one another in the eye.

It is all I could do to suppress a groan of relief as the last of the blood cultists lurches out of the building. I thought those losers were never going to leave!

I check my own watch against the shadows sliding across the floor below me. Now would be a good time to pay a social call on their so-called "master". I hope he's in the mood for a little chat before beddy-bye.

Lord Rhymer yawns as he makes his way down the basement stairs. What with the candelabra he's holding and the flowing opera cloak, I'm reminded of Lugosi's Dracula. But then, Bela Lugosi is dead.

The basement runs the length of the building above it and has a poured concrete floor. Stacks of old hymnals, folding chairs and moldering choir robes have been pushed into the corners. A rosewood casket with a maroon velvet lining rests atop a pair of sawhorses in the middle of the room. An old-fashioned steamer trunk stands on end nearby.

I watch the vampire lord set the candelabra down and, still yawning, unhook his cape and carefully drape it atop the trunk. If he senses my presence, here in the shadows, he gives no evidence of it in his manner. Smiling crookedly, I deliberately scrape my boot heel against the concrete floor. My smile becomes a grin as he spins around, eyes bugging in fear.

He blinks, genuinely surprised to see me standing to one side of the open casket balanced atop the sawhorse. I'd already caught the tell-tale smell when I first entered the basement, but a quick glance into the casket confirms what I already knew: it's lined with earth. I reach inside and lift handful of dirt, allowing it to spill between my splayed fingers. I look up and meet Rhymer's scarlet gaze.

Rhymer squares his shoulders and pulls himself up to his full height, hissing and exposing his fangs, hooking his fingers into talons. His red eyes glint in the dim light like those of a cornered animal.

"Can the Christopher be act, asshole! I'm not some goth chick tripping her brains out! You're not fooling me for one moment!"

I kick the saw horses out from under the casket, sending it tumbling to the floor, spilling its layer of soil. Rhymer gasps, his eyes flailing from the mined coffin to me and back and again. "Only humans think vampires need to sleep on a layer of their home soil!"

Rhymer tries to regain the momentum by pointing a trembling finger at me, doing his best to sound menacing. "You have defiled the resting place of Rhymer, Lord of the Undead! And for that, woman, you will pay with your life!"

I move so fast it's like blinking. One moment I'm half-way across the room, the next I'm standing over him, his blood dripping from my knuckles. Rhymer's lying on the basement floor, dazed and wiping at his gushing month and nose. A set of dentures, complete with fangs, lies on the floor beside him. I nudge the upper plate with the toe of my boot, shaking my head in disgust.

"Just what I thought: fake fangs! And the eyes are contact lenses, right? I bet the nails are theatrical quality press-ons, too ..."

Rhymer tries to scuttle away from me like a crab, bill he's much too slow. I grab him by the ruff of his poet's shirt, pulling him to his feet with one quick motion that causes him to yelp in alarm.

"What the fuck are you playing at here? Are you running some kind of scam on those goth kids?"

Rhymer opens his mouth and although his lips are moving there's no sound coming out. At first I think he's so scared he's not able to speak—then I realize he's a serious stutterer when he's not a vampire.

"I'm n-not a con m-man, if that's what y-you're thinking. I'm n-not doing it for m-money!"

"If it's not for money, then why?" Not that I didn't know his motivation from the moment I laid eyes on him. But I want to hear it from his own lips before I make my decision.

"All m-my life I've been an outsider. N-no one ever p-paid any attention to m-me. N-not even m-my own p-parents. N-no one ever took me seriously. I was a j-joke and everyone k-knew it. The only p-place where I could escape from being m-me was at the m-movies. I really admired the v-vampires in the m-mov-ies. They were d-different, too. But n-no one m-made fun of them or ignored them. They were p-powerful and p-people were afraid of them. They c-could m-make w-women do whatever they w-wanted.

"W-when my p-parents died a c-couple of years ago, they left m-me a lot of m-money. So m-much I'd n-never have to work again. An hour after their funeral I w-went to a dentist and had all m-my upper teeth removed and the dentures m-made.

"I always w-wanted to be a v-vampire—and now I had the c-chance to live m-my d-dreams. So I b-bought this old church and s-started hanging out at the Red Raven, looking for the right type of g-girls.

"T-Tanith was the first. Then came S-sable. The rest w-was easy. They w-wanted m-me to b-be real so b-badly, I didn't even have to p-pretend that m-much! B-but then things started to g-get out of hand. They w-wanted m-me t-to—you know—p-put my thing in them. B-but m-my thing c-can't get hard. N-not with other p-people. I told them it w-was because I w-was undead. So we f-found S-serge. I-I like to w-watch."

Rhymer fixed one of his rapidly blackening eyes on me. His fear was beginning to give way to curiosity. "B-but w-what difference is any of this to y-you? Are y-you a family m-member? One of S-serge's ex g-girlfriends?"

I can't help but laugh as I let go of him. He staggers backward and quickly, if inelegantly, puts distance between us. He flinches at the sound of my laughter as if it was a physical blow.

"I knew there was something fishy going on when I spotted the belt buckle on the goth stud. No dead boy in his right mind would let that chunk of silver within a half-mile of his person. And all that hocus-pocus with the smoke and the Black Sabbath folderol! All of it a rank amateur's impression of what vampires and vampirism is all about, cobbled together from Hammer films and Anton Levy paperbacks! You really are a pathetic little twisted piece of crap, Rhymer—or whatever the hell your real name is! You surround yourself with the icons of darkness and play at damnation—but you don't recognize the real thing even when it steps forward and bloodies your fuckin' nose!"

Rhymer stands there for a long moment, then his eyes suddenly widen and he gasps aloud, like a man who has walked into a room and seen someone he has believed long dead. Overcome, he drops to his feet before me, his blood-stained lips quivering uncontrollably.

Instead of inspiring fear in Rhymer, all this does is cause him to cry out even louder than before. He is now actually groveling, pawing at my boots as he blubbers.

"At last! I k-knew if I w-waited long enough, one of y-you w-would finally come!"

"I said get up, you little toad eater!" I kick him away, but it does no good. Rhymer crawls back on his belly, as fast as a lizard on a hot rock. I was afraid something like this would happen.

"I'll do anything you w-want—give you anything you n-need!" He grabs the cuffs of my jeans, tugging insistently. "B-bite me! Drink my b-blood! Pleeease! M-make me like you!"

As I look down at this wretched human, who has lived a life so stunted, his one driving passion is to become a walking dead man, I feel my memory slide back across the years, to the night a foolish young girl, made giddy by the excitement that comes with the pursuit of forbidden pleasures and made stupid by the romance of danger, allowed herself to be lured away from the safety of the herd. I remember how she found herself alone with the blood-eyed monster that hid behind the face of a handsome, smooth-talking stranger. I remember how her nude, blood-smeared body was hurled from the speeding car and tossed in the gutter and left for dead. I remember how she was far from dead. I remember how she was me.

I'm trembling as if I've got a high fever. My disgust has become anger, and I've never been very good at controlling my anger. And part of me—a dark, dangerous part—has no desire to ever learn.

I try hard to keep a grip on myself, but it's not easy. In the past when I've been overwhelmed by my anger, I've tried to make sure I only vent it at those I consider worthy of such murderous rage, such as vampires. Real ones, that is. Like myself. But sometimes . . . well, sometimes I lose it. Like now.

I kick the groveling little turd so hard his ribs splinter as he flies across the basement floor and collides with the wall. He cries out, but it doesn't exactly sound like pain.

I tear the mirrored sunglasses away, and Rhymer's eyes widen as he sees my own. They look nothing like his scarlet-tinted contact lenses. There is no white, no corona—merely seas of solid blood boasting vertical slits that open and close, depending on the strength of the light. The church basement is very gloomy, so my pupils are dilated wide—like those of a shark rising from the sunless depths to savage a luckless swimmer.

Rhymer lifts a hand to block out the sight of me as I advance on him, his trembling delight now replaced by genuine, one-hundred percent monkey-brain fear. For the first time he seems to realize that he is in the presence of a monster.

For a brief second Rhymer's hands still flutter in their futile attempt to beg my favor, then there is a spurt of scarlet from the neck stump, not unlike that from a spitting fountain, as his still-beating heart sends a stream of blood to where the brain would normally be. I quickly side-step the gruesome spray without letting go of my trophy.

Turning away from Rhymer's still-twitching corpse, I step over the ruins of the antique coffin and its payload. No doubt the dirt had been imported from the Balkans—perhaps Moldavia, or even Transylvania. I shake me head in amazement that such old wives tales are still in circulation and given validity by so many.

As I head up the stairs, Rhymer's head tucked under my arm, I pause one last lime to survey what is left of the would-be vampire king of the goth chicks. Man, what a mess. Glad I'm not the one who has to clean it up.

This isn't the first vampire-wanna-be I've run in to, but I've got to admit he had the best scam. The goth chicks wanted the real thing and he gave them what they thought they wanted, even down to retrofitting the church with theatrical trapdoors and magician's flash pots. They bought into the bullshit because it made them feel special, it made them feel real, and—most importantly—it made them feel alive. Poor stupid bastards. To them its all black leather, love bites and tacky chrome jewelry; where everyone is eternally young and beautiful and no one can ever hurt you ever again.

As for Rhymer, he wanted the real thing as badly as the goths. Perhaps even more so. He spent his entire life aspiring to monstrosity; hoping that, given time, his heart-felt mimicry of the damned would either turn him into that which he longed to be thorough sympathetic magic, or that his actions would eventually draw the attention of the creatures of the night he worshipped so ardently. As, indeed, it had. I was the real thing all right; big as life and twice as ugly.

But I was hardly the bloodsucking seductress Rhymer had been dreaming of all those years. There was no way he could know that his little trick would lure forth not just a vampire—but a vampire-slayer as well.

You see, my unique and unwanted predicament has denied me many things—the ability to age, to love, to feel life quicken within me. And in retaliation against this unwished-for transformation, I've spent decades denying the monster inside me; trying—however futilely—to turn my back on the horror that dwells in the dark side of my soul. However, there is one pleasure, and one alone, I allow myself to indulge in. And that is killing vampires . . .

Dawn is well underway by the time I re-enter the nave. The white-washed walls are dappled with light dyed blue, green and red by the stained glass. I take a couple of steps backward, then drop-kick Rhymer's head right through the Lamb-of-God window.

The birds are chirping happily away in the trees, greeting the coming day with their morning songs, as I push open the wide double doors of the church. A stray dog with matted fur and slats for ribs is already sniffing Rhymer's ruined noggin where it landed in the high weeds. The cur lifts its muzzle and automatically growls, but as I draw closer it flattens its ears and tucks its tail between its legs and quickly scurries off. Dogs are smart. They know what is and isn't of the natural world—even if humans don't.

Last night was a bust, as far as I'm concerned. When I go out hunting, I prefer bringing down actual game, not faux predators. Still, I wish I could hang around and see the look on the faces of Rhymer's groupies when they find out what's happened to their "master". That'd be good for a chuckle or two.

Pruitt knew the cottage was the one for him the moment he laid eyes on the slightly blurry Polaroid in the realtor's office. It was tacked onto a cork bulletin board, nestled amongst expensive country estates and seedy farm houses.

"How about this one?" he said, plucking the picture free and holding it out to the realtor, who took it from him with a mildly surprised grunt.

"This one? I'll have to admit I don't know that much about the place," she replied, tapping the edge of the Polaroid against a brightly lacquered nail. "I suppose you could say we "inherited' the house. It was one of old Garret Stroud's properties, rest his soul. He'd been handling it since the Fifties, I guess. When he passed on last season, his widow called up the office and said it was too much for her to deal with alone. Since she and Garret never had kids, there wasn't anyone to take over the business, so we bought her out." She glanced back down at the cozy cottage with its white picket fence, climbing roses, and canary yellow shutters and trim. "But to tell you the truth, Mr. Pruitt, I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in this one—I mean, wouldn't you rather see one of the townhouses? They're much closer to the shore and the night life ..."

"I appreciate your concerns, Mrs. Hardy," Pruitt said, smiling wanly. "But I've had enough night life in Manhattan to see me through the summer."

The cottage was as quaint and cozy as its picture. It was set back from the blacktop county road, the front-yard surrounded by a white-washed picket fence. Except for a slate gray Cape Cod a few hundred yards away, there were no other houses to be seen. Mrs. Hardy took out her key-ring, frowning at the color-coded tags.

"I know I have the key on me somewhere. However, it's only fair that I warn you, Mr. Pruitt; no one's been here to air the house out yet, so it might smell musty ..."

With a small cry of triumph, Mrs. Hardy located the proper key and fit it into the front lock. The hinges squeaked a bit as she pushed open the door, the wood slightly warped by the humidity. Pruitt stepped forward, sniffing the air like a cautious hound, but instead of smelling the faint odor of mildew, he detected a far more unusual—and pleasant—scent.

Pruitt blinked, somewhat nonplused to discover that he had spoken aloud. "It smells like pancakes."

Mrs. Hardy frowned, sniffed, then shot a skeptical look in his direction. "I don't smell anything."

Pruitt sniffed again. The pancake smell was gone now. "Must have caught a whiff from the people next door having breakfast," he muttered.

Mrs. Hardy looked like she wanted to tell him that, unlike Manhattan, people in her neck of the woods didn't have breakfast at two in the afternoon, but said nothing. From there on in, everything went without incident as she showed him the house.

The cottage was fully furnished, although much of it looked a bit worn. Whoever had originally owned the cottage hail bought their furniture in the early Fifties. Not the Fifties moderne space-age deco stuff on display in trendy Soho stores. No, this was solid, middle-class American furniture—well made and reasonable, if not particularly remarkable. It reminded Pruitt of his great-aunt's house in Tea Neck.

There was a tidy front parlor, complete with doilies, a small dining room, a bathroom with an old-fashioned ceramic tub with curled feet, a bedroom that faced the back garden and boasted a four-poster shaker bed, and a good-sized kitchen with an old-style range and refrigerator that sparked fond memories of childhood.

"Wow! I haven't seen one of these in ages! We used to have one of these when I was a kid!" he grinned, slapping the sleekly rounded top of the Kelvinator.

Mrs. Hardy glanced down at an index card she'd pulled from her day planner. "According to what information was given to us by Mrs. Stroud, these are the original furnishings and appliances that belonged to the original owner, a Mrs. Hettie Greenfield, who died in 1956."

"This place is great!" Pruitt grinned. "It's like walking back in time! The minute I cross the threshold, I'll be able to forget about everything at the office!" As he tested the knob on the back door, his eye was caught by a second, narrower doorway next to the pantry. "Does this place have a fruit cellar?"

"It doesn't say anything about one on the card. But then, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out there was one. A lot of the older houses around here have them."

Pruitt opened the door and was surprised to find that the stairs lead up and not down. Attic storage, no doubt. The stairs were narrow and strangely spaced, as if designed for someone crippled with severe arthritis, and he had to bend nearly double to make his way up them.

Whatever had been originally stored up there certainly couldn't have been worth the effort of hauling it up and down the steps. There was no door at the top of the stairwell, just a hole cut in the attic floor. Poking his head into the attic, he was surprised to see a narrow bed, a chest of drawers, and what looked like an old-fashioned washbasin and commode tucked under the sharply slanting roof. A bare light bulb dangled from the canted ceiling.

"That's odd," he sniffed, as he clumped back down the stairs. "Stroud must have converted the attic into a second bedroom. But I'd be damned if anyone bigger than a twelve-year-old kid could get up and down those stairs on a daily basis—or stand to be in that room for more than ten minutes. Talk about cramped! Still, I guess it could prove handy should one of my friends decide to visit for the weekend for a taste of the country!"

Pruitt's first night in his summer cottage passed without incident. He found himself growing tired by eight o'clock, exhausted by the long drive from the city and unpacking his books, cookware, and clothes. After the sun went down he stood on the back porch for a long moment, sipping a bottle of Snapple as he listened to the cicadas drone in the trees. There was something comforting—almost hypnotic—in the way they seemed to sing. After spending so much time surrounded by the man-made cacophony of New York City, he had come to appreciate the sounds of Nature.

He was in bed by eleven o'clock, which was actually quite early for him. Plagued by insomnia since college, Pruitt usually didn't go to bed until two or three, and even then he'd only sleep four or five hours at most. That was one of the reasons he'd always had trouble maintaining relationships. Women don't like to wake up to find their lover had vacated the bed for the comfort of a book or late-night television. For some reason they always fell as if he was slighting them; as if his inability to fall asleep meant he was unable to be comfortable or fully trust them. Even after Pruitt explained his predicament, they all still seemed to nurse hurt feelings, as if suspecting he was lying.

Maybe it was the country air, or perhaps it was just simple exhaustion after a grueling week at work, but he slept soundly until six the next morning, when he was stirred awake by the pleasant aroma of bacon sizzling in the pan and coffee brewing on the stove. He smiled sleepily as he opened his eyes to the daylight spilling into the bedroom, dappling the wallpaper with the leafy patterns of the tree outside his window.

Pruilt stretched lazily under the clean, cool sheets, thinking to himself: there's nothing like the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen to make you look forward to waking up in the morning. Then came a short shock of realization. Wait a minute. I live alone.

Pruitt hurled aside the bedclothes and hurried into the hall clad in nothing but his briefs. Even as he stomped through the house, his only weapon the tennis racket he'd picked up from one of the boxes he'd left in the living room the night before, he wondered exactly what the hell he thought he was doing. In the twenty-six years he had been living within the seething belly of New York City, he had never once experienced a break-in. No doubt there was irony to be found in his driving three hours from the city's homeless, junkies, and professional criminals, only to wake up and find someone making themselves at home in his summer house.

"What's doing on? Who's the hell in here?" he bellowed, trying to sound more indignant than frightened. "What are you doing in my house, asshole—?"

As he pushed back the swinging door that lead from the dining room to the kitchen, it occurred to Pruitt that whoever was preparing his breakfast might not be a burglar but one of the locals, participating in some arcane form of simple neighborliness that twentieth century life had rendered obsolete in the major metropolitan areas. No doubt the story of how the big city slicker cursed out the preacher's wife while waving around a tennis racket and dressed in his BVDs would go over big around the cracker barrel.

Pruitt was half-way to apologizing when he set foot in the kitchen—only to find the room completely empty. There was no skillet of sizzling bacon sitting on the range top, nor was there a coffeepot to be seen. Yet there was still a hint of aroma of fresh-brewed Java hanging on the air, like the perfume left by a mysterious woman disappearing into the night.

Pruitt's second weekend away came after a particularly dismal week. Work at the office was both tedious and unrewarding, and he'd found himself agreeing to have dinner with an old girlfriend who was, for some reason, trying to rekindle their affair. She insisted on cooking for him, knowing that he placed a great deal of importance on such things. He had always equated the willingness and ability to prepare meals for others as a testament of love. Four star restaurants were all very nice, but nothing spoke the depth of a heart like home cooking.

It wasn't until he sat down to eat in her modest East Village apartment that he remembered the reason their relationship had come to an end. Despite a winsome personality, a dynamite figure, and a sex drive that couldn't wait, the poor woman simply couldn't cook to save her life. And, to make matters even worse, her idea of what constituted a home-cooked meal leaned more towards the weight-conscious, calorie-counting recipes found in the back of glamour magazines.

The appetizer consisted of humus and baby carrots. The entree was undercooked spinach ravioli, sans sauce. For dessert she presented him with a Sara Lee cheese cake that, considering the wretchedness of the meal that proceeded it, tasted like the Holy Grail of baked goods. The dinner did little to rekindle Pruitt's passion, and he left halfway through his second cup of instant coffee.

While riding the subway home, Pruitt reflected on how something he'd once taken for granted—his mother's cooking—had now taken on a mythic quality in his mind. Had his mother been so gifted in the culinary arts that no woman could ever hope to match her? Or were his memories and expectations conspiring against him? Or was it simply asking too much to find a woman who was both a demon in the bedroom and an angel in the kitchen?

These thoughts were still buzzing around in the back of Pruitt's head during his drive upstate, but they were hardly preoccupying his waking hours. The first night went by uneventfully enough, and he spent the next day puttering around the house, working on the novel he'd been lugging around with him for the last six years. He'd been working on Chapter five for sixteen months now. He liked to think he was a writer marking time by working in an office until his Day of Greatness came, as opposed to being a paper-pusher whose hobby was tinkering with a book he was never going to finish. It sounded better. Just like "single" sounded better than "confirmed bachelor".

However, by the time supper rolled around, Pruitt found himself no closer to the end of Chapter Five and in no mood to stick a TV dinner into the antique oven which, despite its quaintness, he was somewhat intimidated by. So he decided to hop in the car and check out the local eateries and see what they might provide.

What they provided was a companion for the night, in the form of a pretty bartender, a sociology major going for her Masters who was making ends meet by pulling brew for the locals and what she referred to as "the summer people". After a greasy hubcap-sized yuppie-burger garnished with grilled onions and sauteed mushrooms and a few beers, Pruitt found himself driving back to the cottage with Elaine's slightly dented Camarro following him, the headlights glaring in the rear-view mirror.

They fucked in the four-poster, which squeaked and groaned as if they were performing the sexual decathlon. Pruitt had enjoyed himself—and he felt reasonably certain the young lady had, too—but the racket the bed made certainly made things sound a great deal more impressive.

He fell asleep with the sociology major's hair pressed against his cheek and did not wake up until he heard the front door slam, followed by the sound of the Camaro hastily heading down the gravel drive.

Pruitt sat up and looked blearily around the room, trying to get up to speed. He'd brought someone home with him last night. Someone who hadn't bothered to stay to find out how thick their beer goggles had been. Even though he was a grown man—some would even say a little on the mature side, nowadays—and knew the score when it came to one-night stands, he couldn't help feeling a little rejected. He yawned and got out of bed, stretching to greet the day. She hadn't even bothered to say goodbye. Or had she? He could definitely smell coffee brewing.

Pulling on last night's discarded jeans, he shuffled into the kitchen, knuckling the sleep from his eyes. There arranged on the kitchen table was a plate boasting a short stack and a side of bacon. An old-fashioned coffee pot—one of those metal monstrosities that looked like it belonged in a logging camp, sat atop the stove.

Pruitt was both surprised and genuinely touched. He had experienced with one night stands before, but usually in diners. Once or twice he'd had room service deliver breakfast in bed. He'd certainly never had one go to such trouble and then leave without waking him up. Still, it was a nice gesture, if somewhat puzzling.

He poured himself a cup of the coffee from the stove and sat down to the pancakes left for him. He was surprised he hadn't been awakened by the sound of her working in the kitchen. He was usually a light sleeper, although last night's exertion and the beers he'd knocked back at the pub probably had something to do with him sleeping through it all. He paused for a second to admire the pancakes. They were a delicate golden brown, not the color of buckskin, which was how the pancakes at the diner on the corner always came out. They were so tender he could cut them with his fork, and so moist they didn't need butter. Indeed, they all but melted in his mouth. Pruitt was impressed. He hadn't had pancakes this good since he left home for college, twenty-five years ago. The bacon was equally perfect—crisp and crunchy without being burned. Just the way he liked it. And the coffee tasted as good as it smelled, to invoke the ghost of Mrs. Olsen.

It wasn't until he was putting his plates in the sink that he realized that there weren't any dirty mixing bowls or skillets to be seen. In fact, some to think of it, he wasn't even aware he'd owned a coffee pot.

Later that afternoon he called the restaurant he'd gone to the night before and asked for the woman who worked the bar, suddenly realizing he couldn't remember her name.

There was a long pause and then a vaguely familiar female voice came on the line and said hello.

"Oh. Yeah. Hi. What do you want?" she sounded fairly distant for someone who'd gone to the trouble of fixing a total stranger breakfast.

"You know—the pancakes and bacon. That was really nice of you. I was wondering if you might be interested in going out later on—"

"Wait a minute, buddy—I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't fix breakfast for you—your mom did."

"Yeah, when I went into the kitchen to see if you had anything to drink before I split, and there she was—standing with her back to me at that weird old stove. Why didn't you tell me your mom was living with you? And with all the noise that damn bed made all night long—I could have lied down and died of embarrassment! I left before she could see me."

"Look, uh, Elaine, I don't have the slightest idea who or what you're talking about! My mother is living in a retirement community in Florida! I swear!"

"So you're saying I'm either crazy or lying is that it? Well, look George, or whatever your name is—I don't do mamma's boys. Especially ones as old as you! And if you come round here again bugging me, I'll tell my boyfriend! Is that understood?"

The phone buzzed in his ear for a long moment before he got around to hanging it up. If his one-nighter hadn't fixed his breakfast—then who had? And who the hell was the mysterious old lady seen in his kitchen?

Pruitt sat up with a start, his head swiveling about as if it had come unscrewed from his neck. It took him almost a few minutes to realize where he was. He was slumped in the over-stuffed easy chair in the front parlor. He'd been watching the ball game—or at least trying to. The cottage's battered old black and white set was far from cable-ready and the rabbit ears could only pull in one or two stations, and the reception seemed affected by everything from sunspots to shifts in the wind. The length of the shadows in the room told him he must have dozed for a hour or two, as it was close to dark outside. The television was still on, but the picture on the tube looked a snowstorm as viewed through a layer of gauze.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and here it was fast approaching dinner. He debated whether to go out for a bite, but quickly decided to stay home. The only place he knew of was the restaurant from the night before, and he wasn't eager to go back there. Last night's stand might misread his motives and sic her boyfriend on him, and trouble with the locals was the last thing he needed.

Pruitt pushed himself out of the easy chair and shuffled out of the parlor. No, tonight he'd stay home with a Swanson's TV dinner. Fewer problems that way. The strange incident involving the pancakes has slipped his mind almost entirely. Instead, he was pondering whether to have the turkey-and-dressing with rubber english peas or the roast beef-and-gravy with congealed instant potatoes as he pushed open the kitchen door, not the identity of his mysterious phantom cook. Which is probably how he surprised her in the act.

The first thing Pruitt noticed as he stepped into the room was the smell of cooking—the rich, redolent odor of roasting meat and simmering vegetables. The second thing he noticed was the figure of an older woman hunched over the antique stove, dressed in a drab, calf-length dress and a nondescript sweater. Although Pruitt knew he should be alarmed—if not actively frightened—to find a stranger in his kitchen, his mouth began to water.

The mystery cook did not seem to have noticed his arrival and continued doing whatever it was that was focusing so much of her attention. Pruitt took another step further into the kitchen, holding the swinging door open behind him with one hand. He gave a slight cough into a his fist, but still she did not seem to notice him. Maybe she was hard of hearing. Judging from her iron-gray hair, she was probably close his mother's age.

The older woman spun around to face him as if he'd goosed her with a red-hot poker.

From her body language it was clear that she was frightened, but it was Pruitt who screamed and fainted.

He came to seconds later, sprawled across the linoleum. He scrambled to his feet, trying to look everywhere at once. The old woman was nowhere to be seen. The memory of what he'd seen made his head start to swim again, but he didn't faint this tine. That face! God, her face! It looked like a paper-mâché Halloween mask sculpted by a disturbed child, except that it was fashioned of real flesh, not old newspapers and glue. Grabbing a knife from the drain board, Pruitt undertook a thorough search of the premises, peeping behind doors and even going to far as to poke the shower curtain. He searched the entire house—even the weird little room in the attic—but could turn up no sign of the old woman, or even that she'd been there in the first place.

As he prowled the front parlor for the third time, a explanation for the hideous old crone in the kitchen suddenly occurred to him. The old thing was doubtlessly one of the locals—maybe she'd been working as a cook for the people who'd rented the place before him? Yeah, that sounded possible. With a deformity as severe as hers, landing a regular job was certainly out of the question. Maybe she had a deal with the old guy who used to handle the property? That she was supposed to provide morning and evening meals—something like that. The old thing probably didn't even know the cottage had been taken over by a new tenant who didn't know the score. No doubt Mrs. Hardy didn't tell him about it because she didn't know about it herself. She didn't know about the attic bedroom, did she? It sounded all very plausible. It certainly would explain everything.

Pruitt looked down at the knife he was still clutching in his right hand and groaned, slapping himself on the forehead with his empty palm.

He must have frightened the poor creature half out of her wits! Life was probably hard enough for as it was, considering her condition, without him acting like a complete and utter jerk! He put the knife down and went to the telephone nook in the hallway and thumbed through the thin volume that passed as the phone book. What had the realtor said the old guy's name was? Strucker? Strider? Stroud? That was it—Stroud!

There was only one Stroud in the listings; it had to be the one who used to own the house. The old guy's widow would know the cook's name and how to get in contact with her. He dialed the number on the ancient rotary phone, the weight of the dial pulling on his finger with each turn. The phone on the other end rang six times before someone picked up the receiver.

"Hello..?" The voice on the other end was old and querulous. Pruitt glanced at his wrist watch. Nine o'clock and already in bed.

"Uh, hello, Mrs. Stroud? My name's George Pruitt. I'm renting a house your late husband handled—the one on Old Switchback Road?"

"I'm afraid I can't help you, Mr. Pruitt. My husband passed away last winter and I'm no longer handling those properties—"

"I understand that, ma'am. It's just that—well, I think there's been a mistake."

"Well, the real estate agent didn't tell me about the lady who comes in and does the cooking here, and I'm afraid I scared her pretty bad walking in on her unannounced tonight. I just wanted to find out her name and get her number, so I could call and apologize ..."

"Cook? Mr. Pruitt, I have no earthly idea what you're talking about. My husband never hired a cook for the Greenfield house. Least not that he ever told me. I suggested you call up Mrs. Hardy—maybe she can help you. Good night, Mr. Pruitt."

The disconnected phone buzzed in his ear for a long moment before he finally hung up. There went his nice, logical—if somewhat far-fetched—explanation, right down the drain. If the phantom cook in his kitchen wasn't some harmless local woman, then who the hell was she? He was mulling that question around in his head as he re-entered the kitchen.

There was a platter of done-to-perfection pork chops with applesauce, a crock of old- fashioned sauerkraut, and a tray of fresh buttermilk biscuits awaiting him on the table—not to mention a Dutch apple pie keeping itself warm in the oven.

Even though he knew he should take the entire mess and dump it in the trash and call the cops, Pruitt found himself sitting down the repast set before him. He felt as if he was trapped in a dream, moving slowly and deliberately, like a man trying to weld underwater. He wanted to jump up and scream and run out of the house and into the night, but it was as the delicious smell rising from the food was scrambling his brain. It all smelled so good . . .

Pruitt woke up the next morning to find himself in bed, although he had no clear memory of undressing himself. In fact, he couldn't remember anything after sitting down to the pork chops. He almost wasn't surprised to find a breakfast of country ham, French toast, and orange juice awaiting him in the kitchen. Waste not, want not, he sighed, as he sat down to eat. However, even though he was supposed to drive back to the city that evening, Pruitt knew there was no way he could return to Manhattan without finding out what the hell was going on.

Screw Manhattan, he was staying put until he knew the identity of the phantom cook. He'd call in sick in the morning—what the hell, he had time coming to him.

Pruitt was sitting on a old wooden deck chair in the back yard, frowning at the hedgerow that was the cottage's property-line and trying to think of some way of finding out exactly who—or what—his mysterious visitor might he, when his attention was caught by the sound of someone pruning.

It wasn't a vigorous clipping sound, as one might expect on a fine summer's day, but instead seemed rather hesitant, as if whoever was using the shears was giving a great deal of consideration to whatever it was they were lopping off. Pruitt got up and wandered over to the hedgerow and peered over the top and saw a very old man dressed in khaki work clothes and a sweat-stained Panama hat, armed with a pair of pruning shears that looked like they were new before Pruitt was conceived. The old man was bent almost double, his neck drooping like the wattle on a turkey, and he wore a pair of glasses thick enough to use as a door-stop. His head wavered slightly as he peered at a branch the size and length of a number two pencil jutting from the uniform mass of the shrubbery. After a long minute, the old man lifted the shears, pumped them open with surprisingly sinewy liver-spotted hands, then allowed the blades to snap shut with a brisk snikt!, leaving the offending twig to fall at his feet.

The old man's head bobbed up rather quickly. Whatever his physical shortcomings might be, deafness certainly wasn't one of them. "You that new fella what's rented the Greenfield place."

"Yes. My name's Pruitt. George Pruilt. I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself before now, but I've been busy getting settled in."

The old man straightened up as best he could, studying the younger man as if trying to read something written on his forehead. He then smiled, displaying fiercely white dentures. He extended his right hand, which was as callused and missing the first two knuckles on his ring finger. "Name's Hogue. Folks round here call me Pappy. Me and Myrtle, rest her soul, used to come up her on weekends to build on the place since after the war," he gestured to the modest Cape Cod a hundred yards away. "Been living here permanent since I retired from the railroad back in '65. Now I stay here with my granddaughter. She's been keeping me company since she got her divorce. Been all kinds of summer folks comin' and goin' over the years. Still, I didn't think they'd be renting out the Greenfield place again, what with Stroud passing on."

Pruitt brightened. "Do you know anything about the people who originally lived here? I'm trying to find out a little more about the house, just out of curiosity. These Greenfields—are they still around?"

"Lord, no!" Pappy Hogue gave vent to a dry, humorless laugh that sounded like the bark of a fox. "Leastwise the wife ain't. Couldn't say about the husband—although he'd been a damn sight older'n me if he was!"

"And then some, these forty years!" Pappy's seamed face darkened for a moment. "Poor ol' Hettie. Lord, what that woman must have suffered!"

Pruitt's stomach suddenly tightened, as if the morning's mystery breakfast had suddenly transmutated into lead. "No. I didn't know."

"I still remember Hettie Greenfield to this day—hell, it'd be hard not to, considering her, uh, condition."

"Nowadays I guess they'd call her handicapped or disabled or something polite like that. But back in them days, Hettie was a freak, pure an' simple."

The vision of the crumpled, ruined face he'd glimpsed the night before swam before Pruitt's eyes. He heard himself saying, as if from somewhere far-away; "What was wrong with her?"

"She suffered from some kind of weird medical condition—had it from birth. It's one of them diseases they can take care of now, but back then—well, either it killed you young or you grew up hideously deformed. I'll have to admit, Hettie was hard to look at, bless her heart. She made her living the only way she could—touring the country in sideshows. Made damn good money at it, too. She got her start when she weren't more than a tot, sitting on a stage in her Sunday best and bein' looked at by folks. She started off as The Ugliest Little Girl in the World. Then, as she got older, she was The World's Ugliest Woman. And she sure as hell was—far as I know!

"But you can't judge an egg by its shell, as my mama used to say. As hideous as she was to look at, Hettie Greenfield had one of the sweetest souls ever to walk God's green earth. There was never a kinder, gentler woman born—and that's counting my mama and Myrtle. And talk about cook! Boy howdy! That woman could whip up a pumpkin pie that's knock your socks off—not to mention anything else you'd have a hunger for. She was a whirlwind in the kitchen—there wasn't a dish she couldn't make to perfection! She could have won any number of blue ribbons at the state fair, if she hadn't been busy working in the freak show.

"But you know what the sorry thing was about that—? Hettie herself couldn't eat what she cooked, on account of her jaw and mouth bein' so messed up. Made it hard for her to talk, as well. She lived off baby food and buttermilk, mostly. It was like cooking for others was the only way she knew to make herself understood."

"What makes most folks kill themselves? She fell in love with a fella that done her dirty. She met this fella name of Oliver back in '52, who wanted to be her business manager. She ended up marrying him later that year. Now, this fella wasn't exactly young or good looking, but he had the charm, if you know what I mean. And for someone like Hettie—well, I figger she must have been pretty vulnerable to a sharpie like Oliver. She was in her fifties and looking forward to retiring here permanent. She'd saved up a sizable amount of money over the years—like I said, she was something of a star attraction in those days.

"Anyways, they got married in '52, and in '55 Hettie announced her retirement. She and Oliver moved out here permanent, although he was still handling a few carnival acts on the side. Then in early '56 Oliver ups and disappears, taking most of Hettie's life savings with him. The bastard pretty much left her with just the bloomers she was standin' in. Heard tell her run off with some fire-eatin' belly-dancer or what-not. They found Hettie a week later—she'd gassed herself in her oven. Funny thing is, the kitchen table and all the counters were covered with pies, cakes, cookies, jams, pot roasts—like she'd spent the last days of her life cooking for someone who wasn't there. Or for her own wake."

Pruitt sat in the front parlor and thought about what Pappy Hogue had told him. He now knew, without doubt, the identity of his phantom cook. And phantom was indeed the correct word.

Although part of him still wanted to deny it in favor of a rational explanation, George Pruitt's heart and—more importantly—his stomach had embraced the unknown. Instead of feeling afraid, he felt a great sadness come over him as he thought of how it must have been between Hettie and Oliver in the tight confines of the cottage. He now knew who had lived in the tiny, cramped attic room. He wondered if Oliver had brought his trollops home to the squeaking Shaker bed, and felt a shudder of pity and shame for the hapless Hettie, banished to her narrow cot, forced to listen to her husband's rutting. No doubt he never appreciated the meals she prepared for him for what they truly were—love sonnets as passionate and heartfelt as any penned by the great poets. No, beasts like Oliver take such gestures as their due, nothing more.

He could not bring himself to be frightened of the ghost of Hettie Greenfield, no matter how ugly she might be. Any creature capable of preparing food so heavenly could not have malice in its nature. Whatever her reason for fixing his meals, Hettie Greenfield was not out to harm him, of this he was certain.

There come the sound of crockery rattling ever so slightly from the kitchen, and Pruitt could make out the quiet 'whumpf' of the stove's gas burners igniting. Instead of being anxious, a sense of well-being crept over him, as if a warm blanket had been pulled over him by a comforting hand. He had not felt such inner peace since early childhood, when he could sleep soundly in the back of the car, secure in the knowledge that his father was at the wheel.

That night Hettie made Yankee pot roast with new potatoes and baby carrots, with soda bread on the side and Indian pudding for dessert. Pruitt slept long and deep and when he woke the next morning, he called in sick. After all, he didn't want to miss lunch.

Pruitt woke up to find himself sprawled on the parlor floor. Funny. He didn't remember fainting. He used the easy chair in front of the television to pull himself upright, then stood teetering uncertainly for a long moment before sitting down again.

The T.V. screen was awash in snow. Pruitt couldn't remember what he'd been watching. Or if he'd been watching anything at all. A part of his brain wondered what day it was. It was hard to tell, now that he'd quit his job. At least he thought he'd quit it. Maybe he'd been fired. In any case, he was no longer going to work. Or outside, for that matter.

He squinted at the shadows creeping along the walls, trying to tell the time. He couldn't remember whether he'd eaten lunch or not. Thinking about lunch made him start to salivate and he wiped at the drool with a shaky hand.

He had never eaten better than he had over the last two weeks, of that he was certain.

Hettie's love had made itself manifest in a dizzying array of delicious meals: roast turkey with cornbread dressing; Maine lobster with drawn butter and roast corn; southern fried chicken with white gravy and biscuits; honey glazed ham with baked apples; pecan pie ala mode; sweet potato pie; tollhouse cookie; shoe-fly pie; gingerbread men; butterscotch pudding; and divinity fudge, not to mention pancakes that all but floated off the griddle, cinnamon rolls the size of a baby's head, and whole pigs of bacon and Virginia ham.

Pruitt tried to lever himself out of the chair, failed, then tried again and succeeded. He dimly wondered how it was he'd started hearing her voice lately. At first she'd been mute—as if the gap between the living and the dead swallowed all attempts at verbal communication. Maybe she was simply no longer fearful of being rejected. Heaven knew how often that exact same fear had held his own tongue in the past.

It took him a while, but he finally made it to the kitchen, where he found her waiting for him at the table, smiling fondly. Another deeply buried part of him found it passing strange that Hettie was no longer ugly. At least not to his eyes. In fact, as the days wore on, she seemed almost beautiful.

"I fixed your favorite for you tonight," she said, gesturing to the chicken dumplings, fresh cornbread, and black-eyed peas. She said that every night, and every night it was true.

"Thank you, Hettie. It looks delicious," Pruitt whispered as he eased himself in the chair at the head of the table. "What have you got planned for afters?"

"Honey, you're going to make me big as a house!" Pruitt chuckled, as he speared the first dumpling and raised it to his watering mouth. He looked up to compliment Hettie on her cooking, only to discover that her face had been replaced by a brightly shining disk.

They found him several days later. Mrs. Hardy had come by to see why the latest rent check had bounced, only to find the doors and windows locked. Walking around to the back porch, she happened to look through the kitchen window and see what she assumed to be Pruitt slumped across the table. She ran back to her car and used her cell phone to call 911.

The coroner's report read that at the time of his death, George Pruitt weighed eighty pounds and that the autopsy revealed his stomach contents to consist of newspaper and cobwebs, which coincided with the sheriffs report of finding what looked to be a partially-eaten New York Times on the plate underneath his body. Still, they were at a loss to understand how Pruitt, an outwardly successful and stable business executive, could systematically starve himself to death; or why, upon entering the house, the sheriffs deputies and the paramedics reported smelling the aroma of fresh pancakes.

Rolf sat in the back of the limo and fidgeted, waiting for the light to change. It was Friday night and he was late for his rendezvous with The Sisters. They weren't really related. At least, not genetically. Then again, Rolfs name wasn't really Rolf, either.

Cissy, the youngest, was cute and perfect, the way china dolls are cute and perfect. Her hands and feet were tiny, complimenting the doll analogy, although she sported an icecream blonde flat-top. Meg, in contrast, was medium-height and far from small—her breasts, hips, and thighs perpetually threatened to push her over the brink of "Rubenesque". Her hair was curly and the color of spilled wine, hanging to the middle of her back in long, tangled tresses. Alexis, the oldest of the three, was tall and willowy, with cheekbones and attitude suitable for a high-fashion model, with sable hair that fell to her narrow butt.

Each of the Sisters had her own style—her own "shtick". Cissy played the teasing virgin, wide-eyed and innocent. Meg was the bawdy, foul-mouthed earth mother. And Alexis—Alexis was the cool and unattainable Ice Queen. Separately, they were three beautiful, sensuous women. But once together, they surpassed the sum of their individual natures. They were the very essence that is Woman. At least, as far as Rolf was concerned that was the case. And. to he honest, Rolf's interpretation of reality was the only one that mattered.

The light changed and the limo lurched into the intersection. Rolf checked his watch. Five minutes late. He was going to be five minutes late for his session. Mistress Alexis was going to be so displeased. Rolf writhed in anticipation of her anger.

The dungeon was located in the basement of an old three-story brownstone in the West Village. Rolf hurried down the dark stairs that lead to the entrance under the front stoop. The shadows smelled of piss, which made Rolfs hands tremble even more as he punched his code into the security gate. There was a harsh, ear-jangling buzz and he eagerly yanked open the heavy metal door.

Cissy was lounging in the waiting room, dressed in her oversized pinafore and lollipop panties, demurely snacking on a pint of Ben & Jerry's Rum Raisin. Except for the heavy eye make-up and painted lips, she could have passed for a child of ten. Rolf felt himself begin to get hard.

"You're late," she said, not even bothering to look up from her Rum Raisin. "Alexis doesn't like it when you're late."

"Yes. Yes, I know—that was bad of me. Very, very bad—" Rolf was wheezing, but not because he was out of breath.

Cissy glanced up at him with those big, child-like eyes and licked her spoon with a flick of her little pink tongue. "Don't tell me—tell her."

"Of course. Of course." Rolf turned and headed down the narrow corridor that lead from the waiting room into the bowels of the dungeon. In order to convert the basement into a proper S&M dungeon, the original walls had been knocked out and newer, smaller rooms installed. Each "fantasy suite" boasted a certain fetish motif. One was a "nursery" for bad little boys, another was a medieval torture chamber, yet another an enema clinic. There was even a special room for those who wished to re-enact the Nazi concentration camp atrocities. But Rolf did not bother to check any of these rooms to see if Mistress Alexis was to be found in them. He knew exactly where she'd be.

The cubicle was no larger than any of the others in the dungeon—possibly smaller—but the feeling Rolf always got whenever he stepped over the threshold was that the room went on forever. The reason for that, of course, was the collection of strategically located mirrors that lined every surface except for the floor. In the middle of the room a sturdy metal trapeze hung suspended from the ceiling, poised directly over a metal bar fastened to a heavy-duty ring set into the concrete floor.

The first thing Rolf saw as he entered the Room of Mirrors was dozens upon dozens of frowning dominatrixes, their multiplied contempt enough to melt surgical steel. And all of the dominatrixes wore Mistress Alexis' face. She was dressed in a black leather merry widow corset, the lacing pulled so tight at the waist it transformed her figure into that of a queen wasp. Alexis' hips were normally quite narrow, her breasts tiny little jiggly things that looked like fleshy fruit cups. She was wearing black stiletto-heel vinyl boots that nearly reached her crotch, black leather tap panties, and the black velvet opera gloves that were her trademark. Rolf had never seen her without her opera gloves or, come to think of it, the studded dog collar that encircled her neck.

"Yes, I know, mistress—I'm sorry. It's not my fault. My driver got caught in cross-town traffic ..."

"That's a reason. Not an excuse," Alexis sniffed. "Your session's already started, you know. You began paying five minutes, no—" she consulted a diamond-studded Cartier watch affixed to her left wrist—"seven-and-a-half minutes ago."

Rolf chafed at the billing, but said nothing. Alexis cost five hundred a hour by herself. The Sisters, as a unit, ran a cool thousand. But they were worth it—boy, were they ever!

Rolf wasn't your usual punishment freak. At least, that's what he liked to think. He needed to be degraded by beautiful women. He needed to be hurt, to be tortured—to be made to pay for all that he had done in the past. He was a sinner. He knew it. A dirty, wretched sinner who deserved the harshest of treatment at the hands of punishing angels. He was weak and it was his due to be disciplined by those stronger than himself. He needed to have his sins ripped from his flesh. His sins haunted his waking hours, buzzing in the back of his brain like flies hovering over ripe garbage. However, the problem was—Rolf couldn't stand pain.

His sensory threshold was exceptionally low. If anyone even pinched him, he screamed and writhed as if he'd been stabbed. There was no way he could bring himself to suffer the mortification of the flesh, no matter how much he wished to endure them. Over the years he had drifted from mistress to mistress, dungeon to dungeon, in an attempt to find the woman capable of bringing his fantasies to life.

When he explained his predicament to Mistress Alexis, she suggested the use of what she called a "surrogate body"—a stand-in who would undergo the scouring that Rolf so badly desired. At first he was dubious and suspicious of the extra cost, but Alexis eventually talked him into it.

He never knew the name of the original surrogate, not that it mattered. No doubt some meaningless hobo down on his luck and willing to rent his body out for a hundred bucks a hour. He wore a black leather fetish hood and nothing else, chained to the trapeze in the Room of Mirrors. At first the sight of another man's penis and testicles made Rolf uncomfortable, but as The Sisters began administering their peculiar brand of mercy to the surrogate, it was surprisingly easy for him to project his own face onto the black leather cowl. Whenever The Sisters would bruise or burn or whip the surrogate, Rolf found himself screaming bloody murder, as if it was his own flesh they were working on.

That was his first "interrogation" with The Sisters—and far from the last. Over the next six months Rolf began expanding on his fantasy, fleshing it out in greater detail as he became more and more confident. At first he'd been worried about blackmail, but relaxed once he realized he could always dismiss his weekly "interrogation" as an elaborate—albeitly perverse—sex game. It was a fantasy, nothing more. Want to make something of it?

Rolf took off his clothes, watching himself in the multitude of mirrors. He was far from an impressive specimen, with his balding pate and thickening middle. His penis looked naked and sad, hanging between his legs like a dead squid. But that would change the moment the surrogate began to writhe under Mistress Alexis' punishing hands.

"Did you get a good stand-in this time? I didn't like the one you picked last time. His dick wasn't nearly big enough to be mine."

Mistress Alexis' smile was like winter dawn on a frozen lake. "I think you'll find this week's body more to your tastes."

Meg and Cissy lead the surrogate into the room. His head—like those of the ones before—was shrouded by a black leather fetish mask, the mouth zippered shut. Outside of the manacles fitted to his wrists and ankles, the surrogate was completely naked. There was no way to tell exactly how old he was, but Rolf suspected he was quite young. Possibly under-age, judging by his height. Despite his apparent youth, the surrogate was far from buff. While hardly flabby, his muscles lacked tone. No doubt an incipient couch potato. Rolf was reminded how he, too, had been something of a "soft boy" in his youth.

The surrogate seemed unsteady on his feet as Meg unlocked his wrist restraints and fastened them to the far ends of the trapeze suspended over his head. Cissy busied herself with seeing that his ankles were secured to the bottom bar. No doubt the surrogate was strung out on something. Probably ex or junk.

Mistress Alexis left the room and re-entered pushing a wheeled instrument tray, like those found in operating rooms. Arrayed across its gleaming surface was a collection of paddles, leather thongs, clothes pins, carpet needles, brushes, dildos, and candles. Rolf could already tell it was going to be a particularly memorable interrogation.

Mistress Alexis selected a broad paddle made from stiff leather and began circling the surrogate, lightly tapping the palm of her hand as she spoke.

"What is your name, worm?" she asked, her voice stern. Mistress Alexis was a woman used to being answered promptly and with respect. The surrogate said nothing. Not that he could, since the mouth of the fetish mask was securely zippered shut.

Rolf licked his lips, his eyes shifting from the flesh-and-blood participants to their mirror-images and back again. It had begun. From here on everything would go as it always did—following a script he himself had carefully prepared. Although Rolf allowed the Sisters a certain amount of latitude in the kinds of punishment they meted out and in what order they could do it in—after all, he didn't want to become bored by predictability—every word was part of an elaborate call-and-response, as heavily laden with ritual and personal meaning than the holiest of religious observances.

"I said, what is your name, worm?!?" The leather paddle connected with the surrogate's naked left buttock, making a sound like a hand striking wet mud. The surrogate yelped and tried to get away, but was held in place by the manacles.

"Rolf! My name is Rolf!" Rolf barked, in place of the surrogate's voice, sweat beading his upper lip. His eyes were fixed on the crimson welt on the surrogate's left ass-cheek.

"Your name is Rolf what?"' Mistress Alexis snapped, bringing the paddle's broad surface down on the surrogate's other cheek. Again the surprised yelp and shaking of shackles.

"My name is Rolf, mistress!" he rasped. This part always made him excited because it was the only part of the confession that was a lie. His name really wasn't Rolf. It was something far more prosaic. And recognizable. The Sisters knew who he really was—after all, he paid for his "therapy" with his platinum Visa—but had never called him on it. After all, for what he was paying he could call himself whatever he liked.

Alexis snapped her fingers—a mean feat for a woman wearing opera gloves—and motioned for Cissy and Meg to assist her. Meg snatched up one of the leather thongs and looped it around the surrogate's flaccid dick, just behind the head, then yanked it forward with a sharp jerk, stretching it like taffy. Cissy chose a thin birch rod and presented it, hand over wrist, to Mistress Alexis, who made made a few experimental cuts with the rod, smiling tightly to herself as it sliced the air.

Rolf watched the bitch cut a whistling arc through the air, licking his lips in anticipation of the blow he knew was sure to follow. The smell of sweat and excitement was already making the room feel hotter and closer than it had mere minutes ago.

"Answer me when I talk to you, worm!" shrieked Mistress Alexis, bringing the cane down on the length of the surrogate's penis.

The surrogate's scream was muffled by the mask, but Rolf helped him give vent to his pain by collapsing to the floor, rolling around and clutching his groin as if he had just taken the blow himself.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! I was a counselor there for a couple of summers, when I was nineteen, twenty years old!"

Mistress Alexis continued to strike the surrogate, moving her attention from his crotch to his thighs and lower abdomen, leaving wicked looking welts in her wake. Rolf groaned and wailed and clawed at the floor as if it was his flesh taking the punishment, not that of a faceless, nameless stranger. The surrogate jerked and thrashed and shouted for help, but he was held fast by the manacles and Meg's secure grasp on the thong looped about his dick.

Obviously this evening's surrogate had not realized what he was getting himself into. All the better. Rolf preferred it when his stand-ins were "normal". He disliked the ones who were into S&M, or the rent-boys who were used to weathering worse degradations. He always had the sneaking suspicion the professionals were faking it. But this one—this boy honestly didn't appreciate what was being done to him. It made it a lot easier to project his own face onto the blank leather where the boy's should have been. The pressure in Rolfs cock grew, lifting its plump, mushroom-shaped head upward.

Mistress Alexis turned away from the struggling youth and handed the birch—now dripping blood—to Cissy, who carefully cleaned its length with a hand towel and placed it back on the tray. Cissy glanced at Rolf as he squatted on the floor, right hand frantically stroking his chubby erection, her baby doll lips pulling into a rosebud of a smile. She picked up one of the larger dildoes—it was made of black plastic and fixed with a handle at the cock-base that made it looked like an obscene popsicle—and stroked its hard length. In her tiny hands the artificial phallus looked even bigger.

Meg let go of the thong circling the surrogate's dick and went over to the cart, choosing one of the beeswax candles and a cigarette lighter. Rolf nodded, approving her selection. Good. Very good. Beeswax melts at a higher temperature than regular candles, which made it perfect for coercing confessions.

Mistress Alexis took the riding crop from the tray. "While you were a counselor at Camp Tipicanoe—did you ever do anything—bad?"

Rolf licked his lips. "I don't understand. Wh-what do you mean by "bad', Mistress?"

Meg struck the wheel on the lighter and a multitude of flame jumped into existence in the mirrors. Rolf gasped and trembled, his skin tightening in anticipation of the burning kiss of candle wax.

"Don't get coy with me, you worthless excuse for a man!" Mistress Alexis snapped, striking the surrogate across the ribs with the riding crop. As the surrogate once more tried to escape the blows raining down on him, Cissy, crouching between his spread-eagled legs, rammed the dildo upward, spearing the boy like a fish. The surrogate's scream was fairly loud, albeitly muted by the leather mask.

"I confess! I confess!" Rolf blubbered, his body seized with spasms of shame and pleasure. "I did it! I did it!"

"Did what, little man?" sneered Mistress Alexis, pointing to the surrogate's abused genitals. Meg nodded her understanding and began dribbling melting wax onto his exposed groin. The surrogate shrieked like a girl and began thrashing about even more intensely than before, making the manacles rattle and jingle like sleigh bells. "What did you do?" Rolf pressed his fevered brow against the smooth concrete floor, his breath coming in great wheezing gasps. His guilt burned between his legs, as if smeared with molten wax. The need to confess his sins, to speak the unspeakable, was reaching its zenith.

The surrogate continued to jerk and whimper and twitch as Meg dribbled hot wax into his armpits and onto his nipples and Cissy punched at his bowels.

"I—I—" Rolf wiped at the sweat dribbling down his balding head into his eyes. This part was always the hardest—and the most delicious. Decades of having kept silent, of hiding the truth away from everyone, had created a natural reticence on his part. Only the ritual of the interrogation could bring him to breach the ingrained wall of self-preservation and allow to speak the truth—to admit to his crimes—only then could he attain the release of forgiveness—the spasm that signaled absolution and erased his sins in a spurt of jism and blood.

"Tell me!" Rolf flinched as the riding crop smacked against the surrogate's trembling flank. "Tell me!"

The words leapt from his lips like pus from a wound. He could almost see them hovering in front of him—black, vile things, given life and substance by the simple act of speaking them aloud. Now that the unspeakable had finally been spoken. Rolf's could feel his past pressing itself against his teeth. He has to confess, spill his guts, purge himself of the evil secrets boiling away in his gut and his balls.

"I took them to the boat house on the lake. Usually at night. Sometimes during the day, when I knew no one would be around. But that was dangerous. But sometimes I couldn't wait. I had to do things to them right then."

Alexis' eyes narrowed but she didn't look surprised; she nodded her head, as if Rolf had confirmed her all suspicions. "Did you do things to all the children you were in charge of?"

"No. Not all of them. That would have been dangerous. Most of the kids that came to Camp Tipicanoe were the sons and daughters of wealthy, upper-middle class types. Doctors. Lawyers. I could have gotten into real trouble if I tried anything with them—even though I wanted to."

"If you didn't do anything to the doctors' and layers' kids—whose children did you do things to?"

"A couple of weeks out of the summer Tipicanoe would host kids from some inner city orphanages. It was some kind of charity write-off for the people who owned the camp. Most of kids were Niger's or spices. Their parents—if they had any—were junkies or whores or dead. I told them that I was their friend. I told them I was the only one that really cared about what happened to them. I'd give them candy and let them ride the ponies if they didn't cry and acted like they liked it."

Rolf frowned. That wasn't one the questions she was supposed to ask. And she wasn't supposed to use the word 'rape".

That was too harsh. Too close to the reality behind his version of the truth. He was taken aback by the vehemence in Mistress Alexis' voice as well. For a brief second he saw genuine hate blazing in her heavily mascaraed eyes. This derivation from the ritual was bringing him down.

"Stick to the script. I'm not paying you to do improv." He tried to make himself sound like he was in his board room, but it came out sounding whiny. It was hard to come across as authoritative while groveling naked on the floor and jerking off.

Mistress Alexis nodded her understanding, her professional ice princess mask sliding back into place.

The rest of the session went on as scripted, with Mistress Alexis continuing her interrogation while Meg and Cissy assisted her by using the surrogate as an ashtray/snapping wooden clothes pins onto his scrotum, and pricking him with needles. Each punishment meted out to the hapless surrogate prompted more screams, wails, and futile attempts at escape, while Rolf confessed in detail to the molestation of dozens of equally nameless, faceless children.

Rolf was close to the edge. Sweat was pouring off his body, dripping from his balls like beads of pee. His arm ached from pumping his swollen dick. He looked away from the naked youth suspended in the middle of the room to stare at the reflections of his own penis cast by the mirrors. He was surrounded by hundreds of throbbing, swelling, twitching erections, all of them his. The very thought made him smile.

"I'm ready. Its coming," he rasped through gritted teeth, staggering to his feet. He stroked his pecker as if he was trying to yank it off his body.

Cissy put down the cigar she'd been singeing the surrogate's armpit hair with and picked up the knife. Or, as Rolf thought of it, The Knife. The Knife was an old-fashioned stiletto with an ornate golden hilt. Only Rolf was allowed to use The Knife in these sessions.

Mistress Alexis was suddenly by his side, her painted lips whispering in his ear. It was the closest she had ever came to touching him in the six months he'd known her. "Are you sorry, Rolf? Are you honestly and truly sorry for these your wrong-doings?"

"Yes." It was almost impossible to speak because of the tightness in his throat. Tears welled up in Rolf's eyes as he let go of his dick and turned The Knife over in his trembling hands. His groin throbbed, keeping time with the pulse pounding away in his temples. The blank leather mask of the surrogate seemed to twist and blur, taking on familiar features. He blinked to clear his vision, but all it did was make the tears run down his cheeks.

"You are a sinner, Rolf." Mistress Alexis' words were cold and sharp, like a breeze off Antarctica. "The world's biggest sinner. And the wages of sin are—

"Death!" Rolf shrieked, plunging The Knife into the surrogate's heart as he simultaneously squirted his seed across the helpless youth's thighs. Just as he'd done every Friday for the last six months. The orgasm was so powerful it made him dizzy and he fell into a swoon, dropping to his knees.

When his head cleared, moments later, he realized something was horribly wrong. For one thing, there was blood on his hands and on The Knife. That was impossible. The Knife was a trick blade, like the ones used in magic acts. He prodded the blood-smeared point only to flinch as it pricked his index finger. The surrogate was still trussed to the restraining trapeze, blood oozing from a large stab wound in his chest. Rolf looked at The Knife and back at the body, hanging as slack and lifeless as a side of beef, and cast the weapon from him with a cry of disgust.

Rolf got to his feet, his eyes bugging out with fear. He instinctively wiped the blood on his hands onto his thighs, then cringed. His eyes sought the mirrors for answers to the questions he did not dare speak, but all he saw was the surrogate's corpse again. And again. And again. Into infinity.

Suddenly Alexis was there behind him, her velvet-gloved fingers digging deep into the flab at the base of his neck. Rolf was surprised—and frightened—by how strong she was. She pushed him against the blood smeared body, griping him so tightly there was no way to look away from the dead man's leather-bound head.

"I realize we're rather off-script here, Rolf," Alexis sneered, her voice buzzing in his captive ear like a wasp waiting to land a sting. "But I though you might like to know who your stand-in for tonight was. After all, he did give his all for you didn't he?" Alexis motioned for Meg to unlace the hood covering the dead man's head.

The sound that came out of Rolf when he saw the face underneath the mask was not unlike that the children he used to take to the boat house used to make, twenty years ago. When he could finally summon the wit to speak, all he could say was; "Oh—God—" over and over.

The surrogate had indeed been young. Sixteen, in fact. Rolf knew exactly how old the dead boy was because he was his son.

"He was pathetically easy to catch. Cissy had been following him for the last month or so, to find out which bars in the Village he went to with his friends and his fake I.D., and where he liked to score dope. All it took was a little free ex—the promise of some poon-tang—and a little smack and chloral hydrate, and he was ours: signed, sealed and delivered. Or should I say he was yours!"

Rolf tried to tear himself away from Alexis' grip, but he could not break free. "You crazy bitch!" he sobbed. "Brad—What the hell did you do this for—? Why? Why?!?"

"Come on, Rolf," snorted Meg, shaking chloroform onto an used jockstrap. "You're not a complete idiot! Why do you think? You've only been going on about it all fuckin' night!"

Before Rolf could respond, Meg clamped the jockstrap over his nose and mouth and everything went away.

When he came hack to his senses, it was to find himself dangling in the place of his son, Bradley. The heir apparent lay stretched out on the hare concrete floor like a beef carcass, his father's jism slowly drying on his cooling thigh. Rolf wanted to weep for his murdered offspring, but he was too frightened by his predicament to do more than whimper.

"So—you're back." Alexis grabbed Rolf's thinning hair and yanked on it so that he was forced to look into her face.

"Why?" was the only word he could croak out. All the others he might have used seemed to have fled. "Why?"

Alexis stared at him for a heartbeat then laughed—although she did not move to strike him, the laugh was enough to make Rolf flinch. "You really haven't a clue, do you? After confessing to us week after week, after all this time—you still don't know why we'd do such a thing?"

"It—It was all a fantasy. Not real. I never did things . . . to those children ..."

Something cold and hard uncoiled inside Rolf's gut. He stared hard at Alexis' face—harder than he ever had before. He wasn't looking at her as a man appraises a beautiful woman—this time he was trying to find something familiar in the shape of her lips, the cast of her nose, the tilt of her eyes, but without success.

"How—how did you know that was my name as a camp counselor? I never mentioned that in the script ..."

"Oh, there's quite a lot we know about you, Rolf. Or should I say, Mr. O'Brien? You see, we recognized you even though you didn't recognize us."

""You see, the reason Meg and Cissy and I call ourselves The Sisters is because we're orphans. Meg's mother was a whore. Cissy's was a junkie. Mine was a lush. She started drinking hard-core after my father, a Greek sailor, shipped out to Athens without us. She ended up falling down a flight of stairs in a blind drunk and breaking her neck. I ended up in the care of some inner-city orphanage, where I made friends with the other kids. But they were more than friends. They were my new family, my new sisters. Of course, our names weren't Meg, Cissy, and Alexis back then. We took those names later—after I'd graduated from Hunter College with a Bachelors degree, specializing in the Classics. You can't get a job worth shit with a liberal arts degree, so I ended up in the sex business. So we decided to go into it together—work as a team, y'know? So we picked new names to go with our new lives. So we called ourselves The Sisters, in honor of a far more ancient trio known for their ability to mete out punishment—Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. But I'm rambling, aren't I? You want to know what our old names were, don't you? They were Penny, Elizabeth, and Alex."

Alexis smiled then, stepping back, unhooking the dog collar that circled her throat. "Like I said—it was a long time ago. Twenty years. You were only nineteen years old. Cissy was seven. Meg was eight." Alexis took the collar and tossed it at Rolfs manacled feet. "I was just nine years old. And still a boy."

Rolf stared at the Adam's apple that bobbed up and down as Alexis spoke. He shook his head and made another trapped-animal sound.

"You had me going there for a few seconds. I though you'd caught on to us when I asked if you raped little boys." Alexis' tone of voice was almost conversational as she stripped off her opera gloves, revealing hands far larger and wider than a natural born woman's.

Alexis stepped out of her panties, kicking them across the room with a practiced flick of her boot. Rolf had always wondered what Alexis kept in her panties, and now that he had his chance to know, he was almost afraid to look. Her genitals seemed female enough, but he imagined he could make out the tell-tale signs of plastic surgery.

"I thought you looked familiar the first time you came to the dungeon, but I wasn't sure. Meg and Cissy couldn't tell if it was really you or not, either. After all, it was two decades ago. Not that time has had an effect on our memories. None of us forgot the things you did to us—and made us do—in that beach house, Skeeter. To this day, I can't smell suntan oil without fighting a panic attack!"

Meg took up the story, twirling the key-ring to the manacles on one index finger. "None of us ever imagined that you'd show back up in our lives. And we certainly never dreamed you'd turn out to be Michael O'Brien, the president of O'Brien Furniture. Imagine! Our Skeeter—a Fortune 500 executive! I wonder what the Wall Street Journal would say if they found out you were a serial child molester with a taste for sexual torture?"

Cissy re-entered the room, trundling a new instrument tray in front of her. She had changed out of her baby doll outfit and was wearing a pair of battered jeans, Doc Martens, and a Danzig T-shirt. "When you started talking about the camp, that's when we knew it was you. You used a made-up name—"Camp Tipicanoe", gimme a break!—" she snorted derisively and rolled her eyes "—but we recognized you, Skeeter. Your sins identified you as surely as fingerprints!"

"There's no reason for you to do this," Rolf blubbered. "I'm sorry if I hurt you. But that was a long time ago. I'm sorry for everything I did—you know that—"

"Bullshit!" snapped Cissy, all pretense at being a living baby doll dropped. "You're not sorry and you fuckin' know it! Thinking about fucking little kids gets you hard! You'd still be out there stuffing your fist up bald twats if you thought you could get away with it! But you're chicken! You're not sorry about a goddamned thing—confessing your sins while some poor bastard takes the rap for you is just a way for you to get your rocks off and keep your ass outta trouble!"

"No—you don't understand. I really do regret all those things I did. I really do want to atone for my sins—! It's just that I'm weak. I was scared—"

"I bet you're scared!" Meg laughed humorlessly. "You're afraid of what would happen if people found out! You'd loose your rich-bitch socialite wife and your country house in New Hampshire and your overpriced furniture racket!"

"Enough!" Alexis held up her hand and the other fell silent. "We are beyond recrimination and explanation! There is only expiation!"

"Y-you're not going to get away with this," Rolf stammered, his eyes never leaving Alexis' hands as she dipped into a box of safety matches and retrieved a single sulfur-coated stick.

"Maybe yes. Maybe no," Alexis sighed, motioning for Meg to hold Rolf's limp penis so she could wedge the match into its piss-slit. "Now—Mr. O'Brien—or should I call you Rolf? Or do you prefer Skeeter? My sisters and I would like to know the number of the Swiss bank account you've been using to hide certain funds from the IRS ..."

It wasn't until the weekend was over that anyone realized something was wrong. Daphne O'Brien, wife of furniture magnate Michael O'Brien, called the police in New Hampshire to file a missing persons report on her sixteen-year-old son, Brad. He'd gone into Manhattan last Thursday to spend some time with friends attending NYU and had never returned. She'd tried to contact the boy's father, who was also in the city for the weekend, but had been unable to locate him. Not that in itself was unusual. The senior O'Brien was often hard to track down on the weekends.

However, by the middle of the week Brad had yet to resurface and his father had not bothered to check in with his office. Family and police began to grow concerned, as O'Brien was known to be a workaholic. An all points bulletin, was issued for Michael O'Brien's limo. It was found—several days later—on one of the Park 'n Fly lots at JFK. The limo's driver—one Nathaniel Underbill—was found locked in the trunk. Although he was in a rather advanced state of decomposition, it was clear that his throat had been slit from ear-to-ear. A subsequent autopsy revealed that his stomach contained a considerable amount of cognac mixed with tincture of opium.

The newspapers—The Post in particular—worked itself into a hysterical frenzy extrapolating on what may or may not have happened to the millionaire and his son. The FBI was called in and the O'Brien home phone was bugged in hopes of recording the ransom demand everyone was sure to follow. The silence was, at first, baffling, then quickly became ominous.

It was two weeks before the bodies were found, and only then because of a power shortage. A freak summer storm knocked out a portion of the city's power grid, plunging the West Village into darkness. The electricity was restored within a matter of hours. However, the industrial-strength air conditioner in the "dungeon" blew a fuse during the power surge and failed to come back on when the electricity was restored. A few days later the residents of a three-story brownstone began complaining of a foul smell emanating from the basement apartments. The police were summoned. And the mystery of what had become of the Michael and Brad O'Brien was answered, if far from solved.

The Post called it "The Kinky Downtown Dungeon of Death". The cops found two badly decomposed corpses—both male, both nude—in one of the abandoned cubicles. One body was that of an older man, the other that of a youth in his mid-to-late teens. The older man was found chained to a restraining device, while the younger one lay slumped in a corner, a large dildo still wedged in his rotting rectum. It wasn't until the coroner checked the dental files that the NYPD realized they had the missing O'Brien father and son team on the slabs. Both showed blatant evidence of sexual torture, but it seemed as if the killer (or killers) had saved the worst stuff for the father.

According to the coroner's report (combined with physical evidence gleaned from instruments left at the crime scene) Michael O'Brien had been beaten with a leather bullwhip with fish hooks braided into the lash, systematically burned on the genitals and inner mouth with a small propane torch, scourged with a wire curry-comb, subjected to needles rammed under his fingernails, given an enema with boiling water, and—to top it all off—had his eyelids sewn open. That last bit seemed particularly grisly in light of the fact that the death chamber was lined with mirrors and seemed to precede the other tortures. Bradley O'Brien had died of a single stab wound to the aorta. Death was instantaneous. Michael O'Brien had died of a massive heart attack, although not before enduring the torments listed above.

The police recovered a stiletto that proved to be the murder weapon used on the younger O'Brien. However, what puzzled them was how the only fingerprints they could find on the handle belonged to the father. The same held true to the smear of semen crusted on the boy's thigh. Upon learning this particulars, The Post worked itself into a hysterical froth: MISSING MILLIONAIRE IN S&M AFFAIR WITH OWN SON!

The tenants of the brownstone were questioned regarding the basement's residents. They all agreed that there had been three women living down there. Some thought they were sisters, but weren't exactly certain. They all agreed that strange men came and went at all hours, but hadn't really thought much about it, since they all looked rather respectable and wore suits. One neighbor thought they were relatives of the girls living downstairs, since most looked old enough to be uncles or grandfathers.

According to the real estate records, the lease had been signed by one Alexander Poppas. The FBI ran a search, but all they could come up with was a few juvie arrests for male prostitution in the early Eighties. Apparently Poppas—then in his late teens—was saving up for gender re-assignment surgery.

The only other evidence the police had been able to turn up at the murder scene was a stack of travel brochures. There seemed to be a number featuring Greece as the ideal holiday spot.

Interpol was alerted, but whatever trail there might have been was long cold. To this date, the torture-murders of Michael O'Brien and his son and the slaying of his chauffeur, Nate Underbill, remain unsolved.

The old man was smiling when he opened the door. The smile disappeared as soon as he saw it was Emerson.

Not even "it's you". The old man showed his dislike for his visitor by using as few words as possible during their brief meetings. Emerson didn't bother to acknowledge the slight. He was accustomed to such rudeness from his inferiors. And since everyone walking the earth was his inferior, Emerson spent a lot of imagination planning how he would deal with once the time rolled around. But that would have to wait, if for just a little while. Emerson sniffed and drew his arms in close to avoid unnecessary physical contact with the old man as they stood together in the cramped confines of the book shop.

Up until recently, when a slight stroke forced him to close down, the shop had been in continuous business for over five decades. Although he had greatly reduced his hours and limited his clientele to a handful of serious bibliophiles, the old man had done nothing to reduce his stock. In fact, he continued to add to it. Books surrounded them on every side, spilling from the narrowly-spaced bookshelves that reached to the ceiling, and stacked atop one another on every available surface. The place smelled of the genteel decay of old paper and moldering leather.

The old man motioned for Emerson to follow him as he hobbled along a narrow path that lead from the front door to the living quarters in the back, screened from view by a bead curtain. The tiny kitchen and dining area was identical to the front room. The books had found their way in here, too, muscling aside the few meager kitchen appliances. Emerson's eyes automatically went to the door that lead to what he supposed was the old man's bedroom. It was closed.

"Is your wife in?" he asked, feigning small-talk. The old man gave him a strange look, as if Emerson mentioning his wife worried him in some way he could not quite grasp. "No. She's gone shopping. I thought you were her. Thought she forgot her key."

Again the look. "Of course I have it. I would not have called you if I did not have it."

The old man nodded and hobbled over to the kitchen table, which was slightly bow-legged from the weight of the books stacked atop it. He reached into the jumble and. without hesitation, pulled out a over-sized leather-bound volume with a reinforced metal spine and hasps. He turned and handed it to Emerson with a sneer of disgust he did nothing to hide. Emerson wiped his hands and tried his best to control their trembling. It would not do to have the old man know just how important the damned book was to him.

The Aegrisomnia. The fabled tome written by a dying alchemist-wizard 1200 years ago while in the grips of brain-fever. It was believed to be filled with rantings, ramblings, and recipes for power. More power than a man could dream of a remain sane.

Of course, what Emerson was holding was not the original manuscript. That had been put to the torch by the Borgia pope, over five centuries ago, after he'd had it transcribed into Latin by a brace of specially trained monks—all of whom later committed suicide or were found floating in the Tiber under mysterious circumstances. The Latin version was later translated into German by a priest who secretly sympathized with Martin Luther and apparently thought the Reformation would fare better if it had access to some of the "forbidden knowledge" the Holy Gee had been hoarding for the last millennia.

In 1909 a British scholar of the name Stroud translated the Aegrisomnia into English. Stroud was an eccentric, but far from the harmless Oxford don that he appeared to be, proving himself dedicated to the Black Arts in ways popinjays like Crowley and Blavatsky merely played at.

Of the hundred expurgated copies of the Aegrisomnia Stroud had privately published, however, only one was complete and unabridged. And bound in leather. And that was Stroud's private copy—the one with his own personal annotations scrawled in the margins. The one he bound himself—with the skin of his virgin daughter. Granted, she wasn't his legitimate daughter—her mother was a marginally retarded scullery maid who had been with the household since childhood—but the gesture put to the pale anything the self-styled "Beast" had ever done.

Stroud was eventually found out, years later, when the buzz-bomb that took out his London rowhouse and rammed a length of timber through his chest also uncovered a child's skeleton sealed behind the library bookshelves. Many of the "demon don's" books and papers were consumed by fire that night, and since it was never found, it was assumed that Stroud's personal copy of the Aegrisomnia was been one of the causalities. But then, after the war, rumors began to circulate of the hook being glimpsed in South America, then again in Australia, then Canada . . .

Emerson had followed these rumors with the utmost interest. He had spent his entire adult life acquiring books and manuscripts many believed lost—if not apocryphal. He had devoted every waking hour—and nearly every dime of his inheritance—to the study of things most people either dismissed out of hand, or feared so intensely they preferred not to contemplate them at all. And now, after all this time, he had his hands on the last piece of the puzzle. The master-piece that would lock all the others into place and render the unknowable known unto him. Emerson caressed the bastard-child leather as he opened the book, his gaze hungrily darting along the yellowed pages. He closed his eyes and the formulae blazed against his inner lids. Yes. This was indeed the real thing. He opened his eyes and found the old man looking at him as if he was a distasteful animal suddenly transported into his dingy kitchen. Emerson snapped the book shut.

"Have you looked at this?" he asked, trying to mask the anxiousness in his voice.

The old man shook his head. "It's mumbo-jumbo. My wife likes to read things like that—" he motioned to a stack of old Fate magazines teetering precariously atop the draining board. "Me, I'd rather read fiction. There's more truth in fiction. I don't even like touching the thing. I know human leather when I see it. I had a book come through here a few years back—belonged to some bastard in the Nazi High Command. It was pornographic pictures—women with animals, men with children. It was bound just like that. I burned it. I would have burned that thing too, if I didn't need the money so badly—"

Emerson fought the urge to giggle in the old man's face. The fool! He had no idea what he had just surrendered for a mere three hundred dollars! No doubt his idea of a real find was a first edition of Alices Adventures Underground or a autographed copy of Northanger Abbey. Emerson decided to allow himself a little pleasure at the old man's expense. After all, it wasn't like the book-dealer had ever shown him anything resembling the respect due him.

"Tell me—haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to, say, rule the world or to turn back the clock and become young again, perhaps even cheat death altogether?"

The old man allowed himself a smile and the lines around his mouth and eyes softened. "Ha! Now you're starting to sound like my wife! She asks me silly things like that. And I'll tell you the same thing I tell her: who needs the aggravation? You'd spend all your time dealing with all the other people who want to rule the world. And why would I want to be young—so I can grow old all over again? And as for living forever—how could I be happy watching everyone I loved and cared about die and leave me alone? Is that something to look forward to—being a mourner? God knows, my life may not be perfect, but at least it will have a beginning and an end. Just like my books. And as long as I have them and my wife, I can make due without immortality or ruling the world."

Emerson nodded and reached into his jacket, producing a small envelope, which he handed to the old man. "As we agreed."

The old man opened the envelope and counted the bills. He looked up, his pale cheeks suddenly hectic with color. "This isn't enough!"

"What do you mean it isn't enough? You told me three hundred! That's three hundred."

The old man was shaking his head. "No, I told you when I called to let you know I'd secured the book that it ended up costing more than what I first quoted you. I need five hundred."

A spark of panic burst within Emerson. The three hundred had been the last of his inheritance. He only had fifty-six dollars left in his bank account. "I'll pay you the remainder in a couple of days—I'm good for it—"

"No! I spent the rent on that book! You give me five hundred or you get nothing!" The old man shoved the envelope back at Emerson and grabbed the book and tugged on it feebly.

A mixture of fear and rage filled Emerson, blotting out all else in his mind. He yanked the book free of the old man's palsied grip and, his lips pulled back into a rictus grin that exposed his teeth all the way to the gum-line, he brought the spine down on the book dealer's head. He actually felt the old man's skull give way. The old man dropped, lifeless, to the floor, his snowy-white hair stained brilliant red.

Emerson stared down at the corpse for a long moment. He clutched the Aegrisomnia to his chest much the same way Stroud had held his daughter before he slipped the knife between her ribs, nearly ninety years ago.

Emerson's apartment, at first glance, was not all that different from the old man's front room. The efficiency was filled to bursting with books, many of them quite old and exceptionally rare. The shelves that lined the walls were crammed full of tomes dedicated to occult lore. Some where relatively prosaic, such as Crowley's Magick: In Theory and Practice, Huysmans' Là-Bas. Frazer's Golden Bough, and Kramer & Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum. However. Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon, Von Junzt's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Prinn's De Verm Mysteriis, and the Comte d'Erlette's Cultes des Goules were far from innocuous. Or cheap.

Emerson had literally spent a fortune in acquiring them. Over the years, as his money dwindled, he had been forced to take lodgings that were far from the sumptuous appointments of his upbringing. Of his mother's physical estate, all that left was a large mirrored wardrobe that dominated one corner of the room.

Everything else had been sold off, piece by piece, in order to provide him with cash for his precious books of forbidden lore. And now, after close to thirty years, he was on the threshold of capturing the power he'd pursued for so long.

Emerson swept aside the jumble of concordances, foreign language dictionaries and lexicons that littered the table that served both as his desk and dining area, and placed the Aegrisomnia down. Tonight would be the start of his ascension. All the scraps and whispers of information he'd gleaned from the other books and manuscripts would now be stitched together, providing him with a shining reignment suited for a wizard-king.

He flipped open the book and shook his head in amazement. Even in a debased translation such as this, the innate power of the charms and spells recorded was staggering. What had the original been like? Just by skimming the chapters, he saw formulae and rituals proscribing the conjuring of extra-dimensional beings, the transferring of souls into the newborn, the mastery of the weather ...

Yet he couldn't help but wonder why Stroud, who had understood the importance of the forces described in the Aegrisomnia to such an extent that he'd wrapped it in his daughter's skin, had not used it to further his own ends. Granted, Stroud was close to eighty when he died in 1941, but he was far from youthful or immortal. And while he'd enjoyed his share of fame and honors during the course of his long and illustrious career, he lived out his life in a two-bedroom row-house in an appallingly middle-class neighborhood.

No matter. Whatever fears Stroud may have had against wielding the power of the Aegrisomnia, Emerson did not share them. He could not understand how someone could have power and not use it. Then again, there was a lot about people Emerson did not understand. It was one of the reasons he'd never developed any friends. Not even as a boy.

The last, fading blossom of a once-powerful family, Emerson's mother had raised him to consider himself better than others, and he had learned the lesson well. Toward the end, he considered his mother beneath him as well, as she had married into the Emersons and not been born one. It made pulling the plug on her life-support system rather simple.

Emerson smiled to himself. Soon he would replace his dreary studio apartment with a pleasure dome that would put Xanadu to shame! He would dine on the most succulent of dishes, relieve his physical needs with only the most beautiful of women and boys, and the heads of everyone who had ever crossed him, cursed him or even looked at him the wrong way would decorate the pikes lining the roads leading to his palace. Yes. He rather liked that image.

There was a sudden thumping at the door. Emerson jumped in his seat, startled by the noise.

A spike of fear made his guts clench. The police! But how could they have known to come looking for him? Of course. The old man's wife. He must have told her about who was coming to pick up the book. Damn! He should have stayed long enough to finish her off, too! But he'd been frightened and anxious to return home and start work on his ascension . . .

The thudding intensified. "Mr. Emerson—? Please come to the door, Mr. Emerson!"

Emerson's mouth was too dry to respond. Not now. Not after all the time and money he'd spent on locating the Aegrisomnia, only to have it taken away from him at the very moment of his triumph—! There had to be a way he could escape capture! There had to be—!

Even though he knew there was only one door in and out of the apartment, Emerson instinctively glanced around the room. His eye fell on his mother's old wardrobe with its full-length mirror set in the door.

Something sparked in the back of his head. He'd seen something in the book about mirrors, hadn't he? He flipped back a few pages—yes! Here it was. A spell that enabled the practitioner access to and from "the Land of the Reflected Ones". The formulae was simple enough for one such as skilled as himself.

There was a much heavier thump on the other side of the door. The police had stopped using their fists and were now applying their shoulders. However, Emerson had invested in a top-of-the-line set of deadbolts, for fear of the other tenants in the building breaking into his room while he was gone. The police would need one of those portable battering rams to get the door open. That meant he had just enough time to effect his escape.

Emerson stood in front of the wardrobe. The mirror was well over a hundred years old and thicker than any other he'd ever seen. It was slightly convex, protruding a good three inches from its setting. He remembered how his mother used to stand in front of it and primp herself, rattling on about the days when their family had ruled the town with a steel grip. Emerson took a deep breath to steady himself and closed his eyes, reciting the formulae, making the proper gestures and invoking the names of nameless gods. When he re-opened his eyes, the surface of the mirror had been transformed into something that rippled like water, yet glinted silver.

There was a thunderous crack from behind him as the deadbolts finally gave. Without looking back, Emerson stepped into the mirror.

His first impression was that he was being buried alive in gelatin, then he opened his eyes and saw silver fluid rippling around him like mercury, then he was standing in his room again. His first thought was that he'd failed. That he'd hallucinated the whole thing. Then he realized he was standing looking in the direction of the front door. He turned around and stared back the way he came. In place of the back wall of his apartment, with its bookshelves and piles of dirty clothes, there was a blank expanse—blank, that is, except for a oblong opening outlined in silvery light. Of course. How could there be a wardrobe on this side? A mirror does not reflect itself.

As he stared out of the mirror into his real-world apartment, the door flew inward and two policemen, their guns drawn, came into the room. Their mirror-images burst into the mirror-room at the exact same time, and Emerson cried out in alarm. But the mirror-police did not seem to see him, even though he was standing right in front of them. At first Emerson was puzzled, then he realized that of course they wouldn't know he was there, since their real-world counterparts did not see him, either. Unless they happened to look in the mirror.

Emerson quickly moved to one side of the silvery doorway, pressing himself against the blank wall. He seriously doubted the police had the imagination to realize their prey had escaped through the looking glass, but he wasn't going to risk detection. Besides, he could keep track of what the police were doing by watching their mirror-reverse doppelgangers.

Satisfied the mirror-room was empty, the mirror-cops motioned for a little old lady to enter. The old man's wife. One of the mirror-cops pointed to the Aegrisomnia, still sitting open on the table. Emerson strained to hear what the mirror-cop was asking the mirror-old woman, but his voice was twisted around so it sounded like he was talking backwards underwater. No doubt he was asking her if this was the book her husband had procured for his customer. The mirror-old woman shook her head 'no'.

Emerson frowned. Strange. The old man had spoken as if his wife was aware of what he was selling. Perhaps the old man hadn't shown her the book for fear of her becoming angry over the money he'd spent. Or perhaps he didn't want her becoming upset over the human skin binding.

One of the mirror-cops was scratching his head and looking around the room. He was bothered by the fact there was no one in a room double-bolted from the inside. As the mirror-cops huddled near the doorway to talk amongst themselves, the mirror-old woman remained by the table. At first Emerson could not make out what she was doing. Then, to his surprise, he realized she was reading the Aegrisomnia.

Sweat began to bead on his forehead and lip. Surely the old woman knew nothing of the secrets locked within the arcane formulae. He began to chew on his thumbnail. Just as he'd succeeded in convincing himself she was simply an old woman and nothing more, she looked up from her reading and stared directly into the mirror. Although she could not see him, Emerson knew she was looking for him.

As the mirror-old woman slowly approached, growing closer and closer to where Emerson cowered, his back pressed against the other side of a wall that didn't exist, he could hear the old man's voice ringing in his ears: my wife likes to read that stuff. It had never crossed Emerson's mind that the old man's wife might be a sorceress.

The mirror-old woman was standing right beside Emerson, but she did not see him. Instead, she stared straight ahead, peering through the silver doorway into the real-world. The mirror-cops were still talking amongst themselves, paying her no mind as she rummaged through her handbag. After a few seconds she retrieved a small, colorless wax crayon, the type used to scrawl designs on children's Easter eggs. Her wrinkled lips moved slightly as she mumbled something that even backwards and underwater was recognizable to Emerson as an invocation. As she called upon the nameless gods, the old woman made a series of markings on the mirror. Once finished, the old woman's reflection smiled to itself and headed out the door, followed shortly thereafter by the puzzled policemen.

The moment the door closed on them, Emerson peeled himself away from the wall and stood in front of the silvery doorway. His view of the world outside its borders was now obscured by a series of lines that pulsed with a dark power. He reached out to try and touch the inner surface of the mirror, but there was an loud, sharp sound, like that of an electric bug-light frying a particularly large fly, and a burst of purplish-black energy. Pain shot up Emerson's fingers and into his arm, causing him to jump back.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He couldn't think like that. Thinking like that lead to panic. And panic would get him nowhere. He was not trapped. How could he be? She was just an old woman. He, on the other hand, was an Emerson. And everyone knew an Emerson was better than anyone else. There was no way he could be out-foxed, out-maneuvered, outdone by an old woman. Even an old woman who'd mastered the Aegrisomnia.

The original might still be in the real world, but he had access to its mirror-twin! He moved to the duplicate table. Yes, it was still here. The police had not taken it with them. At least, not yet. All he had to do was to find a counter-spell to over-ride the old woman's hastily constructed barrier. . .

Emerson's grin of triumph collapsed as he opened the book and stared down at the mirror-Aegrisomnia's pages. The print was in reverse. The panic threatened to overwhelm him again, but he forced it back down.

Okay. So the words were printed backwards and in reverse. He would simply hold it up to the mirror and—but no. There was only one mirror in his room—and he was in it. A hysterical giggle burst from his lips.

Emerson bit the inside of his mouth so hard it brought blood. No! He refused to believe he was trapped! Refused! He was an intelligent man, he could figure out the problem placed before him if he just calmed down. He needed a drink, that was all. Yes, a drink would help steady his nerves and set his mind to the task he was about to undertake.

The wardrobe was situated in such a way that it reflected almost the entire room, including his humble cot. He kept a pint of scotch under the mattress for moments when he needed it ... But did that mean there was one in this world as well? Emerson reached under the duplicate of his bed, uncertain of what he'd find, and was relieved when his fingers closed about the glass surface of a bottle.

Emerson smiled at the pint of scotch as if it was a long-lost friend and hurriedly cracked the seal. Just to steady his nerves. That's all. Help him think. He tilted his head back and slugged back a double shot—and immediately spewed it out.

The stuff tasted like a cross between cat piss and gasoline. Granted, it was a cheap brand, but this was ridiculous! Emerson wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stared at the bottle. The print on the label was the same as that of the original—except it was reversed. Along with its molecular structure, apparently.

Mirror reverse. The Land of the Reflected Ones. But he wasn't a reflection. He was the real thing. And there was no way he could eat or drink in this world without poisoning himself.

Emerson scrambled back over to the table, clawing through the clutter for scrap paper and a pencil. He'd copy the formulae out of the book by hand, transposing the words so he could read from it. It would take time, but he had no other choice. He had to get out before he starved to death or died of thirst.

Emerson worked for two solid hours, fearful every minute that someone would walk into the real-world room and see him in the mirror. Not that they would believe what they saw, but it would have still proved a distraction and cost him precious time. When he was finished, Emerson stood in front of the silvery doorway and read aloud from the paper. He then waited for the dark lines criss-crossing the mirror's inner surface to disappear.

What was wrong? He'd made all the proper hand-signals, invoked the correct gods and demi-urges . . . Then he remembered how the mirror-replicas of the police and old woman had sounded when they spoke, like skewed tape-loops played backwards. Mirror-speak. The Language of the Reflected Ones. But he wasn't a reflection. He was the real thing. And he talked forward in a world where magical spells only worked if they were spoken not just backwards, but in reverse.

The panic resurfaced a third time and Emerson made no attempt to brook it. He began weeping and cursing at the top of his lungs and raced around the room, kicking over the furniture and knocking the books off their shelves.

After he'd exhausted himself, he stood gasping for breath, his hands planted on his knees. When he looked up, his gaze fell on the mirror-door. In the real-world, it lead out into the dingy, urine-stained hallway of his apartment building. But where did it lead to in the Land of the Reflected Ones? To another mirror, perhaps? It was worth finding out. Anything was better than being trapped in the reflection of his grimy studio apartment.

Since the police had battered in the original, the mirror-door was unlocked. Instead of the hallway outside his apartment, however, a sea of seething shadow and swirling mist filled the threshold. And in the roiling, formless chaos, something lifted something not unlike a head and opened something that might be called eyes. And smiled at him.

Emerson screamed and slammed the door, his fingers scrambling to try and secure locks and deadbolts that were no longer functional. Babbling prayers and pleas to gods he'd abandoned as a child, Emerson raced to the silver doorway that lead from the mirror world into his own. There was a burst of purplish light and the smell of ozone as he was hurled backward.

Emerson groaned as he lay on the floor of the reflected apartment, the smell of smoke rising from his singed hair and clothes. He was dully aware of having soiled his pants.

He found himself wishing he'd bothered to read Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Maybe it would have helped prepare him for his own ordeal in the land of reflections. But he seriously doubted Alice had been confronted by anything as disturbing as whatever it was that lurked on his threshold.

The Aegrisomnia had referred to the other side of the mirror as 'The Land of the Reflected Ones'. And he, after all the metaphysical and mystical studies he'd made over the years, had never once wondered what might fill a mirror when there was no one there to look into it.

I can't wait until I leave town! It's nothing but a swamp of deadend jobs, burn-outs, and half-assed wannabes. The economy sucks so bad you might as well be living in the Caribbean! Everything's aimed at tourists—no jobs available for anyone over the age of twenty-five, unless you want to go to your grave doing nothing but flipping burgers and changing hotel bed linen. None for me, thanks.

I picked up my bus pass to New York City today. All my friends keep asking me if I'm doing the right thing, chucking it all down here in favor of moving to the Big Apple without a job prospect or an apartment. Maybe I'm being foolish, but I know that if I stay around here another year my brain's going to turn into guacamole paste. Still, my old college roomie, Cynthia Brinkes, lives up there. She says I can crash on her sofa until I can find my own space. What's life about, if not taking chances?

Tomorrow's the big day! I'm so excited I can't sleep! At 7:05 a.m. I'll get on the bus for New York and my new life! A couple of friends threw me a going-away party the other night, and one of them even tried to talk me out of it. Even if I was having second doubts, there's no way I'd turn back now. I'm already committed. I've turned in my keys to my landlord and put my furniture and books in storage until I can send for them. New York, here I come!

Sneaking a few paragraphs while I can. Boy, the bus sure is crowded! And smelly! And there are some real weirdoes riding it, too! I had to change my seat because of some weird Pakistani guy trying to proposition me. He sat down and started talking to me after the bus left Nashville. He looked kind of harmless, at first, but after a few minutes he pointed at his lap and said "My balls are so full! Please help me!" That's when I moved. Looking forward to seeing Cynthia again, after all this time. She told me she'd be waiting for me at the bus station when I get there.

I'm finally in New York. It took me three days to get here on the bus. When I got off the bus at Port Authority I was so tired it took me a couple of minutes to realize just how scummy it really was. It was three in the morning when my bus pulled into the station and the only thing open was this cheesy fast-food joint in the lower level that sold over-priced hot dogs that looked like they'd spent a few weeks riding the weenie carousel. I looked around, hoping to spot Cynthia, but all I saw were either other people waiting to get on the buses or street people types who'd snuck past the cops guarding the doors to the main entrance by entering the lower level through the bus ports.

I thought maybe Cynthia was on her way, so I sat down at the fast-food place with my bags to wait for her. After a half hour I got tired of waiting and went to find a pay phone. The phone rang several times before Cynthia picked up. She sounded like I'd woken her up. I told her I was at the bus station, waiting for her. She mumbled she was sorry and that she was on her way to pick me up. When I got back to where I'd left my bags, they were gone! All my clean clothes and extra shoes and things like my make-up and toothbrush and spare tampons—gone! All I had was the clothes on my back and my purse. Luckily, I still had all my money on me.

I asked the black girl behind the counter if she'd seen someone take my suitcases. She looked at me like I was stupid and said; "Don't you know better than to walk off and leave your stuff by itself?"

Cynthia finally showed up around six o'clock. I didn't recognize her at first. She was wearing too much makeup that she looked like she'd been sleeping in. She was also wearing a really tight miniskirt and a blouse you could see right through. Her hair was frizzed out from a perm that didn't take and looked like it'd been dyed badly two or three times. She didn't look a thing like the young coed who'd planned on being a poet and an artist.

When I told her what had happened to my bags she shook her head and looked at me the same way the black girl had. "Jeannie, don't you know any better than to walk off and leave your stuff by itself? You're in New York now!"

I started to get mad, but made myself swallow it. Things were already bad, and I didn't want to make things worse by getting on the wrong side of Cynthia. After all, she was letting me crash at her place and had offered to help find me a job.

We left Port Authority and Cynthia waved down a cab. After a seven dollar cab ride—which I paid—we reached her place on the Lower East Side. When she first told me she lived in "the Village", I thought she meant Greenwich Village, you know, where the beatniks and hippies used to hang. But this is someplace called the East Village. Whatever that means.

Cynthia's apartment is in a big brick building on East Third Street, between Avenue A and Avenue B. Her place is on the ground floor. She calls it a "studio", but it's really an efficiency. The kitchen, bedroom, and living room are all the same room. There's a tiny bathroom with just enough space for a sink, a shower stall and toilet. Cynthia sleeps on a loft platform that's four feet off the ground.

The apartment is dark and smells of old grease and dirty clothes. There are roaches everywhere, because of the pile of dishes in the sink and stacked on the kitchen table. I'm writing this while sitting on Cynthia's couch. At least there's that much. Cynthia took off her clothes and crawled back into bed the moment we came in the door. This was hardly what I was expecting.

Still, Cynthia assures me I shouldn't have any trouble finding a job. She's even promised to set me up with an interview. Better get some rest. It's been a long day (and night) and I need to look my best if I'm going to go job hunting.

Wow! Talk about easy! I'm not in New York forty-eight hours and I've already got a job! And one that pays! Cynthia took me to this place over on Lexington Avenue. They're hiring women to answer the phones for twelve dollars a hour! Turns out its an escort agency. Cynthia introduced me to the woman who runs the business—Maddy—and she hired me right on the spot! All I have to do is answer the phone six to ten hours a day, check credit card numbers on the computer terminal, and relay messages for the girls who work out of the agency. At this rate I'll have enough money saved up to move into my own place within a month! I can hardly wait! Even though Cynthia's hardly ever home—and when she does come in, she's so wasted all she does is go right to sleep—this apartment is so damn depressing! You can't even look out the windows! Not the neighborhood's anything to look at, mind you.

Building next door to this one is abandoned, the windows covered with sheets of plywood. Coke dealers sit on the steps leading to the sealed front door and sell little plastic zip-lock pouches to people in broad daylight. Most of the ones buying are middle-aged Hispanic guys, although I've seen a few young white guys and a couple of black women go up to the steps, too. Some of them are walking dogs or pushing baby strollers.

I still can't get over how blatant the drug dealing is around here. I mean, I'm not stupid or naive. I've used drugs before—but stuff like pot, acid, occasionally speed. Everyone here seems to be into the hard stuff—coke, crack, smack. There's no room for simple buzzes. These people would mainline rocket fuel.

There sure are a lot of dogs in this area. Most of them big, brutish attack animals like Rottweilers, pit bulls, and Dobermans. There's also a lot of dog shit on the streets. At least I assume its dog shit. Saw a homeless woman taking a crap between a couple of parked cars late last night. Apparently there's a law about curbing dogs, but when it comes to humans . . .

Needless to say, what with all the dogs, homeless, and discarded syringes, I always look where I'm walking. Definitely not a place to walk around barefoot in.

I'm finally out of Cynthia's reeking hell-hole of an apartment. Not that where I am is any better, really. But at least it's my own place. After working overtime answering the phone at the escort a service for nearly six solid weeks, I finally had enough money to look for my own apartment.

The rents in the town—even the shiftiest part of it—are unbelievable! I looked at places for rent in five different neighborhoods, all of them progressively scarier, until I found this place. It's on Avenue D between Sixth and Seventh. There are stripped and gutted cars decorating the curbs and the fire hydrant seems to always be open to full flood, and there are never less than three dozen half-naked Latino kids running around screaming at any given time of the day.

At night the streets are loud, since the drug-dealers cruise by extra-slow in their cars so they can serenade the neighborhood with the rap and Latino music pumping out of the suitcase-sized speakers in the trunks. Instead of crickets, if I listen late at night I can hear automatic gunfire and the sounds of people screaming and arguing in the near distance.

My building is very old. It was probably originally built in the 1890s. The apartments have been divided and redivided over the years, according to what the building inspectors would allow. My whole apartment is little over three hundred square feet. There is a tiny two-burner gas stove wedged in between a sink and a midget refrigerator in one corner that's supposed to be my "kitchen". There is a rickety loft-bed with a mildewing double mattress atop it left over from the previous tenant. What I first thought was the first of two closets turned out to be the toilet. The bath-tub is a huge antique metal creature with lion's feet and a curved back lip. It's in plain sight in the kitchen area. Which is also the living area and the dining area and the sleeping area.

Since I don't have any furniture yet, the place looks kind of empty, although all I have to do is buy a Salvation Army couch and a table and a chair to make things crowded around here. Despite everything wrong with the building—the elevator's perpetually out of order, the mail-boxes get broken into every other night, and the halls reek of piss—it's rent-controlled at $450 a month.

The horrible thing is, most people living in the city would envy me my rent! Funny how your priorities and standards change once you're in New York.

The big bummer, though, is the fact that while I've been living in the city for nearly two months, I still haven't found the time to check out the museums or even take in a film down at the Angelika. And, outside of Cynthia and Maddy, I don't really even know anybody. I've spent all my time working trying to get the money to set myself up to take the time to go hang out at a bar and check out the scene. Hopefully that'll change pretty soon. After all, what's the point of living in Manhattan if you don't avail yourself of the culture?

Things went really bad today. So bad my brain's still not able to handle everything that went down.

I went into work today just like usual. During my lunch break. Maddy—the woman who runs the escort agency I answer the phone for—Lady Day & Night—came up to me and asked me if I liked my job. I said sure. Then Maddy asks me if I'd like to make more money. I said of course. Then she tells me that if I want to keep my job. I've got to start going on out-calls at least twice a week. I told her I had to think about it. She said I could think until tomorrow.

Man, what am I gonna do? They're telling me if I want to keep my job, I've got to be a hooker. I know they call it being an "escort", but it's still prostitution. Besides, most of the Johns are Shriners and opticians from out of town, in the city for conventions. Men like my dad. Ick. I can't do that kind of stuff. Not for money. Not with strangers—certainly not the kind of strangers who'd use an escort service. Just thinking about it is enough to make me puke.

Not to mention little things like eating and keeping shoes on my feet. Where's the money going to come from? I'm going to have a hard time finding a job that paid as good as that one. Still, I've got to stand strong. I can't buckle just because I got thrown a curve ball on this.

If I give in, I'll end up like Cynthia, turning tricks and blowing everything she makes on smack so she can live with what's she's become. It's really sad talking to her. It's like communing with a ghost. Every now and then I catch a glimmer of the girl who was going to take Manhattan's art circle by storm with her painting and her poetry, but most of the time she's either strung out or needing a fix. Maddy fired her from the escort service a month ago because of the tracks on her arms.

Cynthia wears long sleeves buttoned down to her wrists all the time now, no matter how hot it is. Last I heard, she was trolling for Johns over on Allen Street, where the skankiest of the crack-whores hang out. I refuse to let the city get to me like that. I absolutely refuse.

Another day of job-hunting. I feel like I'm taking huge chunks of time and tossing them down the toilet. Most of these jobs don't pay shit, and the ones that do pay shit have fifty other applicants waiting in line by the time I get there—and I'm there before dawn! Maybe I ought to just sit on my butt and collect unemployment and food stamps and spend the day hanging out on the front steps and watching broadcast T.V. like everyone else in this fucking neighborhood does.

This place is really scary. I mean, it's always been scary, but back when I was making money and thought it was only a matter of time before I could move into a better neighborhood, I ignored a lot of what does down around here. But now that it looks like I'm stuck here—I've taken to sleeping with a butcher knife under my pillow. I also keep the cheap little black & white portable I bought off one of the street peddlers over on Second Avenue for ten bucks on all night so I can't hear the people next door fighting and fucking and abusing their children. Don't those people ever get tired? It's like living next door to a damn zoo!

I remember how upset I used to get about the people who'd come up and buy drugs from the dealer next door to Cynthia's crib. At least they went somewhere else to do their shit up. In this neighborhood there's no such self-restraint. The junkies and crack-heads buy their poison down on the corner then wander to the middle of the block to shoot up. Hell, they don't even have the decency to crouch in a doorway or something! It certainly takes the guess-work out of who is or isn't doing crack. When you see a guy standing on the curb, lighting a Coca-Cola can, there's only one thing he could possibly be doing.

Cynthia showed up yesterday looking for a place to stay the night. Seems like she's finally been evicted from her crib. Not surprising, considering she hadn't paid rent in five months. What could I say? She was my best friend in college. She let me crash at her place until I had my own apartment lined up. I couldn't just let her sleep on the sidewalk. Turned out to be a big mistake. When I got back from job-hunting today Cynthia was gone—and so was the last of the money I had stashed in the sugar bowl. Three hundred and fifty bucks. Gone. She's probably already nodding out on some corner over on Allen Street, trying to wave down some horny asshole from Jersey. Hope she gets a Rifkin, the skanky bitch.

I hate this fucking neighborhood and all the stinking spic assholes in it! I hate their fucking stupid music and their fucking lousy food and the lousy bodegas that smell like someone's peed in them. They're sleazy, lazy, dirty, stupid, violent people. I was walking back from the subway after registering for food stamps. I left the house at seven in the morning and it already getting dark by the time I got back to the neighborhood. It took all damn day just to do that! But at least I got a packet of food stamps to tithe me over for the next week or two.

I was walking down Avenue D, near Third Street, when I saw this group of PR girls hanging at the corner, sitting on the hood of a parked car. There were four of them, wearing leather jackets and too much make-up and I could tell some of them had tattoos on the wrists. Gang girls.

Before I could say anything else, the one in front of me grabbed me by the hair and punched me in the face while one of them circled behind me and made a grab for my purse. I guess it's a testimony to how much living in New York City has changed me that I not only didn't let go of my purse, that I also got away from them by ramming the leader in the gut with my head. But I'd be damned if a bunch of sleazy spic whores-in-training were going to take anything of mine.

They chased me for at least a block and a half, screaming "I'm gonna cut choo, blondie! Cut choo good!", but I was too fast for them. God damn spic bitches. The anger is finally starting to ebb away, and with it the adrenaline. My god, I could have been killed! And for what? A five-and-time eel-skin shoulder bag and seventy-five dollars in food stamps. Shit. I guess this means I can't walk down Third Street again.

Finally landed a job waiting tables at this trendy retro Seventies bistro in the West Village. I have to wear bell-bottom flares, stack heels, a Farrah Fawcett wig-hat, and a macramé midi-blouse, but at least I get off easier than the male wait-staff—they have to wear lime green polyester leisure-suits with fashionable clown-width ties. It's not enough to support me entirely, and I'll be damned if I'll take myself off the food stamp roles. Is this what I spent four years in college to become? A waitress and welfare cheat?

Took the bus home from work tonight. Saw a homeless crack-addict teetering around the bus shelter. I'd heard that crack makes their skin crawl and itch in such a way when they're fucked-up that all they can do is obsessively scratch and claw at their face and arms. What's it called? Tweaking. So I guess this homeless guy was tweaking. He was staring into the rear-view mirror of one of the parked cars, scraping away at his face with what looked like a pen knife. He'd spend several minutes like he was cleaning barnacles off the hull of a ship or something, then take a hit from this bent-up Coke can, rock back-and-forth on his heels for a few seconds, then go back to scraping away what was left of his face. Do-it-yourself leprosy.

The homeless. God I'm so sick of them. I knew New York had a homeless problem, but I never realized just how bad it really was. Jesus, I can't go out on the streets without feeling like I'm walking through downtown Calcutta. They're everywhere! It's making me nuts. Every day I get hit up for spare change at least twelve times. Do I have a sign taped to my back that says "Hi, my name is Jeanie! I have spare change!" or something?

I used to think they were people like me, only just down on their luck—and maybe some of them are. But most of the ones I see are either crazy or on drugs or just no-good bums. They stand there, shaking their fucking paper coffee cups like their some kind of year-round Salvation Army Santa. Giving you dirty looks and calling you fat or ugly or a bitch if you don't give them a quarter. Like I could afford to even part with a lousy dime!

While I was coming home from work last night some homeless geek literally accosted me. I was on the corner of St. Mark's and Second Avenue, waiting for the light to change, when this piece of walking rubbish comes lurching up to me, waving one of those ubiquitous Greek coffee cups.

The geek was so filthy I couldn't tell what sex or race it was. I assume it was male. Maybe I'm wrong. The only thing I noticed was that his skin was gray and gritty—the color of pavement. He shook his cup at me and made some kind of plea for spare change—at least, that's what I think he was doing. Maybe he was reciting the Gettysburg Address. I really can't remember, since I was doing my best to ignore him.

When he realizes I'm not going to give him money to go away, he gets really belligerent and grabs my arm. I instinctively jerk away from his touch, losing my balance and falling off the curb and into the street, where I come close to getting smeared by a passing taxi. When I turn around, the homeless geek is gone. I managed to escape unscathed, except for where he grabbed me.

My upper forearm, just above the elbow, is badly abraded—as if I'd somehow fallen down and scraped myself on the sidewalk. Hope I don't catch anything. A lot of these street people have TB.

Landed a second job, this one part-time. I work from two to seven in the morning three to five days a week as an assistant shipping clerk for a novelty company in Midtown. They repackage and distribute all kinds of cheap crap they buy from factories in Taiwan and Korea, most of it knock-off bootlegs of popular, copyrighted characters like the Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Batman. Lately I've been packing and shipping out lots of cheap purple plush dinosaurs stuffed with styrofoam pellets. On top of my waitressing gig, I'm averaging sixty-seventy hour work weeks. I still don't have the time to go check out the museums, much less find a boyfriend. I'm still on food-stamps, too.

Had a bad time on the subway. Not from getting mugged or having some perv try and rub up against me, though. This was weirder. I was coming back from my Midtown job, and I fell asleep on the F Train. I was sitting down, staring at this homeless guy sprawled out on the seats opposite me, and the next thing I know, I'm nodding off. It was a really strange feeling, because I knew I was no longer awake, but at the same time I could see everything in perfect clarity.

There were other people in the subway car. After all, it was after seven in the morning, the earliest tip of rush hour, and the train—while hardly crowded—was far from being deserted. There were spics, slopes, pakis, hebes, along with the ever-present homeboys.

And the minute my head dropped to my chest, they put aside their newspapers and paperback novels and crossword puzzles and rose as one, shambling toward my sleeping figure like extras from a zombie movie.

I was terrified by the sight of their slack, alien features, repulsed by their oppressive stink, as they stood ringed about me, straining forward like beasts eager to be fed. I could feel their hungry stares carving me up, dividing my flesh into rump roast, head cheese, ham hocks . . .

Suddenly the crowd parts, shouldered aside by a homeless person with gray, scabby skin that resembles pavement. His eyes appear vacant, then I realize what I'm looking at are unwashed, empty windowpanes. The homeless person grins down at me, revealing a mouth full of bent and rusty syringes, and reaches out to touch me.

I awoke with a strangled gasp, only to find an elderly Ukrainian woman staring at me disapprovingly. I had missed my station and was halfway to Coney Island.

Really tired. Didn't get much sleep last night. The city kept me awake until six in the morning, screaming and yowling and threatening itself. At one point the distant police and fire sirens, the car alarms, crying babies, screaming women, angry pimps, automatic weapon fire seems to meld together into a single voice. The voice of the city. And I could swear it was calling my name.

Police showed up at my crib today. Cynthia's dead. They found her early this morning under the Williamsburg Bridge, where the coke-and-drug burn-outs blow Hassidics for five bucks. I hadn't seen Cynthia in almost three months. Not since she stole the last of my savings. I guess she'd slid even farther, and faster, than even I suspected. I keep think I'm going to feel sad or something, but the best I can muster is a sigh or relief. I guess it's up to me to break the news to her parents. What should I say? What can I say?

Your daughter Cynthia came to New York city to become a poet and an artist, but ended up a prostitute and a junkie. By the time her body finally died she had turned into someone none of her friends recognized or liked. The city ate her hair, guts and all. Hope your are both doing well.

It's getting colder and the drug-dealing, brawling, and pimping has moved from the street into the surrounding buildings. I can't walk up to my crib without having to step over passed-out drunks, junkies shooting up, or whores blowing Johns. The steam radiator is always on, turning my shoe box of a room into a sweltering hothouse. I have to keep the windows open to keep from suffocating. As it is, the radiator leaks, steaming the wallpaper off the surrounding walls and loosing the plaster on the ceiling. I expect to wake up one day and find the whole roof collapsed on top of me. Assuming that I wake up.

I have to write this down. Right now. While its still fresh. The police are going to want to know. I keep telling myself that I have to remember everything. Just as it was. So they'll believe me. They have to believe me.

I was coming home from my waitress job. I didn't have to go to my second job tonight. That's not until the weekend. I was coming down Fourth Street, in between B and C. There was hardly anyone of the street, because it was cold. Not so cold that you would freeze—but cold enough you didn't want to be hanging out if you had somewhere warmer and dryer. I hear what sounds like a bottle breaking behind me, and I turn and look . . .

There were at least four or five of them, clumped together. At first I thought they were a collection of trash bags left out on the curb. Then one of them begins to move. He lifts his head and turns his face towards me and motions with an arm, as if he wants me to help him get to his feet. It's late at night and the light isn't very good, but I can tell his face is gray. The homeless geek opens his mouth and this sound like a car alarm comes out. He grins then, displaying teeth that aren't teeth but broken, rusty syringes.

I take a step backwards, too scared to scream or cry or even run. All I can do is stare at this thing's face as it and its friends get to their feet. One of them keeps swinging its head back and forth, the way disturbed children do, and I catch a glimpse of gray skin and dirty, cracked windowpanes where its eyes should be. It produces a forty-ounce malt liquor bottle from its rags and hiccups like a ambulance's siren when its trying to clear a jammed intersection.

One of them has its pants open. It strokes its exposed penis, which is gray and gleams like wet pavement. The sound it makes as it masturbates is like sandpaper on concrete. It leers at me, drool spilling over its blackened, festering gums.

That's when I ran. I could hear them as they came after me, their voices raised in a cacophony of whooping sirens, booming hip-hop, screaming babies, automatic gunfire, and shrill car alarms. I was so frightened my ribcage felt as if it was going to burst and my heart and lungs spill out onto the street.

I probably would have made it home free if I hadn't slipped in some shit in between parked cars and fallen. I landed hard enough to chip one of my teeth and bite my lower lip hard enough for it to bleed. I was dazed for a second—then one of them grabbed my ankle and began pulling me towards him. It felt like he was wearing a sandpaper glove.

I began to kick and struggle. I glimpsed someone walking on the other side off the avenue and I screamed for him to help me. He paused for a second then turned and hurried away. I screamed even louder, trying to buck my way free of the things surrounding me.

My attackers closed in around me, their gray, stony faces blocking out what little light came from the nearby streetlight. I could feel something like a poured concrete rod pushing itself between my thighs. I shrieked as it penetrated, tearing and shredding delicate tissue into bloody mulch. It felt as if someone had impaled me on a blunt stake, leaving me to bleed to death from my cunt. I screamed one final time before blacking out, joining a thousand other distress calls I'd heard every night and ignored.

I woke up I don't know when—maybe a hour later. I was sprawled across the steps of my building. To my amazement, I discovered that I was still wearing my clothes and the contents of my purse remained untouched. Nor was I bleeding from my vagina. The avenue was empty and I was alone.

I'm going to call the cops in the morning and report a rape. Even though there no physical or medical evidence anything happened to me. Even though they'll end up thinking I'm some kind of lunatic or drug addict.

It happened. I know it did. What happened may have been a nightmare, but it wasn't a dream.

Write it all down. I have to write it all down before I fall asleep. Or else I'll forget things. Forget details. I can't risk anyone think this is a hoax. I have to convince the police that this really happened. That it wasn't some kind of hallucination.

I'm so tired. Sleep. I need sleep. The city's been calling my name every time I try to sleep. And I'm so tired. So very tired. I have to get out of this place. Out of this hell. I need to go home. I have to escape before I'm devoured, soul and all, just like Cynthia. I have to get away. The city knows my name.

I woke up today after sleeping over a week. I feel wonderfully refreshed and not in the least weakened. I'm not too sure what my dreams were about, except I'm certain I dreamt of the city.

As I thumb through this diary it is all I can do not to toss it down the incinerator. To think I even contemplated leaving the city! When I stand at my window and look out upon the city, I am awash with the joy and security that comes with knowing that I have a place in the scheme of things. That I have taken the worst and survived—the city has scourged me and, finding me worthy of its cruel affection, made me its bride.

In the dim light of the coming dawn I stroke my new skin, the one that grew while I lay sleeping. It is rough and dry and the color of pavement. I stand before my mirror and smile, my mouth full of broken needles. I think back on my previous fear of my environment and I laugh at my foolishness, and my laugh is the bark of a 9mm handgun. I shake out my hair, which shines and rustles like strips of plastic garbage bags.

Cynthia did it all wrong. She succumbed to the city's mad passions without allowing it to transform her. And for the city there can be only lovers or meat. Cynthia failed the courtship dance and found herself on the low end of the food chain.

Soon I will leave this place to go and join my lover, to wander his graffiti-smeared heart day and night. Jeannie Singleton is dead, tossed aside with the husk of dead skin that served as my chrysalis. From now on I shall go by another name. My true name.

Sign of the Asp,© Nancy A. Collins,2000; originally published in Dark Destiny: Proprietors of Fate, White Wolf Publishing, 1997.

The One-Eyed King,© Nancy A. Collins, 2000; originally published in The Fantastic Adventures of Robin Hood, Signet, 1991.

The Thing From Lovers Lane, © Nancy A. Collins, 2000; originally published in It Came From The Drive-In, Bantam, 1996.

Vampire King of the Goth Chicks, © Nancy A. Collins, 2000; originally published in Cemetery Dance Magazine, Vol. 8 #3, 1998. Cemetery Dance Publications.

Someone's In The Kitchen, © Nancy A. Collins, 2000; originally published in Gahan Wilson's Ultimate Haunted House, HarperCollins, 1996.