When the Darkness Falls
Author: J. F. Gonzalez
Date: 2006-10-15 23:19:45+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Fantasy; General; Horror
Description: Four years after his first collection of short stories, J. F. Gonzalez and Midnight Library are proud to bring you this follow-up volume. Within these pages you will find: A nightmare in which an axe-wielding madman stalking the streets becomes reality for a young family trapped in their home during the height of a blizzard. In a world ravaged by the living dead, one man's mission to find female companionship lands him more than he bargained for. A magazine editor discovers that a deceased pulp writer's most notorious work is a warning of Lovecraftian nightmares yet to come on an unsuspecting
Publisher: Midnight Library

Table of Contents

Introduction: Here We Go Again

Desire

Menage A Trois

Out of the Cradle

Mummy

Riding the Storm Out

The Watcher From the Grave

Sending Them Home

Finding the Flame

Offices

Going Home

The Lingering Scent of Brimstone

Addict

What Happened At Forest Green Cemetery

Girlfriend

Story Notes

About J. F. Gonzalez

Also by J. F. Gonzalez

Acknowledgements

Copyright

WHEN THE DARKNESS FALLS

Introduction:

Here We Go Again

DATELINE, LANCASTER, PA – June 16, 2005

So here we are, four years after I began assembling my last short story collection Old Ghosts and Other Revenants, with a batch of new stories that have been published since then.

In the three years since Old Ghosts and Other Revenants was published, I’ve had probably a dozen new stories appear and another half dozen awaiting publication. I’ve also had four original novels published; well, actually five if you count one that is currently out in the marketplace under a phony name (my lips are sealed on that for reasons I won’t go into here).

In 2001 when my first collection was compiled, all of my novels had been published exclusively within the small press. Fast forward to the day I write this and, of the five additional novels that have been published, two have been bought for mass market paperback reprint by Leisure.

There’s been film interest in one of those novels—Survivor.

Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

I'VE JUST MADE an initial list of the stories that I intend to include in this book. Keeping in mind that it won’t be published until probably late 2006, it will be interesting to see what the final contents are. For now, here is what I have in mind.

Epiphany

Desire

The Lingering Scent of Brimstone

House of the Damned

Sending Them Home

Girlfriend

Riding the Storm Out

Choices

Mummy

Going Home

Old Ghosts

What Happened at Forest Green Cemetery

First Born

Web of Deceit

A New Life

Love Hurts

Playing the Game

That's a pretty nice list, don’t you think? Six of these stories appear in my previous collection Old Ghosts and Other Revenants, but that title is now out of print. As of this writing, my reasoning for including them here in this collection is to provide you with a sample of that particular book. You will see that the majority of the remaining tales comprise of those published from 2002 onward. I expect to have no less than three new tales appear in 2005 and I am currently writing three other stories for anthologies that are slated to appear in 2006 and beyond. That doesn’t count the other stories I’ve written I haven’t mentioned–written on spec–that I’ve submitted to magazines that may be published prior to this collection’s appearance. This means there’s a chance that the contents of this book may change.

It will be interesting to see how this shapes up. That’s why I put my initial notes on the compilation of this collection in this introduction. It gives you, the reader, a chance to see how a writer makes their decision on what stories to include in a short story collection. With me, I prefer to select a variety of tales regardless of theme, written over a specific period of time. Some are personal favorites, others ranked high with my readers. In this case I’m toying seriously with including some material that overlaps with another collection, now out of print, as well as material published after that collection.

But we have a way to go until this collection sees print, so let’s stop now and see where things pick up in a year from now.

DATELINE, FEBURARY 20, 2006

As you’ve no doubt noticed from the Table of Contents of this collection, the material in this volume has changed. Gone are the older stories from Old Ghosts and Other Revenants in favor of more recent stories. I’ve also thrown in a long novella that was published in 2000 that I felt fit. This was a piece that would have appeared in Old Ghosts had there not been space considerations.

As a whole, I’m pleased with the final selection of these stories. They run from science fiction, to supernatural horror, to intense tales of psychological horror ala Survivor (my novel, not the “reality” show of the same name). I’m all over the place with my fiction, and this collection is a reflection of that.

Short stories remain my favorite literary form to write. I’m also a fan of them as a reader. I probably write three or four original stories a year, regardless of anthology invitation. Of course, it’s always nice to have a market already lined up when beginning such a tale and thankfully a handful of these tales were written to order. I’ve included a special piece at the end of this collection detailing how each story was written that will probably be interesting for those who like this kind of thing. For the rest of you, well, you have the stories. And isn’t that why you’re here?

J. F. Gonzalez

Lititz, PA,

February 20, 2006

Desire

I RECENTLY HAD sex with Gloria, my wife of forty years. I never thought we’d have a physical relationship ever again.

After all, she’s been dead for five years.

This seems like an unlikely method of writing down the events that have recently taken place in my life, but I want whoever reads this–homicide detectives and the forensic guys–to understand what has happened.

I want it made known that I loved my family. I loved my wife. I desired her above all other women; I never once cheated on her, never once had amorous thoughts towards another woman throughout our marriage. I loved the two wonderful children we produced and raised together. I loved my grandchildren. Just know this, okay?

Know one other thing, too. If you do read this document, go into my office and find a file in the right hand drawer of my desk with the label “Haynes Vs. State of California, 1998” on it. Read the material in that file, and the one after that which is labeled “Related cases.”

Don’t even bother trying to find the black box. You won’t find it. As I write this I can see it on the living room floor, but I’ll be willing to bet it will be gone when you read this. You won’t find it in the trash, either. It’ll simply be gone. I’ve gone ahead and shot a photo of it on the digital camera (which I’ll leave on the table), but I’m willing to bet it won’t show up in the photos. Likewise, I’m willing to bet the clerk at Bill’s Video and Books on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana will have no knowledge of ever selling me a sex doll called “Dream Girl”.

Nor will you find any other adult video/book merchant in the country who will claim to stock it.

And if you probe further like I did, you might hear the stories, which might tempt you into exploring further.

You probably won’t get anywhere.

Then again, you might come across it somewhere.

That might validate what I’m about to write here.

However, if you do find the doll and are tempted to purchase it, this might lead you to where I’m at now.

Contemplating.

God, what did I get into?

Already the smell is starting to get to me. If I’m found like this, dead by my own hand, with Gloria here...well, they’ll think I’ve been sleeping with the dead and I want to confess right here and now that is not the case. I’m not a necrophile. You’ll find that hard to believe if I win this battle, but at least my children and grandchildren will be safe, even if they have to live with knowing that the physical evidence points to that perversity, as well as my implied madness.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. First, I’m going to get the bottle of Jack Daniel’s I have at the bar and the .45 Caliber Colt. I’ll need both of them.

If I win, I’ll save the Colt for the end.

I RETIRED FROM the Pasadena Police Department in August of 1998 with a full pension and a nice 401k plan. I had joined the LAPD in October of 1959 and saw a lot during my service. Gloria and I had only been married for two years and had a one-year old son when the Watts Riots broke out. I was on duty when that happened, and Gloria had been frantic throughout that troubling week of unrest. I don’t know how I made it through myself, but somehow I did. I quickly rose up the ranks from beat cop to homicide detective in 1969. I was made Chief of Homicide in 1975, and in 1982 I took a job with the Pasadena Police Department as a Homicide Detective. I took the job because I wanted to be back in the field again. Being Chief of Homicide was nice, but it meant staying behind a desk most of the time. I enjoyed the hunt too much.

One of my last cases seemed pretty open-and-shut at first glance. You may remember it: in April of 1998 a middle-aged man named Martin Haynes gunned down his wife in the bedroom of their sprawling ranch house in Pasadena with a .22 caliber pistol he had bought fifteen years before. He had lain in wait for her on a Sunday afternoon and picked her off when she entered their bedroom. He’d shot her five times, killing her instantly. Then he’d waited for the police to show up.

I was the lead detective on the case, and questioned him later at the station. He claimed that he never sat down to wait for the police, which is what it appeared when the first officers arrived. He had been waiting for his girlfriend, some woman named Brandy, to show up. He claimed that he’d met this woman two nights before and that she’d promised him that they could go away together...only he had to kill his wife and children first.

Here’s what eventually got him sent to the Atascadero State Hospital rather than being put on trial for first degree murder: when he was asked where he met this woman Brandy, he said she’d come out of the black box that was in his bedroom. He’d bought her at an establishment called Le Sexx Shoppe in Old Town Pasadena.

The funny thing was we found no black box in his bedroom, or anywhere on the property.

Mr. Haynes insisted on this story, though, and didn’t deviate from it under intense questioning. In fact, the psychiatrists we brought in to question him and determine whether he was really delusional or merely faking it, reported unanimously that Martin Haynes bore all the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and paranoid delusions. A conviction would be impossible.

That’s where we were by the time my retirement rolled around. In a way, I was glad to be rid of the case.

Of course, we checked Martin Haynes’s story completely, or at least the part of it that was rooted in reality. He had checked into a hotel on Foothill Boulevard in La Crescenta on a Friday evening in April. He was very much into sex dolls–you know, the blow-up dolls that are sold in porno shops and in the backs of magazines like Hustler and Swank. Martin had bought a new doll prior to showing up at the hotel, which he claimed was called “Dream Girl”, and according to him it was the most realistic sex doll he’d ever had. He claimed he inflated the doll up, and did whatever the hell guys like him do to sex dolls. The way Martin talked about this in his interrogations with the psychiatrists and I, you would think he was talking about having sex with a real woman because that’s what it had been like with him. Only after he fucked this doll, he claimed she became a real woman—a real flesh and blood woman—and that he and this woman had screwed like bunnies all weekend.

So of course I think the guy is making this up to cop an insanity plea. That’s the direction our questioning began to go towards: trying to get the subject to contradict himself or trip up. Nothing worked. Martin Haynes stuck with this story and didn’t deviate from it at all. It was actually creepy listening to him. The guy actually believed a blow-up doll had become a real-life human being, that it had become a woman with long black hair, dark eyes, with a perfect body and beautiful full breasts, that she was willing to do anything sexually with him. Well, no wonder why he called the doll a Dream Girl, right? The physical description of the woman was one of the first things we tried to go on as a way to dismantle his defense but that didn’t work. We had a sketch artist do a composite of her and put that over the wire. We never did locate her.

Once the psychiatrists began questioning him they agreed he wasn’t just making the stuff up. He really believed what he told us, and it was of their professional opinion that he was suffering from various delusions.

Much of the evidence supported this fact. The clerk at the adult video store didn’t remember Martin, but the store’s security video camera showed him making a purchase. In the video, Martin was observed purchasing something in a large black box. A search through the store’s records showed that the store had received a novelty called “Dream Girl” from a company called Eros, Ltd, based in a small town in Massachusetts. Inquiries to the company were in vain; the firm had dissolved shortly after they shipped the doll to Le Sexx Shoppe, and I was still trying to trace their shareholders and owners when my retirement came up.

Other aspects of the investigation went nowhere. I spoke to the desk clerk at the motel Martin checked into, several guests who’d stayed on the premises that weekend, as well as a waitress who served him and several patrons of the coffee shop he claimed he had breakfasted at one morning with Brandy. The witnesses unanimously agreed that Martin had been alone at the restaurant. In fact, the waitress related that he was carrying on a conversation with himself and acted like he was actually talking to somebody across the table from him.

So that’s where we were when my retirement came up. Open and shut, right? My superiors seemed to think so, as well as the DA. Martin Haynes was whisked quietly away to the Atascadero State Hospital.

But for some reason this case nagged at me.

It shouldn’t have. Martin’s kids related that their father was not a violent man, that he never would have done anything like this. Likewise, his colleagues at the HMO he worked at all had high praise for him and were shocked by the allegations. Everybody we talked to—family, friends, neighbors—unanimously agreed that even though some of them were aware of strain in the marriage, Martin was not a violent person and never would have harmed his wife. His children were shocked to learn from Martin’s confession that he had planned to kill them that afternoon after killing his wife.

On the week before I officially retired, I tapped into the VICAP network and submitted a query to find out if anything similar to the Martin case had happened elsewhere. The data I included in my query was too broad for the system, and as a result I got thousands of results. I asked an analyst at the office to comb through the spreadsheet I sent to him containing the information. “Humor me,” I said. “In your spare time see if you can find a pattern in these cases.” I gave him some rather general outlines of what I was looking for, gave him my home number, and then tried to forget about the case as I embarked on my retirement.

Howard called me at home five days later with the news that a man in Nebraska had killed his wife about two weeks after Martin Haynes killed his wife, Vicky.

He, too, claimed to have been ordered to kill his wife by his lover, a ravishing blonde woman he’d met that weekend.

A woman he claimed had transformed from a sex doll into a real-life woman.

That’s what grabbed my attention. That’s what started the obsession.

I contacted the Grand Island Police. The case was eerily similar. The perpetrator was a middle manager at a textile firm who was having marital problems. He claimed his wife no longer wanted to have sex with him, so he developed his fetish with sex dolls because he was afraid of the consequences that might befall him if he sought pleasure with prostitutes. He claimed that Cheryl (the blonde woman) had come out of the Dream Girl box he bought at a Grand Island Adult novelty shop, that he’d had the best sex with her he’d ever had, and that Cheryl told him she loved him, that she wanted to be with him forever and all he had to do for them to be together was for to kill his wife.

The police in Grand Island had made the same inquiries we did and gotten about as far. The establishment that sold Warren Douglas the box had no record of the transaction, and when I questioned them a few weeks later they claimed they’d never heard of an outfit called Eros, Ltd. The perpetrator in this case was also judged a paranoid schizophrenic by the psychiatrists who examined him.

Even though I was retired, I couldn’t help feeling obsessed by both cases. It drove Gloria a little nuts; we’d planned our retirements to coincide with each other and do nothing but relax and travel the country. But with this newfound information, I began to devote much of my free time to chasing down leads and investigate them more fully, even though both cases were officially closed. I stopped when I ran into the same dead end with the Nebraska case.

For the next two years I kept in touch with my old colleagues at the station, and whenever I had a moment I would do some research on my own. Gloria and I bought a Winnebago, and every few months we would take off on a jaunt. Sometimes we would board a plane and visit other parts of the country. When we were at home we found plenty to do; gardening, home improvements, catching up on our reading, taking long walks around the neighborhood. We spent every evening making love, and our physical relationship was rekindled to the heat it had when we first met in 1961, when she was a young college girl. She was beautiful, and had blossomed into a mature beauty that was natural and radiant. I didn’t lie when I said earlier that I never desired another woman throughout our marriage. Gloria remained beautiful and desirable to me from the moment I laid eyes on her. When we made love it was like joining with her in the flesh for the first time. When her heat enclosed me I could never contain myself, and she would urge me on in a voice that drove me wild. And when I released myself it was like being young again. Gloria satisfied me in so many ways, and she continued to do so even in our retirement. Our appetite for sex had never waned; in fact, it seemed to grow stronger.

Perhaps it was our growing contentment with each other, with our lives, that allowed Gloria to tolerate my fascination with the Haynes case. Sometimes I would do research on the Internet at home, typing in “Eros, Ltd” in a search engine to see what came up. Nothing ever did. Or I would stop at one of the many sex shops along Harbor Boulevard in Orange County, or Sunset, or Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and browse, noting the novelties, especially the sex dolls. I would ask the proprietors if they had ever heard of a doll called “Dream Girl” or an outfit called Eros, Ltd, and they would shake their heads. Likewise, I would sometimes purchase the raunchiest of the adult magazines by the bundle and go through each one carefully in the privacy of my office while Gloria was engaged in another household activity, looking for any mention of the company or the doll. I saw neither. And on a few occasions I’d sit at my desk, an issue of Chic or D-Cup lying on my desk, feeling I was chasing an urban legend, the paranoid fantasy of a genuine schizophrenic and Gloria would come in, approaching me from behind to kiss the top of my head, and she’d see the open magazines. “Still obsessed with that case, José?”

I would nod. “Yeah, I don’t know why I keep doing this, but—“

“It doesn’t bother me,” Gloria would say, looking at the graphic photos. Her hand would stray down to my crotch or slide beneath my shirt, her fingers tracing lightly over my nipples. “In fact, looking at these magazines gives me some ideas of what we should do for the rest of the day.”

And that’s how it went for almost two years. Gloria and I enjoyed our retirement. We went through a sexual rebirth in which it felt like we were rediscovering each other again, and in my spare time whenever I thought of my last case I did a little research.

Then the nightmare arrived: Gloria was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Our world collapsed.

The pains actually started a week or so before we left for a trip to Colorado and had persisted throughout our little vacation. Gloria called her doctor to arrange an appointment at my urging, and she was already dismissing the pains as indigestion. She had her appointment the day after our return, and the test results came back a day later.

All my focus centered on Gloria at that moment.

I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. She took the news like a trooper. She refused to let the cancer thwart her lifestyle, and she continued her social life and gardening, but I could tell that the strain was working on her. The doctors tried everything—the chemotherapy zapped much of her energy, and there were days when she could barely move. I would wait on her hand and foot, tending to her every need. Our children—Frank and Jessica—stopped by more frequently and spent every weekend with us either at the house or the hospital where Gloria was undergoing treatment. I tried to remain strong but it was difficult. Many times I couldn’t take it and would collapse in a crying fit, the sudden emotion overwhelming me. I was losing the only woman I had ever loved, the woman I desired over all others. I did not know what I would do without her, and during the few moments of lucidity we had together I would tell her this and she would smile and whisper, “You’ll do fine without me, José. You are a strong man. You will get through this.”

Meaningless words meant to soothe my troubled soul, but they were no use. I clung to their false sense of hope to no avail. On the morning of June 16, 2000, on the fifth floor of the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Baldwin Park, with our children and grandchildren gathered around her bedside, my beloved wife slipped away quietly and peacefully.

I fell apart.

For the first time in my life I was lonely. Sure, I had my children, my grandchildren, and my many friends. But I was missing my soul’s mate, my best friend, my lover and companion. Gloria was such an important piece in my life that with her gone it was like I was missing something.

I kept her alive in my dreams, in my heart...

In my desire for her...

I coped the best I could. I joined support groups for widowers; I became active in my church. My friends and family kept me busy. But there was still something missing. Things just weren’t the same without Gloria.

I suppose that’s how I got through it. I coped, I continued living. And eventually I wandered back to that old case, the last one I worked on before I retired.

I must admit it didn’t fascinate me the way it had before. One night I found the files on my computer and read through them, trying to rekindle that old spark. I still found the case interesting, still thought there was something unexplainable worth looking into, but I couldn’t get motivated enough to go chasing down leads.

I suppose in a way the only reason I continued my research was because it was something to do, something to occupy my time so I wouldn’t have to think about Gloria. Before I knew it, I was back where I’d started. I began delving deeper into some of the underground sex clubs on the Internet and made inquiries to the people I met there. I asked them about the doll and struck out every time.

I found better luck with the adult novelty stores. I found twenty-eight cases across the country dating back twenty some odd years in which a sex doll was sold to a customer and the customer eventually committed murder. Coincidence? Perhaps. In all the cases a motive was always explained, usually a crime of passion or a murder for profit scheme. In only a few instances was the perpetrator judged to be mentally unfit. There was no common thread to connect any of these cases except for their possession of a sex doll that was always dismissed by the original investigators.

I backtracked through the cases and found out the doll purchased was one not normally kept in inventory, that the proprietors could not remember stocking, or one they did remember stocking but could not find again due to the company that manufactured it going out of business. I tracked down all these leads relentlessly. I found as many of the witnesses, victim’s families, and investigators that would talk to me as I could. Most of them couldn’t tell me much; the passing of time had eroded many memories. Others told me pretty much what I’ve already related here. When I put all this together I saw a pattern, but it was a pattern of a sinister sort.

The more I pursued this, the more obsessed I became. I began hearing rumors of the object of my search in whispered terms, like it was an urban legend. The stories were the same everywhere: the doll was known as Dream Girl; it came in a black box from an east coast company that remained elusive. The people who bought the dolls were mostly men, but there had been a few women that bought it and later killed unsuspecting boyfriends or husbands and, in one case, an entire family. And when I spread the data I’d uncovered out on my desk for analysis I saw that the earliest case occurred in 1956, the latest a mere two months ago.

Then there’s my own case.

I don’t know what compelled me to go into the shop on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana. The shop itself—Carl’s Adult Toys and Videos—was the last American-owned establishment in that section of Orange County that had turned into Little Saigon. I’d been there before and didn’t think much of it. So when I walked into Carl’s that afternoon on my way home from seeing my daughter and her husband, I knew I wasn’t going to spend much time in the shop. The sexually explicit videos and DVDs didn’t interest me, nor did the glossy-coated magazines piled on the racks. I went straight to the back of the store where the blow-up dolls were stocked and immediately saw it on a high shelf.

With trembling hands, I reached up and brought it down.

I felt such a sense of dread, such a strong emotion of fear, that I almost put the box back where I’d found it. But another part of me demanded to follow through with the path I had chosen, to follow my investigative instinct. So I took the box to the counter and asked the clerk what it was and where it had come from.

“Don’t remember where this come from,” the clerk said. He was Vietnamese and spoke in broken English.

“How much?”

The clerk checked the tag on the side of the box. “Seven hundred dollar.”

“What’s it called?”

“Dream Girl.”

Along with the sense of dread was a feeling of excitement. I wasn’t buying this doll to partake in some kinky sex the way those other men had. I had no desire to fuck a blow up doll and pretend it was somebody else. That settled it for me. I pulled out my wallet. “I’ll take it.”

When I got home, everything that I learned in the past five years flashed through my mind. I set the box on the living room floor, thinking about all I’d learned about this particular novelty; how the doll appeared as the woman of the buyer’s sexual fantasy, how it comes with blonde or black hair, or large breasts, or how it’s skinny or fat; how after the initial coupling it turns into a human being, the woman of that particular man’s dreams; how the sex with it is fantastic, and that she does everything for the man, everything he desires, further ensnaring him. Most of all I thought of how all the men in question later killed loved ones—girlfriends, wives, families—all claiming they’d been told to by a woman whom the police could never identify, a woman that was claimed to have once been a blow-up doll come to life. I thought of all this and told myself I was going to get to the bottom of it. If this thing had power, I was immune to it. I had no intention of using the doll as a proxy lover.

I opened the box with shaky hands.

And heaved a sigh of relief.

The doll inside the box was so generic-looking it was almost funny. It was so obviously fake. I think I laughed when I saw it for the first time.

I took it out and laid it on the floor. Sure enough, it was very phony looking. After all, it was only an inflatable blow-up doll with the requisite squeeze bulb attached to it.

I did notice the fake hair that had been affixed to its head was black with streaks of gray, but I didn’t pay it any mind at first. I examined the doll’s facial features, which were crudely rendered. The doll’s mouth was a red ‘O’ for the obvious. I examined the deflated doll and the box it came in, noting that there were no instructions, just the clear decal that had come affixed to the box saying this was my ‘dream girl’, and that she could be ‘anybody I desired’.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I found an air compressor and began to pump the doll up.

With the compressor humming, I stepped away briefly for a beer. When I came back Gloria was waiting for me in the living room.

She was naked.

I stood in the threshold of the living room in shock. My wife Gloria was really there. She was standing in the center of the living room smiling at me. The black box was where I’d left it on the floor.

“José...” she whispered.

It was her. It was really her. I could see her, I could smell her.

I went to her.

She held me and I’m afraid I wept in her arms.

I was with her that evening and it was the most erotic sex I ever had.

Her caresses were gentle and teasing. Her lips were sweet, her skin was warm, her nipples hard. When I entered her she moaned, cradling my face in her hands and kissing me as I moved inside her, crying her name over and over. She stayed hot and wet and excited all night, and surprisingly I stayed hard. While our sexual relations had exploded in the months following our joint retirement, that evening it was more than explosive; it was orgasmic.

We even tried things we normally wouldn’t have tried earlier; different positions, ones I never imagined existed. Each thrust, each caress, each kiss, was like touching an electrifying orgasm.

Some time later we lay together on our king-sized mattress and I tried to catch my breath. My senses were on full alert and my skin tingled. I wasn’t imagining things or hallucinating. I’d just had incredible sex with my dead wife, Gloria, who wasn’t dead. She had returned to me as she had been in the months prior to her getting cancer. When I told you earlier that Gloria was the only woman I’d ever desired, I hope you see what I now knew to be the Dream Girl doll’s power: it took the mental image of every man’s fantasy woman and brought them to life. When the men who bought the Dream Girl doll had sex with it, their fantasies brought that woman, the dream girl in their mind, to life. This had happened to me, too. Because Gloria was the only woman I had ever fantasized about, the doll brought her back.

I thought about this as we lay in bed. I turned to Gloria and touched her. She was real, my fingers touched sweaty skin. Gloria turned to me, her eyes ablaze with passion and desire. She smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” We kissed. Pleasures of sensation shivered up and down my spine, brought me back to life.

“I want to stay with you forever,” Gloria said, settling into my embrace. “I don’t ever want to have to be away from you again.”

I turned to her. “You want to be with me forever?”

“Of course I do!” Gloria said, turning to me. She kissed my neck. “I’ve always wanted this; to be together, just you and me all the time. Forever.”

“You’re here now. Why can’t you just stay?”

She paused, and I sensed tension. “You know it’s not that easy.”

She turned to me and I read sorrow in her eyes. Sadness. My heart wept. In all the years of our marriage, I’d only seen Gloria look so saddened once. That was in 1969, when she miscarried our third child. The doctors told us after that we would be unable to bear any more children, so to avoid further pain and suffering, I had undergone a vasectomy.

Now that beautiful, regal face bore that same look of impending hurt and I immediately wanted to comfort her, to make that hurt go away. “Talk to me,” I said.

“I can’t stay,” she said, her voice trembling. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I want to stay...more than anything I want to. I don’t want to go back. I don’t ever want to go back in that dark hole I just came from. But...I can stay if you...do something that will help me stay.”

“I’ll do anything so you can stay,” I blurted out before realizing it.

“Will you?” Her eyes lit up and she clutched at me, like a drowning woman clinging to a life preserver in treacherous seas. She was like a little girl, defenseless, and hadn’t I always vowed to protect her?

“Yes,” I said, holding her close and kissing her.

Then she brought her lips to my ear and whispered what I had to do for us to be together.

And that’s what has led me to my present predicament. When she whispered those awful words in my ear, I knew that I was damned either way. If I did what she asked I was damned, and if I ignored her I would be even worse off.

I fought her. I tried to get rid of her but she wouldn’t go. Fighting her was useless. She always appealed to my base emotions and fleshly desires in the end. That weakened me.

I called the shop where I’d bought her, and when I asked to speak to the clerk who had sold me the doll he claimed to not know what I was talking about. I reminded him that I’d spent seven hundred dollars on the doll and he claimed he didn’t remember. Then he hung up on me.

Through it all Gloria waited for me in our bedroom, calling to me.

And oh God, I couldn’t control myself. I couldn’t resist her.

I couldn’t help going to her and coupling with her, losing myself inside her.

The sex got better all the time.

And my strength and resolve weakened each and every time.

I'M LEFT HERE writing this all down as evidence. I have been struggling between following my desire and doing what is right. I know it will be hard for those of you who read this to understand, but think of what I am going through as what a heroin addict feels when they cannot resist the allure of the needle, the sense of calm that pervades their being when they ride the spike. Their body craves it just not to feel sick. This is the way it is with me now regarding Gloria; the more I try to resist her, the sicker I feel. Being with her makes me feel alive and whole, and when I think about the rest of my life with her it is like glimpsing an oasis of beauty and sensuality in which we can reside together forever.

That is what she is promising me, and on some level I believe this can happen if I go about it the right way and am not caught. I can plan—I have the means and the ability to arrange for a new identification, and can easily slip out of the country, taking all my money with me. I can settle us somewhere down in Mexico, Baja perhaps. I probably have a better chance of evading capture if I plan methodically.

The problem is, I can’t do it. I cannot bring myself to do what Gloria asks of me.

If I don’t follow through with what she wants I know what will happen. My children and grandchildren will be tainted forever with the knowledge that their grandfather and father was a madman, a necrophile.

You see, the longer I wait to make my decision and carry out what Gloria wants me to do for us to be together, the more Gloria has begun to deteriorate.

Somehow, she manages to change back when we make love. She is lovely, whole, healthy, and beautiful. She’d have to be. I am not a necrophile, have never been attracted to the dead, and the few times I’ve even thought about the rotting thing I’ve been seeing the past few days when we aren’t making love has been enough to drive the desire right out of me. Gloria always has the antidote to that; she always appeals to my pleasures, presses the right buttons, and then I’m hers again and she is no longer the wretched thing she turns into. She is the Gloria I knew and loved before the cancer got her.

I know this is happening because I am stalling, and I know that the smell will soon attract the neighbors. I haven’t left the house in over a week, and I’m afraid that if I steal outside now for a quick trip to the store for bread and milk people will look at me funny. Perhaps somebody will grow suspicious and send the police to my house.

What I know will happen, though, is that either my son or daughter will grow worried and stop by. I’ve already received a few phone calls from them. I’ve let their calls go straight into voice mail. Jessica left one just this morning, her voice tinged with worry as she said, “Dad, it’s Jessie, I called you yesterday and the day before and I’m starting to get a little worried. Um...if I don’t hear back from you I’m coming over, okay? Please call me. Bye.”

One of the calls I let go to voice mail was from a friend of mine still on the force, David Harrison. His voice sounded strained, worried. “Hey José, how’s it going? Listen, I hate to spring bad news and I know you’re probably off visiting your kids or something, but...well...some crazy assholes just vandalized Forest Green Cemetery last week and dug up a bunch of graves and...well...Gloria is missing—“

The smell is getting stronger.

The whiskey is almost gone and I cradle the Colt in my hands lovingly. I can’t do it...I can’t do what she asked me to do.

Gloria’s whispering to me, telling me what to do.

My son’s last phone call to me, just an hour ago: “Dad, Carrie is with me and we have the kids. Are you home? Listen, Jessie’s been worried about you. She just called on her way home from picking her kids up and we’re going to meet at your place. We’re on our way over now.”

I know I can fill the chamber of the Colt with the rest of the .45 caliber shells I have, thus doing what Gloria asked me to do in order for us to be together. On one hand that could be a very easy way out. My kids will not have to live the rest of their lives knowing their father went mad and dug up their mother.

But I can’t do it...I can’t wipe them all out...

I love my grandchildren. I would never hurt them.

Ever.

I hear the sound of car doors slamming shut outside. It’s a warm, sunny day. The house reeks.

In the bedroom, Gloria keeps changing, shimmering from the ageless beauty I’ve always known her to be, to the dripping, rotting thing she really is. Her voice calls to me:. “We can be together, José...”

I can’t do it.

Footsteps, coming up the walk to the front door.

I look at the Colt with that one bullet already in the chamber, my feelings torn.

Please kids, please know this isn’t what you think.

There is a knock on the door. Soon I will hear the rustle of keys as they let themselves in.

I take a quick breath, willing back my tears. Gloria calls to me again. I pick up the gun and make my decision.

Menage a Trois

DOUG RICHARDS SMIRKED as he scanned through messages on the Survivor Bulletin Board.

Most of them were lame. Chatter talk and bored confessions of what most people had done before the epidemic. Doug didn’t give a rat fuck about them. Before the epidemic I was a Senior CEO for Viacom International, Inc. Fuck you. Other soppy ones consisted of snippets such as I was a housewife and I had three wonderful children. Yeah, right. Little fucks were probably out right now chewing through somebody’s asshole to get to their innards. Others were too sick and stupid to even deserve life in the thereafter: My wife died in childbirth six months ago and I can’t bear to put her out of her misery. The baby, too; she’s so beautiful (at this point Doug can just imagine the guy sobbing). Won’t somebody please help me? I don’t know what to do, but I can’t part with them . . . I can’t . . . kill them  . . . I keep them chained up so they can’t  . . . do any damage . . . but I just can’t stand hearing them  . . . What a dimwit. Fucker deserved to have his brains blown out. If Doug knew the guy was within a three hundred mile radius, he would drive over himself and blow away wifey and baby before turning the Luger on the pitiful buttwad.

People were such morons.

He didn’t have to worry about putting up with mankind’s stupidity up here. Nestled in the crags of the high Sierras, Doug Richard’s split level cabin was the only sign of civilization for fifty miles.  The last human activity in the area was two months after the epidemic when one of the forest rangers was killed by his partner over a game of gin rummy and the ranger rose from the dead and ate his partner’s brains out through his eyesockets. Doug had used the Zombie for target practice; the Zombie ranger had lasted a tad under a month, even after Doug had blown most of its extremities and torso into mush. Once he closed the game with the headshot, he knew he wouldn’t be in for such delightful amusement for some time. Being over fifty miles away from civilization did have its drawbacks.

The messages on the bulletin board contained more of the same. Doug sighed. “Stupid fucks.” He clicked out of the general chatter line and locked in on the private talk board. This was where the action was. The topics were heavy in this arena. Organizers of Skin Game events advertised their wares within these lines, along with promoters of underground dance clubs (The Zombie Zoo invites you for an evening of music, drinks, and games). Something had to be happening somewhere. Despite liking solitude just fine, he needed occasional human contact. He was tired of winging his flesh torpedo to the stereophonic sounds of porno actresses getting tit fucked.

Doug had this cabin built in ’83, a year after he got lucky with some wise business investments. Ten years before he had won a large cash settlement from the city of San Francisco and the ACLU after arriving home from ’Nam. A clash of anti-war protestors had attacked Doug and two other veterans as they arrived home from the war. The injuries he suffered in the melee—a concussion, a hundred stitches along various sections of his noggin’, and six broken ribs—were worse than any he’d endured during two tours of duty.

He ended up suing the city of San Francisco and the local chapter of the ACLU, which had organized the demonstration. The out-of-court settlement from both parties was enough to ensure Doug the next decade of peaceful, easy living. He put the money in Swiss Accounts, wise investments that yielded nice returns, and lived off the interest. By the time the eighties dawned, his wheeling and dealing had amassed a fortune of thirty million dollars. He had owned three automotive repair companies, a large retail comic book store, two bars (one of them was a way-cool strip joint on Hollywood Boulevard and Fairfax) four video arcades, and a small cable TV channel. He also held stock in two finance companies, four clothing firms, and a racetrack. Life was good.

But he didn’t really like the people he had to deal with. Frankly, he didn’t like dealing with people at all, unless the deal was to result in some gain for his ownself. And when his purse was lined with enough green to ensure a lifetime of doing absolutely nothing he checked out, sold his companies and his share in stocks, and high-tailed it to the Sierras where he commenced the construction of his dream house.

He equipped it with the latest in modern technology. Why deal with people when you could have the world delivered right to your door? He almost never had to leave the house; the satellite dish he installed outside beamed in two hundred stations world-wide; he subscribed to thirty different magazines, belonged to two different CD Clubs. He had been one of the first to cash in on the computer craze, and was hooked up to bulletin boards at day one. Books were bought via mail order dealers, as were videocassettes and DVDs (better variety with those, too). The only time he really had to leave the house was to take the fifty-mile trip into town for his provisions and to pick up the mail. Anything he didn’t have he could get by phone or mail. And when it came to women, he met many through the computer bulletin board sex clubs. Arranging rendezvous in the city had been a monthly occurrence. It had been his only contact with mankind.

But with the coming of the epidemic, most of this was shut down. Half the Cable Stations and radio stations were now completely off the air. Some were resurrected by survivalist types who ran them as 24-hour news-lines. The mail system ceased to exist, and while the phone lines were down for about three months, it was resurrected successfully in certain parts of the country by some enterprising survivors who had the intellectual candlepower to flip a couple of switches. Granted, he still couldn’t hook up to the places he was able to before, but it beat being totally cut-off.

Big cities had it worse. The widespread panic following the epidemic produced mass hysteria, which resulted in anarchy. After the initial damages, it was deduced that it would take years to get technology back to the degree it had once been before. Most of the big cities Doug had traveled to since the epidemic lacked the basic necessities of running water and electricity. It was almost like living in the Stone Age. He had forecasted something similar transpiring a decade ago, and made preparations. The only difference was that back then he was a hundred percent positive the end would come via nuclear annihilation. Who would have thought that seventy percent of the population would have been stupid and slow enough to allow themselves to be eaten by their dead brethren?

The generator that churned away five hundred feet from the rear of his home was powered by a stream that wound its way down the lush, green mountain. Doug had channeled the stream to various degrees, harnessing enough waterpower to run his hilltop adobe. Running water was channeled through a separate system, which funneled into the main water supply system of the house. He enjoyed all the modern comforts of the way things had been before; electricity, running water (hot and cold), and the telephone. He cooked his food with an electric stove, and he heated the house in the winter with a woodfire stove. While most modern comforts had failed in urban areas, Doug prevailed. Life hadn’t really become that primitive for him since the epidemic.

A bulletin came over the private chat line on the computer. Doug zoned in on it, his blood pumping with excitement:

INDUSTRIAL GLOOM

DANCING

GAMES

FOOD AND DRINKS

SENSUAL ENCOUNTERS FOR ALL

CLUB DEAD

DOORS OPEN AT EIGHT P.M.

An address flashed on the screen. Doug jotted it down. It was in Hollywood, near Sunset and Vine, and the festivities started tonight at ten. The digital clock in the computer read two thirty-seven. He had just enough time to shower, hop in the four-wheel drive, and head on down to L.A. Tonight wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Doug turned off the computer and was in the shower a moment later, soaping his body off, his mind dwelling in anticipation of the evening ahead. It had been close to a year since he’d been laid, and the need pulsed in his veins stronger than ever. When the plaque hit he’d remained in his lofty fortress, venturing out only for food and supplies. In the first few months, the walking dead outnumbered the living, but as weeks flew by they fell to natural decay and headshots. Because of the scarce population in the area, it was rare that he came across the Walking Dead. Those that he did come across were blown to raspberry slush. He hadn’t come across any dead folks in close to six months. He’d probably exterminated all those that were in the area.

Less than an hour later, Doug Richard’s was fully equipped and heading south to Los Angeles.

IT LOOKED LIKE the world’s biggest New Year’s Eve party had just gone down on Hollywood Boulevard. The street was littered with debris; chunks of concrete, broken glass, and garbage. Dilapidated cars sat among the boulevard, some tipped over and gutted. Doug had been seeing pretty much the same ever since he hit the San Bernadino County line. Pretty much all of civilization had been reduced to rubble.

The few people he passed were all equipped the same way he was; double thick work boots, provisions belt with a canteen and Bowie knife, a pistol slung in a holster, and a larger automatic weapon slung over their shoulders. Some had rounds of ammunition slung over their shoulders, too. Those that Doug passed by recognized him to be among the living and sane; they nodded as he drove by. Doug nodded back. Those that survived the plaque and its immediate aftermath usually welcomed those that were living. Their kind were now a dying breed.

Doug found Sunset easily and parked the jeep behind an abandoned van. Heavy electronic music boomed out of a narrow doorway set almost indiscreetly among the dilapidated buildings. The faint swell of laughter could be heard as Doug approached the entrance. He grinned. Tonight was going to be fine.

A low moan averted his attention and he whirled toward its source. A puke green dude in a Rolling Stones jersey and tattered jeans hobbled toward him. A thin hypodermic needle stuck out of his inner elbow. His eyes were sunken and dead. He smelled like stale pig shit.

Doug grinned and withdrew a Luger nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol. Green Man was a good twenty feet from him and as slow as a fly stuck in molasses. The dead guy groaned hungrily and flayed his arms out toward him.

Doug raised the Luger casually. “Sorry, Charlie,” he said, and pulled the trigger. The shot was loud. Green Man’s head exploded in gray and red crap and splattered the wall of the building. His body stood rigid for a moment, his arms flailing confusedly as if he’d just stepped off the bus in the wrong neighborhood, and then he went down. Doug chuckled as he stepped over the prone body and made his way to the doorway. Not a glimmer of candlepower in any of them zombie fucks.

Doug stepped through the threshold. A huge guy with a bushy black beard and bulging, tattooed biceps guarded the door. Doug caught a glimpse of a Remington pump shotgun behind the counter.  The bouncer nodded as he recognized Doug as one of the living. Doug nodded back and stepped inside the club.

Someone with some smarts must have gotten the power running in this part of town. The strobe lights in the club were on, basking the black interior in a steel gray, gloomy look. Ministry howled over the club’s sound system. Doug stood near the entrance for a moment as his vision adjusted to the gloomy interior. He grinned. He liked what he was seeing.

The building itself looked like the interior of an old warehouse. The ceiling was high, with huge industrial-like fans whirling. The floor was concrete, with tables and chairs grouped around in a semi circle along the right side. A good fifty feet of floor space in the middle of the room was devoted to the dance floor. Two dozen couples were dancing. A large bar flanked the right side of the room; bartenders were filling drink orders. Cocktail waitresses didn’t seem to exist in this place. Doug stepped further into the club and surveyed the folks mingling. Most of them appeared college-aged, dressed in hip, upbeat, tight clothing; the guys wore baggy slacks and shirts; the women short skirts or tight pants and tops that showed lots of cleavage. Despite the fact that civilization had gone into post-apocalyptic times, you wouldn’t know by stepping in this place. In here, it still felt like a pick-up joint from times forgotten.

Doug moved to the bar and sidled up casually. A tall geeky-looking guy with a crew cut approached the bar and took his order. Doug ordered a shot of Black Jack and a Miller. The bartender set him up and Doug felt the first shot fire through his veins. He turned around on his stool, watching the crowd as he nursed his beer. Marilyn Manson moaned that we’re all stars in the dope show.

Two swigs into his beer and he was being hit on left and right. Doug laughed and went with the flow. He ordered drinks for his new female companions, talking aimlessly, cracking jokes. There were as many as six women within a twenty foot radius that conveyed heavy interest signals. It was obvious that they were hitting on him, yet catfights seemed to be far from the making. Most of them seemed to be hitting on other guys as well; the demand for folks who wanted to spend the evening with another able-bodied soul was higher than days bygone when AIDS, egos, head games, and emotions had to be wafted through to get down to the nitty-gritty. Doug knew that those he passed on tonight would wind up with someone else. No hard feelings.

Five beers later he was in deep conversation with a drop-dead gorgeous blonde. She stood no taller than five foot two and had wonderful breasts. The minute she blinked those big baby blues at him he was hooked. His head swam from adrenaline and the buzz from the alcohol and music.

Three beers later they were in Doug’s jeep heading toward Tiffany’s condo in West Hollywood. They were accompanied by her friend Andrea, who was tall, willowy, with big brown eyes and great breasts (face it, Doug thought. Every female is going to have great breasts since you haven’t seen any in over a year since all this zombie shit started). As Doug drove, Tiffany related how her complex was one of the only buildings in L.A. that still had workable electricity and running water. Their apartment was on the top floor, via the elevators. The Walking Dead were too stupid to man the elevators, and both women carried nine millimeters and extra clips with them. They were both getting to be pretty good shots. Doug grinned, hardly paying attention to their banter. All he could think about was what lay ahead.

Moments later it came. And Doug came with it, along with Tiffany and Andrea, all over each other, in the comfiness and elegance of the girls’ penthouse apartment on the tenth floor.

“WHY DON'T YOU come with me to my place?” It was one of the few complete sentences Doug had spoken to them since arriving at their apartment. All of last night and most of this morning had been spent frolicking in their king-size waterbed. It was now high noon, and Doug had popped the suggestion after another seemingly endless round of sex. Andrea looked at him quizzically from his right, her long lashes masking the confusion in her eyes. Only Tiffany, grinning ferally at him from his groin, responded. Doug grinned down at her. “Whattaya say?”

Tiffany slithered up over him. Andrea ran her finger lightly over his right earlobe. “And why should we go to your place, lover?” Tiffany grinned.

Doug nodded toward the expansive entertainment center opposite the bed. It was equipped with a twenty-four inch color TV, a VCR, a DVD Player, and a high-tech stereo system. None of them worked due to the faulty electrical system in the building. The elevators and lights were about the only thing that worked in the building. “I’ve got stuff like this back at my place, and my stuff works.”

Andrea flicked her tongue in his ear. “Really! How so?”

Doug felt fingers of pleasure rock through him as Andrea ran her tongue through his ear. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

“Where do you live,” Andrea whispered. She kissed his earlobe.

“High Sierra’s.”

Tiffany sat up in bed. “Geez, that’s a long way.”

Doug rose, too. “At least just come with me for a couple of days. I’ve got all the conveniences of modern technology and everything works.” He spilled out a rough list of how his place was set up, including the generator, the phone line, and the computer setup. Both girls perked up at the sound of it. Doug grinned and rubbed Tiffany’s shoulders. “Just for a few days. You’ll love it.”

“I don’t know,” Tiffany said. She turned to Andrea, who was lying on her stomach, her rump jutting in her air, legs bent upward at the knees. “What do you think?”

Andrea pursed her lips in contemplation. “Sounds okay to me.” She looked up at Doug. “You’ll bring us back in a couple of days?”

“Honey, after seeing what I’ve got at my place, you’re not gonna want to come back,” Doug chuckled.

Tiffany and Andrea traded glances. Doug smiled and Tiffany giggled. “Well, then, let’s go.”

An hour later they were winging their way out of the empty, dead city of Los Angeles to the mountains.

HE WAS RIGHT about their reaction when they got to the house. They were more than amazed; they were astounded.

The girls looked in awe at the massive living room, the huge dining room, and the downstairs rumpus room filled with toys, pinball machines, a large pool table, and other electronic gadgets. They marveled at the wide screen TV and the fact that it worked; they ooohhed over his massive collection of videotapes, DVDs, compact discs, and books. They were equally impressed with his massive kitchen and its supplies. Andrea squealed with delight when she opened the freezer and found a frozen pizza. To appease her, and their growing appetite, Doug put the pizza in the oven. Then he steered his guests out toward the back patio.

Once at the patio, they ahhed at the awesome sight his perch had over the mountain range. His house was situated on a crag that overlooked the main pass coming up the Sierras, and if you looked due west you could see the rolling hills of the San Joaquin Valley. It was an awesome sight to behold.

He took them down into the woods that consisted of his property and showed them the generator. He showed them the stream that ran by it and explained how it worked. He pointed out the massive satellite dish that sat next to his home; it brought in the phone line, and it used to bring in over five hundred channels from all over the world. The girls were doubly impressed.

They ate the pizza Doug had put in the oven with all the zeal and excitement of children spending an afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese. Neither of them had had a pizza in . . .well, gosh, in over a year, since the first zombie rose from its grave and bit through the first wandering human. In Los Angeles there had been plenty of frozen pizzas that had thawed out when the electricity died but with all the power gone, savoring their taste was something that could only be reminisced. Doug smiled and put another pizza in the oven and brought out two cases of Dos Equis. He reached underneath the cabinet in the kitchen and produced a bag of powdery substance that brought a squeal out of both girls. Pizza, beer, and coke—three great tastes that taste great together!

They munched and drank, babbling excitedly. Doug grinned. The girls were acting like they were in Donald Trump’s mansion. And to them, this was a mansion. Those that had survived the zombie plaque sure didn’t have luxuries like running water.

When they had eaten their fill, Doug rolled up a crisp, ten thousand dollar bill. Tiffany nearly babbled with excitement. “Jesus Christ, Doug!” Her eyes sparkled, her smile dimpled her cheeks. “So that’s how you were able to get such a bitchin’ place?”

Doug handed her the rolled up bill and winked at them. “There’s more where this came from, baby. Not that this money stuff is worth anything these days.”

DOUG WAS RIGHT about Tiffany and Andrea wanting to stay longer than a few days.

The first two weeks at the mountain retreat was spent languidly fucking, eating, sleeping, snorting coke, fucking, sleeping some more, fucking again, eating, drinking, partaking in some more toot, fucking some more, and, well, fucking. The two of them provided a workout that Doug never thought he would go through again with a woman. After the first night he thought his dick was going to fall off from the sheer exertion of the strange contortions they were putting it through. He was having sex everyday, if not with both of them at the same time, then with one or the other. Because they were bisexual, it spurned him on even further. There were moments when all the energy was drained from his body, but the sight of Tiffany eating Andrea’s pussy with her tender little ass poking up in the air brought the divining rod between his legs to full attention. It was always enough for a quick romp from behind.

Doug drove them down to Los Angeles two weeks later to gather their things. They really didn’t need that much, Tiffany said, just their keepsakes. Photos of their late boyfriends and parents, friends. Trinkets. Doug didn’t mind, and they were back at the house by darkness, enjoying another night of sex and coke.

The days seemed to pass quickly for Doug. Mornings consisted of awakening to the smell of frying bacon or perking coffee, one of the girls in the kitchen while the other lay nestled next Doug. He would awaken and sometimes, if the mood was right, make love to whoever was in bed with him. After breakfast he would do immediate chores while the girls lounged in the den, watching a movie on the big screen TV, or blasting the stereo. Andrea was the bookworm, and preferred quiet mornings in the library. Tiffany usually warmed up in the morning with a Cher video, and around noon they met at the back porch for a light lunch usually prepared by Andrea. Then it was whatever struck their fancy for the rest of the day and evening. Sometimes they went on romps through the woods, or accompanied Doug into the little town fifty miles down the winding, steep valley road to stock up on provisions. Movies and music were almost always on the agenda, and Tiffany told him that she could probably watch every single videocassette and DVD he had for a year and still not get through all of them. Doug had what amounted to a store full of videos and DVDs; his collection had grown since the plague.

But more often than not, their evenings ended up engaging in sex and partying, usually until the wee hours of the morning. The coke that Doug had was one of two dozen kilos he had accumulated over the past two years, gained from a dealer that also supplied him with a steady amount of marijuana, which Doug had started growing himself shortly after the zombie plague. The girls dipped into that stash too, usually in the early evening. Getting stoned always helped arouse the nerves and brought heightened climax to their lovemaking.

To Doug, it was heaven. How many guys would love to be able to fuck two gorgeous women with perfect breasts every night, anytime they wanted to?

And so the lifestyle continued into the summer months.

DOUG BEGAN TO sense that something wasn’t right toward the end of August.

The past couple of weeks had been filled with slightly tense moments. For the first time in almost two months, Tiffany started suggesting insane ideas that they pop down to Los Angeles and bring some of their friends out. Doug squashed that idea in a hurry. Andrea seemed to side with Tiffany, and they went around that topic for a good portion of a night. We just want to see some of our friends again, was the excuse. Well then, we’ll drive down for the day and visit, was Doug’s reply. No, they wanted to do more than that. They wanted to bring people up from L.A. to party. Well, what’s the matter with what we have already?

“Don’t get us wrong,” Tiffany said. They were seated on the cream colored couch in the recreation room. The VCR was unrolling Terminator 2. “We love it up here, and we love you.” She winked at him, smiling broadly, and Andrea second the motion with a kiss on his cheek. He was sandwiched between the two women as they explained their situation to him. “But . . . well, we kind of miss our friends, and we just thought it would be nice to have a big party up here.”

“And then they would want to stay, and you would needle me into letting them.” Doug knew what they were getting at and, by God, he wasn’t going to let that happen. “The reason I built this house in the first place was to avoid all that live-fast-make-a-pretty-corpse bullshit lifestyle. So, no way, I am not throwing a big raging party for hundreds of people I don’t even know.”

“Don’t you even want to talk to other people, get to know what’s going on?” This, from Andrea. “Make new friends, meet new people?”

“I don’t want to make friends and meet other people.”

“Well, suppose we do?”

Now Tiffany joined in. “We love it up here Doug, and we like being with you, but we just can’t stay cooped up here. We need to...interact with other people every once in awhile. Play the field.”

Doug snorted. “Ha! So that’s what you wanted all along.”

Andrea sighed. “All the old moral codes are gone now, Doug. We’re not legally bound to you in any way, nor are you to us. We don’t mind that we’re sharing you, and personally, I would like it if I had more than one male lover right now.”

“Me, too,” Tiffany said, quietly.

This threw Doug into a rage, but he contained it. His cheeks grew beet red, his eyes flared righteous anger. He rose suddenly from the couch, his hands curling into fists. “It figures. I give you everything you could possibly want, yet you still want to...want to—”

“Fuck other guys?” Tiffany’s tone was ice. She leveled her sea blue eyes to meet his. Both girls were wearing shorts, bikini bras and nothing else. Couple their looks with their tone and anger, and they looked like Amazon bitches that weren’t going to take shit. “Yeah, to be quite frank with you, Doug, I would like to fuck other guys. Just as I’m sure you’d like to fuck other women.”

“That’s not true,” Doug retorted.

“Bullshit.” Now Andrea rose and stormed toward the French windows that overlooked the back deck. Tiffany joined her, leaving Doug to pace the floor of the recreation room. What the hell was wrong with them? He had given them everything they could possibly want, or need, and now they wanted to sample other pleasures. He had been nothing but kind and generous to them, loving and caring. The last few months had brought Doug to a feeling of closeness with them. Andrea and Tiffany were the first women he’dever felt this way towards; if the institution of marriage still existed, he would have done it with them in an instant. Because marriage was now a long disposed of issue, bigamy could only be much easier. You could love two women equally, and he loved both of them more than he had ever loved anyone. He told them that time and time again. Didn’t they understand that?

For the first time in almost three months they spent the evening in near stony silence.

THEY TOOK DOUG that night.

Doug seemed to switch from brooding, to lustful at the moment Andrea stroked him beneath the covers. Doug had tumbled into bed by himself, leaving the girls to simmer downstairs. Now they joined him in bed, waking him up with their expressions of affection. Doug woke up to a raging hard-on, Andrea’s hand stroking him expertly, Tiffany’s lips and tongue trailing wet kisses down his bare stomach. Doug turned over and took them into his arms; the argument was all but forgotten now.

The girls played this out, leading him along a cascade of endless sex as positions were switched, orifices were probed and entered, nipples and lips were kissed. Doug surrendered completely to them, yielding to their every whim.

When it was over the girls watched Doug slip into a deep sleep and traded glances. Neither had made verbal plans, but the same thought was running through their minds. They were acting on pure instinct now, letting everything run its course.

Andrea scrambled off the bed and out of the room. She emerged a moment later with a baseball bat. Tiffany scuttled off the bed quickly as Andrea cocked the bat behind her head like Hank Aaron poising for a homerun and then whack! The fat end of the bat hit the top of Doug’s skull. The impact sent reverberations of the blow up Andrea’s arm. Doug made a choking sound and was out, his breathing seeming to rise quickly, than stop altogether. There was dead silence for a moment as the girls stood frozen with bated breath, waiting for some signal of death to emit from Doug’s now bashed head. Tiffany could barely make out the trickles of blood oozing from Doug’s skull in the gloomy darkness, but she knew from his crumpled look and still chest that Andrea’s first swing had more than done the job. Doug was deader than a doornail.

Tiffany looked up at Andrea with rising glee. Andrea raised her left hand in victory, the right still holding the bloodstained bat. She let out a war whoop, and a moment later both girls were laughing, hugging each other, laughing so hard that tears spilled down their cheeks.

“We did it!” Andrea squealed. She kissed Tiffany, smack, on the lips, and Tiffany returned it enthusiastically. Andrea beamed at her lover, their arms encircling each other’s waists, their breasts touching. “We did it, babe. We did it, and this place is ours, the jeep is ours, everything is ours!”

“And we can go back to L.A. and bring Bruce and Janie and everybody from Club Dead back,” Tiffany echoed.

“And we’ll have one big party, and we can bring anybody we want to.” Andrea was so happy, she was practically glowing.

The implications of what their lives would be like now in this castle-like home hit Tiffany like an explosion. It would be wonderful, like heaven. The warmth of their lovemaking still coursed through her veins, and she could still feel Doug’s seed trickling between her legs, inside her. The feeling bubbled within her, made her take Andrea in her arms and kiss her passionately. Andrea cupped Tiffany’s face in her hands and kissed her back, remained lock in her embrace as the kiss waxed and waned.

When they came up for air, they were panting. “I love you, Andrea,” Tiffany breathed.

“I love you, too,” Andrea said.

“Let’s get Doug out of here now.”

They did it. They rolled Doug’s body off the bed and dragged him by his arms across the floor and out of the house. They dragged him out to the porch, down the stairs and laid him to rest beside the big oak tree that towered next to the cabin. Tiffany laid a green tarpaulin cover over him and smiled. Both girls were still nude, their skin goosefleshing from the cool mountain breeze. Tiffany tweaked Andrea’s puckered nipples and kissed her again. “We’ll bury him tomorrow,” she said. She was beginning to feel hot for Andrea all over again. “Right now I want you to take me down.”

Back into the house, through the kitchen and that was as far as they got. They didn’t even make it back to the bedroom, their passion and hunger for each other was so strong. They took each other in the kitchen, on the big table, and made love to each other until they sank into deep sleep.

MORNING.

Tiffany emerged from the bathroom wearing one of Doug’s chambray shirts and nothing else. Andrea was just beginning to stir in the early morning sun. They had fallen asleep in each other’s arms on the living room floor, and now the sun beat golden light through the window on their makeshift bed. Andrea smiled up at Tiffany, her eyes lush with love. “Hi!”

“Sleep good?” Tiffany asked, smiling down at her.

“Mmmm. Never slept better.” Andrea raised herself up on her elbows. “And you?”

“Like a baby.” Tiffany moved into the kitchen and rummaged around for a glass of water. Andrea rose and retrieved a T-shirt that had been tossed on the sofa a few days before. She slipped it over her head just as Tiffany came back from the kitchen. Tiffany was sipping on a glass of water. “Well, I guess we should take care of Doug.”

Andrea nodded. “Yep.”

Tiffany set the glass down and together they moved outside and down the steps to where they had laid Doug down last night.

They both stopped at the same time. Tiffany’s heart pounded in her chest. Her limbs felt suddenly light. She traded a fearful glance at Andrea, who looked like she’d just witnessed a ghastly crime. The same thought popped into their heads at the same time, sparking an instant rise of fear. “Oh, Jesus,” Andrea said.

Doug was gone from where they had left him last night. Only the tarp remained, with a few dried bloodstains.

It felt like an eternity passed before Tiffany could muster her collectiveness together. “Jesus, Andrea, why weren’t we fucking thinking.” She turned and began trotting up the steps to the back deck. Andrea followed her, more out of fear of being left alone. Tiffany strode across the deck and into the house, Andrea trailing right behind her. Tiffany’s thoughts were running like wildfire. He was dead, he had risen from the dead because he was the undead, they had killed him but not in the way they should have. They needed to arm themselves and find him before he found them. She darted through the kitchen toward the back den where Doug kept his gun collection. One good headshot would be all it would take. “We’ve got to—”

“Got to what, babe?” The voice came from Tiffany’s left, just as she was entering the threshold to the den. Tiffany started, the fear lodging in her throat and stifling her scream.

Doug stood in the darkened hallway, a Remington pump shotgun cradled in his arms. His flint gray eyes blazed with a maniacal fury. Blood caked the left side of his face and stained his left shoulder and chest in a gory mess. Tiffany thought she could see slivers of his skull from the ruined mass of his head. Doug grinned and shambled forward, bringing the barrel of the shotgun to a careful aim. His left arm appeared partially paralyzed, and he rested the barrel of the shotgun across it, holding it firmly with his left hand. He had them frozen in its sight. “Didn’t even check to see if I was dead, did you?” He snickered. “Stupid air-headed bitches.”

The girls stepped back. Tiffany’s throat felt locked up, but she still managed a few words. “Doug, please—”

“Enough!” Doug gestured with the shotgun. “No excuses. You tried to take what was mine and you almost killed me for it. Although I think that the worst part about all this is that you did it in such a cowardly manner that you felt you needed to blindside me and leave me for dead.” He regarded them with his blazing eyes. “Shows how goddamn stupid you are. If you’d had any brains you would have blown my head off with one of the guns, and that would have been it.” He leered at them. “Suppose I had died? Supposed I had died and come back? What would you have done?”

“I—” Tiffany tried to answer that they were in the process of doing that just now, but stopped. He was right. They’d been stupid, not to mention careless. Any excuse she came up with would only make her appear more dimwitted.

“Thought so,” Doug muttered. “You have no answer for that. Isn’t that right?”

The girls said nothing. They remained frozen, paralyzed with fear.

Doug tittered, grinning. The shotgun was still trained on them. “Believe me, but I know your kind well. Knew it even when I met you at Club Dead. Living for today, for the flesh, for desire. Nothing else mattered. Not peace of mind or spiritual peace. Not even for the beauty of life itself. Drifting from one party to the next blow of coke, to the next stud.”

Tiffany could see that he was running on pure adrenaline that was fueling his energies to keep him alive from his head injury. A flap of skin permitted a brief glimpse of the shattered bone of his skull. “Doug, please,” Tiffany said. Her hands were held up in a peace offering. Andrea stood beside her, a smile trying to worm its way on her face. “Doug, put the gun down,” Tiffany said, her voice calm. Smooth. “Put the gun down, and we’ll get help for you—”

The barrel of the shotgun raised to mid-chest level. “From where?” Doug’s eyes narrowed as he focused in on his target. Sweat stood out in shiny droplets amid his blood-crusted forehead. “I’m gonna die, Tiffany. I’m gonna die, and then I’m gonna rise and walk the earth in limbo. Only problem with that is there ain’t gonna be anybody around to satisfy my new craving.”

Tiffany started babbling again, joined by Andrea. “Shut up!” Doug blurted. His finger was tightening on the trigger. “Just fucking shut up! If you were going to kill me, you should have blown my brains out, but you didn’t and I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die and come back and I’m not gonna let you get away with it...” He was almost crying, his voice now coming in hitching rasps. He took a deep, collective breath. Focused them in with his gaze. Determined. “I’m not gonna let you get away with it.”

With a swift move, he gripped the barrel of the shotgun and brought the heavy stock down on Tiffany’s head. She collapsed to the floor, her eyes rolling up in the back of her head. He grimaced at Andrea as she stood in numbed shock.

The introduction of shotgun stock to Andrea’s skull produced similar results. Doug stood over them for a moment panting, his panic-stricken mind racing.

Five minutes later he was limping down the steps to the woods and up the mountain, dragging each girl behind him by the ankles.

BOTH WOMEN CAME to consciousness right around when Doug had them safely tied up to two large oak trees at the rear of his property.

It had taken every last ounce of strength he had. After he dragged both girls up, he’d trudged back to his place and rummaged in his workshed for some rope, or preferably something more heavy duty. He’d found some heavy-duty steel cable and rope, and after pausing for a quick rest (and to let a bad bout of nausea pass) he headed back to where he’d left the girls.

He’d tied them up carefully, taking care that they were trussed up securely.

He’d also made sure they were a good thirty feet apart.

Then he’d waited for them to wake up.

They came awake slowly. Andrea was the first to focus in on what was going on. She saw Doug and immediately started to cry.

Tiffany came awake thirty minutes later.

Doug stood up and approached both women, shotgun in hand. His breath wheezed in his chest. Already, he could feel his limbs growing weaker, could feel his equilibrium give out. He knew he had a serious head injury, and that it was only a matter of the next twenty-four hours if he lived or died. And if he died, he knew he would be back.

The thought of eating them sickened him.

Funny he would think that now, he chuckled to himself as he brought the barrel of the shotgun up and took aim. He sure loved eating them out before.

Tiffany’s left eye widened in horror as the barrel of the shotgun aimed at her midsection; her right eye was closed shut and swollen. “Nooo! Doug!”

Doug pulled the trigger and the shotgun exploded, propelling Tiffany back against her bounds. A large hole exploded between her breasts, blowing chunks of flesh, bone and skin. She fell back and hit the trunk of the tree limply and slid down, her eyes wide and vacant. The blast snapped Andrea from her shock, and she struggled in her bonds, eyes wide with fear. Her full lips were open in terror as she looked from Tiffany’s corpse and up to Doug.

Doug jacked the pump on the shotgun and took aim at Andrea, fixing her baby blues in his gaze. Her face screamed white fear. “No, Doug, oh please, God no—”

“Goodbye, Andrea,” Doug said, and pulled the trigger. Her right breast exploded in a shower of viscera. The impact flung her backward over Tiffany. Doug pumped another shell in the chamber and stepped forward.

Andrea was still alive. Her left side twitched spastically. Her eyes locked on Doug as he approached her, and she moved her limbs in a half-assed attempt at escape. Blood ran out of her mouth and was pouring out of her chest, staining Tiffany and the forest floor. A mewling sound rose in her throat. Doug stood over her and took aim, a slow grin beginning to spread on his features. A perverse sense of elation swept through him as he stood over her. She twitched in pain beneath him, still trying to get away. A massive hole of ruined flesh gaped where her once luscious right breast used to be.

Doug smiled and aimed at the center of her chest. Where the heart was. “Goodbye, Andrea.” He pulled the trigger.

He stood there in the thicket, listening to the echo of the shotgun blast reverberate through the forest.

Tiffany had ceased her struggle. Doug kicked her body with one booted foot. She was dead.

And so was Andrea.

He felt himself growing weaker, but he knew he had to wait. He had to wait to see if what he had hurriedly planned would work.

Andrea’s fingers twitched. A moment later Tiffany’s foot moved. Doug fought back a wave of nausea as he squinted at the two girls lying before him, trying hard to keep his breathing even.

Andrea was trying to sit up. Her dead eyes locked on him and she opened her mouth and hissed. Doug smiled. He knew that look on her face well. He had seen it on hundreds of them before. It was a look of undying hunger.

A moment later, Tiffany joined her. Both women strained against their bonds, their arms outstretched, jaws opening and closing, teeth gnashing into bottom lips in hunger. Doug laughed. He supposed it was like tying a starving man in front of a Filet Mignon, teasing him with it.

Doug took a dozen steps back, feeling himself growing wobbly. “Bye bye, girls.” He sat down heavily on his rump, the shotgun almost flying out of his grasp. He could feel himself growing faint. The shotgun seemed suddenly heavy, but he still managed to bring the barrel to his mouth. He stretched his lips over both barrels, his teeth scraping against the cold steel. He stretched his arm out and his finger found the trigger just as he felt another wave of blackness wash over him.

The sound of the shotgun blast was loud and echoed throughout the valley.

The wailing and gnashing of the hungry went on for much longer.

Out of the Cradle

OKAY IT'S CLICHÈ, but right now I don’t give a zip. This is how I’m starting this narrative:

I’m an alcoholic and drug addict.

There. I’ve admitted it. Mind you, I’ve been on my latest road to recovery for three years now. Haven’t touched a drop of booze, chased the dragon, or done a line of coke since. And I don’t plan too, either.

Yeah, I’ve said that before too and blown that promise out of the water. This time it’s different, though.

I’ve got a reason to keep going this time. She’s only four days old and she weighed in at eight pounds seven ounces and was twenty-seven inches long at birth. Her name is Annabelle Lee Walker.

She’s asleep right now in her bassinet, in the room I share with my wife, Christy, Annabelle’s mother. Christy’s asleep, too.

Me, I can’t sleep. Blame that on all the caffeine I’ve had.

Since Annabelle’s birth four days ago I’ve come to believe in a lot of things I’ve always dismissed.

Of course if you had known me five years ago, or ten or even fifteen, you would have thought otherwise. Back then I knew on a subconscious level that ghosts existed.

I believe that now as well. But I believe in a lot more than that, too.

Now I know better.

I’ve known it since Annabelle was born.

And I stopped hearing the sounds.

And I stopped seeing the ghost of my first daughter sitting on my bed, sucking her thumb, waiting to be picked up in her father’s arms.

MY FIRST DAUGHTER. My God, where do I begin?

It was so long ago in years but I still feel so close to her that it feels like yesterday. This was well before I met Christy, before I got sober for the third time. My first daughter’s name was Lisa, she was beautiful, and I loved her more than life itself.

Her mother was my high school sweetheart, I guess you could say. She’d come from the wrong side of town but had a loving family. I still think about her; still wonder what would have happened if we’d remained together, or if the awful events that drove me to a path of self-destruction hadn’t occurred. I think we’d still be together, that Lisa would be in her freshman year of college as of this writing. Things would be different.

Much different.

Lisa’s mother’s name was Ashley Juneau, and she’d been blessed with glossy black hair that hung to her waist, big brown eyes that sparkled, and a smile that brightened her face and eyes up so much that it was like looking into a beautiful painting. Ashley had been of French, Indian, and Spanish stock, and the mixture created an exotic blend of tan skin and fiery passion between us. When I first laid eyes on her at seventeen, I knew she was the one for me. I was from an upper-class family on the so-called right side of the tracks, but I’d descended to the streets by choice. I felt more comfortable with blue-collar people than I did with my shitty holier-than-thou parents. Ashley and I hit it off immediately, and rather than bore you with the details, I think I can sum up our relationship in three words: teenage hormones, parental disapproval from my end, and early pregnancy.

Lisa was the perfect baby. Bearing her mother’s eyes and mouth and my facial features and hair, she was a dream. They say that the love of your life always comes second with the birth of a child, and the minute Lisa was born I knew that theory was true. Ashley loved Lisa with all the energy and emotion as I, and we spared no expense on that child. I worked two jobs so Ashley could stay home with her. I sacrificed; I sweated. I wanted Lisa to grow up in love and security, something I never experienced as a child (I may have had financial security, but my parents surely never loved me). Those two years were, in many ways, the best years of my life.

I used to lie awake at night and gaze down at Lisa’s sleeping form and just look at her. Marvel at her fair skin, her cupid lips encircling her thumb or her pacifier as she sucked it in her sleep; her chubby baby legs; her cowlicks; her feet, and especially her toes. Lisa’s fourth little toe on both feet were bent at an odd angle. Instead of tilting in alignment with the others, they went very slightly against the grain. The doctors had noticed that minutes after her birth, but there was physically nothing wrong. The bones weren’t broken and it was so subtle that you really had to look at them to notice the difference.

Back then I was sober. I had started abusing alcohol when I was nine, then graduated to drugs when I was thirteen. When I was seventeen I met Ashley and I quit cold turkey. I did it because I didn’t want to disappoint her, and I also did it because I didn’t want my parents to win. Another cliché: even though my parents came from upper class stock (my dad’s some bigwig CEO who pulls in over ten million bucks a year and my mom used to be a corporate lawyer, like I really give a fuck), their parenting skills were for shit. To break it down, the abuse I suffered was overwhelmingly psychological; they never raised a hand at me in anger, but it was painfully obvious to me that my birth was never intended. Sometimes I wished they’d beaten me instead of neglected me emotionally. Damage of the psyche and the mind is far more devastating than damage to the body.

They never knew Lisa. They wouldn’t acknowledge a child of ‘mixed-blood’, so they didn’t want to know. I  resolved to never speak to them again by then anyway, so I was more than happy to finally be out of their lives. Ashley’s parents, however, were the parents I never had, and they took us into their home any chance they could. Wanting to be self-reliant, I insisted the three of us live on our own. We had a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Santa Ana near Main Street and we did fine there. For two years we were happy.

I’d come home late at night after a shift at the factory, than lie down in the twin mattress Ashley and I shared. Many times Lisa would be asleep with her mother, and I would lie down next to her and listen to her breathe, smelling her fresh baby scent. And I would fall asleep with the susurration of the moist sucking sounds of Lisa’s perfect mouth sucking her thumb or her pacifier.

When I wasn’t working we were a family. We did everything together. Ashley and I would spend hours with Lisa playing with her. We took her on walks to the park and around town. We always went to Ashley’s parents’, who doted on their grandchild with as much love as we. I really took to fatherhood; I never thought I’d make a good father. Before that, and in the years after Lisa’s death until just recently, I thought I’d never want children. Never really liked them much, to tell you the truth. I suppose you could blame that on my upbringing. With Lisa it was different. She was from me; from my flesh and blood; a little human being Ashley and I had created in love. I think if you’re a parent you’ll understand what I’m referring to. I loved Lisa more than anything, and even though the three of us had a tight bond, she was always her daddy’s girl. When I came home from work in the afternoons she would shriek ‘Da-eee!” and run toward me, arms outspread and I’d swoop her up in my arms and hug her. We had a strong bond. The strongest I’ve ever had with another human being. Stronger even than Ashley or Christy.

What shattered the dream was the monster that lived next door. The monster was a fifty-two year old man named George Rios, who worked as a salesman. I didn’t know much about him except that he was recently divorced with two grown children, and that he took the same bus as I every morning to work. On warm afternoons after work we would sometimes sit on the front deck of our complex and shoot the breeze over a beer. On the surface George was a normal enough looking guy. Ashley liked him and Lisa adored him. He always showered her with gifts; toys, candy, stuffed animals, dolls. One time he told me he was getting into practice for the day when his own children gave him grandchildren. And what did I know at the time? Even though I’d already lived through hell—had been a victim of abuse at the hands of my parents, had been arrested, been through drugs and alcohol, witnessed and taken part in petty crimes like B& E and credit card fraud and shoplifting and an assault or two—I thought I’d seen it all. I didn’t realize there were people out there that liked babies the way a normal heterosexual man likes adult women.

I got a frantic call one evening at my night job. It was Ashley. She was hysterical. She was calling from the hospital, saying that Lisa was bleeding internally. I rushed over and sat with Lisa as she lay in bed, hooked up to monitors and tubes. I brushed back her fine, silken baby hair from her sweet face and told her that her daddy was there, that he was going to protect her and make it all better. Ashley, who had been standing there crying when I came in later told me that, to her, Lisa’s condition seemed to improve drastically for a brief moment when I arrived. That bond at work I guess. Then ten minutes later as I sat beside my daughter whispering to her, my baby died.

A part of me died then, too. I felt it the moment Lisa passed. I felt a sudden cold chill; I was shivering, my teeth were chattering. I felt my baby die the minute it happened and I collapsed at her bedside and wept.

The five days that followed were a blur to me. I remember a doctor giving me a sedative. I remember Ashley’s parents taking us to their home. I remember sitting in my in-laws’ living room talking to a detective, answering questions about George Rios. I don’t remember making arrangements for Lisa’s funeral, but I remember the service itself. I remember sitting with Ashley in the front row as a choir from my in-laws’ church sang the theme song to Cinderella, which had been Lisa’s favorite movie. I remember the flowers that decorated the church and the tiny oak casket that sat on the altar. I barely remember the sermon, but I remember following the four pallbearers that bore my daughter’s casket down the isle of the church to the waiting hearse. I remember having to be supported by my father-in-law as my wife wept beside me.

The official cause of Lisa’s death was hemorrhaging due to internal injuries suffered during a sexual assault. Ashley had a nervous breakdown shortly after the service when George Rios was arrested and charged with my daughter’s murder. I learned later that on some occasions when I worked nights, George would come to the apartment and the two of them would sit and talk or watch TV. Sometimes Ashley would use this opportunity to run a quick errand—a trip to the grocery store or the post office or whatever—and leave Lisa with George. And why not? We thought we knew him. We’d seen his two grown children; met them; interacted with him. He was a normal guy to us. Freaks don’t have children of their own, they don’t wear suits and ties to work every morning. I know better now.

How long he might have been abusing my daughter, I have no idea. I only know this: on that last fateful day he assaulted her horribly, and when Ashley arrived back to the apartment she noticed Lisa screaming in extreme pain. George had been nervous but claimed to not know why she was crying. He’d left the apartment soon after Ashley arrived. Ashley noticed Lisa’s injuries when she changed her diaper a few minutes later. That was when she rushed her to the hospital but it was already too late. She’d been bleeding internally for hours. My baby never had a chance.

Despite being arrested for second-degree murder and sexual assault on a child, George Rios was convicted and sentenced to twenty years to life in state prison. Last time I checked he was still alive, although he’d survived several attempts on his life in prison. He’d be in his seventies now. If Lisa had lived she’d be in her senior year of high school. My daughter never had the chance to live, yet my tax dollars go toward keeping sick pedophiles like George Rios alive for the rest of their miserable lives. He took her life in a selfish act of sickness and she paid the ultimate price. I was left with a memory.

TO LOSE A child is something one never recovers from. That child remains with you. Always.

In your heart. In your mind.

In your soul.

Lisa remained with me. A day didn’t pass, a minute didn’t go by, when she wasn’t in my mind and all I could do was break down and cry. Ashley, too, took it very hard, but I think in some ways I took it harder.

She blamed herself. She told me that if she’d only waited for me to come home that night, if she had only sent me to the store she wouldn’t have left Lisa with George Rios and he wouldn’t have killed her. I immediately sought solace in black and red labeled bourbon and did my best to see her through her grief, but I did a lousy job at it. Maybe if I hadn’t been working so much Ashley wouldn’t have needed to feel she had to leave Lisa with George. That was what I told myself over and over.

We were young, and because we couldn’t deal with what happened, we dealt with it the only way our shattered selves could. Our relationship crawled along for another six months before finally ending.

And I still felt Lisa with me. I still thought about her. Still smelled her. And feeling her seemed to make the pain greater, not better.

In the four or five years that followed I remember snatches of evenings where I’d suddenly come awake from a heroin-induced stupor and suddenly start crying, calling out for my daughter. And as my drug-addled mind whirled I’d feel Lisa with me, lying beside me wherever I was; on a soiled mattress in some abandoned building; in a lover’s bed; on an acquaintance’s sofa, in the back seat of whatever shitty car I was driving and living out of. I’d feel her there making those soft cooing baby sounds and I’d hear the moist sounds as she sucked her thumb or pacifier in her sleep, and I’d try to burrow myself against her and hold her. For years I told myself that it was the drugs making me hallucinate, but in the past three years since my last emergence into sobriety I’ve come to realize that what I felt was not drug-induced. Because every time I thought I heard or smelled her or sensed her presence, I sought comfort in trying to embrace what I knew wasn’t there. And in reaching out to embrace what I knew intellectually wasn’t there, I’d feel the soft fluttery caress of baby-soft skin, then the warmth of breath against my cheek. I’d lie there, heart racing, telling myself that it was the drugs messing with my mind, making me remember what it felt like to sleep next to Lisa, to feel the curve of her skull against my cheek, to feel her warm body snuggled against mine and to feel the grasp of her little fingers as they wound themselves around mine, seeking comfort in sleep.

Sometimes I’d feel her presence at work. I was working in a warehouse whenever I had brief moments of lucidity. Of course, I was always under the influence of something—self-medicating was the only way I felt I could deal with the pain of my loss. And I’d be at work on the line, or operating a forklift, and I’d feel the presence of somebody else there. At first it creeped me out, but after awhile I got used to it. I told myself that what I was sensing wasn’t my daughter even when I tried to intellectualize it. It freaked me out because she would show up unexpectedly and I could hear her. Making those soft cooing sounds she made when she was happy, lowering the register in her tone whenever she would get sad. It seemed that lowered register was more prevalent than the happy one. I almost got the impression she was trying to reach me, and I reacted stronger to this impression late at night when I was tripping or stoned. That’s when I’d get all weepy and cry for Lisa and she’d be there beside me, taking my hand and talking to me in that broken baby-English. “Eth ah right da-eee. Eth ah right.”

For years I didn’t tell anybody. I was afraid they would think I was crazy. That what I was hearing, what I was sensing, was a result of my fragile state of mind and my tremendous sense of grief.

It was Ashley who helped me get sober again. She had grieved for Lisa, and then gone on with her life. The next time I saw her she’d tracked me down to a run-down apartment complex in Hollywood where I was living with three other addicts. I woke up from a heroin binge to see her and some guy I had never seen before standing over where I was sleeping on a worn dirty mattress with drug paraphernalia strewn about. Ashley was beautiful; she had cut and styled her hair differently, and it shimmered in the waning sunlight. The guy she was with was wearing a white shirt and a tie, and at first I thought he was a cop. Ashley looked down on me with sadness in her eyes. “Get up, Gregg.”

They helped me up, and they waited while I showered (which they made me do...back then I hated taking showers because I was poor, and when you’re poor and hooked on smack you can draw out the high by not bathing; being dirty clogged up the pores and held it in your system longer). I could tell they were hiding the disgust at my living conditions, at my physical condition, but I didn’t care. We sat down at the scarred kitchen table when I was finished and that’s when I learned that the man Ashley was with was her new husband, and the two of them had decided they wanted to find me to try to drag me out of the mire of self-pity and destruction I’d been traveling down. Ashley started crying. “I still miss her, Gregg. I think about her everyday, and I still mourn for her. But...I’ve gone on with my life. Lisa will always be in my heart, but—“

I interrupted her. “Don’t,” I said.

Ashley looked at David, her husband, who nodded. She turned back to me. “I’ve been having these dreams,” she said. “Dreams in which Lisa tells me that her Daddy is dying...and that she’s sad because she’ll never be able to see him again.”

I didn’t know what to say. At the time, Lisa’s presence was always permeated by sadness. I was deep in a bad heroin addiction, and I was stealing to support it (in fact, my roommates and I had just pulled out the apartment’s stove and refrigerator that we sold to raise money for drugs; the bathroom sink and the pipes were next). I was also smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and smoking crack and I’d often lie awake for days scratching at the scabs along my arms and thighs and watch television mindlessly for hours at a time, trying to ignore the shuffling and cries of my daughter’s ghost as she wandered around the apartment, crying, crying.

David leaned forward. Looking back, I see now he was a good guy, that he was genuinely concerned for me. Back then I thought he had other agendas. “I’m willing to pay for your treatment and rehabilitation,” he said. “We want to help you.”

“Can you make her stop?” I said; it just blurted out of my mouth, with no forewarning. “Can you make her stop?”

“Make who stop, Gregg?” Ashley asked.

I told them. About how I heard Lisa’s voice, heard her cries and heard her suck her thumb in her sleep. I told them how she still came to me, that she snuggled beside me when I slept at night, that she followed me everywhere. And as I told them I could tell they were glancing at each other worriedly. “Doesn’t she come to you?” I asked Ashley.

Ashley appeared stunned; I didn’t know if she was going to respond because David quickly intervened. He took her hand and nodded. “Yes, she does Gregg. Lisa does come to Ashley. She comes to her all the time. Now please...let us help you.”

Looking back, I realize two things: my grief was still so profound, and I was still feeling the remnants of the previous nights’ high. When David told me that Lisa appeared to Ashley, I broke down and wept.

They got me into rehab, my first stint. I was at Crossroads Rehabilitation for three months. Lisa went with me, and I could sense that she felt happier. She no longer cried, no longer moped around. I told my therapist about her, told the people in group about her, and I thought they understood. I thought David and Ashley had been telling me the truth about Lisa appearing to them. I found out later it was a lie, that David had been humoring me. They really did think I was crazy.

Apparently the doctors at the rehabilitation center saw it that way, too. After I was discharged, I continued to see a psychiatrist. He was very interested in hearing about Lisa, and I told him everything. By this time I was working a new job—and going to school to be a computer technician (you get a lot of contacts in rehab). I was also living in a new apartment by the beach. I’d get up every morning and go jogging and then I’d go to work. I stayed busy. And when I’d get home and unwind, Lisa was there. I could hear her playing in my living room.

In the four years I remained sober, I tried to tell myself that I was either having flashbacks or that maybe I really was disturbed in some way. I talked about this to my psychiatrist and that’s when he went full bore. He praised me for recognizing my illness, which he diagnosed as schizophrenia. “Extreme cases of grief after losing a loved one can trigger schizophrenia,” he explained. “It can range from the patient actually believing that the deceased is still with them, “It strikes primarily those who have lost somebody they were very close to; in your case, your daughter. We always encourage people to keep a journal of some kind, or to write letters to those they’ve lost to keep that connection. Many times when the level of grief is so profound, the patient loses that sense of reality in which the person they’ve lost becomes real to them. This can lead to a mild form of schizophrenia.”

When I first heard Dr. Robinson explain this to me, I thought he was full of shit. What did he know? I still had Lisa’s pillow, the blanket she slept in. I still had some of her toys, her pictures (thankfully, Ashley kept them and had given me some after I  got sober the first time). I no longer slept with her blanket or her pillow, but Lisa still bedded down with me just like she did when she was a baby. Every night she still snuggled against me for warmth. I still heard and felt her. And it was her presence that brought a sense of comfort to me. There’s no other way I can explain it.

Naturally, I didn’t believe I was schizophrenic. They say schizophrenics talk to themselves. I never talked to myself. Yeah, if you were to look into my apartment some evenings it would look like I was talking to myself. But I was really talking to Lisa.

I did well in therapy, even if I didn’t want to admit to Dr. Robinson that I thought his schizophrenia diagnosis was wrong. Let him think I was on the road to recovery. I took the medication he gave me (a very mild dose of Lithium), I tried to live my life, I attended AA and NA meetings. And through it all my daughter was with me.

There were women, too. There were women in my life even when I was using. When I was deep in the throes of my addiction I coupled with dozens. I went through one-night stands the way most people go through underwear (thankfully I managed to become HIV and Hepatitis III free). And from what I remember I performed just fine. It wasn’t until I became sober, nine months into my recovery, that I started seeing women again and realized I couldn’t perform without thinking of the possibility of becoming a father again.

The thought terrified me. It brought back the pain and the anguish I felt when Lisa had first been taken from me. I didn’t want to risk getting somebody pregnant, so I always insisted on contraception. The few times it wasn’t available I’d pull out shy of climax like they did in the porn movies. The few women who professed they loved me pleaded that they didn’t want me to waste my seed on their bellies and backs, and when I tried to give myself to them I just...couldn’t. Couldn’t achieve orgasm, couldn’t finish the act. I couldn’t explain to them why I couldn’t, didn’t want them to hear that I was afraid of being a father, so they eventually left me. The only one who didn’t was my second wife, Catherine.

I met Catherine at the place I worked, which was an electronics plant. To make a long story short, one thing led to another and we got engaged, and then married. Our wedding night was a disaster. Know why? We never officially consummated the marriage. Guess who couldn’t reach the finish line?

Unlike the other women, I told Catherine my fears and she encouraged me to seek counseling. I’d told Catherine about my past, about my loss, and one of the reasons I fell in love with her was because she had been so loving, so supportive. She saw me through therapy, too. For a while we were in group together. Our therapist didn’t want to discuss my schizophrenia; he was more concerned with our sex life, which is what we were paying him for. We worked through several exercises designed to reintroduce the pleasures of sex to me once again, starting with sensual massage. He encouraged condom use for the first few sessions as well. That all went fine until...well...the actual deed sans contraceptives. Suffice to say, we tried for a year and when Catherine finally broke down and announced her intentions to have a child with me even if we had to go through artificial insemination, I lost it. I was adamant about not having another child, so adamant that we had a huge fight and I left the house.

And through it all Lisa was there. I could feel her impending sadness. Her tone of voice and demeanor changed. She began to cry more. She became more clinging. She would lie between Catherine and I and reach for me, crying that she wanted her daddy, and when I tried to hug her and talk to her, I’d wake Catherine up. “Who are you talking to?” she asked one time. When I realized I was talking to myself (for even then I didn’t want to believe that who I was talking to was really myself), I’d stop. This happened three times, and the morning after the last one Catherine gave me an ultimatum. Either I go back to therapy and address my issues or she would leave me.

My issues were I didn’t want another child. I wasn’t ready emotionally; I was still running away from my past life, still assigning blame. Catherine left.

I started to chase the dragon again.

I’ve had a chance to look at my medical records and talk to my new doctor, a guy named Dr. Simmons. Looking back at that period, officially I was still deep in the throes of drug addiction and schizophrenia.

I know better now. I may have been an addict, but I’ve never had schizophrenia, even though I exhibited the symptoms.

I was haunted by the ghost of my daughter.

IT'S FOUR A.M. and I’m still awake. I still haven’t heard the sounds I had come to associate with haunting, either.

I’m almost finished. The more I write, the more the minutes pass. And the more the minutes pass, the more I am convinced it’s stopped.

If you read back over what I’ve written, you’ll either come to the conclusion that the enormity of grief over the loss of my first daughter was so great that it led to the shattering of my mental state, that I developed schizophrenia and, therefore, imagined that I was being haunted by her ghost. My drug and alcohol problems only compounded the problem.

Or, if you believe in ghosts, you’ve come to the conclusion that I really was being haunted.

For years I didn’t know what to believe. There were periods of time where I’d go weeks, sometimes months, where I wouldn’t feel Lisa’s presence. Then she’d suddenly be there. I’d feel her presence in the apartment; I’d hear her crying, or laughing, or playing. For the most part I was the only witness to these spectral hauntings. Catherine surely never believed that I was being haunted by Lisa. It was her disbelief that led to our divorce.

Following our divorce, I descended back into the world of drug abuse. I sensed an immediate response in Lisa, who became more clinging, more morose. Once again I lost my job and apartment and soon took to shacking up with street people.

This last binge didn’t last long. And it all had to do with the confirmation that I really wasn’t crazy.

Strangely enough, it was a woman who helped me confirm I wasn’t insane. I was living with a skinny pothead named Tina Short in Huntington Beach. One evening we were reclining in bed when she asked right out of the blue, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

I turned to her. The first thing I said was, “Yeah, why?”

“Because I think this apartment is haunted,” Tina said. She’d only moved in three months before, and I’d only been living with her for a week or so before she made this announcement.

“Why’s that?”

I remember what she said verbatim. And when she told me it sent chills down my spine.

“A few days ago I came home,” she began. “You were crashed out in bed. I came in and started undressing and I...I heard a sound, like somebody moving in the bed. Like the bed springs creaking. I turned around and you were in the same position, but...” Her voice grew lower, almost a whisper. “Okay, I know this is freaky but I could have sworn there was somebody else in bed with you. I could feel...just feel the presence of somebody else there. And you were so sound asleep on your side but...it seemed you were...” She gestured. “...embracing somebody. You had your arm cradled out, as if you were holding somebody in sleep. I...I took a peek and there was nobody there, which I knew there wasn’t. But...” She looked at me and I knew she was telling me the truth and that what she’d seen spooked her. “Your arm was just around air, but something was there. I saw the indentations on the sheets, as if somebody was lying beside you.”

I felt my heart beating as she told me this. She was describing hundreds of nights I’d slept since Lisa died.

“And then your arms slipped down and I heard the rustling of somebody getting up. The creases from the indentations on the sheet shifted, and part of it slipped down...as if somebody was sitting up...” Here she paused. I could tell she was struggling to continue, that she still didn’t know what to make of what she saw. “And then...I swear to God this is the truth, Gregg, and I wasn’t tripping or anything, but...I swear I heard this sound...like a child sucking its thumb.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or feel terror the way Tina did. I felt this warm sense of relief rush through me. I think what I felt was vindication. I smiled. I felt like crying and it took all my willpower to stem the tears.

“Doesn’t that freak you out?” Tina asked.

“So it’s the ghost of a baby,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly, fighting to hold back the sudden wave of emotion. “Maybe a baby used to live here. I don’t see anything to be frightened of.”

“But why would the ghost of a baby be suddenly showing up? I’ve been here for three months!”

I don’t remember how I responded. What she told me confirmed that I wasn’t insane. She didn’t know it, but that confession helped me on the road to my latest recovery.

I stayed with Tina for another three weeks and she reported the visitations more. I feigned ignorance as we’d sit in the living room listening to the sounds of my daughter playing and laughing at our feet. Tina would sit spellbound, taking hits off her hash pipe. “This is fucking intense, man!” I stopped doing drugs that first night she told me about her experience. I suppose I stayed with her another few weeks to confirm the fact that we were both experiencing the same thing.

I moved out and checked myself back into rehab again.

Sometimes Lisa showed up. When I was alone and sensed she was there, I’d call out to her. She’d appear at my feet and I’d lean down and whisper that I loved her. I could sense her smile and I’d hear her little voice saying “I love you, too, Da-eee!”

The rehabilitation center found me a job as a computer consultant for an insurance company, and nine months later I had a small apartment again. I wasn’t running away from my past anymore. I embraced it; embraced Lisa; embraced the experience I’d had with her, and counted myself lucky I’d had her. I still felt sad occasionally that she was no longer alive, but I felt rejoiced in knowing her spirit lived on. That her spirit and her memory lived within me.

I could also sense Lisa’s growing happiness at my change of behavior. When I met Christy I could tell Lisa liked her. I told Christy about my past, about my first marriage and Lisa and what happened to her, but I left out the part of my schizophrenia diagnosis. I didn’t tell her about Lisa coming back, either. I wanted to see if Christy sensed her the way Tina did. Christy never did and I left it at that. It would be my little secret. I was at peace with myself for the first time in my life, and because of that my physical relationship with Christy bore fruit. Six months after we met we were getting married, and eighteen months after that Christy was pregnant.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back on it I remember Lisa’s sense of jubilation during that period. When the two of us were alone she’d dart about the house like she did when she was alive, making sounds, playing with knick-knacks, hugging my legs. I had to be careful in displaying my affection to her when Christy was around, but she seemed to understand. And as the months passed during Christy’s pregnancy I didn’t look at the birth of another child in dread. I welcomed it. We purposefully did not have an amniocentesis done because of the potential consequences to the fetus, plus we wanted our child’s sex to be a secret. Therefore, when Annabelle Lee Walker was born four days ago I think I cried a little bit more in happiness because I secretly wanted a little girl again. And my wish came true.

Annabelle has Christy’s eyes and mouth and she has my facial structure and hair. She also has Christy’s feisty temper.

Lisa hasn’t shown up since Christy and I left for the hospital five days ago. She never popped in the apartment to make her presence known; she never reached out to me; I did not feel her spectral presence or hear her sucking her thumb. I didn’t have to. I know she’s here. How do I know this?

The fourth toe of Annabelle’s feet are slightly inclined in the opposite direction of her other toes.

Mummy

IT HAD BEEN Johnny’s idea to coerce Ricky to pretend to be the Mummy. Ricky came from that weird family that moved in to the old house on the end of the street, and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood made fun of him because his parents were even weirder than the house was. The house itself had a long reputation for being haunted—now that I look back on it, every old, dilapidated house quickly gains a similar reputation among the neighborhood kids. But to hear that Ricky’s parents had specifically asked the real estate agent for the house was what branded Ricky a weirdo in our minds. And because of it, when we were playing, Ricky always got stuck with playing the roles the rest of us didn’t want.

You know the drill: Ricky was always “it”; he was always the criminal in cops- and-robbers; he was always the lion when we played Mighty Hunter. And on this late summer afternoon as we were gathered at the Hetfield twins’ house, lounging in the big maple tree in their backyard, Johnny came up with the idea of playing Mummy.

We’d all been watching Creature Feature a few nights ago and they’d played the old Universal Mummy film. The Hetfield twins and I had been pretty creeped out by it, but Ricky had laughed. “Oh, how scary!” he’d squealed. He began walking in that Boris Karloff limp, dragging his left leg behind him. “I’m the Mummy!” he cried, raising his arms out in a menacing gesture.

Johnny had gotten the joke and screamed mockingly. “Oh no! It’s the Mummy! I’ve got to get away!” And he ran away shrieking with laughter as Ricky shambled along after him. After awhile Ricky stopped and turned back to us, laughing.

We got the joke after that. What was there to be scared of when you had a monster that could barely move?

This subject had come up again as we all sat around the maple tree. Ricky read a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland, and now he passed an issue of the magazine around with Boris Karloff on the cover. “The mummy isn’t that scary. Now the Wolfman, that’s scary!”

“What do you mean the Mummy isn’t scary?” Johnny said, and from his tone of voice I could tell that he was itching for a teasing. The Hetfield twins recognized this and perked up. But because Ricky was new to the neighborhood, he didn’t recognize the tone in Johnny’s voice.

“He just isn’t,” Rick said.

“But he’s wrapped up in all those bandages,” Johnny said. “That’s got to be scary.”

Ricky shrugged. “If you think so.”

“I think so,” Johnny said, and now he jumped from his spot on the tree and stepped up to Ricky, his tone and demeanor threatening. “And I think you need a lesson in how scary it really is.”

Ricky just looked at him and Johnny grabbed him. “You freak! Moving in to the old Jones’ place and your parents a bunch of damn hippie witches! You think that’s scary, I’ll show you real scary.”

Grabbing Ricky roughly the way he did must have scared him, because now the smaller boy began struggling. Johnny turned to me and motioned, and I came over to help. I grabbed Ricky and together we hustled him into the empty garage, the Hetfield twins trailing along behind us. My heart was pounding with excitement. I didn’t know what Johnny had in mind, but I knew it was going to be some sort of childhood torture. He had jacked me up a year ago when I  moved into the neighborhood by pinning me to the ground and holding a large garden spider over my face. I was so scared, I pissed my pants.

I was expecting something similar. Johnny barked at William Hetfield: “Gimme a couple of rolls of bandages.” The Hetfield twins’ parents worked at the medical clinic as a doctor and a nurse respectively, and Will darted into the house. He emerged a moment later with several boxes of bandages and a pair of scissors and tape. Ricky was still struggling beneath the weight of Johnny, Mike, and myself. Will handed the bandages to Johnny, and with our help he began wrapping Ricky’s struggling form in the bandages. Johnny had to hit Ricky a few times to quiet him down, and that actually scared Ricky more than anything. This made Ricky easier to wrap up, and within ten minutes Ricky was trussed up like a mummy.

Johnny bent over him, wrapping his face up tight. I could feel Ricky shivering inside the bandages. Johnny leered down at him. “Are mummies scary now, Ricky? Huh? What do you think, fart-face?”

Ricky started struggling harder. His feet actually kicked out and connected with Johnny’s shin. Johnny snarled and kicked back, his foot connecting with Ricky’s head. Ricky went limp.

For a moment, we all stood still.

Ricky was still.

Will leaned forward and bent over Ricky’s prone form, as if listening. Then he turned a frightened face toward us. “He ain’t breathing!”

Johnny stood up and kicked Ricky in the ribs. “Quit fucking around, Ricky!”

Ricky remained still.

Now I was scared. I joined Will on the floor of the garage and felt Ricky. He was still. And very dead.

I looked up at Johnny, blind terror rising in me. “You killed him.”

“Me? You guys helped me. You’re just as guilty as I am.”

That’s what started the fight. The three of us must have argued and yelled at each other for over an hour, and within that time we all cried at least once. I don’t know about the other guys, but I got to thinking about Ricky’s parents and the story that had floated around that they were witches. Of course, this was the early seventies when this happened, and back then any adult that didn’t look normal or associated with the hippies was often considered witchy. Ricky’s parents had probably been hippies at one time and still held onto the movement’s ideals by the time the seventies rolled around. They surely stood out like sore thumbs in the upper middle-class neighborhood of Oak Street where we all lived. But witches?

Well, I’m older now, and much wiser. Or I should be. As a child I believed the stories I was told by Johnny and his older brother that they’d seen Ricky’s parents participating in some strange rites in their backyard with other dark-robed adults. How they’d all gathered around a fire and chanted. Of course as kids we all believed that, and combined with their physical appearances we all knew it must have been real. And to hear Ricky talking back then, how he’d said that his parents would protect him against anything, surely must have contributed to those fears.

They never fingered any of us for what happened to Ricky. The official story is that the Hetfield twins went crazy one night and were confined to an insane asylum for the rest of their lives. Johnny was found in their garage strangled to death rather horribly. Ricky had simply disappeared. That all happened, too. You’ll understand why in a minute.

Luckily none of the other kids in the neighborhood had seen me with the Hetfield twins, Ricky, or Johnny that day, and I claimed to not know anything about what had happened. I told everybody that I’d been at home watching TV. The police questioned everybody, of course. For awhile Ricky’s parents were considered suspects in all of this. They were eventually cleared, and they later moved to another state.

Of course I only heard about this later on. A year later, when I turned thirteen, I ran away from home. I knew too much, you see. I knew exactly what was happening. And I knew I had to leave when I heard that Will Hetfield was discovered dead in his room one night at the state mental hospital, dead of asphyxiation.

I ran away then, and I’ve never been back. But no matter how far I run I know I can never run far. I’ve known this all along ever since that fateful night in the Hetfield twins’ garage.

You see, an hour after Ricky died, when we were all still sitting there crying and arguing with each other over who killed him, I saw. I know how Johnny was killed. I know what drove the Hetfield twins insane. I knew right from the beginning.

I was the first one to see Ricky’s mummified form rise from the garage floor and stretch its twisted hands around Johnny’s neck.

Riding the Storm Out

CARRIE'S SCREAM WOKE Richard from a sound sleep.

He shot out of bed, heart racing. Carrie was in bed, but she was screaming in terror. Her eyes were open, hands flailing in front of her. She was still caught in the throes of a nightmare.

Richard grabbed Carrie’s shoulders and shook her. “Carrie! Wake up!”

Carrie drew in a breath as if to let out another ear-piercing scream, then stopped. Her eyes changed from the glassy mirror of sleep to awakening as she realized that she was safe. “Richard,” she said.

“You okay?” Richard’s heart was pounding. He tried to listen to see if Carrie’s screaming had woken up the kids. All was silent down the hall.

“Yeah,” Carrie said. Wide-awake now, she was trying to catch her breath. She looked at Richard with a frightful expression. “That was the worst nightmare I ever had.”

“What happened?”

Carrie settled back against the headboard. Now that the initial fright was over, Richard felt himself beginning to wind down from the adrenaline rush. “It was weird. I was being chased by this...this...I don’t know how else to describe it. It was this crazy guy with an axe. He was chasing me. We were back in Portland, and—”

“You were back home?” They had just settled in Silver Spring, Pennsylvania from Portland, Maine six months ago.

“Yeah,” Carrie nodded. “But...the streets were completely deserted and I was on foot. I was only a few blocks from home and this guy was chasing me up and down various streets, trying to kill me. He had an axe.”

“Wow!” Richard didn’t know what to say. He’d never heard of a dream in which somebody was trying to kill you.

“I was always a block ahead of him and every street I turned down, he turned down, too.”

“Was he somebody you know?”

Carrie shook her head. “No. I have no idea who he was. He was just...some guy. He was wearing dark jeans and a white shirt, and...he was just kinda ordinary looking. Sandy blonde hair thinning at the top. Sensitive features. But...” She looked at him. “He looked insane. His eyes were like...pits of insanity.”

Richard nodded. “And he was chasing you with an axe.”

“Yeah. It seemed like he chased me for hours.” Carrie had calmed down now, and she settled back into bed, pulling the covers over herself. “I finally got a good enough lead on him that I was able to make it back to the house. I got in and slammed the door shut, then darted to the window and peeked out through the blinds. I saw him walk down the middle of the street, looking around trying to find me. He was holding that axe like...he was getting ready to use it. And all I could do was watch while he stalked down the middle of the street, looking around trying to find me.”

“Is that when you woke up?”

“Yes. Well, no. Not really.” She looked at Robert. “I woke up in the dream. It was like a dream within a dream. You know?”

Robert nodded. She’d had a false awakening; she’d been dreaming that she was having a nightmare.

“I woke up in the dream and I saw that I’d fallen asleep on the sofa. It was snowing outside. My screams brought you out to the living room.” Carrie related the nightmare with calm conviction, her features still evoked with fear from the memories. “I told you what happened in the dream, just as I’m telling you now. You opened the drapes and I looked out the window. There was nobody there. Just our street and falling snow.”

“Our street here? In Silver Spring?”

Carrie nodded. “Yes. And then you told me to lie back, that you were going to get me a drink of water. I sat up on the sofa and watched the snow fall outside, thinking it was all just a silly dream, and then I heard you come back from the kitchen. I turned around...” Her voice trembled and Robert could tell that she was reaching the climax. “...and you were standing there in the doorway with the same look that guy had. You had that same look of madness in your face...and you were holding an axe in your hands.”

Jesus, Robert thought. He shuddered.

“That’s when I screamed,” Carrie said. “That’s when I really woke up.”

“Man,” Richard said, shaking his head.  “You okay?”

“Yeah, just...it kinda freaked me out.” Carrie looked at Richard and the beginnings of a grin curved her mouth upward. Richard smiled. He could tell Carrie was starting to feel better already. “Figures I would have a nightmare in which my husband was a mad axe killer.”

Richard chuckled. He held up his hands. “Don’t worry! No axe here. It’s under the bed.”

Carrie hit him playfully. “You!”

They tumbled in bed, giggling. Richard held his wife, holding her close to him. “Least you didn’t wake up the kids,” he said as they lay in bed waiting for sleep to overtake them.

“Mmm hmmm,” Carrie said. She was starting to drift off again.

Carrie didn’t mention the dream the next morning as they got the kids dressed, fed, and off to school. Richard watched the Weather Channel as he nursed a cup of coffee in the living room. Forecasters were predicating a big storm to hit much of the Eastern Seaboard. Central Pennsylvania was to be hit particularly hard. “They’re calling for a big one, honey,” Richard called out from the living room.

“Really?” Carrie herded Mark and Susan ahead of her. Both children were bundled up in jackets, boots, gloves, and scarves. “When?”

Richard shrugged. “Tomorrow?”

“Is it gonna snow like it did in Maine, dad?” Matt asked, grinning gap-toothed.

“Looks like it, sport.”

“Cool!”

Carrie grabbed her coat and scarf and quickly kissed Richard as she herded the kids out the door. “You going out today or seeing clients?”

“Nope. I’ll be home all day.” Richard operated a book-selling business off the Internet, which enabled him to work out of the house. Sometimes local clients came in to inspect his stock by appointment, which was housed in the basement. It had been easy to move the business from Maine to Pennsylvania, since he’d already been established in mail-order for over ten years. The only time he left his home was to pay a call on a client to appraise books they wanted to sell, attend an auction or estate sale, or to go to the post office to ship orders.

“Will you go to the store then and stock up? If this thing is hitting tomorrow the stores are gonna be packed.”

“Okay.”

Carrie left with the kids; the routine was that they took turns taking the kids to school. Carrie worked in Manheim as an Administrator at a high school. She’d been able to get a job pretty easy when they moved here. After all, Lancaster County was her hometown; she’d grown up here. That was one of the reasons why they’d moved back.

When the forecast came back to the local area, Richard sipped his coffee and paid attention. The storm was expected to arrive tomorrow morning, and it was going to be a doozy. It was being called an extreme Nor’Easter, the first blizzard the area had had in thirty years. There was the possibility that with the wind chill factor and the amount of precipitation, they could get up to over a foot of snow in the next week.

Even by Maine standards that was significant snowfall. They used to get storms like that at least once a year.

When Richard arrived at the grocery store on Lititz Pike, he found it pretty busy as was expected before a storm when people stocked up to ride it out. Older people pushed shopping carts, filling them with various sundries. He was rounding the corner to the canned goods isle when he ran into Walt Forest, the guy who ran an antique store around the block from where they lived. Walt nodded. “When you leavin’?”

“Leaving?” Richard asked, confused.

“Big storm coming,” Walt said. “That foot of snow is probably going to turn to eighteen inches or two feet by tomorrow. This is a big one. Best you’d leave.”

“No sense in leaving,” Richard said. “We’re just gonna hunker down and –”

“Oh,” Walt said, staring at Richard with a look of epiphany. “That’s right. You’re not from here.”

“Well, yeah, but I am from Maine,” Richard said, now more puzzled than before. “I’ve been through storms like that and—”

“Like I said. Best you leave. Trust me on this.” Then, without another word, Walt pushed his cart past him and down the aisle.

Richard looked at Walt’s receding figure as he headed down the aisle. What was that all about? Walt looked...well, he looked pretty uneasy. Almost embarrassed.

As he drove down 772 nearing Silver Spring he noticed two more of his neighbors, people he’d developed nodding acquaintances with, heading in the opposite direction. The Rutts, who were in their mini-van, had all the kids crammed into the backseats. They looked like they were embarking on a family trip. Likewise, the Beckers had both their teenage children in tow. Richard frowned, wondering why both sets of families had decided to allow their children the day off from school.

When he pulled into the driveway of his home he saw his neighbor, Paul Ross, packing a suitcase into the back of his gray Chevy Suburban. Richard opened the trunk of his Saturn and began taking out bags of groceries.

Paul turned to Richard. “You stock up?”

“Yep.” Richard hauled a bag containing a jug of milk and reached inside for the eggs.

“Where you staying?”

Richard paused, looking at Paul curiously. “Here. Why would we go anywhere else?”

Something passed through Paul’s face, as if he realized he’d said the wrong thing. His eyes were wide, nervous looking. “You might want to leave. This is supposed to be the biggest storm we’ve had in thirty years.”

“Are we in a bad zone or something?” Richard asked, getting fed up now with the evasive nature in which the locals were refusing to address the situation. “I mean, we aren’t at the foothills or anything. I see no threat of Silver Spring being in the path of an avalanche.”

“No, we aren’t,” Paul said, eyeing Richard. “Still, it’s better if you can leave for awhile.”

Three cars drove down the street in quick succession. As they passed, Richard saw they were filled with families or couples. Across the street, a man and woman exited their home bearing suitcases. The man opened the trunk of his Subaru and loaded it up.

He turned back to Paul. “Is everybody in town leaving?”

Paul nodded.

“Where are they going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to my mother’s in Akron.”

Now Richard was puzzled. “You’re staying with your mother in Akron? Akron’s, what? Ten miles from here? What’s the difference in staying here or—”

“Listen,” Paul said, and now he appeared more animated. He glanced around furtively, as if afraid he was being overheard. “I can’t speak for everybody in town, but I’m guessing everybody else is staying with friends or family in Lancaster County. Most of ‘em are probably driving out of the county and stayin’ in a motel or something. Reason I’m staying with my mom is because...” He shrugged. “Well, she knows.”

“Knows what?”

Paul sighed. “Okay, you’re gonna think I’m crazy but here it is. You don’t want to be in Silver Spring when the storm hits. Last time a big storm like this hit was thirty years ago. I was only eight and we was fine. Everybody left. But before that? It was back in the fifties. Guy moved to Silver Spring from Philly with his family. Had three kids. He didn’t leave.” Paul swallowed and Richard could see his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat. “During the storm he killed his whole family. Chopped ‘em up with an axe.”

“No kidding?” Richard still didn’t understand what an almost fifty-year old murder case had to do with the weather.

“He was warned,” Paul continued, his eyes darting to the front door of his house. “My dad said everybody warned him and he wouldn’t go.”

“He was warned to leave town before the storm hit and...what? He went storm-crazy and butchered his family?”

“You don’t understand,” Paul leaned forward, his voice a hissing whisper. “They don’t just go stir-crazy. It’s the weather conditions. When we get a Nor-Easter like this, at these conditions, it awakens them. They take over and look for a suitable host. If you’re here—”

“They? Who’s they?” Paul sounded like a bona-fide nut.

Paul gripped Richard’s upper arm. “I don’t have time to give you a history lesson, so listen carefully. About a hundred and eighty years ago, this town was founded by a closely-knit religious group. They weren’t like normal Christians. They worshipped something else. It wasn’t the devil exactly, but it wasn’t entirely of this earth. They flourished in Silver Spring because Pennsylvania was a Quaker state and they were largely tolerant of other religions. But people started settling in the surrounding areas...Lititz, Manheim, places like that...and they didn’t take to this group’s ways. They got driven out.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“Listen!” Paul’s eyes were wide, all pupils. “They all got run out except one guy. He refused to leave. A posse came for him during the height of a great blizzard and they killed him in a little stone house that’s no longer standing. And according to legend, before he died he swore he’d come back. That was in 1845.”

The tale was insignificant to Richard. An old wives’ tale. “So what happens? The town gets possessed or something whenever we get a storm like this? Does this guy’s ghost come back? What?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said, getting back to the task at stowing his baggage in the vehicle. “All I know is that every time Lancaster County gets a huge storm like this, it acts like some sort of catalyst or something. It’s like when the weather gets to a certain wind chill factor and we get enough snow it triggers something. It triggers some kind of madness to anybody who lives in Silver Spring.”

“And whoever is left here when it happens is affected,” Robert said.

Paul nodded. “Yeah.”

“And you believe that?”

Paul’s wife, Susie, joined him with their son, Ben. Susie had an overnight bag and Ben was clutching a backpack. “You see us leavin’ don’t you?”

“Did you tell him?” Susie asked Paul.

“Yeah, I told them,” Paul said. He put Susie and Ben’s luggage in the vehicle, then turned to Robert. “I know it sounds crazy, but it happens. The locals will tell you. We got old timers in town who’ve been through two or three of these things. Besides that family in the fifties, there was a family in 1932 that got wiped out, and before that, in 1917, another family was massacred. We get these storms once every fifteen, twenty years or so. Last one was in ’72. We was lucky that year. Everybody left. I’d advise you take your family and leave until it blows over.”

Ben and Susie got in the car. Paul slammed the door to the rear of the Suburban, then climbed behind the wheel. Before he closed the door he looked at Richard. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Then he slammed the door, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway.

Richard watched them leave. He felt a sense of nervousness as four more vehicles headed down the street, all of them filled with people from the neighborhood. It was a mass exodus to leave Silver Spring, Richard realized; one based on fear and superstition.

He carried the rest of the groceries in the house and put them away, thinking about what he’d just witnessed and heard. It was crazy, like something out of one of those B-movies he used to love watching as a kid. When all the groceries were put away, he went to the window and looked out. The sky was gray, definitely snow-material, but it didn’t appear the storm was going to be hitting anytime soon. A few more cars drove by, stopping at the end of their street and turning south on 772, heading out of town. Richard found it weird that all two hundred and thirty seven residents of the little village of Silver Spring would be held together by the same superstition. Still, it piqued his interest. He checked his watch; it was ten-thirty. A trip to the library was in order.

The closest one was in Lititz, about ten miles away. He locked up the house and drove over, mulling everything he’d witnessed and been told in his mind. Something wasn’t right about the story. He found it hard to believe this legend was only confined to Silver Spring and the few Lancaster County residents who lived in the outlying areas.

When he arrived at the Lititz Public Library, he asked the clerk behind the counter if they had microfilm of the Lancaster Intelligencer going back the past hundred years. The clerk, a young man with a crew cut sitting in a wheel-chair, nodded. He pointed to his right. “Micro-film machines are over there. The cabinets in the back contain back issues of the Intelligencer going all the way back to 1875.”

Richard thanked him and headed over to begin his research.

The first year he researched was 1972, the year of the last storm. As he scrolled through the issues, he decided to focus on the months between December and March, typical Nor’Easter months. He struck paydirt five minutes later.

The storm that hit in 1972 had occurred on February 12. It had lasted for five days, bringing four feet of snow. The entire week of the paper was filled with stories about the storm and local reaction to it. The February 15 edition eluded to the last time a storm of this magnitude had hit—January 4, 1958.

Richard took out the micro-film and went over to the cabinets to get the film for 1958.

The January 4 edition ran a banner headline: MONSTER STORM EXPECTED TO DUMP TWENTY INCHES OF SNOW IN TWENTY-FOUR HOUR PERIOD. The next few days’ reporting was similar to the 1972 storm with one exception.

On January 9, Karl Eschbach of Silver Spring killed his entire family—his wife and two small children—with an axe.

The story made the front page. The bodies were discovered by neighbors who paid the Eschbach’s a visit after the storm lifted. The Eschbach’s had moved to the region from Philadelphia. Karl was arrested for first-degree murder.

Intrigued, Richard scrolled through the rest of the year, looking for more stories of the Eschbach case. The week following the murder, the paper ran daily updates. He learned that in the days following the murders, Karl Eschbach had been examined by a psychiatrist and found legally insane. He also learned that, according to medical examiners, Karl had killed his family the day before they were found, on January 8, four days after the storm hit.

Richard sat back in his chair, thinking about that. Snowbound for four days and Karl Eschbach goes crazy and kills his whole family. He leaned forward and perused the paper some more.

A follow-up article contained the brief mention that, prior to the killings, Karl had been heard arguing with his wife. There were suggestions of family troubles. It was speculated that while they were closed up in their home for the four days their troubles accelerated until Karl blew a fuse, resulting in him losing his sanity and murdering his family.

A plausible explanation, Richard thought. But not believable enough to support the theory that he’d become possessed by some spirit.

During his perusal of the 1958 storm and the subsequent murder case, the articles mentioned that the last time Lancaster County had suffered such a heavy storm was in 1940.

He checked the paper for the winter of 1940. No murders occurred that year, but the storm had been a whopper—three feet of snow in two days, wind chill factor of 25 below freezing with winds of eighty miles per hour.

The articles from that period referenced the last storm of similar magnitude in the area, from 1932.

That year, the storm had hit with a ferociousness not seen since 1917. Five feet of snow was dumped in as many days between January 23 and January 28. On January 27, Eric Heister used a hatchet to dispatch his wife and two teenage children.

Richard read the article with rapt interest. The articles on both the Heister and Eschbach cases were eerily similar; both families had been recent arrivals from out-of-state. The Heister’s had come from Indiana. There was trouble at home —Eric Heister had been laid off from a plant job in November of 1930 and was unable to work since then. They’d bought their home in Silver Spring from an inheritance on Mabel Heister’s side of the family, and Eric worked odd jobs in the area to pay the mortgage. In the articles published in the weeks after the storm and the discovery of the bodies (again, made by a neighbor after the storm passed, and again Eric Heister was committed to a mental hospital), it was suggested by neighbors that Eric was a violent man who often beat his wife. Relatives in Indiana confirmed this, adding that Eric had a problem with alcohol.

There were no murders during the 1917 or 1901 storms, but in 1888, a farmer who’d moved from Berks County slaughtered his family of seven at the height of a week long blizzard. When his neighbors came to check on them after the storm, the farmer, Randolph Walker, attacked them with an axe. He was shot in self-defense.

1888 was the last storm Richard was able to locate that was within the perimeters he was looking for. The 1888 articles noted that the last time the region was hit with this big a storm was in 1867.

Robert wondered if anybody living in Silver Spring was caught up in the madness even then.

He drove home slowly, pondering everything he’d read. Surely they were just weird coincidences. It had taken him three hours to do his research, and he wondered if, given enough time, he would have been able to find reports of similar violent acts in other parts of the state. Surely Silver Spring was not the only part of the country immune to violent acts while snowbound during heavy winter storms. Plus, according to all the articles he’d read, all the men involved had one thing in common: past histories of violent behavior and alcohol abuse. They’d been powder kegs waiting to explode. Cabin fever during extreme weather conditions keeping them inbound was what set them off.

As he drove through Silver Spring he saw that the town was deserted. Normally he wouldn’t have noticed. He drove slowly, checking everything out as he cruised. Sutter’s Market was closed on Main Street, as was the antique shop and the sandwich store. The four square blocks that made up Silver Spring was deserted. There were no cars parked in the driveways or along the streets. The casual passerby driving through town wouldn’t even notice the abnormality because Silver Spring was so small. You could literally drive from one end of town to the other in twenty seconds.

As Richard parked in the driveway, three cars headed down the street and turned down Main Street, heading toward 772 out of town. Richard watched them leave, noting they were packed with families.

Leaving in fear of the storm.

Once in the house, he checked the orders he’d printed out on his computer the night before. Sales had been slow at the beginning of the year, and he’d shipped all his orders yesterday. He booted up his computer, accessed his Internet connection and checked his order queue. Nothing had come in since yesterday. If any orders came in during the storm, he could always e-mail the customer and explain that their order would be shipped as soon as the incoming storm lifted.

He tried to turn his attention to other tasks: bookkeeping, browsing through publisher’s catalogues, updating his own print and on-line catalogue, but he couldn’t concentrate. He realized his mind was wandering when he realized the wind was blowing and he looked up from the mint copy of Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival he’d found at an estate sale for dirt cheap and looked out the window. The sky was dark. And he saw the snow swirling and blowing sideways in the field across the road from them before it hit.

By the time the storm hit he’d shut his computer down and strolled to the living room window to watch. The snow was flying; it looked like thousands of little white pebbles zinging like bullets. A pair of headlights cut through the swirling white and a moment later Carrie’s car pulled into the driveway. Richard reached for his coat hanging on the rack by the door and went out to help her bring the kids inside.

Once everybody was in the house and their coats were off, Richard headed to the kitchen. “Guess this is the beginning of it. I stocked up on all kinds of stuff.”

“Good,” Carrie said, heading to the refrigerator. The kids were in the living room, the television and Playstation already in use. “I was thinking of doing up a pizza for the kids.”

“Sounds good.” As Richard leaned against the cupboard watching Carrie gather the utensils and ingredients she needed, he told her about his encounters at the grocery store and his conversation with their neighbor.

Carrie laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding!” She turned around after putting milk in the refrigerator. “You’re serious?”

“Oh, I’m serious all right. It’s a real epidemic. The entire population of Silver Spring is gone. Kaput! They’ve gotten the hell out of dodge.”

“They actually believe this?”

“Looks like it,” Richard said, glancing in the living room to check on the kids. They were safely embroiled in Play Station. “And they were serious about it. The people next door acted like a goddamn hurricane was coming. You should’ve seen the look on their faces.”

Carrie looked shocked. “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I did some checking today at the library,” Richard said, and as Carrie looked up at him at this revelation he told her everything he’d learned. Starting with the last storm in 1972, he traced what he’d learned all the way back to the last article he could find at the library. When he got to the murders he lowered his voice, noting how Carrie’s eyes widened at the mention of the incidents. “You’ve never heard of any of this?”

Carrie shook her head. “No! Never in my life.”

“Not even when you were a kid? Like as some kind of local urban legend?”

“Not even as a girl scout at camping trips.”

Richard thought back to that morning at the grocery store, how the only local to Silver Spring had been the only patron in the store that seemed to be in any real hurry to leave before the storm hit. Everybody else had been going about as normal, the way most folks usually stocked up before a big storm. There’d been no sense of panic or fear in their faces. Not the way he’d seen it in the faces of his neighbors, those that lived on their street who’d packed up their vehicles in a mass exodus to get out.

“So they’re all freaked out that we’re staying?” Carrie asked, a grin on her face now.

Richard noticed that grin and he smiled back. “Looks that way.”

“Boy, will they be surprised when they come back and see us shoveling our sidewalks.”

Richard laughed. Carrie laughed too, and Richard felt the tension ease between them. He thought Carrie was going to be worried about what he’d just told her. Instead, she’d seemed to take it as a joke, which it was.

Later in bed, as the storm howled and raged outside, splattering snow against the shutters and windows, Carrie snuggled against him. “We’re okay, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” Richard said, holding Carrie close to him. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I was just thinking about all you told me,” she said, her head resting against his chest. They’d put the kids to bed hours ago and retreated to their room early, made love, and had lain awake listening to the storm rage outside. The house was warmed by the heater and the fireplace in their bedroom, which was now burned down to embers. “That story...about the religious group that was run out of town. What kind of religion were they?”

“I don’t know. None that I’ve ever heard of.”

They listened to the wind whip and howl outside.

“Richard?”

“Yes.”

“All those people that died...the men that killed their families. They all had drinking problems, right?”

“Exactly.”

“And according to what you told me, they had marital problems as well. One of them had been laid off and couldn’t find work. They were already going through extreme times in their lives when they snapped.”

“That’s right,” Richard said. He kissed Carrie’s forehead. “They had all kinds of problems. We don’t.”

Carrie smiled. “No, we don’t. I mean...I love my job, I love living here. I love our life. Don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“You’re able to work at home now. I know you weren’t always able to, and that the kind of business you do has its ups and downs but—”

“And I’m doing very good,” Richard reminded her. “Living here in the middle of the country where people stash all their old magazines and books in the attic for years has paid off well for me. Remember that box of old magazines I bought at that estate sale last week?”

“Yeah?”

“One of them was a crate full of pulps from the 1910’s and 20’s. It had early issues of Black Mask, Weird Tales, and All Story, including the issue with Edgar Rice Burrough’s first Tarzan story. Know how much one of those sold at auction last time it was offered?”

“No.”

“Eighteen grand.”

Carrie gave a little gasp of surprise. “Are you kidding?”

Richard shook his head. “Nope. First issue of Black Mask usually goes for five hundred, maybe more. And the first few issues of Weird Tales? Between five and ten grand apiece. I sell four or five of these old pulps on Ebay, that’s my yearly income right there. And you know I usually do that well just selling used books.”

Carrie hugged him. “That’s wonderful honey.”

Richard held her, feeling good. It was wonderful. The items he’d bought at that estate sale, old books and magazines that had been stored in somebody’s attic for eighty years, would fetch close to sixty grand. Maybe more. Normally, he was lucky if he made thirty grand a year just selling the usual stuff.

That good feeling pervaded the next day. The storm didn’t let up; as they ate breakfast in the dining room, Richard and the kids watched through the window. Richard stood at the window nursing a cup of coffee as the snow piled up. He could barely make out the street they lived on. Everything was covered in swirling white.

“What do you think?” Carrie asked as she brought a tray of scrambled eggs to the table. “Over a foot?”

“At least that,” Richard said.

“Can we go sledding today!” Mark asked. Susan was jumping up and down, anticipation on her beaming features.

”If the storm lets up we can go sledding,” Richard said. He smiled at his son.

“Yay!”

The storm didn’t let up.

It continued unabated, dumping snow and blowing freezing wind all day. The kids went down in the basement to play games on the family computer, and he and Carrie watched the news. The Weather Channel reported that the storm was hitting South-Central Pennsylvania very hard. “Lancaster County has reported almost two feet of snow in the past eighteen hours,” the weather anchor reported, “with temperatures dipping below freezing. With the wind chill factor, it’s making for extreme Artic conditions. UGI is reporting a hundred thousand residents are without power due to downed lines, and Verizon has reported phone outages throughout the region. The Governor is also issuing a state of emergency and has ordered all vehicles off the roads except for emergency vehicles. If you don’t have to be anywhere, by all means stay home!”

“I don’t think we’ve been through one of these in awhile,” Carrie said.

“Yeah,” Richard replied. “At least since we left Maine.”

Richard got a taste of what it was like outside when he took the trash out. He’d put on his snow boots, long-john’s, sweater, and a heavy jacket and gloves before going out, but he was still unprepared for the bitter sting of the snow as it slapped against his face, stinging him like angry bees. He dragged the trash bag to the cans tethered to the side of the house and got it in, slammed the lid down, then headed back in the garage. Once inside, he hesitated before going back in the house. Might as well drag the trash can in the garage so it’ll be within easy reach. If they were expecting three more days of this shit it would make things a lot easier.

They spent the rest of the day lounging around the house, reading, watching movies and TV. Mark and Susan wanted to go outside and play in the snow but Carrie told them it was still snowing, that they could go outside when it stopped. The kids played computer games, then Susan fell asleep and Mark read comic books. They ate a light lunch of sandwiches and Carrie spent the rest of the afternoon making chicken and sausage gumbo, which they ate for supper. Then they retreated to the family room where they watched Shrek on DVD.

That night in bed, with the wind moaning outside, Carrie asked, “Have you thought any more about what the locals told you?”

“No,” Richard said. “Not at all. And neither should you. Now let’s get some sleep.”

The following day it was still snowing and the wind was blowing hard. Mark and Susan got dressed up to go outside and they were just about to exit the front door when Richard stopped them. Couldn’t they see that it was still snowing outside? Mark looked at his father wide-eyed and Richard instantly regretted using the tone of voice he’d used on the boy. They were just kids; they were getting restless being cooped up in the house. Richard knelt down and promised them that the minute the snow stopped they’d all go outside for a little bit. The kids nodded, looking crestfallen.

Richard ventured outside, bundled up like an Artic explorer to see how much snow had fallen. It piled up around the house, burying both cars. He spent an hour outside doing what he could to remove snow from the windows and the back door of the house, then retreated back inside to thaw out. Carrie and the kids were watching from the den, a fire going in the hearth. Carrie looked concerned. “It’s starting to come down harder,” she said.

He looked back out. Fresh snow was falling heavily. “Great! Oh well.”

“Thank God for self-employment, huh?” Carrie grinned, pointing at him. “When it’s over, you can stay home and shovel it all away from our house.”

“Forget that; I’m calling a snow removal company.”

“At least we still have phone service,” Carrie said, retreating to the kitchen to start dinner.

The rest of the day went by smoothly. At one point, Richard checked his e-mail and found ten orders in his mailbox, one of them a credit card order for a mint condition copy of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others. What do you know? he thought as he processed the order and e-mailed the customer. I just made two thousand bucks without having to leave my house!

The next day brought even more snow. The news was becoming more dire. The signal was fuzzy and as Richard tried to decipher the weather report, Carrie tried the phone. “Phone’s out,” she said.

Richard turned to her. Carrie looked worried. “We’ll be okay, babe. We got a few weeks worth of food in the house and we still have power. And if we lose that, we’ve got the fireplace. We’ll be fine. Besides, you have the cell phone.”

“Maybe I should check to see if we have any battery-powered lamps,” Carrie said.

“Basement.”

While that third day of the storm was spent doing more of what they’d been doing the last few days, things seemed different. For the most part, they caught up on their reading and film watching, Carrie called in to the office to make sure things were okay there, then did laundry and some knitting. Richard wrote a few pages of a novel he’d been working on for the past five years, the kids played either alone or together in the basement or in their rooms. A few times Richard caught them looking outside, then turning to look at him as if they were asking can we go out now? And each time Richard shook his head no. Physically and emotionally he felt fine, but he could tell the kids were close to bouncing off the walls. They really needed to get outside and play. They’d been watching the snow fall and batter their house for three days now, and he knew the sleds and snowboards were beckoning. If it would only stop!

Carrie was quiet most of the day, and that evening in bed Richard asked her if she was okay. “I’m fine,” she said, snuggling up to him. “I’m just tired. And you?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

The next day’s weather report gave a damage count: ten dead, thousands without phone service or electricity, hundreds more injured in traffic accidents across the state. Four feet of snow had fallen and crews were working around the clock to remove it from vital areas. Homeowners were being advised to stay inside when possible, and to only venture out during brief lulls to remove snow from generators or windows. “It looks like we’ll have at least two more days of this, folks,” the weather reporter said. He was broadcasting from Harrisburg, which looked like somewhere in Alaska. “The snow has been falling steadily since Friday, and thankfully the wind has died down a little bit. But we’re expecting another strong front to move in by this evening to last through tomorrow night, and after that it looks like we’ll get a reprieve. So batten down the hatches and bundle up. This one looks like it’s going to be the Storm of the Century. And according to the National Weather Bureau, South-Central Pennsylvania hasn’t seen a storm of this magnitude since 1972.”

Carrie glanced at Richard. “When was the one before that?”

“Fifty-eight, I think.”

“And that was the one when—”

‘Yes,” he said, motioning toward Mark and Susan, who were also watching. Carrie got the message, but he knew what she was trying to get at. The last time anybody from Silver Spring had stayed behind during a storm that brought these conditions was 1958...and the man that had stayed behind had slaughtered his entire family.

Richard couldn’t work on his book that day. He tried to clean up some files on his hard drive, then finally shut down the system and poured himself a cup of coffee. He stood in the family room and watched the snow fall outside, his mind going back over what he’d read, everything Paul had told him. They don’t just go stir-crazy. It’s the weather conditions. When we get a Nor-Easter like this, at these conditions, it awakens them. They take over and look for a suitable host. And if you’re here—.

Richard thought about this, his mind retracing everything he’d learned. Paul’s story was bullshit. It had to be cabin fever that set those men off. They’d had drinking problems, trouble at home, financial difficulties. That had been their breaking points. Richard was the exact opposite of that spectrum. He was fine. He was happy. He had a good life, he loved his wife, his children. Carrie loved him, his kids were healthy, well-balanced. Their finances were fine, neither he or Carrie had histories of violence or alcohol and drug problems. What could go wrong?

The day went by smoothly.

It snowed all day.

And all through the night.

The next day, the storm was stronger. Richard and Carrie stood at the windows and watched as it came down. Earlier that morning, Richard had once again braved the bitter wind and tried to shovel snow away from the windows, but the more he shoveled it, the more it fell. He let Mark and Susan out during the brief time he was out shoveling snow and they’d played in the white powder for perhaps five minutes and then stopped to watch him. The snow was so thick and deep he couldn’t see the cars, and it had been days since a plow had driven up the street. To get to the street they would have to climb a mountain of snow. Their cars were covered. If it weren’t for their covered porch, the snow would be piled around their front door.

Richard sipped his coffee, his arm around Carrie’s shoulders as he looked at the sky. The clouds were dark. The wind howled, blowing the trees. He could feel the house shake as the wind whipped around the eaves. Mark and Susan looked up from their Play Station in the living room. “It’s getting worse,” Mark said, a hint of worry in his voice.

“We’ll be fine,” Richard said.

Later that day the power went out.

Mark was lying on the sofa napping, and Susan was in her room taking a snooze when it happened. Richard was reclining on the sofa reading a book when the lamp suddenly went out. He looked up, meeting Carrie’s gaze as the wind picked up again suddenly. A chill seemed to pass between them. Richard closed the book. “I’ll turn the circuits off and get a fire started.”

When he came back Carrie was sitting up, looking outside, a strange expression on her face. Richard started making a fire. “You okay honey?”

Carrie looked up, as if snapped out of a silent thought. “Oh, I’m okay. I’m just thinking about something.”

“What’s that?”

“The dream.”

“What dream?”

“Remember the one I had four, five days ago? About that guy chasing me down the street of our old neighborhood with that axe?”

Richard turned around. “Yeah?”

“I had it again last night.”

They looked at each other and Richard tried to read the look on his wife’s face. She was looking out the window, and he could tell she was worried about something. Probably the fact that the storm was really raging now, and that they’d been cooped up in the house for almost five days, all the work that would have to be done to shovel out of it, all the time lost from work. “You okay?” Richard asked.

Carrie turned to him and mustered a smile. “I’m fine. It’s just...I had the dream again last night and it didn’t freak me out the way it did the first time. And...”

“Yeah?”

Carrie shook her head, picking up a cup of coffee she had set on the coffee table. “Nothing.” She looked at him and smiled. “I’m fine.”

“Tell me!”

Carrie looked at him. For the first time since the storm started, she looked frightened. “This time the guy chasing me in the dream...was you.”

Richard regarded her for a moment and turned back to the fireplace, putting wood in the hearth, getting it all built up.

When it was ready, Richard lit a match and held the flame to a bit of newspaper he’d put in as kindling. The flame caught and he closed the screen. He thought about what Carrie told him as he waited for the fire to build. Being cooped up in the house for five days, the insanity of the local urban legend and what Richard found out about its origin had surfaced in her dream. Perfect breeding ground for the nightmare resurfacing.

A moment later the flames were blazing, warming the family room. Richard turned around—

Carrie was gone.

Richard went to the coffee table where his own cup of joe was and he sipped it. He heard Carrie rummaging around in the garage, probably taking out the garbage. Then he heard her walk through the kitchen to the entry hall and up the stairs. He noticed that it had stopped snowing and his mind wandered, resting briefly on the dream Carrie had: the madman stalking her with the axe–him!—bearing a crazed expression, running into the house and waking up. Telling his dream-self about the nightmare she’d just had, then turning around to see that Richard had become that same crazed madman holding that axe, leering at her with a look of insanity.

Then the local legends of all those people who’d stayed in Silver Spring when the weather became like this...and the madness that took over them, bringing the male members to insanity and murder. How they’d slaughtered their families with hatchets.

And all because the vengeful spirit of a slain man couldn’t rest. And was reawakened when weather conditions reached the same as the day he was lynched.

It suddenly hit Richard; Carrie’s dream, what he represented in the dream, the legends.

Christ, no wonder she was looking at me like that! She’s terrified out of her mind.

He heard a noise behind him and felt her presence before he turned around—he’d heard her rummage around upstairs in both the kids’ bedrooms as they slept before she’d headed back downstairs. She was standing there, madness in her eyes, her features a contorted rictus of lunacy. The axe she held in her hands was the one he’d used to split kindling during the winter months in Maine. The blade was stained with fresh blood, as were her face and the front of her shirt. She hefted it in her hands, the blade gleaming sharply. “I’m not going to let you do it to me,” she said, drool running down her chin as she advanced on him and lifted the blade over her head to take the first swing. “I’m not going to let you...”

FROM THE LANCASTER INTELLIGENCER

January 27, 2002

Three family members were murdered yesterday in what police described as a bloodbath.

Police say Carrie Sweigart used an axe to brutally murder her two young children and her husband in a frenzy that this area hadn’t seen in fifty years. Their bodies were found when their neighbors, Paul and Susan Ross, returned home from a weekend trip and dropped by for a visit. “I never thought something like this could happen here,” Paul Ross related. “They were such lovely people.”

The suspect isn’t speaking and is under suicide watch at the Lancaster County Prison for women, where she is also under a psychiatric evaluation. A neighbor, who witnessed the police leading Ms. Sweigart out in handcuffs, related that she looked insane. “She kept saying being cooped up during the blizzard was influencing the spirit, whatever that was,” says Alvin Moore. “She kept saying they were stuck there for five days, that the storm wouldn’t let them out.” Other witnesses reported that Ms. Sweigart said the same thing.

With Lancaster County experiencing the mildest winter on record in over twenty years—only six inches of snow has been recorded this season—it’s obvious that other factors, perhaps mental instability, was the cause for the brutal murders. Grieving family members confirmed that Carrie Sweigert met her husband, Richard, when both were being treated for various mental disorders at a state-run psychiatric facility and that they married soon after they were released (continued on Page 4).

Dedicated to the memory of Javier “Eddie” Reza

The Watcher From the Grave

I

Now about the “terrible and forbidden books”—I am forced to say that most of them are purely legendary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself.—H. P. Lovecraft, Letter to Willis Conover, dated July 29, 1936.

Justin Grave was lucky that the house he finally landed had such a cheap rental rate.

It was situated at the end of a long, narrow road in Reamstown, Pennsylvania, a lonely two story rambling farmhouse situated on ten acres of land. His closest neighbor was half a mile up the road. He could work well into the night with the phonograph playing loud and it wouldn’t pose a problem.

The rental agent had informed him that the previous occupant of the house had kept late hours, too, and that most of the neighbors had hardly known he was around. She seemed to think he was a student, pre-med maybe, who was on a brief sabbatical from University. In either case, acquiring the house took a load off of Justin’s mind. The rent was affordable, the location bearable, and the space gigantic compared to his apartment in town. He already decided where the study and the library were going to be. All he had to do was settle in.

He moved in right after Christmas. The holidays were bitter cold, and on New Years Eve greater Lancaster County, Pennsylvania received a foot of snow that covered everything from barns to downtown city streets. Justin moved in three days before the storm.

The storm lasted four days, unleashing a cold front brought along by a fierce wind that blew in from Canada. It was a good thing he’d moved in and unpacked before it hit. What better place to be in a howling storm than snug in your own warm study with the fireplace blazing?

The storm brought no relief. Justin sat by the radio on the second day of the storm, listening to a weather broadcast. The forecasters were predicting a Nor’easter to pummel much of the New England and Mid-Atlantic region. Bad weather. The rest of the month was going to be shot as far as neighborhood exploration went.

This became apparent two weeks later. He’d just finished another Rex Bates tale for Adventure Magazine when he suddenly realized it had been six months since he’d worked on anything horrific. His last appearance in the land of the weird had been “...When the Bells Toll” which appeared in the December issue of Weird Tales. That story had been written at the commencement of the previous summer. The six-month time lag had been spent writing two science-fiction novels to be serialized in Amazing Stories and Astounding respectively, along with the usual work. As a writer of pulp fiction, Justin Grave could turn out romance novellas for Romance Stories and Love Stories; detective stories for Black Mask and Detective Fiction, adventure serials for Argosy, and weird-menace tales for Spicy Mystery Stories, Thrilling Mystery, Dime Mystery Magazine, Terror Tales, and Horror Stories. Thank God for pseudonyms.

But the itch to churn out a couple of horror stories gnawed at him. His first sale had been to a small circulation pulp (a rag actually) entitled Tales of Terror, in the summer of 1928 when he’d graduated from high school. His first appearance in Weird Tales saw print six months later. In the ten years that followed he’d probably published well over five hundred stories and a few serialized novels in every pulp magazine on the stands. By the time he graduated to writing full time, his name was being advertised on the covers of the horror pulps along with H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, as well as in most of the adventure and detective fiction pulps. Even some of the pen names he used for the romance pulps began to make cover status after a few years. Half of the stuff he churned out was pulp for the masses, with a guaranteed life of one month on the racks in whatever pulp magazine it appeared in, only to be gone by the next month’s issue. Forever.

At least it paid the bills.

The storm outside was providing the perfect atmosphere to get back into the horror mode. The house in general seemed to emanate a sense of foreboding. He noticed it when he first settled in. It was as if the very air was weighted, leaden. The elements seemed to churn and change in different rooms. It was probably his imagination—his mind had been turning to horrific themes for story ideas—but he still couldn’t shake the feeling off. It felt the strongest in three rooms; the kitchen, the bathroom, and the master bedroom. It was worse in the master bedroom. He would lie in bed, eyes wide open, faint murmurings fluttering through his mind. The silence of the house seemed to whisper to him and he got up a few times to investigate, thinking he really was hearing something moving stealthily in the house. He never found anything.

Which was why he wanted to start on another horror tale. Channel the nightmares out of his mind and put them on paper. That method had always worked before. It would work again.

A couple of feeble attempts at starting a new tale were undertaken in negative results. Writer’s block had set in after six months away from the creepy crawlies that he normally enjoyed dealing with. After his fifth attempt, he tore the page out of the typewriter and tossed the crumpled ball into the wastebasket. The storm showed no sign of abating and cabin fever had set in, making an afternoon walk a no-go. He had to clean out his mind, carve out the clutter that was occupying his brainpan.

He decided to explore the rest of the house. The attic and the basement hadn’t been explored yet, and now the urge to examine them blossomed. He left his work area and donned a jacket to make the trip downstairs.

The rental agent had steered clear of the basement during his initial tour. She’d simply pointed to the door of the basement, which was set by the kitchen. The key was in place on top of the heater. He scooped it up and fumbled it into the lock. The lock turned with a creak of protest, and he eased the door open slowly. Light from the kitchen stabbed feebly down into a yawning pit of darkness. The steps descended for about three feet and were swallowed by blackness.

And the dark, pulsing, foreboding feeling ebbed out from the basement, washing over him. Stronger than ever before.

His heart thumped hard in his chest as he grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen counter and flicked it on. The beam stabbed into the darkness, making the downward trek less hazardous.

He descended slowly, the ominous feeling growing heavier on his shoulders. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with this house, with the basement. And despite that feeling, he denied that it had anything to do with the supernatural. He wrote about it, dealt with it in his fiction, but he never believed in it. He refused to believe in it now.

He tried to deny that there was something wrong. But his heart told him otherwise.

He explored the basement that afternoon with the nervousness and fear of a child in an amusement park house of horrors. The feeling dwindled as the beam from his light began flashing on normal looking objects, and it soon subsided. A stack of boxes in the corner yielded moldering, ancient Penny Dreadfuls and turn of the century pulps. Another crate revealed back issues of Harper’s and Blackwood’s Magazine, more gems.

Justin spent that afternoon leafing through them, transferring them to a pile on the floor to be taken upstairs for cataloguing into his own collection. When he was finished, he cast the beam of light around the shabby basement. There were a few chairs, a makeshift table with a layer of dust on it, an ancient stone fireplace that sat cold and empty, and a door set against the far wall. It was locked.

Justin trundled his catch of the day up the stairs to his library. He spent the rest of the evening sorting through the ancient pulps. He couldn’t help but think of the day his wanderings through the closets of the house the week before yielded a similar find. Beneath a pile of old blankets in his study closet was a box of vintage pulps; early copies of Weird Tales (some with his own published work!), Strange Tales, and others. There was Arthur Machen’s The House of Souls, Robert W. Chambers The King in Yellow, the infernal book of Magic and Supernatural The Golden Bough, and a book he had never heard of, From Beyond by James Smith Long. He flipped open the cover of the latter; a collection of short fiction by a forgotten writer.

Stacked in a heap with the pulps and books were notebooks filled with spidery handwriting. Justin had dragged the stuff out and spent the afternoon sifting through it. Most of the notes were scholarly in nature, depicting thematic structure and symbolism of the fiction in Long’s book, but there was a good deal of personal criticism as well. One of the journal entries stated “...am getting closer to what they’re hinting at. Even the newer crop of writers like Lovecraft hint at the same thing, yet I’m not so sure. Either way, I know I must do more research before I am absolutely sure of my theory.” Other books found in the stack were volumes on psychology, astronomy, anthropology, philosophy, history, theology, the occult, and archeology. There weren’t enough hours in the day to sift through all of them, so Justin gave up after a few hours and called it a night.

And now he’d found more of the former occupant’s belongings. And things were getting weirder by the minute. He didn’t know much of anything about the former occupant, just that he’d simply “disappeared” after not paying the rent for the last two months. The landlord came to collect the rent last month and found that he’d simply left, with no forewarning. The landlord cleared out the furniture and put the residence up for lease again.

The following day brought no new lightning bolt revelations for story ideas, so he trumped down the stairs to investigate the basement further.

He stood in the center of the room, trying to figure out what to hit next. A box of magazines sat by the far wall and he inspected them. He pulled the top magazine off the pile and flipped it open. His eyes widened in shock at the vile, perverted images. He’d seen pornography once on a trip to visit his agent in New York, and the graphic images had shocked him. They shocked him now, and he flung the periodical to the floor in disgust.

He sifted through the rest of the magazines with bated breath. They were all of the same ilk; their sexual perversions spiked through his brain, creating images that were sickening and repulsive. He moved the stack to the center of the room, making a mental note to burn them in the fireplace that evening.

Now his curiosity was more piqued than ever. He still couldn’t shake his mind of the images. What kind of person could keep such literature and photos in his home? It was obvious that whoever possessed them had enjoyed them by evidence of their condition, which showed a sign of careful handling. It was this which turned his attention to the locked door set against the far wall.

He tried the knob again; it was locked firmly. He began hunting around the basement until he found a crowbar on top of a pile of tools and debris by the fireplace. He hefted the tool in his hand and inserted its slim end into the crack of the door. Heaving with all his strength, he began prying the door open with the strain and groan of splintering wood.

When the lock snapped, the door flew open and banged against the wall. Justin stood panting in the cold basement, his nostrils suddenly tracking a damp smell that issued from the tiny room he had just unearthed. He stabbed the beam of his flashlight in the room, revealing a dusty piece of string that hung from the ceiling. A light fixture.

He reached inside the room and clicked on the light.

The room was bathed instantly in light and Justin blinked. Black spots danced in his vision and he blinked them away as his eyes adjusted. When he finally saw what was displayed against the far wall of the room he had to put his hand to his mouth to hold back the scream that threatened to issue forth. As it was, the shock of the gruesome sight pitched him on his butt while the back of his head thunked softly against the wall. The pain from the bump failed to supersede the shock of what he was seeing.

What looked to be a makeshift altar stood at the far end of the little room. It was constructed of large blocks of stone, about six feet by three feet. Running along both sides were what appeared to be gutters with drains that fed into two funnels that dripped into two buckets. The smell that came from the room was one of death and blood. Heart thumping hard in his chest, Justin took a step closer and peered into the buckets. They were empty, but it was obvious what they had once contained judging by the dried crimson that stained their steel surface.

Justin felt his gorge rise as he looked around the tiny room. Above the makeshift altar was a strange symbol, part pentagram, part some other hieroglyph that he didn’t recognize. It appeared to have been drawn in blood. Dusty black, white, and red candles sat at various positions around the altar, and on his right, sitting on a makeshift ledge, was what appeared to be a human skull. Heart beating harder now, Justin approached the loathsome object for a closer inspection. It was a skull! But it looked strangely...inhuman.

He didn’t know how long he sat there staring numbly at the scene. But when he finally came to his senses he heard the dull chimes of the grandfather clock upstairs in the entry hall tolling six p.m. His eyes widened in surprise. Five hours had elapsed since he trekked downstairs to investigate the basement. He shook his head to clear the shock and cobwebs from his mind. Where had his mind gone in that time?

As if in answer to his question a vision rose in his mind, as if he were remembering a dream. It was a vision of an endless plane, a wide gulf beyond time and space. He felt himself floating in this dream, drifting among various shaped objects and shadowy figures. He heard droning, monotone voices calling out and he closed his eyes and drifted through the flow. He drifted onward through the vast gulf of this curious dimension, and then before he knew it he was back in the little cellar room and the clock was tolling.

His mind was racing with a million questions and thoughts. He looked at the blood-stained altar, dismissing the dream as mere fantasy brought on by exhaustion. The important thing was dealing with what he’d found in his basement. The blood-stained altar only meant one thing: a crime had once been committed at this house, maybe the very same crime that had led to the disappearance of the former tenant. He needed to find more evidence before he decided what to do next.

It was obvious that Justin had stumbled upon an amazing discovery. He was standing in what was very likely a private ritual chamber. The vile pornographic literature in the box outside had probably been the former resident’s, as well as the books and magazines upstairs. The maroon stains on the makeshift altar, and in the buckets were now easily explainable, as were the strange symbols drawn on the walls. All of which explained the weird feeling he got when he first set foot inside.

There were other items scattered about the small room. A two-by-three foot cedar chest lay in a corner, padlocked shut. More notebooks slid in the shelves like books. Weird, symmetrical drawings and patterns were drawn with what looked like blood on one of the walls. He reached for the crowbar he had left in the doorway of the room, and turned its blunt edge to the padlock on the cedar chest. Three hard blows snapped the lock, and he flipped the lid of the chest open.

All that was inside the chest was an old leather bound book.

He was barely aware he was holding his breath as he bent down and picked the book up gingerly. The leather was old and cracked. Actually, it didn’t feel like leather at all, at least not the leather he was used to. This leather was smooth, thinner than normal, and had a distinct look to it. He examined the back and front covers, noting the thickness of the volume–it was at least 900 pages–then he flipped open the cover and stared at the title page.

The Necronomicon.

That weird hieroglyph symbol again. And then the name of the author.

Abdul Alhazred.

Now Justin began to smile. Surely this had to be a fake! Howard himself had revealed to him in a letter that he’d invented the name The Necronomicon and Abdul Alhazred many years ago, when he was a mere child. Howard was amused of the fans that had written in to Weird Tales asking where they could find a copy of the famed book of black magic that was apparently kept under lock and key at the Miskatonic University Library in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Yet another phony town and a phony university that so many gullible fans thought were real. They were all props to aid in Howard’s and others stories of a cosmic race of monsters known as “The Old Ones” who were waiting to once again reclaim the earth. Justin had written three similar stories himself, all of which had been very well received by Weird Tales readers. Howard had praised one of them, “The Whispering Thing in the Cellar”, as a fine piece of work.

But if the Necronomicon and everything that went with it were fake, how did that explain the book he now held in his hands?

He examined it more carefully. It was carefully bound, as if by hand. The pages were old and felt like parchment. Almost like papyrus. The writing in the book was obviously English, and appeared to have been hand written directly on the pages. He turned the book over and examined the cover, his fingers skimming across the surface. The binding was smooth and dry, grayish in color. There were splotches of pink in it here and there, and some of the gray appeared mottled. There also appeared to be tiny hairs jutting out of it, and–

Justin took a closer look and promptly dropped the book on the floor, his hair standing on end.

The book was bound in human skin!

That decided it. Now he was calling the authorities. The book itself, while odd, wouldn’t catch the attention of law enforcement, but the evidence of homicide in the room would interest them plenty.

Justin pulled himself away from the grisly scene and turned to move out of the room. He got no further than the threshold when a wet, rotted hand gripped his arm.

His heart flew in his throat and he choked back a scream. The thing standing beside the doorway was emaciated, scarecrow-like in its visage. It held Justin’s upper arm in one bony grasp, its grinning caricature leering at him through broken, rotting teeth. Twin orbs burned insanely in hollowed eye sockets. Wild, white hair sprouted from the skullcap like honey suckle blowing in the wind. It took a shambling step forward, its other arm reaching out to grab Justin by the throat, when he suddenly broke free and started running toward the stairs.

Blind fear raced through him as he stumbled over the box of pornographic magazines in the center of the room. He hit the ground on his hands and knees and was back on his feet in a flash, racing towards the stairs. Behind him he could hear the thing that grabbed his arm giving pursuit. Its labored breath wheezed behind him. Justin banged into a bookcase as he rounded a corner of the basement, nearly stumbled over a chair, and was almost to the stairs when he tripped over something else that pitched him forward. The bridge of his nose smacked the fifth stair with a hearty crack. He yelped at the impact, blood spattering the stairs and the front of his shirt. Fogginess clouded his brain and he pulled himself up only to be pushed down by the thing, which was now leering over him.

Justin felt his bladder give way. It was the last thing he remembered before the thing flipped him over and moved its hungry mouth toward his blood-ravaged face.

II

The latest issue of Nightshades magazine was at the printer when its owner and Editor-in-Chief, David Corban, received a call from his editor at the monthly trade publication Horror Scene. “Justin Grave just passed away this morning,” Mike Ashbury’s tired voice issued over the phone. “Heart attack. Sorry about springing bad news on you like this.”

David had been expecting the news. Justin had fallen ill in recent years, and informed David only two weeks ago that he wanted him to be his literary executor. David cradled the receiver on his shoulder and kicked his feet up on the window ledge overlooking Raymond Avenue. “Thanks for telling me. You’re the only guy I know that can bring bad news and still manage to keep me in a cheery mood.”

“Well, I’m not trying to make his death sound like it’s good news,” Mike said. “Justin lived the kind of life I hope to someday live. He lived his life to the fullest.”

David snorted. “You can say that again. The guy was almost ninety years old!”

“And he was still writing up until the time of his illness,” Mike interjected. “Mythos Books is putting out the last two novels he turned in to them, and if you were smart you’d get a collection out of his recent short stories.”

“We’d been talking about it before he got ill,” David said. “I suppose now that I’m his literary executor I can issue the stuff to myself for free.”

The conversation drifted a bit and eventually came back to Justin Grave’s short fiction again. “You really might want to consider a collection of his recent stuff,” Mike reiterated.

“Mythos put out a volume last year,” David said, musing the subject over. “It was a sixty year retrospective. Come to think of it, it didn’t include that much of his recent fiction.”

“There you go then,” Mike said. “At the very least you should consider an omnibus or something.”

David laughed. “It would take five volumes to showcase Justin Grave’s horror and dark fiction in an omnibus.” Still, Mike was thinking in the right direction. A collection of Grave’s horror, mystery, suspense, and dark fantasy fiction—most of it long out of print—could kick start Nightshades Publishing back into high gear. Presently there were two volumes of Grave’s short fiction in print from Mythos: Death Cry in the Night, a collection of weird menace stories from the shudder pulps of the 1930’s, and In the Depths, the retrospective that contained work from the late 20’s through the 90’s. David owned the seminal Cloak of Darkness and Others, which had been published in 1977 by a noted small press. It largely contained the more well known of his horror stories from the pulp era and beyond, and was now a highly sought after collectors item. With the recent trend in horror fiction toward the extreme end and the noir, Justin Grave’s work was receiving an almost rediscovered flavor. Anthologists were mining his work from the pulps for a wider audience, and most of the novels he wrote when he came out of retirement in 1973 were now being reissued. David leaned back in his chair, eyeing the late afternoon traffic along Raymond Avenue. “It’s a great idea. I just wish there was something we could mine that’s really rare...you know, something nobody has collected yet.”

“Have you thought about tracking down The Watcher from the Grave for reprint rights?”

The title drew a blank in David’s mind. Mike was a literary bibliophile, one of the three most well read people David knew. David’s interest was piqued. “I’ve never heard of it. What is it?”

“I’ve never read it,” Mike admitted. “From what I understand, it was published in late 1939 and early 1940 in serialized form in Shudder Magazine. It supposedly started some kind of controversy when it appeared.”

Now David’s interest was really piqued. “That’s pretty amazing. You wouldn’t happen to know what kind of controversy? “

“No. I really don’t know any more about it.” Mike added a short pregnant pause. “If you could dig it up somewhere I’d love to see what it was that caused folks in rural America to heave their cookies.”

“Well, I’ll try to track it down.” The conversation ended with a promise for David to get the bi-monthly column he wrote for Horror Scene in to Mike by the first of the week. David hung up the phone, his gaze still trained out the window. Justin had placed no less than ten stories with Nightshades  during the magazine’s eighteen-year history, the last one presently at the printer to appear in the latest issue. The new story was sure to go over big with Nightshades readers. The tale concerned the rumor of a ghoul-like god that feasted on the flesh of the living. A small, yet fanatical cult devoted to the ghoul devotes itself to appeasing the god. Extreme sexual favors in the form of succubi and incubi are the return for devotion. It was a story that straddled the traditional mode of the Cthulhu Mythos with the new erotic noir of Lucy Taylor and Edward Lee. Pure pulp for the masses.

David grinned as he leaned back in his chair. Justin Grave’s first posthumous piece was going to be his epitaph; his small, but fanatical audience was surely going to love it.

III

David made a trip to The Hollywood Book and Magazine Store that evening after closing down business for the day.

David’s favorite clerk, Brian Eaton, was seated on a chair, leafing through a recent issue of Fangoria. Brian was medium built, in his late twenties. The sides of his head were shaved down to the skull, wild hair sprouting from the top to cascade down to his shoulders. His left ear was pierced with six earrings. He played bass guitar in a local alternative band called Evil Offspring, and was a walking encyclopedia when it came to pulp trivia. The Hollywood Book and Magazine store itself was the kind of place that pulp fans in the Los Angeles area flocked to. The entire second floor of the place was devoted entirely to pulps—everything from Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Amazing Stories, to rare pulps like Strange Tales. David heard that the owners of the store sold the extremely rare second issue of Weird Tales a few months back for a tad over ten grand to a collector who’d been searching for it for the past five years.

Brian looked up from his early evening reading and grinned as David walked in. “Yo, Dave. New issue at the printer?”

“You bet.” Dave sidled up to the counter as Brian put the magazine down and approached, grinning wide.

“So what can I do for you this evening?”

“You know anything about a pulp magazine called Shudder?”

Brian nodded. “Sure do. It came out right around the time Unknown made its debut. It didn’t last long though. Why?”

“Well, I’m looking for a novel that was serialized in Shudder. A Justin Grave piece. The Watcher from the Grave.” He waited to see if recognition set in. It did.

Brian’s face lit up, excitement in his eyes. “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. That’s the story that caused some major editorial freak out. There were even Senate subcommittee hearings over the contents of pulp magazines being too damaging for kids.”

Wow! Pre-McCarthyism thirteen years before the infamous Congressman set up the witch hunt that ultimately killed EC Comics and black-listed several Hollywood screenwriters and actors for their supposed communist ties. “Tell me about it,” David asked.

Brian shrugged. “Not much to tell. Shudder only published seven issues, with The Watcher from the Grave appearing in serialized form in each issue. It caused an uproar by the third installment and by issue five the shit hit the fan. The hearings were already in place. Ironically, the novel concluded in issue seven, the same issue the publisher decided to abort his publishing career by killing off the magazine. He ultimately sued Grave for an unspecified amount of damages and eventually went bankrupt.”

This was all news to David. “What was it that freaked everybody out so bad?”

“The story itself,” Brian explained, not breaking stride as the history lesson continued. “It had something to do with cult killings, was Lovecraftian in nature but incredibly sexual as well, way ahead of its time. It combined the cosmos of Lovecraft with a hint of Clark Ashton Smith, along with the ghoulishness of Hugh B. Cave and Robert Bloch. It had ghouls, sex, death, and a race of creatures that wait in the outer spheres of space and time, ready to plunder the human race. Like I said, it was kinda Lovecraftian in theme and tone—it talked about another sphere where the gods came from, spoke of R’lyeh and Shub-Nigguroth, but then at the same time it wasn’t.” He chuckled. “Justin Grave was something of a trendsetter anyway—I mean, some of the stuff he was doing in the early thirties makes stuff that’s out now tame by comparison. Know what I mean?”

David nodded. Grave was downplayed as a hack writer for much of his career, and was ultimately forgotten in the field of horror for thirty years until an enterprising small press publisher issued Cloak of Darkness and Others in hardcover. The collection went on to win several awards, and a year later Grave’s first horror novel in over thirty-years, The Ritual, appeared in paperback from Lion Books. It still took ten years after that for his work to be taken seriously as important contributions to fantasy literature.

“The story never appeared anywhere else,” Brian continued. “During the commotion, an aspiring film maker optioned it from Grave, but nothing happened. Ten years later another producer bought the rights and made it into a low budget feature starring Bela Lugosi.”

David’s eyebrows shot up. He was supposed to be the film buff. “I never knew that!”

“Don’t feel so bad,” Brian said. “It was one of the endless stream of low budget films Lugosi did toward the end of his career. The film itself was largely confined to art houses and special midnight screenings in a few major cities. It came and disappeared and now it’s one of Lugosi’s lost films.”

David’s entrepreneurial mind was racing. If he could secure reprint rights for Watcher and resurrect the film on video (that is, if he could find it) he could make a small fortune. “Do you have any copies of Shudder in stock?”

David grinned wide. “You’ve come to the right place. I’ve got all seven issues in very good condition. They’re pricey, though.”

“How much?”

Brian named the price and David winced. It was enough to meet his monthly living expenses. David pulled his daytimer out of his black leather satchel and opened it up to his vast array of plastic. He pulled out an American Express card. No revolving debt.

“Couldn’t you just see if you can get a copy of the original manuscript from Justin himself?” Brian had just returned from the storeroom where he laid out all seven issues of Shudder in their protective plastic covers on the counter. David examined them carefully.

“I would, but the man passed away this morning,” David said.

Brian looked bummed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

David relayed his conversation with Mike Asbury earlier that afternoon. Brian listened intently. “Justin told me once that back in the sixties, a fire broke out in his house and he lost everything. Every pulp he had ever appeared in, along with the original manuscripts to all his published works. He’s been able to get copies of some of the pulps through the years, but he never did get all of them. I’m not sure he had any copies of Shudder.” David looked into Brian’s pensive features. “So, I don’t think that would work. Besides, I want these now. It’ll make a great tax-write off as well.”

Brian rang the transaction up. “Not only that, but you will be the proud owner of a sought after collectors item. Now that he’s passed, these are going to be worth a lot more money. Count yourself lucky.”

“I do.” David placed the fragile pulps in his satchel and bade Brian goodbye as he left the shop. His excitement and adrenaline spurned him on to what he knew he had to do in order to break his mini-publishing empire wide open.

IV

The hardcover first edition of The Watcher from the Grave sold out in two weeks.

David was prepared for the reaction to the advertising he put out, and he quickly ordered a second printing before the ink dried on the first. Six months later, The Watcher from the Grave had gone through four printings and a bidding war had started between four major paperback houses for reprint rights. Justin Grave’s literary agent, and Nightshades Publishing, had set up an estate for the deceased writer which was going to reap huge financial rewards in the months to come.

During the book’s production, David was able to scare up the original print of the cinematic version of The Watcher from the Grave. It was found moldering away in a warehouse near downtown Los Angeles. Hard detective work uncovered the print and once viewed, David realized he had to scare up some investors and do some legal checking to make sure the marketing rights to the film were clear. His main concern was that Lugosi’s estate would holler blue murder when word leaked out about the print. A referral through a mutual business associate put him in touch with a legal shark by the name of Daniel Walters, of Walters, Lowell and Zuckerman. Daniel navigated the choppy legal seas, and within two months the contracts were signed, sealed and delivered. Lugosi had signed a one-shot deal with the producer of Watcher for a flat fee of two thousand dollars. His biographers surely hadn’t been able to point out why Lugosi allowed himself to be ripped off. Different theories had been tossed out in explanation, but they were useless to David; the forty-eight year old document between the actors and the producer/holders of the film guaranteed no future royalties to Lugosi’s estate should the film ever be resurrected. Thus guaranteeing the future of Nightshade Publishing.

There was no problem in rounding up investors for the fifty grand needed for the post-production, distribution, and marketing of Watcher onto video. Return on investment was expected within three months of release. The moola came in a month and a half early. So much for forecasting.

What David didn’t expect from all the hoopla surrounding the resurrection of Justin Grave’s lost novel was the offer to pen the deceased writer’s biography for another enterprising small publishing house. The advance was small, but David jumped at the chance anyway. The travel required to research the book would provide a much needed working vacation.

Unfortunately, things turned out differently.

V

David Corban was a week into researching Justin Grave’s life for the biography when Nightshades Publishing received a letter in shaky handwriting. It was postmarked Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

July 6, 2000

Dear Mr. Corban,

I note with great interest that you have published Justin Grave’s long lost novel The Watcher from the Grave in an attractive deluxe edition, and have undertaken to resurrect and distribute the film based on the book later this year on video. While I applaud your keen business mind in tackling such an endeavor, I wanted to share with you some insights I have on the background of the story, and the later film adaptation.

I became acquainted with Justin in 1919, when we were both in grammar school. We became friends in 1925 when we were both high school freshmen. We remained friendly correspondents over the decades. Justin and I shared similar interests, mainly a love for the macabre, and the strange and bizarre. It had always been Justin’s goal to create a piece of fiction that would out-do anything being published at the time. We were both avid followers of the great pulps, and while I was never a correspondent or member of the now infamous “Lovecraft Circle”, we both shared a deep admiration for the gentleman from Providence. Justin published only a few Cthulhu Mythos stories, his most famous being the one which also ultimately destroyed his career in the early forties—The Watcher from the Grave.

Of course, Watcher touches on much more than simple deities from outlying cosmos struggling to gain their hold on our world, a world they once ruled. In addition, the work of Dr. John Dee was also a big influence on Watcher, as well as research into the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, the fabled lost city of Atlantis, and the ancient civilizations of South America. He had a theory, you see, about these “lost” civilizations that he wanted to answer in his novel. Ultimately he failed with mass America, but others before had tried to confront similar themes masked in mystery and fantasy.  Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith have flirted with such themes for years, but never in such grotesque detail that Grave managed to accomplish in a single story. Grave’s contemporaries, too, seemed unwilling or unable to grapple with the anthropological aspect of the ideas expounded in such themes. The two who came closest, Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, died rather tragically at the height of their careers. The third, Clark Ashton Smith, virtually abandoned writing in 1937 and produced no more of his strange, dark fantasies. Who knows what light these gentlemen would have shed on such things if they hadn’t suddenly died or abandoned their careers?

I’ve been keeping up with the world of fantasy ever since, and while I admire those who have come after Lovecraft and copped his style—namely Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell—none have come close to dealing with what these gentlemen were trying to accomplish. Even Lovecraft himself opted for devising his fictional towns of Innsmouth and Arkham, and casting devilish, tentacled creatures from the deep seas as integral parts of his tales, using them to obscure the true facts.

Have you ever read anything by James Smith Long? Don’t worry if the name doesn’t seem recognizable. Long’s work is largely forgotten now, but he published a steady stream of work from the 1840’s through the 1870’s in England, appearing in many of the Penny Dreadfuls and the Dime Novels of that time. Long died tragically in 1878 in a flat in London (and by strange coincidence, the very same room where Mary Ann Kelly was later found eviscerated beyond recognition by Jack the Ripper in 1888). Sadly, Long’s work has been out of print for over a hundred years, but his work is astonishing to compare to that of his literary descendants—there’s no doubt that Grave must have read Long’s work at one point, for Long talks of the same dreaded book that is so evident in Watcher. Yes, hard to believe, but Long makes reference to Lovecraft’s famed Necronomicon throughout the stories in his lone collection, a volume entitled From Beyond (I do not have a copy, but I remember Justin had an old, weather beaten copy. From what I recall from the fly leaf, it was issued in the year of Long’s death by a small publisher in London in an edition of 250 copies, of which most were ordered destroyed by Parliament for “blasphemy”. The book is virtually impossible to find today. I imagine copies that survived destruction by the pillars of British Society were destroyed during the blitzkrieg of London during World War II). Despite what Lovecraft’s biographers say, (and Lovecraft himself, rather contradictorily in his letters), I tend to believe Lovecraft must have come in contact with Long’s work at some point. How else could he have heard about the Necronomicon?

I am incredibly anxious to view The Watcher from the Grave on video when it is released. I remember seeing it in the fall of 1953 at a theatre in downtown Philadelphia. The film version moved me in a way the novel hadn’t; reading the novel for the first time gave me those unexpected tingles of gooseflesh one is accustomed to getting when reading great horror fiction (not to mention the three weeks of nightmares afterward; no novel has affected me since then. Not even the work of Stephen King, who I simply adore). The film raised those levels two-fold. Having read the novel in Shudder, those in my party wanted to bolt from their seats during those integral parts of the story. You know what parts I’m talking about; the parts when that ghoulish wraith walks out of the cellar and—

(Here the handwriting is illegible, and then it resumes after two lines of white space)

—we refrained though, and upon visiting the theatre the next week, in the accompaniment of more friends and colleagues, I was amazed to see the film was gone from the marquee. I never saw it advertised on a theatre marquee since.

In closing, I would like to commend you on a job well done in both resurrecting such a classic novel, as well as preserving the integrity of a man we all knew well and loved.

Yours Respectively,

Mr. Calvin A. Smyth

David read the letter twice with bemused interest. What did Dr. John Dee have to do with the seeds of Watcher? He couldn’t understand where Mr. Smyth was coming from in relation to that. While Grave’s story was relenting and literally scared the living shit out of you, it was pretty much a straight-forward horror story with Lovecraftian overtones that basked in the gruesome: a writer of the macabre vacationing in a fictional town along the Pennsylvania Dutch Country discovers a sacrificial altar in the basement of his home. It turns out the former owner was the follower of a secret cult, one that worshipped “The Watchers”, a group of demonic angels sent to watch over the Earth, who later descended and took themselves wives and beget monstrous offspring. They passed forbidden knowledge to mankind and were banished to the outer spheres for their crimes. Like most mythos stories, they are still seeking a channel into our plane of existence.

Further exploration of the house finds that the former occupant had abducted people for sacrifice in strange rites, offering the bodies to a creature described in great detail as “a leering, grinning emaciated scarecrow of a beast with a jaw full of broken, rotted teeth and rank breath that stank of the pit”. This creature is revealed to be one of the offspring of the Watchers, who had managed to remain in hiding when the other Watchers were banished to the outer spheres. In order to live, the offspring requires fresh blood from sacrificial victims. The more sacrifices made to the Watcher, the stronger he becomes. In return, he seduces his followers by showering them with succubi and incubi. Various idols and fetishes are utilized in rituals, some seeming to borrow heavily from Lovecraft’s Mythos: several of the mini-deities and fetishes grouped under the umbrella of the Watcher cult are amphibious in nature, some half reptilian and half mammal. The cult’s total purpose on earth was now established: to await for the proper sacrifice, a human being whom the offspring could inhabit, allowing him to open the flood gates into the dimensions from which the Watchers had sprung from, giving reign of the earth to those who had been banished to the outer stars.

Upon discovery of the evidence at his home, the protagonist is caught in a whirlwind of sexual perversion and bloody rituals as he struggles to retain his sanity and his life. The mystery darkens when two young girls are found murdered, their bodies curiously drained of blood, and evidence to the murders lead law enforcement to him. A musty old tome is found in the house–the Necronomicon–and the authorities shudder at the sight of it. It contains a virtual pre-history of a world now gone, and a world that will soon become reality again “when the stars are right”. Unfortunately they are too late. The protagonist has already used the book to the Black God’s bidding and realized, too late, what the intentions of the cult really are: that he is to be the vessel that will bring the Watchers back, allowing the Outer Gods to take hold on this world again. He doesn’t realize this until the end, when a young woman who has become his love interest early on in the novel, lures him into the basement of his home and seduces him. Before he is aware of it, the basement is filled with people, some he recognizes, others he doesn’t. The offspring is among them, a wraithlike figure emaciated and shambling as it is led to him to take communion of his blood, thus giving the dark god new life which will help to throw open the gates.

The Lovecraft-inspired Cthulhu Mythos had nothing to do with this tender tale of a boy and his corpse-like friend. Still, Mr. Smyth’s letter raised some interesting observations, and David made a note in his day timer calendar to pay the gentleman a visit during his trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which he was scheduled to partake in a week.

VI

From the Los Angeles Times—July 6, 2000

SIGNIFIGANT ARCHEOLOGICAL FIND IN SOUTH AMERICA STUNS SCIENTISTS

(AP) No longer will geologists refer to the Americas as the “New World” if the carbon dating performed on the artifacts found among the ruins of a newly discovered lost temple are any indication to be proven reliable. According to sources, the initial results from carbon dating on the objects prove to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000–75,000 years old. “This is nothing short but astonishing,” claims Dr. Edward Danzig, Professor of Anthropology and Ancient Civilizations at The University of California said yesterday. “We have reliably placed Homo Sapiens on this earth 30,000 years ago. To see the evidence such as this, that demonstrate modern man was creating things of this magnitude over 30,000 years before most scientists believe he was on this earth, much less in this part of the world, is incredible.”

Dr. Edward Danzig is referring to the statues found in the pyramid-like structure uncovered deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle in Brazil. The statues, all carved from stone, and all measuring twenty feet high, five feet wide at a weight of two tons apiece, depict a strange, hideous beast that can only be described as—“ (Continued page 34)

VII

Calvin Smyth didn’t leave a phone number with his return address. David Corban squeezed his eyes shut to alleviate the pain of a raging headache that was rocking his brainpan. He’d gulped two Excedrin with his last swallow of United Airline’s complimentary soft drink, but the headache persisted. The commuter flight from Philadelphia’s International Airport to the tiny Lancaster airport was bumpy by rough tail winds. The pilot announced they were preparing for landing. David settled down in his seat to battle the headache away as the plane prepared to touch down the runway.

The headache was gone by the time he made it through the terminal gates. After collecting his luggage, snaring a rental car, and driving to his hotel in town and checking in, he retrieved Calvin Smyth’s address again. He lived on 1982 N. West End Avenue. The meager street map in the Lancaster Directory was no help. David drifted downstairs to the hotel lobby and ended up parting with three dollars and fifty cents for a more detailed Lancaster Street map.

He went to his car, unfolded the map and found North West End Avenue easily, it was near Franklin and Marshall College, about a five minute drive through town. David started the car and set off down the highway to pay a visit to Mr. Smyth.

Rousing Mr. Smyth proved to be not difficult at all. He answered David’s knock with a curious, warm look. His features grew friendly when David introduced himself. The old man’s eyes lit up as if he was seeing an old friend for the first time in half a century. At eighty-nine years old, Calvin Smyth was in remarkably good shape for a man his age. Stooped with age, his eyes were lively, his movements smooth. He had a nervous tic along his right side from Parkinson’s disease, but other than that he looked healthier than a lot of people David’s own age. He opened the door of his modest Victorian home and bade David to come in and make himself comfy. After serving his young guest a cup of coffee, the two men sat down in the living room, where David began trying to steer the conversation toward a comfortable position for which to hurl questions at the older gentleman.

Mr. Smyth grew immediately interested when David mentioned the biography he was researching on Justin Grave. He leaned forward in his chair, his bright blue eyes dancing with delight. “I suppose that’s why you paid me a visit then?

“In a way, yes,” David said, stepping carefully to the main question. “You don’t mind if we talk a little about Justin, do you?”

“Oh no, not at all.”

David produced a mini-cassette recorder from his black leather satchel and began recording. Calvin related the usual litany; he had known Justin since the second grade, they’d become friends when they were fourteen and he confessed to the many boyhood activities they’d done together. David nodded at the appropriate times and coaxed the story along by asking key questions. Justin had been an only child, and both parents had passed on in the early forties. Calvin thought there might have been an uncle in Ohio somewhere that had a big family, which would be the deceased writer’s only living heirs, but he wasn’t sure (David made a mental note to look into this further since Justin’s royalties were currently held in trust). “Justin’s folks were pretty solitary people. If they had relatives, they surely never mentioned them.”

While Calvin never aspired to be a writer, he loved reading ghost and horror stories, something his childhood friend shared. Only Justin had the story-telling bug in him as well, which eventually led to their not spending as much time together once Justin’s writing began to take off. “A writer is a solitary person,” Calvin said. “And Justin was no exception. All he did was write. He had no time for family or friends, much less girls. The few girlfriends he had were, pardon the expression, ‘easy-pickings’, if you know what I mean.”

But Calvin had noticed a change in his old friend right around the beginning of 1939. He’d moved into a home in the outskirts of the city, and quickly became a recluse. “Justin got that place easy and quickly. Maybe too easy. It was almost as if some unseen force had guided him there. I knew those kind of living conditions weren’t to his liking; he had always liked the bustle of a community, with restaurants and theatres within walking distance. Something simple, but modest. So when that place came up for rent, I was surprised he took it. It was a good six months after he moved in that I saw him.”

Did Calvin ever visit him there? “Justin always gave me an excuse for me not to come over,” Calvin recalled. He sipped his coffee languidly. “Either the place was always a mess, or he wasn’t going to be in, or he was asleep or something. The one time I did go there, he’d already finished Watcher and he looked bad.” Calvin’s face grew somber at the memory. “He looked over his shoulder as if someone was watching him. And he spoke very carefully, as if he was being careful of what he said.” Calvin frowned. “It also looked like he’d broken his nose at one point and never got it fixed. He had a noticeable bump right here.” He rubbed the bridge of his own honker. “I asked him what happened, and he said he’d gotten drunk and fallen down the stairs. I asked if he’d seen a doctor about fixing it and he said he couldn’t afford it. And then he changed the subject and wouldn’t talk about it again.”

Calvin related Justin’s state of mind during the hearings and the lawsuit filed against him by Shudder’s publisher. “He hit the bottle real hard, becoming a real alcoholic. Most magazines wouldn’t take his work anymore, and he started writing under pen names again. He looked bad, the worst he ever looked in his life, and I told him that maybe he should see a psychiatrist. He refused, and six months later he joined the army and was shipped overseas to fight Hitler and his SS.”

The talk continued for nearly three hours. Calvin related what eventually happened to Shudder’s publisher: he was found dead of multiple stab wounds in a New York City brownstone. The film producer who turned Watcher into celluloid was killed in a car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and the film’s director eventually landed a spot in the Atascadero loony bin. He committed suicide two years later by gouging out his own eyeballs. David found all this extremely fascinating. What became of the actors who starred in the film? Lugosi’s story was a matter of public record, and the other actors had been little known. Calvin had done his homework years ago. “All of them were dead by the mid-fifties,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The actress that played opposite Shane Towers, the lead actor, was murdered by a jealous boyfriend. Shane himself died of a drug overdose shortly after the film was shot, and two others died of heart attacks a few years later.”

“Kind of reminds me of what happened to Poltergeist’s alumni,” David murmured. Calvin got the hint and nodded. Four of the actors from that film had passed away mysteriously, or been murdered. Strange, but surely coincidental.

After the war, Justin moved to Los Angeles and tried to remain anonymous. He found work as a foreman in a factory, and tried moving back to his hometown in 1950. It didn’t last long. He took off for Florida six months later and lived on the streets of Miami for two years. After several stints in jail and alcohol rehabilitation centers, he saw the light and found Jesus. His sudden conversion to Christianity came as a surprise to Calvin, who revealed to David that Justin had always been an atheist. But his friend was glad Justin wasn’t “finding salvation in the bottle anymore”. Justin picked himself up with the meager cash from the sale of Watcher to film, and never made a cent beyond the initial advance. He married a girl from his church two years later, and the couple moved to Tampa Bay where they opened a hotel.

“He eased up on the religion stuff as the years went on,” Calvin said. He had brewed more coffee and they sat in the living room with fresh, steaming mugs. “And he started writing again in the sixties under the old name again, mainly for the mystery magazines. Nobody seemed to notice he was publishing fiction again. He’d been forgotten entirely, but it didn’t bother him.”

Eventually an enterprising young fan would discover that the Justin Grave writing cozy mysteries for Alfred Hitchcock’s, Ellery Queen’s and Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazines was the same writer that wrote all those grisly horror stories for the pulps. The fan contacted Justin via one of the magazines, and a correspondence ensued. The fan persuaded Grave to return to the horror field. Grave’s first published horror story in almost thirty-five years, “Sleep No More”, appeared in Whispers three years later. More stories followed in a briefly revived Weird Tales, and in another little magazine called Weirdbook. Cloak of Darkness & Others appeared two years later, and once again Grave was back writing what he loved the most.

David knew the rest of the narrative by heart, having read Grave’s recent work and meeting the writer himself at various conventions; a string of successful paperback novels, a slew of short stories in the leading horror and fantasy magazines of the day—Twilight Zone, Night Cry, The Horror Show, and his old alma mater Weird Tales (resurrected yet again and so far still going strong) were only some of the publications his work appeared in. What he’d been unaware of was Grave’s past and the circumstances surrounding The Watcher from the Grave.

Now David popped the question that had been on his mind since he’d gotten Calvin’s letter. “You mentioned in your letter to me that part of the inspiration for Watcher was a Dr. John Dee, as well as the myth of several lost civilizations. Can you tell me a little more about that?”

Calvin heaved a big sigh. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Are you familiar with ritual magic at all? Aliester Crowley, the Order of the Golden Dawn and the like?”

David shook his head. “Not really.”

“What about ancient Jewish myth or biblical mythology?”

“Only what was pounded into me in Catholic school.” David grinned.

Calvin sighed again and leaned forward. He managed a smile. “I take it you are pretty familiar with Lovecraft?”

“I am,” David said, his next question popping out of his mouth automatically. “And that’s the other thing I wanted to ask you about. You mention in your letter that the Necronomicon is actually referred to in a piece of fiction over fifty years before Lovecraft began using it in his work. What do you know about this?”

“It all ties in together, trust me,” Calvin said, taking a sip of coffee. “To give you the short version, the Necronomicon, according to Lovecraft, does not exist. However, the Necronomicon according to Dr. John Dee does exist.”

David blinked. “Say again?”

Calvin leaned forward. “The Necronomicon is not a myth. It is very much real. But the Necronomicon that you know of, that Lovecraft wrote about, is far from the real thing. I have my suspicions that Lovecraft heard about some of the particulars from his wife, Sonia Greene, back in 1921 or so, but then—“

“Wait, wait, wait,” David said, his heart beating hard. “Are you telling me all this Cthulhu Mythos stuff is real?”

Calvin smiled. “Not at all. Why don’t I start at the beginning?”

Which he did.

It was a fascinating tale, one that David found hard to believe. But the more Calvin spun the story out, the more it all began to make sense. After all, don’t all myths and legends have some kind of basis in facts?

“Let me begin with Lovecraft,” Calvin said, reclining in his chair and addressing David like a professor addressing a student. “But first, some brief back story. Aliester Crowley was a student, and some say, a master of the occult. One of the things that no doubt happened is that Crowley read Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon. I say this because it was Crowley who later translated and adopted Dee’s Enochian Keys into his own Law of Thelema. He probably read the Necronomicon while researching Dee’s manuscripts because there are too many passages in his Book of the Law that read like a transcription of passages in that translation. Anyway, Crowley himself never mentioned the Necronomicon in his works. I suspect it was an embarrassment to him when he realized the extent which he had unconsciously incorporated passages from the Necronomicon into his own Book of the Law.

“But in any event, Crowley was in New York in 1918, where he was trying to establish a literary career. He was contributing to Vanity Fair and other magazines, and it was at a lecture when he first encountered Sonia Greene, who had literary ambitions of her own. Crowley described her as one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. As we know from Crowley’s reputation with women, he wasted no time with her. They saw each other on an irregular basis for some months.

“In 1921 Sonia Greene met Lovecraft and it was in that same year that Lovecraft wrote ‘The Nameless City’, where he first mentions Abdul Alhazred. The following year he mentions the Necronomicon in ‘The Hound’. In 1924 he and Sonia married.”

David interrupted the narrative with a question. “So he found out about the Necronomicon from Sonia?”

“That’s what is believed,” Calvin answered. “We don’t know exactly what Crowley told Sonia Greene when they were seeing each other, and we don’t know what she told Lovecraft. But knowing that Sonia and Howard connected in so many ways philosophically, and in ways relating to literature and the such, it’s only too easy to picture them talking one night and Sonia mentions some of the ideas she learned from Crowley. She wouldn’t even have to mention Crowley by name; she might have simply mentioned that she’d heard of this book called the Necronomicon, made mention of some of what it contained, and Lovecraft’s imagination could have come up with the rest.”

David nodded. From what he knew about Lovecraft it was very possible. Lovecraft would write that he’d invented the name Abdul Alhazred when he was five years old, but he could have simply confused the name with the intense dreams of the Arabian Nights he’d had at that early age.

“So the long and short end of it is that Lovecraft’s fictitious Necronomicon is based on a real book called the Necronomicon.” David mused.

“That is correct,” Calvin said, his blue eyes dancing with amusement. “Not much is known of its author, Abdul Alhazred, who Lovecraft later dubbed ‘the Mad Arab” for his tales. Abdul wasn’t mad, at least as far as we know, but he was probably rather eccentric. Also, unlike what Lovecraft wrote in his mythos stories, the Necronomicon was not a book of spells or a grimoire of ancient black arts. It was conceived as a history, and hence, a book of things now dead and gone. An alternative meaning of its name means  ‘the book of the customs of the dead.’”

“Wow,” David said, leaning forward in his chair. This was really interesting.

Calvin continued. “The book was written in Damascus in 730 A.D., by Abdul Alhazred. No Arabic manuscript is known to exist. A Latin translation was made in 1487 by a Dominican priest named Olaus Wormius, who was a secretary to the Spanish Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada. It’s likely the original Arabic manuscript of the Necronomicon came into his possession during the persecution of the Spanish Moors.

“Anyway, it must have been incredibly risky for Wormius to translate and print the Necronomicon during that time. It must have held an obsessive fascination for him, because he was finally charged with heresy and burned after sending a copy of the book to Johann Tritheim, Abbot of Spanheim. The accompanying letter contained a detailed and blasphemous interpretation of certain passages of the Book of Genesis. All of Wormius’s translations were seized and burned with him, although I suspect that at least one copy must have found its way into the Vatican Library.”

David stroked his chin, nodding. “I’ve heard they keep tons of old manuscripts and stuff there. That they keep secrets in there they don’t want the world to know.”

“Exactly!” Calvin said. “If they revealed them it would crumble the hold they have on the world.”

Calvin paused for a moment to take a sip of coffee, then continued. “About one hundred years later, in 1586 I believe, a copy of Wormius’s Latin translation surfaced in Prague. Dr. John Dee was a famous English magician at the time, and he and his assistant Edward Kelly were at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II to discuss plans for making alchemical gold. Kelly brought the copy from the so-called Black Rabbi, the Kabbalist and alchemist Jacob Eliezer, who had fled to Prague from Italy after accusations of necromancy.

“The Necronomicon appears to have had a vast influence on both men. The character of Kelly’s scrying changed, which struck horror into the Dee household.”

“Scrying?” David was puzzled.

“Forgive me,” Calvin said. “The systems of magick now known as Enochian magick derive from the work of Dee and his seer Edward Kelly. Dee had a passion for discovering lost knowledge and spiritual truths. The method employed for these works was fairly standard for the time. Dee would act as the orator, directing fervent prayers to God and the archangels for 15 minutes to an hour. Then a scrying stone would be placed on a prepared table, and the angels were called to manifest a visible appearance. Kelly would watch the stone and report everything he saw and heard; Dee would sit at another table nearby and record everything that occurred. Kelly’s scrying technique changed when the two gained possession of the Latin translation of the Necronomicon.”

“How so?” David asked.

Calvin shrugged. “Kelly’s technique became more...hideous...monstrous in its nature. Crowley interpreted this as an abortive first attempt of an extra-human entity communicating the Thelemic Book of the Law. Very shortly afterward Kelly left Dee, who translated the Necronomicon to English. Contrary to Lovecraft, this translation was never printed. The manuscript passed into the collection of the great collector Elias Ashmole, and later to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.”

David perked up. “Does it still exist?”

Calvin shook his head. “I’m afraid Dee’s translation disappeared following a break-in in the spring of 1934. The British Museum suffered several burglaries and the Wormius edition was deleted from the catalogue and removed to an undergound repository in a converted slate mine in Wales. Other libraries lost their copies, and today there is no library with a genuine catalogue entry for the Necronomicon. In the mid 1930’s the few known copies of the Necronomicon just simply disappeared. It is believed that someone in the German SS government took an interest in obscure occult literature and began to obtain copies by fair means and foul.” He smiled ghoulishly. “It is believed there is a large wartime cache of occult and magickal documents in the mountains of Osterhorn near Salzburg that contains a copy of the Necronomicon. This may be connected to the rumor of a copy bound in the skin of concentration camp victims.”

David let this sink in. “You mentioned that the Necronomicon is supposed to be a history. What history is it supposed to be of?”

“Alhazred appears to have had access to many sources now lost, and events which are only hinted at in Genesis, or the Book of Enoch. Many of the legends he had access to are disguised as mythology in other sources, but are explained in great detail in the Necronomicon. It is also believed that Alhazred used magical techniques to clarify the past. Essentially, he believed that many intelligent species besides the human race had inhabited the Earth, and that much knowledge was passed to mankind in encounters with beings from ‘beyond the spheres’. He shared with some Neoplatonists the belief that the stars are similar to our sun and have their own unseen planets with their own life forms, but elaborated this belief with a good deal of metaphysical speculation in which these beings were part of a cosmic hierarchy of spiritual evolution. He was also convinced that he’d contacted beings he called the ‘Old Ones’ using magical invocations, and warned of terrible powers waiting to return to re-claim the earth. He interpreted this belief in the light of the Apocalypse of St. John, but reversed the ending so that the Beast triumphs after a great war in which the earth is laid to waste.”

“The Old Ones sound very Lovecraftian,” David said, nodding. “You’re sure Lovecraft never read the book himself?”

“Quite sure. I’m even pretty sure he wasn’t familiar with James Smith Long’s work at all. And you’re right, the similarities are uncanny. They parallel each other tremendously. It is clear that Alhazred elaborated upon existing traditions of the Old Ones. According to Alhazred, the Old Ones were beings from ‘beyond the spheres’, presumably the spheres of the planets, and in the cosmography of that period this would imply the region of the fixed stars or beyond. They were superhuman and extrahuman. They mated with humans and beget monstrous offspring. They passed forbidden knowledge to humankind, and they were continuously striving to seek a channel into our plane of existence. And do you know something else?”

“What?”

“This is virtually identical to the Jewish tradition of the Nephilim, the giants mentioned in Genesis. The word Nephilim literally means ‘fallen ones’. The story in Genesis is really only a fragment of a larger tradition, another piece that can be found in the Book of Enoch, which was never canonized in the Bible. According to this source, a group of angels sent to watch over the Earth saw the daughters of men and lusted after them. Unwilling to act individually, they swore an oath and bound themselves together, and two hundred of these ‘Watchers’ descended to earth and took themselves wives. The wives bore giant offspring, who then turned against nature and began to, and I quote, ‘sin against the birds and beasts and reptiles and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh and drink the blood’. That’s an exact quote from Enoch, by the way. The fallen angels taught man how to make weapons of war and cosmetics and enchantments, and astrology and other secrets. These separate legends are elaborated in later Jewish sources such as the Talmud, which makes it clear that Enoch and Genesis refer to the same tradition. The great flood described in Genesis was a direct response to the evil caused by humankind’s commerce with fallen angels, who were cast out and bound.”

David said nothing. He was letting this sink in. It was so overwhelming. “In Lovecraft’s fiction, cults are formed in an attempt to summon the Old Ones. Is this... is this possible for what we’re talking about?”

Calvin nodded. “Of course. The Necronomicon strongly hints that there is a cult, or group of cults, that worships the Old Ones and seeks to aid them to gain control of this planet. One of the tactics attempted by this cult is to breed human and Old One offspring that will then multiply and ingress into terrestrial life until the Old Ones return to their pre-ordained position.”

David was silent, letting this sink in. Calvin continued: “It is now generally believed by occult scholars that the Enochian system of magic Dee and Kelly came up with was directly inspired by those sections of the Necronomicon that deal with Alhazred’s techniques for evoking the Old Ones. Remember, the Necronomicon was primarily intended as a history, and while it does provide some practical details and formulae, it is hardly a step-by-step beginner’s guide to summoning demons from beyond the gulfs of space and time. Dee and Kelly had to fill in many details themselves. It is believed that the scrying technique Kelly used was under the influence of the Old Ones. The very name of their system—Enochian—is a clue; it was inspired by the age-old traditions recorded in the Book of Enoch, and it was obviously Dee and Kelly’s intention to contact the Nephilim, or the Watchers. The manuscript of The Book of Enoch was lost until the late 17th century, so Dee would have had access to only a few fragments quoted in other manuscripts. Alhazred most likely had access to the Book of Enoch, as it was current throughout the Middle East in the eight century.”

“This Enochian stuff,” David said, “is it very common now?”

Calvin nodded. “Crowley translated the Enochian system in the early part of this century. He includes it in his Book of the Law. Others have attempted their own translations as well. Anton La Vey, the late founder of the Church of Satan, included a translation in his book The Satanic Bible, which can be found in any Borders bookstore.” Calvin smiled. “Hardly typical of what is supposed to be a system of forbidden magic, eh?”

“What is the difference between this James Smith Long’s work and that of Lovecraft?” David asked.

“Long utilizes the Necronomicon in its original meaning,” Calvin said, choosing his words carefully. “It isn’t mentioned very often, but in the one definitive book on the Necronomicon, Long’s work is quoted quite significantly. Obviously the author of the piece had gotten a hold of a copy of From Beyond, because he was able to describe the stories from it quite vividly. From what I could tell, the work is vastly different. Lovecraft merely hypothesis the Necronomicon, and comes quite close to its contents. His Cthulhu Mythos is pure invention, whereas Long’s work is based on truth. As is The Watcher from the Grave.”

David posed the next question, which had been on his mind since the interview commenced. “It’s a wild theory. And I can see why it’s been...suppressed for so long. It certainly goes against much modern Christian and Jewish myth. The question is why have they been suppressed?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. It’s been hypothesized that our present civilization is not the first time that man has risen through the ranks to become the most dominant animal species,” Calvin said, speaking slowly and carefully. “In fact, there is now ample proof that the earth is far older than scientists have originally thought. Modern science pegs the earth at 6 billion years old. But new theories estimate earth at being twice that age, with a prior civilization of man occupying much of the world seventy thousand years ago, a full fifty thousand years before most anthropologists believed the first Homo Sapiens appeared. This civilization had a completely different language and custom, their own mathematical system, their own government, their own science. And they all spoke of beings that came from beyond the spheres, beings who gave them wisdom, beings who ruled over them and were later banished to the outlying cosmos.” He grew quiet. “And they’re waiting for the right moment, when the stars are right, for the appropriate vessel—a man—to throw open the gates and allow them entry back into this world. Where they will once again rule the earth.”

David eyed Calvin curiously. “You’ve researched this?”

Calvin nodded. “A little. Besides the Aztec and Mayan civilizations, which show ample proof to have been erected well before the Aztecs even showed up, there were the lost civilizations of Mesopotamia, Easter Island, and Atlantis. One thing I forgot to mention is that the original Arab translation of the Necronomicon comprised of seven volumes and that the Latin translation ran to nine hundred pages. Much of the history contained in its pages was of this older world. It discussed the legend of the Old Ones, as well as the history and times of the people who existed before the great flood, which some archeologists have now attributed to a cataclysmic event that happened due to the lunar alignment of the planets. It was this havoc which destroyed those older civilizations. According to the Necronomicon, the world was destroyed by the force of the Old Ones being banished to the outer cosmos. It suggests that upon their return, the world will once again be laid to waste as they swoop in for their rule. Of course Genesis and other books in the Bible paint the picture of an angry God destroying the world due to his anger at man or the Nephilim.”

“So why should I believe this?” David asked, still struggling with his thoughts. He was under the impression that Calvin believed every word of it, but he’d never known Justin Grave to believe anything as wacky as this. The man had always come across as being a very normal elderly man. A voice whispered in the back of his mind: but normalcy is a great front for concealing secrets. “There’s no hard, solid proof of any of this. Everything you’ve presented to me is all speculation. You say yourself that by all accounts the real Necronomicon is lost.  But even if it is truly lost, and has been lost since the 1930’s, surely there are survivors who have seen it, or been involved with a cult that may have used it. Are there any diaries or statements from former cult members? The only thing anybody who investigates this angle has to go on is pure speculation based on the writings of two or three men who are now not only dead, but who wrote horror fiction for a living.”

Calvin nodded. “You’re quite right. But then, people believed Whitley Streiber’s account of his alien abduction. And he was known as a writer of the fantastic before that supposedly happened to him.”

Calvin continued after draining the rest of his coffee. “If it’s bizarre and out of the ordinary and steeped in some kind of historical fact, people will believe it. Pure speculation presented with facts or evidence to support that speculation often results in bona fide belief. Take the common myths and superstitions of the world; the Loch Ness Monster, witchcraft rituals, hauntings. People will want to believe that Jack the Ripper was Queen Victoria’s grandson. Or that Amelia Earhart is still alive somewhere on the Fiji Islands.”

“Or that Elvis is still alive.” What a joke.

“Exactly! Elvis Presley was already larger than life before he passed on. Keeping him alive by reputed sightings only adds to the intrigue to the point where we want to believe he’s still alive.”

David’s eyes narrowed at the older man sitting across from him. “Okay, granted weird things happen, and I don’t doubt that they do. But even if a cult like the one you’re talking about did exist, and James Smith Long dug up some facts and fictionalized it, only to influence Lovecraft and a slew of others, why...” He grasped at the question. “Why would any of it matter now?”

“Suppose the work of James Smith Long wasn’t entirely fiction?” Calvin posed. “Suppose he was trying to...warn us of what was to come?”

“Which would be what?”

“Long’s fiction describes portions of the Necronomicon that Justin’s work barely scratches the surface on. Primarily the pre-history of earth, but also history of the outlying cosmos. Like Lovecraft’s fiction, it suggests that when the stars are right, when everything is in balance in the universe, that the lone Watcher and its followers will be able to summon up the occult power to throw open the gates. And that in order for this to happen, there must be a sacrifice from a willing victim, a victim who goes to the cult of their own free will. In Justin’s novel the protagonist does exactly that. When he begins uncovering the truth he is led into his own basement by his lover who, unbeknown to him, is a cult member. He is taken in sacrifice by the cult members and the Watcher at the appropriate date and time. And what follows is wide-spread chaos as the Nephilim return.”

“And if Justin’s novel resembles Long’s fiction, there are cult members somewhere in this world devoted to the emergence of what you call the Watchers?”

Calvin shrugged. “Something like that.”

Dave was silent for a moment, taking it all in. He finally put forth the second question that had been nagging at him, the one that, if the answer to his first question was true, was even scarier. “Do you think Justin Grave may have discovered something like this?”

Calvin sighed. He set his empty coffee cup down. “I’ve asked myself that question for the past fifty years or more. Justin never wanted me to see the inside of that house he lived in. And when I did visit him he was very skittish. Squeamish, almost. He steered me away from certain rooms and he just seemed jumpy. Watcher had already been published and I thought that its writing had terrified him in some way. After the chain of events that led to Justin’s downfall, I began to speculate more and more about his behavior during that afternoon visit. Maybe he had discovered something and Watcher held the key to all of it.” He broke off and chuckled slightly, his eyes lighting with some new memory. “He surely downgraded Lovecraft and others after that. Said that their stuff was too watered down, and that they were afraid to face the truth, that they devised all these stupid monsters to bury what he described as the truth. He surely appeared to be always on the run from his pulp past, especially The Watcher From the Grave. When Cloak of Darkness was in production, the publisher wanted to include the novel in the book, but Justin refused. He never wanted that novel in print ever again, and he never mentioned it in bibliographies after that. It was almost as if he were trying to distance himself from that work, as if he were trying to escape its influence. I sometimes got the impression that...he was worried there really was a cult out there, and that they were on to him. That by keeping a low profile, moving around a lot, would keep them off his trail.” Calvin shook his head. “If I’d only known.”

David let this sink in. He was very intrigued by what Calvin had just told him, but a part of him was still skeptical. David didn’t believe in speculation and rumor; he needed the pure, hard facts to lean toward the angle Calvin was edging at.

Calvin shook his head. “I know it sounds hard to believe. But it’s what Justin told me the whole genesis of his story was based on. I only came up with what I’ve told you through investigation and my own theories.”

“Still it is an interesting theory, even for entertainment purposes. It’s still kind of wild though. The only thing different about it is that the Old Ones, or whatever, lack an organized following today.”

“Oh, but according to Long’s work there is a cult.” Calvin said. “They’re not as obvious as Lovecraft’s Mythos cult; they’re not some half-breed mulattos speaking broken English and chanting in weird tongues around a fire in some swamp. Far from it. Why, you remember what happens in Justin’s story at the end, don’t you?”

David nodded. It had slipped his mind and now it all came back to him. The protagonist’s love interest seduces him one night in his basement where he found evidence of the cult, and the place is suddenly swarming with strange shapes which later materialize as people...and strange beings. His lover holds him down and he knows now that he is in the hands of the cult. His death guarantees the gate to the other side will be thrown open, allowing the Watchers entry into this world.

Calvin rose and took David’s empty coffee cup, prompting David to start making his exit. He gathered his belongings, turned off the recorder and followed Calvin to the kitchen. “Do you think you could tell me where the house was that Justin lived in here in Lancaster County?”

Calvin looked at him with a mystifying expression. “I wish I could, but you’re about forty years too late. The place burned down one night and is nothing but an empty field now.”

Thus eliminating any chance for David to dig deeper into Justin’s life for the book, or the answers to the questions that were now gnawing at his mind.

VIII

Lancaster, Pennsylvania didn’t provide the clues David wanted now that his curiosity was piqued regarding the Watcher theory. He had drained all the information he could get out of Calvin Smyth and opted to make his next move: Seattle, Washington, home of rainy weather, stout beers, Ted Bundy, alternative-grunge music, and one deceased writer and a mystery that gnawed at David’s brain.

He touched down at Sea-Tac airport five days later and checked into a hotel. Most of his material on Grave was on one large legal pad and five micro-cassettes of interviews with whatever former colleagues and friends in Lancaster he could find that were still alive; one tape was of his afternoon with Smyth.

Once checked into his room he put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door and crashed. He slept for twelve hours.

The following afternoon he drove a rental car to the house that was in the Nightshades business rolodex. Justin Grave’s former residence before he bit-the-big-one was situated in a quiet tree-lined street at the foothills of green, rolling hills. Low clouds hung over the trees, shrouding them in fogs of intrigue. David parked in front of the ranch-style house and noted the FOR SALE sign erected on the lawn. The executor of Justin’s estate wasn’t wasting time in carrying things out.

A pleasant looking middle-aged woman met him at the door. Her smile downplayed the age lines on her face. She was dressed immaculately and professionally in a snug, gray burgundy suit and knee length skirt with a white blouse and tan pumps. Her legs were shapely. Her once blonde hair was turning a rapid gray, yet her eyes still sparkled with a youthful boisterousness. She had a full hourglass figure that was attractive. The sign outside stated that the sale of the house was being handled by Geri Sheller Realtors. David smiled as he approached the door. “Hi. You must be Ms. Sheller?”

“At your service.” She held out a hand in greeting and David took it. “Coming to take a look, or— ”

“Actually, I’m a friend and associate of the former owner of the house,” David said. “I’ve just been named his literary executor and I came by in the hopes of extracting whatever manuscripts or private papers he might have left behind.”

Geri nodded. She motioned for David to come inside. David followed her into the house, noting her figure. The woman looked almost old enough to be his mother but she hadn’t lost her attractiveness, or her sex appeal. She reminded David of an Ann Margaret or a Raquel Welch.

“The moving crew took everything out last week,” she said as she led him to the kitchen. The interior was stripped of furniture and knick-knacks. “Mr. Grave’s attorney arranged for his personal belongings to be stored at A-1 Storage. I’ll give you the address.” She reached a table in the kitchen where she was headquartered and jotted down a number on a piece of stationary. She handed it to David, who made a mental note of it before putting it into his shirt pocket.

David was just about to ask if he could have a look around the house, but was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and a hollow, “hello”. Geri whirled. “Duty calls,” she said, moving to the living room to greet a potential buyer. David checked his watch; it was two o’clock, which gave him time to swing by Justin’s physician, as well as pay a visit to the storage area. He let himself out of the house, making a mental note to come back and try to get a feel for the place at a later time. Right now he had other matters to attend to.

IX

He exited Dr. William Johnson’s clinic an hour later, more puzzled and frightened than when he’d talked to Calvin Smyth five days ago. Johnson was very adamant about Calvin’s health up to the time of his death. At eight-nine years old, Justin was in better physical shape and health than most men half his age. His cholesterol level was normal, his blood pressure controlled by medication, his heart strong and fine. He had no respiratory problems, no back or joint ailments, and normal bowel movements. Well then, what had been the cause of his death? David asked.

A massive heart attack, was Dr. Johnson’s reply. It was as if a hand reached into his ribcage and squeezed the muscle until it burst. The news was shocking, but what bounced off David’s mind even more were Johnson’s final words. You should have seen the look on his face when the coroner brought him in. He had such a horrified look on him that you would have swore he’d just seen something...that defines fear as we know it, before he passed on.

X

The clerk at the storage area unlocked the rental space for David and then let him get down to business. The rental space was the size of a one car garage. It was crammed to the hilt with furniture, framed pictures, boxes, and two large spring mattresses. David maneuvered around the stuff until he came upon some boxes. Then he set to work in locating some of Justin Grave’s manuscripts, memorabilia, and anything else that he could use for the biography.

And he was also keeping his eye peeled for anything that looked out of the ordinary.

His search yielded two boxes of manuscripts consisting of Justin Grave’s published work from 1975 onward. Short stories, essays, and novels. All forty-one of them. Justin had proven to be extremely prolific in the eighties, at one point twelve of his novels seeing print as paperback originals in a two-year period alone. Most of them bore stupid cover art that were foil embossed, with evil skeletons or children; in short, the covers usually had nothing to do with the contents of the book. Once the books started selling on the basis of their actual content than the stupid covers his publishers chose to adorn them in, the cover artwork actually improved.

He put those findings aside. They would be dealt with later.

Rummaging further, he turned up five of Justin’s notebooks with story ideas. He flipped through them eagerly and scanned the pages. Story ideas, dream synopsis, and general observations and notes. Nothing about Watcher, or the horrors the story was said to allege.

Two hours later he stumbled on something in a crumpled, dusty box in the rear of the storage space. He sneezed as dust swirled around. He pulled the box to the center of the room where the light was better. He opened it and gasped down at the contents.

The big leather-bound book was old. Musty and cracked, it looked as old as God. It was bound in a pinkish gray leather that resembled skin. The spine was bound by two large steel clasps bolted into the leather. David opened the cover and glanced at the title page: Necronomicon.

The idea that it was a fake flashed through his mind. But how does one fake a disheveled, musty, old appearance? The Necronomicon looked ready to fall apart.

Beneath the book was another notebook, this one more frayed and weathered. He opened it. The spidery handwriting was unfamiliar, but the contents were shocking. David drew a sharp intake of breath as he read a few paragraphs.

Five minutes later he was racing out of the storage area grounds with the Necronomicon and the notebook under his arm.

XI

He decided to spin by Justin Grave’s former residence on a whim. The daylight was fading fast, and in another thirty minutes it would be dark. The house was on his way to the hotel in downtown Seattle. David hit interstate 5 and zoomed toward the house.

The notebook and the ancient book were the proof he wanted but never thought he would get. David’s heart raced with excitement as the realization of what he had just discovered thumped through his head. Occult scholars had long debated the existence of an accursed book as described by Lovecraft and others, but now David had the proof.

David hadn’t read much of the notebook, but what he’d perused was enough to convince him that something weird had been happening for decades, perhaps even centuries. The notebook was most likely written by a deranged cult follower. The author describes the unholy power the book has over him, and his own weakness to the pleasures that the Watcher showers upon him. My very will has evaporated since the discovery of that cursed book. I no longer have control over myself. Every time the Watcher visits me, I am compelled to commit unspeakable acts all in the name of my pleasure, and his demand that I bow down to him upon my relief. Another line further down: With each victim he grows stronger, more physical in his strength. His thirst for blood is unstoppable! And further down: Oh God, why did I even research this? My curiosity to the writings of James Long have proven to be disastrous! The man had discovered what had been sleeping for centuries: the demon of the undead himself!

David had flipped ahead to the rear of the notebook and found the last entry. His heart raced madly in his chest as he remembered the passage. I can no longer contain myself; these horrible murders must stop. The only way I can warn others is to make this story public and step out of the shadows I have sprung from. I now know the true reason behind Long’s death, and the tragic lives of his later contemporaries. It is good for those that came after Long and have tried to emulate him have never discovered the true secret—

But wait! The damp odor of rot invades my nostrils. They’ve found out what my plans are! I don’t know how, but they’ve found—

It is there that the journal ends.

And it was that which sent David racing to his car, the ancient book and journal in hand. His mind pieced together the events by pure speculation. Justin moved into the house outside of Lancaster in January of 1939, a month after the former resident suddenly disappeared. Was it possible he’d moved into the home of a curious researcher delving into the dark secrets of the Necronomicon, a researcher who’d gotten too close to the truth and was silenced, only to discover the same ancient book and become possessed by the Watcher himself?

It was this thought that rose in his mind as he drove through town. Justin obviously intended The Watcher from the Grave to be a warning, and his enlisting in the armed services was most likely an attempt at escaping the horrors in that rambling farmhouse. Likewise, his moving around the country, his degeneration into alcoholism, were all results of the plans he now knew what the Watcher had in store for earth. Dr. Johnson’s words rang in his mind. Was it possible that upon his death Justin had received some sort of revelation? Could it have been that which sent his heart into complete arrest?

He parked in front of Justin Grave’s former home. A single light glowed from the porch, along with a light from the kitchen. A tan BMW was parked in the driveway; it looked like the real estate agent was still there.

David strode up to the front door, his mind already formulating a story to pitch to Geri about his sudden return. The door opened immediately after he knocked, and Geri’s face smiled up at him. “Hi! Surprised to see you back in this neck of the woods.”

David stepped hesitantly inside. “I was just wondering if I could take a look around the place,” he said. “Get a feel for what Justin lived in...you know.”

Geri nodded. “I understand. Help yourself.”

David nodded, relieved that she wasn’t putting up resistance. He moved into the barren living room with its large stone fireplace as Geri retreated to the kitchen. He could feel the cold mist of the night seeking its way inside the comfiness of the house. David stood and closed his eyes briefly, trying to get a feel for the room. He took a deep breath. He could imagine Justin living out his last days in this house, harboring the dark secrets that had plummeted him to depression and alcoholism, hiding the secrets that held the very fabric of sanity together. David exhaled and opened his eyes, taking a step toward the oak-paneled study off the living room. The room gave off a warm vibe, expelling the weird thoughts that had just clouded his mind. The hominess settled into his system, beckoning him to relax.

The sound of clicking heels on the bare floor caught his attention and he whirled around. Geri stood in the threshold of the study, a smoky silhouette that gained form and substance as she stepped into the room. “I was kind of hoping you’d come back,” she said, stepping into the room. David forced out a smile as she stepped into the light of the waning moon filtering through the trees outside and shining through the large French windows of the study. The top two buttons of her blouse were unbuttoned, exposing the creamy top of her luscious cleavage. Her lips were moist and slightly parted, her eyes holding a feral secret. She stood in front of him, smiling wanfully.

“Yeah, well, I’m kinda glad I came back, too,” David said. He thought that maybe after he checked the house out he would ask her to dinner or something, but she beat him to it.

She stepped closer to him, her hands reaching up to touch his chest lightly. “I was attracted to you the minute I saw you,” she whispered. David’s adrenaline surged, the breathing space in his jeans becoming uncomfortably tight. His mind fumbled for something else to say, like well, I think you’re attractive, too. Why don’t we split and have a drink, when his thoughts were obliterated by her kiss. He returned the kiss in surprise as her body melted into his. Before he knew it, her hands were roaming all over his body and his mind screamed for something rational to say.

As if reading his mind, she said, “It’s okay baby, nobody will disturb us.” Her fingers fumbled on the buttons of his cotton shirt as her lips kissed his chest. David was filled with an insane feeling that was beginning to make him feel a little stupid. Don’t you think we’d have the patience and maturity to wait till we get to her place, or my hotel room, before we begin commencing the bone dance? But proper sexual etiquette seemed the farthest thing from Geri’s mind as she undid his jeans and took him hungrily in her mouth.

David groaned and a moment later they were both nude on the floor. Geri straddled him, riding him furiously. David cupped and kneaded her large breasts as he moved inside her, not caring anymore about what was proper anymore, just going with the natural flow of sexual adrenaline. Geri moaned and bucked more frantically, impaling herself on him as they raced toward climax, spurning his orgasm on until sweet release came.

She collapsed on top of him in a heap, her face buried in the hollow of his shoulder. He held her, still inside her, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The sudden coolness of the night air pricked his skin, raising it to gooseflesh. The sudden change in the atmosphere raised a warning of awareness as Geri kissed his neck and raised herself up.

There were shadows materializing in the study.

David raised his head at the sudden intrusion, an icy stab of fear penetrating his gut as Geri pushed him down, the expression on her face changed to an icy, cold mask. The shadowy shapes moved forward and David’s eyes grew wide with fright as he saw what entered the room.

Most of them were living, breathing human beings. But they were silent, unemotional and rigid. They stood staring down at him as a lone figure stepped forward from the circle. David’s mind reeled as recognition set in. His throat locked in a sudden scream.

Justin Grave’s rotting visage peered down at him with a leering grin. Twin orbs of blazing light from beyond the stars shined from the hollow eye sockets of his skull. The black suit he had been buried in was dirt-ridden and crusty with mold and white squirming things. He smelled of ripe, rotting flesh. A silent hiss escaped from his parted jaws. David’s mind reeled as his body tried to scramble to his feet. Geri slipped off him and pinned him down with her knees as two others moved in to assist her. A rag was stuffed in his mouth and David writhed and kicked at his attackers. The rotting remnants of Justin Grave hunkered down before him.

“The same thing almost happened to Justin fifty years ago,” Geri said, her voice dead to emotion. “Lucky for him, he chose to later embrace us rather than expose us. James Long wasn’t so lucky.”

David squirmed in his captor’s grip as the rest of the congregation moved forward. Geri’s regal features hovered over David, a grinning parody of evil. “When you become one with us, you become immortal. All it takes is the willingness to serve the Master.”

David squirmed more frantically as Geri moved aside to allow Justin Grave’s rotting corpse to shamble over him. It lowered its pasty, stinking bulk over him, its lichen gray hands grasping David firmly. David’s skin recoiled from their damp, sticky touch. His stomach lurched like a tilt ‘o wheel, threatening to upheave its contents.

“And now,” Geri whispered, standing nude with the others who formed a rough semi-circle around David’s prostrate body struggling on the ground, “Justin Grave will make his sacrifice that will throw open the gates from beyond the spheres.”

Another muffled scream was launched out of David’s parched throat as Justin lowered his head to David’s throat. But it wasn’t Justin’s gaping jaws that made him scream, rather it was the sudden sense of recognition that flooded his senses. For the insane light that burned in the hollows of Justin Grave’s eye sockets had been described in The Watcher from the Grave and they were the livid, burning evil of the Watcher himself!

The last thing David felt was Justin sinking his rotting, yellow teeth into the tender meat of his throat as he began to feed.

Sending Them Home

SUNDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 16.

Like most of the women I killed, when I killed Brenda Thomason it was flawless.

First things first: I don’t kill just women. I kill men, too, but I generally find women easier. I just want to make it known now that I am not some woman hater or something. I have no preference over men or women. I just find, through experience, that women are much easier to kill then men.

We were sitting in her parked car in the parking lot of the Grace Baptist Church in Whittier, California when I did it. I’d just met her that afternoon at church services. She struck me as a very devout Christian lady, devoted to her faith and her Lord. That much I was able to get when we met after services and, without even knowing me, embraced me lovingly, much in the way you would expect Jesus Himself to take you in his arms and love you. I hugged her back and we started talking immediately. Naturally, because I was new to the church (I’d just stumbled on the church that morning; in fact, I’d  only been in the Los Angeles area for twenty-four hours) she wanted to welcome me appropriately as a member of the congregation. I made it obvious to her that I was saved, reborn in the spirit, and she introduced me to some of the other congregation members. Then after some spirited conversation and prayer, she invited me to join her and other congregation members for an early Sunday dinner at a nearby Denny’s. I was mighty hungry, and said yes.

After dinner we sat in our booth and talked awhile. Once in the parking lot we said our goodbyes to the other folks, prayed together again, and the other church members started heading toward their cars. We’d had a highly spirited conversation at the restaurant; I told them little about my own Christian walk and sought to learn more about them. And talk they did! They were just as fired up for the Lord as I assumed, and more than once references were made that although it was much better to walk in the spirit than to live in the flesh, they couldn’t wait till their eternal reward in Heaven with Jesus. Brenda had been very adamant about this, a look of ecstatic bliss on her face as she confessed that she “just could not wait to be up in Heaven with her Heavenly Father.” Everybody was smiling in anticipation, the way a child will smile in glee when told that he was going to be getting his favorite toy very soon. Anticipation. What a wonderful thing that is!

It was dark when we finally left the restaurant. I’d ridden with Brenda in her car, and after we left I asked if she would drive me back to the church where I’d left my car. We pulled into the parking lot but it was empty. I explained to her that I’d parked out on the street and she nodded. Then she killed the engine, and I turned to her and laid a gentle hand on her forearm. “Thank you for your wonderful hospitality, Brenda. I feel very blessed to have met you and your friends. I think I’m really going to enjoy Grace Baptist Church.”

Brenda smiled, a glazed look on her face that was so easily common with born-agains. “I just thank the Lord that he brought you here into our lives, Cliff.” (I’d told them my name was Cliff Roberts, I was twenty-four, and had just moved to Whittier to take care of my ailing parents. Truth is I don’t know where my daddy is, and my momma is dead, but I’ll get to that later).

“So am I,” I said.

“Let’s pray,” she murmured. She closed her eyes and took my hands, bowing her head. I bowed my head but kept my eyes open as she prayed. “Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing Cliff into our lives today. I pray that you draw us closer to you Lord, so that we may do your will. I pray that you continue to work through us to glorify you. Lord, I thank you for preparing your Kingdom for us, and cannot wait to be with you. God, it is such a burden to be here on this wicked earth, but I know you have prepared a place for me in Heaven. I pray that until then you continue to enrich us in your blessings. In Christ’s name, Amen.”

“Amen,” I said, then I leaned forward, motivated now after hearing her confirm her wishes in her prayer. I locked my hands around her throat and strangled her.

It didn’t take long. Less than a minute later she got her wish.

She bounced up to meet Jesus.

WHEN BRENDA THOMASON was dead and with Jesus in Heaven, I opened the passenger side door and carefully dragged her body out. There was a trash bin at the end of the parking lot and I carried her over to it. The lid was open, so I dumped her in. I smiled down at her for a moment, that warm feeling after I have helped a Christian get to Heaven rushing through me. Then I moved some garbage over her to conceal her, then headed back to her car. I leaned into the passenger side, rifled through Brenda’s purse for her keys and wallet. I took out the money she had in her wallet–a little over two hundred dollars–and trotted back to the garbage bin and tossed the purse in the bin. Then I went back to the car, got behind the wheel, started the car, and eased out of the parking lot. I didn’t turn the headlights on until I was on the street, heading toward Whittier Boulevard.

I knew I couldn’t hold on to her car forever. She would be reported missing by tomorrow at the earliest (the body would be found by tomorrow morning I was sure). But I had a few hours, and the car had a full tank of gas in it. I thought it best that I drive east towards Palm Springs and get a motel room for the night. I was tired and I needed to sleep (I almost always feel a tremendous sense of what I can only describe as a combination of fatigue and relief after I send a Christian home), but I also knew I had to get as far away from Whittier as possible.

As I drove I thought about the last two years. The only truth to what I told Brenda and her church friends was my age. I turned twenty-four this past April. Other than that, everything else was a lie.

(And how I wanted to send all of them home. That was on my mind almost the whole time we sat in that restaurant, replaying my main fantasy, which is sending a whole bunch of them home at once. Perhaps someday I can do this. I can drive a moving truck full of what Timothy McVeigh used to bomb the Federal building in Oklahoma City to a football stadium where a Promise Keepers Rally was going and hope for the best.)

I’ll only tell you my first name in this account, which is Gary. But not my last name, just in case I ever get separated from this notebook and the wrong people find it. But I will say that I was born and raised in northern Alabama, and that I never knew my daddy. Don’t know how I could have since I later found out he was one of momma’s regular customers. She thought she had it pegged between five or six guys, but one of them was a nigger, and I know I ain’t got no nigger blood in me otherwise momma probably would have treated me worse than she did when I was growing up. The other two or three I never even seen, and another one was incredibly fat and oily looking (I’m very thin and don’t have the broad forehead or fish lips this guy has), and another one just didn’t resemble me in any way.

The first twelve or thirteen years of my life are pretty unremarkable; momma and I lived in a trailer just north of Montgomery and I had many friends. Mom had a lot of biker type friends with tattoos and big motorcycles. She also used to do a lot of speed and coke, and sometimes when she was on the stuff she could be a heller. Knocked me around more than once, I might add (I have a two inch scar that runs along the base of my temple that was caused when the side of my head hit a nail sticking out of the wall when she hit me). But then when I was fourteen or so, she and her boyfriend went to church one day and came back changed people (this boyfriend was one of the nicer ones, guy named Frank Johnson who was a real southern gentleman; never hit my momma and never raised a hand towards me. I felt bad killing him, but he wanted to go home and the reason I killed him was to send him home to Jesus). Momma said she was saved and that she had been reborn again.

From that point on life sure was different.

For one, instead of never going to church, or only going to church when she felt guilty about something she’d done, she was going to church every Sunday and even on weekdays. Her and Frank went to Bible studies and church socials. Mom stopped wearing jeans and t-shirts, started dressing more lady-like, and such. Frank even got himself a haircut and a shave. They still looked like hard-asses, what with all them tattoos and such, especially Frank’s (Frank had once spent time in prison and some of his prison tattoos snaked up his neck to the bottom of his jaw). They even changed personality-wise a little bit. Got more nicer. Stopped snorting speed and smoking dope so much (Frank sometimes still dipped in the till, but Momma stopped completely). Even paid more attention to me.

This went on for about three years. By this time I was a teenager, and like all teenagers I rebelled at first. I surely hated church, hated even more their new lifestyle. See, shortly before they got themselves saved I was rarin’ to go to this big biker rally they went to every year. The year before they got themselves saved I got to go to one of their parties and the sight of seeing all those crazed, drunken biker women dancing to the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd music got me right horny, ‘cause sometimes the girls would go topless and shake their titties. The older guys that would befriend me at these parties promised me that the next year when I came to the rally they would get me laid. Well, the following year momma and Frank got themselves saved and the biker rally was now seen as a big den of sin and I was deprived of not only fun, but getting some pussy as well. Because they tried to shelter me more now, it took another year before I finally did get some pussy and even then it was from some old whore on the west side of town who was twice as old as momma. But hey, pussy’s pussy, right?

MONDAY, AUGUST 17

I read through what I wrote last night and think it’s pretty accurate. I knew it would take a long time to tell some of my background and such, so I guess I’ll just put it down where I find it appropriate.

I reached Palm Springs about ten o’clock last night and found a motel along highway 18 leading into the main drag of the city. I checked in and paid cash. I signed in as Herb Stevens and used his Oregon driver’s license and gave them a fake make, model, and license number of the car I was driving. Then I parked the car right by my unit, locked the door, stripped down to my underwear and crawled into bed. I was beat.

I figured no alarm would be raised about it till tomorrow at the earliest, but I may get lucky and get a forty-eight hour lead-time. Police usually don’t consider an adult missing till they been gone that long, which I think is a plumb retarded idea. If I was expecting somebody to be home at a certain time and they failed to come home within a few hours of that, I’d call them missing. Wouldn’t you?

(I sent Herb home a few weeks ago. He was a truck driver who picked me up north of San Francisco and when I found out he was both born-again and couldn’t wait to go to heaven, I helped him along a bit. I followed him into the men’s room of a truck stop we went to, and when I was sure we was alone I first locked the door to the bathroom, then I killed him by coming up behind him in the stall where he was pissing and slit his throat with a knife I took from his glove compartment. I left him propped on the toilet bowl and positioned him so the blood dripped down the front of his shirt into the bowl. The way it looked to somebody coming in the bathroom, Herb was just squatting on the john taking a dump. Herb looked a lot like me in many ways, but in the picture he has a mustache and beard, and I’m clean-shaven)

Woke up around nine-thirty. I took a nice, long shower, and took my time getting ready. I had my plan in motion and I acted on it. After checking out, I drove the car out of the lot and headed toward the east part of town, away from the more trendy tourist spots (I been to Palm Springs once last year–killed a revival preacher named Chuck Smith there who invited me to his nice big home near the tourist section). I drove the car to a run-down neighborhood, parked the car and left it there. I still had Brenda’s car keys and I took those. I’d ditch them later in town, throw ‘em in a public wastebasket or something.

Which I did. Don’t need ‘em any more, no reason to hold onto ‘em.

I had a little over three hundred dollars in my pocket, about three quarters of that Brenda’s money. It was already getting hot, and all I was wearing was the clothes on my back–a pair of faded blue jeans, and a blue T-shirt with a pelican on it, and a pair of white Nike tennis shoes and white gym socks. I used to have a backpack with clothes in it, but I lost that in a fire I started when I burned a house down helping the Christian occupants go home. I walked down to the corner where there was a bus stop and waited for a bus to come along. When one came I got on, found out I could hit the greyhound terminal from this run, paid the fare, and got on for the ride.

Once at the greyhound terminal I bought a one way ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah. It was the one leaving the quickest. Cost me ninety-five dollars and fifty cents. I paid in cash, then hurried to board cause they was boarding.

And wouldn’t you know it? They only had one major stopover on that particular bus and that stop was Las Vegas, Nevada.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 21.

I’m writing this now in the home of James and Melissa Van Buren’s home in Salt Lake City. James and Melissa have gone up to meet Jesus, but their bodies are in the bedroom. Their eight children–three of them are their own, the other five are adopted from women they talked out of having abortions at abortion mill rescues–are at an all day Bible retreat. They aren’t due to be back till later tonight, and it’s only two-thirty now so I still got six hours or so. I had planned on waiting for them to get back and send the kids home as well, but not all of them are still keen on the Lord. The oldest kid is sixteen and rebelling, going through what I went through when I was his age. The Lord will work on him; it’ll just take some time. He’s been influencing his three brothers and sisters, so they’re sorta rebellin’ too. But the three other kids claim to know the Lord. Even the little two-year-old says he wants to be with Jesus. They told me this yesterday at supper when I asked them. I thought about sending the four youngest off, but they’re not at the age yet where they understand the wickedness of the world. Once they get to that age they’ll know whether or not they have the strength to resist sin. Then they can make their decision at that time.

It was a tough decision to make. Since their parents was already so adamant about leaving this “wicked earth” (as they put it), I knew I was gonna do them this favor. But I’m a firm believer in pro-family values, and children need to have a home with a momma and daddy in it. Wouldn’t do them no good if their momma and daddy went home to Jesus now and left them children behind, so I had to see if they wanted the same things their parents wanted and if they were eager to go too. And like I said, four of them was, four of them wasn’t, and because of the ages of the four that wanted to go to Jesus (two to nine years old), I figured it would be best to let them all wait. The Lord will provide new foster parents to these children, that I am sure.

I got me a bigger notebook to write all this down in. Before, I was writing in one of them pocket notebooks and had filled half of it already. But now I got this big legal sized notepad and I can write lots on it.

I heard about the Van Buren’s from a man I met in Vegas. We had a two-hour stopover and I was walking around the strip, just taking in the sights. I’d never been to Las Vegas and it was a sight to behold. Big cheesy hotels with lots of lights, even in the daytime, flashing and flashing. One of the hotels looked like a pyramid, and another looked like a castle like you see in the fairy tales, and yet another one was a tower that had a roller coaster way at the top! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And everywhere there was big expensive cars driving up and down the strip. It was all an experience, let me tell you. Anyway, I met this man passing out tracts in the parking lot of one of the big casino’s (he was passing out them Jack Chick tracts, you know, the ones with the funny cartoons on ‘em) and I introduced myself as Jack Webb and told him I was a Christian too, and would appreciate some brotherly company for an hour or so while I waited for my bus to go. So we sat for a spell in a coffee shop and talked.

When he learned that I was going to Utah, he told me about the Van Buren’s and that they were mighty good Christian people. He said they needed some support in the Lord, what with them living in a city populated by one of Satan’s cults (the Mormons). He gave me their address and said that they would be glad to take me in for a spell. I thanked him, then we talked some more. And...well, to make a long story short, he got down to business and explained why he was passing out them Chick tracts. He felt he had to work that much harder in such a city of sin and death as Las Vegas if he wanted to win souls over for the Lord.

I asked him if he hated being here, that if he had the chance to go up to Heaven to be with the Holy Father in His Heavenly Kingdom right now, would he go?

I think you know the answer to that question.

I saw by my watch that I had thirty minutes before my bus left. I asked if I could help him hand out tracts. He brightened up and said that would be great, but we would have to go to his van for some more. This is what I was hoping for. I followed him out to his van, which was at the far end of the parking lot. His van was old, with dirty curtains pulled over the windows in back. He opened the back and as he reached in to pull a box of tracts out, I checked to make sure nobody was watching, then I climbed in and pinned him to the floor of the truck on his stomach. He grunted in surprise, but I knocked the wind out of him, which made it easier for me to strangle him.

When he was unconscious I broke his neck just to make sure. It sounded loud, the way kindling will sound when you break it over your knee.

I rolled his body over, then turned his pockets out to take whatever cash he had. His wallet had seventy-five dollars in it. I took it, then left the wallet laying on one of the rear seats of the van. Then I closed the doors of the van and walked away.

The rest of the bus ride to Utah was just shy of eighteen hours. We stopped a few other times, this time not as long as our stay in Vegas. I slept most of the trip up. Sending another one off home made me feel relaxed and serene.

The bus hit Salt Lake City Tuesday evening, and I stayed in another motel that night, registering again as Herb Stevens. The man at the counter didn’t even ask to see an ID (most Motel 6’s never do, but if they do I got Herb Stevens ID I can fall back on). Then I went to bed and slept straight through till morning.

After I checked out the following day, I set off to find the Van Buren’s. I had their address, and after calling a taxi I gave the driver the address and he took me. It was on the north side of town, near the mountains.

Melissa was the one that answered the door. She was a kinda plain-looking woman. When I told her who I was and who had recommended me, her eyes lit up and she let me in. The younger kids was all on the floor with schoolbooks open before them (she explained that she home schools her kids because she don’t trust the pagan school system to teach her children by the Bible). She called her husband at his job, and I spent the rest of the day helping her home school the kids till her husband came home.

We had a mighty good fellowship that evening. I told the Van Buren’s that I was traveling the country preaching the gospel and they said amen to that. James told me that his home was home to any good Bible-believing Christian that was also a soldier for Him, and I thanked him and told him I appreciate that, but that I didn’t want to put an unnecessary burden on them. I told them I was tired from traveling and preaching and could just use a few days rest. They gave me their blessing, and that was that.

I relaxed for two days. I also watched the news. I like to check to see if the authorities are after me or not. Despite the fact that I only follow God’s law, man has his own law, and as long as I’m on this earth I gotta watch out and make sure I don’t alert the authorities. When I sent momma and Frank home, they was after me the minute they found their bodies, but I haven’t heard anything about the investigation since then. For one, I haven’t gone back to that part of Alabama. For another, I’ve changed my appearance some, and change it every so often to avoid detection (sometimes I let my beard and mustache and hair grow real long, or sometimes I shave my head, or sometimes I eat a lot to put on some pounds, and other times I change my clothing style. It works every time). I also use different methods to send people home: sometimes I stab them, sometimes I strangle them, sometimes I shoot them, sometimes I make it look like suicides. Either way, I try not to make them suffer. And lastly, I haven’t spent the last five years doing nothing but sending Christian folk home. When a place looks right, I settle down in a particular town or city and get a place to live and a job. It don’t matter what kinda job, just anything to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head. Usually it’s fixing cars, but sometimes it’s doing other things too; being a janitor, or working in a warehouse, or sometimes pulling stints as a short-order cook. I’ll settle down for a spell, usually eight months is the longest, and then I get tired of being where I’m at and start feeling the itch to spread God’s love and then I hit the road again to do what the Lord called me to do.

I don’t right remember how many people I’ve sent home in the last five years. I stopped counting after fifteen, but I suppose it’s been over sixty or so. Maybe more like a hundred. I really don’t know. Either way, there haven’t really been big investigations, which I attribute to sending them home different ways (usually the police is looking for serial killers who kill folks one way over and over again, but I don’t do that ‘cause I ain’t no serial killer).  But there was an investigation going on in Los Angeles regarding Brenda Thomason according to the news I watched on the Van Buren’s television. Her body had been found Monday evening, just like I thought. And there was a composite sketch of the man last seen with her.

That man was me.

And wouldn’t you know it, they were blaming the same suspect–me–on the death of a man in Las Vegas found in his van.

I knew it was time to grow the beard out some, and change the appearance with my hair. Maybe shave it off again. Shaving my head was the only way I could drastically change my appearance right now. Anyway, I figured it was best to do that right away and then skip town.

I laid low at the house the next few days, helping Melissa during the day, and talking Bible stuff and the like with the adults at night. One night a friend of the Van Buren’s came by and he was a brother in the Lord too. Was a member of Operation Rescue, the group formed by Randall Terry that rescues babies from abortion mills. The Van Buren’s were dedicated to the cause, but were on the non-violent side to the approach. “We ain’t like those Army of God folks that bomb abortion clinics,” James said. “The Lord doesn’t call us to commit violence.”

I thought about this. If the Lord doesn’t call on them to commit violence, why does He call others to it? This is a question that is most often asked with a sneer by atheists, as if saying that God don’t exist because He wouldn’t be so contradictory, what with him supposed to be all knowing and all powerful and loving. The answer is simple: He calls on some to commit violence for His cause because He knows they are capable of it and wouldn’t object, and He calls on others to work on other methods. With me, He calls on me to send those of His flock who want to come home, home, because He doesn’t want His followers to be subjected to the wickedness of this world for as long as they have to.

There have been plenty of Christians I haven’t killed. I would say I don’t kill most Christians. A lot of the Christians I meet, when I ask them what they think about the world they live in and such, they say that the world can be a bad place, and that while they know they’re going to heaven, are even looking forward to it, they think the world can be a beautiful place as well and want to live out their life here first. I appreciate that a lot. I think it takes a strong person to admit that while the world has wickedness and evil in it, there is also good and beauty in the world, and that as long as you are here it is up to you to find that good and make the best of it. The Christians I send home are really the weak ones, and I am doing them a favor and doing the Lord’s work when I send them home. After all, Christ himself said that the Lord will not call on us to do that which we are too weak to do; if living in the world was too much of a burden for them, then they were to be relieved of it.

Today, Friday, when I decided it was time to leave, the kids went off to their Bible retreat. They were to be dropped off at the house by nine tonight. Before James came home from his early shift at the factory, I went into the master bedroom where Melissa was in the master bathroom taking a shower. When she got out of the shower I surprised her and strangled her with one of the bath towels. She struggled some (for one, she didn’t see who I was cause I surprised her by covering her face with the towel), and I had to hit her in the solar plexus to gain control over her. But I finally strangled her and she twitched some, then shit all over the place (that’s about the only ugly thing about strangling people, they lose control of them bowels). I lowered her into the tub, then went into the bedroom where I knew James kept his gun collection. He had shown it off to me the night before, and he was especially proud of the silencer-equipped 9 mm Python with the twelve round magazine.

I took the Python and turned out the lights in the living room and waited for James to get home.

He entered through the garage door. I placed him in my sights and took him down with one shot, the bullet entering his throat at the Adam’s apple (in Alabama I grew up around guns and could empty six rounds from fifty yards into Dr. Pepper can and leave a hole in it the size of a dime). He fell back into the garage and bled like a stuck pig. And that was all it took. Now the Van Buren’s are home where they belong.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25.

They’re after me in Salt Lake City now.

They’re looking for the man that fits the description of the person that killed Brenda Thomason in California, and Bill Wolf in Las Vegas (that was his name, but I didn’t put it down before because I forgot) but they won’t find him here in Yuma, Colorado, which is where I am holed up in a Motel 6 off the Interstate. The man sitting in this room writing this down is not only in the beginning stages of growing a beard, he is completely bald-headed.

He also has his left ear pierced.

I’ve had both my ears pierced for two years now, but only wear earrings when the mood strikes to change my appearance. Only this time, I hadn’t worn them in six months and the holes had filled in. I had to pierce my left ear myself with a pin that I sterilized with a match and my own earring, which I bought at the bus depot jewelry counter. It hurt some, but I cleaned it up with rubbing alcohol I bought at a drugstore, and it should be fine soon.

After I left the Van Buren’s house I caught a cab to the Greyhound terminal and bought a bus ticket for as far as I could go as quickly as possible. There was a bus leaving in fifteen minutes bound for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I bought it and was heading away from Salt Lake City thirty minutes later with a new set of clothes on me, and fresh ones in a nice overnight bag I found at the Van Burens. I also had some more cash, along with some toiletries I picked up at the bus depot.

I panicked when the bus blew a tire just outside Yuma, Colorado. We’dbeen going along at a steady sixty-five miles per hour when it happened, and the bus skidded some awful. For a moment I thought we was going to tip over. Everybody was screaming and scrambling to stay in their seats, but the bus driver was a real pro. He handled the skid real well and brought the bus to a stop at the side of the interstate where we all filed off.

I was nervous when the Colorado Highway Patrol came with the rescue units to help those who might have been banged up, but I played it cool. Besides, I looked very different from the man who was wanted in California, Nevada and Utah. I was wearing an aqua colored T-shirt with a tropical design on it, a pair of blue shorts, and my customary Nikes. I was also wearing a pair of glasses I’d snatched from the Van Buren house; the prescription wasn’t that strong, so it wouldn’t be that hard a strain on the eyes so long as I didn’t wear them all the time. Thanks to the change in appearance, the police didn’t even pay attention to me. In time, a couple of vans pulled up to transport those passengers who were well enough in body and mind to continue onto Chapel Hill, and they took us into Yuma. But because there were no buses scheduled to go to that part of the country until tomorrow, they put us up at this Motel 6 here in town.

I wanted to write some more about my background, and I guess now’s a good time to do it. Last I left off, I told about momma and Frank being born-again and my indifference to it all. Well, I was so indifferent to it all that I got into quite a bit of trouble. Became quite a hell-raiser, in fact. But I never did get arrested. Not for anything, not even for drinking or what goes with it. Instead, what I liked to do was lay around and drink, shoot the crap with my friends, go shooting in the woods, and chase tail. Naturally, momma and Frank weren’t too wild about that, especially the chasing tail part. Finally, when I was seventeen I got a girl pregnant and we got married.

We lived with her family in their trailer for a while, and I had a job fixing cars at the auto shop on Lincoln and Grand in town. When the baby came I changed. I settled down some, and really got into fatherhood. Momma and Frank sort of eased up on me, and then before I knew it my wife had done left me for another man.

I plumb near went crazy. I was set on heading over there with my rifle to kill the sonofabitch when Frank intervened. He talked to me, man to man for the first time since I knowed him, and that talking set me straight. Killing that man for running off with my wife was wrong. It was my wife who made the decision to leave me, and this man had nothing to do with taking her away from me. If it had been the other way around (she being married to him and having his child, and me being him) she would have done the same thing and left him for me. I saw Frank’s point, and it was then that he put his hands on my shoulders and asked to pray with me. I was so confused I didn’t know what to do, so I said yes. We prayed together and all of a sudden I felt better. All the bitter anger was lifted from my shoulders and I suppose I felt what they describe as the experience you feel when you become born-again. I knew then that Frank really cared for me and loved me like a son. And in knowing that, I knew God loved me. I think I cried then.

I went back home to momma and Frank then, and my momma was so happy I was home that she took me in her arms and held me, crying on my shoulder.

In the months that followed I went to church with them and Bible studies. A lot that I had learned about the Bible from when I was a kid slowly came back to me. And the more I listened and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was right: the world is a wicked place, and there is a better place prepared for us in Heaven. I began to feel an overwhelming need to help people about that time, and I didn’t know where to channel this energy. I looked at various things but none of them appealed to me. Helping the homeless was useless because there were always more than you can help. Same with the hungry. I saw how many had been called to preach the Word, but there were already so many doing it I didn’t want to trample on nobodies turf, but I know that we could use a lot of good preaching folk. Besides, I tried it for a while but wasn’t too good at it. Didn’t win a single person over to the Lord, and what good is that when you got all this energy and fire for the Lord and it ain’t being taken in? I wanted to do something that really helped people, really set them free, really affected them, and it wasn’t until I was at home one night with Frank and momma watchin’ TV that it hit me.

We were watching Pat Robertson’s 700 Club and Pat said that this world was the devil’s world. He said that as Christians we need to be on guard at all times because the Lord gave Satan the world to do his dirty work. As we watched it, momma and Frank would “amen” every so often, nodding as if they agreed with him. And as Pat Robertson went on about how bad and how evil the world was and how Heaven was a much better place, Momma finally said, “Amen and Praise the Lord! I can’t wait to leave this awful place and be with my Lord Jesus Christ!”

Frank said, “Amen to that, honey.”

And it was then that I knew what I must do to help people.

I went into momma and Frank’s room and went to the dresser where I knew Frank kept a loaded Winston .38 caliber revolver. I checked to make sure it was loaded, then I went into the living room and I shot my mother in the back of the head. Frank was just getting up and turning around, a surprised look on his face when I shot him point blank in the face.

And that’s how I sent Momma and Frank home and started doing this good thing.

SEPT. 2, SOMEWHERE outside Jacksonville, FL

Man, this last one was a pure contradiction!

Her name is (or was) Janet Hain, and she was a sister in the Lord I met two days ago at Holy Bible Pentecostal Church, which is on Route 17 outside of Jacksonville, Florida. Them Pentecostals are some fierce folks; clapping and singing in church to the accompaniment of guitar or piano, speaking in tongues, hands raised in the air, shouting out Hallelujah every five seconds, some downright falling to the floor in convulsions like they was pitching a fit or something. And then there’s the snakes, and I’m not talking no harmless corn snakes or king snakes now, either. These Pentecostal folks pick up live rattlers and water moccasins and dance around with them, all the while praying and singing praises to Holy Jesus for keeping them serpents from striking them. Some of them snakes was mighty big, too; one rattler must have been a good nine feet long and was as big around as my upper arm.

I even picked one up. I was scared at first, but I was so fired up for the Lord that the hands was picking the snake up the moment it was handed to me. I looked him right in the eye and the rattler kind of looked at me with those fierce eyes of his, his tongue flicking out lazy at me. I held the serpent high over my head in thanks and praise to the Lord, and I was praising God when I passed him on that I didn’t get bit. Guess that means my faith in the Lord is rock solid. Course that don’t mean much to the fellow I passed him on to. The snake bit him right in the neck the minute I handed him over, and Janet told me yesterday morning that he died even though we all prayed over him.

Guess his faith in the Lord wasn’t as strong as it should have been.

That’s what I mean about contradictions. I met so many Christians that were contradictory to an extent, but none so much as this bunch down here in Florida. Janet Hain was a prime example; the minute she met me she made it clear that her home was in Heaven. And what does she go and do when I try to help her, she not only puts up the fight of her life, she damn near broke my nose and I almost got bit by her snakes, which she keeps in a box in her living room for the congregation.

I don’t get it. One minute they say they can’t wait to be in Heaven with Jesus, and the next minute they’re fighting like mad to stay down here on this miserable earth. Makes me wonder if they’re just fooling themselves, or if they got some doubt in their minds, like they’s scared to believe that maybe there really ain’t no heaven and they don’t want to have to find out.

Well, there is a heaven, and God has prepared it for us, Praise His name. I know this because it says so in the Good Book.

Between the time I left Yuma, Colorado and the time I got down here to Jacksonville, not much happened. I finally got in to Chapel Hill, North Carolina on August 28th, and man was it boring. Weren’t many Christians to be found in that town. Chapel Hill is a college town, and I stayed around near the University. Met some Christian folk, but they seemed to be more interested in buying school books for next semester and going to parties then they was about the Bible. I figured they liked it down here so there was no work here for me in this town. So, I left.

I got to Jacksonville three days ago and tooled around town a bit. Wound up on the outskirts south of the city and found this small community out in the swampland and found this here Pentecostal church. Turned out it was Sunday morning when I stumbled across it, and I attended their service. That’s how I met Janet Hain.

When Janet found out I was preaching the gospel on the road and that I needed a place to stay, she offered to put me up. She lived in a good-sized home on the edge of a swampy river; she said she inherited the home from her daddy, who was a land baron or some such. The home is nice (I’m sitting in the living room writing this now); it’s got those high ceilings with the big wooden beams in them and the main floor is split-level. The bedrooms is off to the back and the garage is attached to the house. The driveway winds through some dense foliage, and the back deck overlooks the river. In fact, there’s a small pier hooked onto the back and she’s even got a small boat on the river where she sometimes does some fishing.

When she showed me around she took me all through the house and its grounds. The living room had a fireplace, and there was a big box sitting on a large table where she kept the rattlers the church used. I was especially impressed with the surrounding land and the river. She showed me her boat, and as it turned out she showed me Old Moses. That’s what she named the ten foot ‘gator that sometimes sleeps beside her pier. Old Moses. “He’s mean looking but he’s a real baby,” she said. “I been here fifteen years, and the folks that used to live here before were here for ten, and Old Moses been here the whole time. Folks that live around the river been wanting him gone because sometimes he’ll snack on somebody’s dog or cat, but I told them ‘God made Old Moses to do that. He made Old Moses just the way he is so you leave him be’. Other than that, he’s real friendly. If you see him, pay no mind to him and he’ll leave you be.”

I stayed at her place, and the next few days were pretty much like they was in Salt Lake with the Van Burens. Janet don’t work (she lives off some inheritance) and we spent a lot of time together studying the Word and praying together. One day we went to a Gay Rights rally in Jacksonville and tried to spread God’s love, but Janet spent most of the time yelling at them queers, and some of them got downright ugly. One of ‘em even hit Janet and there would have been a fight, but I pulled her away. Got her out of there before the police arrived.

It was that incident that really set her off about leaving. She was crying as I drove us home down the back road. She kept crying, saying that she didn’t mean to cause no fuss, but that she just couldn’t stand there and see them queers and faggots throwing their lives to Satan the way they was living in their homosexual sin. And then to have the nerve and reject the truth and try to shoot the messenger! It all made her very sick and very distraught and finally she just up and said it. “Lord, if I could go with you now, take me now, because I’ve about had it with the sin and wickedness of this world. This room is not fit for those who follow you, Oh Lord.”

I said Amen to that.

Amen.

It was dark when we got home. As Janet started supper in the kitchen, I got my stuff together to make sure it was all in place. I’d probably leave tomorrow morning and I wanted to be sure I had everything before I went.

Then I went to do God’s work to send Janet home.

She was standing over the stove, looking out the window at the river beyond when I walked up behind her, grabbed her neck from behind and started strangling her. She went crazy instantly, struggling madly (actually, this isn’t uncommon for those I strangle; it’s an instinctual reaction, even if they really want to go home, but Janet was a big woman and strong). I bore my weight down on her and she managed to elbow me a good one in the ribs. I grunted and squeezed harder and she went down on her knees, then went limp. I bore her to the ground and looked down at her. She was unconscious.

As I struggled to catch my breath, I saw the glint of rope near the box she kept the rattlers in. An idea began to form in my mind as I grabbed the rope and made a noose with it. I’ve made several of my favors to Christians look like suicides, and now was as good a time as ever to do so now, what with the manhunts in California and Utah going on. I put the noose around her neck, then threw the end of the rope up and over the beam that stretched across the ceiling.

I’d just gotten her propped up on a chair and had her hoisted up ready to go, when she came to suddenly. Her sudden jerking knocked the chair over and she hung, her legs kicking furiously. I was still holding the end of the rope and I tied it down quick to an opposite beam. Then I went over to her as her body began swinging back and forth during her struggles. Her eyes bugged out, her face turning blue as she fought, kicked, and scratched at the noose. Her legs were kicking wildly and I don’t know how she managed to do it, but on her outward swing toward me she managed to swing out far and kick her foot hard and wide, connecting to my balls.

God how that hurt. A bolt of deep pain shot through me and I collapsed to the ground, holding my nuts. It hurt so bad I wasn’t aware of anything for maybe a minute, just this white hot pain coursing through my belly and head and echoing through my groin. By the time I became more aware of anything, Janet had somehow managed to hoist herself up so she wasn’t hanging, and had undone my noose. Her dropping to the floor was what made my adrenaline surge, and we both came together in a fury, she clawing at my eyes and face, me holding her off while trying to knock her down.

She hit me a good one across the face and it stunned me. She sought this opportunity to belt me a good one, and that sent me reeling back. I fell back against the box that held the rattlers and it fell to the floor with a splintering crash, spilling snakes all over the hardwood floor. I jumped up as if my ass hit red-hot coals and saw her coming at me with what looked like a knife. She stabbed down at me and I swung my legs out and knocked her feet out from under her. She fell over, dropped the knife, and landed right on the splintered box and the snakes.

And then she screamed.

Them snakes was biting her all over. In the brief time I watched, stunned, she got bit in the face, the chest, both arms, her left hand, and her leg. She managed to get up, screaming in rage, her right cheek bleeding from two puncture wounds from a snake bite, and her arm and hand bleeding as well. She bellowed at me in rage, her eyes red with anger and she charged at me. I dodged out of her way and my hand brushed against the knife–or what I thought was a knife–that’d been knocked out of her hand when she lunged at me. It turned out not to be a knife but some sort of carpentry tool with a broad wooden handle and a long, sharp end like a pick. Looked kind of like an ice pick.

When she came at me again I met her head on and I gave her a karate chop to the throat. My hand hit her in her Adams apple and it wasn’t hard, but it was hard enough to make her choke and stumble back. I used this opportunity to push her down on her back and with the ice pick I jabbed it down at her, embedding it in the side of her head right above her ear. She gurgled for a moment and then was silent.

My head was ringing, and for the first time I was aware that my nose was bleeding. I touched it and it sang with pain. It felt like it was bleeding a lot, and it was then that I thought it might be broke (turned out it wasn’t though, after I cleaned myself up).

I sat on the floor and tried to catch my breath. The only sound I was aware of was the sound of my own breathing and the buzzing of them rattlers still fired up and pissed off that Janet had fell down on them. I’d almost calmed myself down when I sensed movement.

I looked up and she came at me. Her face was all swollen up from the snake venom, and her left hand was swelled horribly. There was a great river of blood gushing down the left side of her head from where the pick-like tool still protruded, but she was alive and she came at me. I swear, it was like one of them horror movies momma never liked me to watch. Her hands found my throat and tried to choke me and I somehow got out of her hold and pushed her. We struggled and I got the upper hand again and pushed her away from me. She came at me again and we struggled, only this time I got the upper hand. I grabbed her from behind, got a good grip on her and locked my hands around her throat. She didn’t even put up resistance as I strangled her again. She went limp.

I tried to strangle the life out of her right there on the kitchen floor, but I was just too tired. Too tired even to try hanging her again, so I dragged her outside onto the pier by her hair. It was a warm, muggy night and if she stayed unconscious long enough all I’d need to do was throw her in the river and she’d drown.

But wouldn’t you know it? She came to again.

I had her on the side of the pier and was about to push her in when she came to and grabbed onto my leg. I got down and pushed her upper body into the water, holding her head under with one hand around her throat. She thrashed something wild, as if all the fight was back in her, which I don’t see how after having all that snake venom coursing through her veins and the pick stuck in her head. But she fought anyway and she fought wild. Raised quite a ruckus in that water, arms splashing wildly. I brought her up briefly to catch air and she gasped but couldn’t really draw it in–guess the snake venom was now starting to work—and I ducked her in again. She kept thrashing, and I kept bringing her up and ducking her back in. And her thrashing was starting to diminish when, all of a sudden, I felt a slight tug on her and almost fell in myself. It was then that I noticed that her left arm was gone.

Blood sprayed everywhere like a fountain. I sat there on the pier a moment, wondering how the hell her arm just sorta fell off. In sitting down on the pier, I sorta pulled her up a bit more so that her head and upper body was just dangling off the pier and her legs and lower body was resting firm in my grip. She was still somewhat conscious but was going fast. Her eyes were now completely swollen shut and her face and head were swelled from the venom and she gurgled at me. I was just getting myself into a better position and grip on her body when suddenly Old Moses surged up from the river and grabbed her head and upper body in his powerful jaws.

I instinctively grabbed her legs and Old Moses shook his head, trying to shake her free. We sorta played tug of war there with her for a minute, but then Old Moses won. He gave one fierce tug that pulled her apart in a great spray of blood; it drenched me, felt like being sprinkled with warm holy water. The body just kind of split apart and some guts fell on the pier and the rest was pulled down in wet trails with Janet’s upper half as Old Moses wolfed her down. I sat on the pier holding her legs and lower torso, barely noticing their twitching, and then I thought “what the hell?” and tossed the rest in the river. Old Moses surfaced a moment later and ate the rest of her.

So in the end it all turned out all right. Janet finally got to go home (and I still can’t puzzle out why she would fight me so ferociously on this), and Old Moses got to have himself something to eat, which is what God made him to do: eat things.

SEPTEMBER 3, JANET'S home.

I’m still here in Janet Hain’s home. After I wrote what I wrote last night (I had to write it last night; I was still high on adrenaline and I couldn’t rest until it was out of my system), I took a shower, put my clothes in the wash, and went to bed. I got that sleepy, peaceful feeling again, but this time I was really tired. Every muscle in my body was sore from sending Janet home.

Woke up this morning, made myself some coffee, then helped myself to some eggs and bacon, fixed myself some toast as well. Put the dishes in the dishwasher too, cause I just can’t stand the thought of leaving dirty dishes in the sink.

I cleaned up some in the house too. Washed up the blood on the floor, cleaned up some of the broken furniture and such. I tried looking for them snakes, but they appeared to have hid. Rattlers like to hide during the day, so if they was still in the house that was fine by me. I just had to be careful not to stray too close to the sofas and chairs and such. Just in case they was still in the house and hiding in dark spots. Before I leave I’ll prop the back door open so they can crawl out later if they want to.

I looked out back at the river and there’s still a smidgen of Janet’s guts stuck to the pier. Some crows are picking at it, and I thought about pushing it into the water for Old Moses, but thought better of it. If the police show up, they’ll put two and two together and figure Old Moses ate her, which he did.

So now that I’ve cleaned up a bit I’m going to gather my things and

SHERIFF JOHN BROWNING'S Journal.

September 3, evening, 2004

After reading the above journal entries, myself, Sheriff John Browning, and Deputy Eric Hanson, have come to some serious conclusions.

We found the narrator of this journal, Gary Z. Linneman, sitting at the kitchen table of the presumed deceased Janet Hain’s home. I say “presumed” deceased, because so far Ms. Hain’s remains have not been recovered. The suspect apparently cleaned up evidence of the described struggle in the house, leaving the only account of foul play in his journal. The Florida Department of Fish and Game is currently scouring St. John’s River in an attempt to capture “Old Moses”, who is an American Alligator assumed to be well over thirty years old and ten feet long, and perform a necropsy on him to determine if the last statement of murder is true.

My deputy and I had been called out to the Hain residence at the request of her neighbors who reported hearing screams coming from her house late last night. They claimed they’d been concerned when Janet didn’t answer their knock at the front door the following day, so they called us. Me and Deputy Hanson arrived, found Mr. Linneman sitting at the table, writing in this notebook, and we placed him in custody.

Once at the Duval County Station, we placed Mr. Linneman in a rear cell, fingerprinted him, photographed him, then did some checking. Deputy Hanson read the journals found with him, and we both realized we had stumbled on something.

It looked like we had a wanted man on our hands.

It was a slow day at the station. Only people in were clerks, most of the officers were on patrol. We had enough to hold Mr. Linneman based on the FBI Most Wanted poster currently in circulation in relation to the California, Nevada and Utah murders, and as soon as the prints came back from Virginia we knew we had our man.

Deputy Hanson put in the call to the FBI, and we were told they would be here by morning.

Meanwhile, I kept Mr. Linneman’s capture quiet. Didn’t want the media to get wind of what was going on. And Deputy Hanson and I read through Mr. Linneman’s journal again.

You see, Deputy Hanson and I are good Bible-believing Christians. Initially we were sickened at the account of murder in Mr. Linneman’s journal. Murder is a direct violation of the Ten Commandments and will surely send you to hell.

But there was something about what Mr. Linneman wrote that spoke to us, seemed to confirm what both of us had been feeling for quite some time.

The end is near at hand.

God is planning on calling His people home. I know this just as well as I know that the grass is green. Jesus is coming soon, and I believe because of all the things that have happened recently. The Bible says that the end times will be precluded with catastrophes, and all the earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters happening everywhere is a sign that the end times are right around the corner. And let’s not mention all the trouble going on in the Middle East now and the heathen Arab terrorists who are attacking God’s people here in America and elsewhere, which was prophesized in Revelations. God is preparing to call his people home.

Deputy Hanson and I talked about this. And just then it hit us.

It is late now as I write this. After everybody went home, Deputy Hanson and I walked to the rear of the jail and looked in at Mr. Linneman. He looked out through the bars at us and our eyes locked. A silent understanding passed between us, and Mr. Linneman nodded and closed his eyes. He’d been praying earlier, we heard him clear as day and he’d prayed for forgiveness of his sins and was ready to enter the Kingdom. He was ready to go home.

We helped. Using the laces from his shoes, we hung him up in his cell.

Now Mr. Linneman is in Heaven for his eternal reward.

And our work has just begun.

It is estimated that eighty-five percent of the United States population declares themselves as Christian. I don’t know about that, but I do know that most people in Duval County, Florida are good Christian folk. Most people in Florida are good Bible-believing folks anyway. And there’s more out there. And there’s all those people still yet not won over to the Lord. Deputy Hanson’s been thinking of moving out to Kansas, and now he says he’s going to. He knows he can get some other good Christians to believe the revelation we have just been shown and together, with a good half dozen of us, we can start on sending all good Christians home before the thousand-year reign of Satan on this earth. Others will hear our call as we have heard it. Some will be called to evangelize to win the unsaved over to Jesus, others will be called to send them home. Some might even be called to punish those that refuse His gift. That’s all I know, all I have seen in my vision. God don’t want His people on this earth when he unleashes Satan at the end times, and the only way to get His people to safety is to send them home now. As soon as possible.

I believe Mr. Linneman heard the calling, as Deputy Hanson and myself have.

Jesus Christ told us to go out and evangelize for Him. I have done that in my life, but now He calls on me to send His people home. I don’t know how else to explain it, except to describe it as some sudden need now to help my fellow Christians go home to Heaven. It’s a feeling I have never had, and it’s a feeling I can’t control now.

I will send His people home.

I will do it in His name.

I will do it immediately, right after I go home for the day. My wife, Evelyn, will be the first I send home to Jesus.

But before I leave for the day I will call my superiors and tell them that Mr. Linneman has hung himself in his cell. I have already confiscated this notebook, and it hasn’t been noted as one of his possessions or items taken into evidence. I will put it in my backpack with my personal belongings and take it home.

I now exist to do the Lord’s work.

I have heard His calling.

All praise His name.

Finding the Flame

ALWAYS, EVERYDAY, IT is the same.

First, swing by the day care center to pick up Angela, who was now three years old.

If groceries were needed the next agenda item was to head to the Von’s Supermarket on Sierra Madre and pick up whatever was needed. He generally made grocery store runs at least twice a week. Sometimes, when it was possible, he took an hour or two from his schedule at work and did the grocery shopping. They only lived less than a mile from the office, and the Von’s he shopped at was another mile down Walnut Street. He always knew exactly what they needed, and he could swing through the store and get everything in less than fifteen minutes.

After the grocery run, if that needed to be done at all, he took them home. The quicker he could get home, the quicker the home-care nurse could take off.

Leaving him to care for his wife.

Angela was fussy when he pulled in to the day care center, and he gathered her up along with her care bag, thanked the young Hispanic woman who took care of her, packed the toddler in the car, and headed for home. There was no need to go to the grocery store tonight. He was anxious to get home and get started.

He was getting home relatively early. It was only seven-thirty.

Please let it work, he thought, hands gripping the steering wheel. Please let it work.

He pulled into the subterranean parking garage of the condominium complex he and his wife Lisa had moved into five years before. The gate closed behind them and he took Angela out of her child seat, grabbed his briefcase from the back seat, and took the elevator to the ground floor.

He entered their condominium.

The home-nurse, Karen Lamley, was sitting on the couch, the TV turned to the news. Sitting in her wheel chair with the oxygen tank propped in the back, was Lisa. She was asleep.

Karen turned the sound down on the television. “How was your day, Mike?”

“Fine.”

Karen crossed the room and picked Angela up. Angela started complaining right away: “Jody pushed me down in the sandbox!” As Karen listened patiently to Angela’s litany of the life of a three-year-old, Mike smiled; Karen was a good nurse. At fifty-seven, she’d never had children and she doted over Angela and Lisa as if they were her own. She treated Mike like a son, and Mike never thought he could meet another human being that could show so much love, kindness, and caring as the nurse they’d been lucky to get to care for Lisa after the incident. Mike didn’t know where he would be now without her.

“How is she?” Mike asked, motioning toward the sleepy form of his wife.

“Tired,” Karen said, putting Angela down. She looked down at the little girl. “Why don’t you go to your room, honey, and change into your pajamas? I put them out on your bed for you.”

“Can we watch Barney tonight?” Angela asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Karen said, smiling.

Angela jumped up and down and clapped her hands. “Goodie!” She turned and happily scampered to her bedroom.

She watched Angela run to her room then turned back to Mike. “I fed Lisa an hour ago. I changed the sheets on her bed today, and the oxygen company dropped off another week’s supply, which I put in the storeroom. That’s about it.”

“Thank you.” Mike looked over at his sleeping wife and felt an incredible pang of sorrow and guilt. The same feelings he felt everyday he looked at her. If I’d  only been there, he thought.

Karen was heading toward the kitchen. “Do you want me to get dinner ready for Angie while you change?”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

He changed in the bedroom, folding his slacks neatly and placing them in the closet. He put his dress socks and his shirt in the laundry basket. Karen also performed light housework for him at an extra charge of two hundred dollars a month; she did the dishes, vacuumed and dusted the house, and did the laundry. After a full day at the office, Mike needed the time to devote to Angie and Lisa.

When Mike entered the kitchen Angie was sitting at the table and Karen was serving her a plate of spaghetti. She smiled up at Mike as he entered the room. “When do you think you’ll be home?”

“I don’t know.” Mike had been planning this night for weeks. Karen was being extremely gracious in spending the next few days at the house. He was going batty being cooped up in the house all the time.

But that wasn’t the real reason he was going out. The real reason was that he was lonely.

Mike stood in the entryway of the kitchen, looking at Lisa’s limp form as she slept soundly in her chair. As always, Mike felt his throat constrict with grief and he felt the tears come. He willed them away. The lump of flesh that loosely resembled his wife was not his wife. It was a cruel caricature of the woman he’d fell in love with and married.

Three years ago almost to the month, Lisa had gone to the Glendale Galleria to do some Christmas Shopping. She’d spent about three hours in the and was walking out to her car amid the bright florescent lights of the mall parking lot when they attacked. Two teenagers had come out of nowhere, one grabbing her bag and running off with it. Lisa didn’t even have time to scream. The second kid punched her in the face, sending her falling on her back. The back of her head hit the pavement, and her purse spilled its contents on the ground to mingle with her blood. All it took was less than thirty seconds for the thugs to rifle through her purse and then stomp her about the head, face, and abdomen, as she lay unconscious on the pavement. The first witness to the crime, a young man who’d just bought an anniversary present for his wife, later stated that as he came upon the scene one of the assailants was in the process of unbuckling his pants. That was enough for prosecutors to add on a charge of attempted rape when they were caught four hours later.

The young man who’d stumbled on the scene yelled for help, causing the assailants to flee. But the damage was already done. Lisa lay on the ground in a spreading pool of blood, forever changed from the woman she once was.

Lisa had been seven months pregnant with Angie when the attack occurred. There’d been blunt force trauma to her stomach during the assault, and both the Paramedics and the Emergency Room Technicians fought to stabilize the baby and Lisa. Fortunately, the few blows delivered to her abdomen hadn’t proved that serious, but they took no chances. The baby was monitored constantly and, as a result of the beating, was delivered by caesarian section four hours after arriving at Huntington Memorial Hospital. Born two months premature, Angela spent the first two months of her life in an incubator.  By some small miracle, aside from being two months premature, Angie was perfectly healthy.

In addition to the trauma to her abdomen Lisa suffered a broken neck, several cracked ribs, a broken nose, jaw, and skull fractures. The skull fractures created pressure on her brain and, combined with the beating, didn’t give much hope for her survival. After forty-eight hours and two emergency brain surgeries, Lisa was stabilized and brought into intensive care. The beginning of the nightmare.

Three years later Mike still blamed himself for the incident. At the time of the assault, Mike was riding high as a senior consultant at Braun & Edwards. He and Lisa met there when they first came on board upon receiving their MBAs. It had been love at first sight, but business came first. Being young and new to the world of business consulting, Mike and Lisa were thrown together into seventy-hour work weeks. It was a schedule they took to with ease and somehow in the free time they were able to find, they secured an apartment together. Some time later they managed to get married. Lisa transferred to another division in the company and got an assignment to work with a big HMO. After that they rarely saw each other. Working twelve and fourteen hour days and on weekends will do that.

Things hadn’t changed much for Mike since the incident. He still put in twelve-hour workdays. Sometimes fourteen or more. But now he tried to work fewer hours. It was hard, but somehow he managed.

It had been easier for Lisa to cut back when they learned she was pregnant (how they managed to get pregnant in the first place was nothing short of a miracle, considering their busy schedules). Lisa settled into pregnancy effortlessly; she shopped for baby clothes, cut down drastically on her work hours. She even began hinting that she would like to take time off of work after the baby was born. After all, between the two of them they were pulling in close to three hundred thousand dollars a year. Working seventy hours a week each in one of the best consulting firms in the industry will boost your income into a comfortable three figure level, even when you were inching into your late twenties. Mike knew of more than one consultant who had retired at the ripe old age of thirty-two after ten years of putting in seventy and eighty hour work weeks.

On the day Lisa was attacked, Mike was in Boston on a major project. The authorities were unable to get a hold of him because, at the moment Angela was being delivered by emergency cesarean section and the adjoining operating room was being prepped for Lisa’s emergency brain surgery, Mike was on a plane heading home. By the time he walked through the door of the condo there were ten messages on the answering machine. Mike didn’t find out about the incident until seven hours after it happened.

He’d felt guilty about that ever since.

Mike remembered the look on Lisa’s mother’s face when he told her, after having a long heart-to-heart talk with the doctors, that Lisa would not only be permanently paralyzed but that she would be an invalid for the rest of her life. The damage to the brain had been irreversible. Semi-comatose, while she could breathe and eat on her own, her vocal and motor skills were gone. She would never walk, laugh, cry, or love again.

Without knowing what he was doing, Mike walked up to Lisa and stroked her hair softly. She slept, oblivious to him standing over her. Before the attack she’d been a beautiful woman in every way; vivacious, filled with laughter and wit, charming, fun-loving. She’d taken the news of her pregnancy with happiness; she’d  been looking forward to being a mother.

But now that was all gone, shattered by a viscous crime.

“What time will you be back tomorrow?” Karen called from the kitchen.

“Before twelve,” Mike said. He wiped a solitary tear from his cheek and stepped away from Lisa.

“Will you need me after you get back?”

“No. In fact, I’ll be looking forward to spending the rest of the weekend with Lisa.”

“Good.”

Five minutes later the doorbell rang. It was Lisa’s parents, arriving to take their granddaughter for the night. His mother-in-law, June, gave Mike a questioning look as she greeted him, as if she wanted to give him the third degree about his strange request, but then wisely decided not to. Bob, his father-in-law, gave Mike a friendly nod and headed to the kitchen at the sound of Angie’s squeal of “Grandpa!” Mike handed over Angie’s overnight bag to June, which Karen had packed before they got home. They made small talk while Angie finished her supper, then Bob and Karen packed her up for the trip to their home.  Before they left he gave Angie a kiss and a hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow, baby girl. You be good now.”

“I will, Daddy.”

Lisa’s folks left and Mike went to his bedroom and gathered his things. He donned his jacket and headed into the living room. He’d told Karen and his in-laws that he was going to a co-worker’s house to discuss the next marketing move at DBH, the company Braun and Edwards was consulting for. If their scheme paid off, it would be big bonuses for the both of them. They planned on burning the midnight oil and working to the early hours of the morning. He had his cell phone with him in case Karen or his in-laws needed to get in touch with him. “See you tomorrow morning, Karen,” he said, pausing at the doorway. “And thanks.”

“No problem, Mike,” Karen said, seeing him to the door. “You two have fun.”

You two have fun. The sentiment echoed in his mind as he walked to the parking garage and got in his car. It sounded like something that would be said by a babysitter to he and Lisa as they went out for the first time in the almost three years since since Angie was born

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

MIKE SAT IN a corner booth in the hotel lounge, nursing an Absolute on the rocks. It was smoky and dark; Natalie Cole crooned in the background, singing with the ghost of her father. The lounge was partially filled, people lined up at the bar, couples huddled in booths. Mike traced the rings of his glass on the table and tried to quell the quickness of his beating heart.

He’d changed into a clean suit as soon as he checked into his room, a two-room suite on the tenth floor of the Marriott in Long Beach. He’d also left a bottle of champagne chilling on the rocks. He’d wisely left the bedsheets the way they were instead of turning them back. For all he knew, what he intended on doing tonight might not even happen.

He’d been thinking about Lisa almost non-stop since leaving the house. Part of him felt a twinge of guilt for even considering what he was planning on doing tonight. But then another part of him said it doesn’t matter anymore, Mike. The Lisa you knew and loved is gone and is never coming back.

Never.

In a way, she was as good as dead.

It hurt Mike deeply to think that, but he knew it was the truth. He’d seen the damage, and despite everything the doctors could do they were all unanimous in their diagnosis that Lisa would be a vegetable for the rest of her natural life. Thank God for their medical insurance and the settlement they received from the mall where the attack occurred. If it wasn’t for that, they’d be destitute.

That didn’t change things, though.

Three years of living like this, with nobody to talk to the way he and Lisa had talked, nobody to confide in the way he’d confided to Lisa, and nobody to be physically intimate with, Mike realized that he was growing stir crazy lonely.

He needed some companionship.

Emotional companionship.

Physical companionship.

He’d spent the past two months researching his options. He’d tried internet chat rooms, but most of the people that logged in to them were lying about something: their age, their gender, their physical description. He thought briefly about employing the services of an escort, but decided against it. The money they charged wasn’t the problem; he didn’t have the time to arrange a rendezvous with an escort. Plus, paying for sex and companionship was something that went against his ethics.

The World Wide Web had still been able to provide what he was looking for. He did his web surfing at work in the privacy of his cubicle. He was lucky enough to have his monitor turned away from the cubicle door so he could easily click on a spreadsheet when somebody came in to engage in work-related banter. It was at work where he’d done his research and come up with the solution.

The solution had been www.casualpartners.com.

Unlike other internet dating services, casual partners.com didn’t charge a fee. All one had to do was e-mail them to a secure email address that was routed to the person you were interested in meeting. Mike had scanned through the personals and gone through dozens of profiles and photos. Many of the women advertising were provocative and alluring, but he was looking for something special. Someone who would be sensitive to his needs, who would be willing to forsake companionship and friendship first for unadulterated lust. To wit: he was seeking somebody to satisfy his sexual needs.

He thought he found it in a woman named Barbara Franklin. Her profile described her as a thirty-year-old professional woman who enjoyed movies, concerts, amusement parks, traveling, and shopping. She wasn’t looking for a permanent relationship; she was simply looking for a good time with no strings attached.

Which was exactly what he was looking for.

The photo he saw on the site depicted the woman who was now walking into the hotel lounge.

Five-foot five, slim figure accented by firm breasts and long, shapely legs. She was dressed in a white cocktail dress that showed a lot of leg and fit her figure snugly. Her hair was blonde and fell about her shoulders in a curly disarray. Her sea blue eyes scanned the room, twinkling in anticipation, and she smiled in delight when she spied him in the corner booth. She started heading toward the back of the lounge. The few lone businessmen seated at the bar turned their heads to watch her walk past.

She approached the table. She looked better in person than in her picture. “Mike Peterson?”

Mike smiled. “Barbara.”

They clasped hands, as if unsure how to appropriately greet each other. Mike detected a shyness in her that mirrored his own feelings. He gestured toward the seat opposite his and she slid into it, never once taking her eyes off him.

WHEN THEY ENTERED his room an hour and a half later they were both a little tipsy and were laughing as if they’d known each other for years. Mike locked the door and escorted Barbara into his suite. “How about some Champagne?”

“I’d love some,” Barbara said.

They’d both been shy at first and started off talking about the internet service that brought them together. Mike broke the ice first by confessing this was something he’d never done before and she laughed, as if releasing a tremendous weight of relief, and voiced similar sentiments. Mike smiled at her, feeling better about the arrangement, and they’d spent the next thirty minutes getting better acquainted. He told her everything about himself except his marital status and his daughter. As far as he knew, she told him the same.

In addition to what he’d learned through her profiles and e-mails, Barbara Franklin was single, had never been married, and she worked long hours as a consultant for MacKenzie. She’d attended Boston University and received her MBA from Pepperdine. When she took vacations she preferred exotic locales like the Caribbean or Hawaii. She rarely dated; when she did, it was usually brief. “My work schedule is of the kind that most guys get tired of me after a month or so anyway,” she said. “One guy dumped me during a date. We’d gone to the Playboy Jazz festival at the Hollywood Bowl. We’d only been going out for six months and had only been on five dates.”

Mike nodded. He knew very well what she was talking about.

“Now I’m only interested in one thing when it comes to dating,” she told him over cocktails, “and that’s sex.” She smiled shyly, as if bashful to confide in such intimate details about her life. “It’s still my number one reason for going with a guy because I really don’t have much time to devote to a steady relationship. But now what I’m really interested in is a more monogamous sexual partner. I still don’t have the time to commit to a...well, a real relationship...but it would be nice to be able to have a guy who I can come to for sex over and over again without feeling that he needs to marry me or something. You know what I mean?”

Mike did know what she was saying, and it was precisely the type of relationship he was looking for. He was excited at hearing Barbara say this; he had the feeling this was what she was looking for, and she only confirmed his feelings. If he had a monogamous sex partner that he could go to for sex, he wouldn’t have to worry about his frustrations anymore. He could stay married to Lisa, hoping against all odds that she would eventually come out of her vegetative state and things would eventually return to normal between them.

They talked some more, had a few more drinks, and then before he knew it they were in his suite.

As Mike poured them some Champagne he reflected on their initial fumbling at getting to know each other downstairs in the lounge. He liked Barbara very much, but there was something about her that he couldn’t put his finger on. It felt that she was holding something back, as if she were afraid to reveal any more than she’d revealed to him. It was certainly something he could understand all too well; he didn’t feel quite sure about telling her everything about himself either. Why should he when they were both after the same thing?

He handed her a glass of Champagne. She took it and raised the glass, her eyes holding his with a sparkle. “How about a toast? To a promising beginning.”

Mike clinked his glass with hers and drank, never taking his eyes off hers.

He poured them both more champagne.

“Do you want to have a seat?” he asked, trying hard not to stammer. He motioned toward the couch in the living room area of the suite. She smiled, nodded, and he led her to the couch, champagne glasses in hand. She sat close to him, leaning forward, skirt riding up her thighs. They talked a little more, sipping champagne, not taking their eyes off each other.

The pressure built.

Before he even knew what was going on, she was in his arms. At some point they must have finished the champagne and placed their respective glasses down somewhere, because both his hands were free and holding her close to him as he kissed her. He could feel her hands roaming up and down his back, across his chest, as they kissed. It was a tender moment, both awkward and exhilarating at the same time. He trembled as he realized what he was getting himself into. He was just about to stop, to tell her that maybe he wasn’t really ready for this, when she stood up and took his hand. She motioned toward the darkened rear bedroom.

He followed her.

They stood facing each other for a moment, his arms around her waist, hers around his neck, gazing into each other, pausing every so often for a soft kiss. Then they began to undress each other.

Fully nude, they came together in bed.

“You’re trembling,” Barbara murmured.

“I’m a little nervous, that’s all,” Mike said, trying so hard not to be.

Barbara smiled. “I am too, baby. It’s okay...”

They came together then, exploring each other with their mouths, lips, and tongues. For a moment Lisa rose in his mind and her features briefly replaced those of the woman in the bed with him. Lisa, I miss you so much, he thought, feeling a slight sense of guilt.

Their foreplay was long and tantalizing. It developed slowly, languorously, and it was evolving into a more physical nature quite beautifully. Mike let himself go with the flow, letting the sensations of her lips on his carry him to new sensations. Before he knew it they were making love and then suddenly they weren’t. Barbara pushed him away. “No, Mike, please....not now.”

For a minute he didn’t know what she was saying, he was so lost in his own feelings and sensations, but when she began to push him away he blinked. He looked down at her, surprised to see her crying. “Please Mike, I just can’t!”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. She cried and turned her face away from his. “What’s the matter?”

For a minute she didn’t answer him. His erection wilted as soon as he began thinking about what he could have done to have created such a reaction out of her. He was just about to ask what was wrong again when she turned to him, a completely different look on her face than the one he’d met just under three hours ago. “Oh, Mike, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face. He felt an overwhelming need now to take care of her, to hold her and comfort her

(if only he’d been there)

and be a patient listener. He barely knew her, but he felt that they were strangely connected. “What’s wrong, hon?”

She took a deep breath, paused as if contemplating what she was going to say, then let it all out. “Almost everything that I told you tonight was a lie,” she said.

He let that sink in, his mind racing to track what she’d just said. “Okay,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it, or what?”

She nodded, sniffling. “I’ve never been out on a lot of one night stands. I know I told you that that’s what I’m really into. But I lied. In fact, this is my first time out on a date from the computer service we met on. I didn’t lie about that.”

Mike was listening, and he encouraged her to go on.

“The part I told you about being single,” Barbara began, looking up at him with a look of shame. “That was a lie. I’m married to another consultant from MacKenzie. We never see each other. He refuses to compromise his career for our marriage, and I’ve been coping with the thought that our marriage is dying, that it’s doomed, but I can’t see any other way to stop it. I’ve suggested counseling, taking more time off from work–he won’t have any of it. He loves the goddamn salary he makes more than he loves me.”

She began to sob quietly.

Mike sat beside her, stunned. The paternal part of him that wanted to take care of her reached out and lightly touched her arm. “Hey,” he said softly. “It’s okay, honey.”

She was crying openly now, the tears running down her cheeks, streaking her mascara. “No, it’s not okay. I am so sorry for leading you on like this.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I just wanted somebody....that would understand me. I just wanted somebody to hold, and...to be with.” She looked at him through tear-stained eyes. “Do you understand?”

Mike nodded, feeling a rise of emotion well up in him. “Yes,” he said. He knew exactly what she meant. The image of Lisa’s comatose figure sitting in her wheelchair, came to him again. He was lonely, too, and had just wanted the physical comfort of another human being. He wanted the soft touch of a woman.

Mike took a deep breath and let it out. Then he told her.

Everything.

He told her that she shouldn’t cry for misleading him because he was just as guilty as she was. He, too, was lonely, and just wanted somebody to hold and love, even if just for one night. He told her he was married, that he had a little girl. He told her about that fateful night three years ago that had turned Lisa into an invalid. He told her about the three years of hoping for a miracle, of raising their daughter alone, of the long hours put in at the job to escape the pain of going home. He told her about the doctors’ prognosis on Lisa’s recovery, and how she was just never going to get any better. He told her that if he hadn’t been working so goddamned much that maybe this wouldn’t have happened, that maybe he would have been with her that night, that his very presence might have deterred the vermin from doing what they’d done to her. And through it all Barbara listened, the cries having trickled down to sniffles.

When he finished he tried to offer her a smile. “I guess we both weren’t very honest with each other, were we?”

Barbara looked at him for a moment, then down at her hands, which she’d crossed in her lap during his confession. She cast a look of sorrow and loss up at him. “I’m so sorry, Mike.”

“For what?”

“For what happened to you. For your pain.”

“I’m sorry for you, too,” he murmured.

They came together again, but this time it was to seek comfort. She snuggled against him, his arms encircling around her, her head resting against his chest. They lay there in the dark silence of the bedroom. Outside, the Los Angeles sky was unusually star-filled, the sounds of the street below barely filtering up to their tenth floor retreat. Mike lay back in bed, holding Barbara to him, stroking her hair gently with his left hand, wondering how long it would take for the void to be filled.

“Maybe what happened tonight is a good thing,” Barbara suddenly said.

“Of course it is,” Mike said, not really thinking about his answer, just wanting to give some sort of positive response. The way he was seeing it now, they’d both walked into emotional disasters.

Barbara continued, not even picking up the meaning of Mike’s response: “This act of pent up....lust....or whatever you want to call it, brought us together. We’re very lucky that the two of us actually wound up together instead of with other people. Because if we had, it might have damaged us even more.” She looked at him. “Do you know what I mean?”

Mike nodded. “Yes,” he said, staring at the ceiling, seeing Lisa’s prone form in his mind.

“Our loneliness, our yearning for physical companionship, brought two lonely people together to help each other deal with the pain.” She looked into his eyes. “That’s what if feels like to me.”

Mike felt his chest constricting. “It feels that way to me, too.”

“Can we just lie here and hold each other?”

“Yes.”

She snuggled against him and he shifted his position on the bed to accommodate her. She fitted into his embrace, and now the touch of their skin together, the feel of their bodies pressed together, felt like more than just a simple lustful fumble in the dark. There was a spark, a connection, that he couldn’t explain. It wasn’t the same as when he met Lisa originally. It wasn’t the same when he met his first girlfriend in high school and fell in love for the first time. Likewise, it didn’t resemble the few flings he’d had in college. What he felt with Barbara was different. A connection. Between two people. After physical companionship with no strings attached. But secretly crying for more.

Mike didn’t know what lay in the future for him and Barbara, but he did know what lay in the future for his life. Starting Monday, the overtime stopped. The blind dedication to his job stopped. They could fire him if they wanted to. He could get a job elsewhere for less demanding hours for halfway decent money. He wouldn’t be pulling in the six figures he was currently making, but he would have his life back. He’d saved enough money the past five years that he could afford the time off. He would have his dignity. But most of all he would have the thing he loved most in the world.

A chance to be there for Angie when she needed him. A chance to see her grow.

And a chance to spend as much time with Lisa as he could before she finally slipped away.

Because he knew that was inevitable.

Mike started crying now, the tears running down his cheeks silently. He wished he could tell Lisa how much he loved her and that she could hear him, but he knew she was never coming back. He wished she would simply drift away and die peacefully in her sleep, easing her pain. He wished things hadn’t turned out the way they had.

And Barbara turned to him in the dark and brushed the tears away and he told her what he was thinking. And she vowed that, she too, was making the same vow; if her husband decided to remain married to the job she wasn’t going to stop him. It would be the real test of their marriage. And as they talked through the night, planning how their lives were going to be so different come Monday morning, Mike told her one other thing he wanted to do besides devoting the time to raising his daughter and loving and caring for Lisa. He wanted to get to know Barbara and perhaps love her, too, if she would let him.

And she said yes.

In time, they joined together in the darkness, as two people who are alone and longing for love will often do.

Offices

RAMONA THOMAS KNEW it was going to happen and it did. The minute her boss Sylvia started exclaiming excitedly that they were all getting bonus checks—again—Ramona settled back in her seat and began a slow burn. Three months ago when bonuses were handed out, it was to upper-level management. Two months later all the exempt employees got them. Last month it was the same thing. Ramona had seen the letter that accompanied the bonus checks, and the slow burn turned into a sizzling pit of anger. As she heard Sylvia tromp down the office happily chortling that they were all getting yet another bonus, Ramona picked up her phone and dialed the extension of David Pearce over in desktop publishing. David answered on the first ring.

“Bonus time again,” Ramona said.

“Are you kidding?”

“Would I kid about something like that?” Ramona settled back in her chair, preparing to relax for the rest of the day. “Sylvia just got a call from Ingrid; she’s bringing the checks down here in about thirty minutes.”

“‘Jeez...”

“And you can bet we ain’t gettin’ jack!”

“Are you sure?” David was always hopeful that the hierarchy of Randolph Industries wasn’t screwing them over, but then Ramona had ten years of experience under her belt at the company. She knew how things were run here: those that did the brunt of the work were discredited, lied to, harassed, made to feel inferior, and didn’t get to share in the fruit of the company’s labors. David saw what had been transpiring during the past three months and yet he still held out hope that the hourly employees would be recognized for their contributions. The boy had a lot of learning ahead of him.

“You just watch,” Ramona said.

She was silent as Ingrid from Business Administration came down with a smile on her face and handed Sylvia the bonus checks, along with yet another letter of congratulations from Peter Grant, the company’s Vice President. Ramona had seen a copy of the letter last month when she’d trekked down to her friend Cathy Martinez’s cubicle to sulk about the unfairness of it all. Cathy was the only exempt employee who understood; she’d come up from the ranks of the lowly hourly employee and had worked hard for her new position. Cathy deserved the bonus, but then so did every employee who worked at Randolph Industries.

The checks were passed out. Ramona surfed the internet on her computer as Sylvia went back into her office to gloat over her bonus. It was almost three-thirty in the afternoon and Ramona had another forty-five minutes before she was officially off the clock. She’d be damned if she was doing more work today. After doing most of the work behind the project that had enabled the company to save as much money as they had and generate more business than they ever had since their existence, Ramona was even more pissed than most of the hourly employees.

But that was all coming to a head. She thought it was a nice coincidence that the corporate hierarchies chose to bestow the bonuses on a Friday afternoon. She was equally lucky they choose the Friday of their next happy-hour. Every four weeks or so, several of the hourly employees from Randolph Industries met at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant where they sipped Margaritas and munched on Nachos while they gossiped and unwound. Tonight was no different, although the topic of conversation was deservedly on the bonus controversy.

There were six of them grouped around a large table at the outside patio of Mijares Mexican Restaurant. The afternoon sun was setting, the warmth of the day fading with a low breeze coming in over the San Gabriel Mountains. Once drinks were served Ramona turned to Cathy. “Can I see a copy of that letter Pete wrote for the bonus?”

“Sure.” Cathy dug into her purse and handed it to Ramona, who read it silently. Amy Taylor, the secretary that worked with Ramona, read it over her shoulder.

“‘Thanks to your contributions we are proud to present this bonus for your hard work and loyal dedication to Randolph Industries’,” Ramona read aloud. “Who does he think we are? Chopped liver?”

Amy was still reading it and noticed something toward the bottom of the letter. “Look at this, Ramona.” She pointed to what caught her eye.

Ramona read it. “‘Randolph Industries believes that sharing in the company’s success with our most valued employees will help strengthen the bond between management and personnel, thus, creating a stronger sense of teamwork. If it weren’t for you, our hardworking employees, Randolph Industries wouldn’t be where it is today.’” Her voice rose. “So everybody but the hourly employees are the most valued ones? What a bunch of crap!”

David was sitting at the table, munching on Nachos and drinking a Corona. “That’s what it looks like.”

“That just isn’t fair,” Ramona said. She handed the letter back to Cathy, who wordlessly jammed it back into her purse. She turned to David. “You and I worked just as hard on that Quadra project that did so well for them.”

“Right.” David nodded.

“Hell, in my department the boneheads that are supposed to know all the programming sat around with their thumbs up their butts while I figured out the software language for them. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be getting paid for?”

Amy and Cathy looked at each other and shrugged. “Guess so,” Amy said.

“The tone of this letter makes it seem like everybody except the hourly staff actually do anything,” Cathy said, putting in her two cents.

“It makes it appear like we’re worthless,” Amy said. She took a sip of her Margarita. “Like what we do doesn’t really matter. Like we’re expendable.”

Ramona was about to comment on that when David cut her off. “But that’s not true because if you think about it, all of the exempt staff is expendable, too.”

That made them all think and they dwelled on this for a minute. Ramona took a long sip of her Margarita and set the glass down. “You’re right,” she said. “When you really look at it, everybody at Randolph is expendable.”

“Of course,” David said. “Accountants, Administrators, Contract Specialists, even the executives. They can all be replaced like that.” He snapped his fingers to emphasize this. “When you look at the big picture, people with so-called white collar professional jobs are a dime a dozen. They can be replaced and exchanged easy. They’re not as special as they think they are.”

“Well, neither are we,” Amy quipped.

“True, but if management is going to reward employees for the work they’ve done that has helped in their success—namely the Quadra project—they should reward all the employees. Not just the exempt staff. When they do that it does make it appear that the exempt staff is more...how should I say it? More favored than the rest of us.”

The topic centered on this for awhile and later drifted on to other subjects. Ramona’s anger faded for a moment, replaced by the euphoria of the drinks and conversation, but as they were leaving the restaurant a few hours later the subject came up again. “You know, this is the third time this has happened this year,” she said, talking to Amy and David. “And upper management really hasn’t heard anything from us on how we feel about it. Maybe it’s time they did.”

“What do you want to do?” Amy asked.

“Write a letter,” Ramona said.

“Nothing nasty now,” David said, waggling his finger at Ramona.

Ramona grinned. “Nothing nasty, but I do want to let them know how we feel about this. But I can’t do it unless I have your support.” She looked at Amy and David, who voiced their approval. “I’ll e-mail the rest of the hourly staff and see how they feel before I do it.”

The following Monday proved to be a slow day, and the idea of writing a strong, concise letter to management expressing her displeasure at the hourly staff’s exclusion of bonuses was still on her mind. She outlined her plan in an e-mail, which she fired off to the twenty or so hourly employees that were all under the Support Services Staff umbrella. Support Services Staff employees were largely comprised of secretaries, but also included Administrative Clerks, Administrative Assistants, Word Processors, Desktop Publishers, and all-around computer gurus like Ramona. Their main function was to provide services for the departments they worked in. While many hourly employees got to work on some challenging projects—many of them being very instrumental in the way the company was run and contributing to its overall success—rarely were they given a chance to share in the fruits of company’s labors or acknowledged for their contributions.

By the end of the afternoon Ramona had received replies from everybody in Support Services and the overwhelming response was one of support. Before she left that day she drafted a letter to the Vice President of the company, Peter Grant, who had written the original memo that accompanied the bonus checks for the exempt employees. Since the checks and the memo came from him, she figured her letter should go to him also.

The next day she completed the final draft of the memo and sent a copy to David for his approval. He fired back an e-mail thirty minutes later. Great job! You managed to convey your feelings well without sounding angry, which would have just made management even more angry. Let’s hope it works!

I doubt it will, Ramona thought, as she printed the letter out. Since she hadn’t signed her name to it — merely noting that it was from Support Services Staff—she placed the letter in an inter-office envelope and put it in the OUT basket.

A few days later a memo was circulated to all the Support Services Staff from Peter Grant.

Dear Support Services Staff,

Thank you for your memo. Upper management had considered including hourly employees in the sharing of bonuses, and we have heard your position on this manner. The consensus is that since hourly employees already receive benefits that exempt employees don’t share in—namely being able to work overtime for additional compensation—we feel this excludes them from receiving bonuses.

Please be aware that management does appreciate your dedication and hard work. In the end, what matters most is that your work does matter, and that you do contribute to the overall picture of the success of Randolph Industries.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Grant, MBA

Business Administrator

Did he suddenly forget that upper management had already prohibited overtime compensation for hourly employees? Ramona read the memo three times, and each time she read it the message became clearer. No matter how hard you work you will not be compensated or acknowledged for what you do.

Ten minutes after Ramona read the memo, the first e-mail arrived. It was from David. Well, looks like upper management is pretty much of the opinion that we’re mere serfs. Guess we don’t exist in their eyes. More e-mails arrived in Ramona’s mailbox echoing similar sentiments. By the end of the day the consensus among the hourly employees was unanimous: if they were looked down on by upper management as being peons, why continue to contribute their talent, their labor, their ideals, to a company that could care less about recognizing it?

Ramona and David came up with the strike plan at the end of the day. They sent their plan out to all of Support Services Staff, and were met by a unanimous agreement. Since Randolph Industries was a non-union company, they couldn’t go on strike per se. But they could strike in their own way. And the way Ramona and David outlined their plan in the e-mail was simple. Starting at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, two days from now, everybody in Support Services staff was to stop working. Secretaries were to stop answering the phones, word processors were to stop typing memos, desktop publishers were to cease page layouts for software manuals. They were all to stop working and just sit idly at their desks. They were to do this for thirty minutes. That was the time Ramona and David figured it would take for the well-oiled machine that was Randolph Industries to grind to a screeching halt. Once their point was made they were to resume work as if nothing ever happened. If a boss or supervisor questioned them as to what they were doing, they were to tell them the truth: that they were doing this to send a message, to tell upper management they needed Support Services Staff more than Support Services Staff needed them. Hopefully that would send the message to the upper echelons of management that all the employees of Randolph Industries—not just the exempt ones—were to be valued.

Of course there were problems with the plan. People could be fired over this little stunt. But the consensus among the Support Services Staff was that they’d had enough of upper management’s elitist bullshit. If they were fired, so be it: they would simply get another job elsewhere, hopefully where the pay was better. In fact, it was the initial planning of the strike that kick-started those who’d become disillusioned with their jobs to agree to be a part of the strike: being fired would be a blessing because they could then qualify for unemployment payments while they were seeking work.

On Thursday Ramona looked at her clock. It was nine in the morning. She stopped typing into her computer and sat back in her chair. Over the wall of her cubical she could hear the manual typewriter cease to clack; that would be Amy Taylor, the department secretary. Ramona sat in her chair, the beginning of a smile etched on her face as she imagined all of Support Services stopping their work throughout the company. A moment later the first crisis began.

The department phones began to ring.

They rang shrilly and Amy just sat there. The exempt employees were in their cubicles, performing whatever tasks they got paid for. Sylvia was working on a Power Point presentation and looked out the door at Amy as the phones rang. “Amy, why aren’t you answering the phones?”

Amy smiled and said nothing.

Ramona tried to stifle a grin and found it hard. Already she could hear phones ringing from other departments, all of them going unanswered. Their own department phone kept ringing, finally bringing Sylvia out of her office. “Why isn’t anybody answering the phone? What’s going on?”

“The phone is always for you,” Amy said, sitting jovially in her seat. “Why can’t you answer it?”

Sylvia stood there for a moment, looking stunned, then headed toward the phone. She picked it up, obviously irritated. “Development Engineering.” It was for her. She began taking down the instructions she’d been waiting for.

A moment later one of the Engineers came by Ramona’s cube. “Do you think you can help me with that Map Graph, Ramona?”

“I don’t think so,” Ramona said, not doing anything.

“Why not?”

“I believe you’re getting paid big bucks for being a tech, so why should I have to help you do your job?”

The Engineer looked at her, flabbergasted. Sylvia finished with her conversation and was about to say something to Amy when the phone rang again. She picked it up automatically.

Ramona envisioned this happening throughout the building.

As the Engineer stood by Amy’s cubicle trying to get Sylvia to listen to his complaint that Ramona couldn’t help him with his project, Ramona began to laugh. If it wasn’t for the Support Services Staff, these morons couldn’t get anything done. Which justified that they were an integral part of the organization, thus, should be recognized and rewarded accordingly. Here it was, barely five minutes into their little experiment and already things were falling apart.

They couldn’t have picked a better morning to do this. The phones rang one after another. Sylvia flashed looks of anger at Amy as she answered the lines and fumbled awkwardly for explanations as to why she was answering the department phones. The scene repeated itself elsewhere; secretaries stopped taking transcription and answering phones. Word Processors stopped work. Desktop publishers ceased layout of new manuals, regardless of looming production deadlines. It all came to a halt.

While the frustration of the exempt employees at their lower-salaried co-workers sudden cease in production grew.

The phone in Product Development ceased ringing for a moment. Sylvia spun to where Amy was seated, preparing to lash out at the secretary, but blinked in surprise. Amy was gone.

She turned toward Ramona’s cube. “Ramona!” She bellowed angrily. “What the hell is going on?”

She stopped abruptly at the doorway to Ramona’s cube. Ramona was gone.

She looked down the aisle as Terry Voegtli, Senior Engineer, lumbered toward her. “Terry, have you seen Ramona?”

“No. She won’t input my files,” he said. “I had to do it myself.”

“Dammit!” Sylvia was obviously angry.

All around them, the phones continued ringing.

Secretaries weren’t available to answer them.

Upstairs in the CEO’s office, the head executive stepped out of his plush office. “Where’s my coffee?” he asked an empty office.

A phone call to the head desktop publisher’s desk from the supervisor of production went unanswered. The company was scheduled to ship 200,000 units of their latest software package, and last minute changes to the manual resulted in desktop publishing being behind. Today was the deadline and the phone rang at an empty desk.

Sylvia stood at Amy’s desk, answering questions from dumbfounded colleagues in the building. “I have no idea what’s going on? All the secretaries are just gone!”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

The CEO walked down, his features non-plussed. “Carol always brings me coffee every thirty minutes,” he complained. “She failed to do so and there’s nobody upstairs. What’s going on? Production says that Diamond Printing is screaming for the new layout and Dave isn’t in his office.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Sylvia said as another line on Amy’s desk rang. She picked it up and answered as courteous as she could under the circumstances.

“If we don’t get that layout to Diamond by ten o’clock, we’re in deep trouble,” the CEO said. He walked back up to his plush office to wait for somebody to set things right.

While all throughout Randolph Industries, the collapse continued.

Twenty minutes into the experiment, Sylvia found herself in the eye of the storm and speed-dialed Terry’s number. It rang three times and went into his voice mail. She cursed, got up from Amy’s chair, and strode angrily down the row of cubes to Terry.

He wasn’t there.

She looked in all the other cubicles that housed the eight employees she supervised in Product Development. Computers were turned on, but the cubicles were unoccupied.

Back at Amy’s desk three lines rang simultaneously.

“What’s going on here?” Sylvia bellowed.

She ran to Amy’s desk and answered lines, asking confused callers to be put on hold, then doing so without waiting for an answer. She was aware that the clatter of business activity had died down around her while the phones still rang. There was no sound of conversing voices, nor was there any activity in the cubicles. She was about to neglect those callers she still had on hold and venture further into the building to see if she could find somebody, when the personal line in her office rang. She dashed inside to scoop up the phone.

“Diamond is screaming for the layout files,” the CEO yelled. “Where the hell is everybody?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvia breathed.

“Get to David’s desk and see if you can find it. Fax it over to them as soon as you find it.” He hung up.

Sylvia headed out of her office, prepared to do as she was told. She never made it to David’s cubical.

Five minutes later the CEO walked out of his plush office into an empty, silent environment save for the ringing of the phones. Where the hell did everybody go? Why isn’t anybody answering the phones? He stepped toward Carol’s desk, hands outstretched to pick up the ringing phone.

Starting at four p.m., when the employees of Randolph Industries usually began leaving for the day, building security noticed that the people leaving the ten story office building were from all the companies housed in the complex except for Randolph Industries. By five-thirty, Walt Chambers, supervisor on swing shift, got curious. He and his assistant, Bernie Macintosh, took the elevator to the tenth floor and stood in gape-mouthed silence at the empty expanse of offices and cubicles before them. The two men looked at each other in amazement. How all two hundred and thirty-five employees were able to leave the building without being seen by security was beyond them.

The only sounds that came from the vast myriad of offices and cubicles was the sporadic ringing of the telephones.

Going Home

JACK PAGE WAS surprised at the sudden turn of events this evening, but he had been even more surprised at Carla Beck’s living conditions.

Carla Beck’s current residence was room 204 at the Lucky Star Motel on Beach Boulevard. He hadn’t said anything to her as she led him into the room but now as he lay in her bed, Carla comfortably snuggled against him, he debated on whether he should bring it up. He wanted to ask, why do you live in such a dump? But as he thought about it he realized it all fit: her low pay scale, coupled with whatever happened to her in the past that would have caused her to be divorced would be sufficient excuse to live in a motel. He wondered how long she’d been living like this.

As if she’d read his thoughts, she said, “If I hadn’t been so drunk I wouldn’t have brought you here.”

“Are you sorry for what happened?” Jack asked.

A pause. “No.” She was silent for a moment. “I just didn’t want you to see how I lived.”

Jack thought about that. He didn’t know what to say. He’d met up with Carla Beck at happy hour, after work. Once every few weeks or so, their co-workers at Free State Insurance gathered at a local Mexican Restaurant for drinks and munchies and serious unwinding time. Much venting against their working conditions was done at these excursions. Jack was a frequent attendee, and he’d been surprised to see Carla Beck this evening, especially after she’d become the object of an intense round of verbal intimidation at the staff meeting just four hours earlier.

“I haven’t always lived like this,” she said.

“What happened?” Jack asked.

“The usual shit,” Carla sighed. “My husband left me and took everything.”

“And this was all you could afford,” Jack confirmed.

“Yeah.” She shifted around beside him in the bed. “My job doesn’t really pay all that well.”

“I can imagine,” Jack said. He felt sorry for Carla. He’d wound up sitting by her at the restaurant, trying to cheer her up. He didn’t know her well, but he’d heard through the grapevine that she wasn’t that well off. She was in her mid-forties, with wavy brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Carla was what you thought of when you thought ‘white trash’. She favored frumpy skirts and slacks at work that framed her chunky frame loosely, and tonight she dressed in faded blue jeans and a white blouse. She had wide hips and large breasts and she would have been pretty if she hadn’t lived such a hard life; the lines in her face made her appear weathered. Her nose looked like it might have been broken and never reset correctly, and she had a small scar on her chin. She had a nice mouth, though, and if you looked past a missing tooth or two she had a pretty smile that brought dimples to her cheeks. The only thing he knew about Carla was that she was divorced, with two daughters who were in their late teens and early twenties that were already out on their own. She’d originally come on staff as a temp and after two years she was hired on a permanent basis as a floater. Meaning she floated around from department to department, assisting other secretaries as needed. It was a shitty job, and for all Jack knew it was the lowest paying position in the department. He would be surprised if she made twenty-five thousand dollars a year.

They’d gotten tipsy at the restaurant, and then they were walking out, arm in arm drunkenly. Carla told him she lived just up the street a ways and Jack thought he would just walk her home, wearing off the buzz, but then one thing led to another and the next thing he was aware of they were at her place, in bed.

“I never really had any job skills before I came to Free State,” Carla continued. “In fact, this is the first real job I’ve ever had.”

“You were just a housewife before?”

Carla nodded. “Yeah. I thought that was great.” Then, in a lower voice. “Boy, was I wrong.”

Jack didn’t want to go into her personal life, but she appeared to be freely divulging the information. “I was so desperate to leave home that when I did, I didn’t know where to turn to,” she said. “I had a little money with me, but I knew it wasn’t going to last. Then I met Mike, my husband, at a bar. We hit it off real quick and I fell for him fast. I was only nineteen. Young and stupid.”

“You got married young?”

She nodded. “About a year after we met. I had Darci two years later, and then a few years after that I had Michelle. Mike had a good job as a general contractor. He made enough money so I didn’t have to work. It sure beat home.”

“Where’s home?”

For a minute he didn’t think she was going to answer him. She stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then she said, “I’m from back east. Pennsylvania to be exact. A very rural area. We had no running water, no electricity. We were dirt poor.”

“Are you Amish?” It spilled out of Jack’s mouth before he could stop it.

Carla shook her head. “No, my family isn’t Amish.” Then, in a voice so low that Jack wasn’t sure if he heard it right, she said, “When I was young, though, sometimes I wish I had been in an Amish family. Even that would have been preferable to where I was.”

“Your home-life was that bad?”

Carla sighed. “I’m sorry if I’m making it sound as if I came from this hell-hole, but really...no.” Carla shook her head. “It really wasn’t that bad. It was just...”

“Eccentric?”

Carla appeared to think about it, than nodded. “I guess you could say that.”

“So there were good things about where you’re from?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be so harsh on it, but, yeah, there was.” Carla sat up, her back propped against the headboard. Jack sat up, too. “Living in the country does have some beautiful advantages: the clean air, the open space, the wild-life. It’s really quite peaceful.”

“Did it ever occur to you to maybe go back after your divorce?”

Carla shook her head vehemently. “No. I couldn’t do that. That would just make things worse.”

“Why?”

She wouldn’t answer. Jack thought he’d stepped over the line. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s okay”, Carla said. “I started this.”

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Carla was silent again. She appeared to be struggling to hold back the tears. Jack felt uncomfortable. “You okay?”

She nodded hesitantly.

“Was it that bad?” he asked.

Carla sniffled, staring at the wall in front of them where the nineteen-inch Minolta TV was bolted to the wall. “Sometimes I think about that and I wonder if it was as bad as I made it all out to be.”

“What do you mean?”

Carla appeared to think about it for a moment. “Have you ever looked back on an event that you used to think was bad only to later think it wasn’t as bad as you thought?”

Jack nodded. “Well, yeah. High school was like that.”

“That’s what home is like,” Carla said.

“How long has it been since you’ve been back?”

“I left twenty-two years ago,” Carla said. “I’ve never been back.”

“Not even to visit?” Jack found this astonishing.

Carla shook her head. ‘Not even to visit.”

“But you’re thinking what it might be like to go back now, aren’t you?”

Carla nodded. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Are you afraid of going back?”

Carla appeared to not know how to answer this question. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel scared, and other times...other times I think it would be so much better for me if I went back and never set foot in the modern world ever again.”

Never set foot in the modern world ever again. Christ, had she lived in a stone hut back there? “Do you really hate it here more?” He asked.

Again, Carla appeared uncertain. “I don’t know.”

Jack thought about this. Maybe her parents were alcoholics or something; or they’d abused her. He didn’t dare ask, but a part of him wanted to know. “Maybe a short visit back might help. You know, give you a chance to confront whatever it is about your past that’s bothering you.”

She seemed to think about it. “I don’t know. That might be a good thing to do.”

He almost asked why not? He smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Maybe it wouldn’t be. But then how would you know if you don’t at least try?”

She nodded slowly, looking at him. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Still...” That look of uncertainty came back to her.

“What?”

“It’s going to be so much different. I haven’t been in that environment in twenty-two years. I would be...I don’t know...I would feel so uncomfortable and out of place.”

“Do you think it’s really changed that much in twenty-two years?”

“No. But then, I’ve changed. My whole world-view has changed. Going back now would be...”

“Like going to a foreign country or something?”

She nodded. “I guess you could say that.”

They were silent again. After a few minutes, Jack asked if he could smoke a cigarette. She needed one, too, and they lit up and leaned back against the headboard, smoking silently, each lost in their own thoughts.

“I know we don’t know each other that well, but...”

“Yeah?” He looked at her, waiting for what he was expecting.

“If I went back for a few days would you come with me?”

What he was expecting was more in the line of, I know we don’t know each other very well, but I enjoyed our time together and I hope we can do it again. Maybe...see where the relationship takes us to next. What she asked him instead was unexpected.

He thought about it. He could use a vacation. And he’d never been in that part of the country before. As long as she paid for her own airfare, he wouldn’t mind tagging along. Hell, it might be fun.

That decided it for him. “Sure.” He grinned at her. “When do we leave?”

The smile she flashed back at him seemed to suggest that, right at that moment, Carla Beck was the happiest woman on the planet.

“YOU OKAY?”

They’d pulled to the side of the narrow dirt road that Carla indicated, and now as they sat in the rented Ford Escort somewhere in the deep woods of the Pennsylvanian mountains, Jack felt a shiver of foreboding pass through him. Until now, he’d never been nervous about the trip. That was all rapidly changing.

Carla looked up at the old, ramshackle house set back against the dirt lane with a look of fear. The late afternoon sun was hidden behind trees with skeletal branches that spread themselves over the grounds. The house was Victorian in style, with high gables along the north and south ends, indicating a roomy attic and a long front porch. The house seemed to tilt to the left, as if the foundation it rested on was slowly sinking into the earth. The shutters leaned off crookedly; the paint was peeling from the gray walls. Dead leaves floated along the weed-choked front yard amid a light breeze. The shades were drawn over all of the windows. The house looked haunted.

“So this is where you lived?” Jack asked, looking up at the house. It had been three weeks since their conversation at her motel room. Since then, Carla Beck had been a frequent visitor to his bed, but they never discussed the subject they’d spoken of the night they consummated their relationship. Except for a few brief discussions on his accompanying her back east, Jack respected her wishes. They’d lucked out on two round-trip tickets to Philadelphia due to stiff airline competition, and it had been fairly easy to get the few days vacation time.

Carla Beck sighed and reached for the door handle. “I might as well get this over with.” She opened the door and got out.

Jack followed her out. Upon landing at Philadelphia International Airport, they’d rented a car and driven northwest, reaching the foothills of the mountain country two hours later. They’d landed at two p.m. east coast time, and by the time they’d checked into a cheap motel along Route 87 it was closing in on five-thirty. The homestead was another thirty minutes through winding, heavily wooded terrain. Carla had wanted it to be her first stop after they checked in so she could get this over with as quickly as possible.

Jack followed her up the yard to the rickety wooden steps that led to the sagging porch. Carla hesitated a beat, then stepped forward and rapped on the thin wooden door.

They waited for what seemed a long time. Carla rapped again, harder. After a moment the sound of shuffling footsteps could be heard from inside and the door opened a crack. Jack couldn’t see who was peering out, but he could tell from the expression on Carla’s face that it had to be one of her parents. “So...you’ve come back, haven’tcha?”

Carla’s voice was hoarse. “Hello, Mother.”

The door opened wider, allowing Jack a glimpse of the darkened interior and the occupant of the house.

The woman standing in front of them was old and stooped. Wearing a frayed gray housedress, her white hair was tied in a bun behind her small head. Her eyes were the same watery-blue as her daughter’s, her face sunken, chin bony. She drew an equally faded gray sweater closer to her cadaverous frame and peered up at Jack. “Your husband, I take it? Looks mighty young to have been married some twenty-odd years now.”

“He’s not my husband, Ma; just a friend.”

Carla’s mother glanced at him once more, than turned to her daughter. “Well, come on in then if you’re a mind to. I always knew you’d come back.” She turned and began heading into the gloomy interior of the house.

Carla seemed to have regained some of her nerve; she stepped past the threshold of the front door and followed her mother into the dismal old house. Jack glanced back at their rental car, then followed Carla inside.

The house was dark and dusty. He stood in a small entry hall. To his left was the living room, shrouded in shadows. To his right was another room, cloaked in darkness. Carla moved down the hall, following her mother toward the rear of the house and Jack trailed after them, trying to take in as much as he could. It was obvious the place hadn’t been cared for in a very long time. The furniture he passed was old and drab. The wallpaper was faint and peeling. Dust motes swirled in the atmosphere, illuminated by the light from lanterns that were placed along various portions of the hallway. He passed a kitchen on his left but didn’t pay much heed to it because now he was in the rear of the house where both women were. As he entered the room he saw what appeared to be a den or family room lit by several oil lamps. The furniture here looked more cared for, the dust less of a nuisance. The old lady sank back in a worn easy chair and bade her daughter to sit down. Jack cast a quick glance around the room, noting the strange sculptures decorating the end tables and bookshelves, the equally weird paintings depicting strange subjects matted in frames, and the wall of books that took up one wall. The odor of mold was in this room as well, but that could be because of the books. He felt an irresistible urge to look at the books, but he sat down on a red sofa opposite Carla and her mother.

“So...” Carla began. She looked nervous. “How’s Dad?”

The old woman looked at Carla as if she were the dumbest person alive. “Humph. Guess you don’t know, don’tcha? What, with you packing up and leavin’ us like that all those years ago. Your father’s gone on to the other side.”

Even though it was dark in the room, Jack could clearly see Carla’s face turn pale at the mention of this. Jack’s initial impression was an obvious guess; in the time Carla was in California, her father had passed away. She was hearing this for the first time and was justifiably shocked at the news.

“No!” Carla said, hand going to her mouth, eyes wide. “It can’t be, it—”

“But it is, child,” the old woman said, leaning forward and attempting to take her daughter’s hands. “It is. And you know what your father told you. You still remember, don’t you?”

“No!” Carla was clearly frightened, and now Jack was nervous. This wasn’t the reaction somebody would have upon hearing that a parent had died. This was something else, something of a more primal fear.

“Yes,” the old woman croaked. “You do remember. He always knew you would come home. You were always his little girl. And you know how much he would have wanted you to go with him. To go with us.”

Carla shot out of her chair, screaming at the top of her lungs. The suddenness of her act and the intensity of her scream stunned Jack. For a moment, all he could do was look up at her stunned as she screamed, eyes bugged out, face deathly pale. Then she turned and began running down the darkened hallway toward the front door. Jack bolted out of his seat and chased after her, never even thinking of Carla’s mother or the affect her sudden turn of behavior had on the old woman.

CARLA REFUSED TO speak of the incident. For the remainder of the evening she was silent and fearful. She refused Jack’s offer to go into town—Burkesville, population 145—for supper at the little cafe on the main drag of town, so he went by himself. By the time he returned to their motel room she was asleep, the thin sheet drawn over her as if she were using it as a shield against some otherworldly invader. He watched her sleep for a moment, then stepped outside and sat on the porch of the motel, smoking silently and thinking.

He’d had to chase her past their rental car before he caught her. Once he grabbed her, she’d jumped as if shocked by a strong electrical current. For a moment it almost appeared as if she didn’t recognize him; she was looking at him, but her eyes were still wide, all pupils now, and while she was seeing him, she was looking at him in terror. But then as suddenly as the expression came upon her face, she’d seemed to gain control of herself and collapsed into his arms, sobbing uncontrollably. Jack managed to get her into the car and drive them to their motel.

And now she was refusing to speak to him about it. The most she’d said were fitful mutters of, “I shouldn’t have been so foolish!” or “He knew, he knew all along,” and “I’ve felt them calling to me all this time.” Jack listened to her and tried to make sense of what she was saying, but couldn’t. Quite frankly, he was beginning to fear for her sanity.

He smoked two cigarettes, then stepped back in the room. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was eight-thirty, still early, and he was far from tired. In fact—

“Jack?”

Carla was awake, her head supported by two pillows, looking up at him. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and now she sat up slightly, the top sheet slipping down into her lap. She’d fallen into bed wearing her clothes, and now as Jack approached the bed he tried to think of something to say to ease her troubled mind. “You okay?”

“No,” she said. “But I think I owe you an explanation. Sit down.”

Jack sat down at the foot of the bed.

“You probably won’t think much of me after I tell you this,” Carla said, her voice husky. “But the reason I reacted so strongly the way I did was because of what my mother said.”

“Something about your father going to the other side,” Jack said; he’d developed a theory on that himself while he was outside smoking. Her father was now deceased. Her parents were crazy. They’d heaped a tremendous amount of psychological torment and probably physical abuse on her as a child, and somehow the phrase ‘going to the other side’ was the kicker. Maybe it meant death. Maybe they’d had some kind of crazy suicide pact.

Carla nodded. “When my mother told me he’d gone, I knew right away. But he’s not dead. Not really.”

“Excuse me?” Was he hearing this right?

“You’ve got to understand something about my father, Jack,” Carla said. “He was a very dangerous man. Not dangerous in a physical sense. He didn’t rob banks or kill people or anything like that. But he was a dangerous man. He messed with things only a crazy man, or perhaps an evil one, would mess with.”

Jack stared at her, trying to make sense of it all. Carla looked at him, her composure getting stronger. “The closest I can describe what my father was, was a...a mystic. Or a wizard. He was very deep into the occult. I grew up with it.”

“Your dad was a devil worshipper?” Jack asked.

“Satanism was child’s play to my father,” Carla said. “What my father was into was beyond Satanism. It was...it was about going further back, to the outer reaches of time and space, to a time before our very being, to a time before the earth was even formed.”

“I don’t think I’m following you,” Jack said.

If Carla heard him she didn’t indicate it. “I grew up with it. It was all I knew for years. I thought it was normal. My mother knew about it, but I never realized she was into it the way my father was. Mom cleaned house, sent me to school, made sure I had clothes, made sure we had food. My father worked. When he came home he shut himself in his rooms in the attic and dabbled.”

“What did he dabble in if he wasn’t a devil worshipper?”

Carla was silent for a moment, as if thinking of how to continue. “When I was younger and I asked my mother what daddy was doing, she would tell me he was studying. One time I got the nerve to peak into his room. It...even then, it was creepy. There were desks and lots of old books and papers all over. He had a skull, a human skull, on the table, and there were all kinds of papers tacked on the walls with weird shapes drawn on them. There were other weird shapes drawn on the floor in chalk. Weird symmetrical shapes, circles over triangles and stars, shapes that I can’t even describe. I didn’t understand any of it at first, and what I saw scared me. In fact, it was almost ten years later before I saw that room again..

“Sometimes I would lie awake at night trying to fall asleep while my father was deep into his studies. Sometimes I heard him in there saying something in a weird language. Sometimes it sounded like he was...praying.”

Jack shivered. Christ, even he was getting a little spooked by all this.

“Sometimes I heard other things.” She looked down at the bed, as if afraid to continue. “One time I heard him speaking that weird language and...I could swear...I heard a second voice, as if it was answering him.”

“What was it saying?” Thinking of what it was like for Carla as a little girl in that big dreary house, going through what she was describing to him, was giving him a severe case of the willies.

“Nothing you would recognize as what we know as language, But then...it was a language in a sense. A language far older than the world itself.”

This was getting too much. “I don’t think I’m following you, Carla,” Jack said. “What the hell do you mean by ‘far older than the world itself’? There’s no such fucking thing.”

Carla stared at him for a moment. “If you only knew,” she said. “There are things out there...just waiting to gain their foothold on our world. They can’t wait to enter our world and tear us to pieces. We’re beneath them. They were here long before earth was inhabitable to the creatures that live here now. And for some reason they...they lost their foothold here. They were banished to another dimension. And...somehow...my father found out about them through studying obscure texts he managed to track down in remote parts of the world when he was in the military. He began to...communicate with them. He...he made them an offer...and  they accepted!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jack tried to sound angry, but he was also beginning to be a little afraid, too.

Carla ignored him. “One afternoon when I was sixteen years old I came home and saw what he’d been doing the night before had worked.” The huskiness returned to her voice. “He’d been involved in something intense in his rooms. He’d been praying again, chanting to something, and a few times I heard him refer to it by name—he called it a...a...it’s hard to pronounce. And then I heard this sound, like the blowing of the wind. It was like there was a hurricane outside, the wind blowing the trees hard in a sudden gust. It was so windy I actually went to my window and looked outside.” She looked at him, deadpan. “But there was nothing. The wind wasn’t blowing at all. But I could hear it, howling and moaning around the house as my father’s prayers and incantations grew worse.

“When it was over there was silence for perhaps five minutes. Then I smelled this horrible smell, like...garbage or something. Or shit. It was awful. And then I heard a voice that sounded like a thousand bullfrogs croaking together at the same time in the stillness of a swamp. It had a voice, and it told something to my father in that croaking voice and my father answered it...” Carla’s voice began to hitch. “He answered in that same croaking voice!”

She paused a beat before continuing; Jack could feel his pulse quicken as his belly turned to ice. “I pulled the covers over my head and huddled there, so afraid. I couldn’t sleep. I was awake all night and when I got up to go to school I tried to pretend that I didn’t hear what had gone on. I came home from school through the back way behind the house and I saw it. Whatever daddy called had pulled itself through the woods behind the house and left a ten-foot wide swath of dead vegetation in its path. It went deep into the woods, as far as I could see, and it left a slimy, smelly residue. And...as I followed its tracks from where it started I saw that it had set off on its path from our house. The entire west wall of the house was coated in that shit. It had crawled out of our attic!

“That night my father actually joined us at the dinner table for the first time in months. He looked insane. He kept...trying to put his arm around me, trying to...be the father he never was to me. And he kept saying that he’d summoned it and that it was going to come back for the three of us. That it was going to take all of us to the Other Side. And that the dimensions would be turned inside out, allowing them free reign into our world.

“That was the last night I ever spent in that house. The next morning I took the hundred and seventy-two dollars I’d saved in my bank, and a change of clothes and my toothbrush and stuff, and packed them into my book-bag. I didn’t even go to school that morning, just hitched a ride into Philly and bought a one-way bus ticket to as far as I could go.”

“How far was that?”

“St. Louis, Missouri, at first. I got a job waitressing and lived in a motel for a while. I was gonna stay, but I felt that was too close to Pennsylvania. I saved up two hundred bucks and bought a bus ticket to California a few weeks later. I’ve been there ever since.”

Jack thought about this as he sat on the mattress. It was a warm muggy night and the air conditioning was on low, cooling the room nicely. “So, I take it you got to California and met your husband and everything was hunky dory after that, right?”

Carla looked at him with something that resembled shame. “You think I’m crazy.”

“No. I don’t think you’re crazy. But I think your mother is pretty off her rocker. I mean, just look at her—”

“You don’t know her the way I do.”

“She’s a fuckin’ nut!” Jack snapped. “Jesus Christ, she’s fed you this shit since you were a kid, Carla! Can’t you see that? She probably made the shit up when you were little to keep you in line. There’s no such thing as what you’re talking about, things beyond time and space and all that bullshit. What the fuck is this shit about things coming from...” he sputtered to remember the right description. “...beyond whatever the hell they’re beyond. And all this bullshit about your father offering whatever it was he offered and—”

“My father offered them the three of us,” she said, her features serious. “He offered my family. We were to be the gate to let them regain their foothold in the world.”

“Bullshit!” Jack hissed.

“My father was a coward,” Carla said, her mouth set in a grimace as she stared at Jack, her brown eyes cold and determined. “He was the kind of person everybody in town pushed around. From what I gather, he must have been that way as a child. He could never stand up for himself. I know that now. He used to tell me that the world was no place for people like us, that it would just chew you up and spit you out. That it was created to hurt you. He fed me this over and over. And I can see how I let this affect me. I got into an abusive marriage and I’m in an abusive working relationship with my boss, Lori. I let people take advantage of me. He was like those two kids that shot up that high school in Colorado—mad at the world. He was mad at the world and he was going to make it pay. Only instead of going on a killing spree, he turned to things even more dangerous. What my father finally did can very well be the end of the world as we know it.”

“How can the bullshit your dad was into be the end of the world?” Jack said, his voice rising. “The guy was a lunatic! All he did was dabble in a little black magic bullshit that doesn’t exist!”

“You aren’t listening,” Carla said, glaring at Jack. “This isn’t just black magic. My father discovered something more ... more real than black magic. The Old Ones are real. They once ruled the earth. They’re more real than the deities we’ve created out of our flights of fancy. So real that the select few that have stumbled upon this knowledge have come away with such fear of what would happen if they were to ever break through the barriers that...” She seemed to be at a loss for words. “This is more than just the occult, Jack. It’s about harnessing a power that holds the balance between maintaining the earth as we know it, to creating the right atmosphere to throw open the gates of chaos. But my father...he found a way to communicate with them, something few men have tried. Most people foolish enough to try have failed with horrible consequences. But not my father. He made a deal with them. He offered himself and his family as sacrifices, what they would need, in order to gain their foothold into our world.”

“What, so your old man offed himself, is that it?” Jack sneered.

“No. He probably planned to use us as...as portals.”

Jack threw his hands up in disgust. “What X-Files bullshit!”

Carla ignored him. “Dad was excited that the ritual worked. He said all it would take would be for the three of us to perform the rites and the Old One he summoned would claim its sacrifice. Once the three of us were claimed and in their world, the dimensions would turn inside out. It would have a rippling effect around the world.  It would be like the sound of a great storm, with a great roar of wind only there really would be no wind—that would be the sound of the universe tearing itself inside out and then it would peel back and it would be like a great dark cloud blotting out the sky. Only it wouldn’t be the clouds of a storm...it would be the peeling back of the universe.”

“Bullshit!” Jack yelled.

Carla was trying hard to hold the tears in, but she wasn’t doing a good job of it. For the first time since they were together, Jack saw how she would look as an old woman. He saw her as the old woman he’d seen early that afternoon, at that old gray house in the woods. “You don’t understand, Jack. You just don’t understand!”

“I understand,” Jack said, trying to calm his anger down. He scooted toward her and tried to take her in his arms at an attempt at comfort. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. It’s just...you’ve got to understand what you’re saying, Carla. Your mother’s been living alone for who knows how long, and—”

“And my father is gone!” Carla cried, drawing away from him. “He’s not dead, he’s gone! Gone to the other side, and I was supposed to be here! I was supposed to go with him! We all were! We were supposed to never feel pain or despair ever again, and in return for that we were to provide the opening for them to come into our world, so they could take over again.” And then she broke down completely, crying uncontrollably. Jack felt helpless; he could only sit beside her on the lumpy bed and make a clumsy attempt at consolation, stroking her back, her brown wavy hair.

After awhile the sobbing eased up. Carla wiped her eyes. “I know it’s hard for you to understand. Nobody ever did. That’s why we were always shunned when I lived out here. But my father...he was very powerful. He still is very powerful, and...the things he called upon are more powerful than your...comfy little Judeo-Christian world-view. Daddy guided me back here. I can feel it. He helped me come home!”

Jack didn’t know what else to say. There was no use in arguing with her. That would just create more problems, and it was something they didn’t need now. All he could do was listen and be there for her, to keep the demons at bay.

Eventually she calmed down enough to sink back into bed again. Jack sat up in bed with her, rubbing her shoulders, holding her hand, until she fell asleep.

Jack checked his watch. It was ten-thirty. He was wide-awake and far from tired.

He waited until Carla went into a deep sleep. Then, when he was certain that she wasn’t going to wake up again, he let himself out quietly and sat outside and smoked and thought about the things she’d told him.

HE COULDN'T SLEEP. No matter what position he lay in, he just couldn’t fall asleep. He’d returned to the room at midnight, stripped down to his boxers, and slipped into bed beside Carla, who lay snoring on her back. He’d tried to fall asleep to no avail. He just couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t Carla’s snoring that kept him awake. It was his mind, which just couldn’t get the story she’d told him out of his head, that kept him awake.

At some point he must have dozed. He lay in bed until six a.m. and when he knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep, he got up and went to the bathroom. He urinated, flushed the toilet, then brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He checked on Carla, saw that she was still fast asleep, then he changed quickly. He let himself out quietly. He was hungry, but he had more on his mind than food. He wanted to prove Carla wrong, show her that her mother was nothing more than a senile, crazy old woman who belonged in a hospice or, better yet, a mental hospital.

He climbed in the rental car and, using the map as guidance, drove back to the house where Carla had grown up.

He got lost three times on the drive over. All those back roads looked the same and the trees hung over the road, stretching out branches that looked skeletal even in the bright bloom of summer. After forty minutes of driving he finally found it. He recognized the landscape as he drove up the heavily wooded terrain, heading into the deep woods of the mountains.

When he rounded the curve that led to the house he leaned forward and squinted. The house was there all right, but it looked a little more decrepit than it looked yesterday. Of course the morning sun was hitting the structure at a different angle now, bathing it in more light. When they’d come by yesterday it had been in the long shadows of late afternoon. Jack pulled to the side of the road and got out of the car.

As weathered and beaten-up as the house was yesterday, it definitely looked more jacked-up now. The driveway was still bare and empty. As he walked up the crumbling walkway, Jack noticed the weeds that were sprouting everywhere; poking through cracks in the concrete porch; climbing up the trellis. When he knocked on the door he was startled at how flimsy it felt, as if it was going to fall apart at the slightest hint of strength.

He waited for a moment, listening for any sign of life from within. He knocked again, suddenly getting the feeling that whatever was in that house was as dead as the grounds outside.

His heart was pounding in his chest; he felt light-headed with nervous tension. He gripped the doorknob and turned it. It opened and he stepped inside.

The first thing he noticed was the strong, pervading odor of mold and rot as he stepped within the crumbling structure. A plume of dust swirled in front of him, clogging his nostrils. He coughed, blinking in the darkness as he tried to peer inside. “Hello? Mrs. Beck?”

His voice echoed back. “Beck...Beck....Be...Be...”

He stepped into the living room. It was in shambles; broken furniture leaning against the sagging walls, the carpet torn up. Jack saw an end table and touched it; it was thick with dust. He sneezed suddenly, and the force of the sneeze expelled the dust, swirling it into a cloud. This made him sneeze again, and he backed out of the living room, trying to control his sneezes.

With rising trepidation, he stepped further into the house. It was dustier than it had been when he and Carla  experienced it yesterday. He stopped at the stairway that led to the second floor, one hand on the crumbling banister, and debated on whether he should venture upstairs. The house was silent; it felt like there was nobody here except him.

“Mrs. Beck?” he called. “Anybody home?”

When the echoes died he put one foot on the bottom step. The wood creaked. He could tell that the minute he put all his weight on the stair that it would collapse. He tried the next step. It seemed sturdier. Carefully testing each step as he went along, he made his way to the second floor.

He inspected every room on the second floor. Each room was empty and filled with dust. Some rooms, like what looked to be the master bedroom, bore crumbling, bare furniture, long since reduced to rot from disuse. The windows were closed, faint light filtering through dirty, filmy curtains. Jack didn’t even think of trying to flip on a light. Somehow, he had a feeling that there would be no electrical power in the place.

He climbed the narrow stairway to the attic, feeling nervous as he entered. The attic room was large and, with the exception of a huge desk that took up most of one wall, completely bare. He approached the desk slowly. This was probably Carla’s father’s study, where he’d come to work on his supposed black magic. Jack took in the room, checking it out carefully. There were no books, no papers, no crude occult symbols drawn on the floor or the walls. There was no sign that this had been the ritual chamber of a black magician. Aside from the strong odor of rot—stronger here in this room for some reason—there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary.

What the hell is going on? he thought, heading back downstairs to the living room, the odor of mold and dust everywhere. It was as if the place had been unoccupied for years. But how could it be? We were here yesterday! I saw Carla’s mother with my own eyes!

His eyes tracked down the hall to the front door, and when he saw what was on the floor his heart skipped a beat.

There were three sets of footprints in the dust. There was his set from today, going from the front door to the rest of the house and up the stairs. The other two pairs were his familiar tread again from the day before, and Carla’s. They went from the front door to the den, the only two rooms they’d entered in the house yesterday.

There were no visible tracks of a fourth person.

This can’t be right, Jack thought. He skirted around the footprints, grasped the doorknob and let himself out.

He was almost to his car when a boy of about ten years old rode by on his bike. Upon seeing Jack exiting the house, the boy stopped and looked up at him with surprise. “Hey Mister! Did you just come out of that house?”

Jack stopped at the car, still trying to find a logical explanation for what he’d found in the house. “Yeah,” he said, fumbling with his keys.

“Why would you want to go in there?” the kid asked. He was freckled, with brown hair, wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a striped shirt. “That place has been abandoned for years.”

“Abandoned?”

“Yeah,” the kid said, snapping a wad of chewing gum. “It’s supposed to be haunted, too. Some crazy old lady died in there a long time ago. At least that’s what my older brother and his friends say.”

“What else do they say?” Jack said, the door to the car open now.

The kid shrugged. “Just that nobody goes in there because the people that lived there used to be witches ‘n stuff and did things. And now it’s haunted. Nobody goes there now.” Then, as if he’d made his point, the kid pedaled away.

Jack watched him go, then turned back toward the house. Then who the hell did we talk to? Who was that old woman that claimed to be Carla’s mother?

Jack drove away, these questions chasing him all the way back to the motel.

WHEN HE RETURNED to the motel, he didn’t tell Carla what he’d found in the house. He’d thought about telling her on the drive over and decided that if he did, she would really freak out. As it turned out, she’d almost done so anyway. “I woke up this morning thinking you were gone,” she said, pacing the small room. At some point while he was gone she’d showered and changed into fresh clothing. Her hair was freshly brushed, gleaming on her shoulders. “I thought they had...come and gotten you or something.”

“No way that’s happening,” Jack said.

Carla lit a cigarette. She looked at him. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I went back there.”

“It’s okay,” Jack said. He lit a cigarette, too. “You needed to go home to realize this.”

“Maybe.” Carla thought about this, smoking silently. “I don’t know. I know that...everything that happened to me was so real, though.”

“But it’s not. They manipulated you into believing that.”

Carla sighed, took another drag. Now she didn’t look too sure. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“I think we should leave,” Jack said. He moved toward his duffel bag at the foot of their bed. It was time to turn this shit around and get her mind off of this.

Carla broke down. She buried her face in her hands, heaving sobs that shook her shoulders.

“Hey,” Jack said, feeling like an idiot now. “Listen, everything will be fine. We’ll get out of here and—”

“What do I have to go back to?” she cried, looking at him through tear-filled eyes. “A piece of shit job where everybody pushes me around and takes advantage of me, no friends. I’ve got a crappy life, and...I’ve got nobody back home!”

“That’s not true,” Jack said. “You have me.”

Carla sniffled. “That’s sweet.” She reached out and touched his face gently. “Really, it is. But face it. I’m so much older than you.” She held back a sob and at that moment she was so beautiful to Jack, so beautiful that he just wanted to take her in his arms and shield her from the world. “You don’t want to be with a crazy old woman like me.”

“You’re not old,” Jack quickly said, but he silently agreed with her. True, she wasn’t that old, even though she had fifteen years on him. But she was crazy. Maybe not in the clinical sense, but she did have her problems. And he couldn’t deal with them. Still, he cared about her. “Listen,” he said, taking her shoulders, trying to calm her down and divert her attention to something else. “Why don’t we go out for a little bit. We won’t go back to the house. We won’t even talk about what happened. Our plane doesn’t leave till tomorrow; let’s use this day and have fun. Let’s drive around, explore, have a picnic in the woods or something. We can even find another place to stay tonight. Somewhere more romantic.” He kissed her. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

She nodded and mustered a smile. “Okay,” she said, wiping a tear that trickled down her cheek. “Okay.” Jack didn’t know if she was agreeing to appease him or if she really meant it.

They checked out of the motel, packed their stuff in the trunk, then climbed in the car and started driving. Carla told him to drive south, toward Berks County. It was closer to Philadelphia and maybe they could find a little bed-and-breakfast place. They drove on twisting turning roads until they found a two-story house with a large wrap-around porch. The sign in the yard advertised it as a bed-and-breakfast. Jack pulled up and they checked in for the evening. Jack felt better as he hauled their overnight bags to their rooms. He was determined to have a good time with her this last night in Pennsylvania. He was determined to keep her mind off of her parents.

They spent the rest of the day taking a hike through the area, stopping to browse at an antique store. They had a late lunch at a little roadside cafe, then took a long walk back to the bed-and-breakfast. Once back in their room, they showered and changed into some clean clothes, then lounged on the bed, the television turned to the evening news. Carla was quiet all evening as they watched TV, and Jack could tell her mood had changed for the worst. She was probably thinking about what happened last night. Twice he thought about telling her about his encounter at the house this morning, then wisely vetoed it. As evening fell he put his hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

She turned to him and he saw she’d started crying again. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

Jack took her in her arms.

He held her for a couple of minutes. Then, she climbed out of bed, her back to him. “I’ve made my decision,” she said.

“What decision?”

Carla didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze averted to the window, gazing out at the moon-filled night. “I know that what happened at the house yesterday was a sign. They’re waiting for me. I know what to do. I’m sorry Jack. I’m sorry you can’t understand, and I’m sorry...that I have to leave you. But it’s the only way.”

Jack was about to protest again when she got down on her knees as if she were going to pray. She raised her arms and began singing, her voice high and musical yet weirdly fluttering, as if the notes she were singing were coming from some deep place in her soul. Jack watched in numbed surprise and confusion. Christ, she’s really lost her mind, he thought.

He couldn’t tell what she was singing. The words weren’t any he’d ever heard before. They were guttural, primitive sounding. They floated and rode in crescendos, like the music coming from a flute. It was a steady stream, in a language Jack didn’t recognize. She’s making the shit up. She’s fucking crazy, she’s just spouting gibberish.

The wind picked up outside, suddenly looming stronger than Carla’s singing. This only made Carla sing louder, and Jack could now see that her eyes were closed, face tilted to the heavens. It sounded like there was a hurricane going on outside; the wind howled mercilessly, the trees whipped violently, and he could feel and hear the house buckle under the strong gusts. A strong smell of excrement burst suddenly in the room and Jack fell back against the headboard, gagging. Carla was smiling now, her singing growing more urgently, as if she were encouraging whatever it was that was happening. The wind outside grew stronger and the building shook more, this time not from the wind but from a deep rumbling that seemed to burst forth from deep in the ground. Its shaking tumbled him off the bed.

There was a sudden flash of light and an explosion knocked him against the wall. Something that looked like a hovering transparent mass of protoplasm with hundreds of writhing snakes attached to it hovered over Carla as she reached up with eager hands to embrace it. It made a sound like the croaking of a thousand bullfrogs, and the last thing Jack heard before he blacked out was Carla answering it in that same croaking bullfrog voice.

“I'M TELLING YOU, there was no storm last night!” The proprietress exclaimed as she stood behind the counter the next morning. Jack was in the lobby, his hair standing up in wild corkscrews, feeling haggard and worn. Contrary to what he heard last night, it was a bright and sunny day outside, without a hint that the region had been hit with a sudden, violent storm. “It was a perfectly peaceful night except for you and your girlfriend making all that racket.”

“There wasn’t a storm, or an earthquake?” Jack asked, his voice rising in falsetto. “I can’t believe you didn’t feel it. It shook the whole building.”

“There was nothing!” the proprietress snapped, her gaze fixed steadily on his. “Now I suggest you and your lady friend check out now.”

“She’s gone,” Jack said, his mind still fumbling with what had happened. Carla’s strange singing, the sudden wind and rumble from the ground that knocked him out of bed, the sudden explosion, the bullfrog voice, that thing he saw before he blacked out. And then coming awake this morning on the floor with a nasty bump on his head, seeing Carla gone, her clothes scattered on the floor. “It took her. It came out of the sky and took her.”

“If you aren’t out of here in five minutes I’m calling the police!” the proprietress warned.

There was nothing else Jack could do. He wandered back up to his room and began gathering their things up. Maybe Carla climbed out of the window last night. He would check. He packed their things together then headed downstairs, spending only a minute at the front desk to pay the bill, the proprietress giving him the evil eye the whole time. Before he departed he would go behind the house and see if he could find anything in the back. Maybe she had torn a piece of clothing in her mad haste to escape to whatever it was she was escaping from. He didn’t give a damn if the proprietress called the police. He needed the police to help him look for Carla.

The proprietress was standing on the porch, watching him. When he started trudging to the side of the house she darted inside.

Screw her, he thought as he made his way around the side of the house to the rear, where their room overlooked. Let her call the cops.

He reached the rear of the house and looked up at their window and stood there, his mouth agape in shock and horror. He stood there for a full minute, not even hearing the proprietress call out in her shrill voice “I’ve called the police! They’ll be here any minute!” He simply stood there and looked up at the window, then looked at the wall of the home and the ground, letting his gaze trail down the rear of the property, then back up the wall of the house again.

There was a path from the woods that traveled all the way up the wall of the house to their second floor window, and it was coated with a grayish-green slime.

Just then the sky suddenly turned dark, and the sound of a great wind rose. And as Jack turned to look up at the sky for the source of the storm, he realized that the wind wasn’t blowing, and the dark shape wasn’t a cloud—

The Lingering Scent of Brimstone

THE FIRST THING Emily Doyle thought when she took the phone call from her mother shortly before 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, July 6, 2004 was Oh my God, no!

“I’ve already called the police,” her mother said, her voice strangely calm despite the severity of the situation. “I’ve sent the Baker boys out on their bikes in the hope they see where he went, but—”

“I’ll be right there, I’m leaving now!” Emily blurted, fighting back tears as she slammed the phone down and grabbed her purse.

Her co-worker and cubical neighbor, Lisa Wheatland, looked up, her pretty features concerned. “Everything okay?”

“I’ve got to go, somebody just took Amy.” Emily could barely speak; already she could feel the fear and the shock hit her, freezing her up.

“What?”

Emily headed out of her cubical and made a beeline out of the office, ignoring Lisa’s questions of concern, only one thing on her mind.

Oh my God I can’t believe this is happening, I can’t believe this is happening, please let it be a mistake—

Somehow she made it out of the building and into her car, where she threw her purse on the passenger side bucket seat. She slammed the door and started the engine, peeling out of the parking space and heading out to Route 372.

She had to force herself to be calm as she drove home, her heart racing. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind as she made the normally twenty-five minute drive home in ten minutes.

Emily, it’s mom. You have to come home right away. Somebody snatched Amy while she was playing outside with the Baker kids.

What?

I called the police. I saw it happen and I tried to stop it but he was too fast. He just grabbed her and threw her in the car. It happened so fast—

What are you telling me, mom, are you trying to tell me somebody kidnapped Amy?

Yes! Somebody grabbed her while I was sitting on the front porch watching her! Now please come home! I’ve already called the police, they’re on their way over and—

The conversation replayed in her mind as she raced home.

By the time she pulled into her neighborhood her nerves were shattered.

The first thing she saw were half a dozen police cars parked in front of the house, lights flashing.

She pulled into the driveway and was out of the car, stumbling in her haste to reach the house. She was barely aware of the humidity, fragrant with the scent of newly mown grass. She was barely aware of the policemen gathered around the front porch as she headed straight to the front door into her mother’s arms.

“Where is she?” she babbled, unable to control the shakiness of her voice. “Have they found her yet? Have they—”

“Calm down,” Mom said, taking her by the shoulders and trying to get her to sit down on the sofa. “They’re out looking for her.”

The living room spun before her as a uniformed officer sat down beside her and gently assured her he had the entire Lititz Police Department on the case. The state’s Amber Alert was in affect with a description of the kidnapper’s vehicle—a beige Cadillac, late seventies model—and a physical description of the kidnapper (white male in his late thirties, wearing tan Dockers and a white sport shirt). Emily felt her world collapse as her eyes focused on a stuffed animal on the sofa—Amy’s favorite, a green teddy bear with dark eyes. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe—

“We’re going to find her,” the uniformed officer told her. He was in his late forties, balding, watery blue eyes set in a hound dog face. “The kids got a good description and your mom got a partial on the plate and we got the State Police on it. Every cop has this guy’s description. We’ll get him.”

Emily wasn’t paying attention. All she could think about was Amy, wondering what was happening to her.

At some point she lost her composure and broke down.

The next thing she was aware of was her husband Jeff, holding her. She blinked, becoming aware of his presence as the sound of his voice came through. “...I appreciate everything. I know we’re going to find her. Amy’s a tough little girl and we’ve gone through all the safety precautions about what to do if a stranger were to lure her into his car. We’re going to find her.”

Emily took a deep breath, her mind focused on what Jeff just said. We’ve gone through all the safety precautions about what to do if a stranger were to lure her into his car.

We’ve gone through all the safety precautions—

—all the safety precautions—

Dear God...

Jeff led Emily away from the throng of police officers that had gathered in the living room. She had no idea when he’d arrived home, but it must have been a few minutes ago. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, looking shocked. A detective dressed in black slacks, a white shirt and black tie was sitting at the table with her, jotting something down in a notebook. “I’m going to get Emily something to calm her nerves and get her to lie down, okay?” Jeff said to the detective.

The detective looked up and nodded. Emily tried to make eye contact with her mother, who looked down at the table. She noticed the time—six thirty p.m.

How long have I been out of it? Oh my God!

The cop with the hound dog face approached them. “Mrs. Doyle...Mr. Doyle...”

“Did you find her?” The words flew out of Emily’s mouth before she could stop them.

Hound Dog face shook his head. “Not yet, ma’am. We’re chasing down several leads and the local news is on the case. Thought you might want to know.” He gestured outside. “There’s a couple reporters and a news van outside. We can keep them at bay if you want.”

“Yes, officer, please,” Jeff said. His grip on her shoulders was comforting, familiar. For the first time in years she noticed how different his grip felt with his missing left pinkie finger; gone now almost as long as Amy had been alive. It had been so long since he’d lost it that its loss seemed normal now. He squeezed her shoulders gently. “Thank you for everything.”

Hound Dog face tried to look encouraging, but Emily knew he was troubled. She knew the statistics of stranger abductions; she knew that despite their rare occurrence it still happened. They’d never been worried about anything like that happening, but they’d still done what every conscientious parent would do and enrolled her in self-awareness and self-defense classes. They’d done everything they could to protect Amy—they’d moved from the mean streets of Los Angeles to this little town in rural Pennsylvania to be closer to Emily’s mother, hoping to provide a safe haven for Amy to grow up in, away from the dangers of the big city. They’d taught Amy all the necessary drills—don’t get in a car with a stranger; if a stranger asks you to help him look for a lost pet, tell him no and run away; if a stranger grabs you, rotate your arms and legs like a windmill and scream; fight and yell, kick and scratch, aim for the eyes and the crotch. They’d taught her other things, too: don’t take unnecessary risks; listen to your instinct; if you believe something is dangerous, avoid it. They’d taught her all this and somehow they knew that it might not be enough, so they’d taken extra precautions, somehow believing nothing would never happen, especially this.

But it had.

The beginning of a nightmare.

EMILY DOYLE DIDN'T know how she got through the night, but somehow she did. With her mother and Jeff beside her, she was able to maintain some vigilance of strength. They would find her daughter. She was alive. She had to be.

A squad car sat outside the house at sentry duty for the remainder of the night while the Lititz Police department joined forces with the Pennsylvania State Police and conducted a search. A description of the vehicle and the perpetrator went out over the wire and the latest updates were relayed to Hound Dog face, who’d been assigned to stay with the Doyle family until the nightmare was over.

Emily didn’t sleep.

She couldn’t. Not with her nerves wired with worry, not with her mind constantly wondering if everything was going to turn out okay. She traded silent glances with Jeff and knew he was worrying about the same things, but they remained quiet. Emily’s mother went through bouts of crying, chastising herself for not doing enough to protect Amy, and Jeff finally convinced her that she’d done all she could. She’d done everything right. Finally Laura fell into a light sleep on the sofa, occasionally twitching in her sleep as the visions of what happened tormented her dreams.

At seven a.m. Hound Dog Face’s cell phone rang.

He answered it, his eyes bloodshot, his jowls slacker now with lack of sleep. “Yeah?” He listened for a moment and Emily noted the sudden change in his features from fatigue to a slow warming of hope. “Are you serious? Oh that is good news! I...yes, let me tell them. They’re right here—”

Jeff and Emily were up in a flash. “They found her!” Emily gasped.

Hound Dog Face held up his hand and nodded, still listening. He looked hopeful and serious as whoever was on the other end filled him in. Emily was frantic with hope and a new found joy. They found her!

“Okay...yes, I’ll tell them. Yes, I’ll bring them over.” Hound Dog hung up the phone.

Emily couldn’t stop the tears. “Is she okay? Where is she? Can we see her? What—”

Hound Dog Face took her hands and addressed both of them, his features still bearing the good news but Emily detected an undercurrent of something that troubled him. “We found her. She’s okay, she’s alive.”

Emily felt her knees threaten to buckle. She fought to remain standing and she could feel that Jeff had similarly been overtaken by this sudden emotion of good news. She heard him draw in a breath, sniffling back tears of joy. “Where is she?”

“They’re taking her to Ephrata Community Hospital to look her over,” Hound Dog Face said, still looking shell-shocked at this news himself. “She’s...the officer I talked to examined her personally and...he said she didn’t appear to be hurt but...” He licked his lips nervously. “She was covered in blood.”

Emily gasped. Oh God!

Jeff stiffened beside her, reacting to this news.

Hound Dog continued. “She was found in north Lancaster County wandering along 272 about six-thirty this morning. A trucker spotted her and called the police. When the officers arrived they identified her and...questioned her.” Hound Dog swallowed and Emily could tell he was nervous. “She seemed to be fine, but in light shock and she was able to tell the officers where...where she was taken. She described a motel, and a squad car was dispatched there and found the vehicle, parked in front of a room at the end of the building.” Hound Dog’s face looked hesitant, as if he didn’t know how to finish the story. “The perpetrator...what was left of him...was...well...he was pretty badly mangled, let me put it that way. Cliff, the guy who called, basically described the room as resembling an abattoir.”

Emily was horrified. She could tell Jeff was having the same reactions, but she tried to calm her sense of shock and horror in favor of letting her gratitude and joy that her daughter was alive and safe show through. The tears that were streaming down became a flood as she melted into Jeff’s embrace. “I want to see her! I want to see my baby!”

Jeff held her, trying to be strong for her, and Hound Dog face nodded and told them he was going to drive them to Ephrata Hospital to see their daughter.

LAURA RODE WITH them to Ephrata Community Hospital. Emily could barely contain her emotions. She wavered between crying and trading worried glances with Jeff, who sat on the driver’s side in the back seat looking out the window, his features silent and stony during the fifteen-minute drive.

When they reached the hospital Emily had to resist the urge to run inside and demand to see her daughter. She let herself be led down the hallway and up an elevator. Another uniformed officer met them and led them to a room in the pediatric wing where Amy was seated on a paper-covered hospital bed dressed in a white hospital issued gown.

“Mommy!” Amy’s face brightened instantly at the sight of her parents.

“Amy!” Emily and Jeff rushed to their daughter and Emily felt a sudden sense of elation as she swept the little girl into her arms. Amy began to cry, her small shoulders quivering with sobs. “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay” Emily cooed, holding her daughter, stroking her hair. “It’s all over now, you’re safe, mommy and daddy are here.”

Jeff was holding both of them and she felt Amy shift in an attempt to include her father in her embrace. Behind them, Hound Dog face and the other uniformed cop stood by the door uncomfortably. “We’ll leave you alone for a minute,” Hound Dog face said. He exited the room with his partner, leaving the Doyle family alone.

The family continued to huddle close together, whispering to their daughter in soothing tones. Eventually Amy’s cries trickled down. Emily held on to her, eyes closed, thankful that her daughter was alive and safe.

Jeff stepped back, running his hands over Amy’s head and face. Emily stepped back as well, performing a visual inspection of her daughter. Her hair was damp, as if she’d just had it washed. “Are you okay honey? Are you hurt anywhere or cut or—”

Amy shook her head, her eyes wide, still red from crying.

“You weren’t hurt anywhere?”

Amy shook her head again. “No. I’m...I’m okay.”

Emily and Jeff traded a glance and Emily knew from looking at her husband that he was thinking the same thing. They said she was covered in blood and that the room her abductor checked into was spattered with it...that there wasn’t much left of him. That must mean—

“You weren’t cut anywhere at all honey?” Jeff asked Amy.

Amy shook her head and began to cry again. “What happened to me? I don’t remember what happened!”

“It’s okay, honey,” Emily said, pulling her daughter close to her. “It’s okay. You’re fine. You’re safe and you’re fine and that’s all that matters.”

“I don’t remember anything,” Amy said, her voice sniffling. “I...I tried to fight him off but he handcuffed me in the car and then...we got to that...that hotel and he got me into that room and then...I don’t remember what happened after that! The next thing I remember I...I was walking outside, wandering around and...I was...covered in blood!” She broke down, sobbing quietly.

Emily and Jeff traded another glance and Emily felt a heaviness settle in her chest. Was what happened that horrible that she’d blocked it out?

Jeff was holding his daughter. “It’s okay, sweetie. Mommy and daddy are going to take care of everything. Don’t worry...everything will be fine. The only thing that matters is that you’re safe.”

Emily joined him in trying to calm Amy down and after a few minutes their daughter’s sobs trickled down. Amy sat morosely on the bed, her gaze far away and dazed. She was going to need help at some point. The most immediate concern now was getting her out of the hospital and getting her home; the next was trying to keep the police from questioning her further. They would want to, Emily was sure of it, but she didn’t want the questioning to damage Amy. She traded a glance with Jeff, who nodded at her. It was like they were telepathically connected at this moment, reading each others thoughts, making silent plans to resume their lives in peace and quiet the way things had been before somebody had tried to shatter it.

There was a soft knock on the door and then a doctor wearing a white lab coat poked his head in. He appeared to be in his mid-forties and wore glasses on a round face. “How’s our patient?” he asked.

“Fine,” Emily said, standing up, feeling a hundred percent better now that she’d seen and touched Amy, confirming she was alive. “She’s a little fighter.”

“She is,” the doctor said, smiling. He introduced himself as Dr. Knoll and flipped to Amy’s medical chart. “Physically, Amy’s fine. Emotionally she’s been through a shock. I’d like to prescribe a sedative to help calm her nerves for the next several weeks, and then I’d like her to follow up with Dr. Jascowski, a child psychiatrist in the Denver area. She’s going to need some help coping with what she’s been through.”

“Will the police want to talk to her?” Emily asked.

“They tried but they couldn’t get anything out of her,” Dr. Knoll said. “They’ll probably want to try again once she’s entered therapy. In the meantime, I’m sure they’ll have plenty of other potential witnesses they could question to help explain what happened.”

The rest of that morning was a blur; leaving Amy for a few more hours of observation in the hospital while Emily and Jeff went to the Ephrata Police Station to answer questions. As the morning unfolded they learned the identity of the man who’d abducted their daughter—thirty-year-old Ken Banning, a computer programmer with no prior criminal record. As the pieces were put together, a very sketchy chain of events was put into place with several large holes threatening to make the entire theory collapse were it not for the actual physical evidence—a very alive but shaken eight-year-old girl, and the scant remains of Banning.

The motel clerk who checked Banning in reported he’d done so late that morning. After checking in, Banning was gone for a good four or five hours. He returned just past four-thirty—the clerk saw the car pull past the front office and around to the back where he’d rented his room, and the cleark didn’t think about him again until this morning when he showed up for work and the place was overrun by cops.

Based on what the police had been able to get out of Amy and the children she’d been playing with, as well as the motel clerk, the crime was both pre-meditated and impulsive; pre-meditated because Ken had already secured a motel room in which to commit his crime in privacy, impulsive because he wasn’t familiar with the area and the kids that were playing with Amy reported they’d seen him drive by twice before he stopped a third time, left his car running, got out of the vehicle and simply grabbed Amy off the sidewalk and made a beeline for his car.  He’d thrown her into the car, quickly handcuffing her to the door handle of the front seat, and driven away. Emily shuddered at what the police told her they’d found in the blood spattered motel room—leather restraints and a ball gag.

Amy had screamed and struggled during the ten-mile ride to the motel, and she claimed that Ken produced a gun at one point and threatened to shoot her if she continued struggling. A handgun was recovered from the vehicle, but this proved to be fake. Nevertheless, it had the desired effect and Amy was complaint until they reached the motel. When Ken tried to usher her in to the room she became combative again and Ken quickly gagged her, uncuffed her wrists from the door handle, and carried her into the motel room.

Amy didn’t remember what happened after that.

The next thing she remembered was walking along Route 272, dazed and covered in blood. She didn’t remember how long she’d been wandering—she’d started off when it was dark and then it was dawn, and then she was found by that trucker. She didn’t remember how the blood got on her, and she didn’t see what happened to the man who’d kidnapped her. Dr. Knoll explained that Amy’s lack of memory in the hours between arriving at the motel and wandering near Route 272 in the early morning hours was due to shock; the mind’s natural defensive mechanism to cope with what happened to her.

The motel clerk claimed he heard no violent sounds of struggle coming from the room. When pressed on the matter, he later claimed that he thought he heard screams, but he didn’t feel inclined to investigate. “Nobody was screaming for help,” he explained during questioning. “The people that check in here...they tend to rent rooms by the hour, you know what I’m saying? This guy, I just figured he wanted to play a little heavy duty by renting for the night, you know? Long as he paid and nobody called the cops, why bother?”

The pitiful remains of Ken Banning were still being examined later that day when Emily and Jeff took Amy home.

Deputy Sam Boyer—Hound Dog face to Emily Doyle—watched the family leave in a red Saturn station wagon. His partner, Don Hudson, stood beside them. “She’s one lucky girl,” Don said.

“She is,” Sam Boyer replied. “I can’t imagine what she could have gone through.”

“Neither can I.”

“Have you heard from the coroner?”

“Nah. They’ re still trying to put the guy back together.”

“Any idea what cut him to pieces like that?”

“If they know, they aren’t saying yet.”

Sam Boyer shook his head. What happened to Ken Banning was what had the department in a frenzy. On one hand it was a good thing Amy Doyle was alive and unscathed physically...but something happened in that room that tore Ken Banning apart, and Sam had no doubt Amy saw what happened and it scared her so bad she’d blocked it out of her memory.

Don Hudson appeared to be reading his thoughts. “Think we’ll ever find out what happened?”

“I imagine we will eventually,” Sam Boyer said, turning to go back into the Lititz Police station.

Don followed him inside, still chatting. “You know, something weird just occurred to me.”

“What’s that?”

“When I shook Emily Doyle’s hand at one point I noticed she was missing one of her pinkie fingers.”

Sam Boyer frowned. “I noticed that about her husband. Jeff’s left pinkie finger was missing. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Figured maybe it got lost in an accident. Emily’s missing hers, too?”

Don Hudson nodded. “Yeah. Weird, huh?”

“It is,” Sam Brower agreed.

IT HAD BEEN a long time since they’d had a fight. They waited until Amy was asleep to let it all out.

Emily started by screaming at Jeff that this was his fault. Jeff countered by saying, she’s alive, isn’t she? She’s alive and healthy and she’s going to go through a lot of emotional turmoil, but she’s going to get better. That’s what matters, Emily. Our daughter is alive. If we hadn’t done what we’d done, she’d be laid out naked and dead and alone in some farmer’s field by now, raped and murdered.

Emily started sobbing, knowing Jeff was right but still feeling angry at him—at herself—for what happened. It was true—Amy was alive. She would have a chance at life that was denied to so many other children who’d faced similar horrors. But there was a price she and Jeff would have to pay now and she was sure Jeff knew that. He had to.

Surely he had to have noticed the smell by now.

She thought she smelled it late last night, when they were still waiting to hear if they’d caught the bastard who’d snatched Amy. It began as a faint tickle in the back of her throat that she first dismissed as tears—she’d been crying a lot—but it remained steady and constant. A steady smoky scent, pervading and unique, with an underlying tint of rotten eggs.

It remained with her the rest of that morning and throughout the day. There were times when she appeared to forget about it and not notice it was there, and then suddenly it would be almost enveloping, strong in its odor. Several times she found herself stepping outside her mother’s house or the police station where they’d gone for questioning to see if she could see smoke, but she never saw anything.

“Don’t you smell it?” She asked, looking at her husband. She’d settled down on the sofa, crying, and paused amid her sobs to look at him through tear-stained eyes.

“Smell what?”

“Just...sniff...” She sniffed the air. Despite her stuffed nose she could still make out the faint scent.

Jeff sniffed. His face flushed briefly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

She could tell he was lying.

At some point during the argument the subject of packing up and moving came up. “What good would it do?” Jeff asked. He was pacing the living room, running his fingers through his thinning hair. “The cops would think something is up.”

“How?” Emily asked. She was sitting on the sofa. Despite being tired, despite being up for over twenty-four hours, she was wired.

“We can’t just pack up and leave!” Jeff protested.

“What are we going to tell them when they want to question Amy?”

Jeff paced the living room. She could tell he was thinking about it. “I don’t know. We’ll think of something.”

Emily sat on the sofa, fidgeting. They’d never stopped to think about other consequences if this happened - or something similar. They’d been as careful as possible to avoid exposing Amy to danger. She told herself that she couldn’t continue beating herself up over what happened. What happened wasn’t their fault; the danger had come to them. Thank God they’d done something about it.

She paused at that thought: thank God.

God had nothing to do with it.

She became aware of the scent again, this time unmistakable, and she broke down again, weeping silently.

Jeff could only pace the living room.

OFFICER SAM BOYER came to see them three weeks later.

Emily knew this day would come. After their blow-up the evening Amy was found, she and Jeff agreed to think about it and talk about what they would do and say if the cops came around and started asking embarrassing questions. In the meantime, they agreed that it was time to move. They loved living in their little town, but their idealistic dream of small-town life had been shattered permanently by what happened. Jeff began quietly making plans to resign from his position at Strothers and Sons and Emily made plans to transfer a portion of their savings account into bonds, something that would gain interest they could draw some income on. They’d made a tidy bundle on the sale of their home in California, and they’d been fortunate enough to not have to touch any of it. That bundle had grown in the five years they’d been in Pennsylvania and it would continue to grow a little bit each year, so long as they lived frugally for awhile.

Jeff began looking into real estate in New England. Specifically Maine and New Hampshire.

Emily doted on Amy and drove her to her daily therapy sessions where she seemed to be rapidly improving. The psychiatrist told Emily and Jeff that what she’d witnessed in that motel room would no doubt live with her forever. “Fortunately she’s suppressed that memory,” he explained one afternoon a week after the incident. “It’s in her subconscious, though, and there’s no doubt we’ll be dealing with this for some time, but for now her mind is handling this very well. She’s not displaying any symptoms of depression or paranoia and she’s sleeping well. My recommendation is she remain on the medication for the next year or so and I continue to see her every week, then maybe we can drop the visits down to bi-weekly, then monthly. At some point, preferably when she’s in her early twenties, we’re going to need to schedule some heavy therapy to draw those memories out gradually and deal with them. It’ll be catastrophic if they come out of her suddenly and without warning.”

Emily and Jeff nodded, silently agreeing. Emily once again became angry with herself for allowing Jeff to talk her into this and once again her thoughts circled around to the inevitable. What they’d done was the only thing they could have done. When Amy was born they’d made a vow to each other that they’d do anything to keep Amy safe from harm and they’d kept their end of the bargain. If they hadn’t, their daughter would be dead, plain and simple.

But at some point the questions were going to come, either from Amy or the police, and they knew it was going to be harder to try to fool the police. So they discussed their options and agreed on a plan of action.

And now it was time to act on it.

Sam Boyer stood on the front porch, alone. He was wearing his uniform and he nodded at Emily as she answered the front door. “Mrs. Doyle.”

“What can I do for you, Officer Boyer?”

“Is your husband home?”

“Right here.” Jeff appeared beside Emily.

“Amy home?” Officer Boyer asked.

“She’s with my mother,” Emily said.

“We need to talk,” Officer Boyer said.

Jeff opened the screen door. “Come on in.”

They offered Officer Boyer drinks and he declined. He sat down on the sofa and got right to the point. “The autopsy on Ken Banning has been complete and our investigation is far from over. There’s...” he hesitated, regarding them both uncertainly. “...lots of unanswered questions. I realize that Amy doesn’t remember anything about that night—”

“And we don’t intend to put pressure on her to submit to hypnosis in an effort to find out what happened to that scumbag, either,” Jeff said, sternly.

“I realize that,” Officer Boyer said. He looked nervous. “Trouble is, I got the State Police breathing down my neck for answers. The Attorney General of Pennsylvania wants answers, too. I realize that legally we’re rather restricted in what we can do. Officially, Ken Banning’s death is classified as a homicide and your daughter is the only witness. She’s not considered a suspect because there’s no physical evidence pointing to—”

“You were actually considering Amy a suspect?” Emily asked, her temper flaring.

“No, no, not at all!” Officer Boyle said, raising a hand. “If anything she’s a victim in this, but she’s also a witness - and a good one, too, if she could only...” His voice trailed off.

“If she could only remember what happened,” Emily finished for him.

“Yeah,” Officer Boyer nodded.

Emily and Jeff glanced at each other and turned back to Officer Boyer. “I’m sorry we can’t help you, Officer,” Jeff said.

Officer Boyer continued as if he hadn’t heard them. “The coroner stated that Banning could have died in any number of ways: blood loss, shock. It’s hard to be entirely sure if he was alive when most of the mutilation took place because his heart was never recovered, although the amount of blood in the room indicates that he was alive for some time while he was being torn apart. Some of the...injuries he sustained appear to be from teeth...or claws from some kind of animal...”

Emily resisted the urge to gasp; she glanced quickly at Jeff who avoided her gaze. Officer Boyer was watching them and he noticed Emily’s reaction. “Does this mean anything to you at all?”

“No,” Emily said a little too quickly.

“I think it does,” Officer Boyer said, gaze locked on Emily’s now.

“Why would you think that?” Emily asked, trying to dismiss Boyer’s allegations.

“Supposing some kind of animal got in that motel room and attacked Ken Banning, what difference does it make?” Jeff asked. “I mean, big deal! The man was going to rape and murder my daughter! Maybe Banning didn’t check the place out too thoroughly when he got the room and woke up a bear or something that slipped in through an open window or something.”

“Forensics found no evidence of any animal or other people in the room aside from Ken Banning and Amy,” Boyer said quickly.

“And since you said Amy isn’t a suspect, you need to focus your investigation elsewhere,” Jeff quickly countered. “You know we were nowhere near that motel - you were here all night with us. That leaves a third party.”

Boyer’s gaze was hard, stern. “There’s something else I haven’t told you yet.”

“What’s that?” Jeff said.

“We retrieved a knife at the scene,” Boyer said slowly. “Banning’s mother identified it as one her son owned. We found blood on it.” He paused. “The blood on Banning’s knife didn’t match his blood type.”

“So?”

“The blood was human.”

Emily’s heart pounded. She glanced at Jeff. What is he talking about? she wanted to ask.

“By process of elimination, we ran a test against the blood we drew from Amy a few weeks ago,” Boyer said. “The blood on the knife matched.”

Jeff opened his mouth, stunned. Emily’s heart stopped; she felt numb.

“I know what you’re probably thinking,” Boyer continued. “It can’t be Amy’s blood. She sustained no injuries. Nevertheless, the sample from Banning’s knife matched your daughter’s blood type and I think we need to discuss this.”

“Who knows about this?” Jeff asked, his voice raspy.

“Just the three of us, my assistant, and the coroner.”

Emily’s mind was racing, her limbs felt numb. She felt on the verge of faint.

“This needs to be explained because I have to submit our findings to the Prosecutor tomorrow. Do you understand what I’m talking about? You and I know Amy couldn’t have killed Banning. We know you couldn’t have done it. The prosecution is going to want some kind of case, though. We don’t want a drawn out ugly court battle. I think you just want to pick up where you left off and get back to raising your little girl. Am I right?”

Emily could tell Jeff was stunned. This hadn’t been in the script - no way were they prepared for this.

Boyer regarded them calmly. “I’m waiting.”

Emily glanced at her husband again quickly and determined this latest revelation was too stunning for him—it had totally blindsided him. She turned back to Boyer and he met her gaze.

She nodded at him. “That’s a lovely cross you’re wearing Officer Boyer,” she said.

“Thank you.” Officer Boyer fingered the cross he wore around his neck on a slim gold chain.

“Are you a Christian man?”

“I am.”

“Then you believe in Jesus...in God?”

“I do.”

“Then if you believe in Jesus you believe in Heaven, correct?”

“I didn’t come here for a Bible lesson, Mrs. Doyle.”

Emily ignored him. “If you believe in Jesus and Heaven then you must believe in his adversary and the fiery pits of hell. Correct?”

“What does this have to with—”

“Please just answer the question, Officer Boyer!”

Boyer sighed. “Yes. I believe in Hell, Mrs. Doyle.”

Emily continued, ignoring Jeff’s nervous stare as he settled down in one of the kitchen chairs.

She also tried to ignore the scent, which had remained constant for the past three weeks.

“Do you have children, Mr. Boyer?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“A son and a daughter.”

“Do you love them?”

Boyer looked at Emily, his features uncomprehending. “Yes. I love them. Now please, what does—”

“How far would you go to protect your children, Mr. Boyer?”

Officer Boyer looked grim. “Mrs. Doyle—”

“Let me tell you a story, Mr. Boyer,” Emily began. She could feel the shakiness in her voice and she pressed on. “Once upon a time there was a couple who tried and tried to have a child but they couldn’t. For some reason, they just couldn’t. They tried everything. Fertility doctors, various treatments. All to no avail. They prayed about it, and they kept trying and then finally the Lord blessed them with a child...a beautiful little girl they named Amy.”

Officer Boyle listened. Jeff was sitting at the kitchen table, head bowed, not looking at them.

“When Amy was born her mother and father wept tears of joy. She was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen. They felt blessed. They swore to each other they would love their child more than they loved themselves and that they would do everything in their power to protect and love and cherish and provide for her. You see, her mother and father never had that love and security when they were children. Her father came from a family of alcoholics that neglected him, and her mother never knew her father—she never knew her mother well either, since she was emotionally unavailable. They swore they would never put their daughter through what they went through as children. They would put their child first, above everything, even themselves. Their love for each other was still strong—in fact, it strengthened with the birth of their daughter—but it was stronger for Amy. Do you understand their love for their child, Officer Boyer?”

Boyer said nothing; he waited for Emily to continue.

“A few days after Amy was born, her mother and father sat up late one night talking. They talked about the uncertainty of the world and how worried they were about their child’s future. They knew they would be raising a healthy, happy, productive human being. They knew their child would love them, would grow up to be a good person. They knew this with all their heart. But they were still afraid. They knew the world was full of...uncertainties...that they couldn’t trust some people...they knew there would come a time in her life when their daughter would come in contact with people who would either wish to do harm to her or would unwillingly put her in that position. They knew that even if their daughter was as careful as they were going to raise her to be, they couldn’t protect her from everything. They couldn’t be their twenty-four-seven. So...” She raised her left hand, fingers splayed out; the pinkie was missing. “...they made a deal.”

Boyer’s eyes grew wide. He looked at Jeff, who was now looking at them, his own left hand held up, left pinkie missing. Emily watched him, noting the sharp rise in the Officer’s breathing. “Do you understand what we’re talking about, Officer Boyer?”

“I...” Boyer said, eyes darting from Emily to Jeff. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll spell it out for you. You believe in God, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Jeff and I do too. But we also know that God...sometimes allows bad things to happen to good people. We’ve tried to understand why He allows this...and we both knew that if...something bad were to happen to our Amy that we would be devastated. And that God...wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care about our suffering and anguish. I know that’s probably blasphemous to you, Officer Boyer, hearing two self-professed Christians like ourselves saying God wouldn’t care if he were to allow an innocent child to suffer. But...why does He allow so much suffering to exist in the world? Why does he allow children to step on land mines in Viet Nam, and why does he allow monsters to snatch children off the street, never to bring them back?” She faced Officer Boyer, the adrenaline running through her veins. “Why?”

Officer Boyer opened his mouth to answer and couldn’t.

“Nobody can answer that question to my satisfaction, Officer Boyer,” Emily continued. “Not my pastor, not a priest, not any minister I’ve spoken to. Nobody. Their answers ring false to me. And since we believed in God we began to...explore other options.” She looked at Officer Boyer, left hand raised to emphasize her sacrifice. “If God wasn’t going to care about the suffering of a little child, then we were going to do everything in our power to make sure nothing happened to our daughter. Anything.”

Officer Boyer sputtered. “You mean, you—”

“We made a deal,” Jeff said from the kitchen table, his face pale now, shoulders sagging with the weight of the dreadful implications of what had happened. “A protector for Amy who would only come to the rescue in the event she was put in imminent danger. Her life and soul for our souls. It would only become due and payable in the event...something like this were to happen.”

Officer Boyer’s face paled. “You...am I...are you telling me you sold your soul to—”

“The devil? A demon? Something like that, I suppose,” Jeff said. Emily held back, her emotions running high. “It took months of research and prayer and...once we made the decision it was relatively easy. You can pray to demons just like you pray to God or Jesus or the angels. They answer your prayers the same way. But they do want...certain sacrifices.” He held up his left hand, emphasizing the missing finger.

“You cut off your own fingers?” Officer Boyer asked.

“It’s what the dark forces asked for,” Emily said, her right hand caressing the spot where her left pinkie finger used to be. “It wasn’t too difficult. Whiskey to deaden the pain, bandages to staunch the flow of blood when the ritual was over. We both used Jeff’s electric bandsaw in the garage. Made it easier to explain to the doctors at Ephrata that Jeff slipped and fell while working in the garage and when I went to help him, I slipped and fell right beside him. They dismissed us as unlucky klutz’s and patched us up.”

“We told them we’d been in too much shock to retrieve the fingers,” Jeff continued. “That they’d fallen somewhere we couldn’t get to them, that we realized we needed immediate medical attention and they worked with what they had. That made it easier to explain why they were missing when they couldn’t be found later—rats, foxes, some small animal.”

“They bought it,” Emily said. “And we adjusted. It was a small sacrifice to make. We’d do anything to keep Amy safe.”

“And now we know our boon was a success,” Jeff said, his features grim. “The thing that protected our daughter that night...a dark demon created from our blood. That explains why you got a match.”

“But—“ Officer Boyer sputtered.

“Don’t you believe us?” Jeff asked.

“You’re asking me to believe...this?”

“Do you smell anything odd, Officer Boyer?” Emily asked.

“Huh?” Officer Boyer looked at her, puzzled.

“Sniff the air.” She sniffed. “Smell anything unusual?”

Officer Boyer sniffed a couple of times. His brow furrowed in concentration. “Smells kinda like...it’s really faint...but...” He sniffed a few more times. “It smells like...something’s burning...like sulfur...”

“That’s brimstone you’re smelling, Officer Boyer,” Emily said, the tears streaming down her cheeks now. “You smell brimstone. We’ve been smelling it now ever since the day we were reunited with Amy, and everybody that’s...that’s been around us...has mentioned smelling it. It’s...our mark.” She broke down and wept silently.

Officer Boyer looked stunned. He turned to Jeff. “You mean...”

“‘But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’” Jeff said. “That’s from the Book of Revelations, Officer Boyer. It’s a reminder that the bargain Emily and I made is now due and payable,”

And as Jeff put his arms around Emily in an attempt to comfort her, Officer Boyer could only stand in their living room, his features still bearing a sense of shock. Emily wept, not caring what Officer Boyer did now. There was nothing he could do to them.

Officer Boyer turned away, his features still shocked. “I’ll see what I can come up with for the report I’m supposed to file to the Prosecutor.”

Jeff’s hand stroked Emily’s hair. “Are you going to tell them what we just told you?”

Officer Boyer looked at Jeff and shook his head. “No. They wouldn’t believe me.”

“Do you believe us?”

Officer Boyer looked at them for a long time. Emily’s sobs trickled down and she regarded him through tear-blurred eyes. “My rational side tells me I shouldn’t,” he said. “But...like you said...I’m a Christian man. And...”

Jeff and Emily said nothing. They held each other, watching as Officer Boyer came to grips with their revelation.

Officer Boyer’s eyes reflected a sense of haunting. “I can’t begin to imagine what you went through. To love your child that much to put yourselves...your souls...”

Officer Boyer shook his head and walked quietly out the front door. Leaving the Doyle family alone.

And as he drove to the station, trying to think of something to put down in his report that would explain Banning’s cause of death, he couldn’t get the lingering scent of brimstone out of his nostrils.

Addict

IT WAS A place he stopped by occasionally on his way home from work and, like most underground porn flea markets, it moved around periodically. This time it was in a modern three-bedroom tract home in Alhambra. Dennis Hillman stopped by shortly before 2 p.m. after having left work early for the day.

He tried to stifle a yawn as he flipped through home-made magazines containing photos of various sexual acts. Normal garden variety in-and-out didn’t do much for him anymore. It hadn’t in a few years. The deeper he got into it, the more hardcore his pornography had to be. It was his unique tastes in pornography that led him to seek out places such as Carl Grossman’s group a year or two back. You couldn’t find bestiality or scat stuff in neighborhood porn shops. Or women being fucked by guys with dicks the size of those little souvenir baseball bats you could pick up at Dodger Stadium.

There were half a dozen other porn junkies browsing through Carl’s wares this afternoon. Dennis ignored them as he silently sifted through the materials. None of it excited him anymore. He felt a slight sense of disgust with himself as he leafed through a rape magazine. Violence didn’t even turn him on anymore.

Carl Grossman lumbered over. “Got something I think you might enjoy.” Carl was a huge fat man; he looked like a crowd of fat people squeezed into a tight suit. His trousers were wearing thin, the tails of his white shirt was coming out from his pants. Even though Carl didn’t work a normal job, he still tried to dress as if he had a regular nine-to-fiver. His tie was stained with grease and ketchup.

“What is it?” Dennis said, already bored.

“Come this way,” Carl beckoned. He turned and Dennis followed him down a dim hallway to the rear of the house.

“Just got this in the day before yesterday,” Carl said, weaving his way through boxes piled on the floor. He opened a box and rummaged around inside it before he found what he was looking for. Dennis let his eyes stray around the room as Carl looked for the thing he wanted to show him; this was where Carl kept stuff for the hardcore freaks. His eyes rested briefly on a still from a bestiality film depicting a young woman with thin limbs and heroin sculpted cheekbones on her hands and knees being fucked by a large monkey. “Here it is,” Carl said, handing Dennis the item.

Dennis picked it up. It was a magazine, the cover showing a woman with blonde hair lying on a bed. Her throat was slit, a great cascade of blood spilling down her chest and on the mattress. Her eyes were open and glazed over.

Dennis handed the magazine back. “It’s snuff, and every snuff film I’ve ever seen is fake. Don’t try to pawn this shit on me.”

“It ain’t snuff,” Carl said, handing the magazine back to Dennis. “Take a better look at it.”

Dennis sighed and began flipping through the magazine, growing more disgusted with himself. What he should be doing was working at the office; he had to finish that CPM spreadsheet for a meeting next week. But the pull of desire was strong and he needed an outlet. Admit it, Dennis thought, his hands trembling slightly as he flipped through the pages of the magazine. You’re a hardcore porn junkie. You’re addicted to this shit and you know it.

The photos in the next few pages showed the same woman from different angles. The next few pages showed a young man, about twenty years old, climbing onto the bed with the woman and embracing her. The next few pages had photographs of the young man sticking his cock between the woman’s lips and shoving it into her mouth. That particular set of photos ended with the man vaginally penetrating her.

“What is this, some kind of special effects thing?” Dennis asked, his curiosity only slightly aroused.

Carl shook his head, a sick grin on his face. “Keep looking.”

The next few pages showed different subjects. One was of what appeared to be an old man, his belly puffy and distended, the flesh of his torso the color of dark storm clouds. A woman who looked like a junkie was sucking his flaccid penis. It wasn’t until he got to the old woman—what Dennis thought was an old woman—that he stopped and stared at the picture, his stomach curling in his belly.

He flipped back through the magazine, looking at the photos again. His eyes were wide. “You mean...this shit is real?”

Carl grinned. “As real as they get, Dennis.”

The photo that had stopped Dennis in his tracks was that of an old woman. She must have been Caucasian because her hair was straight and long. Her skin was black and blue and green in places, some of it wet-looking. There were spots of white in various parts of the body. As Dennis flipped through it the photos got perversely worse. There were close-ups of her decayed face, the eyelids sunken in. There were close-ups of her rotting breasts, the flesh falling off her arm bones. It wasn’t until the man entered the picture that Dennis held his breath. Even though he found it hard to go through the rest of the magazine, he did so anyway. His eyes were riveted on the scenes of the faceless man’s cock buried in the rotting woman’s pussy, the close ups of the man’s penis with brown, maggot-ridden, rotted flesh caked to it amidst creamy semen.

Dennis closed the magazine. He couldn’t breathe, he was that excited. “Where did you get this?”

Carl shrugged. “Just got it in a few days ago. A local outfit. You want it?”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred.”

Normally Dennis would have paid for it, but he hadn’t come prepared to pay that much money for something. “I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he said, handing the magazine back to Carl. “I’ll call you.”

Carl smiled and put the magazine back where he’d found it. “You do that.”

Dennis exited the house with a sense of shaking excitement that chased him on the drive home. He couldn’t get his mind off that image of the corpse of the old woman being fucked by the faceless stranger.

“DENNIS, ARE YOU okay?”

“Hmmm? ” Dennis snapped awake, banishing the daydream that had been floating through his mind. He was replaying the images of the necrophilia photo in his dreams again, wondering what it felt like to fuck a rotting corpse. Trying to imagine what the sensation must feel like on your dick.

“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Everything okay at work?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

Dennis was sitting up in bed watching the evening news. His wife, Carrie, was sitting next to him doing her nails. Their son, Justin, was in his room doing God knew what on the internet and their daughter, Elizabeth, was in her room talking on the phone with her friends. Dennis had hardly paid attention to his children when he got home this afternoon. All he’d been able to think of were the images from that magazine.

Carrie lolled on the bed, her hair up in curlers. Dennis tried not to look at her; she’d grown increasingly flabby in the past five years. Her ass was a mile wide, the cellulite on her thighs quivered like Jell-O. Dennis tried to get his wife to accompany him to the gym, but she showed no interest. “I’ve got an early morning and late afternoon meeting tomorrow,” he said, flipping through the channels, “so I won’t be home till late. That okay with you?”

“Fine with me,” Carrie said, finishing her nails. “What’s on Channel Two?”

And that’s the way things went every night. It was the way things had been for fifteen years. The minute they began to have kids, their sex life took a nosedive. And to compensate, Dennis sought to relieve his outlet through other means. Pornography.

And the more he got into it, the more he needed to satiate his needs. Where before he couldn’t stomach an anal sex scene, within a few short years he began to crave it...where before he flinched at the barest suggestion of S&M, within a few years he was exploring every aspect of that subculture. Where before he’d gagged at the site of a woman sucking a Great Dane’s cock, or some redneck fucking a sheep, now bestiality films held a strange fascination for him. And while he had heard of snuff films over the years, the closest he’d ever come to seeing one was an extreme hardcore loop Carl Grossman sold him. The clip showed a woman being viscously whipped, then burned with a hot piece of metal as she dangled from the ceiling in an abandoned warehouse. The first time Dennis saw the clip it disturbed him. Later viewings turned him on. He currently kept the tape in a safe in his study and only brought it out when he knew he was going to get at least four hours to himself at home, which was rare.

Now the only thing that could get him off was the hardest of the hardcore. Currently he possessed two additional films other than the torture film, which were the only things that could bring him to orgasm, all three he kept in the safe. One was a film showing a woman being fucked by an Orangutan; it was followed by a guy screwing a female German Shepard. The other tape was a rape film showing the very real rapes of a twelve-year-old girl, a forty-year-old toothless crack addict who looked like he was seventy, and an eighteen-year-old man who already looked like he was in his mid-forties courtesy of hard-living. Carrie would never dream that both tapes resided in a locked safe in Dennis’ study.

Before they settled down to sleep Carrie said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Bob Lansing called this afternoon.”

“Really?” Dennis felt his stomach clench. “What did he want?”

“To talk to you,” Carrie turned over. “He sounded surprised, like he thought you would be home.”

“Bob gets confused sometimes,” Dennis said, the lie springing to him easy. “He must have forgotten I had that meeting at our West LA office and thought I’d gone home early.”

Carrie didn’t say anything. Dennis waited for a response, and when none came he rolled over on his right side, facing the wall. He waited until he heard the calm breathing of his wife sleeping beside him, and then he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep himself. But it was a long time in coming.

HE HAD A meeting on his calendar the next morning but he skipped it, stopping by Carl Grossman’s instead. He’d gone to the bank on the way and had the fifteen hundred dollars for the necrophilia magazine; he simply couldn’t get it out of his mind. He’d  woken up in a good mood so why not splurge? Carl shook his head as Dennis asked for the magazine. “Sorry. Shoulda bought it yesterday. I sold it last night right after you left.”

Dennis felt his hopes deflate. “Oh. That’s too bad.” He didn’t know the magazine would sell so quickly.

“But you’re in luck,” Carl said, moving to a corner of the living room that he referred to as his ‘office’; it was crammed with a small desk and filing cabinet. He rummaged around on the desk for a business card and copied a name, address, and phone number on it. “You might want to talk to the guy that bought it. He’s a big collector. You and he have similar interests. Maybe he can help you find another one.” He handed the card to Dennis, who slipped it into his pocket.

“Thanks,” Dennis said.

Dennis took a look at the card in his car. The name on the card—Harvey Panozzo—was unfamiliar to him. At first he wasn’t going to place the call; after all, he had to get to work and start giving his employers the impression he gave a shit about his job. But he finally succumbed to his desires and punched Harvey’s number in his cell phone.

The phone was picked up on the other end. “Panozzo here.”

Dennis quickly introduced himself and told Harvey how he came by his number. “Carl suggested I call you since we have similar interests.”

“Are you busy later today?”

“Not at all.”

“Why don’t you stop by? We’ll chat then. You have the address?”

“Yes.” Harvey was in Monrovia, just down the freeway from Pasadena where Dennis lived. He jotted down the directions and hung up, his nerves on edge at the thought that he was going to see more of the type of material he was becoming enamoured with.

The next few hours were spent at work. He made phone calls to various business contacts, did some work on the CPM spreadsheet. Bob Lansing poked his head in his cube and asked where he was yesterday. Dennis told him he’d been stuck in traffic, which was why he was late to the CPM meeting in West LA. Bob nodded, than asked him how the meeting this morning was. Dennis made something up and Bob left, seemingly satisfied with his answer.

He spent the remainder of his day cruising the internet, always making sure to keep a spreadsheet open, and to be on alert in case anybody came by. There’d been a few close calls when Dennis had fumbled with the icon at the bottom of his screen for the spreadsheet, thus blocking out whatever porn website he was on. Thank God for quick fingers.

He visited ten porn sites that afternoon including his favorite: the rape page. He also did some searches on Google for necrophilia pages. He couldn’t find any.

He left the office at his normal time and arrived at Harvey’s house ten minutes early. Harvey Panozzo lived in a nice neighborhood with tree-lined streets and ranch homes. He met Dennis at the front door dressed in tan slacks and a white shirt; he looked like he’d just come home from work. He appeared to be around Dennis’s age—early forties—and had thinning black hair and a dark mustache. He also looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.

“Nice to meet you,” Harvey said, holding out his hand.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Dennis said, shaking his hand. “I really appreciate it.”

Harvey invited him inside the house and Dennis followed the man, his nerves twitching. One time he’d met an extreme hardcore fetish enthusiast in the hopes of scoring some bloodsport videos and was tackled from behind by another character who was lying in wait. Looking back on it now, Dennis realized that they were going to rape him, probably torture him to fulfill their own desires, but Dennis was lucky. Working out at the gym every day gave him an advantage a lot of guys his age lacked, and he was able to fight off his attackers ruthlessly. He was careful in meeting like-minded freaks, and now as he followed Harvey Panozzo down the hall toward a rear bedroom, his senses were on heightened alert.

“Carl is a trusted friend and ally,” Harvey said, motioning for Dennis to have a seat. “I knew you were okay when you mentioned Carl sent you. I don’t trust people that are referred to me by people other than Carl.”

“Neither do I,” Dennis said.

“You said you were going to buy the necro publication Carl had?” Harvey asked.

Dennis nodded. “Yes. He said you bought it last night, that you’re a fellow...”

“Enthusiast?” Harvey smiled. “I suppose I am.” He paused for a moment. “I take it you are interested in similar material?”

Dennis nodded. “Very much so.”

“I think I may be able to help you.”

Dennis felt a burst of excitement. “That would be great.”

“Tell me something,” Harvey said, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “What do you do for a living?”

Dennis hesitated a moment, then plunged on ahead. “I’m a financial analyst.”

Harvey nodded. “I see. The reason I’m asking is that the group has pretty specific membership requirements. They like for fellow members to be professionally employed.”

“Well....”

Harvey smiled. “Don’t worry. I take it that with your job title you have at least a Bachelor’s Degree and that you make at least fifty k a year. Correct?”

Dennis nodded. Actually he made quite a bit more than that but he wasn’t going to tell Harvey.

Harvey rose to his feet. “Come with me. I think I have just what you’re looking for.”

Dennis followed him to the next room, which appeared to be an office. Harvey opened a file cabinet with a key and rifled through it. He extracted a glossy paged magazine wrapped in plastic and handed it to Dennis, who took it in trembling hands. “Is this the kind of material you’re looking for?”

Dennis looked at it. The dead girl with the severed throat glared at him, her eyes lifeless. Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“If you’d like, I can give you some time alone with it. Perhaps thirty minutes?”

“That would be great.” Dennis tried to keep his excitement at bay.

“After that, all I have to ask of you are three things,” Harvey said. “The first: make sure you stay employed. We have our reasons for insisting on this policy, the main reason being that when you begin to acquire a taste for the type of material we’re into, it can get rather expensive. We’d rather have you indulge with money you are making honestly. We have no desire to have the police come poking around should you resort to a life of crime in order for you to pay for your habit. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Number two, your being employed is actually a benefit. It automatically separates you from a lot of the other hardcore freaks out there. We have no desire to associate with drug addicts, ex-porn stars, the homeless, or other degenerates. What we do is in the privacy of our own homes. We don’t hurt anybody. We are simply working professionals with similar interests. Agreed?”

Dennis nodded. “And the third?”

“That when you are finally admitted to our group you bring us some materials. An offering, if you will.” Harvey smiled. “It doesn’t matter what it is...a loop of some junkie getting fucked by a Doberman...a torture flick...some chicken hawk stuff for the pedophiles in our group. But you’ll score big points if you can procure some necro flicks or some snuff. And not the fake crap, either. We’re seasoned veterans and we can spot fake a mile away.”

Dennis nodded. “Yeah, I think I can do that.” What the hell are you thinking? Where the hell are you going to find more of this kind of stuff?

Harvey clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will. Now why don’t I leave you alone for awhile?”

And he did just that. Harvey left Dennis alone in the office, pointing out a box of Kleenex and a bottle of lotion on the desk. He closed the door behind him, leaving Dennis alone.

Dennis sighed, opened the magazine to the spread of the decayed old woman, and felt his dick grow hard at the sight of the anonymous penis penetrating the rotting flesh of her stomach, and then he began to jack off.

WHEN BOB LANSING called Dennis into his office the following day he was exiting another meeting regarding the CPM project. Dennis thought Bob wanted to pick his brain some more about the project, but as he closed the door to Bob’s office he saw his superior’s features were grave. “Sit down, Dennis,” Bob said.

Dennis sat down, his stomach growing leaden. He’d been feeling uneasy since exiting Harvey Panozzo’s house yesterday. He’d driven home wondering if anybody saw him leave the house. Ever since bringing himself to orgasm yesterday courtesy of the necrophilia publication, he felt like he was under scrutiny now, as if everybody around him suddenly knew he was different from them. It was a feeling that had chased him throughout the day.

“What’s up?” Dennis asked Bob as he settled into his seat.

Bob pushed a set of papers across the desk at Dennis wordlessly. He refused to meet Dennis’ eyes. Dennis picked up the paper and scanned the document. At first he thought it was computer code, but then he recognized it as website URL’s. His eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the URL’s as websites he visited at work. “I don’t understand,” he said, trying to sound casual but doing a terrible job of it.

“Those are the websites you’ve been visiting during your work day,” Bob Lansing said, jabbing a finger at the document. He looked at Dennis unsympathetically. “I got an IT tech to download some software on your PC yesterday when you were out and run a check. Human Resources gave me a call the day before that to inform me an anonymous call was placed to their Sexual Harassment hotline informing them you were viewing sexually explicit material at work, so we had to investigate. And this is what we came up with.”

The news was hitting Dennis like a sledgehammer. Despite the fact the evidence was staring him right in the face, he still tried to talk his way out of it. “There must be some kind of mistake,” he stammered. “I don’t—”

Bob Lansing leaned forward. “Can the bullshit, Dennis! Between you and me, it would be one thing if you were visiting the Playboy Website and looking at a little T & A. Human Resources would still want me to fire you, but I’d fight for you because I like you, and I like your work. But the crap you’ve been looking at on our computers, on our time?” He emphasized this by jabbing his finger down on the paper, his tone of voice becoming hoarse with anger. “Frankly I don’t have much respect for guys like you that get off on watching women being degraded like that.” His left hand dipped down to his desk drawer and emerged with a document and a green envelope. He slid them across the desk to Dennis. “Consider yourself fired. You’re getting off easy; if the material you’d been viewing in your cubical involved children, so help me God I would have waited until after work and then I would have kicked the living shit out of you and damn the consequences.”

Dennis was shocked; he didn’t know how to respond. Bob Lansing glared back at him with anger and disgust. “Now get the fuck out of my office. You disgust me.”

Dennis rose to his feet slowly, feeling the burning of Bob’s gaze on his back as he exited his office. A tall African-American man from building security was already at his cube, waiting to escort him out of the building. The security guard stood at sentry duty as Dennis gathered the few personal items he had in his cubical and then he left the department, not even aware of the furtive whispers of his co-workers as the gossip mill started.

DENNIS WAS AT home when Harvey Panozzo called. He picked it up in the extension in his study upstairs. “Hello?”

“Dennis! Harvey here. Are you ready?”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to join just yet,” Dennis said, lowering his voice. He was still reeling from the events at work today and was pouring through his business rolodex, coming up with a list of contacts. He had enough money to float on for a while, but he would have to get another position fairly soon. “Some things have come up and—”

“Oh, but you don’t have to worry about joining, Dennis,” Harvey’s voice was soothing. “Consider yourself a charter member.”

“Well...thanks, but—”

“The reason I’m calling, actually, is to see if you’ve held up your end of the bargain.”

Dennis’ mind drew a blank.

“Don’t you remember? You were supposed to contribute something to the circle? A film? Photos perhaps?”

Dennis couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I just met you yesterday. You expect me to come up with something in twenty-four hours?”

“Why not? Surely you have something in your own collection that would suffice.”

Dennis felt his nerves tremble. “Well, yeah...I guess I do.”

“Great! How about you swing by on your way home from the office tomorrow and drop it off?”

Dennis told him that was fine and hung up. He spent the next thirty minutes staring out the window. He was so involved in his thoughts that he barely noticed when Carrie arrived home with the kids.

DENNIS LEFT EARLY the next morning dressed in his normal work attire just like any other day. He didn’t go to the office, however. Instead, he headed straight for the nearest coffee shop.

He bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times and sat in a corner booth, sipping coffee and circling the job listings. He also had a good breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, orange juice. He left the coffee shop at ten-thirty, taking the paper with him, and leaving the waitress a satisfying tip.

His house was silent and empty when he got home. Just as he thought it would be.

He headed straight to his study where the safe was. He got the safe opened and took out the rape video. This should satisfy them, he thought as he closed the safe. They probably want something really hardcore and this is the hardest I have.

He spent the rest of the day at the library making phone calls from his cellular phone, making connections, trying to set up some meetings. He was able to get a few interviews set up, and by the time he set out for Harvey Panozzo’s place that afternoon he was already starting to feel better.

When he pulled up to Harvey Panozzo’s home he saw the garage door was open. The silver Mercedes he’d seen in the driveway yesterday was absent. A group of kids were messing around on skateboards on the driveway. Dennis walked up the driveway, briefcase in hand. One of the kids, a twelve-year old boy with curly black hair, looked up as Dennis approached. “If you’re looking for my dad, he isn’t home yet.”

“Oh.” Dennis frowned. “When will your dad be home?”

The boy shrugged. “Probably after six. He said he had a meeting.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Dennis walked back to the car, his feeling of apprehension growing again.

It turned to dread when he pulled into his neighborhood and saw the police car parked in front of his house.

THE OFFICERS WERE at his front door talking to Carrie when Dennis approached his home. Carrie saw him and he could tell by the look on her face that she was worried and confused. “They’re here to see you, Dennis.”

Dennis tried to act casual. “What can I do for you, officers?”

The officers stepped off the porch and approached Dennis. They were around his age, both of them slim, nice-looking men, a blonde guy and an African-American cop. “We got a call that you’re dealing in illegal pornography,” the African-American cop said.

Dennis almost exploded. He looked at his wife briefly and motioned for the cops to huddle close to him so he wouldn’t have to talk so loud. “Look, I don’t know who called you about that, but its bullshit, okay? If this has to do with work, and I’m sure it does, some asshole planted some shit on my computer and got me fired for it!”

The African-American cop cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me, sir, but we realize the allegations against you probably are trumped up, but still...”

Dennis looked at the officers with numbing horror. “You mean...”

“Do you mind if we look around a little bit?”

Dennis was just about to say no when an alarm went off in his head. To say no now would only spell trouble down the road. They’d get a search warrant and he might not be able to get the tapes out of his safe. If he let them poke around they might not even see the safe, much less ask to see what was inside. Ditto on his briefcase. He sighed. “Go ahead.”

As the two officers poked around his living room, he herded Carrie into the kitchen. Carrie’s eyes were wide and scared-looking. “Dennis, what’s going on?”

He told her. Not about his recent Internet activities, nor his deviant pornography addiction, but about his being fired from his job. He told her Bob Lansing had been out to get him for a long time now, and that he was fairly sure Bob had gotten that information planted on his computer. Carrie swallowed the story, hook, line, and sinker. “And now he’s trying to get you arrested? Why, that’s outrageous!”

“I know,” Dennis said, his voice low and trembling. It just occurred to him that whoever had complained about him at work was now anonymously calling the police. Whoever it was, they wanted to get him bad. “And that’s why we’re going to fight this thing tooth and nail.”

The police didn’t search for very long. After poking around the living room, the den, and his study and bedroom for a few minutes, they emerged looking sheepish. “Sorry to have troubled you, Mr. And Mrs. Hillman.”

“No problem,” Dennis said, seeing them out the door.

By the time he stowed his briefcase away and began to undress, Carrie was getting steamed about the whole incident. “I can’t believe somebody would stoop so low just to have you fired. That’s outrageous! I bet it was that Bob Lansing; he’s been envious of you ever since you got that position. I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with something like this. In fact—”

Dennis grinned as he changed into casual clothes. As long as he had Carrie believing him, he was home free.

THE FOLLOWING DAY he left the house dressed in usual business attire. With Carrie knowing he was now unemployed, it would be easier to keep odd hours. Giving her the illusion he was job hunting was his chief source of cover. She left at her usual time this morning, carting the kids to school on her way to her job as an executive secretary, while Dennis dressed and made phone calls to prospective employers. When they were gone, he went to his study and extracted the rape tape and placed it in his briefcase. Then he left the house.

Harvey Ponozzo had left a message on his cell phone last night and instructed him on where they were to meet today to make the drop-off for the tape. Dennis returned the call late last night, telling Harvey he would be there, and now as he made the drive to Colorado Boulevard, looking for Phan Liquor store, he hoped to have all this swept under the rug as soon as possible. Get Harvey the tape, then he could resume his life. He was positive he could get a new job soon and when he did, he wasn’t going to look at a porn magazine or website ever again. In fact, he was going to expand his job search and consider positions out of state. The further away he could get away from Los Angeles, the better.

He made the drop-off quickly. Harvey was waiting for him in his silver Mercedes and Dennis handed him a brown paper bag containing the tape. “I’ll call you later this afternoon,” Harvey said, starting his car. He pulled out of the parking slot and Dennis went back to his car, feeling as if a heavy burden had been suddenly lifted from him.

The rest of the day would have gone smoothly except for one thing.

Harvey Panozzo never called him.

Dennis began to worry about it that evening as he feigned normalcy in the den. Carrie was watching the evening news. The kids were...well, who knew where the kids were this time of the evening. Dennis made a half-hearted attempt at getting his resume updated and actually visited a pornography addicts support group on the Internet. He’d been thinking about his actions all afternoon, and how they’d affected his job and his life. He was finally coming to terms that he had a problem and he had to face it, deal with it, correct it. He still didn’t want Carrie or the kids to know about it, and he hoped that keeping it away from them while secretly trying to conquer his problem would do the trick. He still had to stay away from the stuff. He hoped Harvey Panozzo didn’t call him back.

“How’d the job search go today?” Carrie asked from her spot on the sofa.

“Good,” Dennis lied, rustling the paper. “I updated my resume, made a few phone calls. I’m hoping to get at least one interview by next week.”

“Think you’ll have something by then?” Carrie looked concerned. “Our house taxes are going to be due pretty soon. With Wendy’s college tuition coming up in Fall, it’s going to be kinda tough.”

“We’ll be fine,” Dennis said. Shit, he thought. He’d completely forgotten about the goddamn taxes. Without a job to cover him, Wendy’s college tuition was in jeopardy. The money he had in the bank was already earmarked for it. The house taxes would eat all that up.

“Are you sure?” Carrie was looking at him with concern.

Dennis smiled. “We’ll be fine, honey. I promise.”

He told himself that over and over all night until he was convinced things would be fine. And they would be. He was sure of it.

HARVEY CALLED HIM the following morning.

“How’d you like to make some money?” Harvey asked.

Dennis was sitting at his desk in front of his computer. He had just updated his resume and printed ten copies on nice bond paper. The Los Angeles Times Employment section was spread out in front of him and he’d circled five job descriptions that appeared to match his skills and educational background. “Doing what?” he asked. He was immediately suspicious.

“Don’t worry, it’s legit.”

“I think I can find a new job on my own,” Dennis said. “Thanks for the offer of help, though.”

“I want to help,” Harvey continued. “Like I told you a few days ago, we prefer our members be professionally employed. That includes being able to network with us, allow us to help each other.”

“I don’t think I’m interested,” Dennis said. “In fact, I’ve changed my mind about the group. I no longer want to be a member.”

“You have three more tapes in your house,” Harvey said. “The police didn’t find them yesterday, but they will if they make another visit. While possession of bestiality films are only punishable by a small fine, possession of a necrophilia film will probably carry a murder charge.”

“What are you talking about?” Dennis felt his stomach drop. My God, did Harvey call the police and have them search my house? Did he get me fired from my job? If so, how?

“The film,” Harvey continued. “The one showing that guy screwing corpses. They’re murder victims, Dennis. Unsolved murders, I might add. The man in the videos is a hardcore junkie like you who’s a necrophile. Surely you don’t want your wife—your children—to know that you’re a—”

“I don’t have any such film in my safe,” Dennis stammered.

“You do now, and it’s not in your safe. It is in your study, though. When you were gone yesterday, one of our operatives broke into your home and planted it.”

Dennis felt all the spit dry up in his mouth.

“Go ahead and call the police and tell them about us if you want to,” Harvey purred. “They won’t be able to prove the group exists. The tape will have your fingerprints on it. We can arrange it so that the evidence of murder points to you. And with your...unique tastes in pornography, you could be in jail for a long time, Mr. Hillman.”

“What do you want?” Dennis felt his entire body go slack with shock. He felt totally helpless.

“All we want is your cooperation,” Harvey continued. “Your membership in the group. You’re one of us now. We’re here to help you. Stray from us, we have to risk exposure. We can’t afford that. Surely you understand our concerns for security, don’t you Mr. Hillman?”

“Y..yes,” Dennis stammered.

“I’m calling you from my cell phone. I’m parked right outside your house. I expect to see you walk out your front door in fifteen seconds. If I don’t see you, I call the police and alert them to the location of the tape.”

“Wh..why...”

“When you exit your home, you will walk to my car and enter the front passenger side,” Harvey continued. “I will take you to the job I’ve mentioned. Do you understand?”

Dennis didn’t know what to say. His eyes darted around his study, trying to find something out of place, some clue that would tell him where the tape was planted.

“Dennis?”

“Yes?”

“Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Fifteen seconds, Mr. Hillman. From the time I hang up. I’m hanging up now. I expect to see you shortly.” The line went dead.

Dennis was up and out the study in a flash. He grabbed his wallet and keys and left the house, locking it behind him, and headed down the front walkway and saw Harvey’s silver Mercedes parked at the curb across the street. He walked around the front of the vehicle, feeling the dread build inside, entered the car and sat down in the front passenger seat. Harvey started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb. “Good,” Harvey said as he drove out of the neighborhood. “I’m glad you came out.”

“Why are you doing this?” Dennis asked.

“I want to help you,” Harvey said as he piloted the Mercedes out of the neighborhood. He headed toward the 210 Freeway. “Relax. You’ll be well taken care of.”

Dennis found it hard to relax. He kept thinking, what did I get myself into? as Harvey took the 210 into the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Harvey’s demeanor was casual and laid back. He was dressed in casual business attire—tan slacks and a white polo shirt. The interior of the Mercedes was spotless. For the first time, Dennis wondered what Harvey did for a living.

“What do you do for a living?” Dennis asked, trying to sound casual.

“I’m in the insurance industry,” Harvey said. He kept the car at the speed limit. “I’m just a corporate drone like yourself. That’s all.”

“What’s this job you told me about?”

“You’ll see.”

Forty minutes later Harvey pulled the car up to a ranch-style house nestled in a small valley deep within the San Gabriel mountains. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. “Come, follow me,” he said.

Dennis followed, still wondering what this was about. He’d managed to get Harvey to admit that the work in question was for a fellow member who needed a database built of various hardcore pornography media. “We’re building a lending library,” Harvey had said. “It’s still in the early stages, but neither of us have the time to build something sophisticated. That’s why you’re here.”

“And you’ll pay me?” Dennis asked. Despite how things were shaping up, he still felt a trifle nervous as he followed Harvey to the front walkway.

“Of course,” Harvey said. He unlocked the door. “Perhaps we can get you to make some money at this as well. How would you like that?”

“I don’t know,” Dennis said.

“If you had an opportunity to make twenty-five grand screwing a dead chick, you wouldn’t do it?”

“I just like to watch,” Dennis said. “I don’t want to actually do these things.”

“Ah! You’re merely the customer, right?”

Dennis shrugged. “I guess.”

“Wonderful!” Harvey grinned. “Come this way, Mr. Hillman.”

Harvey led Dennis through a large foyer to the rear of the house. Dennis could hear the sound of a television and he saw the flickering light of the screen spilling in the shadowed room. Whatever was playing it was either a horror movie of some kind or—

Dennis stopped at the threshold of the room as the image on the large screen TV rolled on. What appeared to be the elderly woman from the necrophilia film was being brutally beaten by two masked men. Her cries of pain were real, genuine. Dennis could tell that the minute he laid eyes on the film. He turned to look at Harvey and as he did so, his eyes rested on two figures lying on the floor like large, bloated lumps. Dennis took a step forward and recoiled, his stomach roiling as he saw that the figures were two adult dead males. They were naked, their bodies livid and white. Dennis noticed one had a small hole in the center of his forehead. His eyes were half-open, the lids like droopy shutters. Dennis took an involuntary step backward. “Hey, look, I don’t think this is—”

“You don’t think this is what, Mr. Hillman?” Harvey stood at the threshold to the large den, smiling. The old woman on the large screen TV screamed in pain as something horrible happened to her.

Dennis turned to Harvey, his heart racing. “Those guys...” He couldn’t finish what he was going to say.

“Are dead. Yes, I know that Mr. Hillman. I thought that’s what you liked.”

“I’m not gay,” Dennis said quickly. He wanted to get the hell out of here, but something kept him rooted to the spot.

“Of course not,” Harvey said. “Andy Wilkes, one of the dead men you see there, was very much into young men, though. Take a look at the other one. Surely you’ll recognize him.”

A spike of fear dripped down Dennis’s spine as he took another look at the bodies. One of the bodies was that of a fat middle-aged man with thinning gray hair. He looked familiar...vaguely familiar. He looked like the type of guy who’d be...

Dennis put a hand to his mouth to hold back the scream. “Oh my God! That’s Carl Grossman!” His knees threatened to buckle and Dennis leaned against the wall.

“Yes, that’s Mr. Grossman. He was the supplier. Nice that we have all three of you here, don’t you think? Customer, supplier, and the manufacturer.”

Dennis looked at Harvey. He was shaking so badly. “Wh-wha-what are you talking about?”

Over the agonizing screams of the old woman on the screen, Harvey continued. “Almost twenty years ago my mother and son were kidnapped. My son was only eight years old. They were never found. I looked everywhere; the police, the FBI, they looked everywhere. I used every available resource I could. I became so obsessed with their disappearance that my wife left me. There was no sign my mother took my son and changed their identities. There were signs that they were taken against their will, though. A witness reported that on last day they were seen, two men were observed talking to my mother and son at Alondra Park in Gardena. My mother was a very accommodating, very helpful woman. This same witness saw my mother and son walking with the two men out to the parking lot. Perhaps they told her they needed some kind of help. We’ll probably never know. Needless to say, they disappeared from that park. My mother’s car was found still parked there without a trace of them. Later, much later, about thirteen years ago while chasing down a lead, I came across this tape.” He motioned toward the TV screen. One of the masked men was cutting the old woman’s throat while another one forced a small boy, who appeared to be eight or nine years old, his face red and wet from crying, to watch.

“Don’t ask me where I got it,” Harvey continued. He reached into his slacks pocket and pulled out a gun. He pointed it at Dennis as he continued. “To make a long story short, I did more research and found out my son  later died. He’d been held as a sex slave for a group of perverts and eventually ran away. He was so scarred, so traumatized, that he became insane. He was tracked down by this ring of pedophiles and perverts and again abused horribly for profit.” Harvey picked up Dennis’s rape tape from the top of the large screen TV. “Your tape, Mr. Hillman. You have the only copy. My son’s suffering was made for your pleasure. You paid to watch my son suffer!”

“No!” Dennis said. “I swear, I didn’t!”

Harvey’s face was twisted with rage and grief. “I’ve waited a long time for this...to get back at the people responsible for this...this filth! It took me years to track down Carl Grossman, but I did. I got him, and I got the bastard who killed my son, and now I’ve got the sonofabitch who paid for it.” He pointed the gun at Dennis.

“Please...” Dennis stammered. “Y-Y-you don’t want to..to...d-d-do this!”

“Sure I do,” Harvey said, his grief suddenly as gone as fast as it came, his face erupting into a sick smile and then he pulled the trigger.

The .38 caliber slug tore into Dennis’s head, ejecting brain and bone into the wall behind him. The force of the shot propelled Dennis back and he slumped against the wall, eyes opened and glazed. Harvey watched as Dennis’s dead body rolled over and beat a convulsive tattoo on the carpeted floor before finally stopping.

Harvey knelt down and felt for Dennis’s pulse. Except for the dwindling sound of the dying woman’s screams coming from the snuff film on the TV, the house was silent.

Harvey grinned. He felt good. Wonderful. He never thought it would have felt so great, so fulfilling, so powerful! He stood up and replaced the revolver in his front pants pocket. He turned the VCR off with the remote control and rewound the tape and began making preparations for the owner of the house to arrive. According to his research, they were due back home in about three hours. Harvey had already set up all the video cameras at strategic places in the house, and he would turn all of them on with one flick of the remote when it was showtime. Then, he would wait for them to walk in and welcome them home, all four of them: mother, father, two adorable kids. Then they’d have some fun. He was looking forward to it now that he’d gotten warmed up. And getting warmed up was important. He’d gone through this stage with Carl, Alan, and Dennis to make sure he had the stomach for it. It was one thing to watch this shit everyday for the past twenty years; it was quite another to actually cross the line and do it.

Marveling at how well his fabricated story about his mother and son had gone over with Dennis Hillman, Harvey Panozzo made sure all the weapons were ready. Then he sat down in the darkened living room and waited.

What Happened at Forest Green Cemetery

Subj: Re: Long Time No See!

Date: 3/14/01  4:32 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: InRecvry@earthlink.net (Julie Stewart)

To: Phantasmjg@aol.com (Jesus Gonzalez)

<<It sounds like you’ve been doing well for yourself. Yes, I found Classmates.com the same way, too. And even though I wasn’t that popular in high school, I just had to sign up for it. What better way to promote myself than throw my URL up everywhere, right?>>

I know what you mean! If I hadn’t gone there and saw that you were now a writer—a published writer with books!—I probably wouldn’t have gotten the nerve to write to you in the first place.

<<Sounds like even though we were both social misfits in high school, we’re doing very well now. Who would have thought that two nobodies from the Gardena High School graduating class of 1982 would have turned out to be...well, somebodies!>>

Well, maybe you’re somebody now, but not me. The only thing I’ve been successful at is maintaining nine years of sobriety. Okay, so I managed to get married and have a kid, too. Everybody does that, though. At least I’ve been monogamous, which is something I thought I could never be. Which leads me to something I want to ask you...

When I saw that you were a writer and visited your web site, I was very intrigued. So I went to Amazon.com and bought a couple of your books. And since they were *exactly* what I was hoping for, I thought I would ask you a favor. Would you care to read something of mine? Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those “would-you-read-my-story” things you probably get from aspiring writers. This is actually a true account, something that happened to me and the guys I hung out with in high school over at Forest Green Cemetery—remember that place, down the street from Gardena High? The reason I thought I’d ask you first is that it’s pretty long. It may take me several e-mails to tell you. And the reason I thought I’d ask you is that since you’re a writer you’ll probably be open-minded to the story. Besides, I really need the help. I have nobody else to turn to.

So, whaddaya say?

Later!

Julie

*

Subj: Intrigued

Date: 3/14/01 5:13 PM Pacific Standard Time

From  Phantasmjg@aol.com (Jesus Gonzalez)

To: InRecvry@earthlink.net  (Julie Stewart)

Okay, I’m intrigued. “Really need the help” and “I have nobody else to turn to” tell me that this is serious. Nice to hear that after not being in contact with you for almost twenty years, you’re able to trust me so readily. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, either; we were friends then, and I’m sorry we lost touch. I’m glad to be back in touch with you again and will listen to anything you have to say.

I’m all ears,

Jesus

J. F. Gonzalez
http://members.aol.com/phantasmjg

*

Subj: What happened at Forest Green Cemetery, Part One

Date: 3/14/01 5:45 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: InRecvry@earthlink.net (Julie Stewart)

To: Phantasmjg@aol.com  (Jesus Gonzalez)

Thanks! I knew that even though we haven’t seen or spoken to each other in almost twenty years that I could confide in you. You were one of my best friends in high school, and I knew the minute I saw your name up at Classmates.com that I could come to you with this.

Before I begin I suppose I should preface this by warning you right off the bat about two things: (1) I am fucking scared to death and (2), in the event I can’t finish this e-mail I’m just hitting the send button. So if the last e-mail I send to you doesn’t end with my customary ‘Later!’ you’ll know that I’m history. No, I won’t be dead, but...well, I’ll explain it later. One other thing: don’t tell me where you live now. That’s a warning right off the bat. DON’T!

Another thing you should know: I’m writing this on my laptop, in some hotel room somewhere in Kansas. I actually stayed here last night and all day today, getting some rest. I’ve been on the run since Saturday and had to rest for a day or so. I really don’t know where else to go, but I have to keep going. If I stay in one place for too long I think he’s going to take over. If I stayed at home I was afraid of what I might do to my husband and my son.

Okay, you’re probably freaking out now, thinking what the fuck is wrong with you, Julie! Whatever you do, don’t call the cops. There’s nothing they can do anyway. All they’ll do is take a look at my record (mostly for drugs; more on that later) and that’s not going to help. They’ll just think I’ve back-slid into using again, and that all I’m going to relate to you is drug induced. I’m telling you right now that is BULLSHIT. I am of clean and sober mind as I write this. And I intend to stay that way. All I want you to do is read these and SAVE THESE E-MAILS. These e-mails are the only evidence, the only documentation, of what has happened. I’m sorry, Jesus, but the minute I saw your name on Classmates.com, I knew I could rely on you to receive these messages. I feel bad that I’m using you in this way, but...believe me, I don’t mean it to be this way. If things had been different I wouldn’t be doing this, but I really need somebody to read these and save them. I don’t know anybody else that would; not my friends, not my in-laws, and certainly not my own fucking family. I don’t trust any of them more than I can throw them.

Okay, enough of that. Time to take the plunge.

Remember Mark Sawyer, Brent Katsamata, Tina Aguilare, and Joel Brandt? I know you and Brent hung out, and you probably knew the others as well (I know you’re probably thinking this has to do with what happened to Mark and Tina and it does). Well, as you probably remember, I used to hang out with them when we were juniors. We used to spend most of our first and second periods of school getting stoned over at Forest Green Cemetery. If you remember, that was the party place for us social outcasts. It was either that or go to John Burke’s place occasionally when his parents weren’t home. I remember seeing you at John’s a few times. Christ, it was in his bedroom that we got stoned that one morning and one thing led to another and...well, I hope if anything that single memory will bring a smile to your face. :)

Anyway, as you know, I used to get righteously fucked up with them. There was so much shit going on at home with my dad and sisters that I didn’t give a shit about school, or myself. I suppose if I had, I would have cared more about myself and maybe I would have cared more about what happened to me later.

Okay, here it is then. Enough fucking around. I’m going to tell you everything from the beginning.

It must have been May or June of 1981. It was toward the end of the semester, so I think it was June. Joel had scored some great weed at a Rush concert the night before, so we went over to Forest Green Cemetery to get stoned. Joel and Brent were telling us about the show—you went, didn’t you?—and we were passing the pipe back and forth, taking hits. Joel was getting real philosophical, and he was talking about Jung, and the hemispheres of the brain, and just a bunch of stuff about where we all came from. Shit like that. Brent was actually getting into it, and the conversation turned to the gravestones we were sitting on, and we started reading the names off. Joel got this bright idea to see how far back the graves go and like a bunch of stoned morons, we went along with him. We weren’t even thinking that the oldest grave we’d find was probably from 1925!

So we’re walking along, just reading the names and the dates on the stones, wondering who the people were. There were a lot of people there that died in the forties, and now that I think about it I wonder if they were in World War II? Most of the death dates were from the 40’s through the 70’s, and there were some recent ones as well. Still, some of the stones looked ancient, even though they really weren’t that old. And some of the older graves, those of people buried in the 1940’s and 1930’s, had stones that still looked brand new. Wonder why some stones fade quicker than others?

Anyway, so we’re going along and we stop by this one marker and I still remember the name: Archibald Lasher. What a name, huh? It’s the kind of name that leaps out at you, and it leaped out at us. Tina started wondering if they called him ‘Archie,’ and I suppose in the ‘20’s they had. He died in September (don’t remember the day) of 1928. He was thirty-four years old when he died.

So we’re talking about him (and remember, we were really stoned; you know how smoking pot always turned us into blabbermouths), and Brent starts wondering what kinda guy he was, and we just...fixated on that. We were intensely interested in this Archibald Lasher—who he was, how did he die. I mean, there were probably a couple thousand graves at Forest Green Cemetery and here we were focused on just one guy!

We started guessing what might have been his story. Tina thought maybe he was killed in a car accident. Mark thought maybe he might have gotten murdered. Brent’s idea was the most logical. Being that Brent’s Japanese, he knew quite a lot about Gardena—if you remember from our junior high school local history classes, Gardena was a farming community in the early part of the 20th century, and landowners often employed the Japanese to work their farms. Many of those same Japanese later bought the land and settled in the area, which is why Gardena has a very heavy Japanese-American population.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson. Brent’s theory was that maybe the guy was a local farmer or a ranch hand that was killed in an accident. A plausible theory, don’t you think? It was Joel who had the bright idea of coming back later that night with a Ouija board to try to contact the guy’s spirit.

I can hear you already: you’re thinking that I’m trying to pin something as stupid as playing with a Ouija board with what happened to Mark and Tina. I wish I could say that were true. As things turned out, we didn’t need a Ouija board to result in what happened to Mark and Tina, but that’s a theory I’ll expound upon later in my story.

Okay, this e-mail is already getting long. Part two is coming next.

Later!

Julie

*

Subj: What happened at Forest Green Cemetery, Part Two

Date: 3/14/01 6:16 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: InRcvry@earthlink.net  (Julie Stewart)

To: Phantasmjg@aol.com  (Jesus Gonzalez)

Okay, continuing where I left off...

We left the cemetery and finally showed up at school around 10:30. I think I may have only gone to one class that day. I left at lunch and got stoned again at Michelle Kimoka’s house. I don’t remember what I did the rest of the day. If you’d done as much pot and acid as I did back then, you wouldn’t remember either. Christ, it’s a wonder I’ve got any functional gray matter left after all the shit I’ve done, huh?

I do remember Joel called me later that night. He said he’d gone to the library and had done some research, reading micro-film of the Gardena Valley News, trying to find information about Archibald Lasher. And guess what? Ol’ Archibald was killed all right—he was hung at San Quentin!

Joel told us the story later that night at his house, in the garage where we often hung out and smoked. Archibald Lasher had been arrested and convicted in 1928 for 12 brutal murders spanning four months, all of them committed in the Gardena/Torrance areas. He actually brought one of his victims almost to the same spot where he was later buried. Weird, huh? Keep in mind that those areas of Los Angeles weren’t that well built up yet. From what my dad told me, it was actually quite a drive to downtown Los Angeles in those days. Now everything’s all one big urban sprawl and you can get to downtown LA in fifteen minutes by hopping on the freeway.

Anyway, Archibald Lasher had been hung at San Quentin in September of 1928, and was buried near his family, in Gardena. Forest Green Cemetery was fairly new back then (in fact, Gardena High School wasn’t even at its present location—if you remember, it was down the street a bit at what is now Peary Jr. High School). The areas surrounding the cemetery were mostly farmland. Gardena itself wasn’t incorporated as a city until 1930.

That was all Joel found out that afternoon, but it got us talking. Tina and I were kinda freaked out that we’d been standing over the grave of a convicted murderer. It was like standing over Jack the Ripper’s grave or something.

A few days later we met at the cemetery, only this time we met over Archibald Lasher’s grave. That was Joel’s idea. He wanted to talk more about the murders. Tina and I didn’t want to, but Brent had some prime Acapulco Gold, and you knew me back then—that was shit I could never turn down! So, we hung out and got stoned, wondering about the man that lay below us, and the people he’d killed.

Now a little side-trip. If you remember, Mark and Tina were banging each other, had been for a few months. A few nights before when we’d all gone out, Tina hadn’t come along and Mark and I wound up making out in the backseat of his car. I had become real attracted to him and wanted him. And I got him finally. It was around the time that we discovered who Archibald Lasher was that I think Tina started suspecting.

Anyway, back to the story. We got real fucked up that day. Most of the talk centered on Archibald Lasher, wondering about the details of his story. Tina was really stoned, almost in a trance. She didn’t say much. Joel and Brent were talking about trying to find out more about Archibald Lasher, and Mark and I stammered at small talk. Finally we left.

You know the rest; perhaps you were anticipating this anyway. Later that night, Tina and Mark went out and wound up at Forest Green Cemetery, at Archibald Lasher’s grave. She killed him there. Stabbed him in the chest with a dagger she’d gotten a hold of, then proceeded to stab him ninety-eight times. She left him there and started walking home. A cop saw her walking along with blood drenched all over her clothes down Artesia Boulevard, and they arrested her.

Then she hung herself in her cell with her belt and shirt.

I’m sure you remember when the news broke. It was the last week of school. I think that last week everybody that knew them was in shock. Christ, I think even if you didn’t know them you would have been in shock. Everybody was talking about it, more so than when they talked about that horrible car accident Joe Lopez and Chuck Miller were in earlier that year. I went ballistic; I freaked out. I remember being called out of my first class (the one I hardly ever went to; English Lit) to the principal’s office, figuring I must be getting busted for cutting school so much. Instead, a pair of detectives wanted to question me. They told me the news. I started crying and I couldn’t stop.

They called my dad and step-mom, and they took me home and questioned us for about an hour. They asked me everything about Tina and Mark. I told them most of what I knew (leaving out the part of Mark and I screwing around, and us smoking pot at the cemetery of course—I may have been a dumb teenager back then, but I wasn’t that stupid). Later, when my dad wasn’t around, I told them about Mark and Tina being an item, and me messing around with Mark one night, and me thinking that Tina might have had suspicions and I started crying even harder, right in front of them. I had to get it off my chest, but I couldn’t do it in front of my father. I didn’t want him to think badly of me—funny to think that, even though I didn’t care much for him in the first place, if you know what I mean.

They finally concluded that Tina killed Mark in a jealous rage, then committed suicide in her cell out of grief. That was the official verdict.

I have since found out otherwise. Which I’ll explain further in part three.

Later!

Julie

*

Subj: What Happened at Forest Green Cemetery, Part 3

Date: 3/14/01  7:18 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: InRecvry@earthlink.net (Julie Stewart)

To: Phantasmjg@aol.com (Jesus Gonzalez)

Okay, now I’m going to give you my theory of what happened, and why I think it’s happening, and why I’m so scared. But first I have to remind you to SAVE THESE E-MAILS and do something with the story I’m telling you. Publish it or something. Make people aware that what has happened, what is still happening, is the truth. People need to be warned.

Second, I think I should fill in some missing gaps. If you remember correctly, you didn’t see much of me that summer. (Okay, we saw each other at that Ozzy Osbourne concert at the Long Beach Arena, but if we saw each other again I surely don’t remember; I was probably too fucked up to notice.) When school started again in September, I was more of a waste case than I was before. I don’t even know why I went to school. I was really depressed, only I didn’t know it at the time. Poor John Burke even tried to cheer me up; he’d gotten clean and was trying to turn his life around. I remember him trying to get me to go to class. Remember that?

To make a long story short, I never did graduate. My dad got pissed at me for my failing grades, started calling me a stupid-ass slut, and that’s when I left home. That’s the last you, or Brent, or Joel, or any of you ever saw of me. So what happened to me?

I was going out with Daryl Martinez at the time, and I lived with him in a room his parents had made for him in their garage. Daryl was in a band, and for awhile he even played in some of the Hollywood clubs. I started hanging out on the Strip, started hanging out with bands like Motley Crue and Ratt, who were just club bands then. I started doing more drugs, harder stuff like coke and speed. Then I started dabbling in smack. Just a little at first, but then a few years later I really got into it. I wouldn’t shoot it, not at first. I was dancing by then, mostly at Bare Elegance near LAX, then at the Seventh Veil on the Strip. I went through boyfriends like you wouldn’t believe. I became a real heavy-metal chick groupie. I suppose in a way I was blaming myself for Mark and Tina’s death. But I was blind. I could not see, ha ha.

No matter how much drugs I did, I still read a lot, mostly science fiction. (Remember when you and I were the only kids at 156th Street School that always ordered a lot of books from the Scholastic Book Club? LOL!) One of my boyfriends at the time had a computer, a Mac, and I started playing with it a lot. That’s when I first discovered the Internet. This was in 1986 or ‘87. I got into the whole cyberpunk culture thanks to that Mac and some of the science fiction I was reading (I think I read Mirrorshades until it was falling apart). Thinking back on it, it seems kinda weird that I was doing this Internet thing way back then, huh?

I was making good money stripping, and I was also doing some escort work—high-priced stuff. This is actually the first time I’m telling anybody this (except for my husband, Jim). I’m ashamed that I fell into that, but I needed the money, and I really didn’t have any confidence in myself. I didn’t think I could do anything else to earn money, and the only life I knew was using my body to make money, so I did. Plus, my heroin habit got ugly; I finally started shooting it, and within a few months I couldn’t even dance or work the escort scene anymore. Business executives don’t want to screw a junkie with track marks all over her arms and hands.

Somehow, I made it through the rough spots. I was a functioning smack addict for three or four years. Another boyfriend I had was a dealer, so I had a steady supply, enough to keep me going. I also didn’t have to work for it (thinking back on it, I guess you could say I put out for it, but we won’t go there). Finally, as most addicts will say, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and I left Ben and went to a recovery center in North Hollywood called Cri-Help and literally got down on my hands and knees and begged them to help me.

I was there for nine months. It was a hardcore recovery center. It was like being in the army or something. I had jobs to do (keeping the place clean, doing volunteer work, attending meetings every day, that kind of thing). But finally I made it through the program in December of 1992 and have been clean ever since.

During the whole time I was using and when I was in Cri-help, I was still playing with the computer. I used the computer with Ben to manage his business. (He was one of the big distributors for Black Tar Heroin in the LA area, and some of his clients were big spenders—I tracked everything on an Excel spreadsheet.) I continued using my computer skills at Cri-help, and shortly after I completed the program, they helped me get a job at an insurance company. To make a long story short, I worked my way up the ladder, bought a computer for myself, haunted the internet at night, and when the World Wide Web started catching on in ‘95 or so I taught myself html and Java programming and began my own Web Design business in early ‘97. Been in business for myself ever since.

Oh yeah, and I also met my husband, Jim Stewart, at the insurance company I worked at. He was the first ‘real’ boyfriend I ever had; was the first guy I was with since becoming clean, and we got married in ‘96 and had Mitch, our son, two years later. I never thought life would be so wonderful.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, I got nostalgic, typed in ‘Gardena High School’ in a search engine, came up with Classmates.com, looked at the names of all the people in the class I would have graduated with (not recognizing most of them) and saw your name as well as a few other people I remember, and took the plunge. I wanted to find out if anybody knew what happened to Brent Katsamata and Joel Brandt, so I left a message on the message board pertaining to that. I didn’t get many responses, then somebody (I don’t remember who) left a message saying she heard Joel was in prison or something.

Now I was intrigued. I left a message back, asking for details. The woman wrote back (e-mailed me, actually), saying she heard Joel had moved to Florida, but had come back to Gardena. He’d killed a woman, who I later found out was his wife. Joel was actually caught at Forest Green Cemetery, and he’d brought his wife’s severed head with him. Pretty sick, huh? Guess whose grave he was found at?

You guessed it. Ol’ Archibald Lasher.

I found all this out later, a week after the woman e-mailed me the info. I went to the Gardena Valley News and read the stories on their micro-film. Then I searched the paper for similar stories about Brent Katsamata. For some reason, I knew what I would find before I even found it.

Getting long. Continued in the next...

Later!

Julie

*

Subj: What Happened at Forest Green Cemetery, Part 4

Date: 3/14/01  7:43 PM Pacific Standard Time

From: InRecvry@earthlink.net (Julie Stewart)

To: Phantasmjg@aol.com (Jesus Gonzalez)

Okay, back to Brent. It seems that shortly after high school, Brent got a girlfriend pregnant and she had a baby, a daughter. Brent didn’t find out about it till a few years later. (Another classmate of ours, Tracy Melgosa, who I got reacquainted with at Classmates.com, told me about it.) Anyway, he started a relationship with his daughter and her mother even though he was involved with somebody else and eventually got married to this other woman. He got divorced a few years later. Anyway, maybe five years after his divorce, he went to his daughter’s home and brutally murdered her in her bedroom. Cut off her head, ripped her heart out, the whole nine yards.

I don’t even want to tell you what he did with the body. I will tell you, however, what was found with the body.

Oh, by the way, both Joel and Brent are still alive, although both of them were committed to psychiatric hospitals. Atascedero, I think. From what I later found out, they are—pardon the expression—“crazy as a bunch of fucking loons.”

Okay, I’m sure you’re probably shocked to hear all this, especially since you used to be friends with Brent. All that I’ve told you is true, and no, this isn’t a figment of my imagination, nor is it drug induced. I’ll include some URL’s at the end of this narrative to a few of the online news articles and research stuff I found.

Anyway, what was found in Brent’s daughter’s room with the body was some weird symbol drawn on the floor in the girl’s blood, along with some black candles. The police said the killing was cult related. In my research, I also found that the murder Joel committed was cult related, too. I’m guessing that Mark’s death was cult related as well; the weapon Tina used to kill him with was a long ceremonial dagger she’d bought a few days before. But at the time of Mark’s murder, the police didn’t consider it to be cult-related; they simply chalked it up to a lover’s quarrel since they’d been lovers, and I had been messing around with Mark and all. They figured she got jealous and killed him.

Well, trust me, she wasn’t jealous, it was a cult-related murder! I know so because I later found out a lot of shit that really freaked me out and is gonna freak the fuck out of you, too.

Okay, when I found this out about Brent I did more research. I started on the Internet, then went to some bookstores. I did some more background investigation on Archibald Lasher’s crime spree, and actually talked to the son of one of the detectives that was on the case. Apparently the case was big in its day, and this man, a guy by the name of Angus Scott, told me all kinds of stuff. In fact, Angus’s father had kept a journal, and he let me read the entries pertaining to the Lasher case. Here is a summarized version:

Lasher had been a farm hand, all right. Gardena was pretty remote back then and not built up much. Downtown Gardena existed, three whole square blocks of it, so the section where Gardena High is now, and the surrounding neighborhood, was farms. The cemetery was there, I think, but not much else.

Anyway, according to Detective Scott, Lasher used to drive into LA and Hollywood a lot in the 20’s. He was quite the party-animal apparently. Anyway, around 1921, maybe 1922, he attended a lecture by Aliester Crowley and got interested in the occult. He joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, then later the Ordo Templi Orientis, which was an ancient German Secret Society (related to the Knights Templar, or so they liked to think). It was then that he became involved in yet another group, one called The Children of the Night.

Information on this last group is sketchy; it’s so sketchy that it took me a long time to get information on them. They were very secretive, and the information I got was from a writer who wrote a book on Satanic Cults (his book, by the way, is called Satanism: An Anthropological Study, and his name is Arthur Meadows). Okay, get this: they (The Children of the Night cult) apparently paid homage to a demonic entity named Belial. This stuff isn’t in Arthur’s book, by the way. He told me all this stuff over the phone and in e-mails. According to Arthur, they paid homage to Belial and according to their creed or whatever, one who became a deep worshipper of Belial had to prove their alliance to him by performing a blood sacrifice in his name...and the blood sacrifice had to be one who the follower loved the most. Sort of paralleling that Biblical story of when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son to prove Abraham’s love for him. Well, this worked the same way. The more Lasher got into it, the stronger Belial’s influence on him was until he was under the demon’s spell. Belial was by now compelling Lasher to bring him a blood sacrifice, and Lasher was trying to resist. The person he was closest to, the person he loved the most, was his son. So, he committed those other murders, hoping that would appease the demon but it never worked. He was finally caught for the murders and executed, and that’s the story he told all the detectives.

Naturally, they didn’t believe it. They probably thought he was trying to cop an insanity plea.

Okay, so some psycho in the twenties gets a burr up his ass about the occult and decides to go killing people. Big fucking deal, right? Where do Joel and Brent and Tina come in? Why the fuck am I so scared? I bet that’s what you’re thinking, right?

Here’s why, and this is based on my research and talking to Joel and Brent’s family, and later Tina’s family. I got in touch with all of them after I found all this out, and they told me what was going on with them in the years after our little incident at Forest Green Cemetery.

My feeling is that Belial was pissed. He’d done all these things for Archibald Lasher and the bastard didn’t live up to his end of the bargain. He’d been promised the perfect blood sacrifice and was denied it. And he was hungry for it. And somehow he was trapped between the spiritual world and our physical one. Archibald’s death was the cause of that, and he waited over fifty years for the perfect open vessel to jump in and influence. The perfect vessel that was fully open, ready to receive anything.

Meaning a bunch of stoned teenagers hanging out at a fucking cemetery.

I’m sure lots of people walked by Archibald Lasher’s grave all the time. Probably drunk and stoned people, too. The trick is, we *willingly* went there, day in, day out. When we found out who Archibald Lasher was, we sought his grave out. We wondered about him, talked about him, tried to imagine what it was like for him back then. And we were under the influence of drugs, the perfect state to be in to be receptive to psychic and spiritual influence. Think of it this way: Samadhi is a state in Eastern religious disciplines in which man achieves union with the Infinite—the spirit world. Psychedelics have long been known to be a short-cut to Samadhi. Eastern mystics have also warned that shortcuts can be dangerous. Once the doors of consciousness are thrown open, those without the proper discipline (like us) cannot control what gets in (like Belial).

Naturally, that was all Belial needed.

I think it got Tina first. I think she saw what Belial offered her, and she caved in easily. Only she never got to finish the ritual.

But that psychic link was still there. It sought Joel next. It took awhile, but the link was never broken. Joel kept tripping and getting stoned after that, so it found its way to him. And he resisted. But he finally did it, five years or so after we graduated.

It got to Brent next, and it stayed with him for almost ten years. Get this: apparently there is some speculation Brent may have killed a bunch of people prior to him murdering his daughter. There isn’t any hard proof, but the way he killed his daughter, and some other circumstantial evidence makes the cops think Brent may have murdered 20 people between 1986 and the day he killed his daughter in early 1997. It was in 1986 that Joel killed his wife and was caught. I think it got to Brent right after that, and Brent tried to resist, appeasing it with other murders that started in 1986. By the time it got to him, Brent had virtually stopped getting stoned, but I think it still got to him; by then it didn’t need that link.

Brent also had a stronger will then, so Belial had quite a fight, which is why I think it took ten years for Brent to finally succumb. I think Brent was following Archibald Lasher’s plan, only it didn’t work.

Now it’s after me.

How could it get to me if I haven’t been doing drugs for years? I’ve done acid probably a hundred times. And that shit stays with you. Occasionally, I still get flashbacks. I think that’s all it took.

I’d started feeling weird a few weeks before I even went on Classmates.com and found all this stuff out. It was a feeling I couldn’t explain at the time, but now I recognize it; it was as if something was invading me. Some other entity, totally independent of me, had taken host inside me. And it was massaging my brain, nestling into me, getting ready to take control.

The minute I found all this out it started making demands. It started playing with my synapses, releasing pleasure-reward centers. I learned about this in rehab, how drugs reward our pleasure centers so we keep doing them, pushing that button to feel good, like a rat in a controlled experiment that keeps pushing the button for food.

I recognized it for what it was and that’s when I got the fuck out of my house. You see, I wanted to save my husband and son. They are the two people I love more than anything else in the world. Next to you, they are the only people I’ve ever really loved.

So that’s why I left. That’s why I’m e-mailing you now because I really need your help in this. I can feel Belial’s strength growing stronger, and I just pray to God that maybe if I keep running he won’t find me and march me back to California where you and my family are and

*

Author’s Note:

The above series of e-mails are cut and pasted into this document verbatim as I received them. My lone correspondence to Julie I’ve included here is intended to provide verisimilitude to her narrative; my only prior communiqués to her bear no relation to the events described above.

Naturally I was curious, then alarmed when her message ended so abruptly. I never did receive a follow-up e-mail. I tried e-mailing her several times to no avail.  So I did some research of my own (it’s a writer’s pet peeve). I contacted the LAPD and the Gardena Police Department, first in an attempt to report that I was afraid Julie might have caused harm to herself. An officer from the Gardena Police Department returned my call a few days later to report that Julie had left her family a few weeks before, and that they were investigating my story. I was alarmed at this, and then turned to my second phase of research: verifying Julie’s story.

Surprisingly, I found her accounts of Joel and Brent being convicted of murder to be true. With the help of a friend who is a skip tracer, I was able to locate Julie’s husband. I was able to very quietly verify that, yes, Julie had left her husband and child very suddenly over a month ago. A missing person’s investigation is still going on, but according to my skip tracer friend it is believed she left on her own and no foul play is involved.

I did research her claims about the so-called “Children of the Night” eventually locating the book in question, and the author. According to Arthur Meadows, what he told Julie was based on his own speculations, and he’d told her that she shouldn’t construe his opinions—which he felt may or may not be true—to be genuine facts. He revealed to me that despite an exhaustive research, no such cult with that name existed then, although it was rumored at the time that a cult did, in fact, hold rituals and paid homage to Belial. He claims he got the information on the cult from a man who allegedly knew a member.

Julie’s claims of Lasher’s statements to Detective Scott are factual, however. (I found this out through the LAPD and the Freedom of Information Act.) I researched the demon Belial and found no reference to the claims made by Julie. According to the Penguin Encyclopedia of the Occult, Belial is the evil spirit of darkness and godlessness in the Jewish myth of old Palestine. In the Old Testament there is mentioning of Belial-men: they are those who oppose law and order. Other research suggests Belial is simply a synonym for Satan. In Paradise Lost, Milton distinguishes Belial from Satan, regarding him as the demon of impurity. In the Old Testament, the word is not a proper name, but a common noun usually signifying “wickedness” or “extreme wickedness.” There is scant information on worshippers, although modern day practitioners of the occult, most notably LeVeyan Satanists (adherents to the late Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan) invoke his name in rituals, but this is mostly for dramatic effect since they don’t believe in the devil anyway.

I did, however, find Julie’s story fascinating and rather disturbing. Who knows whether any of her claims are true? I am surprised (and sort of touched) by one claim of hers, though: that she loved me. Looking back, I can see it; we did have a special relationship in high school. We’d known each other since fourth grade, and became close friends through junior high and high school. I think she was closer to me, in some ways, then she was the other friends she hung out with at the time. She certainly seemed to divulge a lot of personal things to me back then, and I think she did so because she felt she could trust me. After all, we were friends.

Needless to say, this e-mail, and what has happened, came at a perfect time in my life. My web page says that I reside in Pasadena, California, which Julie no doubt saw. Since she first contacted me and now, eight weeks later as I’m writing this, I’ve since moved across the country. Despite the fact that I’m a horror writer, I’m not overly superstitious. And as a way of confronting whatever fears I may have, when I update my web page I will include the name of the town I live in. Yes, the coincidences are strange, but I also know a lot of the facts, too. Joel had come from a very dysfunctional home and had a drug problem. Brent, too, had a problem with drugs, namely hallucinogens. I can’t comment on what would cause him to kill his daughter and to do it in such a fashion. I also can’t say much about the speculation that he killed other people; that’s all based on circumstantial evidence anyway. I think blaming it all on drug use is a cop-out. Tina and Mark’s story is open and shut. And of course, you as a reader know Julie’s story. She, too, came from a dysfunctional background. Yes, she was intelligent, witty, and funny. But she also had serious emotional and psychological problems. I think her theories of the cult, and her fear that Belial was after her is simply a product of her drug-induced imagination.

Of course if I’m wrong, then I’m shit out of luck I guess. Personally, I don’t think she’ll find me. Guess the only thing to do is to wait and see.

What do you think?

JFG, 18 April, 2001

Girlfriend

IT HAD BEEN almost two months since his second wife, Jennifer, had died, and three months since he’d seen Sherri Anderson.

They’d taken dinner together at the Doubletree, and Ken had asked for a corner booth where they could have privacy. He almost hadn’t called Sherri; he wanted to see her, but it had been three months since they’d been together,  so he decided to invite her out to dinner in the hopes of rekindling their relationship.

Sherri sipped a glass of Zinfandel. She smiled, her deep blue eyes radiant. “I’m glad you decided to call me.”

Ken smiled back. “So am I.”

Sherri opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, yet hesitated. Ken had an idea what was on her mind: his wife, Jennifer. It was obvious that she’d heard the news, even if he hadn’t told her himself. He figured she would have found out from Marianne Denver in the days following Jennifer’s death. Like Carol’s death four years ago, Marianne had swooped in to the rescue in the aftermath. She’d taken care of the house, made sure that Helen was fed and dressed and off to school. And she’d made the funeral arrangements with Jennifer’s parents and had no doubt answered the phone in the three weeks of blind grief that followed after Ken walked into the master bedroom upon hearing the muffled thump, finding Jennifer dead of a cerebral aneurysm

Now it was just he and his daughter, Helen

And Marianne.

Sherri hadn’t told him who she’d left a message with, but he knew she had to have spoken with Marianne. How else would she have found out Jennifer was dead?

What mattered was that she was back in his life.

He was waiting for her at the table he’d reserved when she arrived. He’d risen to his feet awkwardly and she immediately swept him up in a hug. “I’m so sorry,” she’d whispered, kissing his cheek. Ken had hugged her back, feeling an instinctual need for closeness. It felt good to hold her, to see her, and as they sat down and glanced at the menu, Ken tried to bridge the three-month gap with idle chatter. Drink and dinner orders were taken, and after a few sips of wine Ken felt his tongue loosen enough to drift into what was foremost on his mind.

“You didn’t call me at work,” he said.

“I tried,” Sherri said. “Your voice mail wouldn’t let me leave a message and I couldn’t zero out.”

“So you called me at home.” Ken looked at her. He wasn’t angry. He was just concerned.

“Yes,” Sherri said, nodding. “I’m sorry, but...”

“It’s okay,” Ken said, managing a smile. “Who told you?”

“Jennifer’s friend, Marianne.”

“Ah, yes. Marianne.”

Sherri detected the tone in his voice and she looked at him. “What?”

Ken wondered if he should tell her. He’d been dying to confess to somebody about this for years. It was bursting at the seams. Hell, it was the reason he’d drifted into the affair with Sherri in the first place.

“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a crazy story.”

“What is?”

“What I’m about to tell you.”

“And what’s that?”

“How Jennifer died. And how Carol died.”

“Carol?”

“Carol.” Ken took a sip of wine. “My first wife.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Oh. I didn’t know you’d been married before.”

“I was,” he said. Now he really wished for a cigarette. So much for quitting.

Sherri poured herself some more wine from the carafe. “Well, as long as you’re here you might as well tell me,” she said.

“That’s why I ordered a full carafe of wine.”

Sherri raised her eyebrows in surprise. “This must be some story.” She took a sip and winked.

“It is.” Ken felt relaxed, at ease. They’d started sleeping together almost two years ago, and most of those trysts occurred at her luxury Glendale apartment. Some nights had been spent at the Doubletree. Virtually every time they’d had a weekend together he told Jennifer that he was out of town on business. Jennifer never checked. She’d always been doing something with Marianne.

He took a deep gulp of wine. “I’m going to be completely honest with you on this. I’ve been honest since the beginning, when I told you that I was married. At the time, though, I didn’t mention Carol because...well, I was over it. I’d gone past it, and it was over. I needed to not talk about her so I could heal. Do you understand?”

Sherri nodded. Her expression changed from puzzlement to sympathetic understanding. “I’m all ears,” she said.

“I think the best way to go about this is to tell you from the beginning,” he said. “I’m not even going to tell you what’s been happening. I’m going to let you come to your own conclusions about that. I think once I’ve told you everything about my relationships with Carol and Jennifer and Marianne, you’ll understand completely.”

Sherri’s expression darkened slightly. “You’re not going to tell me that you’ve been having a secret affair with Marianne this whole time, are you?”

Ken shuddered; he didn’t mean to, and he could tell from the look on Sherri’s face that she saw the look of horror and disgust that must have fluttered across his face at the mention of an affair with Marianne. “God no! Don’t even think that!”

“Okay.” Sherri’s features took on a look of concern at his expression. Ken took a sip of his drink and started talking.

“The best place to start is at the beginning,” he said. “I was twenty-four years old when I first met Carol. I was attending the University of Pennsylvania, going for a Masters degree in Health Care Administration. Carol had just graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, her hometown. We met at a healthcare seminar. One thing led to another, and we fell in love.”

Sherri smiled.

Ken smiled back, the memories fluttering in his mind. “It was 1986. We were young and infatuated with each other. We dated for a few months, then when it came time for me to come back to California, Carol pulled stakes and came back with me. We moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Pasadena. I got a job at Kaiser Permanente while she finished up her Master’s Degree at UCLA. Two years later, we got married.

“Carol got a job at Kaiser, on my recommendation. We had a lot of friends, had an active social life. Most of our social circle came from my old friends I’d grown up with, and a few people I went to college with who’d come out to LA. And while I thought Carol had come to think of them as her friends, too, I was mistaken. Because a year or so later, she began to get depressed. She felt she had no real friend in Los Angeles that she could hang around with. You know, a girlfriend to like, go shopping with.”

“We girls need to have our fun,” Sherri said, paraphrasing Cindy Lauper.

Ken grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. I understood perfectly where Carol was coming from. I encouraged her to seek out friendships with people at her office. And the only person she could really connect with was Marianne Denver.” He frowned. “I think about that now and wonder if Marianne saw the perfect opportunity in Carol. If perhaps she planted herself there and waited until the perfect victim just came along.”

“Wait a minute,” Sherri said, holding her hand up. “Are you accusing Marianne of something?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Ken said, taking another sip. “I told you that you were going to think I’m crazy.”

Sherri regarded him for a minute, then nodded for Ken to continue.

“At first I didn’t mind the relationship. They hung out together at work; went to lunch together, stuff like that. Then they started taking weekend shopping trips together. You know, either Marianne would come over to our place or Carol would drive out to Marina Del Rey to hers, and they would hit up all the stores and spend money. You know, things all women do.”

Carol brayed laughter. “Yeah, that’s right. Spend all of our men’s money.”

Ken’s demeanor was dark despite the jovial memories. “This went on for a year, maybe a year-and-a-half. Then it got more intense. They’d talk on the phone occasionally after work or on weekends. And Carol would tell me certain things about her. Like how messed up Marianne was. How she’d been this horribly abused child and was involved in some very intense psychotherapy. During this time, Carol told me Marianne was attending nightly therapy sessions that would last an hour or two, not to mention weekends. And the more Carol played the patient listener, the sympathetic friend, the more Marianne began to rely on her more. Pretty soon, Marianne was calling the house to have these intense conversations with Carol about things she probably should have been talking to her therapist with. And it was really bugging Carol, but not the way you would think. She wasn’t irritated by it. Instead, she was drawn to it, and before I realized what was happening, Carol had become her second shrink. Marianne not only had her normal therapy sessions, she had second therapy sessions with my wife. And it was starting to become draining on Carol, but she wouldn’t admit it to herself.”

“How do you mean it would become draining to her?” Sherri asked.

“It was like...” Ken thought about it for a moment as he nursed his drink. “It was like she was becoming as emotionally involved in whatever problems Marianne had. Marianne’s problems became Carol’s problems. And Marianne’s problems became Carol’s burden, in a way. To give you a good example, Marianne was very suicidal.” Sherri raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah,” Ken said, nodding. He took a sip of wine. “Carol told me more than once that Marianne often had thoughts of killing herself. Apparently she’d tried it years ago and it didn’t work. It was an obvious cry for help. And she used the suicide ploy to get Carol to run to her aid whenever she had some sort of emotional episode. Carol would tell me that whenever Marianne got in one of her depressed moods, she got worried. She was always afraid her friend would hang herself, or slit her wrists or something.” He huffed. “Sometimes I wish she did!”

“So all Marianne would have to do was call and say ‘oh Carol, I don’t know what to do,’ Sherri mimicked, cradling an invisible phone to her ear. “’I feel that the weight of the world is just crashing on my shoulders and I could just kill myself today. Please come help me’.”

Ken nodded. He knew Sherri was kidding, but he also knew that she was taking his story seriously. “Yeah. It was exactly like that. Marianne snapped her fingers and Carol jumped.”

“Wow.” Sherri took another sip. “Okay, go on.”

“It eventually turned into a symbiotic relationship. Soon, Carol started sharing intimate details about her private life with Marianne. It was like a quid-pro quo thing. Carol told Marianne things and vice-versa. It didn’t take long before I dropped down to the number two person in her life. Carol started going to Marianne first with her problems. If she was having trouble at work, at home, with her parents, whatever, she would consult Marianne first.”

Sherri looked at Ken. “You sure that maybe you weren’t just...”

“Jealous of the friendship?” Ken shrugged. “In the beginning I thought I was. Carol and I were best friends. She knew she could come to me with things. And before Marianne entered her life, she did. That changed. Before I knew it, Carol was consulting with Marianne on things first before coming to me. I think it really started bugging me when her cat, Tom, died.”

“Her cat?”

“Yeah.” Ken nodded, taking another drink. He leaned over the table, reflecting on the incident. Despite the subject at hand, he had warm memories of Tom. “Carol had Tom for years, even before I knew her. She’d brought him out to California with her. He was like, ten years old when we made the trip back. He was her baby. And I’m not, you know, trivializing it or anything, because I’ve been there. I had a dog when I was in high school that I was real attached to. It broke my heart when he died.”

Sherri nodded. “Yeah, I know how that is.”

“Anyway,” Ken said, continuing the narrative. “We had Tom another five years or so. Then he got real sick and died. Carol lost it. I mean, she utterly collapsed with grief. She couldn’t function. She wouldn’t talk to me about Tom on the drive home from the vet. I let her have her space; I knew she would come around and we would talk about it. When we got home I told her that I was there for her, that if she wanted to talk that we could talk whenever she wanted to. And the first thing she said was, ‘I have to call Marianne’.”

“So maybe she needed to talk to her friend first,” Sherri murmured. “Sometimes women...need to talk to another woman friend first. Sometimes we just...need that closeness that we can get from other women.”

“You don’t think I didn’t tell myself that? Christ, you’re making me sound like I’m some...needy, egotistical macho pig or something.”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way—”

“Carol never talked to me about Tom,” Ken said, his gaze leveled at hers. “Never. Not even once. Not even after I gave her the time and space to grieve. Not even after she talked to Marianne about it several times in hours-long phone conversations and visits. Not even after I brought it up to her myself.”

Sherri appeared stunned. “She never talked about it?

“Never. Not even if I brought it up. When I did bring it up, she said she was fine. I...I didn’t know what to think. I mean, you should have seen her when the damn cat died. She was a nervous wreck. She bawled to Marianne over the phone like she had...lost a child or something...”

Sherri shook her head, engrossed in the story.

“...and then a few days later it was as if Tom didn’t even exist,” Ken said. “It was as if she’d gotten over his death just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “I’d try to bring it up; hell, by this time I needed to talk about Tom. But to her it had become something trivial. It was almost as if Tom had never been in our lives.

“That’s when I began to notice other things. How she was starting to forget certain things about our relationship.”

“What kind of things?” Sherri asked. The carafe of wine was all but forgotten now as Sherri leaned forward, elbows on the table, engrossed in the story.

“Little things,” Ken said, trying to think of an example he could share with Sherri. “Like one time we were at a fast food restaurant. It was one of our favorite places—Burrito Express. A cheap little roadside dive that makes the best take-out Mexican food you could ever have. We were sitting at a table eating our lunch and we were just making small talk. And I said something like, ‘yeah, remember the first time we came here and you ordered the real spicy burrito and it was so hot you couldn’t eat it?’ And she literally did not remember. And that’s when I first started noticing that she was forgetting other significant things in—”

“How can you call something like eating at a fast-food—” Sherri began.

“Because it was all she talked about for days afterward!” Ken exclaimed, raising his voice. He glanced around quickly, then leaned forward, making an effort at lowering his voice, which was hard to do because he was really into the momentum of the narrative. “Christ, it was all she talked about for months! She was still referring to the incident three years after it happened! Carol had never had anything spicier than Taco Bell before she moved to Los Angeles. She bit into this stuff and her mouth went numb. Trust me, she referred to it enough times in conversations afterward that she would have remembered it.”

The waiter arrived with their salads, and as they dug in Ken related other incidents; how Carol couldn’t remember her last birthday party (“how the hell could she forget that? She got plastered on Jagermeister and laughed at Gary when he fell down the steps to our apartment!”), or why she disliked a mutual friend’s fiancé, or her first job in California. “Little things, maybe,” Ken said. “But they weren’t that little that she would easily forget them. I mean, I’ve forgotten about one or two day temp assignments I had in college, but she worked at Watterson for three months before they shit-canned her! How the hell do you forget a place like that?”

Sherri sipped her drink and said, “I don’t know.”

“And through it all, her relationship with Marianne intensified.” Ken huffed. He stabbed at his Caesar salad with his fork. “Christ, I’m surprised we even got pregnant.”

“But you did.” Sherri smiled.

“Yeah, we did.” Ken’s tone became reflective whenever he talked about his daughter. “Six, seven months after Tom died, Carol found out she was pregnant. That was the first time I thought that maybe things weren’t going downhill after all. Even Carol started to come around a little. When she found out she was pregnant it was almost like old times again. We spent more time together, spent less time with our friends and at work. She even cut down her visits and phone conversations with Marianne.”

Ken paused to eat some of his salad. “Marianne was still in our lives. But she became...how do you say it? More...deceptive. The half dozen times I saw her during Carol’s pregnancy was in the company of others. We’d all go with a bunch of people from Carol’s department at work to Chinatown for Dim Sum, and Marianne would always be there. Or Carol and Marianne would go out with some of the other girls from the office. That kind of thing. I actually started chilling out more about it.”

“So what happened?” Sherri asked.

Ken looked grim. “Nothing at first. Carol gave birth to a healthy baby girl we named Helen. She took three months off of work. When she came back, Helen went to a day care facility across the street from Kaiser. Carol actually started working there a few years before, so it was the perfect arrangement. Helen became Carol’s life. I was still the number two person in her life, but I didn’t care now. As long as Helen was number one, that was all that mattered.” His features clouded. “Little did I know what position I really ranked.”

Sherri looked troubled. “You mean...you were really number three?”

Ken nodded. “Yeah.” He offered a pensive smile as he ate his salad. “All this time I thought maybe she’d wised up and put Marianne in her place. But I was wrong. Helen had been number one in her life, but as the weeks turned into months I began to notice that Marianne hadn’t so much as fallen out of her life, she’d just been...shifted to a different position. She’d settled to a lower position in Carol’s life, and she knew it. And once the...novelty of the baby wore off, Marianne started in on Carol again.”

“Damn, Ken, you make it sound like this poor woman was some kind of parasite or something!” Sherri had finished her salad and was fiddling with her fork when Ken’s arm shot out and he gripped her wrist.

He leaned over the table, his features a mad grimace. “Marianne is a parasite! Haven’t you been listening?”

“Ken! You’re hurting me!”

Ken let go, wincing at the realization of how hard he’d gripped Sherri’s wrist. “I’m sorry,” he said. Sherri cradled her left wrist in her right hand, rubbing it with her thumb. Her features had taken on a wide-eyed, frightened look. He couldn’t tell if she was more frightened of his behavior or at the story. “I’m sorry,” he reiterated. “It’s just that...that’s how she got to us. She came across as so trustworthy, somebody that was likeable, yet somebody you could take pity on at the same time. She appeals to people who have a strong streak of altruism. She...makes you want to think that you want to help her. And so you offer to help her by listening to her...and in listening to her problems she feeds you the illusion that you’re friends. And as the relationship progresses, you think you are friends with her. But what you aren’t aware of is that she’s feeding on you. Little by little, she’s digging at you for information: she wants to know everything about you. Your past life, your hopes and dreams, your fears and opinions. She gathers this information discreetly and at the same time she’s feeding you this feeling of euphoria, this feeling that you think she’s a good friend who is truly interested in you for the person you are. And she feeds that altruistic side by throwing out her own problems in the hopes she snares you. Because if you catch that net with the intention of helping her, it tells her that you care about her. And if you care about her, the deeper she can dig her hooks into you and drink deeper. So while you think you’re being the sympathetic friend trying to help her out, listening to her sob stories, offering her advice and words of encouragement, she’s sucking the life right out of you and you don’t even know it.”

Sherri looked stunned. Ken drained his wine glass, set it on the table. “I know it sounds crazy. But it’s what happened. It’s the only thing I can think of that happened. When Helen was only a year old I suddenly realized that Marianne had become the number one person in Carol’s life again. And that Helen and I had dropped down a few rungs. I became Helen’s mother and father. Marianne started feeding Carol this...bullshit that she missed her due to Carol’s motherhood.” Ken’s features took on a tone of disgust and anger. “At first I was like, ‘well what do you expect? When somebody has a child, friendships usually suffer to some degree. Big deal! Get over it!’ I told this to Carol, and all she could say was ‘how could you be so cruel?’ And then she treated me as if I was the bad guy and she’d run off crying to Marianne. And meanwhile Helen is crying for her mother and I’m left fending for not only the baby, but our marriage.”

“She was completely ignoring the baby?” Sherri looked like she couldn’t believe a woman could ignore her baby for the sake of a friend.

“Yes!” Ken exclaimed, his voice raised slightly. “She didn’t give a shit anymore about being a mother. She didn’t give a shit about our marriage. Everything was ‘Marianne this, and Marianne that’! It got to the point when she’d get home from work, first thing she would do was call Marianne. She’d be on the phone with that bitch all night and I’d have to take care of Helen until she fell asleep. Or I should say, until Helen cried herself to sleep because she wanted her mother.” For the first time since Ken began his confession he felt the first strains of tears as he recalled his baby daughter crying herself to sleep for her mother. “This went on for weeks, but Carol just wouldn’t listen. And she was...she was getting worse. She was losing weight. She wasn’t sleeping. All she could talk about, all she cared about, was Marianne.”

Sheri was wholly absorbed by the story now. Her eyes were wide with astonishment. Ken plunged on. “I kept trying to reason with her, trying to get her to see that Marianne was wreaking havoc on our marriage and all she could say was that Marianne needed her. Marianne was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, she was at a very low time in her life, the usual bullshit. And then she’d chastise me for not seeing that...for not seeing that Marianne was severely depressed, that she needed somebody to talk to...that if Carol didn’t do something to help her friend, she was afraid Marianne might hurt herself. That’s what kept her going. I think that’s what really kept her going for so long...being afraid Marianne might hurt or kill herself...her love for that...for that bitch. Because when she finally went, she did it suddenly. She just collapsed in the kitchen in our apartment, dead of a heart attack.”

Sherri’s hand went to her mouth in shock. Ken bowed his head, his eyes closed to stem the flow of tears that always came whenever he thought about Carol. The background noise of other conversing restaurant patrons, the clinking of glassware, the drone of voices, all of it sounded very far away. Ken felt Sherri’s hand on his wrist, gentle, lovingly caressing it. He took a deep breath. “The doctors say it was from the stress she was putting herself through at work. During this time, she was going through a lot at work. She devoted one hundred percent of herself at work, too, not just to Marianne.” He snickered. “And she gave herself one hundred percent to that bitch, as well. The only things she didn’t give that much attention to was herself. And her daughter.”

“And you,” Sherri said, softly.

“Yeah, but it’s not about me,” Ken said, wiping a runaway tear that slid down his cheek. He looked up to see if their conversation, or any of his outbursts, had brought them any attention. They were still safe in anonymity. “It’s about how she should have had her priorities straight. It’s about how Helen should have been number one, more than anybody else. More than herself, more than Marianne, more than me.”

They were silent for a moment. Sherri poured them both some more wine from the carafe. Ken took a sip of his as Sherri finished her salad and pushed the plate to the side. Ken picked at his salad. “I was a wreck after Carol died. I just couldn’t believe she was gone. I look back on it now and realize I was in shock. Somehow I got through things in the week after she died. All I could think about was Helen and taking care of her. Aside from that, I was a basket case. Carol’s parents came and helped out with the baby, and both our parents helped with arranging the funeral. And somewhere during all this, Marianne was helping, too. She’d reached out to Carol’s folks and worked behind the scenes in helping with the funeral. I didn’t know it at the time. I was so...blind in my grief I barely paid attention to what was going on around me. The few times I remember seeing her I was so numb with grief that I couldn’t send her away. I didn’t want to cause a scene. I really thought I was going crazy. Especially when the autopsy showed that Carol had died of natural causes.

“By the time I’d come to my senses, Marianne had already integrated herself into the family.” Ken took a final bite of his salad, then washed it down with some wine. He pushed his salad plate away. “She was babysitting Helen, helping out with various things. Carol’s parents and my folks totally accepted her. And when I realized she’d wormed her way in, there was nothing I could do. Oh, I came this close to throwing her out,” He emphasized this by putting his thumb and forefinger together a millimeter. “but...I don’t know.” A shrug. “I just couldn’t. My parents kept telling me how much Marianne had helped out, and Marianne told me that she would be there for me for whatever I needed. And she sounded so damned sincere that for a minute I was convinced that maybe I imagined all the crap I’d been thinking. Maybe I really had been jealous of her relationship with Carol. You know? Maybe...maybe I really was projecting my feelings out and had come up with this horrible image of Marianne as this...this...thing!”

“So what happened?” Sherri asked.

Ken sighed and took another sip of wine. “To make a long story short? Marianne moved to an apartment within walking distance of our apartment so she could help out with Helen when needed. And...well, I really did need the help. Marianne was really good with Helen. Treated her as her own daughter. At first I was torn by the decision, you know? I remember Carol telling me when Helen was born that she wanted Marianne to be Helen’s godmother, in case anything happened to her. I remember thinking how against that I was, and as I observed Marianne with Helen I realized, or started thinking, that maybe I had some problems with myself. Maybe I really had been jealous of Marianne. I wanted to talk about my feelings, but I didn’t dare tell Marianne about what I felt about her. So I started seeing a therapist.”

“And?”

“And after a few sessions, my therapist concurred that my fantasy against Marianne was based on my envy and jealousy of her relationship with Carol. I saw that. I was convinced of it. And it helped me to go on with my life. It helped me to let go of Carol, too. Especially when I later learned from her parents that there was a history of heart problems in the family. This meant I had to be extra vigilant in Helen’s care, and I told Marianne that this was what I was most worried about. She shared my concern, and she became a sort of...surrogate mother to Helen. She was around so much it was almost as if she was part of the family for a while.

“I didn’t think I could fall in love again,” Ken continued, looking out into the darkness of the restaurant. “But I did. I met Jennifer Jacobs at work. She started working at Kaiser about a year or two after Carol died. I fell for her the minute I saw her. I...I didn’t want our relationship to be any kind of...you know, rebound thing. I never did mess around with other women after Carol died. I couldn’t.”

“Not even with Marianne?” Sherri’s tone of voice was joking. She grinned.

Ken laughed. “God, no. Marianne was way too old for me. She was old enough to be my mother for God’s sake.” An image rose in his mind and Sherri must have noticed the troubled look on his face. “In fact...well, I’m coming to that in a minute. Just remember what I just said: Marianne is old enough to be my mother. She must have been in her late forties when Carol first started working at Kaiser, and we were married for eight years before she died. Jennifer and I didn’t get together for at least another year and a half, maybe two years later. Okay?”

Sherri nodded and sipped her wine.

Ken sighed. “To make a long story short, Jennifer and I started dating. By this time I had a pretty good relationship with Marianne. We weren’t real close friends, but I trusted her. She was good with Helen, and she helped me out a lot. And in return, I helped her with things as well.”

“So by now you’d gotten over your notion that she was a parasite,” Sherri said.

“Yes.” Ken sipped his wine. “So when Jennifer and I started dating, Marianne volunteered to baby-sit. Jennifer and Carol knew each other professionally since we all worked in the same building. By the time it got serious for Jennifer and I, she and Marianne had become friends. Again, I didn’t think anything of it. All three of us were having a good time, and Jennifer was really good with Helen, too. We were in love. I proposed to her about six months later and we got married. End of story?”

“Apparently not,” Sherri said, mustering a smile that looked forced. Ken knew it was because she was probably feeling a little uncomfortable about her upcoming role in the narrative. After all, Sherri had been the Other Woman. Ken had told Sherri that he was married the moment they’d begun their affair.

“The first few months of the marriage were great,” Ken said. “We had a great time. We moved to a new place in Pasadena, and for a while everything was fabulous. Jennifer became friends with Marianne, and at first I didn’t notice anything was out of the ordinary until maybe a year after we were married. She started spending more time with Marianne. Soon, it was just like with Carol: Marianne began having problems again, and Jennifer started telling me about the depressions, the threats of suicide, the whole bit. And that’s when the warning flag went up and I started looking at the relationship with a different eye. And that’s when I saw what had been happening since before Jennifer and I even got married.”

Sherri took a sip of wine and waited calmly while Ken composed himself to continue. “It was the same thing with Carol. Jennifer became obsessed with helping Marianne, with being her surrogate mother. It was the same excuses. ‘Marianne needs me’, and ‘Marianne is feeling very vulnerable right now’, and then she’d either disappear for the weekend to spend time with Marianne, or sit on the phone with her all night. Helen and I dropped from the number one position in her life to the lower tier of the ladder. And there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.”

“What do you mean?” Sherri asked.

“She wouldn’t listen. When I saw it happening again, I immediately knew that I had been right all along. Marianne was a parasite, she’d destroyed Carol, and now she was latching on to Jennifer. She was stealing her soul, sucking the life out of her, and Jennifer wasn’t even aware of it. And Marianne was so subtle about it, so...so...quiet about it, that I didn’t notice until it was too late!

“Remember when I told you to remember how old Marianne was when we first met her? Well, eleven years had passed from the time I first met her till she latched onto Jennifer. That would make her close to sixty. And she doesn’t look a day over forty-five!”

“Ken!” Sherri exclaimed. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not bullshitting you,” Ken said. “That woman doesn’t look a day over forty-five. In fact, sometimes she looks younger. But I know she’s older than that, because when Carol first met her and started hanging out with her, she mentioned to me that Marianne was in her late forties. That was eleven, twelve years ago. You do the math.”

“So what’s Marianne doing? Stealing women’s youth?”

“Yes!”

“You can’t be serious.”

“If you would see her, you would know,” Ken said. “I look back on things now and remember little incidents, little snapshots of how she looked when Carol was alive. And the more I look back on old photographs, old memories, the more I can see that as Carol and Marianne’s relationship intensified, the younger Marianne appeared to be getting. And how during the year preceding Jennifer and I hooking up and now, how Marianne began to look older. But in the past eight months I can tell that Marianne is getting younger. She doesn’t look her age at all, Sherri. If you saw her you wouldn’t think she’s a woman in her sixties. No way.”

He continued. The waiter returned with their dinners—veal parmesan for Sherri, shrimp scampi for Ken. He detailed the past two years of a spiraling marriage with Jennifer as they ate. How he attempted to get Jennifer to listen to his concerns, her refusal to listen and talk to him. Her increasing obsession with Marianne Denver, how she began to spend first every other weekend with her, then every weekend, and soon every day. “That’s when I lost it,” Ken admitted. “I took a day off of work, not telling Jennifer I was going to do it, and drove straight to Marianne’s place after dropping Helen off at daycare. I intercepted her as she was exiting her apartment and I walked right up to her and grabbed her. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her and yelled right in her face. I told her to stay the hell away from Jennifer, and that if she refused to stay away that I was going to kill her.”

“You didn’t!” Sherri looked shocked.

“Oh, I did,” Ken said. He plucked a shrimp off his plate and put it into his mouth. “Marianne freaked out. She started crying and I got the hell out of there before the ruckus attracted the neighbors. I spent the rest of the day wandering around Old Town Pasadena, drifting into the Barnes and Noble, going to a coffee shop, just wandering around. I picked up Helen early and we went home. Jennifer didn’t even call to tell me she was going to be late. She just went to Marianne’s straight from work. When she didn’t come home by nine that evening, I called her at Marianne’s.

“She sounded...” Ken conjured up the memory. “Dazed. She said she had no idea how much time had gone by and that she and Marianne had just been talking. She didn’t sound angry, and at first it was hard to tell if Marianne told her what happened between she and I that morning. I didn’t really care. I put Helen to bed, waited up for Jennifer for another three hours, and when she still hadn’t come home I finally went to bed myself. I was awake when Jennifer came home and she acted as if nothing was wrong, as if it was perfectly all right for her to just...neglect our relationship like that. I tried to talk to her about it, brought up the fact that she had me worried, that I had no idea she was going to be at Marianne’s and she dismissed it. She said I was over-reacting. That’s when I gave up. There was nothing I could say or do to pry her away from Marianne. At one point during the conversation – which by then had turned into an argument—I asked her to pick between Marianne and me. Know who she picked?”

“Marianne?” Sherri asked.

“Bingo!” Ken felt the anger return. “I should have expected it but I was hoping not to. But when she told me that Marianne was more important than me...it crushed me. I...I didn’t understand why...why this woman had become so important to her. I mean, I can understand the love between friends but...she was choosing her friend over her husband. Just like Carol did!”

They ate their meals in silence for a moment. Ken could tell that Sherri was having a hard time accepting what happened, and he was determined to not let her go away from this evening thinking he was losing his mind. “I tried counseling again,” he said, spooning pasta in his fork. “Tried to get Jennifer to attend therapy with me but she refused. She claimed she didn’t have a problem. She thought it was my problem that I felt this way about Marianne, that there was nothing wrong with her. I almost believed her. That’s why I went back to therapy. But as I got deeper into therapy and laid it all out, I realized that it wasn’t me who had the problem. It was Jennifer. For whatever reason, Jennifer had left me. She’d abandoned me. And knowing that, it made it easier to...well...” He offered Sherri a sheepish grin. “It was easier to drift into an affair with you.”

“So I’m the rebound, then?” Sherri asked, smirking.

“No,” Ken said. He put down his fork and reached out, touched Sherri’s hand. “Far from it. Maybe you were at first.” He looked at her. “You know how it is.”

Sherri nodded, looking down at her plate. Ken hadn’t been the only one cheating; Sherri was cheating on her boyfriend, a man she’d lived with for ten years who refused to commit to marriage and had become less intimate with her as the years went by. She’d drifted into the affair out of the same sense of desperation and loneliness as Ken.

They finished their meal as Ken brought the story to its inevitable conclusion. After almost two years of neglect, Jennifer finally succumbed to the brain aneurysm three months ago. Again, it had come as a sudden shock. “Part of me wonders if it was my fault,” Ken said. “You know, cheating on her, driving her away from me.”

“You didn’t drive her away,” Sherri said. She pushed her empty plate aside and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “She’d already made the decision to devote herself to Marianne. You had nothing to do with it.”

Ken sighed. He’d needed to hear that. It felt good to finally tell somebody everything.

“I loved Jennifer very much,” Ken said, keeping his voice calm and in control. “I really thought we would spend the rest of our lives together. She really took to Helen; she even talked about legally adopting her. Helen loved Jennifer and was already starting to call her mommy. That really felt good. And I could tell Jennifer liked it. We even talked about having a child of our own together.”

“Marianne got jealous,” Sherri said. Not a question. She was picking up on what he’d been through.

“Yeah, I think so. Years ago, Carol had told Marianne that if anything happened to her that she would be Helen’s godmother. She even wanted to draw up a living will declaring Marianne as a legal guardian. Can you believe that?”

“She wanted to take Helen away from you?”

“No. She wanted Marianne and I to raise her if she died,” Ken said, sipping his wine. “She wanted Marianne to take her place in Helen’s life as her mother. She mentioned this to me maybe a month before she died. I told her she was out of her fucking mind.”

“So you never did have the papers drawn up.”

“Hell no!”

“Good.” Sherri sighed. “The poor kid. How has she taken all this?”

“Pretty well, considering her age.” Helen was almost six years old, and she’d been heartbroken at Jennifer’s passing. Ken’s features clouded as he realized that Marianne had once again swooped in to the rescue, comforting the girl in her grief. That was going to stop. Immediately.

“So Marianne is still around?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ken looked at her. “You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

Ken drained the rest of his wine. “You believe me, right?”

Sherri nodded, but Ken couldn’t tell if she was being truthful. She appeared to be hesitant, as if she were dealing with somebody who was crazy. Then she smiled. “I believe you. It sounds crazy, I admit, but...this is something you couldn’t have imagined.”

“It isn’t. And thank God you’ve never met Marianne.”

“After hearing about her I don’t think I want to.”

“Good.” Ken set his wineglass down and reached across the table, taking her hands. “Sherri, I love you.”

Sherri smiled, her features brightening. It was the first time he’d told her he loved her. “I love you too, Ken.” Her fingers caressed his hands and he brought them up and kissed them.

“Come with me to Pennsylvania,” he said. The invitation was so out of left field that it startled her. She started, looking into his eyes with surprise.

“What?”

“I want to get the hell out of LA,” Ken said, holding her hands. “But I don’t want to leave you. I love you, and I want you in my life. And I want to get away from California, away from Marianne. Helen’s grandparents miss her, and I’ve been thinking of going back to Carol’s hometown in Lancaster County, getting a job in the Healthcare Industry back there. Starting over. Starting fresh.” He smiled. “And I’d like you to be a part of it.”

Sherri looked so stunned that for a moment Ken was afraid his proposition was going to drive her away for good. Instead she blinked back tears, gave a little laugh, then leaned across the table and swooped him up in a hug. “Yes,” she said, laughing and crying in her joy. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”

And that was the beginning of what Ken hoped would be the beginning of a new life.

KEN NEVER THOUGHT things would end up so nice.

He smiled as he walked out of his office on Prince Street in Lancaster, briefcase in hand. It was a warm summer afternoon, and the sky was a deep blue. He walked across Prince Street to the parking garage where he usually left his car, humming to himself. He was dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a blue shirt and brown loafers. No tie, no dress shirt, no patent leather shoes. His new employer, a Healthcare billing company, operated in a very casual business atmosphere and Ken thrived in the new environment.

And he was thriving in his new life arrangement, too.

In the year-and-a-half since setting up house in Pennsylvania, he and Sherri had become engaged and set a wedding date for the fall. Making the transition had been tough for her at first; she’d had to quit her job, uproot from her life in Los Angeles and come across the country. He’d helped as much as he could, but he’d had to spend most of his time in Pennsylvania setting up house and looking for a job. And then there was the matter of getting Helen settled in and making sure Marianne hadn’t followed them.

Ken unarmed the Lexus and climbed in. He set his briefcase down on the passenger seat and started the car. He hadn’t thought of Marianne in over a year. That was a good thing. Not seeing her, not being around her, was what this move had been about.

As Ken drove to Carol’s parents’ house in Lititz, he thought about how things had been since they made the move. He and Sherri were both fully acclimated to their new surroundings now. They both had new jobs they loved. Helen was in school and would be starting second grade in the fall. Sometimes seeing Carol’s folks brought back the old hurt, but it was rare that he thought of Marianne anymore. He knew he would never see her again.

He’d made plans quietly. Shortly after the night he told Sherri that he loved her, he began to quietly arrange for the move. Stealing time at work to look into airline tickets, obtain price quotes from moving companies, getting bank and IRA accounts transferred, selling his car. He had no intention of leaving a paper trail if he could help it, so all of his transactions for the move were made in cash. He’d alerted Carol’s parents of the move and they’d been surprised and pleased. His parents hadn’t been as thrilled, but since they were both recently retired and living in Florida they were actually going to be a little closer now. He’d told Carol’s parents to keep the news of his move a secret; he’d wanted to make it a surprise to Helen.

And through it all he told no one of his plans except for Sherri. Luckily, Sherri didn’t work at Kaiser, therefore didn’t run in the same social circles. And because he continued his front with Marianne, Sherri didn’t come by the condo very much. As far as he was able to tell, Marianne was never aware of Sherri.

Finally, when all the arrangements were made, he gave his supervisor two weeks notice. A few weeks prior to that, he’d persuaded Marianne to take a two-week vacation. “You need it,” he’d said. “You haven’t had time off in years and you’ve been working too much during the day and doing too much for me after work. Seriously, Marianne. Take off and go somewhere.”

Which she did. At Ken’s urging, Marianne booked a trip to Alaska on a cruise. He tendered his resignation on the first Monday she was gone.

He hadn’t anticipated Marianne returning home early, or coming by unexpectedly the morning the moving truck showed up. The last item had been stowed in the trailer when Marianne arrived and she’d looked frantic as she ran up to him. “What’s going on?” she’d asked, looking strangely refreshed (and younger, Ken had noticed; since Jennifer’s passing she looked a good ten, maybe fifteen years younger again) from her trip.

“What I should have done a long time ago,” Ken had said. His parents, who were visiting to help out with the move, had taken Helen to visit his sister and her family for the day. “I’m moving.”

“Well no shit you’re moving!” Marianne exploded. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Why should I tell you?” Ken replied coolly. He’d refused to look at her.

“Because I deserve to know! Because Helen needs me!”

“Helen doesn’t need you,” Ken had replied, turning to her. “I don’t need you. We never needed you. Get lost.”

Marianne had looked stunned. He’d remained impassive and strong. There was no way he was going to give in to her. “How can you say that?” She’d started whining, and already she was starting the old vulnerability trick. “After all I’ve been through...”

“I don’t give a shit about you,” he’d said.

She’d pleaded for him to remain in contact with her; had started crying that she was going to miss Helen deeply. Ken had felt a smug sense of satisfaction as he’d listened to her. She hadn’t said anything about missing him; she was no doubt turning her attentions on to Helen now, was already beginning to work her influences on his daughter and he hadn’t even been aware of it. She was that sneaky. Knowing how Helen would have wound up boosted his confidence, made him feel good about his decision, made him feel strong in standing up to her. He’d turned to her and ordered her to leave. He never wanted to see her again.

“Please!” Marianne had wailed. Tears streamed down her face. Her muddy brown hair hung in her face. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Don’t take Helen away from me!”

“She’s my daughter, not yours. She never was yours. You’ll never see me or my family again, and I hope you die, you bitch!”

His final memory of Marianne Denver was of that crying, wailing caricature. He remembered that receding figure as he’d driven away from the condominium complex that day in the rain, the last echoes of her cries reverberating. “Please don’t take Helen away! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Oh, but he did. He surely did.

Ken smiled as he drew closer to Carol’s parents’ home. The summer air was warm, tinged with the scent of new mown grass. Now he and Helen and Sherri were free from Marianne.

He had not seen or heard from Marianne Denver since that rainy afternoon. He’d made a clean break. There was no way for Marianne to ever find them. Helen had mentioned her a few times, asking Ken “whatever happened to Aunt Marianne? I miss her. Is she ever going to come visit?” And every time Helen asked this, Ken would nod and say that Aunt Marianne would visit soon, she was just very busy right now. And Helen would smile and scamper off and Ken would tell himself that Helen would cease asking about Marianne as the years went by. Until that happened, though, he didn’t want to trouble his daughter so he’d told her what she wanted to hear. Maybe someday he would tell her the truth.

Sherri had been worried the first few months they set up house in Pennsylvania. “Suppose she does find us?” she’d asked one night as a thunderstorm rumbled outside. Helen was asleep in her room down the hall, and Ken and Sherri had just finished making love. “How am I supposed to know what she looks like? I’ve never even seen her?”

The next day Ken had rooted around in the old photo albums he and Carol had kept and found a picture of Marianne. In the photo, Marianne was posing with Carol and a six-month old Helen. To those who didn’t know what was really going on, the photo looked like it  captured a snapshot of good times. “There she is,” he’d said, handing Sherri the photograph. “If you want to keep it, you can have it. I’m going to gather all the pictures I have with Marianne in them and burn them.”

He didn’t know if Sherri kept the picture. And he did what he told her he was going to do.

He was glad that Sherri and Carol’s parents had become friends, though. He was hoping they would get along, and they did. Carl and Ann had taken to Sherri the minute they were introduced, and within a few weeks it was almost as if Sherri had been a part of the family forever. Every other weekend they got together for dinner, either at their place, or at a neighboring restaurant or diner. And many times Sherri picked Helen up from Carl and Ann’s place after they’d picked her up from school.

Yep, things were just great. Yet as much as he loved Sherri, he sometimes still found himself wishing Carol were still alive. That it was she instead of Sherri that was here with him and Helen now.

Ken pulled up in front of the house. Sherri was already here. As he walked through the front door he heard them on the back porch talking. It sounded like they had a guest, as they were laughing and talking happily, their voices intermingling. The fifth voice was unrecognizable to him, and as he wound his way through the kitchen toward the back porch, Helen opened the screen door and stepped inside. She looked and sounded excited. “Daddy! Guess who’s here?”

Story Notes

Desire

Jeff Gelb invited me to contribute a story to Hot Blood 12: Strange Bedfellows, and because it was a professional paying anthology, I said yes. I don’t write much erotic horror these days, having squandered most of my good ideas in my early work, but I came up with this tale, which was sort of a sequel to a previously published story “Dream Girl” (reprinted in Old Ghosts and Other Revenants). The more I thought of the idea, the more I wanted to write it, so I pitched it to Jeff and his co-editor Michael Garrett. They liked it, and I wrote the story. They made some suggestions for rewrites, I did them, turned it in, and got paid.

I’m happy with the way the story turned out. It focuses on a theme I see running through several of my stories and novels – the theme of choice and personal responsibility. This is apparent in other stories of mine (“Choices”) and novels (Maternal Instinct/Survivor, and Bully) and so far I seem to have written the theme out of my system.

Menage A Trois

This is an older story, and was originally written for Book of the Dead 3  (which was never published) in 1993!

Backstory:

In October of 1993 Craig Spector asked me to help him put together Book of the Dead 3. I came on board as a sort of “ghost editor”. The Skipp and Spector team was in the middle of disintegrating and the duo had just sold film rights to their last novel, Animals, and Craig was busy adapting it to the screen. Book of the Dead 3 and 4 had been sold to a British Publisher and the editing chores were to be broken up by each partner. Because Craig was pressed for time and a deadline was looming, he asked me to help him put the book together and I agreed.

It was the idea of starving to death forever that sparked the idea for this story, probably thanks to remembering some lean financial times I’d had previously in which macaroni and cheese consisted of my sole meal for the entire day because I was too poor to eat much else. I’ll stop right here in case some of you decide to jump to these notes before reading the piece itself (and shame on you if you do that!). Needless to say, that’s what sparked the idea, and the characters, situation, and plot came pretty quickly. The girls, Andrea and Tiffany...well, they came pretty easily and their motivations are something I’ve seen over and over again, both personally and elsewhere.

I wrote this story as the anthology was being assembled with the hope that I would show it to Craig and hopefully be included in the final line-up. However, I was rather intimidated by the material we eventually put together: stories by Douglas Winter, David J. Schow, Poppy Z. Brite, Charles L. Grant, Christa Faust, Brian Hodge, and Robert Bloch still stand out in my mind as being outstanding stories (most of them later went to other anthologies). There was so much good material that I never showed Craig the first version of this story. In hindsight, I realized I should have but I never did.

To make a long story short, the publisher cancelled Book of the Dead 3 and 4, much of the aforementioned material went to other anthologies (some were never published, which is unfortunate), and eventually both volumes morphed into Mondo Zombie, which John Skipp ended up putting together from selected material out of both books. As I write this, Mondo Zombie has just been published by CD Publications.

About once a year after Book of the Dead 3 imploded the first time in 1994  (I’m not going to talk about the second time it imploded in 1996 but I’ll go on record here as being a chief supporter of a mission  several contributors undertook to shoot it in the head). I’d take out “Menage A Trois” and rework it. At some point I started submitting it to various places and it was actually bought twice for projects that died in utero. In 2003 Paul Fry announced he was going to edit an anthology of zombie stories and I took the story out, gave it a polish and updated it, and sent it to him. He took the story for Cold Flesh and it took an even longer time for the volume to see print from Hellbound Books in 2005. But it finally did, alongside other cool material from John Evenson and Patrick Lestekwa. I like it, and whether I write another Romero-based zombie tale remains to be seen. In the meantime, this is my contribution to that brand of mythos.

Out of the Cradle

I have no idea where this one came from. I wrote it in 2002 and 2003, and it was based on a nightmare I had a year or so earlier when I could hear my daughter running around the house and I couldn’t see her because she was invisible. Freaked me out. I started thinking about a man haunted by the ghost of his murdered child and this story came to me. It’s a gentle piece, one of a handful I’ve done that actually made it into print. I like writing subtle ghost stories. I like writing stories that have a happy ending, but for some reason I can’t sell them. People seem to like the more grim horror stuff I write for some reason, and they think that’s all I write. They’re wrong. This story is proof of that. Anyway, this is a story that provides a nice counter-balance to the more gruesome stuff in this book, and I hope you like it.

Mummy

I wrote this one in 1998 or so as an homage to the pulp writers I grew up reading, like Robert Bloch. Another influence was Joe Lansdale’s early stories, especially the ones he wrote for The Twilight Zone Magazine and The Horror Show. It was originally accepted for publication by Delirium Books head honcho Shane Ryan Staley in 1999 for a chapbook he was going to put together. The chapbook was to be part of a whole line he was doing called The Twilight Garden. Each chapbook was going to contain five short-shorts (or vignettes) of mine, and he was going to publish a whole line of them by writers like A. R. Morlan, Greg Gifune and I can’t remember who else. He wound up publishing one by Michael Laimo and a few others and then scrapped the idea, and the entire line. This story, and some of the others, bounced around in limbo until Jane Letty took it for the first (and only) issue of a web zine she’d put together, where it appeared in November 2002.

Riding the Storm Out

I had a cousin named Eddie who was a great storyteller. He used to tell us younger kids in the family these great stories that he claimed were either true or were nightmares he’d had. Eddie had nightmares all the time. They were all vivid, they were all bloody and bizarre and terrifying, and when I was a kid I wondered how the guy got any sleep. He’d tell his siblings and parents about these nightmares he’d have and then they’d have nightmares. That’s how vivid they were.

The nightmare in this story is actually from one Eddie is alleged to have had, and it has stayed with me all these years. Members of my father’s side of the family will recognize it immediately.

Anyway, one day Eddie’s crazy nightmares came to mind and I wondered if he'd been fibbing about nightmares; in other words, they were stories he made up just to entertain the younger kids in the family. It’s only been recently since I’ve suspected this, as Eddie was an avid horror fan (in the late seventies when he lived with us briefly he used to tell me about the horror films he would see that were playing in the theaters at the time, films I couldn’t get into because they were rated R and I wasn’t old enough to get in by myself...films like The Hills Have Eyes and Martin and When a Stranger Calls. Listening to Eddie tell me about these films was like watching them, that’s how good an oral story-teller he was). It didn’t matter to me if he’d made the nightmares up or if they were real. I focused on this one nightmare-induced anecdote in particular and this story came from it. Richard Chizmar bought it for his Shivers II anthology, and it remains a favorite of my readers.

I only wish Eddie were around to see it published. He passed away in January 1985, one of the very first wave of AIDS victims that perished from that tragic disease. Therefore, the dedication.

The Watcher From the Grave

I love old pulp horror fiction. I cut my teeth on it when I was a kid thanks to my mother and maternal grandmother, who bought me anthologies that reprinted stories from the pulps. My grandmother read pulps, and I remember the covers of those old Gold Medal mystery and crime paperbacks she used to read, as well as the covers of the Ballantine paperbacks that rescued many classic horror stories from obscurity. I was very influenced by writers like Robert Bloch (probably the big influence on this story), Hugh B. Cave, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, and Robert E. Howard (both his Conan and his mythos work). Lovecraft was an influence, too, but I encountered his imitators first.

I’ve always wanted to write my own take on the Mythos, and I’ve done a few Lovecraft inspired stories. At the time I started writing this story, I was reading a lot of non-fiction material about lost civilizations, pre-history, and the occult. You name it, I read it: Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Book of the Law, The Golden Bough, and many more. My reading into this subject matter, and my yearning to write a Mythos story, sort of converged and the result was this novella.

I wrote the first draft of it in early 1993 while I was doing temp work at some company in Pasadena, California. I was supposed to be working, but when I arrived for the assignment that day I entered a complete clusterfuck. Nobody knew what to do with me, and I was placed in a cube and told to “look busy”. After attempting to actually perform what I was supposed to be doing for this company, and after being told to “look busy”, I did what they said. I pulled out a blank floppy disk I had with me, inserted it into the PC in the spare cube I was sitting at, and started writing this novella.

Hey, they told me to look busy, right?

I “looked busy” for the rest of that week and basically made over $400 on this novella.

The finished novella pretty much resembled what you read here. I didn’t send it anywhere for a long time because it was so goddamned long. I might have sent it to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction because they’re one of the only professional magazines that publish novellas. I did show it to the late Mike Baker at one point for his short-lived magazine Skull, and he wanted to run it as a serial but he killed his magazine before that could happen. No way was I going to send it to the revived Weird Tales, since they were publishing very sporadically at the time and this piece was way too long for them. The story lay dormant in my files until I started placing stories with Fading Shadows, Inc., a small publisher of pulp-related magazines. I sent them this novella, originally intending it to be for Weird Stories, but it wound up in Classic Pulp Fiction Stories instead.

I’ve always liked this story, and over the years I’d receive an email a year from readers telling me how much they loved it. Then in 2004 I got a great email from a guy named James Ambuehl who loved it so much he wound up reprinting it for his Elder Signs Press anthology Hardboiled Cthulhu. The only hardboiled element in the story is David Corban’s dogged pursuit of his friend’s death (and the dame that seduces him at the end), but hey, when it comes to reprint offers, I’m easy.

Sending Them Home

I remember having the idea for this a year or so before I actually wrote it. One night, my friend Gary Zimmerman was at my house visiting my wife and I, and the idea for this story came up. When I told them about this idea, Gary burst into laughter. He couldn’t stop laughing. That’s when I knew I had a good idea...I thought it was kinda funny, too, but I hadn’t told him the ending I had in mind.

Encouraged by having one of my best friends laugh at my idea, I wrote the story. It’s the first (and only) story I ever wrote in which I cast a friend of mine as a main character. I gave it to Gary to read and he not only found the funny parts funny, he understood the horror behind it. That’s what I was aiming for. Also, by some strange coincidence, he saw a parallel with the fictional Janet Hain with his real older sister, who he is estranged with and hates with a passion. According to Gary, my Janet Hain is exactly like his sister. Gary’s only criticism of the story was that he wanted the fight between his fictional counter-part and Janet Hain to be more violent. Aside from that, he liked the novella and, most importantly, he got the ending.

The novella was inspired by an often misinterpreted Biblical quote, one often translated as meaning God will not allow one to suffer through something they do not have the strength to handle (I Corinthians, 10:13). More than once I’ve heard people of deep religious faith say something along the lines of, “God, please take this burden from me” or “God, I can’t wait to get to heaven because I can’t take this anymore.” And I thought, suppose God gave somebody a vision to help these people out?

Because of its length and theme, this novella was a hard sell. It was bought twice for different projects that died in utero. It eventually appeared in my chapbook That’s All Folks from Yard Dog Press with another story “House of the Damned” (which doesn’t appear here). Selina Rosen, who is one half of Yard Dog Press with her business and life partner, Lynn Stranathan, not only understood the story but loved the black humor of it, and I thank them for it.

In hindsight, “Sending Them Home” bears a slight thematic resemblance to the film Frailty (2002), which I highly recommend. Ironically, this story was conceived and written circa 1998-1999, probably around the same time the screenplay for Frailty was created.

How’s that for the Lord working in mysterious ways?

Finding the Flame

I knew a lot of people like Mike and Lisa Peterson and Barbara Franklin in the mid 1990’s. They made tons of money working seventy and eighty hour weeks as consultants for big firms, doing God knows what (what the hell do consultants do, anyway?). I knew one woman who was so married to her job that she was actually dumped by her date as Barbara Franklin describes being dumped in this story—during a concert at the Hollywood Bowl; the guy just left the show without telling her. Shitty thing to do, I know, and she had no clue why he dumped her. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t keep boyfriends. I guess that makes us even because to this day I do not understand the workaholic mentality that stresses blind devotion to your job over everything else, including your life and dignity. It’s a theme I’ve explored most recently with a novel I’ve just completed called The Corporation.

This was what I wanted to explore when I originally sat down to write this story. Although this is the only original story in this volume, it wasn’t written for this book. I wrote this in 1995 one day at work (see my notes on “The Watcher From the Grave”...I was supposed to look busy and what else was I going to do? Besides, I was surrounded by dozens of these so-called consultants; they provided the perfect inspiration). I set out to deliberately not write a horror story, but a tale of love and tragedy. When I was finished I put the story away. I had no idea what to do with it. The story of Mike Peterson, who is alone with his invalid wife and their young child was haunting, and his devotion to his wife is unwavering, but a person can only go so long without real physical companionship. That was the theme I was exploring with this story, and I like the way it turned out.

Perhaps in a way this is a horror story after all. It’s subtle, heart-breaking, and ultimately tragic. I also think this story provides a nice counter-balance to the material I am probably more known for (like Survivor and Maternal Instinct). Horror doesn’t have to be visceral and in your face. It doesn’t have to have sociopathic killers or succubi or werewolves or giant crabs. It can be quiet, subtle, heart-breaking, and sad.

Offices

I was at work one day when part of this story really happened. While the place of employment in question was no doubt one of my best, there was a subtle suggestion that high ranking executives and middle-managers thought they were better than everybody. You will find this in every corporate office, pretty much everywhere.

What part of the story really happened? One day everybody except secretaries, word processors, computer graphic artists and IT staff, and administrative assistants got a nice bonus due to a project that completed successfully. A project, I might add, that the aforementioned people who held those various job titles (of which I was one) had a significant role in helping to accomplish. Naturally, everybody I knew who was in a similar position as I was mighty peeved we were overlooked. And because I realized even then that complaining to upper management wouldn’t do any good, I took out my frustrations over the incident by writing about it. The result was this story, which was intended to be slightly surreal, and darkly humorous.

I liked the story, but it was hard to sell. Not that many people got it. One who did was Pam Chillimi-Yeager of the small press magazine Fantasque, who took it for her December 2004 issue.

While re-reading the story for inclusion in this collection, it occurred to me for the first time that this story bears a thematic relation to the Rush song The Trees. If you aren’t familiar with the song, the lyrics are easily found on the Internet. I don’t remember listening to Rush when I originally wrote the story (I listen to all kinds of music while I’m writing, everything from classical to Johnny Cash), but it’s possible since they are one of my favorite bands.

Going Home

This was another story inspired by my work place...or at least it was inspired by a person I used to/sort of worked with. She was a sad character who had a lot of hard knocks in life. I started thinking about her one day after a particular nasty meeting at work where she was chastised by her boss in front of her co-workers. Basically, she was humiliated before her peers. I felt sorry for her. I was reading some Lovecraftian material at the time and started thinking about this character I started developing based on this woman. The Lovecraftian material kind of meshed together and this story came out.

The Lingering Scent of Brimstone

I remember jotting the basic idea for this in my notebook in the days after the birth of my daughter: young couple sell their soul to the devil in exchange with providing a life-long protector for their child.

That basically sums up my feelings of how far I’d go to protect my child. It also taps into some spiritual aspects I wanted to explore in the story, namely concerning violating ones religious faith to protect a loved one.

Like many people, I was raised in a faith I no longer adhere to. But when I was still a practicing member of that faith I attended church regularly. I even attended churches comprised of other Christian denominations. One of the first seeds of doubt that were planted in my head was at one of these institutions and it came from a sermon. Basically, the thrust of the sermon was about putting God first above everything: your family, friends, job. Even your children.

Years later a friend and I were having a discussion on spirituality and religion (two different things!), specifically Christianity, and we unanimously agreed that any religion that downright demanded complete and total subservience to a diety that was indifferent to the cruelties of the world was a religion neither of us could no longer adhere to. By this time I pretty much considered myself an Agnostic and I still do. I also started questioning why deeply religious Christians saw Satan the way they did—in the Old Testament he was the questioner, the guy that made sure God was doing the right thing. I also started wondering what would happen if a conservative Christian couple, disturbed by the demands of being subservient to their religion over the basic human needs of their family (especially their children) and realizing that the easy explanation of “God’s plan” wasn’t going to cut it should their child be killed in an accident or – even worse—from murder, decided to thwart this plan by going over to the other guy and making a deal. Hey, if God can’t (or is unwilling) to protect the weak and the vulnerable, than as a parent shouldn’t it be in your child’s best interest to secure the best protection you can?

A few years later I wrote the story, and when Richard Chizmar called to see if I could contribute a story for Shivers III, I sent this to him. He bought it right away and it appeared a few months later.

Some readers might notice a resemblance between the events that happen in “The Lingering Scent of Brimstone” and the real-life case of the abduction and murder of Samantha Runnion. These events are only slight, but they exist nonetheless and they aren’t intentional: I actually wrote the first draft of this story a month or two before she was kidnapped and murdered. Freaked me out.

As I write this, the asshole who killed Samantha has been convicted in her murder and was given the death penalty and I learned something else that gave me the chills when I first read it. During the death penalty phase of the trial Erin Runnion, Samantha’s mother, testified that Samantha was a big believer in heroes and probably hoped for one to save her as she was being driven to the remote spot where she was later found dead. Erin testified her daughter’s entire belief system at the end of her short life was “shattered”.

When I read that I couldn’t help but think of what Emily and Jeff Doyle do to ensure their daughter has a protector, one who would only come if her life were put in imminent danger.

One final note. You too can be a hero. Please consider making a donation to Protect (www.protect.org) or The Joyful Child Foundation (www.thejoyfulchild.org), two child protection groups that are close to my heart.

Addict

The idea for this one came in 2000. Michael Laimo had asked me for a story for his anthology Bloodlines and this is actually the first idea I came up with. It bothered me so much, though, that I stopped writing it and dug out a story I’d written a year or two before, revised it, and sent that to him instead. He took the story (“Fan Boy”), and all was good.

This is a nasty story. I used to work with a guy who had an addiction to internet pornography. Thankfully, he was into the normal T&A stuff, but my co-workers and I tried numerous times to get him to stop looking at naked women on the internet at work so many times, I can’t count them. Sad thing was, he was really a nice guy and he was good at what he did. Before they found out about his internet habits, his female co-workers liked him, too. Complaints to his boss fell on deaf ears because she didn’t care what he did, so long as he did whatever work was assigned to him. Eventually he was reported to somebody high up in the Human Resources food chain, and about eight months after I left the company, I learned he was fired.

When I first got the idea for “Addict” I thought about this guy, only instead of the usual T&A stuff I thought, what if he was into something more horrible? Like necrophilia or something?

I had just written Maternal Instinct and when I tried to write this story, I couldn’t. As mentioned before, I stopped, wrote something else for Michael, and went on to another project (actually, “Fan Boy” is pretty nasty too, but nowhere near as intense or gruesome as “Addict”).

Why I decided to take it out five years later and revisit it is beyond me. Maybe I wanted to see what happened. At any rate, I finished the story, not really expecting that ending to happen and it surprised readers when it appeared earlier this year in the magazine Insidious Reflections.

What Happened At Forest Green Cemetery

Judi Rohrig asked me for a story for her anthology Stones, which was to contain stories involving cemeteries. It was the first story I wrote in the house I now live in, and was written within the first few weeks I moved in.

The story has some autobiographical elements in it, as some readers have surmised. I really did attend Gardena High School in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and there really was a cemetery across the street. The abbreviated history of the city of Gardena is factual. The website classmates.com is a real website, one I found a year or so before. The characters are completely fictitious, but they very loosely resemble kids I used to hang out with in high school. Because I was drawing on my own high school years, this story was a breeze to write, and fun.

Judi really liked it, and said it reminded her of the classic Guy de Maupassant story “The Horla”. Come to think of it, I can see that too.

Girlfriend

My wife has this friend named Ann who is a sweetheart. She really is. She’s very cool, has a wry sense of humor that I dig, and she’s a very gifted photographer (she took the author photo that appears at the back of the Delirium edition of Maternal Instinct). Only there was a period for about a year where she drove me absolutely bugfuck. I think she even drove my wife a little crazy, and I started thinking these crazy ideas: what if Ann was a psychic vampire and was sucking the life out of my wife? That was the spark of the story, so naturally I had to write it. This is what came out.

Thematically, this novella is somewhat related to my novel The Beloved. According to my notes, it was written prior to that novel. This is probably my first attempt at tackling the themes both pieces touch on: psychic vampirism, relationships, addiction.

Ann doesn’t drive me crazy anymore. She hasn’t sucked the life out of my wife, and they’re still friends. In fact, Ann is probably going to visit us soon.

And there you have it: the stories behind the stories. I’d like to use this space now to give roll-call to the editors who originally bought these stories or, in some cases, dragged them out of me when they came calling for material: Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett, Paul Fry, the editorial team of Paul Danda, Chris Hedges, and Stephen Sommerville (twice), Jane Letty, Richard T. Chizmar (twice), Tom and Virginia Johnson, Selina Rosen and Lynn Stranathan, Pam Chillimi-Yeager, Steve Mazey, Judi Rohrig, and David Hobaugh. Acknowledgement  must also be given to Craig Spector, Shane Ryan Staley, the late Mike Baker, and Michael Laimo for whom some of these stories were original written for but, as explained in the notes above, never bore fruit with them. But hey, if it wasn’t for you guys we wouldn’t have these gems, would we?

For all around encouragement, support, and inspiration, a tip of the hat to Cathy and Hannah, Buddy and Holly Martinez, the late Mark Williams, John Skipp, David J. Schow, Ramona Pearce, Brian Benison, Ann Leonard,  Jesus and Glenda Gonzalez, Joe and Lucy Becker, Trish and Tim Chervanek and the munchkins, Peter Atkins, Del and Sue Howison, Gary Zimmerman, Debbie Smith, Brian and Cassi Keene, Geoff Cooper, Garrett Peck, Gord Rollo, Gene O’Neill, Victor Heck, Rikki Rockett, Apple One Temporary Agency and that company that paid me four hundred bucks to write “The Watcher From the Grave”, Brian Hodge, Kurt and Amy Wimberger, Sylvia Huth, Salpy Manjikian, and Shuff-A-Lump, all for providing much needed distractions, fun, and support during the decade plus period these stories were written.

JFG – April 19, 2006

About J. F. Gonzalez

J. F. Gonzalez is the author of over fifteen novels of horror and dark suspense including They, Back From the Dead, Primitive, Bully, The Beloved, The Corporation, and is co-author of the Clickers series (with Mark Williams and Brian Keene respectively). His short fiction is collected in four volumes, of which the latest, The Summoning and Other Eldritch Tales, is available as an exclusive digital title. He also works in other media including film, the technology sector, and other areas of publishing. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania and is currently working on his next novel. For more information, visit him on the web at www.jfgonzalez.com.

Also by J. F. Gonzalez

Clickers

(Co-written with Mark Williams)

Click Click Click Click

Phillipsport, Maine is a quaint and peaceful seaside village. But when hundreds of creatures pour out of the ocean and attack, its residents must take up arms to drive the beasts back.

They are the Clickers, giant venomous blood-thirsty crabs from the depths of the sea. The only warning to their rampage of dismemberment and death is the terrible clicking of their claws. But these monsters aren’t merely here to ravage and pillage. They are being driven onto land by fear. Something is hunting the Clickers. Something ancient and without mercy.

Clickers II: The Next Wave

(Co-written with Brian Keene)

The first wave was just the beginning...

The United States is in ruins. It has just suffered one of the worst hurricanes in history, the people are demoralized, and the president is a religious fanatic. Then things get really bad - the Clickers return.

Thousands of the monsters swarm across the entire nation and march inland, slaughtering anyone and anything they come across. But this time the Clickers aren’t blindly rushing onto land - they are being led by an intelligence older than civilization itself. A force that wants to take dry land away from the mammals.

Those left alive soon realize that they must do everything and anything they can to protect humanity no matter the cost.

This isn’t war, this is extermination.

Clickers III: Dagon Rising

(Co-written with Brian Keene)

They thought it was over, but the second wave was only the beginning. In the aftermath of the Clickers and Dark Ones’s siege and a coup against an insane President, America rebuilds. Change has come, and a better future is promised to all. But promises can be broken and there may be no future at all because deep beneath the ocean a new terror awaits. Dagon, god of the Dark Ones, is waking up...and if humanity doesn’t stop him, then mankind will face extinction.

Trapped on a South Pacific Island, the cast of Clickers and Clickers II: The Next Wave join forces with a mysterious group of occult agents to face off against the Clickers, the Dark Ones, Dagon, and an all-new threat - the deadly obsidian Clickers. The stakes have never been higher. Dagon is rising...and humanity will fall.

Survivor

Author’s Preferred Edition

Before Hostel...before Saw...there was Survivor.

It was supposed to be a romantic weekend getaway. Lisa was looking forward to spending time alone with her husband, Brad, and telling him that they are going to have a baby. Instead, it becomes a nightmare when Brad is arrested and Lisa is kidnapped. But the kidnappers aren’t asking for ransom. They want Lisa herself. They’re going to make her a star - in a snuff film.

What they have in mind for Lisa is unspeakable. They plan to torture and murder her as graphically and brutally as possible, and to capture it all on film. If they have their way, Lisa’s death will be truly horrifying...but even more horrifying is what Lisa will do to survive...

It Drinks Blood

New Castle, Pennsylvania, during the tail end of the Great Depression.

Robert Brennan has never completely forgotten those days, even though he has tried to forget them. But when the nursing home he lives in receives a patient he remembers from those dark darks, it takes his mind back to a period marked by terrible, blood-soaked violence...the very kind marked by the twisted perversity of the stories he used to write for the weird-menace pulps...the kind marked by the real-life fiend that stalked the hobo jungles in search of fresh blood!

Primitive

It began as just another day for David Spires and his wife Tracy: coffee, breakfast, and getting the kids ready for school. Then the bottom dropped out of civilization.

The world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with a dizzying downward spiral. Instead of the rat race of commuters scurrying to beat the clock, humans are now packs of animals reduced to snarling primitives.

David, Tracy and their daughter Emily, along with fellow survivors, leave Los Angeles for the safety of the country where fewer people means fewer primitives. But as they venture farther away from the city, they realize an unnatural force is at work. Civilization didn’t just fall apart...it was overtaken by an ancient evil that was present before the first cave paintings. Human history has no formal record of it, but the dark presence that’s fueled nightmares since time began has crept out of the shadows...and its influence is growing.

The Summoning and Other Eldritch Tales

The Summoning contains seven collected tales of Lovecraftian-inspired nightmares from J. F. Gonzalez. Featured in this collection are two original pieces: "Holes" and "The Summoning" (co-authored with Mike Baker).

This exclusive digital collection of stories includes:

Opening The Way: An Introduction

Tattoos

Going Home

The Revenge of Cthulhu

Holes

The Man Who Had a Death Wish

The Summoning

The Watcher From the Grave

Each story contains special story notes penned by the author!

Back From the Dead

Tim Gaines was the town pariah. Mocked and teased continuously since he was in the sixth grade, he approaches his senior year of high school with a sense of cautious trepidation. Years before, when he was in the sixth grade, a group of boys led by Scott Bradfield - a popular, well-liked kid from well-to-do parents - spread a vicious rumor that he was a devil-worshipper. The rumor stuck, and is believed by most of the students and even a few of the teachers and administrators. It’s a rumor Tim can’t beat, and one he sometimes feels he’s brought on to himself due to his love of horror novels and movies.

Now Tim has become friends with a loose-knit group of kids who have also become social outcasts thanks to other rumors about them by the student elite. With their mutual support, Tim has begun to come out of his shell. He’s going out with them, being invited to parties, and even begins to have a romantic interest in a girl, something he never thought would happen to him in high school.

But all that will change when Scott Bradfield and his friends set their sights on Tim again. Only this time, they need his help. Like most of the student body of Spring Valley High School, they sincerely believe Tim Gaines is a devil-worshipper. And they believe he has a dark power. Now they want to use him and that power for their own sinister plight...

...To bring back the dead homeless man they’d kidnapped and brutally beaten to a pulp in the guesthouse that resides on the Bradfield residence.

They want him brought back not because they're scared of getting caught for his murder, but so they can savagely beat and murder him again...

...and again...

Fetish

Something is in search of human prey in the gang-ridden communities of Los Angeles...

When the member of a notorious street gang is found decapitated and dismembered at the bottom of the LA River, it quickly becomes apparent something is amiss. Detective Daryl Garcia connects it with the murders of six other gang members killed in the same way. It looks like the work of a serial killer, but the gang members don’t think so. They believe the murders are the work of rival gang members.

Someone has a dark desire of the most depraved fetish...

Detective Garcia becomes determined to find the killer at any cost. Together with Rachael Pearce, a journalist he falls in love with, he searches for the killer through the gang underground and the world of prostitution and drugs. And as suspect after suspect is released with no solid evidence to connect them to the crimes, the search for the killer becomes more urgent as the gang-infested areas of the city reach a boiling point to the brink of rioting. In a community of gang members – who are killers themselves – how does Detective Garcia find the most monstrous killer he has ever encountered?

Madness wears many faces...

Do Unto Others

Jim Cornell used to believe in God.

But when things went bad – his daughter getting cancer, his layoff from his well-paying job, the strain of his marriage – he began to have no use for God anymore.

When Jim’s forced into a situation that will require his participation in another man’s murder, his faith will be tested. Because while Jim used to believe in God, he’d never given that much thought to the Devil.

Now he’s going to have to. Because, like it or not, Jim is involved with people who have a deep religious faith, too.

Jim is about to discover that where there is light, there must be darkness. There’s more than one kind of religious faith and his is about to be put to the ultimate test.

The Corporation

Michelle Dowling found her dream job. The offer on her desk from Corporate Financial Consultants included a high five figure salary, generous benefits and cushy perks. Finally, after escaping the psychological abuse of an emotionally cold mother and a series of dead-end jobs, she could start planning for a future with her fiance, Donald.

However, Michelle forgot the cardinal rule for any job offer; always read the fine print. She really should have gotten more details about her overtime hours, company policies, and exactly what they meant when they said “Welcome to the Corporate Financial Family”.

Michelle isn’t afraid of hard work. She’s a dedicated employee, the kind any manager would want for his firm. But this Corporation requires much more than just dedication...

The Beloved

You've seen her before. Perhaps somebody you know is dating her, getting himself into debt by taking her out to fancy restaurants and buying her expensive gifts. Yet you see her for what she really is.

Elizabeth Weaver saw it in her brother Ronnie's new girlfriend, Diana. Something about the woman rubbed Elizabeth the wrong way. She refused to get a job and help Ronnie around the house and seemed to bask in the attention and expensive gifts he showered her with. And as Ronnie began neglecting the rest of his family, they finally took notice, only Elizabeth saw what the others didn't - that Diana wasn't quite human.

And neither were her children.

Don Grant has tracked the creature for years, ever since it turned his wife into something barely more than a living zombie. He's traced its history through the centuries. It feeds off our lust for it, the violence it goads us into creating, and it grows stronger and seductive with each new victim. Now Don has caught up with it and he has to stop it fast, or the nightmare will be unleashed on a whole new family.

Shapeshifter

Mark Wiseman thought he had his curse under control. He thought he’d kept it secret.

He was wrong.

Bernard Roberts is a wealthy, influential man, and he knows all about the curse that runs through Mark’s veins. He knows how Mark’s parents were killed eight years ago. If Mark wants Bernard to keep this knowledge to himself, he’ll have to do what Bernard wants. He’ll have to use his curse to kill.

But if Mark Wiseman begins to lose control of the curse, he will lose everything he has: his life and freedom, and the woman he loves.

They

They walk among us unnoticed, unassuming.

A year after the auto accident that killed his wife, Vince Walters is finally beginning to move forward with his life. With the support of friends, he’s digging back into his career and even beginning to date again.

When his estranged mother, Maggie Walters, is murdered, Vince is stunned by the hideous nature of the crime. Maggie lived a quiet life in a small, rural Pennsylvania town, attending church, reading the Bible, and subscribing to an increasingly paranoid view of the End Times as prophesied in The Book of Revelations. Her brutal killing, which bears all the signs of being related to a sinister satanic cult, is inexplicable given her life of faith.

However, a visit from a childhood playmate confirms what Vince is beginning to uncover about his mother’s past: that she was involved with a cult during his early childhood, but later defected and went into hiding with him. As hard as Maggie worked to bury her dark past, it seems that they finally found her.

Now they’ve found Vince. And this time, they are not going to give him up.

They have plans for him.

Praise for THEY:

“J. F. Gonzalez spins a great yarn, and this one is a classic example. Creepy, interesting and devious. I loved it.” Jonathan Maberry, NY Times Bestselling author of Rot and Ruin.

Acknowledgements

The material in this volume constitutes the definitive versions of these texts.

“Introduction: Here We Go Again” by J. F. Gonzalez. Copyright 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Desire”originally appeared in Strange Bedfellows: Hot Blood 12, edited by Jeff Gelb and Michael Garrett, Kensington Books. Copyright 2004 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Menage A Trois” originally appeared in Cold Flesh, edited by Paul Fry, Hellbound Books. Copyright 2005 by J. F. Gonzalez.

“Out of the Cradle” originally appeared in Insidious Reflections #6, Summer 2006. Copyright 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Mummy” originally appeared in The Star Chamber Online #1, November 2002. Copyright 2002 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Riding the Storm Out” originally appeared in Shivers II, edited by Richard T. Chizmar, CD Publications. Copyright 2003 by J. F. Gonzalez

“The Watcher From the Grave” originally appeared in Classic Pulp Fiction, March 2000. Copyright 2000 by Tom and Virginia Johnson. Copyright reassigned to the author on March 27, 2000. Copyright 2000 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Sending Them Home” originally appeared in That’s All Folks!; Yard Dog Press. Copyright 2004 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Finding the Flame” is original to this volume and is Copyright 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Offices” originally appeared in Fantasque, December 2004. Copyright 2004 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Going Home” originally appeared in The Eternal Night Online: 2002. Copyright 2002 by J. F. Gonzalez.

“The Lingering Scent of Brimstone” originally appeared in Shivers III, edited by Richard T. Chizmar, CD Publications. Copyright 2004 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Addict” originally appeared in Insidious Reflections #5, January 2006. Copyright 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

“What Happened At Forest Green Cemetery” originally appeared in Stones, edited by Judi Rohrig, Lone Wolf Publications, 2002. Copyright 2002 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Girlfriend” originally appeared in Shortestories.com, November 2003. Copyright 2003 by J. F. Gonzalez

“Story Notes” Copyright 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

To Brian Keene

No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored into or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other means now known or yet to be invented) without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact the author: www.jfgonzalez.com.

Translation: no part of this book may be reprinted without prior written permission from the author; that includes uploading digital editions onto file-sharing or bit-torrent networks and/or scanning pages of the paperback edition, creating a digital file, and uploading them to file-sharing/bit-torrent networks. Yes, this does constitute “reprinting”. It’s not the same as checking a copy out at the library or borrowing a copy from a friend. A copy of the book was made; hence, the “copy” in copyright. Committing any of these acts should result in your sudden death if done for financial gain on your part, or on that of the aforementioned file-sharing networks. If done out of ignorance of copyright law, I can cut some slack, and encourage you to either a) purchase a legal copy or, b) donate what I normally would have made had you bought your own copy ($2.99, pay-pal to jfgonzalez@jfgonzalez.com). Bottom line: if you do not have it in writing from the author, it isn’t authorized.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events and individuals is coincidental. This book is sold as is and neither the publisher, nor the author, will be responsible for any direct or consequential damages that may arise from the misuse of the information within.

A Signed Limited First Edition of this book was previously published by Thunderstorm Books for collectors.

When the Darkness Falls © 2006 by J. F. Gonzalez

Cover Illustration and Design © 2006 Richard Long

First Midnight Library eBook edition © 2013

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