We can be awakened, however. There are three ways.

Defile the Flesh. This tenet espouses the mind-freeing potential of tattooing, ritual scarification, and self-inflicted pain. Aubrey himself never went "under the gun" and died with no tattoos or body modification of any sort. But, like many gurus, he said he had developed beyond the rules required of his followers. He also makes the outlandish claim of having gouged his own eye, from the root, with a tablespoon. Father Byron's story of Aubrey losing his left orb in a childhood episode of abuse seems more plausible, and three secondary sources I consulted repeat the "pencil encounter" almost verbatim. I don't know which stor\ is true, if either. Aubrey Morick said whatever popped into his mind in front of crowds. 1 Ms speeches were frequent and interminable. He spoke without notes, and often without sense. He wrote in the same fashion. The foremost goal was to shock the audience and shore up any slippage his waning notoriety may have suffered between gigs.

Outwardly, he directs disciples toward sadism, torture, and disfig urement ol enemies. I le ». ites anclent tribal customs and warrior ethics,

employing an unsystematic hodgepodge of contorted historical facts. Facts are not important to him. Spirit is. And in the spirit of defining supremacy of the Self, a little bloodletting never hurts.

Feast on the Living. Here he promotes parasitic living as the finest aspiration of Man. In the figurative sense, one is urged to live off the labor of others. Sweat not, except in pleasure. I like that line despite myself. Most of the Morick aphorisms, which are incidentally collected and available in pocket form, lack wit and flee from memory as quickly as the eye passes over them. Morick believed that any work done but solely for the perfection and gratification of the Self and the Self's desires was waste. This waste naturally led to the depletion of Spirit and was deemed reprehensible. Cons, street rip-offs, purse-snatching, thieving, marrying for position and money, embezzlement, the duping of friends in secure -ment of loans—were suitable career moves, as long as they were played for maximum advantage and terminated when the advantage itself ended. Above all else, he recommended the seduction of benefactors.

In the more literal sense, he avowed experimentation with cannibalism.

Love the Dead. The Serpent of the Plains illustrates, in various reiterations throughout his texts, an obsessive preoccupation with dying and the dead. Nothing new as far as religion goes. But Aubrey Morick asserts that Death is not simply transitional. It is vital. Utmost in importance is the method or active mode of death. Suicide becomes celebratory. Murder is a gift. For page after page, he revels in oppositions and reversals. Worship the death's head as life force. The grave is the marriage bed. To be a man of bones is to be a truly fleshed-out man. And so on. A smart thrall, he writes, will find his opportunities, and thus his joy, in hospitals, sanitariums, rooms of execution, morgues, mortuaries, cemeteries, etc. For as much ink and paper as Morick devotes to this concept, it remains—to me at least—the vaguest of the trio. The more elaborative his efforts, the more obscured his subject proves.

Sex with the dying or those about to die—condemned prisoners are given as an example—is heartily encouraged. Yet literally and physically "loving" the dead never enters the discussion. I find this omission strange. Was Morick prudish in his deviltry?

Cannibalism, yes, by all means. But necrophilia is a no-no?

glean these philosophical tidbits from the volumes. Death is not an

end. It is not the culmination of a life. It is a means to exercise certain otherwise unobtainable magical freedoms. And Power. Death reshuffles the deck and puts the aces and kings on top.

Taken as a whole, A. H. Morick's is not an organized religion; disorganized makes a better, if charitable, fit. He's practicing sorcery, here and there, but it's his own personal brand of hocus-pocus. He holds back on particulars, rituals such as the Cloven Print are alluded to but never laid bare. They are too dangerous for novices. The Serpent doesn't offer his thralls empowerment. He's a stingy demigod. Slavery in the service of the most fearsome master appears to be the most a lowly thrall can afford.

Aubrey Morick was a madman. I don't believe, even if he were acting a role at the outset, that he could have sustained his sanity for long. There's too much crazy energy alive in his words. Dips, turns, flights of dark fantasy, abound. He was a true believer, if only in his twisted self.

An interesting anecdote, found in the appendix to one of the tomes, leads me to believe I might have been wrong about the necrophilia. The lack of explication was, perhaps, a mere oversight on Morick's part. In the mid-seventies, a group of six people—the youngest was a schoolteacher in her thirties —broke into a funeral home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They stole a dozen bodies and wouldVe gotten away with them if their truck hadn't thrown a tire outside Titusville. A highwa) patrolman stopped to help. The truck had expired plates, and the group appeared to he heading lor a destination across the state line. But when questioned, none of them could say where. The patrolman became sus

picious .mil began checking their licenses. The odor of then ^av^o soon

drew the patrolman's .mention. Once in custody, the perpetrators iden-

l u

tified themselves as "thralls of the Black Blood Druid" and stated their intention in stealing the bodies was "to have an orgy."

Now, it might have been a promotional stunt. Aubrey Morick paid for their defense attorney and appeared every day in the gallery at their trial. He was easy to pick out in the crowd. Tall, gaunt, he wore a deep red turban and matching cloak. During the court recesses, he stood alone in the corridor and smoked cigars, shunning reporters and, when goaded, flicking ash on their shoes.

he ceiling fan thrums. I put down my papers. My feet on the floor, my head dizzily fumed with tobacco and too many words—I switch the fan off. Silence. Then on again.

Off.

On.

The white noise, the whirring . . .

I venture down to the neighborhood video store. Open an account and rent the first thing I lay my hands on.

Poltergeist.

I'm not planning to watch the movie. A film about suburbia, television, ghosts.

I'm in the ghost business these days. Maybe I've always been ... Matthias, my father, the Boyle twins, Tad, my missing Robyn .. . now the Morick clan.

I reconnect the VCR in the attic.

Leave the TV's volume setting where it is.

The movie plays. I'm down the steps. Close the trapdoor.

My eyes are shut. The score, the actors—music and voices transfer through the floor audibly. I can hear it in the boys' room and everywhere else on the second floor. There's no way Tad and Una wouldn't know something was up there blaring in the attic.

Enter the parents' bedroom and push the door until it clicks.

Switch the fan on.

I can't hear the tape playing.

But my heart pounding comes through loud and clear.

Chapter 18

ake a pilgrimage, as I did. Outside Milwaukee, in the woods, you

will find a lake. Next to it a mansion stands. Stroll around the

back to the Maltz graveyard. They charge a fee to tour the mansion and

its grounds. Beer aristocracy, the Maltzes were always smart about their

money.

I pay my fee to the smiling attendant in the Maltz's former vestibule. The paneling was chosen for its darkness and strong grains; the home, what I see of it, purports a nautical theme. I exit the mansion.

The weather has turned nasty. The sky is raw, clouds torn. I huddle inside my jacket. But the blustery winds don't spare me. It's an edgy chill bearing from the north.

Aubrey's buried here, rubbing shoulders with (bur generations of the Malt/ lanuK and a veritable pack of their beloved pet dogs. If the engravings arc accurate, they favored Doberman pinschers.

Release the hounds,

A hillock. New trees. Climbing vines on the gravestones. I think this one entangled al my feel is called a running rose.

Aubrey Mart Morick's tomb protrudes above the ground. They'vi

erected a st.uue. Of a skeletal being. .Anns extended, a mocker) ol

Christ imagery, yet only the knowing would detect the implicit irony,

Two red marble serpents writhe around the legs of this pale, chiseled specter. The cap over the grave is a foot thick. As I expected, there's a spattering of graffiti. All in praise of the man whose bones rest underneath. Some visitors are like me, they've traveled here for a reason.

Red lichen and moss cling to the damp-to-the-touch stone. A spider's web bibs the skeleton, and I have to assume, on these well-kept premises, that the web has intentionally been left undisturbed. It's a macabre tribute. I'm aware, because of my research, that the snakes—I squat to inspect them—represent black blood pythons; Sumatran short-tails with huge girth, relative to length, and orange bejeweled eyes.

I want to stroke them. They are the only shining parts in the configuration.

Instead, I read the tomb's epitaph. Short, concise—name, birth and death dates, followed by a single line of remembrance.

Here lies one who knew the Secrets

I drive to Milwaukee's main public library and dig into archival news files, scan about for items related to Morick family traumas. Aubrey Hart's consumptive father in Belfast, the cruel, dipsomaniacal stepfather in Milwaukee, the dead twin, Griffin ...

I discover, to my astonishment, that Aubrey's wife, Iris Morick, is alive. I find a reference to her on a Milwaukee Sentinel microfiche, an international story lifted from the AP. She was Irish. Aubrey married a girl from the island. But she left the United States. Went back home; where she was confined to live in a mental hospital. How did she find herself inhabiting such a place? Nearly thirty years ago, she tried to commit suicide while in police custody. The courts judged her of unsound mind.

Her crime?

She had attempted murder.

Last heard of, she was living voluntarily at a Catholic-run facility; she'd been deemed fit for release but had chosen to stay for further treatment. Far, far away from where I sit.

I jot the facts.

Whom did she try to murder?

Not Aubrey, her husband.

Graham. She tried to drown her son. And she didn't do it in the bathtub or a secluded garden pond or in Lake Michigan for that matter. On a windless summer afternoon, she rowed—just two in the boat, mother and son—out into a glassy oceanic bay with a little picnic basket resting between them like a treasure. They ate tea cakes and lemonade. She slipped him a sedative, probably in his lemonade bottle. Then she cuffed a stone to his leg and cast him overboard.

Fishermen saw her struggling. She was a small woman, he a large boy. They saved Graham from certain death at sea. The harbor police took custody of Iris.

In Ireland.

That's what gets to me.

The Moricks were living there then. After Griffin's death, they moved across the Atlantic. Then Iris turns murderous and tries to kill her remaining son.

Una Boyle lives there now. Her sons are still missing. Husband and wife pick up, leave America. And then Tad loses his life.

In Ireland.

Chapter 19

fly into Dublin. The airport is like any metro airport. The city is big and dirty. Where does all the paper come from? The crushed lager cans I understand. But the paper? I rent a car. Other-side-of-the-road driving. Everything narrower than I'd prefer. I make three directional mistakes. Finally solve the riddle of Dublin traffic. Get out. Into the countryside. It's green. I pass many sheep. Travelers' caravans parked on the outskirts of crumbly, tilted places. The paper follows me. I'm smoking more. Must be the cold sea climate, the soft rain. I feel like a million bucks. Stop for cigarettes. Buy a scratch ticket. Lose.

he hallway is poorly ventilated, stuffy with a tincture of varnish.

They seat me in a green chair that exhales softly as I stretch my legs. I'm expecting a priest or a nun. You can't walk five steps in this place without passing a crucifix. Iris may find comfort in that. I don't. My presence doesn't merit a priest or a nun. I get a sexless person, wearing gold spectacles, black pants, white shirt, who tells me it will be a few minutes before I'm seen.

Therefore, I remain, for the moment, unseen. I'll give the sisters this

much credit: the housekeeping is spiffy. I'm tempted to say immaculate. Religious language, unanchored, floats to the top of my brain. Sexless pops around the corner. He/she smells like baby powder. I start to rise up but am signaled to keep my place and then reassured my turn is coming. Instead, I'm offered water. Surprised to see it arrive in a real glass, heavy, quality stuff etched with use. I drink and taste disgorged bilge. Seaweed and gull droppings, a school of slimed, dead mullet. Couldn't be, right? I'm polite about it. This place wrings the politeness out of you. Swallow what's in my mouth. Deposit my glass on the sideboard, slip it around the back of a framed photo—a black-and-white, girls on a lawn walking in procession with their hands folded. Little temples. Those damned Catholic schoolgirls in their blazers and skirts.

I'm enjoying the thready birth of my first Irish headache.

"If you'll follow me, please," says Sexless.

ris Morick and I are seated in a conversation room. Two chairs, a table, and a lamp. The door closes. We are alone. Iris Morick appears lucid. A tall woman with sloping shoulders, she has gray hair that's pinned back, and slate eyes. Her complexion is a bit sallow, which I first attribute to the lighting and her circumstances. She presents as well-groomed, dressed in slacks, a blouse, and cardigan—all shades of blue and a size too large. I notice no makeup or perfume. Her mood seems relaxed. She lights a cigarette and asks if I'd like one. I decline. Mrs. Morick has given me permission to tape our conversation. A transcript excerpt from my taping follows.

Ins Morkk fase I leering

l\l ID IM ID IM

You here about Aubrey?

\oi Aubrey . .. I'm visiting to ask about your son.

i she nods, i I had two sons.

I want to talk about C iraham.

(she pulls .it her lip.) I did my best. To be a good mother?

II aughs.) I did my best to murder the bugger. What do you thmk they lotAi-ii me awa^ for?

JD: Did you think he was evil?

IM: No.

JD: Then why did you try ...

IM: Let me ask you a question. A person needs a soul to be evil, doesn't he? (She places her hand over mine.) You look like an honest young man. Tell you a story. One day Aubrey killed my Griffin. He slashed his throat with a razor. It was Aubrey's stepfather's blade. We had a whole box. The old man did a bit of barbering over in Prussia, I think it was. Stepdad used to take nips out of little Aubrey's backside when the mood struck. No excuse, of course. Not for cutting the throat of your own. I witnessed it. Graham did as well. It was during a ritual. Aubrey went overboard. He didn't expect the boy to die, not spiritually. Irrational, but that was Aubrey at the time. Both of us were mad.

JD: The Cloven Print? Graham told me it was a sham.

IM: It's real. But the thing hadn't worked. At least Aubrey thought it hadn't. I helped my husband lug Griffin's body to the top of the wall. The three of us did the dreadful business together. Graham jumped on him, made himself a sweaty spectacle pouncing on Griffin's body. To drive the spike through his neck, you see? We had to make quite a mess to throw off the police. I didn't want my husband to be arrested. But Graham enjoyed it, right? It was like playing games to him. He took great pleasure. (She shakes her head.) I make no claims to my own innocence. I'm going to hell. The good sisters will concur. Their project to redeem me has failed. I can't be saved. Go on. Ask them on your way out. I'd love to hear what they tell you.

JD: Are you mentally ill?

IM: Insane? Does it show? I'm being sarcastic. You asked politely. No, I feel all right these days. Though I've got the bone cancer. When they told me I'd be having a visitor, I thought it might be one of the children come to say good-bye ...

JD: Your children?

IM: I had another child. Nobody knows. I mean, the sisters knew. They took her from me. A daughter, but she was off-the-books. Graham knows about her, that's for sure. He used to visit me. Years ago, he did. I was labeled a catatonic, but I knew when he came into my room. The doctors thought it might be therapeutic. (Unintelligible.) I was no threat to him, was I? Him a young adult now, big, mature lad, and me all withered in my sickbed. (Laughter again.) And I know he was aware of my, my ... my cognition. The way he talked to his mother. The things he said to me ... (unintelligible sound, coughing). He's keeping an eye on my daughter these days. He wouldn't let her go unattended. (Nodding.) That's a worry. I think about him lying in my bed. Tall like Aubrey in his prime, a spitting image of the old Serpent. (Dry laughter.) Nights are hardest. Even with the pills and prayers.

JD: When was she born?

IM: She's twenty-five. Doesn't she look like a beauty queen though? (Smiles. Iris is missing an incisor.)

JD: You've seen her?

IM: She's come around for a visit, just like you. I was telling you about that. How I got confused. When you rang the office and asked for a visit? I thought you might be her. I don't have visitors, not for decades I didn't. Now she drops in. "Hi, Mum." Then, when you called, they said it was a man, a man coming. It's him, I thought. Horrid Graham. But I said my prayers. God told me it would be someone else. And God was right. He hasn't been here. I worry about that. What's he doing? I don't think I would see him this time. After everything, 1 would have a right not to. Soon I'll be dead. He'd gel a thrill at that. Hut a mother wants to know.

JD: Know what?

IM: 1 low did they all turn out? The lovelies, mv little lovelies . . .

Alter, always alter (he fact.

My mind races with things I should've said, chances blown.

178

I park the car. Leave it on the street and start searching. St. Stephen's Green. I wander the paths. The Moricks tag along in my head. I emerge on the other side, aching for a drink. Harcourt Street to Hatch Street Upper. Down the hatch is what I need. Go on. This pub's called the Bleeding Horse and sounds about right. Dark enough inside. But big glass windows combat my claustrophobia. Caves lend us an ancient mammalian comfort. I'm sheltered inside this place. I can see out. Watch for my enemies. From the looks of the crowd, I fit okay, maybe a little too grizzled. Higher mileage on me, but the chassis hasn't fallen apart. There are a fair number of students. Laughing at one another as they should be. I'm not looking for company.

I luck out and get a stool by the taps. Order a Bulmers and a shot of Jameson. Cold cider and a straight whiskey—lovely. When I look up again, I've had three more of the same. Feeling better. A woman pries between me and the cornered wall.

Bumps me in the kneecaps.

Hard.

My fault? I'm turned sideways to minimize distractions. Grooving for good and hammered. Now I swing around.

It's Una Boyle.

She's looking for a refill, empty pint in her slender, ring-heavy hand, but she's looking for more than that too. Maybe I flatter myself.

"Tinker's drink," she says, referring to my three-quarters-down cider.

I nod back. The shock of seeing her muzzles me.

She's tottering a bit, nothing that says she's blasted. In Ireland, she doesn't seem so broken. A tarnished majesty is hung on her sorrow. And she's striking too; more noticeable than when I saw her last—the unpleasantness in the garage—and I do my best to dismiss thoughts of that disastrous exchange. I'm in the moment and drunk. The lighting helps. Jet hair tumbling around a pale face. Una's cheeks are ruddy with the booze. Under the sweater, her limber body seriously at work. She moves that way—a bendy girl. Half-pack of Silk Cut Purples clutched in her fist. Her jeans are snug but not overly. They fall nicely on her, I'll admit. Pale blue moons rising in the corner of my down-turned eye.

Devil in my ear.

Tad's buried in the cold ground. The woman is grieving, yearning. Iris's daughter? Morick's sister? Shall we find out? How to do that? Can't ask outright, not if you want the kind of attention you crave. Not if you want answers either. You like them damaged. Well, here's your perfect ten. Make your move.

"Let me get this," I say. The bartender, quite familiar by now with my cash pile, chooses the proper bills. Takes her empty glass.

"Guinness," she says to him. To me: "You're writing about us?"

"Among other things, yes."

"What sort of other things?"

"Investigative. You live around here, right? You must have seen me walking through the park. Is that it? Did you follow me here?"

"I may have."

"That's sneaky."

"Is that woman with you?"

"My partner? Robyn? No. We're not together anymore."

"Just as well."

"I've been to visit Iris."

"Who is she?"

e're in her flat. She's lit some candles, found a bottle of Bushmills in the cupboard. She keeps her sweater on and shucks off everything else without a warning.

Why is that such a turn-on? I'm out like a shepherd's hook.

Pared to the bone, not an extra ounce of flesh on her. Thighs like cemetery marble. They won't warm despite my busy hands and the peat fire glowing in the fireplace.

Riding me.

[alking nonsense filth at my request.

The talking tilth part, not the nonsense part.

u ( k) fuck yourself" she sa) s.

1 ler eyes are mischievous slashes.

I'm ready to break out laughing. Only she's locked on like a Jump's

list.

Jesus.

I adore a woman with a bit of hair downstairs, taps into the Garden of Eden of my slithery reptilian brain. Una is a jackpot. The Mighty Sin is unmistakable. If you're doing it right, there will be hell to pay. And you don't care. You're a split-second god. I'd sell out for that any day. She mixes in these little side-to-side hitches. Wicked really, the effect they have. I'm shifting dimensions.

"Go fuck yourself," she says again.

I reach for the whiskey bottle.

Second thoughts. Afraid I might chip a tooth. Guilt's on the way and I haven't even finished. I need something to bat it aside.

Una lays her palms over my eyes. Presses down.

"What're you doing?"

Her mouth in my ear. I expect a kiss, an amorous bite perhaps.

"Shhhh. What do you see?"

"Nothing."

"What do you see?"

I feel her rhythm speeding up. She's loose. Wet.

Tight. I see stars.

"Stars?"

"No, it's darkness, nothing but darkness."

"Come on. Give it to me."

That does the trick. I'm quivering like some poor slob getting the paddles in an ER because he's flatlined. Electrocuted by sex. I arch. Buck out the aftershocks. Robyn flashing before my eyes. Una takes her hands away. They both lean close to paint me with whiskey kisses.

ater, the candles gutter as they die. Two left. Their flames lengthen and turn twisty. Una opens the shutters to let the moon inside. She's bathed in nocturnal light. Some must be coming from the streetlamps. Doesn't matter. She sways, dancing flat-footed—backlit, silvery, sad, beautiful. Every object in the room decides whether to be black or white, outline or shadow. My mind fogs over. Clicks back.

"Are you Graham Morick's little sister?"

"Don't be silly. That stooped old hag lied to you."

"Iris told me about her daughter. But she wouldn't tell me her name." Tumblers spin in my drunken brain. "How do you know what she looks like?"

"I only know that men think all women are hags in the end."

"You're no hag. Though, you might be a Morick."

"You honestly think it's me?"

I nod like an imbecile.

Una shows me her hands, doing this weird gesture. Like sign language, but odder, almost Masonic. Index fingers scissoring under her middle fingers, pinkies tucked below ring fingers—a big forked split down the middle, and her thumbs hidden against her palms. Contortions out in front of her, arms stiff, wrists folded down, as if she's offering me a choice of which set of knuckles to kiss.

"Don't do that," I say.

"Know what this means?"

"No, but you're frightening me." I'm only half-serious. I lie there, drifting. Sinking into a drunk's coma, shaking my numb head.

"Haven't gotten that far yet?" She paws the arm of the couch. But they don't exactly resemble paws; the action isn't pawing. Better to say hooves—a pair of prancing hooves. She laughs. I notice her overbite and dental fillings.

I attempt to get up.

She pushes me down. "All right, I'll stop. I don't want you leaving."

Una pours a stiff whiskey. She sits upright at my feet, wedged into the corner of the couch, a look of determination crossing her face. Even with my senses dulled, I have to wonder, Is she waiting for me to fall asleep?

"Waiting for me to fall asleep?" I ask, slurring, yet knowing I'm slurring —that's about where 1 am in terms of consciousness.

She strokes my shins. Her nose buries deep in the glass, cupping her

words.

Worry I'll set you on fire?*'

At least I think she says that. It's a joke. I don't believe she'd hurt me.

I believe very much in sleep. Couches and sleep. Sleep.

na talks in another room. Is she on the phone?

I should be going. I'm sandbagged, alcohol and exhaustion. In a few minutes, I'll be off. But, wait. Here she comes. Feel her coil next tome.

Her hand closes over mine. I never even open my eyes. The red lids tell me it's a bloody new day. I'm aware of the cold nibbling of her rings on my skin.

Her harsh breath blows past me. She had another whiskey while talking on the phone. She's a tougher customer than I ever was.

Una slides to the floor, kneeling. I'm prone on the couch. She's pushing a heavy object—it has a handle—into my hand; it's more a grip than a handle. There's a curve to it. I don't blink. Try, instead, to roll on my side, away from her, whatever it is she's doing.

We're having a lethargic struggle. I want to win. Give me my hand back, I'm thinking. I want to sleep a little more. I jerk my arm to shrug her off.

The gunshot wakes me.

At once, I am fully awake.

Bolt upright.

Afraid.

My eyes wide, looking down on ...

Una's body.

A great tongue of gore hangs from the hole in the back of her skull. By her face, you'd never know it. Blood, shapeless and primitive, pools on the boards. Her expression is beatific. More of the blood had whipped out behind her, hitting things, the wall for example, and it's running down. Red tears. Pieces—grit and gobs. Her life voided. Yet she looks plain stoned.

The pistol.

My God. I've been squeezing it for dear life. Now I wipe its entirety

with the tail of my shirt, lay it gently on the cushions, because I don't really know about guns. I don't want accidents ... I don't want it to go off again.

I find my socks. My shoes. I put them on without sitting down. Hop on one foot to keep my balance. My breathing is loud. I've never heard it so loud.

Hyperventilating, that's what this must be.

Even with the gunshot still ringing in my ears and . . .

Where are my things?

Am I leaving any evidence?

Fingerprints, of course. Hair, fibers. My sweat, my dried saliva. No time to do anything about it. But I'm a foreigner, I've never been printed. I look down at the body again. Dead Una in her sweater and nothing else. I want to cover her up.

She has my semen inside her.

I go back and lift the gun—using my shirttail again—and I leave it next to her.

As if she shot herself.

She did.

She absolutely did shoot herself.

na appears to have been living alone. Little or no evidence of Tad—he's been erased. As far as I know, no one saw me entering her building. But I can't say for certain. It was late. I was staggering drunk. I absolutely don't want anyone seeing me leave now that it's morning. The street looks placid enough. But that only makes me consider how loud the gunshot was.

So I need another way out. Before I go, I decide to have a look around the Hat. I'm on an adrenaline high. Fear circuits are overloaded. My mind turns cold. I will never gel another opportunity like this. Being careful not to touch anything unless I plan to keep it—I start my search in the bedroom. I'm no burglar. No lawman either. I don't know how to toss t \i\ apartment.

Do my best.

The unit is small, perhaps not by European standards, and I manage a thorough job. My sense of time has shattered. Feels like a month since I slept with Una, a fraction of a second since she died.

The only bedroom—it could belong to a hotel. Nothing personalized: a bed, a mirror, an empty wardrobe.

Fasting bachelors have better-outfitted kitchens.

In the bathroom, I learn that Una owns a single towel and takes quite a number of prescription pills. I dry swallow two Valiums. Pocket the bottle.

She's in the sitting room.

Grate my teeth as I step around her corpse.

Come up with zero.

Where are her clothes?

losets.

Her luggage—I kick the bags out into the room. The large bags fall open and are stuffed with women's clothing. Not very clean, or very incriminating. Her carry-on feels light. It rattles. Covering my hand with my sleeve, I release the latch.

Videotape.

Jam it back into the bag—mine now. Ball up my leather coat and force it inside. I'm sweating like a pig. My mouth tastes bittersweet from last night's alcohol, and I'd better not be sick because there's no time for ...

I hear the two-tone siren of a European police car.

ang out the rear window.

The fall won't kill me. Drop onto a garden shed, dent the roof, and slide off into a patch of dewy grass littered with cigarette butts. My right leg soaked. Leap a stone wall. Here come the gardai.

I rush to a taxi stand, thankful there are no cabs to be had. Gazing at my wristwatch, I'm just a businessman off to the airport. The police car speeds by, makes the turn, and stops in front of Una's building. I'm walking away, wondering where I left the rental. Positive I'll never make it that far.

Yet I do.

Chapter 20

don't sleep.

Not on the airplane, or on the el train. Convinced I'll be arrested at any moment.

Through the doorway, I lose everything but the video. Hurry to the attic. Turn the television upright and insert the tape. I've scored a victory. But I'm not prepared to celebrate. What have I won? It tastes like my own descent.

wouldn't call it a snuff film. It's more a log. You could stretch and call it a confession. I would resist the temptation for multiple reasons. Not least of which is I don't think Aubrey Hart Morick was confessing. I think he was archiving his grab at immortality.

The tape reveals the Cloven Print in action. Morick the Elder caught murdering his own son. It's a home movie, of amateur film stock; someone's gone to the trouble of transferring it to a video format. Scratches and flecks of dust show throughout. The sound quality warbles muddy at best, and at worst, it drops out completely; you might be watching a

silent picture. The view is too dark, hazy, obscured. The watcher gets the sense of a large room, not a typical American family dwelling. I know, because Graham told me when we met at the condo that what I'm about to see happened inside the Maltz mansion.

Which room, I have no idea. I never completed the tour.

Aubery Hart Morick fiddling with his camera. With the lighting. His twins, Graham and Griffin, bounce a soccer ball back and forth in the barren hall. The boom-boom-boom of the ball overloads the microphone. The boys are clumsy, tripping over each other. They sprawl on the floor and giggle. Aubrey grows impatient. The undraped archway leading outdoors glows harsh white.

"This will have to do," Aubrey mutters.

egin the chant. As I taught you, remember?" He leads them the first few phrases, but they sing it strong. I know their chant by now. I've heard it twice before. Once at the Sandcastle, again when Graham visited the condo. Aubrey is overjoyed. There is a muffled sound—his voice swallowed by velvet as he cloaks himself, dons his cowl.

The boys lie like two edges of an arrow.

Their heads touch at his feet.

Aubrey climbs onto a three-legged stool. He slips a noose over his head. Snugs the knot up, nice and tight. Slackness apparent in the rope as the Serpent steps down off the stool. He hovers over the boys. His voice is impossible to decipher. A continuous, barely detectable mumble, like the buzzing of a beehive.

You never see the blade.

One of the boys, Griffin it is—it has to be (given what I know at the start ) - the sleeve of Aubrey's robe covers his face. He stiffens for a moment. They mustVe drugged him beforehand. Because that's all.

Aubrey climbs on his stool again. The slack disappears. 1 le kicks the stool away.

I le hangs by his neck.

1 or .1 minute or two, as long as it takes him to run out ol oxygen, tor the panic to hit, he's simply floating there like An angel. He set up the

camera poorly, in a bad position. I don't think it was intentional. The viewer cant see the length of rope tauten or any of the gallows mechanism. You see the noose. It's white. His cowl pulls aside during the struggle. You glimpse Aubrey's grimacing face and the noose as he twists. The other end of the rope is tied somewhere off-camera. His neck doesn't break. But he's strangling. He sways like a slow pendulum. All that's visible for the record are his cloaked body, the knocked-over stool, and the prostrate boys—maybe there's a puddle around Griffin, hard to say, could be shadows.

Aubrey starts to fuss.

Then he's kicking wildly. His pale legs move apart, together again, apart, like a pair of gigantic shears snapping under his cloak.

He takes the barber's razor—here you see it, clearly, the long, black handle decorated with a silver pin through the end—and flips it open. He's sawing at the rope.

Two thralls and Iris rush in. They lift him, the thralls do, and Iris gravitates to her son. She's not angry. Inquisitive. I'd call her attitude inquisitive.

She never looks at the camera.

None of them look.

The screen fills with electric snow. End tape.

Then it begins again.

Replaying the ritual. The videotape is full of back-to-back copies of the Cloven Print film. This is the tape that played over the boys' room every night. They listened to it through the floor. Una—their mother— set it up. Her sons dreamed to the chants. They heard a failed rehearsal of their own murders, while they slept below in innocence.

Chapter 21

atching the Cloven Print video has me thinking about the other tapes—the vanished birthday and Tad's inadvertent recording of the twins' abduction.

I want to see them again.

My memory is fuzzy. As fuzzy as the image of the man playing pin-ball in the birthday video. It was Graham. He was watching the boys. And Una knew it.

Something else.

What part did Una play in the kidnapping of her children? If she and Graham were working together, she could've handed the boys over to him. Tad was the only obstacle. His knowledge might have been his death warrant. What did I know about Una?

She lied to me the night she died.

She knew what Iris looked like because she was Iris's daughter. She had been to visit her mother days before I did.

As .in infant, she was put up for adoption. The nuns took her from Ins in the asylum. Graham had to have found out. He located her. 1 don't know when, lie informed her of her lineage, her legacy. He convinced her to prepare her sons tor sacrifice.

She married young.

Her husband played around with his students.

She was a good enough actress to fool me when we interviewed her. I thought she was bereaved. She fooled me again in Dublin. She brought a loaded gun to me while I slept. Was she going to kill me or set me up as a murderer?

I don't have the answer.

But she was a good actress.

I find the background file Robyn made summarizing the principals associated with the kidnapping. Leaf through the binder.

Payoff.

In college, Una joined an all-female theater troupe. They called themselves the Black Mollies. She played a few lead roles.

Yes, I want to see the abduction tape again.

'm withholding evidence—the rock from the Boyles' attic and now

Aubrey Morick's recording of Griffin's ritualized slaying. Implicated in a murder overseas, on the run, if only in my mind, but here I am walking upright into a police station; worried that my guilt will be as obvious and crude as if I wore a dress. But no one blinks. I meet Brendan Fennessy and we go into the same room where I watched the Boyle tape the first time. Fennessy looks ragged. His mind is elsewhere. Like most cops, he has a full caseload of other people's misdeeds and tragedies. His life has not been absorbed by the Boyles the way mine has. He handles the tape. He leaves me alone.

Pen in hand, I open my notebook. These habits provide a small comfort.

I tap the remote keys. The tape plays. I locate the buttons I'll need to halt the action, and to advance it frame by frame.

The boys are tussling with cushions on the couch.

Block them out. I'm looking for someone else.

The deliveryman.

Freeze him. In his crouch, with his gray gloves, his bushy mustache, sunglasses, and crow-black hair winging out stiffly from either side of his milkman's cap. His uniform bags at the knees, the legs are cuffed. His

shirt is too big, it hangs. His shoes look small, not working boots, but narrow and pointed with a tall, blocky heel—the image isn't that sharp, I might be guessing, filling in the details I hope to see. The walkie-talkie— he plays with it to show the boys, like it's a toy—or a prop.

Unfreeze.

His body language. The gestures. Posture.

When you've been on intimate terms with a person, you would think you'd recognize certain qualities. Maybe not.

He's in the shot, but he isn't grabbing the boys.

He lures them.

They aren't interested—shy with a stranger. Kids are that way. Cautious and slow to warm up to new faces.

The deliveryman knows about Tad's camera, doesn't want to get too close to the lens. But he's unafraid of being seen.

He wants to be seen.

Only not too well.

The boys don't cooperate. They hold their ground.

The deliveryman leaves the shot.

Then the arm . . . it's slender. The fingers . . .

I can't be sure.

But the boys have changed. The trick revealed to them.

They're animated, happy, gravitating where they hesitated before.

Freeze.

Quite a fix she'd gotten herself into.

She couldn't call to them, not using her normal voice, because Regina's chained in the kitchen. Right where Fennessy showed me on the last viewing—yeah, right there—her foot shakes.

Una was the deliveryman. I'm positive.

She had to lose her disguise to attract the boys.

She's kidnapping her own children.

Why?

That I haven't figured out yet.

Didn't Tad see the tape? Couldn't he recognize her?

I don't know how main tunes lad even watched his secret tape he-

fore he turned it over to the police. He didn't see his wife acting a role. He saw an intruder. He saw his future stolen away. He didn't notice his wife because he wasn't looking for her. Perhaps the purpose of the ruse was to fool Tad. But why?

Duped, he gave the tape over to the authorities. He admitted to his surreptitious voyeurism, his affairs, and the underbelly of his marriage. He called his character into question. Una played no part in that. People felt sorry for her. I felt sorry. Tad was a fall guy, a delaying tactic. His purpose timed out. The Chicago police had no longer considered him a suspect. Until the news of his suicide. Their investigation suffered a serious loss of momentum.

There must be simpler ways of absconding with a pair of boys.

And yet, Una never left.

The boys were gone. Dead? I don't think so. Gone away. With Graham? Was he her accomplice? It made the most sense in an apparently motiveless crime. Una and Graham kidnap her sons to perform the Cloven Print. Why would she go along with Graham? Are the ravings of a discovered brother enough reason to kill your offspring?

It's more than that. Iris told me as much, if I'd been listening.

ater, back at the Boyles', I replay our interview. This time I'm listening.

Grant that Iris Morick's surviving son is a magician, a man of unusual influence. To Una he's a triple threat. And it's not because he's her brother. What did Iris tell me?

He used to visit me. Years ago, he did. I was labeled a catatonic, but I knew when he came into my room. The doctors thought it might be therapeutic. ...

The way he talked to his mother. The things he said to me

J think about him lying in my bed. Tall like Aubrey in his prime, a spitting image of the old Serpent. Nights are hardest.

A daughter, but she was off the books. Graham knows about her, that's for sure.

Who was Una's father? I'd assumed Aubrey or a fellow patient. But Iris had been locked away for five years when she became pregnant. Iris never mentioned Aubrey calling on her.

He used to visit me. Years ago, he did.

I think about him lying in my bed.

He's keeping an eye on my daughter these days.

My daughter.

Our daughter.

A magician, a brother, and her father too.

Graham is Una's father.

Chapter 22

pening the back door for a splash of sunshine on my face, even if it is November sun, I find a square blotting the light, a note pinned to the screen.

Meet me at Funspot Bumper Cars 7pm tonite. Much to tell re: Una &, like

the song says, where the Boys are

Regina

I try calling her. Resetting our meeting place. Her number is disconnected. Regina's more paranoid than I am. I don't want her to run again.

She's guessed it or put it together over time. Una's ploy: posing as the deliveryman. I have a stranglehold on this story, or vice versa. I need a person to testify to the fact of a delusional Una capable of kidnapping her sons, perhaps killing her husband, and trying to frame me for her own murder. I need to know the extent of Graham Morick's—her father's—involvement. I need a witness.

Funspot.

Not a location I'd choose. An indoor amusement park and arcade situated on the northwestern outskirts of the city. I'd spent afternoons eating corn dogs and feeding quarters to carny barkers at Funspot when

the girls were younger. When Sydney and I rode the Octopus together, I pointed out how close we were to smacking the roof of the place. We jolted around in circles. Syd threw up on my shoes.

I'm going to stick out in an amusement park, especially alone.

Not riding the Octopus, but standing at the edge of the bumper cars with my hands in my pockets. A singular, middle-aged man looking around for, I don't know, maybe someone special? Hey, kid, you want a piece of candy? Not good. Figure I'd draw attention and quick. Maybe even get security to ask me my name. The last thing I want is attention. All I'm doing is meeting a young woman for a conversation. Public venue. Full of hyper kids and bored-to-tears parents. Security guard on the door. The whole enterprise likely under electronic surveillance. Where's the danger?

I'm not expecting any.

I tell Syd and Sara that I'm picking them up at five. We'll grab some burgers and fries and hit the arcade attractions afterward.

he bumper car operator is a mouth-breather.

From afar you might guess he had a deformity. His eyes are tiny, widely spaced apart. Slits in a mask of latex. Simian, mashed nose and deviated septum therein dominates from the middle. He breathes audibly, though not well, and if you are privileged enough to hear his speaking voice, the pinched-off quality isn't soon forgotten. Today, he's sleepy at the control panel. Lids blink open, once, to reveal buttery whites, irises of impassive green. From afar, as I started to say, you might think he'd been born with no eyeballs, skin pockets where the eyes should be. Despite this, if you approach him closely, you'll notice they twinkle. I notice. It does not make me feel any kinship. 1 desperately want (o leave.

Mis hands are permanently red, arthritic claws. They Hake. 1 watch him manipulate the controls. 1 do not want him laying hands on my girls. But he's Lifting the chain. Waving children through as they race to the cars. 1 le checks their straps. Back behind his console, he punches a big green button, adjusts a lever.

The cars are rolling, banging. Van Halen blares from the speakers. The sound is mostly static. I have no camera to photograph my daughters. I am not here to record the event for posterity. I am here to pretend. To play a normal man enjoying life.

"Mirrorrorrim."

The operator has spoken. It had to be him. No one else around.

"Pardon me. Did you say something?"

"You heard me."

e holds the door with a claw. It's a storage closet, deep and filled with bumper-car parts. The lighting filters through, dingy yellow; makes it so the space actually feels darker. No, I'm thinking, Vm not going in there with you.

"C'mon. Hurry up. They'll fire me for leaving my post."

I see a small woman in the shadows. My heart skips.

She steps under the soiled bulb.

Regina Hoffman.

She's holding out her arms to me, as if to embrace.

I move toward her. Pass the threshold. Lift my own arms.

But she doesn't want a hug. Her hands are out front like hooves. She's twisted her fingers the way Una did back in Dublin.

It's a sign. An identifier. She shows me whom I'm up against. The Cloven Print. Morick and his cult of believers—she's now one of them. Dont even trust me. She said that when we'd parted at the museum. She knew they were following her. Knew she wouldn't be able to resist them once they took possession.

"Long time, lase," she says.

Hit from behind with a rubber mallet, the hammerhead blasts me like a powder keg. On my knees among cables, peanut shells, greasy food wrappers, a push broom. Vision scrambled. Hit again. Walloped into a nova of pain.

The two of them lay their hands on me. Man and woman. Nathan and Regina. Struggling with my dead weight. Dragging me farther into the gloom. I lose a shoe. Ears ringing. I'm fighting.

"Get his shirt open," Nathan says.

Regina rips at my collar. Buttons pop. She scratches my throat with one of her nails. I swing my arms. Shoving her. Hit again.

"Now," she says. "Let me have it."

Nathan produces a syringe. She stings my neck, jams the plunger home.

I twist.

Feel seeping warmth invade my chest.

"I've got to go," the operator says to them. "The ride should be over."

Regina throws the emptied needle away. Grips my head. Stares into my eyes.

"The light," she says.

Her husband shines a flashlight in my face. The light hurts. But I can't blink.

"The boss sees me missing, I have to explain why," says the operator.

"Go, maggot." Regina's voice warps.

"Syd and Sara .. . please, don't hurt them." I'm begging to what part remains human inside Regina.

She gives me a sweetheart smile, kisses my forehead. "Don't worry, Jase. It's not your girls that the Black Blood Druid wants."

In the spiral down, I sense relief.

Hear her say, "It's you."

Chapter 23

irst realization: I am naked.

Second: I've been stuffed into some sort of sack.

Sleeping bag. In a vehicle moving at high speed over uneven terrain. I poke my fingers through the cinched-up hole. Spread the opening. Not much. Replace the fingers with my eye. We're in a hatchback. The rear seat folded down. I'm laid out like a bag of dirty laundry. Try yanking the zipper apart, but it won't budge. Fingers out again, searching, and then I feel why. Touch the knot. The drawstring fed through the zipper pull. I bring the knot into the bag. Voices from the front.

"Slow down," Regina says.

"I'm going to use the headlights," says Nathan.

"Druid warned us not to."

"I can't see in this rain."

"Go the same way as the last time," she tells him. "When I brought you to meet Druid and his other thralls at the lodge."

"That was daylight. Not this blinding—"

"Slow down! I don't want to end up in the ditch. We can't blow this."

"You want to dump him here and leave?"

"Druid would kill us."

"Maybe we could run."

Silence. Regina's words, when they finally come, are tremulous. "I've seen him do things. Walk into a restaurant and eat off other people's plates. Drink their beers. Steal their wallets. They didn't bat an eyelash. Because no one saw him. No one he didn't want to see. He'll pay us a visit. Maybe while we're sleeping. Slit us open. You want to wake up with his arm inside your chest?"

I've got the knot whittled down. Pick at it with my teeth.

Nathan stays quiet. I hear him light a cigarette. Those French Gitanes and their heavy fumes. I'd better not cough. They think I'm unconscious. The windshield wipers are lashing. The roadway is noisy. Branches slap at the doors. A torrent washes under the car. We must be following an unpaved access. Hills, we're definitely driving over hills. We change directions. Nathan cranks the wheel. I have no idea where we are. Or how long I've been out. We hit rocks. Then something larger. Tree limb? The front end goes up. I hear scraping underneath. The sound of—the muffler, or tailpipe, a loose section of the exhaust system—metal tearing away.

Regina says, "We don't have any choice. He told us what we had to do."

The car slides. I feel us lean right. We're losing the battle. Nathan cuts his speed. Keeps us on the road. Moving forward.

"Why are you depressed?" he asks. "The boys were happy to see you. Weren't they?"

"Yes, I know."

"Is it because you're worried about the new mother?"

"I'm sick of her."

"That's disrespectful. We are all together in this process. Druid told you how important you are to the Cloven Print. They all adore you."

"Whatever."

"I think you're jealous of the new mother."

"The turn is around here somewhere. I don't want to talk about her righl now."

"We haven't passed the Fistula camp mark. You keep an eye out tor

the tree. The turn comes after."

I renius, we passed the mark five minutes ago."

I'm working my way out of the bag.

athan says, "How could I miss ... oh, no, shit—" I grab the wheel.

Off to the left—a field of empty blackness. A large body of water, a lake, the low night sky hovers over its waves. Climbing between Regina and Nathan, I get both hands on the steering wheel. Aim for the water. Push with all my strength. Nathan's big. Even through his raincoat, I feel his thick upper arm pummel my ribs. He's fighting me for control. But I've surprised him. And I don't care where we go as long as it's off this road.

The trees thrash around us. A gap opens.

Locked on, I will us through.

Windshield cracking, cracks wider, gives. We're showered in glass. Rain.

Regina says, "No."

The car goes over and down.

Nathan brakes.

But nothing can stop us now. Faster and faster. Silent. Airborne. Hard bodyslam into water and rocks. We land nose-down in a white froth. Slick boulders chunked up on either side. We're not sinking, not yet. I'm knocked into the backseat again. The hatch has burst. I have my way out. Look at them. Nathan, unresponsive—maybe he's dead—slumps against the dashboard. Regina straining, attempts to unbuckle his seat belt.

Grinding.

The hatchback's hood slips under black water.

Water pours in the back. We're filling up, getting heavier. More grinding.

I try to save her.

She won't take my hand.

I help her rip off Nathan's coat. Wrap my arms around his chest. His legs are trapped. He outweighs us both. The water is freezing.

"Regina," I say, "he's not alive. We need to get out."

She doesn't listen. The water's at her waist. So cold I can't hold my arm in it for longer than a few seconds without pain.

I feel a bump. Hear a steady sawlike bite of steel on stone.

Scrambling out the hatch, I take Nathan's coat and the sleeping bag. Naked, stumbling to the shore, I carry the coat and bag over my head. Sit on the grass. Turn back in time to watch the hatchback submerge. Chains of bubbles break on the surface.

Then nothing but a dark, impenetrable lake. The lapping of waves, the wind ...

I slip into Nathans huge coat.

ights.

Lights playing on the water.

And car engines roar above me, from the road's edge.

Morick and his thralls.

They're coming.

They're using spotlights.

"She's there. Look," I hear a voice say.

I look too. Regina treads water on the surface, under her arm— Nathan. Somehow she freed him. She's crying, screaming.

"We see you, Regina. We're throwing a rope."

Regina yells to them, "He's getting away."

"What?"

"Over by the rocks," she calls out. "Deering. He's on the shore."

The spotlight on Regina never wavers. But the others are swiveling around, flashing over the water, and popping from rock to rock.

I pull the coat high and cover my head.

Step between the boulders. The lights shine behind me. Catching up.

I'm looking for a path up the slope. But it's a sheer drop. I ^o farther, my feet cutting on rocks, then crunching sand— slick weeds, roots . . .

The lights hit my back.

"Here he is," a man shouts.

1 hook my hands on the top of a boulder. Pull myself higher. The light fixes on me, is joined by another, then a third I see a possible path.

"I le's going lor the road."

"(lot him. Keep those lights Steady."

I feel a heavy object in Nathan's pocket, bouncing against me as I climb.

Take the coat down off my head. They've seen me. There's no hiding. I reach into the pocket. Regina's gun. I don't know anything about guns.

But how much do I need to know?

I spin around. One-handed, I point the gun at the lights and pull the trigger.

The gun fires.

Once.

Twice.

"He's shooting. Kill the lights. Kill the lights."

I hear barking. Dogs.

On the third pull, the gun jumps from my wet hand. I hear it clatter on the rocks. I'm in the dark again. The gun is gone. In the water.

But I have a chance.

Make the road.

Hug the sleeping bag to my chest, bend low, and run.

They're coming.

I dive into the underbrush. Zigzag. Cross a clearing. To be swallowed by vegetation. Total darkness. I'm slowly working my way, but the brush is denser. I can't see. Nathan's coat snags at every step. I decide to lose it. Naked and pursued. But they don't know I've dropped the gun. Take my time. Burrow through the bushes like a rabbit. Where are the lights? The dogs?

I walk until I can't anymore.

Here's a fallen tree.

Next to it, I unroll the bag. Cover the bag with dead leaves.

Crawl inside.

Hide and wait.

don't know what Regina injected into me. What it was that filled the

syringe. But it's morning in the woods, and I'm seeing things. Things

that can't be. Trees move. Yet I don't feel wind. And the animals. They

might exist in books. Mythology, folklore, fairy tales. I spot a deer

►03

walking upright on two legs. I see reptiles. The forest floor is undulant with snakes. In the distance, an alligator passes—an alligator's head married with a hog's body. I'd climb the trees for a better view. But the trees are frightening. The branches feel soft as flesh and that warm. If I knew a cave, I'd wall myself inside. But there are no caves. Mounds. Valleys. People's voices from just over the thicket—they might be real. I touch the bump in my neck where the needle drove home. My neck is stiff. The muscle lumped.

The forest grows warm and sunny. I'm lucky. A tough November freeze might've killed me during the night. But it's morning. I'm dry and alive.

I backtrack. Find Nathan's coat. Put it on. Leave my bag rolled up under a dead brown bush.

I'm afraid of the road.

But the road is the only route I have.

I stick to the margins.

Eyes peeled open. Cautious. Stop to check my flank. I'm north. I can taste it in the air. The trees are northern trees. The sky is a crisp, unbroken blue.

Last night, we were close to them. To their camp, to the Fistula.

I'm walking the other way.

How far will I have to go down this road?

Are they looking for me?

find the marked tree that Nathan and Regina talked about. The Fistula mark carved into the trunk—it's a snake. I would've never found it on my own. fin not smart enough in my current shape. I'm too desperate. Too fucked-up. I coilldn'l miss this.

A nude body hangs from the lower limbs. The body belongs to a man.

I see something in the grass that looks like beet jerky. Pick it up. It's the end ot a thick leather belt—chewed through, blackened, blood stiffened, and kissed with metal hornets. They scourged him.

I approach. See him struggling. He can't possibly be alive. I pick up a branch from the ground. I nudge him.

Crows fly out of Nathan. He's strung up by his ankles with a filthy chain. The links loop through the treetop. Strung up and gutted: his body cavity transformed into an alcove for scavengers. Did he drown first? Was he dead when this happened? Is this his punishment? I don't know. Arms flung outward—he's a man falling. His fingertips graze the grass. He's been burned. Maimed. They used a torch and knife. The tools aren't here. Neither are his sex organs. Whoever did this to him took them. There's a bloody imprint on the ground, near his head, where a receptacle—maybe a bucket?—was set down and later dragged away. The stain blazes in the dirt.

The windless grove smells like a barbecue pit.

I run a few yards and throw up.

They did this. They have them ...

Robyn.

And the boys.

I head for the Fistula.

Chapter 24

atthias is walking beside me. I don't mean his spirit, not a conjured memory. My flesh-and-blood brother is here. Psychiatrists will say he's a stress-induced phenomenon. He's me hallucinating him. I'll take what I can get. It's my brother. His skin, his eyes, his hair, and I notice, in my ear, the stir of sweet child's breath. I sense him first. See him next. Out of the corner of my eye—this kid, my brother, is kicking up dirt on the road. If I turn, he's gone. So I stop turning. I want him there beside me.

I don't want to die without him.

We locate the turn that eluded us last night in the rain. Enter the brush. I'm not afraid of the trees, not with Matthias covering my back. The dogs are whining. They must smell us coming. We make a big circle around the outskirts of the camp. I'm not being stupid. Even with my brother, I don'l earn invincibility.

I position myself downwind. No fence but the trees.

Tin getting glimpses of what lies behind.

The guard dogs are I )oberman/(ierman shepherd mixes; chest) aiul huge paws, long in the snout; their faces are hairy nozzles jammed with tangs. They hate us.

I he lodge house is old, sunken, constructed of logs. I akeside, there's

the spine of a pier decaying into the water. No neighbors in sight. The camp is isolated. Nailed above the lodge's main door, a logger's crosscut saw streaks rusty orange. The cabins—I count a half dozen—are built like smaller versions of the lodge. The thralls must have boarded over the windows. I don't see a square inch of glass. Which is good, because nobody can see what I'm about to do.

I take off Nathan's coat. Climb up into the crotch of a tree.

Matthias isn't with me.

I'm alone.

Bark nips at my sweaty face. The lodge opens. I see a drunken man, pale and shirtless, stumble out of the house. Beer gut. His rock-star-length red hair is flat and slicked, reaching to his shoulder blades. Others are standing in the shadows. Partial faces, the white blur of an arm, a pair of legs. The man falls. No one emerges to help him. He stands and, jerkily like a puppet, retraces his steps. He runs square into a tree.

Sits.

He is not drunk with alcohol, but fear. I am wrong about his hair. He has none. Neither does he have a scalp. His wet, vesseled skull sugared with sand from his second fall, and dust halos around him.

It's Father Byron. He has less than a minute to live.

Graham Morick walks down the lodge steps.

Thralls follow.

My stomach revolts against me, and I am trying for a silent vomit. Stick my fingers in my mouth to muffle the noise of my retching.

Morick will hear me.

Will kill me.

Morick lays a hand on the ex-priest's back. Comforting him. He reaches under Father Byron's chin with his other hand. Makes a fist. Blood shoots in a fine spray: a garden hose when it's first turned on. Morick opens Father Byron's throat. Not a speedy movement—he's being gentle, effortless.

The leakage changes to a steady pouring, dark as used oil. Father Byron sitting on his haunches. Morick stands. The slightest motion made, hardly a shrug. The thralls—more of them from inside the doorwav— come forward.

Father Byron, poor Father Byron. At least it's almost over. They're forming a ring. Holding one another's hands. Morick says a few words I can't quite hear.

Father Byron attempts to rise. But he can't walk on rubbery legs.

They fall on him.

he dogs see me. They're trotting over to my tree. I need to get down. The branches snap like firecrackers.

I fall.

I don't remember falling. I'm kneeling beside the trunk. My mouth fills with blood. The forest wheels around like it's attached to a giant spinning drum. I hear them. They crash through the brush. Shouting at me. They know my name.

Run.

I rise and move forward.

The forest floor tilts. Drops me. I touch my forehead; my skin has split.

Stand.

They surround me.

Their sloppy crimson faces— they were biting him, I think.

I'm next. My fear enlarged, I'm teetering on the brink of hysteria. I choke on my blood. Spit. Wipe my lips on my arm. Notice the sticky, red smear, the dirt in it. I look around me. Giddy. You people, I think, we speak the same language.

The language of blood.

Morick appears outside their ring.

"Bind him," he says. "Then take him to the cabins."

Chapter 25

hey tie me with a thick, white rope. My arms are down at my sides. I don't resist. I wouldn't have a chance running. There are too many of them. Men and women in equal numbers, twenty strong or more. Morick's slaves—some dressed in street clothes, others in simple hooded shifts of white, black, or red. I suppose the choice of shifts or no shifts, of colors, signals a kind of hierarchy. Graham wears a sweater and jeans. His appearance is no different from the first time I met him at the Mexican restaurant.

Now that I've been apprehended, now that Father Byron lies bled out and bitten in the courtyard, Graham has other business to attend to. He disappears inside the lodge.

The rope pulls tight. They leave a few feet hanging in front, and this they use to lead me to the cabins.

Number 4.

The numeration painted with a stencil.

Three cabins between mine and the lodge.

I stop at the door. They prod me forward harshly. My balance is tested.

Camp odors—the stink of mice and wet logs, of moldy wool and bug spray.

Inside: an army cot, a chair.

One of the women—she's wearing a red shift, hood up—I see her profile (she's seventy at least, gray-haired); she tells me to lie down on the cot.

I lie down on the cot.

They back away from me.

The door closes.

I'm alone.

I hear a bolt sliding.

My eyes flick to the doorway. The dead bolt has been installed backward—locks from the outside. I have a keyhole, no key.

I think they're gone, but then the woman's voice speaks through the wood barrier.

"You have no idea how long it really takes to die," she says. A dry cackle that diminishes and tells me she's finally walking away.

They didn't bother to turn the light on. There's a fixture over the cot, a switch plate screwed on the wall beside the entrance. I don't even know if the camp has electricity. But I'm sealed up in cabin number 4. The single window boarded like all the rest. The door shut. A sword of sunlight thrusts underneath. My room, above and around me, is a cup overturned and trapping the dark. Quiet except for the mice. They must be numerous and bold. I feel a furry contact on my calf. I kick my legs.

I count back from one hundred. Breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. My head aches where I bashed the tree trunk coming down during my fall. It's cold lying here so still.

The door opens.

I don't even hear the lock disengage. It's a man, an enormous, bear-sized man, and he has his hands full. He leaves something in the chair. I notice a Harley-Davidson tattooed on his triceps. An Iron Cross on his sunburned neck.

1 le approaches the cot. Looks down on tne.

I [airs show from every opening of his leather vest. 1 lis chest pumps and his nostrils flare. I smell onions, beer, sweat.

I le presses his thumb into the muscle of mv thigh.

"You're soft, bro."

Mis hand doesn't mow. But 1 hear an unsnapping, the rasp ol steel

dragging against leather. I lis other hand -the knife catches the sun.

I'm going to scream.

I try rolling off the cot. He jams his thumb down, and pain shoots in two directions along my leg.

"Don't you move a muscle," he says.

He cuts my ropes.

I say nothing.

"Druid told me to tell you—get dressed."

He goes out, slamming the door behind him.

I run over. Twist the knob and push.

Locked.

Flip the switch. The light, at least, works.

Bear-man left me something folded in the chair—a pair of boxer shorts, a white shift. Sandals placed on top. I sniff the clothes. They smell like detergent. I put them on.

I survey my quarters.

Washbasin. Sink. The hot water spigot coughs dry. I turn and turn the handle. Nothing. The cold side rumbles, spews brown, then yellow water. It clears up. I smell rotten eggs, sulfur and iron. I drink. The toilet doesn't flush. The bowl clogged with cigarette butts, beer cans, and an army of black ants. Tank lid cracked, duct-taped. I take the tape off. Heft the lid. I could use this bigger piece as a weapon.

It's heavy, the broken edge feels sharp.

Mice droppings sprinkled along the floor like chocolate jimmies. I'm smashing them with my sandals as I pace.

Under the cot, I discover a small boat fashioned from aluminum foil, a box of incense sticks, and a book of matches. Open the book. Tuck it into the waistband of my boxers. I'm dying for a smoke. Waiting and smoking go well together. I make due with waiting alone.

I see my sword of sunlight turn into a gold bar. The bar gradually disappears.

Hours, half a day passes. What's keeping them?

The bottom of the door is my new window.

They're doing something out there. Footsteps. Words, whispers.

Quickly, I wedge the desk chair under the doorknob.

I watch, amazed, as they insert an elastic tube under the door. Vm so

surprised, I almost shout. A soft hiss emanates from the tube mouth. I place the flat of my palm above it. Feel the air disturbed: a constant pressurized flow. The taste on my lips is medicinal. Taps deep memories of clinical settings—dentist chairs, operating rooms ...

My eyes start to burn. I squeeze them closed. My throat tickles. My brain goes sluggish, woozy. Are they gassing me? Cover my face with my sleeve.

I pinch the tube.

The hissing stops.

More whispers. A tug on the elastic.

I hold. Clamp my finger and thumb and hold.

Someone outside the door touches my hand.

I jump back.

See the person's—a man's—fingers wriggle under the door. Impossibly long, they're clawing up, higher and higher, on my side of the wood. Gouging great curled strips out of the door plank. A twitch of gold: the oval signet—Graham Morick's ring, his hand.

The crack under the door gapes. Spreading. Pink light floods underneath, and irrational as it may be, I know that Morick—he's coming through that space.

I grab the broken tank lid. Kneel. Fix my eyes on those wriggling fingers.

Rear back with everything I have and ...

Chop.

I hear a shriek.

Grab for the bloody damaged hand, the mangled fingertips. Before he can pull back, I pin the meat of his hand with my own.

The sharpest edge of the tank lid—I press it down, put all my weight, my anger, my fear, on the first joint of his two broken fingertips. And I carve. Until the porcelain edge breaks and the lid snaps apart in my hands. |

Many voices arc screaming curses. lists thump the wall. Kicks.

The chair I wedged under the doorknob.

It won't stop them. It may slow them down.

They try to swing inward, but the chair blocks their immediate entry I lean my shoulder next to the lock, dig in my heels.

A chair leg falls away. Spindles splinter.

Banging.

They surge against the door and me.

The door will split from its hinges. I know this.

It's splitting now.

Screws drop like bullets.

I hold my ground. Legs and back muscles tensed.

The destruction of the door halts.

The voices go away.

hey must've drugged me. Anesthetized—I'm both nauseated and silly. That gas from the tube was my poison. Forget everything I've ever known about time. Time, my ability to judge its passage, has liquefied. Fast slow. Slow fast. My brain fumbles, unable to adjust and find the rhythm of what I've called reality.

But the blood is real.

Sticky, black pudding pools between my knees. The two fingertips I see in the middle of the pudding are real. Under the chair, yes. Two of them.

One.

Two.

I admit that I am unable to suppress a childish giggle in the sea of this awful nightmare, because, upon first sight of the severed digits, I recall the children's song "Where Is Thumbkin?" I laugh from my belly.

Here are Pointer and Tallman.

How are you to day y sir?

I have something dreadful I need to do.

east on the living.

I put the smaller one in my mouth. The fingernail is no different from a fish scale—bad liar in me trying to fool myself—it's a broken crab shell, an unpeeled shrimp, a remnant of exoskeleton scratching my tongue. I gag. Spit it out on the floor. I'm hyperventilating. Sweating gobs. My face greasy. I'm in need of a shower, a good soapy wash that

drains the hot water, if there is any, from the camp. Press my palm firmly against my sternum and feel quaking. Pick the finger up. Pop it in my mouth. Run to the sink tap. Scoop water past my lips. Drink, drink. The tip swirls, logrolls, will not go down. Spit. I catch my reflection in the mirror.

Madman.

It's all right, okay. A madman can do this. I throw it back. Horse pill. Hoodoo vitamin. Black magic vs. black magic.

Fight Morick.

Big swallow.

Don't stick in my throat. Pray. No choking.

I've done it.

Where is Tallman?

I spin around, hunch over.

Here I am, here I am. There on the floor. He's a bigger meal, of course. Swear finger. But I'm hungry for him.

They kick in the door. The chair shatters.

Morick standing in the middle. Ashen. His hand wrapped in a towel. I see him pull back sharply after taking one look at my eyes. A thrall bends to retrieve the severed digit.

"Where's the other one?" the thrall asks me. He's freckled, bearded, tonsured.

I rub big circles over my stomach.

How are you today, sir?

Very well, I thank you.

Rim away.

Rim away.

The thrall steps forward. I'm not budging. From the folds of his casj sock, he produces a huge, blocky plastic gun. Die? I'm prepared to die. Try and kill me. loud click and an electric chattering. The laser fishhooks drill me in the right pectoral. 1 scream as I fall over.

Moriek above me . . .

Laughing.

Chapter 26

basketball backboard mounted on a pole, they've removed the hoop and net. One of the thralls must be an artist. The backboard is painted. Depicting a snake's head, but it's Graham's face—looks just like him too. Two followers hold me in place, as a third straps me to the pole. I face outward. My feet balance on the sand-filled base. Once I'm secured—and they've done a fine job, I can hardly breathe under the straps—they lean me back and push me, pole and all, up a ramp into the lodge.

They aren't taking any chances. I have two guards: Bear-man and a young Hispanic with cornrows, his cheeks hatched with scar tissue. I hear singing outside the lodge. Through the open doorway—smoke billows, torches pass, the chants of the thralls begin. The lodge room is spacious. Their song echoes.

My guards have acolyte duty.

The room is studded with candles. One by one, they light them. No folding chairs to set out. But crates upended and a ring of large stones—these are the seats for the ceremony. I focus on the altar. Misshapen, cobbled together, it's a dome of broken slabs. Takes me a minute to realize they are gravestones. The thralls—they stole them and brought them here.

I'm next to the altar.

I'll have an unobstructed view of the proceedings.

The chants grow faster, more insistent.

raham Morick leads them inside.

The room fills. An iron bar crosses the door. Thralls organize themselves by shift color. Those who wore street clothes now don robes. Graham cloaks himself in black velvet. It is his father's old vestment. I recognize it as the dressing Aubrey wore to perform the Cloven Print.

Graham steps right up to me.

He says, in a hushed voice only he and I can hear, "You're a trained observer. Eager to look. Yet you are unprepared to see. I am going to give you the gift of sight." He punches me in the stomach. His lips fasten to my ear. "I meant to ask you something. How did I taste?"

I couldn't answer him if I wanted to.

Graham positions himself at the altar. Hidden behind the unearthed cemetery markers, he bends and lifts something from the floor. He hikes his robe. He's wearing a tool belt. He slides the object from the floor into a holster on the belt. Adjusting his wardrobe, smiling, he raises both arms. I notice his bandaged hand, a white paw.

The thralls quiet. They bow.

A new song—much slower, deeper—reverberates around us.

I hear a second sound under it, originating from outside the lodge— a gas-powered engine. Someone has switched on a generator. Graham doesn't react. He's expecting it.

"Come, my dung beetle," he says, motioning to the crowd.

He moves around to the front of the altar.

Trailing him arc two spiral cords.

"I am calling you forward," he says.

A thrall moves Up from a stone scat on the floor.

"Nearer to me, come now." Morick retrieves .1 candle stand from the corner. I le sets it down. 1 !e hikes his vestments. His cock twitches above the candle tl.nne. Thrall eves rivet to lus every move. The llaine gutters,

fizzles as he rubs saliva with rapid splitting fingers around his uncir-cumcised phallus. His groin is shaven. He peels back his foreskin.

Firelight: he is magenta.

He speaks directly to the risen thrall. "You are a death hole, putrid soulless larva, an endless grave into which I will pour my nothingness. Show yourself."

It's Regina Hoffman. She pulls her shift off. The woman in the red hood who spoke to me takes it from her.

Regina's legs quiver. She's aroused, in terror. Her skin shines.

Graham places his wounded paw on her head.

"Are you to be gathered?"

"I am," she says.

The singing stops.

So we can listen.

I watch the thralls. They ready themselves like sprinters at the starting blocks.

Graham, in a three-part flourish, draws his weapon, shows the congregation, and places the weapon in contact with Regina's head.

I close my eyes.

Hearing and not seeing may be worse, because I do see them even without looking.

Graham fulfills his promise to me—the gift of sight.

The thralls greet their debasement open-armed.

He orchestrates them, instructing them as they frenzy.

And the whole time, like punctuation to his orders—I hear and see it—the nail gun going off.

ear-man wheels me from the lodge. The smell of blood hangs in

our wake. He leaves me in the courtyard. The others divide up. I

hear cabin doors close. Vehicles drive away, headlights killed, down the

blackened road. They do not return. The night is frigid and tangy with

smoldering fires. It rains. The rain stops.

I watch the forest.

The next day comes and goes. The camp appears abandoned. I scream and scream ...

This may be their method—to have me die of thirst and exposure. The sun sets. I don't even see the dogs around.

he weather report says frost tonight."

Graham stands in front of me, drinking orange juice from a glass.

"What happened to Robyn?" I ask.

He ignores me. He sips.

He's walking away. I turn my head and try to follow.

"No, wait," I say.

I'm tipping backward on my pole. His bandaged hand resting on my shoulder, he pushes me past the cabins. We enter a path leading into the woods.

"Are you taking me to see her? Where are we going?"

We haven't gone far. I see a shed with a padlocked door.

"Is she here?" I ask.

He brings me upright. The jingle of keys. He opens the lock, pulls the chain free.

Graham steers me into the shed.

From the darkness outdoors, he's taken me to the confinement of this shed. My eyes won't adjust. There isn't enough available light. He stands the pole straight.

"Tell me what you did to her," I say.

He walks out.

I see a light erratically swinging along the path.

(rraham—he has a lantern hanging from the wrist of his good hand. The glass of orange juice refilled to the brim.

He puts the glass to my mouth.

I clamp my lips shut.

"Really" he says. "If I wanted to kill you, I would, you know." 1 [e puts the lantern and the glass on a workbench. The shed holds a fev\ lawn tools, cardboard boxes full oi empty cans and bottles, and a pallet of

bagged dog food. In the dirt, a grouping of loose rocks set out in a pattern a child might arrange.

Nothing more.

Graham's hair is messed. He stinks of incense, sex, and beer. His eyes are tired. He hangs the lantern. He rubs his good hand on his jeans, blows on it. I see his breath. He picks up the juice and drinks half.

"Do you want any juice or don't you?" he asks.

I nod.

He gently tilts the glass until I've drained its contents. The juice tastes fine—cool and sweet. I want more.

After I've finished, he exits the shed. He props the shed door open with a shovel.

Then he's gone.

He's away for a long time. I wonder if he's coming back or if he went to bed.

Soon after I have that thought, Graham visits me again. He's carrying a burlap sack. He opens the neck of the sack and lays it on the shed's dirt floor.

When I look down, I see a burnt stick lying on the ground. The end of the stick remains concealed in the bag.

"What is that?"

He closes the door. I hear the chain sliding against the wood. Links passing through the iron latch. There is a bright metallic snick as Graham locks the padlock and a thud as he lets it go from his hand.

The burnt stick on the floor moves.

Drawing itself out of the bag.

I see it is a live snake. Perhaps nine feet long, slender. Its charcoal body slips mercurially through the grouping of stones. I want to pull my feet up but can't. The straps at my knees are too tight. I try to keep still. Stillness may save me.

The snake flicks his tongue to test the air. It is a long, thin tongue, deeply forked, and the snake whips it out, sucks it back into his mouth : like a noodle. Over and over.

Graham's voice: "That's a black mamba, Jase. One of the most venomous snakes in the world. Very long fangs. Even if I had a stockpile of

antivenin, and I don't, it would be ineffective in saving your life. Mam-bas can kill with a drop or two. But he's swollen with venom. They tend to inflict multiple bites. Death by mamba isn't supposed to be all bad. Feels placid, I'm told. Toxins attack the heart and brain simultaneously. He's South African. This cold weather will kill him. He can't be happy about that. You aren't, are you? Knowing you'll be dead soon."

I don't answer. I'm afraid to make a sound.

"Lysergic acid diethylamide. Old-fashioned LSD. I put it in our juice. I've given the snake some too."

The top of my head feels rubbery, as if it's inflating.

"Good night," Morick says. "It should be an interesting one."

e is fast. Faster than my eyes. One second he's in the corner, and the next he's near the door. I can't tell the difference between the snake and the snake's shadow. Which is closer to me? He knocks along the wallboard. I'm praying for him to find a hole, a cranny he can disappear into. He lashes into a stack of empty soup cans. They tumble. I hear scraping, scratching, and then a sound like rubble pouring. A cloud of dirt stirs. The grouping of rocks lying in the dirt—he weaves between them. Angry.

He pauses.

Is he thinking? Am I? Are the drugs taking effect?

He slips silently to my right. Under my field of vision.

I wait for him. Is the acid working on me? I don't know. But this is happening. The snake and I share this space. I don't want to lose control of myself. I don't want to provoke him. My body grows hot. I am fighting to stay focused. Keep still. Every object appears clearly to me as it I'm staring through a just-washed window.

There he is.

The snake raises the front of his body. I le levitates oi\ the dirt tloor. His head floating, bobbing slightly, angled toward my left shoulder— level with my throat.

Our eyes meet.

1 low can I not look at him?

Shaking, the both of us. His hood flaring as he opens his mouth to show me.

I'm expecting the inside to be pink.

I stare into a cavity of wet and inky blackness.

Behold, Man, why I am given this name. Black mamba.

I think if I yell, he will strike. If I breathe, he will strike. If I blink, he will strike.

Not my face. I'm bargaining with him, mind to mind. Not my eyes, please.

He is turning like a monstrous marionette.

He strikes.

I do not feel it.

I am not his victim.

Chapter 27

t takes hours, most of the night, and I watch it go down. The snake |

swallows the field mouse. The dying mouse progresses through the narrow chamber of his killer's digestive tract. I wonder when exactly j he dies, when his fear and perceptions turn off. The snake retreats to the i farthest corner of our room; curls upon himself—himself.

I continue to be in great danger.

But the snake and I are biding our time.

I wasn't given any acid. I doubt my South African companion was ei ther.

Fear is our drug.

Exhaustion. I let the straps hold my weight.

orick enters the shed, going slowly, carrying a hook and long-handled bag. His eyes move. His head does not. He finds the snake. Without hesitation, he drops him into the bag and closes it.

"You look rested," he says.

I can feel the flesh hanging off my skull like melted wax. My mouth,

tongue, throat—dried out. Speech is unobtainable.

"You are a special man, fase." 1 le opens his palm. Two capsules.

I gobble them.

"That should keep you going. We've got a long day ahead of us."

He carries me out. My limbs are floppy. I cannot fight. I go along. He drops me beside him in a Jeep. A bottle of Gatorade is between the scats. He opens it for me, and I gulp it down. I see the bandage on his hand is fresh, snowy. I want to crush those stumps in my fist and hear him scream. Instead, I watch the trees hunching over us as we drive underneath them. The forest is dense, kaleidoscopic at this speed. I can't run. My unbound muscles burn and cramp. My head lolls against the seat.

"Please don't vomit in my Jeep," he says.

We veer off the road onto a lesser passage cut into the forest. The Jeep settles into two ruts. Our progress slows. The tires throw dirt. I could leap out here. Make my break for the heavy timber.

One thing stops me: a rifle in a scabbard, mounted next to the driver's seat. If Graham can shoot, and I have no reason to think he can't, he'd put a slug between my shoulders before I reach a hundred yards. My head is clearing, but I'm uncertain my legs are up to functioning.

"I was with Una when she died," I say.

"Oh, I know that," he says.

"She was your daughter?"

"Daughter and sister. I can't believe she told you."

"Your mother told me."

"That figures. She's always hated me, hated my power."

"I've seen the film of the Cloven Print."

"Excellent. That saves me from giving you a tutorial."

"Why did Una kidnap her own children?"

"Good question, Jase. The pills must be kicking in."

The ruts lead down into a valley. I notice a pile of animal scat ahead, steaming between the ruts.

"That's bear shit," Graham says. "These woods are full of bears. It's why I keep the rifle handy. Black bears. They're not as cuddly as they look. Tad always reminded me of a dumb bear. Una wasn't trying to fool Tad. No challenge in that. She was trying to fool me. Tad's perversion, his cameras ... Una's stunt wearing that amateurish disguise ... She wanted me to believe Father Byron had snatched my progeny. To keep

them from achieving their destiny. As if he and his gaggle were capable of executing something of that magnitude. All talk that priest. All priests as a matter of fact."

I spot an outcropping of gray rock.

We slow.

Graham says, "Tad was chosen. By us. Me, I should say. I sent them the snake wine as a wedding present. Go and make me some babies. Tad was a glorified sperm donor, not a speck more. The boys were bred for this. Tad was disposable. I planned to gather him when the time came."

"Did you?"

"No, it was Una who talked him out that particular window."

I put the pieces he's given me together. "Una prepped the boys for their part in the Cloven Print. But she changed her mind. They were her children. She couldn't go through with it. Regina was innocent. You got to her later. Brainwashed her into thinking she stood to gain more with you than not. She brought along Nathan, lured Father Byron. Am I right?"

"Close enough."

He turns off the Jeep's engine. We sit there, listening to birdsong.

"Una's mind broke," he continues. "Mother's genes—she's mad as a March hare. Una forgot why she loved the boys. It was because of what they would become someday, I reminded her. Yet she became confused and thought it was for what they are now. They're only boys."

"How did you get them back?"

"I took them; that's how. Una could never stand up to me. After all, I am her father. She called me that night in Dublin. You were passed out on her couch. She wanted me to tell her what to do. I told her. 'Shoot him. Then shoot yourself.' It didn't work out though. Not exactly"

"I didn't kill her."

"I would admire you more if you had. Una was no longer useful. Her boys arc her legacy. I'll make them significant. In and through the ( lover] Print, we shall be Eternal."

He believes. This is no act of showmanship. Morick has a dark faith] I Study the terrain. There's a large, hoarded mouth in the gray rock.

"What is this place?"

As il he didn't hear me: "The hows are reach. I am ready. You were kind

enough to supply a replacement for Una. We are closer than ever. Robyn Matchfrost will usher in the new epoch at my left side. I adore her."

Graham swings out of his seat. He takes the rifle and points the barrel at the boards in the rock. "That, Jase, is a gold mine."

He said her name. It's true then. Not my delusion. Robyn's here. She's with the boys, and with Graham, in every aspect.

"Let's go for a walk," he says.

e'll do the Cloven Print down there. Tonight. I built the gallows. No margin for error. The thralls are coming back to the roost. High spirits. We are all in high spirits." He shakes his rifle in the air. "The Maltzes owned this gold mine, the Fistula camp used to be theirs. They sold. The new owners turned it into a fishing camp. They used to dump their garbage down in this mine. We need to watch for bears."

"Are the camp owners thralls?"

"No. I had to convince them to give me the property."

I'm sure he did.

"Sleep, but we must wake ourselves," he says.

I follow him to the head of the mineshaft.

In the shade, I feel the cold of the surrounding rock. Graham sits on an overturned wheelbarrow. He aims his gaze down the shaft. When he speaks, his voice booms into the chasm.

"I envy you and Robyn. Truly, I do. You'll stand witness to the Cloven Print. Think about it—the most significant magical feat of the last thousand years. I'd like you to look after me, Jase. Once the ritual has taken place, I'll be inside one of the boys. Shane, Liam—whichever boy. But he will be me. I won't be inside forever, mind you. Transformations take time. You and Robyn will be my caretakers. Small families are the best. How does that sound?"

He's a liar. I've watched him kill two people. He'll kill me too.

Finished making his pitch, his brow twists into furrows. As if I've been the one trying to sell him on this concept of partnership. But I've got nothing to sell. I am silent. He wants something more, a sign of agreement.

"Living is better than dying, no?" he asks me.

"Yes, it is."

"Good man. Now back to the Jeep. I'll take you to visit Robyn and the boys."

We're driving to the camp. The same ruts, the same road. I don't understand. I thought Graham and I were alone here after the thralls dispersed.

He parks in front of the lodge.

"Cabin number one," he says.

"Robyn and the boys are in cabin number one?"

He nods. "I'll wait here. Don't worry, I won't rush you. But my slaves are coming. We need to make the last preparations. Robyn will be glad to see you. Go on. Talk to her. Say hello to the boys. I don't want them to see me right before the ritual. Bad luck."

The door to cabin 1. This dead bolt has been installed correctly. Robyn, if she's inside, is no prisoner. I knock.

Robyn says, "Come in."

Chapter 28

hane and Liam are the first to greet me. Big eyes filled with expectation. I open the door to a roomful of toys. Many more, in boxes, stacked against the wall. Children's books crammed into a bookshelf, crayons, blocks ... two child-sized beds, equipped with guardrails. A single bed beside them—Robyn's—I see her nightgown and slippers. I smell her. Hear the sound of water running. She's washing her hands. Shane and Liam are drinking from sippy cups. Eating crackers. The floor is carpeted and covered in crumbs.

"I tried to get the boys to sleep. But they're so excited."

Robyn walks out of the bathroom.

She looks good. Her face scrubbed clean, her hair in a braid. She's smiling. Her eyesight is weak, but she knows my shape, my smell.

"Jase, you're here!"

She runs to me.

Graham's voice behind me—he lied about staying out—says, "I told you I'd fetch him. I promised, and I delivered."

I feel Robyn's tears against my cheek, and my own.

"I didn't think you'd actually do it, Graham. Not actually bring Jase . .."

She's squeezing me.

The boys tug at her legs.

"Shane and Liam, this is Jase. I told you about him. He's been looking for you."

I pull Robyn close, whisper to her, "You have to help me. He's crazy. He's going to kill the boys."

Robyn releases me.

Says nothing.

"Jase has agreed to help us," Graham says.

"He has?" Robyn asks. "Well, I knew he would."

"Everyone will be arriving soon. Don't want to break up this reunion but.. ."

Robyn stares at me. I wonder what she sees. The foggy configuration of a man. Not long ago, I was her lover. Her partner. Now am I a friend or an enemy?

Once the boys see Graham, they forget about me.

"A book! A book!" one of the boys shouts.

Graham crouches and the boys climb on him.

"Kiss Papa, Liam."

The boy on Graham's right knee kisses him.

"A book, Papa," Shane says. He rubs his head into the crook of Graham's elbow.

Graham reaches to the bookshelf, chooses a volume he wrote.

"You want to hear about the snaky?"

Liam and Shane settle in his lap. He has no trouble telling them apart, I realize. Quick study: Liam is the fairer of the two. He has a small dimple in his chin. Otherwise the boys are identical. Has he already chosen one for sacrifice?

After he's finished their story, he tickles them.

I'm looking at Robyn, searching her response for a due, when Graham says,"] ley, Jase, will you look at this?"

I i.iin and Shane hold their arms out in front of their chests. 1 hen stubby lingers don't have the dexterity, but it's the effort that excites

(iraham.

They're making little cloven hooves. Showing me who they are, what he has destined them to be. It is obscene. "Time for you two to take a nap," he says.

raham shows me to cabin 6. He tells me, "You'll find food in the refrigerator. Hot water. You can freshen up. I'm counting on you. Robyn, the boys, and I, we all are hoping for the best. No one yearns for disappointment. I know your strength. And, later this evening I want you to share in the power. The thralls will accept you as one of their own. Don't be afraid. We are together."

"Together," I say.

"I have to lock you in."

"I understand."

"Thank you for cooperating." He makes the hand sign, the presentation of hooves.

I do my best to reciprocate.

espite the upgraded accommodations, I am caged. I don't touch any of the food. If Robyn helps me, we can make it. If she doesn't, we will die.

Morick's slaves arrive in a flood.

They are loud, bristling. Laughter volleys throughout the camp like gunfire. Their exuberance cannot be contained.

How many will be gathered in honor of the Cloven Print?

I don't fear for them.

And I don't fear them either.

he chanting commences. On this night, Morick gives the thralls a surprise: the last Cloven Print recording of him and Griffin singing with their father. Broadcast through loudspeakers. I press my hands over my ears.

!29

The crowd moves past my cabin. They walk to the gold mine. Robyn. I am lost.

quiet knock.

"Jase," Robyn says."Do you hear me?"

On my feet, ear flush to the door. "I'm locked in."

"I have a key." She asks me first to listen. "Down by the pier. There's a boat waiting for you. The motor is gassed. Follow along the bay. When you make it to open water, turn south. Go directly across the main lake. You'll find houses. Make it that far and you're safe. You don't have much time. They'll be coming for us."

"Please open the door."

"Promise me you'll do as I say."

"All right, let's go."

"I'm not going."

"What?"

"I'm staying here with the boys."

"No."

"They need me."

"We're taking them with us."

"That would be wrong. This night is for them, not only for Graham."

I pound on the door. "You can't stay. They'll slaughter you. All of you."

"I'm their new mother. I see the situation differently."

"You're murdering them."

"No one's murdering these boys. Graham and I have talked to no end—"

"I've watched Aubrey's tape."

She doesn't deny what the tape reveals. She's watched it too. The pan t Kill, us of the Cloven Print are no secret. She is well acquainted with the Mm kk legacy. u ( rraham isn't Aubrey,"she says."Shane and 1 iam are the

mirrorrorrim. They will bridge two realities. Aubrey's ego undervalued the importance of the mirrorrorrim to the ritual's success. The splitting of the mage is essential to his reorganization. Power emerges from the new dualism and destroying one fundamental entity—" She cuts herseli off, sighs, as if her exegesis is all too much for me to comprehend. As if she's argued this point before and lost. Exasperated, she says, "I will never let Graham hurt these boys."

"He will."

"We can't go with you."

I see a key slide under the door.

Pick it up. Plug it into the lock and turn.

I'm out.

The remnants of the thralls' bonfire—a dome of heat, the closest treetops are singed black. Ashes, flakes like snow, whirl around me.

She's gone.

obyn's told me the truth. I find a rowboat tied to the end of the dilapidated pier. Carefully, I inch my way to it. Maneuver inside. There's an outboard motor, ten-horse Mercury, and a heavy-duty portable gas tank. I lift the tank. At least five gallons—it's enough to get me as far as I need to go, with extra fuel to spare.

I disengage the tank.

The matches I found under the cot—they're still tucked in my waistband, damp, but I only need one to light.

Burn the camp. It's the only choice I have.

The houses—those people living on the other side of the lake—they will see the flames and smoke. They'll call for help. Graham can't have his ritual.

Not with a crowd of rescuers speeding down the Fistula road.

The tank bangs heavily against my knee. I begin my way uphill to the cabins.

A boat shack nestled beside the pier—I passed it once and never noticed it. I set down my flammables and push the door—it's open. More gasoline. Notice the smell instantly. This must be where they stored the

former outfitter's supplies. I see splintered oars, bait buckets, fishing nets, tackle, life vests ...

Grab four vests and the tank. Run back to the boat. Shuffle along the slick, warped boards until I'm near the motor. Toss the vests between the seats. Reach in with the tank. Kneeling in the dark, I reattach by feel the outboard's fuel line to the tank clamp. Robyn and the boys are coming with me. If I can find them, I'll force her aboard. Knock her unconscious, if it comes to that.

Back outside the shack, I'm dragging two metal cans filled with gas.

Up we go.

It's easier walking with a can in each hand. But my shoulder sockets are ripping loose. My legs tremble.

To the top of the hill where ...

All's quiet.

Cabin 1. Locked. I bang on the door. Silence on the other side. Not Robyn begging me to go away. Not the startled boys crying out. They aren't here. She could've taken them to the gold mine. The boys might've been at the mine when Robyn slipped me the key. I don't know. I don't have time to figure it out.

Start my pouring at the lodge. Soak the steps, the outer walls. I make a circle and let the foundation be my guide. Use up the first can. Throw it away. Unscrew the second can. Stumble. Drench my feet and the bottom of my shift. Going slower now, I don't want to waste a drop. Ring around each cabin. Measure my splashes so I don't run thin, not before I've finished dripping perimeters of soon-to-be fire.

All done except for cabin 1. If Robyn and the boys are in there, hiding from me, keeping their silence ... I can't bring myself to torch it.

For the rest of this place I want an inferno.

trikc a match for the Druid's lodge. The first tew paper matches tall apart in my fingers. Iccl the panic creep across my chest. It 1 can't light this, then what? No need to woi i v. A bud of flame—I cup it. I [old mv breath SO I don't blow the thing out.

Weathered wood catches fast, and the entire camp is a tinderbox. No alarms. No extinguishers. Nothing to stop what I've started.

Steal an unburned stake from the thrall's bonfire pit. I tap it on the steps and the fire walks up like a trained dog. Now it's almost easy.

I transform the grounds into a circus of oranges, yellows, reds.

Crackling heat.

wait for Robyn.

She knows I'm down here in the boat. Knows I want her and the boys.

If she sees the blaze ... she's smart. She'll come with me.

I hear cries.

Someone running . . . not Robyn ... one of the thralls, in red . . . the old woman.

Robyn can overpower her. She'll make it.

My last can, a tiny pool of gas swishes at the bottom, I trail its stain down the length of the pier. I don't want any followers ...

Dry my fingers on my shift.

The matches ready in my hand.

've waited too long. The thralls are scattered in the camp. Trying to

control the fire. They won't be able to do anything. They need buckets and hoses. Water. They'll come down to the lake to get water.

The best I can do for Robyn and the boys is to leave. Bring others back to the camp with me. Police. Fire. Ambulances. Witnesses.

I pull the starter cord on the motor. Nothing happens. Pull again. A sputter, a dry cough that promises nothing. I pull again. The engine starts. Dies. I check the throttle. Repeat the same rhythm of failure. Cough. Sputter. Die out. The motor has been sitting too long in the shack. The gas is old, the oil mix wrong. I pull. Nothing. Check the throttle. The oil-mix knob pops off, rolls under my seat. I run my hand until I touch the fuel line. Test the connections. I pump the bulb in the

233

fuel line. Yes. The fuel line has air in it. I squeeze the bulb until it turns hard.

Pull.

The engine belches smoke. But it's running. Chugging. I adjust the throttle. Smooth out the idle.

A rock sails over my head. Eyes up, on the shore, the camp engulfed. Bear-man throwing rocks at me. He yells out. He lumbers downhill and calls other to join him.

I light the last of the matches, set the book on fire. I drop it on the spill along the pier. The pier burns.

I open the throttle and gun it.

The boat kicks.

I almost pitch out into the cold lake. The boat swings hard into the side of the pier. My aluminum hull slaps the pilings. Smoke in my face, in my throat. Gun it. A guttural roar but no progress made.

Untie the rope, fool The bow, you're tied to the pier.

I put the motor in neutral. Crawl over a bench seat. Throw the life vests out of my way. Get my hands on the rope. It's tight, wet, stiff as cable. I need slack.

I take hold of a piling.

The pier burns. Thralls jump into the water now, wading.

I unwind the rope. Heat on my hands. The rope burns. I drop it.

Reach backward, fall backward, grab for the throttle.

eeper water under me—I follow the main channel of the bay. The sky lit. The forest in flames, and the Fistula camp succumbs, crashes in on itself. Smoke pumps gray cotton into the night sky.

Entering the main lake, I lose sight of the rocky shore. I trust Robyn and turn south. Rectangles of lamplight nestled among the trees. A red dot blinks on the horizon, a tower. I make that light my beacon.

The stink of gas clings to me.

I'm gliding over water, the air filling the shell of mv boat, but still the harsh throat-grapple of melting rubber thickens against mv chest.

I he lu.il.

My fuel line is melting—the rubber burning underneath my scat, at my ankles. The rope tied to the bow has burned down like a fuse. I sec it too late. Flames leap around my shift.

My legs grilled. I stand and the fire stands.

I jump overboard. Flip the boat, my mind says. The water is too cold for survival. But I'm hurt and wet and the motor's gunning and the boat flies away from me.

The boat burns. I freeze. I'm choking on lake water and oil. I perish by fire. I die by water. I'm dying.

I paw at something—a vest bobbing on the waves.

Do I swim for it?

No, I don't.

See a grave opening up for me. Leave the vest. Dive in. Dive deep.

Dive.

In, then out.

Chapter 29

ut.

The rescuers fish me out. The cold did as much to save me as to kill me. I'm alive. But barely, a Lazarus compelled from the tomb. Taken by helicopter. Through clouds. To a burn unit in St. Paul, Minnesota. Where I spend six weeks screaming. Where my skin comes off. Where I wish they'd left me to my quiet death under the lake. Hatred is enough to keep some men alive. Not me. I want to end it. But here I am. Pushed through and carried along. Reborn.

am a sheet of blistering pain.

After a while, I'm transferred closer to home. Treated to a long ambulance ride. I remember the ride Matthias's body took in Michigan. I haven't enjoyed his presence since the 1'istula road. 1 have a rear view out the ambulance doors. The streets oi Chicago. It the ambulance driver were to take two turns, we could drive past Robyn's condo, the orifice.

But he stays on course.

A new planet, but it's the same universe ol hospitals. 1 he ceaseless

racket of machines and people as they carry out the business of living, recovering, dying.

The girls—my Syd and Sara—don't visit me. I get served an envelope of papers, their mother has initiative. She's seeking sole custody. I'm a danger. Negligent. Reckless. A bad father. When I was kidnapped at the Funspot, the girls were abandoned. They suffered trauma. My ex wife's lawyers assert I'm involved with a cult. I am an unsuitable parent.

Fennessy visits. We don't talk. He talks. I lie there and listen.

The bodies at the lodge numbered more than a dozen; they have been autopsied. None of the men were over six feet. They had ten full fingers each. None of the women were natural blondes. Graham and Robyn escaped. I want to tell him they hid in the gold mine. They waited for the authorities to vacate. No children among the dead either.

Shane and Liam—they took the boys with them.

mprisoned in my body, I fall into a torrid affair with morphine. Then the docs take my morphine away. I bounce around with prescription narcotics. Poor substitutes for the pleasure I've known. Find Percodan. I'm out of the hospital. My lower half resembles burnt plastic. I'm learning pain management. The pills mix nicely with Scotch. I can't afford the single malts: those sophisticated bottles the liquor store owners keep locked behind glass. My thirst requires quantity. One day I realize that I haven't talked to anyone, haven't had a real conversation, in months. I'm an addict and a drunk. I lie in bed. Spend my time wisely, though. Write the book in my head, the Boyles' story. I dictate it into a handheld tape recorder. Hire a typist. I start missing my appointments at the hospital. The drugs ferry me along. I meet a generous doctor who doesn't ask too many questions. He writes scripts. He gives me the names of two colleagues who'll do the same. I thank him for being humane, for supplying me with a new expensive habit I need to pay tor. But I have formulated a plan.

And I execute.

Finish the book in a white-hot month. Write a teaser article, culled from the book. Sell both immediately. Buy a commando knife. Liquidate

everything into cash. I need wheels, so I keep my car. My other possessions fit in a single carry-on bag. Destroy my credit cards. Spare one for emergencies. Burn the Rolodex. Break my lease. Open a numbered bank account. Buy a gun. Learn to shoot. I'm ready to die. The future is blank. Buy a box of razor blades. Clear my desk and existence has a Zen-like clarity. My life reduces to a hard kernel of truth. I have one final task.

It's twofold.

Find Graham Morick.

Kill him.

Chapter 30

11 the best stories are about time. The horrible ones are too. I don't mark days passing or even seasons. Throw away my calendars. I keep a list of cities. False leads. Dead ends. The crossed-off places are a jumble in my head.

Barcelona. Bucharest. Wichita.

Miami. Dakar.

I break down in Chicago. Regroup. My funds are low. Book a room in a residence hotel. Here I don't seem out of place. We're wanderers housed under the same roof. No one pays us any attention, and that suits my needs. When people start to notice me, my comings and goings, I check out. I write a few serviceable pieces for my old employer, the Chi-Town Monthly. These are pity assignments, doled out like charity. The sad-eyed editors want to remember our old times together.

Then one day, Free Ray calls.

Free Ray is a huffer. He gets high sniffing various inhalants. I wrote an article about him once, before I ever the heard the name Boyle I cared about Ray and wondered how he'd turned out. But that was a long time ago. I don't have room for him now. I try to cut him oft. His words stop me cold.

He says, "Those missing kids you wrote a book about? Hey, man, check this out. I found those missing kids' graves." I ask him where. "Meet me," he says. "I'll show you."

n my drive, I'm trying to remember everything I ever knew about Free Ray. He has this dream. In it, he's always stoned. Ray wants to live his dream. He does this in the cheapest way possible. He digs up cans from the Dumpsters behind hardware stores, any place that carries paints or glues or solvents. Auto-body shops and service stations are on his milk run. He'll sniff a boosted gasoline container for days. Hide the thing and pour off the fuel into Pepsi cans. Rationing. If he's feeling energetic, he might even scratch together a few cents to add a quick trigger pull of unleaded. Carburetor cleaner. Octane boosters. Whatever. If it's in a can, he'll sample.

But it's paint supplies he prefers.

"As you may know, metallics are the class of the field." He educates me. "More toluene, which is what gets you fucked-up." Ray's personal favorite color, simple Krylon gold, is getting harder to come by. He is a connoisseur of Krylon. "Let the skater kids make fun of me. I'm an ancient. Been doing this shit forever." The marble rattling inside the cylinder gives him comfort.

Free Ray's hair is greasy maple taffy. Caught up in one of his reveries, he touched his head with bleach-dampened fingers. "Sometime, somewhere, man. Can't really be sure." But where he wiped, the hair color has gone away in streaks. Skunk-white racing stripes weave into his scalp. He wears a crocheted wool beanie on his head. Not to hide the dye job, because he's proud of that accident. The hat keeps Free Ka\ r 's ears toastv when the wind blows, and cool under a sunny blaze. But that's not its sole function. "Double duty," he says. Flashing me a bottle of nasal spray he's secreted away. Stowed up under the wool hat. Free Ray slides the sprayer out, plugs his vacant nostril with a filth -encrusted thumb, and squeezes while in he sucksa

tremendous geyser of medicated vapor, l le repeats this process hourly.

There's a COnstanl rash lingering around his mouth. He attempts

concealment with a narrow goatee. Doesn't work. Probably makes the skin thing worse. Of course it itches. He can't stop himself from rubbing. That's a problem. Or it was.

During our interviews, the area of infection on Free Ray's face con-stantly changes. Scaly alterations multiply. He applies a thin layer of Vaseline to several puffy lesions. I look away as he does this.

ard time has passed for both of us. I know it has for me. Yet I'm wading into another October's crisp, purpling dusk. Shane and Liam are probably dead. That's what brings me here. I need to be their witness. The air is incensed with burning logs from unseen fires.

I arrive at the forest preserve's north parking lot.

The forest preserve isn't exactly a park, with swing sets and baseball diamonds, but a wooded valley near the airport that the county set aside as a natural habitat and refuge from the city. A strip of prairie is near the main entrance. Deer and squirrels live around here. Ignoring the posted signs, people feed and photograph the animals. They let their dogs give chase.

Drive farther. Mostly what you notice are the trees. A dense patch of woods crisscrossed by pedestrian paths, a bike trail, and a serpentine roadway that encircles the grounds. Beyond the woods strip malls exist. Office buildings hog real estate. Low-rise apartments finish a close second. Except for the preserve, there isn't much green happening to the landscape. Jets blast overhead.

The park cops will come to hang chains across the entrance in another hour. Cars pass going the opposite direction, finding their way out. Like me, they've switched on their low beams. It's not yet dark, but shapes are indistinct. Vibrancy gets tamped down. Everything blends. The world outside the car feels, somehow, closer. Gray time. I begin to notice stragglers here and there, parking beside the picnic shelters, trail markers, and the odd little frog ponds. I'm not alone.

Fifteen miles per hour.

That's the limit and I stick to it. I slow-ride the curves all the way to the very end where three cement pillars keep me—if I had the sudden

urge—from demolishing a grove of junk trees and then launching over a steep embankment into the bottom of the valley. I pull the hand brake. Free Ray steps into my headlights, years evaporate, and, almost immediately, I notice the rash—thick, tomato red—contracted down to an oval. Like a lamprey's kiss on his dry, chewed lips.

Free Ray lives in the forest preserve woods. He used to sleep in an old Honda CRX. The car didn't run. But he could push it. You had to be out of the parking lot before nightfall. He'd cross the street and sleep until dawn at a twenty-four-hour fast-food chicken place. Then he hurt his knee doing something. He's not certain. "Wonder what it was, dude. Doesn't matter in the end, I guess," he philosophizes. But the CRX got towed. Free Ray scrounged a pup tent. Discovering the gift of mobility and feeling both blessed and paranoid, he moves his camp every night. This way, he reasons, the preserve cops can't find him. They can find him of course, but that would mean effort and a couple extra guys to chase him down while they hauled off his shit from the campsite. Free Ray never bothers regular citizens. Therefore, the cops leave him alone. Everyone's happy.

Until he finds the graves.

hat took so long? You look old. Grew a beard, huh? It'll be dark soon," Ray says. "We gotta move. I'm not playing around down there after sundown."

I hold out my freshly ripped-into pack of Marlboro Lights. Free Ray can't say no. I offer the cupped flame from my lighter. He leans in. Glows orange. Those facial hollows deepen—he's a jack-o'-lantern.

He backs away. "Who's that?"

Furtive eyes. Ray's shoulders juke left, right, and left again. 1 le's slip ping invisible punches. lists rise. Chin drops. Leaning wa\ back against the ropes.

"Easy," I s.i\.

"C.'nion. Pulling this shit on me."

I throw a glance behind me, but that's playacting. I know who's there.

sitting m the passenger seat ol my beat-up ear. I didn'l bring m\ guf.

This is a graveyard search. I brought something better. The sun disap pears below the horizon. Pink sky blushes through the park trees.

My passenger is gloomy. He's unwrapping a stick of Wrigley's spearmint, but before he's finished, he's up and on his feet walking over to us. Cop walk. We've all seen it, right? Well, maybe not if you're joe Clean, living la vida oblivious, safely tucked away in the suburbs. But even then you've probably had a glimpse that instantly connects with your inner criminal. An angry flare vomits hot, jagged gold into your skull. Hands clamp to the steering wheel as your eyes cut sideways. You mark the approach in your wing mirror.

Fucking cops, you think.

His specter is upon us.

"No way," says Free Ray.

"He's worked this case from the beginning."

"No, no, no, no, noooooo ..." Free Ray starts a backward jog into the tree line.

Brendan Fennessy takes a long step forward, arm out, and snags Ray's elbow.

"Jase tells me you found the Boyle boys? That's big-time reward money heading your way, Ray-o."

Free Ray perks at this consideration. He shakes his arm. Fennessy cuts him loose.

"I'm doin' my part. Be a good citizen."

"Sure you are, Ray-o. I wouldn't have guessed otherwise. What charity you going to sign the check over to?"

"Check?"

I say, "The reward check. Detective Fennessy wants to know where you'll make your donation."

"The Help Ray Get High Fund," he says.

We're all laughing. It's not a happy sound. We're walking now. Strolling over to the woods. You spot us, you might imagine three buddies cracking a brew at the park, meeting up for an after-the-whistle bitch session. Arguing sports. Talking women. Or it could be simpler. We're only selling each other drugs.

Who would guess what we're really about to do?

To verify if Free Ray found the skeletons of two little boys snatched from their home. We're men on the brink. Fennessy's involvement in the Boyle case cost him dearly. Like me, his career of late is a series of gutter balls. And also like me, he's lost a partner. Free Ray? Free Ray lives on the brink.

We've entered the shade of trees.

I ask, "What have you got for us?"

On the glide, moving at a brisk pace, he says, "Little way to go before we're there. Isn't far. Closer than you'd think for burying a body."

Two bodies, I think. And I'm right about the body count. But I'm wrong about everything else.

Free Ray hunches his shoulders and dodges overhanging branches. He's guiding us along a deer path. I'm tucked close behind. Fennessy draws the flank. The detective is tense, quiet. The surroundings are doing a number on him. Given my history, you might think I'd hesitate. I should've adopted a new personal rule. Something along the lines of Stay out of the woods. But there's no rule. I go anywhere this story leads me. I can't deny my antenna. There's a vibe about this place. A hum. I'm onto it, same as Fennessy. But the vibe isn't saying danger.

Death.

I'm sensing we're in the proximity of death.

"Look out. Next bit is steep," Free Ray says.

He drops.

His hands grapple roots excavated by summer rains. He's sliding down on the seat of his jeans, controlling his progress with fingers latched to the root system, and avoiding the rocks that claw up from the dirt.

Free Ray is nimble. I understand for the first time that he's a forest dweller, a kind of homegrown aborigine o( these parts.

Fennessy and I are having trouble with the slope. I've resigned mvsell to getting filthy and I'm moving taster. When 1 hit bottom, I look up. Fennessy's sweating and flushed He's mumbling under his breath. He contorts to prevent his sports jacket from rubbing into the grime. Strikes the pose of a man who's taken an arrow freshly in the back. 1 hear .1 distinct up. The fabric under his arm opens like a white mouth. I ennessy stares. Shoots me the bird 1 le has long, slender lingers.

Ml

I've always admired him as a cop and as a man.

We're experienced suckers. The detective and the writer—we've been chasing the same ghosts together. Acting separately, though often in parallel, we've employed our various skills and come up empty. We've both taken it in the neck too. Had our integrity questioned. Our credibility trashed. Past the tipping point, well, we are clearly there. Clearly. To our peers and maybe to ourselves—we're off the map.

Mudflat.

Valley floor. The land rises again a few yards beyond where we're standing.

Fallen leaves the colors of mice litter the ground, clenching as they undergo a preliminary stage of rot. Free Ray's found his mark. He crouches and beckons. I'm looking down as we approach him. My grandfather taught me how to read animal tracks up in Michigan. I've never put my knowledge to good use. The dried surface of the flat is a record. Ignoring the Reeboks Free Ray's wearing, I count dog, deer, and raccoon prints. If Fennessy thought Ray's claim was legit, he would have ; called in a forensics unit. They'd hang tape. Set a grid. We wouldn't be mucking around the scene. Erasing evidence with our feet.

But Fennessy didn't tell anybody where he was going this evening. He's off duty. Coming out here on the sly. Using personal time. Taking i the necessary precautions against humiliation. This way he could be ' anywhere. Doing anything.

No one will ever know.

I don't call him on it. I'm following the same plan. Don't want the attention.

Let's just go and see.

We can stop and have a drink afterward. Heading to the forest prc-I serve to meet Free Ray, Fennessy and I talked about the best places to get drunk around the airport. We were distracting each other. Helping.

That's why I called him. Why he came.

Free Ray's hopping up and down.

Toad, I think. He's found something. Then, / hope it's them. The i Boyles. I hope this phase is finally ending. He kneels beside two large, irregular shapes sunken into the earth.

Free Ray shouts, "He stuck 'em in these old wells."

Concrete. Two slabs about the size of house doors. Mud-frosted. Cockeyed. A ridge of dark, almost purple, stuff is squeezing up between them. Their surfaces are deeply scored and cracked. The corner nearest Free Ray juts in upheaval.

"Wells?" Fennessy asks, his voice rising. He's circling the slabs. Staying outside. Not drawing too close.

I hear his heart beating. No, it's my heart. Superloud. The adrenaline gives me a twitchy body shake. I'm dry. Skittery. Holding my breath.

Fennessy shuffles in for a better look. Bends at the waist and inspects. The muscles in his face relax. He says, "These aren't wells. They're pit toilets. Look at the outline. These were the shitholes." He points. "Here? That's where the wall went, separating girls and boys. Outhouses. Okay? The county must've filled them with concrete. So kids wouldn't fall in."

Free Ray acts angry. He licks his palm and wipes saliva into the pitted block.

"Whadayacallit? Engraved? He engraved them. You're so smart, then explain the words. Do it, Inspector Gadget. Explain what it says right here in fucking stone."

The tension has left me. It's as if I've broken a fever. I feel renewed. I'm happy it isn't the Boyle boys dumped underground. I want them to get out of this alive. I watch Fennessy squat alongside our addict companion. The detective—he's about to put his arm around Ray but then changes his mind—silently pats the ground. He is relieved. We wasted time here, but that's not the worst thing in the world, is it?

Fennessy's attitude kicks in again. He adjusts his glasses to read Free Ray's spit-polished scripture. I'm there too, interested, peering over Fennessy's shoulder. The concrete is badly cratered. Pieces removed or pulverized back to sand. What remains is forked with fissures. A cone o( burnt twigs is off to the side, and the scorches of blown fireworks. Serious damage has come by way of iron. Someone struck with great force. Testing a crowbar or a sledgehammer—whatever it was, whoever it was, possessed a goal of simple destruction. I'm guessing probably kids on a lark. It's Inn to smash things, to burn them. I've done it. Ray's not lying i about the engraving. The words arc small and legible, not a stamp in the

wet, original pour but a recent message painstakingly chiseled into the southern quadrant of these old toilets.

Fennessy intones the pulpit: "Reign in chaos eternal, C) dre.ii De ceiver, and bring us the darkness triumph ... triumphant."

Heavy-metal prolixity. This blend of bombast and portentousness is gothic teenage stock-in-trade. Gobbledygook. You know the types: their uniform of overpriced concert T-shirts and dusters, fingernail polish and eyeliner. The only color is black. Verbal tics. Dirty hair falling over their eyes. They're riding a freight train of hormones and psychotropic drugs. Bored, lathered up, you know ... sledgehammering kids. Easy to dismiss. Easy to forget. Cryptic is where they excel.

"Triumphant is spelled wrong." Fennessy taps the offending letter. "Should be an a, not an e."

"So what?" Free Ray asks.

"How far did you make it in school, Ray-o?" Fennessy asks.

"Eighth grade. Why?"

The detective raises an eyebrow.

"Aw, screw you, man." Free Ray throws a clod of dirt into the distance, toward the deer path. "There's more writing under the mud. I didn't scrape it clean 'cause I thought it might be, like, evidentiary."

"Evidentiary? Hear that, Mr. Deering?"

I light a cigarette. No need to worry about contaminating any crime scene. If we keep ruling out these avenues, all the dead ends, then maybe eventually we'll catch a break. Tonight, after we settle on a bar, I'll buy the first couple rounds. That'll put Fennessy in a better mood.

"This is really excellent police work, Ray-o. You missed your calling."

Free Ray gives the cop his space.

I join Fennessy over by the slabs.

How exactly does Ray know there's writing under the mud?

Sparrows land and flutter back to the trees.

Land and flutter.

Higher in the trees.

Safety.

Fennessy is holding his right hand in his lap as if he's been bitten.

"You okay?"

His hands are dirty. The moons of his nails are black. He's staring at the uncovered section of slab. He's blinking. Lips parted. He grabs my wrist and pulls me down. I see the slab.

MIRRORRORRIM

Every crime has secrets. For something to be a secret, all you need is a person who knows and everybody else. Cops work around secrets. They find them. They crack them. Some they keep. I am the only member of the press who knows about mirrorrorrim.

Under the inscription, a flap of green tarp is showing. A corner. Fen-nessy elbows me aside. He grabs the tarp and hauls it up. Loose dirt is falling away, crumbling under him. The top layer of soil disappears and we see a sheet of cheap plywood, the kind used to board up vacant businesses. Ray was standing on it the whole time. Fennessy tosses the tarp. He and I take opposite sides. We flip the board over. Standing astride a hole in the ground. A grave. It's empty. We're getting close to the water table way down here in this mud valley. The bottom of the grave is filled with leaves, swamped with mocha water. Smells like coins.

"Where's Free Ray?" Fennessy asks. He unsnaps the holster on his belt.

Ray picked a tree to hide behind.

It's a special tree. Hollow. He needs this tree. He put something up inside it.

We're turning.

Turning.

Free Ray comes at us.

He has a Louisville Slugger. He's gripping the tapered handle. The bat was shattered long ago. Shattered low, right above the missing knob. The bottom is a jagged stake. Ray swings. Connects with the back of lennessy's skull. The detective goes down, before I can move, Ra\ stults the broken end of the bat into my stomach. 1 expect to see it sticking there. I'm impaled. But no. Ray still has the hat. He whams the barrel against the side ol my head. I'm sprawling. I almost go headfirst into the

Vis

grave. And it is my grave, I realize. Fennessy kneeling. Ray has .mother clean shot. It is a sick, wet smacking sound.

I get up.

I would like to run away. But I can't breathe. I'm bleeding. I try walk ing and my own blood warms my face and soaks my shirt. I stumble over the slabs. Behind me, Ray is hitting Fennessy.

I see a man in the forest with us.

"Help"

The man watches me. He's looking down the steep drop-off. I can only see his head and some upper body.

"Go get... police. He's killing him."

The man is coming down to where we are. Slowly. Wordlessly. He's being careful not to slip on the roots.

"Please."

The man is dressed casually for business. He wears a jacket, like Fennessy. It is soft gray with purple accenting threads.

"Stay back and call the police for help."

The man must be an idiot. He walks past me. He carries something in his hand.

"I didn't know he'd bring anyone," Free Ray says to the man.

The man does not respond. His eyes are amber. Flecked. I noticed them as he passed. He's clean-shaven but has a heavy five-o'clock shadow. I try to move faster and I'm sprawling for the second time.

"That cocksucker"—Free Ray points the bat at Fennessy—"is a cop."

The man holds a chisel.

Iron chisel. Black leaves. Ravine. Dry mudflat. Stumps.

The man has bluish dust on his trousers.

He cut the stones.

Free Ray sees me looking around. He comes over and kicks me in the face.

ennessy must be dead. I get a flash through the red-black spots. Blum motion. Ray is whaling on him. Straddling Fennessvs unresponsive

body and swinging the bat down from high up over his head. Two-handed. Grunting with each blow.

The man thumps the chisel against his thigh.

I crawl. I'm not looking. My fingers snag the web of roots.

"I got him." Free Ray's squeaky croak. I hear his footfalls. He's not even running. I hear him slapping the fat part of the bat against his palm.

Gunshot.

I spin and Free Ray falls into me.

He opens his red-rimmed mouth. Nothing. I hear a clicking from somewhere deep in his throat. I push him away. The tumbling bat seems dipped in blood. I pick it up.

I look for the man. Was he one of Morick's thralls? Yes. Maybe. From the Fistula camp—there were so many, and with their hoods, I didn't always see faces. But he's one of them. He is a servant of Graham Morick. Sent to set this trap for me.

He's nowhere.

Fennessy's gun is still in Fennessy's hand. I smell the gunshot on the air. He saved my life. I make it over to him.

"Mirrorrorrim," he says.

I'm cradling his massacred head. Saying, "I know ... I know ..."

He's gone.

Chapter 31

aracas. Quebec City. Singapore.

Place names, not years. But it's been a decade since the boys were stolen. Brendan Fennessy's grave is covered with grass now. The ambush at the forest preserve has given me a strange hope. If Morick's clan wants me dead, then Robyn and the boys might still be alive. The thralls have not forgotten me. I continue to search.

Cairo.

I came to Egypt to find them.

To find Graham.

And, once more, I am returning home empty-handed.

I slide the blind open on my portal.

Vertigo as I stare down into the murky lime Jell-O of Lake Michigan.

My stomach is flopping.

I'll stow my pages. Buckle my bag. Wipe sweat. I don't know what to do when I'm not writing, not searching for them, swallowing pills and chasing with booze and seeing him, them, her, Robyn, but Morick mostly. The boys are lost and Robyn too and I need to put my pen down but it gets harder afterward to sort time out, the reality from the fiction from the nightmare and any day could be the one Til have my shot or

put that sturdy little double-edge razor to his throat, reminds me I need to tape up a new blade because the Egyptians kept mine— We've landed.

ase? Jase!"

Maria San Filippo meets me at the airport. The last time I saw her was at Fennessy's wake. She was devastated, silent. I pleaded with her to talk to her former colleagues in the department. They'd decided the murders had drugs at the core. I saw the Morick stamp; literally it was there on the stone. I spoke old crimes, kidnappings, and rituals in the woods. I told them about patterns. Got back the same treatment Father Byron had when the Boyles were snatched. No one bought what I was selling.

Her hair's shorter, sexier, if that's possible. She's made an upgrade in attire too. Her suit must cost in the four-figure range. And her figure? Is curvaceous, decidedly rounded. She's pregnant. I'd say about to drop.

"You're a hard man to find these days," she says.

"No address. No phone. No friends."

"A few friends."

"How did you know I was walking off that plane?"

"Credit-card activity. You changed your ticket and there was a fee. The Egyptian police filed a report. You caused problems."

"Nice to know one's privacy's protected."

"If privacy were protected, I wouldn't have anything to tell you."

"What do you have?"

"Al and Jeanie Westphal. Heard of them?"

"Never."

"They are very wealthy, and retired. No dependents. No heirs. Until last week. A long-lost daughter—they've reunited. And now they have grandchildren to consider. My law firm rewrote the Westphal wills. I think you will find their beneficiaries as interesting as I did. Let's go someplace more private."

We walk through the terminal. Marias condition dictates our pace. I'm unused to making small talk, but I make an attempt. "You must have quite a big family by now."

She shakes her head. Tough ex-cop, she gives up so little. "We lost three babies. The doctors aren't able to explain it. They want to be com forting but end up being vague. I have trouble internally. That seems to suffice. Well, we're trying again. I'm a month from the due date, and the doctors ... we're on schedule." The gold cross around her neck brightens as we pass a sunny window.

I have never actually been inside the Admiral's Lounge. San Filippo has a manila envelope. Paper copies. I can look, she tells me, but I can not have. The will filings, documents legal and extralegal—I scan them.

San Filippo says, "The Westphals lied. They don't have a daughter, or any grandchildren. Their daughter is blind. She has two children. Boys. Twins. Their birth certificates are fakes. Good fakes, which makes them more troubling. The daughter/mother's name is Daria Jillette. Fake papers on her too. They told us the children's father is deceased. The Westphals bought them a house. The boys are homeschooled. The grandparents visit often. They're with them now."

"Where?"

"New Mexico. Out in the desert."

"Lovely. The pieces fit, except one's missing."

"Graham. Maybe he's hidden himself better."

"Or maybe these people aren't who we think they are."

"Here's a ticket. You might enjoy the desert air. It's the red-eye. I hope you don't mind. Jet lag is probably the least of your problems. So, no harm done." She smiles.

"Why are you doing this?"

The smile evaporates. "They murdered Brendan."

I nod. "I need to go to my safety-deposit box. I'm out of cash."

San Filippo passes me another envelope. Smaller, discreet. Stuffed with bills. She hands me a cell phone. "You find them? Don't do anything. Call me. I'll have FBI agents swarming the homestead within an hour. Promise me?"

"I promise."

Some promises are meant not to keep.

y flight to New Mexico—the attendant is calling us to board. I go to the men's room. Avoid looking in the mirror. Wash my face. Dry off with a paper towel. There's a man, an airport employee, emptying the trash. When he turns his back, I wrap the wet paper around the cell phone and toss it into his gray bin.

nother plane ride. Land and hail a taxi. I take a minute to size up my driver. He's perfect. I open the stuffed envelope and pass him a bill. "Show me where I can buy a gun."

"What kind of gun?"

I hand him a stack of green paper. "You know what kind."

He counts the cash.

"I can do that," he says.

The air-conditioning blasts over the seatback. From the radio, Tejano tunes. He drives to a small house. He parks in the street. Eyes flash in the rearview mirror.

"How much bang you looking for, mister?"

"I want a pistol, a revolver. It has to be in excellent condition. Nothing smaller than a .32, and I need to carry it under my shirt."

"Not a cannon?"

"And not a popgun either."

"Wait here a minute," he says. I give him money. He comes out a few minutes later with a paper bag.

I look in the bag. "That will work. Thank you."

"It ain't loaded. I got them to throw in a box of shells, gratis. If you're looking for a party, something like that, I know a couple spots."

"Is there a firing range around here?"

"I can do that too."

understand why prophets love the desert. You push out ol time. IV-spite my sunglasses, the dazzle spikes mv head. I touch my crowa

The hairs feel like straw. I he s^ars on m\ legs don'1 register the temperature. They're dead meat.

Mountains at my back, the sun going down. This is where rich pen pie go to get skin cancer. A neat real estate development of adobe si vie ranches, one road in, then culs-de-sac. Each house has plenty of space,a couple of manicured acres. Graham must feel safe here. No fen< e, no se curity, no dogs.

I'm standing in his backyard.

he windows are covered with heavy shades. 1 can't see through. When I get closer, as my back skims against the rough adobe wall, I discover that the windows are painted, coat upon coat, with white paint. I touch the cold glass with my palm. I'll break it, reach for the window locks, and climb over the ledge. I can be inside in less than thirtv seconds. I'll start shooting. It should all be over in two minutes.

I hear voices.

They're home.

I draw my gun and move toward the noise—electronic bleeps and buzzes.

Someone shouts. I crouch behind a pot of flowers.

The shout came from inside.

I draw my gun. The sliding patio door; vertical blinds hang on the other side. I test the handle. It moves.

raham and Griffin Morick are sitting on the sofa, playing a video

game. They look fine, strong, and clear-eyed. But it's Shane and

Liam, not Graham and Griffin. They're alive. They've grown older.

Older than I was when Mathias died. Twelve years under their belts.

Their resemblance to their predecessors unnerves.

Jaws drop as they watch me invade their home.

I aim the revolver at them. Press a finger to my lips to urge their silence.

They're afraid of me. Good.

A woman works in the kitchen, frying chicken. She's a redhead; her short, bobbed cut, a mom's hairstyle, shows off her long, graceful neck

She turns around and doesn't see me. My Red Robyn. Her eyes are like marbles set into her face. They don't follow me as I rush past the boys and step around the counter. I stand behind her and listen to the grease popping in the pan. She's lived with Graham much longer than she lived with me. She's a stranger. My enemy.

She senses a human presence. Turns off the gas. Dinner's ready.

A moment of near-recognition—I am not one of the boys. Her eyes are fixed and unblinking. They've obviously gotten worse. She can't pick me out of the shadows. But who forgets the way someone feels, someone loved?

I point the gun at her head.

"Where's Graham?" I ask.

The bloodstone he gave her sways on its tether around her neck.

Confusion in her look, asking, "How .. . ?"

I grab her elbow. "Tell me."

"Down the hall. The second bedroom. But, Jase, you don't have to . ..

I hold the barrel of the gun inches from her face.

I can't do this.

Need to find another way.

Do it now.

I think too much about killing. I can't. I leave her. Shane and Liam wait for me to walk out of the kitchen. They go to her side.

The hallway is narrow, cool. The walls are clean. No pictures. Indian rugs spread on the tile floors like islands.

The click-clack of my heels resounds as I walk between them.

I open the bedroom door.

Raise the gun. Finger the trigger. I've got six bullets and 111 use them all.

(rraham's last trick plays out. The room is empty.

Lower the gun. The room has only one decoration. My brain tries td comprehend it.

Black wings—a frozen ascension.

Robyn and her sons join me. Robyn's talking. The black wings—she tells me how she tacked Graham's robe to the wall. How she opened its folds and spread them. Under the robe is a low altar, a ghastly jumble of glue and rope and peeled sticks.

They aren't sticks.

She tells me her sons built the table from Graham's bones. Yes, I see-that now. Here's the Druid's skull wrapped like a great precious egg in velvet; the fabric dyed black on one side, red on the reverse. She holds up his head like a chalice. Put it down. She does and covers it again, so 1 don't have to look.

"You're amazed, right?" she asks, beaming. "Graham really did it, Jase."

The hangman's rope Graham used during the Cloven Print—they've coiled that round and round his skeleton. Robyn's palm hovers over the altar. She finds the frayed end of the rope. Beside it is a straight razor, closed into its handle, black and old; adorned with a silver pin. Even so, the length of the weapon quickens my heartbeat. I raise the gun. But it's the severed rope she chooses.

"We cut his body down when it was finished."

Graham Morick is dead.

He cheated me and I can't believe it. The years I've wasted, my sanity—

But Robyn and the boys are alive. I've found them and that's enough. It has to be or else I'll. .. Robyn and the boys —plural.

Shane and Liam—what happened? If Graham performed the ritual, then one of them should be as dead as Graham.

"Why are both boys still alive?"

Robyn says, "Shane, Liam, come here. It's all right. Jase is a friend"

They approach and she holds them close.

"Aubrey never understood the true power of the mirrorrornm. (ira ham grasped at it. He needed my help. I convinced him neither boy had to die. It wasn't going to work that way. Graham's soul was at stake, [b make the wrong choice during the ritual would be doubly tatal. He should pick later, I told him. Once he crossed over, he would see what to do. He would have his power."

"You never could have convinced him."

"I did," she says.

She crouches and reaches under the altar. She's holding a silver disk—it's a film can. The kind I haven't seen since projectors wheeled around the back rows of my eighth-grade science class. There's a label stuck to the front that says, simply, The Print. Robyn pops it open and shows me the 16mm reel inside.

"It's all here," she says. "We used Aubrey's old Bolex camera and tripod, the same one he shot Graham and Griffin with at the Maltzes. Graham kept everything in storage. He was meticulous. He had such a strong belief in tradition."

"You filmed Graham's hanging?"

"His transformation," she says. "Oh, you have to watch it."

If she saved the boys, then why are we here? It's because Robyn believes. She has convinced the thralls to wait. Graham left them, but they have him in spirit. They have him dwelling inside these boys. All while they anticipate his evil return.

I touch her red hair. Let the strands fall through my fingers.

"Why didn't you tell me where you were? I would've taken you home."

She shakes her head, grabs my hand, squeezes. "My home is with the boys. I'm keeping them safe until Graham emerges. We're his family."

Morick's bloody doctrine addles her brain. I cannot listen to her. It's sickness. That weight drops heavy on my heart. What Robyn needs is help. She needs me to save her from this madness.

We have to get out of here.

"You have phony papers? You and the bows have passports?"

"The Cloven family provided everything. Graham watches over us. I feel him. Sometimes I swear he's here in the house."

I decide, in that moment, what we'll do.

"Pack a bag. We're leaving—the four of US together. Run now. 1 hat's the only way. Before any of the thralls know 1 found you. Hurry, we must move quickly."

shc\ confused. Hut she doesn't argue. 1 usher Robyn, Shane, ani

Liam into the bedroom she tells me they share. There's a noise m the distance. A rumble.

"We don't have much time," I say.

Robyn opens her mouth, but she says nothing.

truck turns into the adobe's driveway. The big engine idles and switches off.

Al and Jeanie Westphal.

I shut Robyn and her sons in the bedroom.

I spy around the corner of an adobe wall. I'm not even breathing. The Westphals walk in their front door. They're carrying groceries. I don't recognize them from the Fistula. I've never seen them before in my life. It's like they stepped out of an AARP brochure. Ma and Pa Retired America.

"We're home," Mrs. Westphal calls into the silent house. "And we have ice cream sandwiches."

I meet them in the kitchen.

They look like grandparents. My grandparents, yours.

"Who are you?" Al asks me. He sounds like he really cares about my answer.

The head.

God help me.

I shoot them both in the head.

Chapter 32

obyn doesn't resist my plan for fleeing the country. She has a lot of cash stuffed in her duffel bag. I don't ask where it came from. I'm ' grateful to have it. Money makes everything easier. She even helps me chart our course. We'll fly south. Hire a small plane. Buy a sailboat. We j pick through countries the way other couples sort paint chips for their living room. This one's too dark. That one's too busy.