WHEN KAREN MET HER MOUNTAIN

-1-

Karen Singleton’s daddy once told her, “Honey, sometimes things just happen and there’s nothin’ to be done about it.” That was thirty years ago, when she was little enough to sit on his knee. “When there’s a mountain in your way, you either climb over it, or find a way around it. There ain’t no in-between.”

Walking through the Arizona desert along Route 93, her favorite Sunday dress stained a dark shade of ruby, Karen finally realized her daddy was right all those years ago. Squinting, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the rising sun, Karen kept on walking down that dusty stretch of highway. Her feet ached. She looked down at bare toes caked in sand and blood, wondering when she’d lost her shoes.

Sometimes things just happen.

Karen cracked a smile and began to laugh in quick, hoarse bursts. Her voice sounded like a dying mule, the thought of which made her laugh even more. She clutched the hatchet and wiped the chipped blade with the hem of her dress. Daddy once told her a dull blade wouldn’t cut anything, but he was wrong about that.

Daddy wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t be right all the time.

-2-

“—Your father never much cared for me, anyway.”

Karen opened her eyes to a dusty brown expanse of desert sage and tumbleweeds slipping by in a blur. Her face’s reflection in the dirty window depicted a tired woman, a mourning woman. Dr. Martin Singleton hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left her daddy’s funeral, and after the day she’d had, all she wanted was to go someplace quiet. Someplace far away from here, from the deserts of her youth and the complacency of middle age.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Karen tilted her head away from the window and nodded. She closed her eyes, swallowed a pool of saliva on the back of her tongue, and patted his knee. Martin glanced at her, frowning.

“Your therapist says it’s best you talk about these things, Karen. So you don’t, you know . . . ”

Relapse. He didn’t say it, but then again he didn’t have to. She knew all too well, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to talk about her daddy’s funeral.

She hadn’t spoken to her daddy all that much in the last years of his life, a fact she regretted as each mile quickly slipped away, lost to the desert behind them. Daddy was a hard man to live with; his dedication to the church had driven her away, first to college and then into the arms of an atheist, but she still loved the old man. He provided for her, cared for her, loved her in his own way. In hindsight, Karen supposed that was why she’d been drawn to Martin in the first place: he reminded her of her father, in some ways.

Martin was right, though—her daddy never did care for him much.

Any boy who walks away from God’s glory is trouble. You watch yourself, honey. I’ll never forgive him if he breaks your heart.

Karen smiled. Even her daddy, Pastor Marlon Ellis, could be blinded sometimes. Martin’s devotion never faltered, not after her miscarriage, not even after the accident that followed. Daddy was wrong about Martin, and Karen’s heart ached when she realized she’d never be able to tell him that.

Martin leaned back against the headrest and sighed. “Karen, you need to talk to me eventually. You can’t keep these things bottled up inside.”

“I’m fine,” she said. The terse response was almost mechanical, an instinctual reaction driven by necessity. Martin was right, but for now she just wanted to remain inside her own head. Confronting her sadness always ended in tragedy.

Karen turned back to the window, watching the emptiness of Route 93 flow past in a sandy blur. Her husband frowned, shook his head, and turned on the radio. Static rose and fell in waves, crashing against a DJ talking about upcoming events somewhere else in civilization, and a moment later Hank Williams began to sing “Weary Blues From Waitin’.”

Now we’re talkin’, her daddy said. He loved Hank Williams.

She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, remembering the way her daddy used to sing this song to himself whenever it played on the radio. She could almost see him sitting on the edge of the bed, humming the tune while pulling on his black dress shoes.

Karen followed that memory down into the darkness of her mind as the hum of the engine lulled her to sleep—

“What the hell?”

Karen shot forward and cried out when the seatbelt dug into her shoulder. The world swam for a moment as an ache worked its way down to the base of her neck, and when she opened her eyes she saw they had come to a full stop in the middle of the highway.

Martin gripped the steering wheel. Karen followed his gaze through the windshield.

A white, rust-spotted pickup truck sat on its side between the highway and hillside. A carpet of shattered glass spread out from the wreckage, and a woman lay a few feet away in the middle of the road with her back to them. A few strands of her dirty blonde hair fluttered in a low breeze.

“Oh, Jesus.” Martin shifted the SUV into park and was about to climb out of the car, but Karen put her hand on his knee and shook her head. “I have to, Karen. She’s hurt.”

And then he was out the door, jogging across the gap toward the woman in the road. Karen watched her husband, trying to swallow the uncomfortable lump slowly rising in her throat.

Somethin’ ain’t right, honey. A pickup doesn’t just fall onto its side. You need two to tango. Where’s the other car?

She leaned forward and looked at the road. No skid marks or other tire tracks. All the shards of glass were off to the side, sprinkled along the edge of the truck. There were no pools of gas or oil, and although the thought made her stomach twist into itself, there wasn’t any blood, either.

Karen’s shaking fingers found the latch and opened the door. She stepped out into the dry Arizona heat and struggled to find her voice. Don’t go there, she wanted to cry out. Get away from her, Martin. But her words failed her, and Karen stood frozen to the highway as shapes emerged from behind the overturned truck.

Martin knelt beside the woman with his fingers on her neck. He looked back when Karen closed the SUV door.

“She’s alive,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Grab my cell and call 911.”

Martin was still watching her, his face a mixture of grim determination and puzzlement, wondering why his wife wasn’t doing as he’d asked. He was so perplexed by Karen’s immobility he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.

He didn’t notice the young woman with the dirty blonde hair roll onto her back. He didn’t see her toothless smile and her gums riddled with blackened, bloody holes; he didn’t see the rusty blade in her hand.

“Thy will be done,” the woman said, jamming the knife through the center of Martin’s loafer.

In her mind, Karen made a mad dash across the road toward her husband, sprinting as fast as her heels would carry her. She tore the blade from her husband’s foot and slashed the blonde bitch across her face, spreading that toothless grin even wider by a few bloody inches. She saw herself turn to the figures advancing toward them from beyond the pickup truck; she saw herself fending them off with the blade, protecting the man she loved, the man who had nurtured her through the aftermath of her accident. She wouldn’t let them hurt him anymore than they had, and oh, they would pay dearly for doing so.

Except that wasn’t right.

Confused, Karen blinked and found she was back inside herself, snapped out of her trance and into a reality punctuated by the agonized shrieks of her wounded husband and the gleeful laughter of a crazy woman lying in the road.

Five masked men in dusty black robes emerged from behind the pickup truck and approached the pair on the highway. One man broke away from the group and turned toward her, crossing the distance with quick, able steps. His mask was blood red and depicted a pained expression, with one side of its cheek drawn downward in agony. Jagged cutouts framed two crazed eyes that glimmered in the late afternoon sun—and they were boring a hole right through her.

The other men fell upon Martin while the blonde crowing bitch climbed to her feet. She danced around them, singing in her cackling manner, “Thy will be done! Thy will be done! The time is at hand! Thy will be done, oh Lord!”

Karen saw one of them cup a dirty rag around Martin’s mouth while the others held him down. Her husband stopped kicking a moment later, his body suddenly limp. She heard one of the men groan as he braced against Martin’s dead weight.

You’d best get movin’, honey.

Karen’s daddy didn’t have to tell her twice. She reached for the passenger door and yanked it open.

“Now where’re you goin’, little lamb?”

She was halfway across the passenger seat when hands fell upon her ankle, and she kicked instinctively, holding that image of her husband’s limp body in the forefront of her mind. She had to get to the driver’s seat, get Martin’s cell phone, and call for help—like she should’ve done when he’d asked her. God, if she hadn’t been so slow and so stupid. She reached for the console. The cell phone was just a few inches more—

“Easy there, little girl.” The masked man laughed as he tugged her leg. She kicked again, and her shoes flew off. “You might be needin’ those. The sand won’t be too kind on your teeny toes.”

Martin’s phone shrank away as the masked man pulled her from the vehicle. She fell in a heap on the road. Her attacker pulled off his mask, revealing a grinning face pockmarked with enough acne scars to rival the moon. No wonder he wears a mask, her daddy said, and Karen had to bite her cheeks to keep from laughing.

Her captor produced a dirty rag of his own and looked down at her with his crazy blue eyes.

“Sorry, little lamb. We only need one, but the Lord will welcome you with open arms, I’m sure of it.”

Karen raised her hand to strike, but he caught her arm. A sudden heat flushed her cheeks when she realized what held his attention. He squeezed her wrist as he twisted it around to face him, sending a sharp pain racing down the length of her arm. This time when Karen bit her cheeks, it was to keep from crying out.

“Maybe I spoke too soon,” he muttered, tracing a finger along the length of her scar. “The Lord don’t take kindly to suicides, little lamb.”

Embarrassed and seething with rage, Karen gave one last effort to free herself. She raised her leg and tried to kick him in the groin just like her daddy had always told her to do, but she was too slow; the robed man stepped aside and yanked on her wrist, pulling her away from the SUV. He fell upon her and drove one knee into her gut, knocking the air from her lungs.

“Enough of this,” he growled. “You sleep now.”

He pressed the rag against her mouth. The fabric stank with a pungent chemical odor that made her throat and nostrils burn, and when she tried to fight him off Karen found her arms and legs simply would not cooperate. The world swam, and the darkness behind her eyes looked so inviting—but she didn’t want to go there, not now. She still had to save Martin from those other men and she had to make that blonde woman stop laughing, but everything felt better with her eyes closed, and how would she do anything with her eyes closed?

The robed man spoke from somewhere far away as she slipped further into herself, away from the dry desert air and into a cold void. His echoing words made her shiver:

“Let it happen, little lamb. Just let it happen. You’ll be with the Lord soon, and He will welcome you with open arms.”

A dark hole opened in the world and Karen sank into its bottomless depths.

-SESSION #1-

“Do you understand why you’re here, Karen?”

Dr. Tanner leaned forward and smiled. A strand of curly brown hair spilled from her forehead, and she brushed it away, tucking it behind her ear. Karen stared through the doctor, lost in her own mind and clutched by a cold grip that sent shivers through her soul.

“Karen?”

The doctor wouldn’t leave. She knew this, knew she’d brought this all on herself, and that was just fine because she deserved everything that came to her.

Karen focused on Dr. Tanner’s smiling face. “I’m here because I deserve to be.”

Dr. Tanner glanced down for a moment, scribbling something on her notepad. “And why is that?”

“Because I’m not a fit woman. I’m not a fit mother.”

Dr. Tanner set down her pen. “Karen, that isn’t true. I think you’re a fit woman, and I think you’d be a good mother. I’m sure your husband would agree with me.” She picked up her pen and scribbled a brief note, paused, and then met Karen’s vacant gaze. “But that isn’t why we’re here, is it?”

Karen stepped outside her mind for a moment. She saw herself reaching forward, plucking the pen from Tanner’s hand, and jabbing the felt tip into the doctor’s eye. Enough cat and mouse head games, Doctor. You know why I’m here and what I’ve done. You know I deserve to be, so cut the bullshit and get on with it.

Those words were venom on her tongue, but she was pulled back inside her head before they could be spat at the doctor. She swallowed and grimaced from the taste of bile at the back of her throat.

“I hurt myself,” Karen whispered. “I hurt myself because I’m not a fit mother.” She ran her fingers across the bandages on her wrists, tugging absently at the edges. The stitches were beginning to itch. “After I lost the baby I couldn’t look at myself anymore, and I couldn’t bear to look at Martin, either. I don’t deserve the happiness of being a mother, and I don’t deserve the happiness of being Martin’s wife because I can’t bring him happiness. I see that now. I understand it. And if I’m not fit to have those things, what is the point?” She was crying now but the words still came, blubbering and tripping over themselves in a saline mess. “So I ran a hot bath, took Martin’s straight razor, said a prayer to God for His understanding, and cut a gash straight down my wrist like this.”

Karen dragged a finger down the bandage of one wrist, and then the other. She shook her head, shrugged, and cocked a smile at the doctor.

“I did it because I’m a coward. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? You want to know why? Well, that’s why, Doctor Tanner. I did it because I felt something growing inside me, and then it died. I did it because I couldn’t face my husband after it all happened because he was so excited we were having a baby. He used to lie awake with me at night, holding me in his arms and talking about what we might name that baby, talking about which room to convert to a nursery, what colors to paint the walls, contemplating what sort of person that tiny life might grow up to be—and now he doesn’t. He doesn’t hold me anymore because I don’t deserve to be held. Because I’m filth. Because I’m shit. Are you getting all this? I can slow down if it helps you.”

Dr. Tanner lowered the pen and leaned back in her seat, trying to keep her composure. Karen’s outburst had set her on edge. “No,” she said, forcing the faintest of smiles. “Please. This is good. Continue.”

Karen closed her eyes, waiting for the maelstrom of thoughts to settle in her head, and out of that roiling dark spoke her daddy’s voice: You never were a climber, honey. Always a runner.

She smirked, snorting back the mucus in her nose. Dr. Tanner tilted her head and gave Karen a quizzical look.

“What’s funny?”

“My daddy,” Karen mused, picking at the skin at the corner of her mouth. “He used to ask me, ‘Karen, what’ll you do when you meet your mountain?’ And I used to tell him, ‘Daddy, I’ll just go around it if I have to.’”

Dr. Tanner leaned forward, offering a perfunctory smile. “What do you think he meant by that?”

But Karen ignored her question. She met Dr. Tanner’s inquisitive gaze with an intense stare that chilled the doctor’s heart. “He also used to tell me that suicides burn.” Karen smiled as tears spilled down her cheeks. “Suicides burn.”

-3-

She stirred, moaning softly as her head swam. Her nostrils still burned with that chemical smell. What was the name for it? Chlorophyll? No, that wasn’t it.

Chloroform, honey. Her daddy always knew the answer.

Karen cracked her eyes and peered at the world through thin, blurry slits. Her bare feet pressed against the warm vinyl of the door, and her dress was bunched up to her thighs. The late afternoon sun hung low, streaming through the glass, and baking her bare skin. Her fingers twitched to life, moving to pull her dress back down—

Don’t, honey. The bad man dosed you, but not good enough, and he didn’t have the common sense to tie you up. He thinks you’re still asleep.

Karen tapped her fingertips against the pad of her thumb.

Not yet, sweetheart. You’d best keep yourself a secret for now. Play possum for a while. I’ll let you know when it’s time to bite.

She did as her daddy suggested, tilting her head to watch the bad man in the black robe steer them off the highway. Stones tumbled and clattered against the undercarriage, the suspension crying out in protest against the rough terrain, and she remembered Martin had scheduled a service appointment for next week.

Martin.

Her heart shot into her throat, and she almost sat up in earnest, ready to dig her nails into the face of her attacker. No, Daddy whispered, just wait. She took a deep breath and let the air turn to churning fire in her lungs; her head swam when she exhaled, shooting patches of black and white across her vision. She forgot about the scarred man behind the wheel, turning within herself to find a shattered image of Martin lurking in the shadows. The last she’d seen him, that laughing bitch had jammed a knife through his foot. He was screaming—God, she could still hear him—and then she’d failed to get help, watching as that group of masked men fell upon him. Had they killed him?

Daddy’s voice echoed in that darkened chamber: You won’t find out if you don’t get yourself out of here, honey. Focus.

Karen held her tongue, narrowing her eyes, glaring at the pockmarked cheek of her abductor. She dug her nails into the vinyl seat.

Minutes crawled by as the bad man drove her deeper into the desert. She was lost in her thoughts and trying to figure out a way to escape when the SUV began to sputter and cough before slowing to a halt.

Her abductor turned and looked down at her.

“All right, little lamb. Out of gas with just a few inches to spare. The Lord does provide!”

Karen peered up at him through squinted eyes, wondering if he could see her watching him. Her heart rapped against her chest, thudding so hard her whole body vibrated with its fury. He climbed out of the SUV and slammed the door.

Now, Daddy?

Not yet, honey.

Footsteps crunched over stones, tracing a path around the vehicle, and Karen followed them with her mind while doing her best to remain a mannequin.

The back door opened. A warm breeze met her face. The bad man’s hands gripped her arms. He pulled her from the backseat and dropped her in the hot sand.

“Don’t you go gettin’ excited on me now. You be a good little sinner. Be a good lamb.”

He knelt beside her and ran his fingertip across the top of her exposed thigh. Her skin burned at his touch and she wanted to tear away that strip of flesh, erasing every trace of his existence from her body. Only one man was allowed to touch her. Only one. And if he was dead she would make them suffer.

The bad man traced his other hand along her naked wrist, rubbing the pink scar that ran across a network of veins and halfway down her arm.

“Such a shame.” The scarred man chewed his lower lip and shook his head. “You would’ve birthed good young.”

He cupped her thigh and slowly moved his hand north toward sacred ground. A series of chills crept along her stomach and she bit the insides of her cheeks to keep from screaming. She felt dirty, her skin covered in a grimy film that wouldn’t come clean no matter how hard she scrubbed.

“Maybe,” he began, “maybe just a taste, Herman.”

Herman. She almost laughed aloud, more out of hysteria than hilarity, but the comedy of Herman the Scarred Man was immediately lost as he lowered his head. His tongue left a trail of saliva along her inner thigh.

Karen watched this vile creature desecrate her body from outside herself.

What about now, Daddy?

Now, honey. Now you can bite, little possum.

Her fingers searched the scorching sands and fell upon a rock the size of a baseball. Herman was almost to her panty line when she sat up and struck him. He cried out in shock as a bloody tooth landed on her dress.

“Thhhh,” he sputtered, his wounded lips failing him as he tried to formulate words. Karen pulled back and struck him again. The rock split his temple with a sickening crack.

Herman sprawled backward and clipped his head against the door of the SUV. His eyes went cloudy for a few seconds before he steadied himself. He reached forward and pulled himself toward a patch of sagebrush.

“Help!” With a mouth full of blood, his cry sounded more like “hup.” He spat a dark stream into the sand as he crawled into the scrub. Karen climbed to her feet and watched him beckon to something out on the horizon. “Help me, brothers!”

Karen squinted against the sun. The shadow of a rocky butte about a mile away shielded a group of RVs baking under the early evening sun.

“Martin,” she whispered.

Her legs propelled her forward. She fell upon Herman, digging her knee into the small of his back. He squealed in agony, shooting thick, scarlet streaks across the sand.

“Where is he?’

Herman sobbed, blubbering something about penitence. She reached around his skull, found the soft meat of his eye, and punctured that gelatinous orb with her thumb. Warm liquid oozed outward as she separated her nail from his skull.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

“A sacrifice,” Herman cried. “Our Lord demands sacrifice, so the Children of Melchizedek give Him the blood of the damned.”

Karen clutched his robe and pulled the collar against his throat.

“Why not me?” she screamed, her voice scratching at her throat, a guttural cry that echoed from her toes. “Am I not damned?”

“Only men—”

She stood, braced her bare foot against his shoulder, and flipped him onto his back. Blood gushed from his wounded eye, and a dark stream trickled out the side of his mouth. Her mind became a red haze while a million accusations raced through her, the words like lashes on her naked skin.

Martin was pure. He was a good man who cared for her, loved her, saw her through that terrible time. Now he was caught up in this madness, judged for sins he hadn’t committed.

Am I not damned?

The question raced through her mind as she gripped the rock.

“Am I not damned?”

She raised the stone. Herman turned his head and closed his good eye.

“AM I NOT DAMNED?”

The stone connected with his face with a sickening crack, leaving a dent in his skull. Karen was too caught up in her rage to notice he was dead before she hit him a third time. She cracked the stone against his skull twenty times more until his face collapsed into a bowl of cerebral jelly. When she was finished, she sat back against the SUV and stared out toward the grouping of RVs on the horizon.

Martin was out there. Damned or not, she had to save him—just as he had saved her.

-SESSION #7-

Dr. Tanner took a seat across from her and smiled. “You seem to be doing well. Better spirits?”

“Much better,” Karen said. “It’s nice to be home again.”

“Good. That’s good.” Dr. Tanner reached for her notepad and pen. Karen watched the other woman’s movements, feeling her blood pressure increase, noticing a subtle throb at the base of her skull.

“How long will we have to do this?”

Dr. Tanner wrote something across the page. “I’m sorry?”

“Our sessions,” Karen said, forcing a smile. “How—how much longer before I can stop visiting?”

“Well, Karen, that depends on you, and that’s why we’re meeting still.”

“But you discharged me—”

“I discharged you because I believe you’re no longer a threat to yourself.” Dr. Tanner waited a beat, observing her patient with a cautious eye. “Was I wrong?”

Karen deflated, shrinking back in her seat. She averted her eyes to the window. “No, doctor. You’re not wrong. Let’s just get on with it. I still have some shopping to do. Martin asked me to cook tonight . . . ”

“And how is your relationship?”

“Our relationship?” Karen blinked. “I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

“In the past, you mentioned feelings of worthlessness. That you felt you didn’t deserve your husband’s love.” The doctor flipped through her notes. “Last month you told me you two weren’t speaking much.”

Karen closed her eyes and bit her lip to hold back the slow throbbing in her skull. She spoke slowly, evenly, each syllable cleaving the air one slice at a time: “I find it difficult to face him when I am smothered by my shame.”

“How do you think your husband feels about your silence?”

“I want to talk to him, I really do, but anytime I look at him I see the look on his face when he found me that night. I was supposed to be gone by the time he got home, but his shift ended early. I was so weak I couldn’t get up to lock the bathroom door. He wasn’t supposed to see me until I’d drifted away, and the shame of facing him . . . ” Karen looked away. She wiped a tear from her eye. “I love Martin with all my heart, Dr. Tanner. I’d do anything for him. Some days I just don’t understand why he bothers to love someone like me. I betrayed him just like my mother did my daddy.”

Dr. Tanner frowned. “Tell me about your mother.”

Karen wiped her nose and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Not much to tell, really. My daddy was a preacher when I was younger and my mother resented the time he spent with the church. Claimed he loved God more than her. So she left him and sued for divorce. Daddy loved her too much to put up a fight. It broke his heart, but he let her go because he wanted her to be happy. That’s the only time I ever saw him cry.”

“And the night your husband found you—”

Karen nodded sheepishly. “He cried like a baby.” She ran her fingers through her hair and stopped when she realized her hands were shaking. “I saw Daddy in Martin’s face that night, and I’ll never forgive myself for hurting him like that. Why aren’t we speaking much? That’s my answer, Dr. Tanner. It’s just my way of going around the mountain. Climbing to face myself is more than I can bear right now. Always has been.”

-4-

Karen wiped the dead man’s blood from Martin’s cell phone and dialed 911. The call failed a moment later, and she tried once more before shutting off the phone to conserve the battery. She would need it once she found Martin—provided she could get a signal.

Next, she searched the dead man, but he had nothing of use to her except for a pair of sandals two sizes too big. They might be awkward, but they would keep her feet safe from the scorching sands. She slipped them on and turned back to the SUV. Herman must have driven them a good distance into the desert to have run out of gas. When she looked toward the horizon, she saw nothing but desert and sky.

She sat on the passenger seat, her legs dangling through the open door, nursing water from Martin’s Aquafina bottle as she took in her surroundings. Other cars and trucks were scattered across the area, long abandoned and left to bake in the unrelenting sun. We aren’t the first, she thought, surveying the dumping grounds. Herman’s words echoed in her head: Only the men. Where did that leave her? Was this Golgotha of lost cars and wayward travelers meant to be her final resting place?

Karen glanced over at the dead man. A metallic smell rose from the body as flies swarmed around his battered skull. Now she would never know.

She watched as the sun fell behind the rocky butte and a long, oppressive shadow crawled across the valley. Night would soon follow. Time to move.

Her thirst slaked, Karen used the remaining drops to cleanse her hands of Herman’s dried brain matter. She tucked the cell phone into her bra, clutched the stone—it had served her well so far—and set off across the desert toward the encampment.

Most men would have felt apprehension or fear in those moments, creeping across the shadowy waste toward potential death, but Karen felt neither of these emotions. She was driven by a singular purpose, an urgent desire to find her husband and seek retribution against those who took him—especially that laughing blonde bitch from the highway. Especially her.

Keep a clear head, her daddy whispered.

“But I do,” she said, smiling to herself. “I do.”

Night fell before she reached the first RV. A slick coating of sweat clung to her exposed skin, working in conjunction with the cool air to produce a bone-deep chill that would not cease. She shivered in the dark, hidden in the shadow of that motor home behemoth. There were voices within, clattering, footsteps, and then a door slammed.

One of the robed men wandered around the side of the RV before she had a chance to react. He stopped at the edge, hiked his robe, and began to piss against the side.

“Goddamn Herman,” he groaned. “Dimwit cocksucker could get lost puttin’ on his underwear.”

Karen froze, her heart shuddering something fierce, quaking her entire torso. He hadn’t seen her. The adrenaline was exquisite, and the stone in her hand felt weightless.

The cultist’s prick was still in his hand when she struck him, practicing the same maneuver on him as she had on Herman, quickly fracturing his skull before he could alert the others. He collapsed in a heap, the open wound hemorrhaging blood at an alarming rate. Karen stepped back after her attack and marveled at how quickly the dark matter oozed out of his head. If she had the time, she might have entertained watching him bleed out just to see how fast it would happen, but she had to save Martin first. Maybe on the way back. Maybe.

Something caught her eye. The hatchet was tucked into a loop of a belt made from a length of golden brown rope. She pulled it from the makeshift holster, examined its dull blade, and dropped the trusty stone in favor of something less awkward.

A dull blade won’t cut anything, honey.

“We’ll see, Daddy.”

Hatchet in hand, Karen crept to the end of the RV and peered around the corner. The mobile homes were parked in a semi-circle and illuminated by a series of tiki torches. Party lights colored red, white, and blue were strung from RV to RV, flickering in and out of life as a generator hummed from somewhere out of sight. In the center of the half-circle was a makeshift idol, a bizarre construction of junkyard parts assembled into the effigy of a creature with hubcaps for breasts and two pieces of bent rebar for horns. Its face was the same mask worn by Martin’s attackers, giving the creature that same dimwitted, slack-jawed appearance.

The idol stood eight feet high with burning torches in each of its elongated arms, making for a sinister, contrived appearance. Karen thought it looked like the worst piece of modern art she’d ever seen.

“Michael?”

Another loud bang filled the night as the screen door slammed home. Karen tightened her grip on the hatchet and readied herself. She stepped out of Herman’s clunky sandals and curled her toes in the warm sand.

“Shit, boy, where’d you go? It’s almost time to go pay our respects.”

The robed man wandered into the gap between RVs. His mask sat upon the top of his head, its fastening string cutting divots into the sides of his bushy beard. Karen waited for him to turn away—he did so, calling out yet again—and stepped into the open. He heard her footsteps and turned back around—

“Michael, we ain’t got time—”

The hatchet blade sank into his skull with a single crack; a moment later his body went limp, collapsing into a heap between the mobile homes. His left leg twitched rapidly.

Karen leaned over, planted her foot against his chest, and pulled the hatchet out of his skull. The blade came away covered in the dead man’s gore and chips of bloody bone. She was busy examining the blade when another door creaked open.

“What the fuck? Ezra, it’s that bitch from the road! She killed Joseph!”

Two men emerged from the RV across the clearing. One of them held a rifle in his hands. Karen froze, her mind racing. Should she run? She’d be no good to Martin if they shot her.

Ezra raised the rifle. “You got lost in the wrong neighborhood, darlin’.” He glanced at his partner. “Aaron, go fetch your sister. The Lord’s sent a lamb to us. We’re ‘bout to have us some fun before the sacrifice.”

Aaron turned to his partner. “Me? Why me?”

“‘Cause I got the gun, dummy.”

Karen listened to their exchange, the glimmer of fear pushed from her blood by the onset of adrenaline. She stepped outside of herself for a moment, allowing her body to work its magic while she watched, a cheering spectator to her own private film. Karen watched as she ran forward, her muscles pumping and propelling her toward the first man, Aaron.

Rage took over, filling her lungs with fire and boiling her blood. For a brief moment, watching her body close the gap, Karen saw not a woman but a demon from the dark bowels of Hell, a red-skinned creature with hate in its eyes and the taste of blood on its tongue. That vile thing sprinted forward and leapt onto Aaron like an animal.

He screamed as she sank her teeth into his throat. The poor man never had a chance: he twisted and turned in place, trying to shake this seething, raging thing from him, but the harder he shook the tighter she clenched her jaw.

Karen’s mouth filled with Aaron’s blood as she tore out a chunk of his neck. A dark stream spurted into the night, anointing her head in a warm arterial spray. Aaron panicked, his shrieks weakening into desperate gurgles, and he thrashed from side to side in one last effort to dislodge the gnashing bitch. When he spun on his heels, Karen saw the other man over Aaron’s shoulder and pushed away from her victim.

She fell flat on her back with a jolt as the rifle fire punched her ears and blew a hole through the back of Aaron’s head. Bits of hair, bone, and brain cascaded across the sand beside her as Aaron’s body collapsed in a gory, smoking heap.

“Aaron? Oh God, Aaron?”

The gunshot’s echo snapped Karen back into herself, suddenly aware of the low vibration coursing over her skin in waves. The coppery taste of Aaron’s blood in her mouth twisted her stomach, but now was not the time to be squeamish. Karen climbed to her feet and spat blood. She clutched the hatchet and met Ezra’s terrified stare.

“You stay back, you godless cunt.” His shaking hands struggled to chamber the next round, but Karen was faster. She closed the gap in two strides just as Ezra shouldered the rifle and buried the hatchet blade between his eyes. Ezra’s eyes rolled back into his head as he sank to his knees. The hunting rifle clattered to the earth.

Karen tugged the blade from her victim’s face, her chest rising and falling in heavy convulsions, one labored breath of fire after another. The taste of blood lingered on her tongue and she spat again, her spittle pooling in the open gash between Ezra’s eyes.

You’ve got a hell of a bite, little possum.

“Goddamn right, Daddy.”

Movement from the corner of her eye. She looked up to see the blonde woman step out of a nearby RV. Karen was already moving before the blonde bitch saw her, the raw pads of her feet slapping all the way across the clearing.

Blondie turned and had but a moment to react, her chipped nails clawing to open the screen door as this bloody creature raced past their burning idol toward her.

“You get back from me, demon!”

Karen didn’t listen. The same fire that drove her to kill the others filled out her lungs, taking her blood to boil, fuming out her mouth and nostrils like a dragon. Maybe she was a demon.

“Am I not damned?”

Blondie paused, her wrinkled cheeks sagging as she tried to understand the question, but Karen’s question was merely rhetorical. She already knew the answer.

“BROTHERS!” Blondie screamed. “AARON! MICHAEL! EZRA?” She choked back tears, shrinking against the screen door. “Joseph? Herman?”

“All dead, honey.”

Karen grabbed a fistful of Blondie’s hair and yanked her off the short steps, dragging her back to the center of the half-circle where the bodies of her accomplices lay still and bleeding. Blondie collapsed over Aaron’s body, her hand sinking in the mushy exit wound that was his face. She screamed, teetering backward and landing flat on her ass.

“What did you—Why didja do this?”

Karen knelt beside Aaron’s body and stuck her hand into the bloody hole of his skull. Blondie turned her head and vomited. She retched until there was nothing left to expel, her chest convulsing into a hoarse coughing fit.

“Look at me,” Karen said. Blondie did as she was commanded, looking up at the demon through teary eyes.

Holding the blonde woman’s gaze, Karen raised her hand and smeared Aaron’s blood down her face. “Where is my husband, you blonde bitch?”

-SESSION #15-

Dr. Tanner shifted in her seat, clicking her pen against her nails. Karen had never seen her so nervous before, but she liked the idea. Tanner had always come across to her as one of those holier-than-thou types, getting off on other people’s misery, and to see her so jittery was almost empowering.

“Something wrong?”

The doctor looked up from her pad of paper and offered a light smile. “Just collecting my thoughts for our session. How are you doing?”

“I feel better,” Karen said. She smiled wide, an expression that made her doctor shrink back in her seat. “I feel more like myself.”

“And . . . and how are things with your husband? Have they improved?”

“Martin is great. I love him so much. He’s the best thing to happen to me, and I’m so grateful that he was there for me through all my troubles. Without him, I would be dead by now.”

“Yes, Martin . . . ” Dr. Tanner trailed off. She clicked her pen against the pad of paper. “Karen, I spoke with your husband last week. He said he found you crying in the shower the night your father died, and when he tried to get you out, you growled at him like an animal.”

Karen ignored the comment. “Martin has been so supportive. He’s driving me back to my hometown this weekend for the funeral—”

“Your husband also told me about an incident a couple of weeks ago at a restaurant. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Karen said, her expression drooping as she clenched her fingers around the edge of her blouse. “I remember the way that waitress looked at him. The way she flirted with him. He’s mine, and I told her as much.”

“Karen, you threw your glass of water at her. Martin says you’ve stopped taking your medication, that you still won’t talk to him, and when you do, it’s one- or two-word responses. He’s frustrated and . . . ” Dr. Tanner paused, composing herself. She cleared her throat. “Karen, I’m going to refer you to another specialist. I don’t think we can maintain this relationship any longer.”

Fine by me, Karen thought, but held her tongue. Her mind turned back to Martin. How sweet he was to offer to drive her back home to see her daddy laid to rest. Martin never got along with her daddy all that well, but in the end, Martin was still there for her. Thinking about him, and how supportive he was, filled her heart to its brim.

A chirp filled the office, startling Dr. Tanner from her seat. She walked across the room to her desk and picked up her cell phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Take your time,” Karen said. “Do you need to take that?”

Dr. Tanner smiled, blushing like a teenager just for a moment before remembering her place. She returned to where Karen sat and extended her hand to shake.

“Best of luck to you, Karen.”

But Karen was too busy staring off into space, fantasizing about her husband, the man she loved, her hero and savior. They had been through so much, but now there was a light at the end of their tunnel. She would do everything she could to make him happy—or die trying.

“Best of luck to us,” she whispered.

-5-

Blondie screamed as the fire blistered her skin, melting the flesh into a waxen glob while Karen held the torch to her face. She stood with one foot pressed against Blondie’s chest, holding the toothless woman at bay, watching the blonde bitch squirm and squeal in agony. Karen smiled and counted off the seconds.

One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three—

“HE’S AT THE ALTAR!”

Karen raised the torch but kept her foot in place. Blondie’s face was bubbling and red, her eyes swollen shut, a clear fluid dribbling down from her eyelids. Karen shifted her weight, easing her heel into the soft curve of Blondie’s throat.

“Where is the altar?”

“Up the p-path,” Blondie sobbed. “Along the ridge. P-Please just luh-let g-go.”

Karen looked up at the opening of the circle and noticed two burning tiki torches stuck in the ground near the butte wall. Their flames cast dancing shadows along the rock.

She curled her toes and pressed her weight against Blondie’s throat, crushing the woman’s larynx and giggling at the labored, wheezing sound gurgling from that toothless mouth. Karen waited until she stopped struggling before lowering the torch and setting Blondie’s curls alight.

“Thy will be done,” Karen said. She smiled up at the flaming effigy of their silent tin god. “Here’s another lamb for you.”

Karen’s heart slowed to an even pace as she passed a rusty red pickup truck. She looked inside, eager to find a set of keys, but they were absent. One of them must have the keys, she thought. I’ll look on the way back.

She wandered through the dark toward the torches. The fire in her lungs abated and the adrenaline drained from her system, leaving her limbs feeling weak and filled with jelly. Martin, she thought, I’m coming. Just hang on, honey. Almost there.

An endless pattern of stars stretched overhead, twinkling back at her, congratulating her on reaching her destination. She marveled at the view, wondering if her daddy was one of those stars winking at her.

You know it, sweetie.

Karen smiled. She loved her daddy so much. Now he was an angel by the side of the Lord.

A sandy trail rose alongside the incline of the butte, marked by the pair of torches she’d seen from afar. Her muscles ached and her feet cried out with each step, but she didn’t dare stop now. Martin was waiting for her at the top. Her mind flashed back to the blonde bitch jamming that blade through his foot. He would need medical attention.

She pulled the cell phone from her bra and powered on the device. She held it up to the display of stars, praying for a cellular signal from one of those twinkling angels. The screen lit up: NO SERVICE.

Frowning, Karen continued her ascent up the path to the top of the ridge, following a trail of sand and burning torches every few hundred feet. She leaned against the rock wall for a moment to catch her breath and steady herself. Her hands were shaking again, and her throat was scratchy, dry.

The cell phone vibrated, startling her so badly she almost dropped it. She fumbled with the device, its bright screen stinging her eyes, and a moment later she found her focus, reading the jumble of letters across the display.

There were several missed calls, three unread text messages, and two unread emails. Karen tapped the screen.

At first, the message didn’t make sense. She had to read it a few times before understanding dawned on her, and when that epiphany finally eclipsed her mind, she felt the strength give out of her legs. Karen sank to the dirt path, struggling against the urge to cry, her throat clogged with cotton.

When can I see you again?

She scrolled down through the list of unread messages, all from the same sender.

Are you home yet?

Did the crazy bitch lose her mind at the funeral?

Karen moved on to Martin’s replies. They were dated as recently as yesterday.

I can’t stop thinking about you, Meredith.

What you did last week, my God, your lips were like heaven.

Tears wrapped her eyes. This was wrong. This was impossible. He wouldn’t. Martin loved her. He was there for her when she needed him. He saved her from herself, stood by her even after losing their baby. Why would he do this?

The phone chimed. Another email. Karen opened Martin’s inbox and died a little bit more. The email was from M. Tanner:

“Have you made it back yet? You’re not answering your phone and I’m getting worried. You were supposed to be back hours ago. I miss you. Call me when you can.”

Karen scrolled down to the other messages from M. Tanner. They went back for weeks, beginning innocently enough: Martin first emailing to ask how the sessions were going, from one doctor to another, you see. Later the emails became more personal, more playful. A flirtatious comment here, a proposition there, all the while pivoting around a rather large elephant in the room: Karen’s sanity.

“I’m worried about you being alone with her, Martin. Her depersonalization isn’t improving, and I’m concerned that there’s a deeper psychosis we haven’t seen yet. I’m afraid that when she snaps again it won’t be with suicidal tendencies.”

Martin replied: “I know that, but I’m stuck for now. We talked about this, Meredith. I’m scared to leave her. Scared of what she might do to herself or what she might do to me.”

Meredith again: “Do you still love her? You can be honest with me, Martin.”

And Martin: “I care about her, but I don’t love her anymore. I can’t after what she put me through. I need something real, something stable. I need you.”

Karen pressed the power button, leaned back against the rocky wall, and began to cry. Her sobs were long and loud, pulled up from the deepest recesses of her soul, beginning in hoarse, guttural fits and rising into quick animal shrieks. A coyote returned her cry, its ghostly howl echoing from somewhere below the ridge.

She waited there until morning, sobbing in dry uncontrollable fits until the heat of the rising sun became unbearable. Her throat was swollen from dehydration, and her muscles ached as she climbed to her feet. A pit opened in her stomach and growled with disapproval.

Martin was near, but the thought of facing him terrified her.

Get on with it, possum. He broke your heart after all, but that ain’t no reason to lay down and die.

No, it wasn’t. Karen pushed away from the rock wall, stepping out of the shadow of the ridge and continued her ascent toward the summit.

Blondie hadn’t lied: the altar was at the flattened top of the butte, erected some twenty feet from the edge. A series of stones circled a dusty old refrigerator positioned to serve as a bed of sacrifice. Martin lay sprawled across its surface, his arms and legs tied at uncomfortable angles over the edges, each extremity pointed outward like a perverted form of the Vitruvian man.

At another time, Karen might have rushed to the side of her husband, showering him with kisses, working to untie his restraints, but not this morning. Not now. Not after shedding her humanity and spilling blood in his name. His heart belonged to another now.

Vultures circled overhead, casting brief shadows that flickered over her unconscious husband. Soon they would descend when he was not quite dead, ready to pluck the softer meats from his skull and relishing their sweet flavor. A part of Karen wanted to watch that happen, but she was not yet so removed from herself as to allow such inaction. No, she needed to say goodbye to Martin once and for all.

He stirred as she approached. His lips were chapped and his forehead blistering from sunburn. A puddle of blood had dried beneath his wounded foot, the loafer forever stained a rich shade of scarlet.

“Martin?”

He turned his head, groaning as the muscles popped in protest. He squinted through sun-blasted eyes. “Karen? That you, honey?”

Honey. She let the word roll off her like a bead of sweat, taking a seat at the foot of the hollow refrigerator. A soft breeze lifted up around them, stirring sand among the stones. She closed her eyes, relishing the air on her burned shoulders.

“Karen, you’ve got to get me out of here. Untie me so—” He strained to get a look at her. “My God, honey, you’re covered in blood. What the hell happened? What—”

“When I was young,” she began, “Daddy used to tell me the story about the binding of Isaac by his father Abraham. See, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son at the top of a mountain. He loved his son, but he loved and feared God even more. But an angel intervened, Martin. An angel intervened and saved Isaac from his father’s blade. And you know what Abraham did?” She waited, watching the vultures circle overhead. Martin was too weak, too awestruck to respond, and she went on when he didn’t answer. “He sacrificed a ram instead because he still owed God something for His mercy.”

“Karen, this isn’t funny,” he croaked. “Untie me so we can get the fuck out of here!”

She turned and glared over her shoulder. He froze at the sight of her. Blood was smeared down her forehead and cheeks, dried and caked in the cracks of her skin like red powder makeup, and her hair was matted to her face.

“Do you think an angel will intervene, Martin? Do you think God will forgive your adultery?” She lifted the hatchet and traced one bloody edge along the side of Martin’s leg. “I’m feeling a bit like Abraham right now, and there’s not a ram in sight.”

Martin’s cell phone rang. Karen looked at the device vibrating in her hand and smirked. Dr. Meredith Tanner’s name lit up the screen, along with a picture of her dark brown curls and bubbly baby cheeks. She glared at her husband and answered the call.

“Hello, Dr. Tanner. My husband is right here and you can talk to him for as long as you want. Until the battery dies, anyway. He said your lips were like heaven and I find that fitting because you’re his angel today.” Karen put the phone on speaker and placed it beside her husband. Meredith’s frantic voice filled the air.

“Martin? Martin? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Karen, I’m sorry,” Martin croaked. Tears streamed down the side of his face. “Just let me go and we can sort this out. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was going to tell you, I swear.”

Karen turned back toward the horizon, watching the morning sun begin its arc across the sky.

“I love you, Martin, but you’re in God’s hands now. Maybe your angel will save you.”

She turned back toward the trail, kicking up sand as she plodded down the path, her husband’s scratchy shrieks and Meredith Tanner’s distorted cellular cries a form of intermingling poetry all their own.

-6-

Karen wandered back to the encampment and dug through pockets of the dead. Ezra had the keys, and she took them back to the red pickup. A sorrowful, twangy tune filled her ears as she started the pickup. She smiled.

Hank Williams. Daddy’s favorite.

She drove until the truck ran out of gas just outside of Prescott, and rather than stew in her own thoughts she decided she would walk until someone found her or until her mind baked in her skull. Either way was fine with her.

Parched, her skin burning from the late morning sun, Karen walked down that empty highway, her favorite Sunday dress stained with the blood of the damned. Squinting upward to the sun, her daddy spoke up once more in her head:

Remember what I used to ask you when you were little? What would you do when you met your mountain?

Karen Singleton cracked a dry smile as she walked along the desert and away from sanity.

“I’ll climb over it if I have to, Daddy.” Her words were empty, lifeless, but her heart smoldered with a quiet rage that had only begun to burn. “I’ll climb over it if I have to.”