Ashe stood on the street across from the high-rise courthouse. The wind blew from the bay, cold and damp. A low fog roiled along the sidewalk blanketing everything in deep gray mist. All the revelers along the stretch of street stood stiff like cardboard cutouts. Nothing moved, except the wind, the fog and him. The noise of the parade carried on, however. Plastic horns blew; people shouted and laughed. The atmosphere felt electric just like the other parades he had been to.
Cybil stood beside him, her pale skinny torso bare. Nothing moved. Not a single hair fluttered in the harsh wind that was heard but not felt. Ashe looked down the street toward the bay. The glittering and flashing lights of a parade moved along a street several blocks down. From that distance, he could see no other movement. The roiling fog helped little. It bubbled and curled into the air higher in that direction.
He looked up the street back toward the bulk of town. People lined the barriers. The noise of the crowd was there, but there was still no movement. Everyone’s face, except for Cybil’s, was blank. The skin of their faces pulled out where a nose should have been, but it was just a flesh-colored lump. The same was true of the chin.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
His voice crashed down the street like an echo from a deep canyon. The crowd noise dissipated into his own voice. The fog appeared to separate to allow his words to pass by just to close up over the empty space.
A section of brass horns sounded. The trumpets played a familiar tune like something he heard at church when he was a child. Ashe looked back toward the bay. The parade turned the corner onto his street about two blocks down. A group of men playing horns led the way. They slipped through the fog but didn’t really move. Their limbs remained still as if they were mannequins being pulled along on roller skates. The first float loomed out of the fog. The gray mist built up around the hull of the ship-shaped float. Only two people were on the float, a man dressed like a jester and another dressed like the Devil. They ran around the whole float. For a moment, the jester chased the Devil; then they would change, and the Devil would pursue the jester.
“Folly seeks damnation,” Marianne’s voice said from the fog. “Then damnation chases folly.”
“Where are you Marianne? Let me help. Where are you?”
“Folly leads to damnation.” Her voice faded into the fog.
As the float passed directly in front of him, Ashe saw that the ship was named Loathing. At a closer view, folly and the Devil moved around with motionless limbs. They must have been running on a track, he told himself.
The fog swelled up and engulfed the Loathing. The next float came out of the fog. A gaping lion’s mouth held a few revelers. Their masks had long noses. They tossed nothing out. As the tawny float passed by, Ashe looked up. Only one person rode atop the float. It was the bum who had been arrested at the parade.
“The Devil walks like a roaring lion seeking who he might devour,” he yelled and tossed out a book.
Ashe caught the throw. As the lion-shaped float slipped into the fog, he opened it. On the inside of the book, the incantation written on Cybil’s apartment wall glowed in a chartreuse green. He closed it and tossed it to the ground. The fog that swirled at his feet parted as the book hit the pavement. The mist gathered around it but never covered it. The words glowed through the cover.
The odor of sulfur like what he’d smelled in Rogers’ office filled the air. The next float slithered out of the fog. A Chinese dragon’s head spewed sparks from its mouth and yellow smoke billowed from its nostrils. Music came from this float. He’d heard it before. It warbled and seemed to have a dual beat. Then the words started. As one line ended, another echoed right after it. It was the song by the Goth Sox. Hortense stood on the float. She moved to the music and sang. Both vocals came from her mouth. Then the incantation started. It wasn’t in Hortense’s voice.
A man dressed in a shiny tunic wearing a long-nosed Venetian mask rose from behind Hortense. His mouth moved to the words of the incantation. Ashe tried to plug his ears, but it didn’t help. The words continued to echo through his mind. When the masked reveler finished, he drew a knife from behind him. It was long and gem-studded. He pulled back Hortense’s head, and slid the blade across her throat. Blood spurted into the night air. Some of it splattered on Ashe’s face. It ran into his mouth. The ferric taste of the hot blood turned his stomach. As he vomited, he screamed, and jerked awake.
Ashe reached up and swiped away something warm that ran down his face. Through the dim light cast into his bedroom from the streetlight outside, he saw it was sweat. His heart pounded so loudly he thought it might wake Cybil. She slept on her stomach, the covers bunched at her waist. The bare skin of her back looked even paler in the wan light. He watched her until he saw her back rise with breath. His own came so quickly that he felt light-headed.
He tossed the bedclothes off him and planted his feet on the floor. The hardwood felt cold on the soles of his feet, but he welcomed it. Sweat poured down his body. He grabbed his robe as he stood up. Nothing could be hotter than a terrycloth robe, but he preferred it to putting on actual clothes. There was enough light in the room for him to navigate out into the much darker living room. He closed the bedroom door behind him. Cybil needed to sleep. She had places to go tomorrow. Well before they had made love and fallen asleep, he’d decided to spend the next few days at home. She could borrow his car to get back and forth. If he needed anything, he could walk the two blocks to the grocery store or just wait until she got in. A few days alone might help clear his head a bit.
The walk across the dark living room proved less than eventful. He made it to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he let his robe fall open. The cool air felt good on his nightmare-sweat dampened body. The silver label of a beer bottle winked at him in the light radiating from the fridge. Although he wanted a drink, he let the bottle stay where it was. Too much alcohol probably brought the nightmare on in the first place. He grabbed a bottle of water and closed the door. The cool air snuffed out as soon as the seal hissed.
Marianne’s voice continued to speak to him from the dream. Her part had been only a small one but besides the horrible death it was the most disturbing. He took a sip of the water as he walked into the living room. The crispness of it helped to cool him. He knotted his robe as he continued into the small guest bedroom, which had been Marianne’s. Ashe hadn’t gone into it without having a clear objective like making up the bed for Cybil the other night. Even then, he didn’t like to look at its door. As he reached out for the doorknob, his hand began to shake. He steadied his nerves and went inside.
It was very dark. Ashe flipped the light switch. The room lit. The small bed was turned longways to the back wall. A chest of drawers sat against the wall next to the window. A small vanity with a round mirror was opposite that. The whole place smelled liked Marianne. Other places in the house did as well, but nothing as strong as this. Ashe wondered how he could have started a relationship with Cybil so quickly. Just the thought of Marianne’s voice mixed with her aroma ripped at his guts. He closed the door behind him and sat on the bed. A balled pair of socks rolled down the mattress and rested against his leg. It was time to box her stuff up.
Ashe grabbed the socks and squeezed them. He hated the idea of tossing Marianne’s belongings out, but she was dead. Was she? He had seen her walk out of University Hospital’s morgue. If she were really alive, why hadn’t she tried to contact him? A lot of uncertainty rattled around in his head. He stood and walked to the closet. Inside he found several plastic boxes stacked inside of each other. Their tops were in the top one. He dragged them out and started to separate them.
The early morning hours weren’t the best time to start a project like this, but sleep wasn’t going to come either. Although he was tired, he knew that he would be able to catch up on sleep while Cybil was at class.
Ashe pulled out the top drawer in the chest. It was full of bras and panties. He didn’t think much about them and tipped them over into the first plastic box. The undergarments toppled in with a few landing on the carpet. He picked those up and crammed them in with the rest. Replacing the top drawer, he moved to the next. Socks rested in the second drawer. He did the same with those as he did the contents of the first drawer. In the next drawer he found T-shirts rolled into cylinders. Ashe remembered that always drove him crazy about Marianne. She rolled his T-shirts like that as well. He never understood why she thought that way saved space. This drawer looked like it was full of stacked multicolored firewood.
His eyes burned as he emptied the drawer into the plastic box. As he put the lid over the clothes that had covered her most intimate parts, tears slid down his face. He didn’t sob nor sniffle. Hot tears just came to him. The last drawer was full of papers and envelopes of pictures. Ashe wanted to flip through them to see what was there, but nothing looked important. He grabbed a second box and dumped the contents into it. Everything fell in without a problem. He put the drawer back.
A small wooden box sat on the chest of drawers. Marianne kept what she called her blue jean jewelry in it. This meant junk jewelry. He snatched it off the piece of furniture. The urge to toss it into the box was strong, but he knew that all the plastic earrings and bead necklaces would spill everywhere. Someday he might want to go through and take out things he remembered the best or just give them to people who knew Marianne. He placed the jewelry box into the plastic one. As he did so, a clothbound book caught his attention. A rose was etched into the cover. He traced it with his finger, and then lifted the journal out of the box.
Ashe couldn’t remember seeing it. Marianne read all the time, but mostly from trade paperbacks or the kind she got at the grocery store. This book was beautiful. He opened it up. The first page was a yellow color and lined with brown college rule lines. Marianne’s distinct cursive sprawled across the page. The date in the corner of the page went back two years. He’d found her journal. She’d never told him that she kept a diary, and she must have wanted to keep it a secret because she’d kept it hidden.
Marianne haunted him tonight more than any other night since she’d died. Perhaps he had started to mourn her like he thought he should. Cybil slept in the master bedroom. They had a relationship now, but his emotional investment seemed minimal. It didn’t seem like that when they had made love and then gone to sleep, but he had a good buzz going as well. Had he cared about her at all except through lust? Ashe didn’t know. He took the diary and returned to the bed. The springs sank in again as he sat. He pushed backward until the wall pressed against his back. The ink used in the diary look faded. She must have used a cheap pen, but he could read it without much strain. Maybe taking the journey through her private thoughts would exorcise her from him for a while. He started to read.
Cybil felt hot, not just hot, but burning. The heat around her felt like the hottest day she had ever spent on a beach. She looked at her usually alabaster skin. It reddened before her eyes. The skin tightened around her arms and began to crack like chapped lips. She opened her eyes against the scorching heat. Everything was white. Sky and land could not be distinguished.
“I can cool you off.” Rogers appeared out of nothing.
“How?” she asked.
“I have my ways.”
Her skin ached from the heat. Any relief was welcome even coming from him. “So?”
Rogers looked at her. His eyes penetrated to the depths of her soul. She had never seen anything like this stare. Nothing existed of his irises. The entire area was black. Flames seemed to sprout up from those eyes.
“You have to do just what I say,” he said.
She nodded. If he took much longer, she was sure she’d burst into flames or wither up.
“Take off your clothes.”
“No.”
“Then burn to death. I offer you the only way out, so take it.”
The burning sensation overwhelmed her. It was as if the temperature had been turned up. She pulled at her shirt. It crumbled into ash in her hands. The rest of her clothes did the same. Her tender parts felt the heat for the first time now.
It was not the same. A feeling of ecstasy came over her. The brutal heat she had felt turned to erotic warmth. It vibrated through her, bringing her to the point of orgasm. As her eyes began to roll back in her head, she glimpsed Rogers. He gyrated, but not in a sexual way. It looked as if he vibrated. The air filled with voices. They chanted words that she did not know, but thought she had heard somewhere before.
The orgasm overtook her. It expelled its energy and coherent thought returned. Opening her eyes, she looked at Rogers. The psychology professor no longer stood in front of her. His figure had changed. Now an unknown man stared at her. His eyes were amber in color. His visage was as stern as if carved from granite. The chanting grew louder. She knew what it was, now that the overpowering feeling of ecstasy had passed. The voices recited the incantation that was on the song that downloaded onto Ashe and Marianne’s computer.
Cybil threw her hands over her ears. She screamed to stop, but the words made it only as far as her lips before evaporating into the air.
“Open your eyes,” a voice said over the chanting.
She did. The man who had replaced Rogers held a knife in front of him. The blade looked old and rusty. What little bit of the handle she could make out, look knurled. It appeared to be some kind of ceremonial weapon.
Before her eyes, Hortense appeared from thin air. She was naked and looked drugged. Her eyelids lay heavy over her eyes, and her mouth sagged. The man brandished the knife and gave it a histrionic flourish before jerking it across Hortense’s throat.
Finally, a scream escaped from Cybil. It expelled outward with as much force as thunder through the sky. At the same time, blood spewed from the gash in Hortense’s neck. The chanting turned to uproarious laughter. Hot blood splattered on her face. Cybil wiped her fingers across her lips. They came back dripping with thick blood. As the metallic taste swelled in her mouth, she awoke.
Sweat poured down her face. It pooled on her lower lip. She licked it away, preferring its salty taste to that of the blood in the nightmare. In the not so dark bedroom, she reached out for Ashe, but felt nothing but the sheets beside her.
Her mind began to race. Was the dream over?
She fumbled for the lamp switch. Its light chased away the shadows in the room. The red numbers on the clock told the time as a quarter until five. It was earlier than she would have liked to wake up, but there was no way sleep was coming back after that. For a long time, she sat up in bed letting her heartbeat slow down. It pounded so hard it hurt. The sweat beaded up on her back and breasts started to evaporate and cool her off. The room had a chill to it. Being awake after a bad nightmare always seemed to put a cold streak into Cybil. She wanted to find Ashe even if he was just in the bathroom. He calmed her nerves better than anything.
Cybil climbed out of bed. She grabbed her crumpled clothes from the floor. The drinks she and Ashe had downtown translated into a flurry of tossed clothes discarded in the throes of passion. She pulled her panties on and buttoned her blouse without putting on her bra. The moisture on her skin absorbed into the fabric. She left the room and entered the dark living room. Ashe was not there. She turned around scanning the whole room. A slip of light seeped from the space under the door to the spare bedroom.
Ashe told her it was Marianne’s. When he said that, he used air quotes. He meant that Marianne kept most of her stuff in there. She hadn’t seen any of his fiancée’s stuff when she’d slept in there. For the sake of decency, Cybil had decided to not poke around looking for anything. The idea of decency concerning Marianne almost seemed laughable. She’d jumped Ashe’s bones almost immediately. Her body might as well have been warm. According to everything Cybil had heard Marianne might still be alive.
The nightmare still toyed with her mind. The images and feelings of the heat and the blood running down her face stayed with her despite all her ruminations about Marianne. She needed Ashe for comfort, which seemed strange. Never had she needed a man or anyone to help her deal with emotions.
“Ashe, are you in there?” she whispered into the crack between the spare bedroom’s door and the wall.
No one answered. Cybil put her hand on the doorknob. It moved free from the lock. She cracked the door and peeked inside. Ashe sat in the middle of the small bed. He leaned against the back wall, reading from a small clothbound book. She eased her head inside.
“Ashe?” she said, a little louder than a whisper.
He looked up at her. His expression was stoic, nothing readable in it.
“Is it okay if I come in?”
Ashe waved her inside. She eased in, closing the door behind her as if someone might barge in. He returned to his reading. She made her way across the room dodging the boxes on the floor and sat down on the bed. He barely acknowledged her presence. His coolness bothered her. She thought that maybe she was still dreaming. Looking at all the boxes, she realized that he had been awake for a while. Several of the boxes were full of the flotsam of life.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked.
“I don’t know, a bit.”
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“I found Marianne’s diary that she’s been keeping since we started our relationship.”
“Oh.”
Cybil felt guilt tug at her. It was bad enough that she had violated Ashe and Marianne’s intimacy by moving in on him so soon after the death, but now she intruded on an even more personal level.
“Would you believe that Erik harassed her nearly every time he saw her?” Ashe asked.
“No. What kind of harassment are you talking about?”
“Sexual. According to this, he propositioned her all the time.” Ashe dog-eared the page he was on and closed the book.
Cybil felt uncomfortable. Rogers did almost the same thing to her. She wasn’t sure if Ashe knew that or not, but at that time, there was no reason to tell him.
“How does that make you feel?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Erik isn’t really a friend. We wouldn’t have much to do with each other if we hadn’t worked on the emotional engram device. I think I’m more upset that she never told me.”
“There are some things that people don’t feel comfortable doing at times.” She thought maybe she needed to tell him about Rogers’ advances toward her.
“Why are you up? I figured you would still be sleeping it off.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Cybil said, “but I had a nightmare.”
“So did I.”
“Both of us on the same night. That’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not really. We’ve been under stress, and that usually causes them. Plus the beers probably didn’t help.”
Cybil knew that stress caused nightmares. She’d taken introductory psychology. Her transcript would show that for a while, she majored in psychology. When Rogers came on the faculty, she switched to math. He’d started making advances toward her almost as soon as he began teaching. Back then, he was pudgy and unattractive, but no less a letch.
“I dreamt about that crazy man from the parade and Marianne,” Ashe said. “I decided to get up and start putting her to rest. Maybe I won’t have any more dreams like that.”
He pointed to the boxes on the floor as if punctuating his sentence. She figured he’d found the diary while rummaging through the boxes.
“I think I dreamed about Hell,” she said. “I’m not sure. It was hot and there was this man who appeared with Hortense. He cut her throat.”
Ashe looked at her. His face became ashen. “You dreamt about Hortense having her throat slit?”
“Yes, it was horrible. The blood splattered everywhere. It even hit my face.”
“I dreamt that too. The blood hit me as well.”
Cybil knew that stress brought on nightmares, and that they had both been under a lot of it, but shared dreams weren’t covered by the stress theory. Dual dreams that specific didn’t bode well. She put her arm under his and laid her head on his shoulder. The sun couldn’t come up soon enough. Only a light that powerful could ward off the uneasiness that settled deep inside of her.
Security Camera: Parking Lot, Water Street, Mobile, AL, 1:00 a.m. CST
Only two cars are parked in the large lot near the bayside railroad tracks. Light from the overhead lamps casts a circular glow over everything. Two people stand by the white car. One is the man in the dark hooded sweatshirt. The other person snuggles close to him. They kiss. The second person steps back.
She tries to push the man’s hood off his head. He stops her, turns her toward the white car, and bends her over the trunk. Without much flare, her jerks her pants down and does the same to his. They begin having sex.
She puts her hands flat on the trunk lid. They slide up and down the metal as they get deeper into their activity. Headlights flash on them as a car passes on the street. It does not faze them; they continue. She tosses her head back in ecstasy.
As their sexual activity becomes more passionate, a hulking man ambles up from the street. They do not seem to notice him.
The hooded man grasps the woman by the hair and pulls on it, making her back arch downward. Their efforts become harder. Both jar with the force of their actions. He lets her hair loose and grabs her hips as he gives hard thrusts. After a few moments of this, he pulls away.
The hulking man steps up behind her as the hooded man pulls his pants up. He motions toward the woman who remains draped over the trunk of the car, her bare bottom half reared up. The hulking man pulls her to a standing position. She turns and looks at him. She tries to escape, but he pulls a buck knife from a holster on his belt. The blade slides along her neck.
She bucks and convulses in his arms. The hulking man pushes her back onto the car. He and the hooded man walk away. The woman slides down the trunk and crumples to the pavement. Blood streaks across the white trunk.