I arrive at the cottage in the last minutes of daylight, emotionally wrung out and exhausted from a very long and painful day that started this morning in Wyn’s office and ended with my running away. All the way out in the car I fight a torrent of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me with guilt and despair. Coming out here was rash; I hope I haven’t done wrong.
The cottage is three hours from New York, out in the middle of nowhere, on the north fork of Long Island. It’s perfect for privacy, separated from its nearest neighbor by more than a hundred yards and almost totally hidden from the road by massive rhododendron bushes and thick stands of pine and blue spruce.
Anne wasn’t exaggerating about the furniture. The living room is totally empty. There’re a bed and a dresser in the bedroom and a small table and three chairs in the kitchen. Except for a couple of lamps, that’s it for the whole house. The first thing I do is move the table and one chair into the living room. That gives me a good working office with no distractions.
On the drive out I passed through the town of Southhold and stopped at a grocery and a liquor store to pick up some supplies. Enough to hold me for at least a week. I don’t want to waste precious time running back and forth to town.
By 10 p.m. I’m settled in and ready for work, but the house has gotten a little chilly. Fortunately there was a good-sized pile of logs in the backyard, and I’d brought in a couple. Now I’m able to put together a tolerable fire, and in a few minutes the tiny living room is warm and comfortable.
Being out here alone should be good for me. With nobody leaning over my shoulder, telling me how to run my life, criticizing me, making demands and suggestions, it’s down to the essentials— Avrum and me with no apologies to anyone.
I open a bottle of red wine and pour myself a glass. Since I arrived I’ve been too busy getting organized to do much thinking, and that’s helped keep out the demons that seem always poised on the edge of my mind, ready to pounce. The wine helps stave them off, and so does the weed. They work almost symbiotically, the wine giving me a pleasant buzz and making everything feel deep red and luscious, and the weed suffusing it all with a comforting haze. Now add to that the warmth of the fire, its long orange and blue tongues of flame licking at the hickory wood and turning the room pungent with fragrance. All this conspiring to protect me from the cold and bitter assaults of the day.
I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I know I’m rolled up in a shivering knot on the floor in front of an almost completely burned-out fire. Foolishly I didn’t bring in any extra logs, and now it’s too cold and dark to go hunting around the unfamiliar backyard for more.
The clock on the stove says twenty after two. If that’s right I’ve slept nearly four hours, and, with so little time to spare, I must get right to work.
I set up my computer, put on my heavy Irish sweater, and get a small wool blanket off the bed to wrap around my legs. Earlier, when the fire was burning, the room seemed cozy, but now, with only the thin light of one pole lamp accentuating the empty spaces where furniture once stood and pictures hung, the room is bare and ugly.
A perfect setting for the chapter I’ve been working on. In it Avrum reveals a maniacal scheme that will satisfy both his hunger for revenge and his pathological racial paranoia. He plans to commit a heinous crime and make it look like the work of black terrorists, prematurely exposing the black revolution he’s convinced has been secretly spawning for years. At the same time, provoking massive white retaliation that will overwhelm the blacks and crush the budding rebellion.
Somehow, sometime, somewhere in that vast underground network of information the name of Avrum Maheely will become known as the man who saved the soul of white America.
Despite the grandeur and madness of his plan, not one of his followers questions him. In true blind dedication they want only to know when and how.
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t used their real names, even though this is only the first draft and I will change them in later drafts. Still, it gives them all too strong a reality, especially Avrum. So much of his real person has infiltrated the character that keeping him fictional in my mind has become difficult.
When I first started researching this project, I was the fascinated but removed observer. Then, as I began to write, I became the puppeteer pulling the strings, allowing the characters their own internal growth but, nonetheless, always in control. Now I’m so deeply involved I sometimes feel the characters no longer step to my strings but to their own. Indeed, so effortlessly do they move across the mindscapes of my imagination that, far from being pleased, I’m often increasingly disturbed. Certainly I am treating this book differently from all my previous writing projects.
For example, I’ve never before been so secretive about my work. At home I kept the manuscript hidden. David hasn’t seen one word of it yet. No one has. Even the idea of revealing it to my editor makes me intensely uncomfortable. And, too, I am not unaware of the changes my life has undergone in the last few months. Before that it was relatively quiet and controlled, moving along in a well-thought-out direction, and then? Avrum and the book? David and the wedding? My sister? My memories? Or a collision of all of them causing an earthquake of emotions that’s rocking my very core. Maybe David is right. Maybe I can’t handle them. Take away the Valium, the Oxycontin, the weed, the wine, whatever holds me up, and I might crumble.
Wyn says I have to turn and look my problems in the face. Stare them down and make them go away forever. The key to that is Sephra. She’s the only one who can tell me what’s tearing at my soul. But I’m so damned frightened of knowing.
Time moves in giant steps—great strides of daytimes and nighttimes. Full days pass as chapters. Words grow and pages mount. The book alone is supreme. Any outside pressures that threaten it meet an army of Oxycontin and Valiums. I let nothing interfere. I keep myself free of any world but Avrum’s, now that I’m so close to the end.
How could both bottles be almost empty? Two Oxycontin in one and five Valium in the other. That’s impossible. I must have put them someplace else.
I hunt through the house for them; my legs are stiff and clumsy from sitting so long at the computer.
They have to be here. All I have to do is calm down and think carefully. But I can’t because I need something to calm me down. I take three Valium. I have to save the Oxycontin. I wait five, ten minutes, but nothing happens. I drink some wine. And then some more wine. I can’t allow myself to surface because they’re all up there waiting for me. All the terrors.
I have to take one of the Oxycontin. They always work when I feel jumpy, but this time instead of taking me down they’re charging me up. My heart is starting to race and I’m beginning to fly. I don’t like it. I feel out of control and I don’t know how to regain it.
I get up and walk around, back and forth, fast, walk it off. Maybe outside. No, I don’t want to go out there. It’s dark and I’m afraid. I wish I wasn’t alone. . . .
I have no one to turn to. If I believed in God again I could bring all my misery to Him, and He would take it from me. I could trust Him the way Pinky trusts Avrum. How safe to be like Pinky. No one can get past Avrum to hurt her. Maybe I could have some of that safety. I would trust Pinky. We’re alike. We share a secret. The secret of Avrum.
She would help me. I want to tell her that, to talk to her.
I have her phone number in my book. In my suitcase.
I haven’t unpacked yet so I have to push through all the clothes.
Maybe I left some more Oxycontin in here, but when I pull everything out I don’t find any. But the phone book is at the bottom, and I get Pinky’s number.
I dial, and a man’s polite voice answers and says he’ll get her for me.
“Hello,” Pinky says.
“Pinky. It’s Johanna Morgan.”
“Johanna, it’s good to hear from you. Are you in San Francisco?”
“No. I’m in New York.”
“You sound strange. Is there something wrong?”
“No. I’m just working hard.”
“How is the book coming?”
“It’s almost finished. That’s why I’m calling. I need some information, and only you can give it to me.”
“Johanna, your voice sounds so weak. Are you sick?”
Maybe I can’t trust her either.
“I had the flu,” I tell her.
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“Avrum. I want to ask you more about Avrum.”
“Maybe we should talk tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
I knew it. She’s trying to trick me, but I don’t let her. “I need the information now, Pinky. Can’t you spare the time?”
“Sure, I just thought you sounded so awful.”
“I’m fine.”
“All right, Johanna. How can I help you?” She stops resisting, knowing that I’ve outsmarted her.
“Tell me about Avrum.”
“What would you like to know?”
“You trusted him. He took care of you.”
“Yes.”
“Did he love you?”
“Completely, as I loved him and love him now.”
“What about the others? Did he love them too?”
“That was the power of his love, that we could all share its fullness. You could too, Johanna, if you needed him.”
I hold my temper at the insult. “Why would I have such a need?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she says, and then pauses and asks, “Why do you?”
Pinky is different now. I have to be extremely careful. “I don’t,” I tell her. “My only interest in Avrum Maheely is purely research. But I want to know about your need. How does he fill it?”
“In every way,” she answers. And, like Imogene, tells me that he is present at this very moment in every part of her life.
“Like God?” I suggest.
“Godlike.”
“What about the sexual experience? Was that Godlike too?”
“There was a spiritual essence to it.”
“I’ve heard Swat and Imogene describe him as a man of high sexual energy, but there was nothing spiritual about the sex they had with him. Why was it so different with you?”
“I don’t know, but no one before had ever given the sexual act such significance.”
“Be specific.”
“Johanna, why are you so angry at me?”
“Because you’re not telling me the truth! There was a fury and a hatred that ran through Avrum Maheely, and when it surfaced sexually it turned into an ugly power.”
“You don’t understand Avrum, Johanna.”
“Yes, I do. I know his kind of brutality.”
“That’s not true.”
“You were young and weak, and he bullied you.”
“No, Johanna, it wasn’t that way at all.”
“He took you when he wanted you. Could you have fought back?”
“I had no reason to.”
“You couldn’t. He would have overpowered you if you tried. He became every part of your life, inside and out and all around. I remember him. The power in his arms, he could hold you down, trap you under those heavy hands.”
“Johanna, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
She’s lying to me, keeping her secrets from me. Imogene would have told me. She knows the feel of Avrum. Pinky pretends to be concerned about me, but I know she doesn’t want to tell me. She doesn’t want to share Avrum with me.
“You want to keep him for yourself,” I tell her, but she doesn’t answer. Instead she changes the subject, asking me where I am, and I tell her because it doesn’t make any difference. Then she wants to know if I’m alone.
“Yes,” I say, “I’m alone. And tired. I need sleep. Do you dream about him? Does he make love to you in your dreams?”
But she won’t answer me, she keeps asking me meaningless questions to take me off the track. I can’t talk to her anymore. I hang up.
And the instant I do I feel ashamed for all the awful things I said to her. How could I be so cruel? She tried to care about me. But I’m a worthless person. I hurt them all so much, David and Sephra and now Pinky. I can’t help it. I have to hide my shame from everyone. Or confess it.
The pain of my mother comes back. So intense it takes up my whole head. I’ve got to get it out, but I can’t without Sephra. She won’t help me. She never did.
But she has to now. I drink another glass of wine, and the spinning in my head starts to wind down. When it slows up enough I dial her number. She answers.
“Sephra?” I say.
“Johanna, is that you?”
But the struggle to slip one word past the sobs choking my throat is so great that, like a fool, all I do is nod my head, yes.
But Sephra doesn’t wait for an answer. “Are you all right?” she asks, and I can hear the alarm in her voice.
“No,” I tell her, “I’m not. Help me . . . Sephra . . . please. . . .”
“Oh, God,” she says in a voice aching with remorse, “it’s my fault.” And I hear the Sephra of long ago, of long before whatever happened sealed her off from me. And I feel comforted. I love her. “Johanna, forgive me. I should have helped you before. I was the only one who could have. . . . Oh, how selfish I’ve been.”
“Help me now. . . .”
“I will, little sister, I want to.”
“Then tell me what happened.” My voice is strained, almost breaking. “Tell me about my mother. Tell me everything about that day. Why was she so furious with me? Sephra, what did I do that was so terrible?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“But she was so angry at me.”
“No, not at you. Oh, God, it’s so hard for me. . . .” I hear her inhaling deeply as she builds up her courage, and finally she finds the strength to speak, but instead of Sephra’s voice the sound is small, almost like that of a child.
“It all started a week before my tenth birthday. My first birthday without my mother. She’d died eight months before, and I remember lying in bed that night and wondering what it would be like having a birthday without her. I remember feeling uneasy and a little afraid that somehow I wouldn’t know how to handle it by myself, and I wondered whether my father would even remember. I knew that if he didn’t I would never be bold enough to remind him. He was such a forbidding figure in my life, our father, the deep-set dark eyes, the sunken cheeks. The black cassock of his ministry that he was always wearing. And his voice, so deep, so powerful. To me, God Himself couldn’t have been more awesome.
“We lived alone, just he and I in that huge Victorian house where everything was dark brown and maroon with heavy velvet drapes that kept out any sunlight. Sarah, a woman from the congregation, cleaned for us three times a week. She cooked for us too, heavy brown stews that clogged my throat, but she was a nice woman, and I looked forward to seeing her. She brought in a pleasant ordinariness that lightened some of the intensity of my world.
“When we were alone, Father and I, we said very little. Though he was never in any way demonstrative toward me when my mother was alive, after she died it was as if he deliberately held himself apart from me. I was very lonely and missed her terribly.
“That particular night, as I lay in my bed, I decided to make my birthday my secret day that I would share only with my mother. I remember turning on my side toward the far wall, happy with my decision and beginning to slip into sleep, when I felt something odd. I stared ahead at the wall, listening without moving, but I heard nothing. Then I saw what I had felt. Ahead of me, halfway up the wall, was the outline of a huge, wide shadow. It went all the way down to the bottom of the wall, broke and spread across the floor, then disappeared behind the foot of my bed. Fearing some storybook monster, I lay frozen. Then I heard my father’s breathing and felt his hand caress my hair and, like puppies do sometimes, I remember moving into it, wanting more. I needed the love so badly. . . .”
Sephra’s silence seeps into the haze of my brain with a foreboding akin to nausea. I wait for her to continue.
“But it wasn’t love, Johanna,” she says, and years of locked-in fury explode in her voice. “The hellfire and damnation he whipped his congregation with became mine. Nightly this pious leader, this monster demon, my own father came to my bed and with his black and hairy fingers unbuttoned my pajamas and as I lay stiff with horror abused my body and tore apart my soul.”
Sephra, my older sister, the rock of my life, collapses into sobs as she curses out a two-year nightmare. And then her voice grows quiet and sad again. “I was just a little girl, Johanna, little as my Betsy, scared and ashamed, with no one to help me. Once I tried to tell Sarah, but when she realized what I was saying she turned on me and said that God would strike me dead if I ever made up another story like that again. I never said a word to anyone after that.
“My only defense was to retreat deep inside myself, leaving the outside intact but dead. In school my teachers saw the change, but like everyone else they were too intimidated by Father’s position to interfere.
“The torture lasted until I was twelve, the year he married your mother.
“Johanna, I loved your mother right away. She was so good to me, and when you were born I loved you too.”
“Sephra, I’m so sorry. I wish I had known. At least we could have shared the pain.”
“Johanna,” she says, “there’s more.” Her very words signal a chill that shudders through my body. Black feelings that have terrorized me for years begin to well up, and I wait silently to hear what in some hidden place in my mind I already know.
In a voice evened out by control she continues. “One afternoon we were home alone. You were about four and had just gotten over a very bad flu and were still in bed, recovering. I was at the kitchen table, reading a magazine, when I heard you crying. I remember grabbing a cookie for you as I left the kitchen. On the way up the stairs to your bedroom, I sensed your cry changing to a whimper, and I hurried on, thinking you must have hurt yourself.
“From the top of the steps your door looked closed. You never closed your door. You were too afraid of being alone. The strangeness of it registered on me, but it was too small for any alarm. I continued down the hall, perhaps a bit more cautiously, and when I got there I saw that the door wasn’t completely closed . . . but it was meant to be.”
“Sephra . . . no more.”
“Let me say it, Johanna, listen to me. You need to know, and I have to tell you.”
“No . . . no.”
“I need to tell you.”
I could put the phone down, but that wouldn’t end it. It’s too late for anything but the truth. I listen, and she continues in a passionless voice. “At first I could only hear your voice,” she says, “but then there was another voice, a whisper, and before I looked I knew he was in there with you. I wanted to turn and run, but instead, very carefully and quietly, with one finger I poked open the door a tiny bit and looked in.”
Now anger and hate rip open her control, and she screams her fury at that vile and hideous creature who was our father. I listen, mesmerized, as she places together the pieces that have been floating around in my brain, tormenting me all my life. And the fright and the pain and the terror come back at me and still I listen, but now her horror is even greater. Sephra cries as she speaks. “I wanted to kick open the door and rush in and save you. I wanted to rip you away from him and hold you safe in my arms. Tight! Tight! He’d have had to kill me to get you. I swear it. . . . I wanted to, Johanna, I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t. Instead I stood outside the door and watched, as if in a dream, as powerless to help you as I had been to help myself. I heard the agony of your sobs . . . to this day I hear them, and the sight of that scene still flashes in my brain with tortuous frequency.”
I am weeping. For that little girl, for my whole life, and now for Sephra too.
“I didn’t hear your mother coming up the stairs. I wasn’t aware of her until she flung the door open and raced in, diving at him and tearing at his arms. He jumped up in horror, shouting, ‘No! No! It isn’t so!’ And then in anguish cried out for God to forgive him, that he couldn’t help himself, but he saw that she was insane with fury and, rushing past me, fled down the steps and out the front door. She grabbed you off the bed with one arm, half carrying you, and with the other hand holding mine took us both down the hall to her bedroom.
“Somehow during that short walk she managed to compose herself, and by the time she got us onto her bed, she was calmer. She told us that our father was a very sick man and that she was going to go out and find him and bring him to the hospital because that was the only place he could get the help he needed. We were to wait here, and she would be back as quickly as she could. And then she left. I watched her from the window. He was waiting for her in the car. She walked around to the driver’s seat and they talked, but he kept shaking his head no, and then she walked around to the other side and got in. When the car pulled out of the driveway, Father was driving.”
The line goes deathly quiet. I hear Sephra’s breathing, quick, shallow breaths at the other end. Or is that me?
“I remember it, Sephra,” I say softly. “I remember the car leaving, not when it happened but in the nightmare I have over and over again. I’m watching you and crying. In the dream I’m being punished for something. My mother is angry at me, and that’s why she’s leaving. You’re crying too, and I think you’re also angry at me. I never know why, but I feel I’m to blame. And the end is always the same. We wait for her. But she never comes back.”
Sephra says, “No, she never did. They said it was an accident, but I never thought it was. He crashed that car on purpose. I know it. He couldn’t face the world, not as a sinner, contrite and human, not him. Not when he thought he was God.”
“He killed her.”
“I say he did, but no one would have believed me. People were very kind to us. They said they’d never seen children suffer so much. They talked about what a great loss to the community Father’s death was, and I never said a word about him or what happened. You were so traumatized that you barely spoke for almost a year. You couldn’t even go to kindergarten.
“We were living with the Winstons by then, and you stayed home with Mrs. Winston. You cried every morning when I left for school, and when I came home you would attach yourself to me and silently follow me around, never letting me out of your sight, loving me as if I were the only person left in the whole world. But the heavy guilt I carried wouldn’t allow me to accept that love. I turned away from you, making my guilt even greater.”
I’m overcome with a profound misery. Sobs break into my words. “It’s all so ugly and awful,” I say, “and so much a part of me, I’ll never get away from it.”
“It’s a part of me too, Johanna. Please, I failed you once, and I can never forgive myself for it. Let me help you now. I’ll do anything. I love you so. . . .”
“I love you too, Sephra, and I forgive you, but you can’t help me.”
“I can. I know it. Just tell me where you are. Please, Johanna . . . ”
The possibility of allowing myself to fall into her strong hands and be taken care of, loved, helped . . . it’s all so tempting.
I yield and tell Sephra where I am.
“It’s going to be all right, Johanna,” she says. “I promise you. We’ll work it out together. I’m going to make the first flight I can tonight and be in New York by tomorrow morning. Stay where you are and wait for me. Trust me, Johanna, please.”
“I do, Sephra. . . .”
“Together we have the strength, something neither of us have had alone. Promise you’ll wait for me, Johanna, promise me you won’t do anything alone.”
But suddenly I’m frightened. Maybe it was a mistake to tell her where I am. She’ll certainly call David, and then both of them will move into my life and take control from me. They might not let me finish the book. Sephra will recognize the dark shadow of Father and know who Avrum really is. She’ll never let me continue. But I must write them, exorcise them from my life, both of them—Avrum and my father.
“Johanna?” Sephra is talking to me again. “Johanna, are you there?”
My mind is in turmoil. I must complete the book. I could be finished today. I have only a few pages left to write. If Sephra told David and he left right now, that would still give me three hours before he got here. And then he would be here, with me, loving me, protecting me. . . . Oh, God, I need David so desperately.
I hear Sephra’s voice. “Johanna, are you there?”
While she waits for me to answer, I quietly place the receiver down on the hook and move quickly to the computer. I could do it in three hours, but I feel so tired. There’s a terrible exhaustion weighing me down. I won’t be able to work unless I can take some Dexedrines, but I can’t seem to remember what I did with them. Then it comes to me. I put them on the windowsill in the kitchen. And that’s where I find them, but I have only six left. I thought I had a full bottle.
I take one and wait for the sleepiness to lift. While I’m waiting I make my plans. First I have to work quickly and finish before David gets here. I should have told Sephra not to come. She’ll bring all those nightmares into my life again. And then David will know all about me. I don’t want that. I have to stop her, but how? I’ve lost track. I feel so heavy that I must lie down for a while. Just for a moment. Here, on the floor.
Why did I choose Avrum, the most terrible of people; why have I polluted my life with him? Or do I deserve him? No, that’s not true.
If they’re one and the same, I have a chance now to wipe both evils from my life. I’ve caught Avrum in my book. I have him trapped. In one last chapter I can write him out of my life forever. Both of them at once.
But I can’t do it like this. I have only a few pills left. If I take them all it will power me through to the end, and by then David will be here, and I will be free to go to him.
But I must finish this last chapter. I take all the pills I have left and wash them down with wine. Seconds later I feel a charge of energy shooting through my body, and I can do it.
I know I can.
It was nearly two-thirty in the morning when the dark blue van slipped past the brick stanchions that led to the Wyndam Estates. The night was clear and so bright with the gray light from the full moon and the blaze of stars that it seemed as if dawn were only moments away.
Immediately inside the gate the terrain became hilly with gentle mounds of velvet lawns topped by long, low, expensive brick and stone homes barely peeking out from the lush of the shrubbery. In the valley, the road curled around each grass mountain, and every house had its own perch. There were no streetlights, but most houses had their own lights that either traced the long driveways or wove up the footpaths to the front doors. Most of them had been turned out for the night, and, except for an occasional dim hall light, the houses were dark inside.
They didn’t pass a single person, not even a stray dog. Swat was driving, and the four practice runs she had made earlier in the week, along with her natural ease at the wheel, took all the guesswork out of the complicated circles and crossroads. She took the turns as if she’d lived there all her life. Sitting back in the seat, her face aimed straight ahead at the road, she seemed relaxed; only the veiny tightness of her hands gripping the wheel gave any hint of tension.
Avrum was next to her, silent, almost in a trance. Directly behind him, Imogene sat leaning forward, her hand lightly, almost reverently, caressing the back of his hair. If he was aware of her, he made no sign. For a long time all were silent; then softly, in the high pitch of a child, Imogene began a monotonous four-note hum. Minutes passed, and neither Swat nor Avrum seemed to notice; then abruptly Avrum jerked his head away, and Imogene snapped her hand back and stopped in mid-hum. Now again all were silent.
Swat, who had kept herself in a state of controlled calm, began to be aware of a rising excitement. It started as easy waves that rolled up from her stomach and over her chest, but then they grew stronger, intensifying to a pounding power that charged her body and changed her breath to quick gasps. She knew where she was going and what would be done, but when she tried to imagine how it would happen, the actual feel of the bodily contact, a dizziness swept over her, and it took all her strength to wrench her concentration back to the empty road. And when she did, she was aware of Avrum, and the power of his presence quieted her, and she could empty her mind until the next assault.
For Imogene there was no terror, not even much excitement. As always, she had removed herself from the firsthand experience and instead focused all her concentration on Avrum. From the beginning he had seeped into her very being and now was a presence always, shielding her from the rest of the world. When he was out of her sight, she thought of him constantly, and when he was near, she had to touch him. However lightly, inconspicuously, she had to be in contact with that energy, had to feel it flowing into her body.
Sitting there in the back seat, she wanted to caress his hair, but he had shaken her hand off before and she felt timid about trying again. But she had to; so great was her need that any kind of touch would do. She curled her fingers around the back of his seat, close enough so that any slight movement would make his shoulders brush against them. Each gentle bump of the car allowed her to inch closer until, when Swat swayed to avoid a pothole, Avrum lurched forward slightly and Imogene put her hand directly behind him so that when he leaned back he would be pressing against her fingers.
She allowed her free hand to slide between the buttons of her thin cotton blouse to her naked skin and move slowly and gently over her breasts, the tips of her fingers tracing tiny circles around the stiffened nipples. She wasn’t aware that she had resumed humming. Nor was she aware of the tightness that had come over Avrum’s body. All she felt was the pressure and the heat of him, and it was enough.
Avrum sat straight in his seat, his deep brown eyes riveted to the road ahead. Their luminosity darkened to near-black and glowed with red pinpricks of light that flashed without stop like a trapped electric current trying to escape. Except for a slight pulse in each cheek where the jaws met, his face was frozen still. He hadn’t uttered a word since they’d left the house twenty minutes before, but now he spoke softly of their mission. A small smile creased Swat’s lips, and she shook her head in tiny, emphatic nods of agreement.
“Yes . . . yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen and I want it to.”
“Because you have love,” Avrum said, and she opened her mouth in surprise. She didn’t realize that she had spoken the words aloud and her face snapped instantly back to empty, but she was pleased. She was always pleased when he noticed her, when he spoke to her beyond an order. She loved him alone, deeply, blindly, but with a misery, sometimes even an anger, and always a frustration. Avrum spent little time alone with her. He had made love to her only four times in the two years she had been with him. Three of those times he was so high on coke and booze that he hadn’t even remembered that it was she. He never touched or caressed her the way he did Imogene, yet he was not unkind to her.
Once when he chose her, he was so stoned he’d passed out inside her. She remembered every detail of those moments, had played them over and over again in her mind. It was the only time she felt she had ever possessed anyone, and the rush of love she felt had overwhelmed her, and she held him tightly and wept, something she hadn’t done since childhood. That was more than five months ago, but still she waited, trying not to show her longing in front of the others. She gave as little of herself as possible to the others, always holding herself apart from them. She hated them all. It was only Avrum who held her to the group. The power of his brilliance mesmerized her, and she became the physical hand of his spirit, ready and waiting for his command. She felt her normal awkwardness dissolve to grace under his powers.
“I am that love,” he was saying, “and you are part of my essence. I have taken you into my body and now we are connected and my spirit floods you and our love is joined and filled with power. Nothing is stronger than that love. Nothing on earth.”
Swat was silent, luxuriating in the sound of his voice, but in the back seat Imogene heard nothing. She never listened to Avrum’s words unless they were a direct order to her. She was still fixed on the feel of him. By now her fingers had gone numb and pinpricks of pain charged up her arm, and she squeezed her thighs together tightly to relieve the aching in her groin. When he leaned forward briefly to check the location, she flexed her fingers but didn’t move them away. She felt nothing but the physicalness of Avrum, no anxiety, no apprehensions, not even an interest in where they were going or what they would do.
“Swat.” Now he was talking business, and Swat snapped back to alertness. “There’s a wooded area a couple of blocks up at the start of a dirt road and enough room to park the van. Watch out for it, it’s just past that white wall.” He pointed to a whitewashed brick wall that wrapped around yet another of the grassy mounds. Swat slowed down as she came to it and continued alongside the wall for two hundred feet until it ended. A thick, black wooded area abutted it.
“Bring it down to a crawl,” Avrum said softly, tapping her lightly on the hand. “As soon as we hit the entrance to the road, cut the lights.”
Swat nodded her head and slowed to ten miles an hour. They both leaned forward, watching for the dirt road. Avrum spotted it first. “Lights!” he said.
Instantly she cut the lights. In the brightness of the night they could easily make out the dirt road not more than twenty feet ahead.
Carefully Swat pulled the car off the cement road and onto a deeply rutted muddy clearing. The clanking noises of all the loose pieces bumping around in the old van resounded in the silent night. Both Avrum and Swat squeezed up their faces at the noise.
“That’s far enough,” Avrum said. “I just want it to be out of sight from the street.” Swat brought the van to a slanty stop in a deep rut. “Don’t open the door yet,” Avrum said. He turned around to Imogene. “Just pass me that stuff from the back.”
Without a word Imogene started handing the coiled rope and the tools to Avrum. He passed the rope to Swat and shoved the wire cutters and screwdriver into his back pockets. Now Imogene picked up a bulging knapsack and handed it to Avrum, but he shook his head no. “You hold onto that,” he said.
Avrum leaned back in his seat, took a deep breath, and the women waited while he held it. Slowly, as they watched, he allowed his breath to escape in one long, uninterrupted hiss.
“Open your mouth,” he said to Swat, and she turned toward him and, with her eyes locked into his, slowly parted her lips. He took another deep breath and, holding it, leaned over into her face, his mouth open, his tongue wiping shiny spittle over his lips. Just as his open lips touched hers, he exhaled, words and breath together, “Inhale me, take me into your body. Breathe my breath.”
And she did with such passion and power that his lips were pulled into her mouth as if she would devour him. He whipped his face away, and she fell back, overcome by the contact.
Now Avrum turned to Imogene and, with his hands, brought her face close to his and again he inhaled deeply, but now, when he let his breath out, the exchange became a kiss and his tongue drove deep into her mouth, and her whole body seemed to move into his, and Swat watched them. She saw him holding Imogene’s head, his fingers buried in the soft red curls, and a wave of weakness broke in her stomach. She turned away and stared at her reflection in the dirty window. And she waited. Hating. Then she felt Avrum turn back in his seat, and for a moment only their breathing was heard as their passion subsided.
“We are one,” Avrum finally spoke, “and that one is me. You are of my breath and my body now.”
“Avrum . . .” Imogene whispered, and it was as if she said, “Amen.”
But he sliced the air with his hand and cut her short. “Say nothing more until I tell you. From now on I am your sound. Do you feel that?”
Both women nodded their heads but didn’t speak.
Very calmly now and slowly Avrum gave them their instructions. Only his door was to be opened. They would all get out that way. They would follow him to the bottom of Pinky’s driveway, walking in single file with Swat last. At the driveway he would give them further instructions. Avrum took a small black capsule from the glove compartment and flipped it far back into his mouth. He swallowed it and took another. The women took nothing.
Quickly, with barely a sound, Avrum opened his door and stepped out. Swat’s heart was pounding as she waited for Imogene to slip over the back of the seat and slide out the door. Now it was her turn, and she moved across the seat, the plastic whining against her pants, and then she too was out the door. Avrum closed it behind her. There was a soft click and then silence again.
Avrum led the way, their black clothes blending into the darkness and their footsteps almost soundless on the soft earth. They walked close to the side, and when the road turned Swat watched Avrum and then Imogene disappear around the bend.
Alone for an instant, out of Avrum’s aura, a thought caught her in midstep. There could be a choice. But then her foot came down, carrying her forward, and there was no choice. Maybe not ever again after tonight.
The three arrived at the foot of the driveway. It had a gentle slope that rose and climbed and turned half circle in front of Pinky’s house. One dim hall light was burning just inside the front door. From the road they could barely make out the contours of the house. Luscious bougain-villea hid all but the top of the slate roof and the four white chimneys. From the look of the roof peaks, the house rambled on and probably ended in an interior courtyard. It was huge, the size of a mansion, but all on one floor.
Along the road, about ten feet past the driveway, was a telephone pole with steel rungs jutting out from it every three feet. Avrum put on the heavy gloves that were clipped to his belt and leaped up onto the first rung and with great agility made his way up to the top. Once there, he seemed to know exactly what he was about. Sliding the wire clippers from his back pocket, he chose a thick double strand from a dozen such wires and snipped it. Then he slipped the cutters back into his pocket and climbed down the pole, jumping the last eight feet cat-quiet.
Once on the ground, he led the others to the wrought-iron gate at the entrance to the driveway and told them to wait outside until he called them. Quietly he pushed the unlocked gate open just slightly and slipped through.
Outside the gate, Imogene poked her head around the shrubbery. Pinky was nowhere in sight. She could see Avrum leaning against the inside of the stone wall that held the gates. She watched him. He didn’t seem concerned that Pinky wasn’t there or that maybe she wasn’t coming.
Suppose she had changed her mind? After all, it was weeks since Avrum had been with her. Maybe his power had been sapped away by the deprogrammers her parents had hired. But Avrum didn’t look worried, so she wasn’t going to either. When Avrum was with her, nothing frightened her or touched her or even mattered much. She was safe, and her mind was free to fly. Even now, untouched by the enormity of the plans, she peeked around the bushes like a child in a hide-and-go-seek game.
Smiling, Imogene watched Avrum, delighting in the way his muscles rippled under his tight shirt. His stomach was perfectly flat, and as he leaned back against the wall his hips jutted slightly forward, tantalizing her, and she giggled softly, absorbed in some delicious fantasy of her fingers tickling down the sides of his body, weaving under his shirt, and running down over the hard belly. Then suddenly, from behind her, other hands dug pain deep into her shoulders and yanked her backwards. She yelped a soft ooh that was smothered by a sweaty palm over her mouth. Now the hand on her shoulder whipped her around, and the fury of Swat was upon her. In terror, with her back pressed in against the bushes and the sharp twigs sticking into her spine and her lower legs, Imogene stood rigid with Swat’s face not two inches from hers, her foul odor assaulting her at every breath.
“Quiet, you fool,” Swat spat at her.
Inside the gate Avrum waited. It was 2:57. Pinky wasn’t late. She still had three minutes to go. As he had done hundreds of times in the past few weeks, Avrum let his mind work over the details of his plan, easy things like the lights, the cars, the door that should be unlocked, and then the most important thing, the logistics of keeping the people inside where he wanted them. Swat would help handle that. She was strong, smart, and could be counted on to respond instantly to any order he gave.
The boldness of the plan—his plan—mixed with the anticipation and the growing effects of the amphetamine was beginning to charge his brain to racing speed, but the only sign of this inner fury was the shine of his red-black eyes.
It was 2:59. Though Pinky was nowhere in sight, she was there, nonetheless. But well hidden. Directly behind Avrum there was a small rock garden with a child-sized, white cement bench in one corner and tucked neatly under the bench and curled to a third her petite size was Pinky, watching him motionlessly. Not with the sexual hunger of Imogene or the frustrated longings of Swat. Pinky stared with a mixture of fear and fascination. Such strong fear that even though she knew he was waiting and would be angry, still she couldn’t move. Nor would she allow herself to imagine his purpose or what her part would be in it.
It was 3:07, and her legs and back were beginning to ache from the cramped position.
At the same time, outside the gate, Swat had loosened her grip on the terrified Imogene. Still, neither spoke as they stood together, Imogene facing the road and Swat watching Avrum through the bushes. Imogene tried not to stare at the face in front of her, but her eyes kept sneaking back, and even in the dim light she was close enough to make out the tough leather texture of Swat’s skin, the large pores around her fleshy nose, the blackheads on her cheeks, and the raised lumps of boils that made her chin appear misshapen. Everything on Swat’s face was oversized and gross except her lips, which were thin and dry and turned down at the corners. No wonder Swat was always so mean and angry; people didn’t like you if you were ugly like that, and the best thing you could do was to hate them first. Swat hated everyone first. Except Avrum. Even now as Swat watched him, her eyes softened, and some of the sharpness and bitterness left her face. Imogene stared at her eyes until Swat, sensing it, gave her a quick warning look, and Imogene lowered her head instantly and was afraid to look up again.
It was 3:10, and Avrum stood up straight, perfectly still, holding his breath. His eyes narrowed for greater concentration. He’d heard something move. Something in the vicinity of the rock garden. He walked slowly in that direction.
Pinky saw him coming toward her and knew she didn’t want it to happen. She wanted him to go away. Desperately. With her eyes squeezed tightly shut she prayed he wouldn’t find her. He was very close now and then he seemed to step away, and she allowed herself a small, shallow sigh of relief, and he stopped.
And came back. A little moan escaped her lips, and she felt him bending down and then he was looking at her, and she winced, waiting for him to drag her out. She knew his violence. It had happened in the very beginning; his rage had been so powerful and the blows had left her cheek stinging for hours. Worse, the shame and remorse he’d made her feel for not believing in him stayed with her for weeks. Even now she was ashamed at what she was doing. She waited, tense, rigid. Seconds flew past, and then she felt his hand, gentle and caressing, petting her and all the while easing her out from under the bench. She let herself be moved toward him, and he gathered her up in his arms and held her close to him, and she wondered how she could have ever been afraid of him, her dearest friend, her greatest ally, her love.
Now he stood and raised her up with him; her arms were still closed tightly across her chest and her head was wedged under his chin. He held her until he felt her body soften, and then he moved her face away slightly so that he could see her face, and his lips formed the words, “It’s all right,” and his eyes looked into hers for a long moment, and then he took her by the hand and led her back to the driveway.
Swat saw them coming, saw Avrum wave to her, and with a quick shove set Imogene moving in their direction. If Pinky was surprised to see the other two women, she didn’t show it. Her eyes were on Avrum, waiting for some word from him, but instead he merely pointed his chin ahead, up the driveway, and gently moved her forward ahead of him.
Pinky led the way with Avrum behind her, then Imogene, and, as planned, Swat last. The gravel in the driveway was mixed with tar and gave no sound as they quietly made their way up toward the house.
The first parked car they came to was a white Mercedes. Avrum grabbed the back of Pinky’s blouse. She turned, and he hushed her before she could speak.
“The key,” he whispered, and she dug into her jeans pocket and came up with a ring of four keys. She pulled out the biggest one and gave it to Avrum.
He unlocked the front door of the car, opened it, reached in quickly, and pulled something under the dashboard. The car light was on for barely an instant.
By now Swat was at the front of the car; she quickly lifted the hood and with small clippers snipped three wires and carefully lowered the hood, not closing it completely.
Then, again with Pinky in the lead, they moved up to the next car, a small blue Porsche. This time the window was open on the driver’s side, and Avrum had only to reach in to unlock the hood. Swat lifted it and snipped the wires.
“What about the Rolls?” Avrum whispered to Pinky, and she pointed to the closed garage. He nodded and felt around in the deep front pockets of his jeans, finally coming up with a small lead rod which he carefully inserted in a garage lock. The rod would jam the electrical mechanism on the lock, and it would be impossible to open the door, even manually. He allowed himself some quiet pleasure at his good planning.
Pinky led them to a small clearing on the side of the house. It was out of the way and surrounded by large, full rhododendron bushes. Avrum motioned for the three to come close. They did, and he lifted the knapsack off Imogene’s shoulders and laid it on the ground. The women knelt around him as he opened the flaps. Carefully he eased out a bulky package wrapped in rust-stained toweling and started to unfold it.
As he unwrapped the last corner a shiver rippled through Pinky’s body at the sight of the three huge carving knives. Even Swat, who had known what was inside the towel, gave a small gasp. But Imogene barely looked, more concerned with sliding catlike close enough to Avrum to touch his thigh or rub against his arm. She succeeded as he bent forward to separate the knives.
The largest one was at least eighteen inches long, with a thirteen-inch blade an inch wide honed on both sides to razor sharpness. The one lying next to that was shorter and, where the handle met the blade, was at least two inches wide. Again, both sides were sharpened all down the elongated triangle to its deadly point. The third knife was nearly as long as the first but much thinner, almost delicate, and there was only one slicing side.
Pinky’s stare was fixed on the knives, and a terrible fear gripped her. “Oh, God!” she moaned, and the words seemed to release her bound chest, and a terror rushed through her body and turned to desperation and then instantly to action. She spun around toward Avrum and put both hands on his wrists and wrenched them away from the knives. He allowed her to hold his arms back and turned to her slowly, with great calmness.
He spoke to her, and his voice was soft and low and seemed to come from him, yet be disconnected.
“This is the beginning, Pinky, our birth. And it can only be experienced from your sacrifice. That is the explosion needed to create the movement.”
“I can’t . . . I can’t,” she pleaded, and she hung her head, and tears ran down her face and dropped onto her thighs.
Avrum still spoke, and as he did he put his hand gently under her chin and raised her face so that he could look into her eyes. “From the deepness of my love I have chosen you. Feed me the blood that I may open the world.”
“No. . . .”
“We must banish ego and free your soul to enter mine and together soar.”
And then he took the thinnest knife and with the other hand slipped open the top button of Pinky’s blouse and pushed it back to uncover a small area of her chest above her heart. With the point of the knife and almost no pressure he drew a ragged x on her skin. She made no movement, nor did she take her eyes from him. First the skin rose slightly, outlining the x, then the lines burst red with blood, and he took a smear of that blood with his forefinger and made a one on her forehead and said, “You are my beginning and I am the whole of you. I am your ego and your love.”
And as the blood welled up again on the little x, once more he dipped his forefinger and this time made a small circle on the forehead of Swat and then of Imogene and told them he was their ego and their love and together they would form the nucleus of a new spirit in the world. He had found absolute truth, and it was within him and of him, and they were part of it.
Then Avrum took up the middle knife and handed it to Swat and the thin one to Imogene. He kept the biggest one for himself and, tossing the rust-stained towel under the bushes, motioned them all to rise.
Pinky stood vacant-eyed, with her arms hanging loose at her sides and her blouse still twisted back, exposing the now hardening blood of the x. Her mind was empty, awaiting the new birth. She allowed herself to experience only Avrum’s strength. She felt she had already entered his soul and that there was no one else who would ever be part of her again. Nothing could touch her anymore. Only Avrum. Her life was his.
For Swat, the cool hardness of the steel-handled knife made her loins tense with excitement. She tightened her grip until her nails dug into the palm of her hand. She felt an enormous surge of power harden her body. Armed, Swat had the strength of a man. She knew this would be her moment. Avrum would depend on her the most, and she would be there, coiled and ready to spring with all her force at his word. It would be Avrum and Swat who would carry it off. The others were fools and weak, and she was impatient for him to finish readying them. She wanted to move while the power still throbbed within her. She wanted to move while she was still cresting.
But Avrum took his time with the others. Methodically he spoke to them in an even voice, and his words met no resistance from either Pinky, who seemed catatonic, or Imogene, who listened politely as if he were giving directions to some distant, unknown place—someplace vaguely pleasant, nonetheless.
“Where’s the bedroom door?” Avrum asked Pinky, but she didn’t seem to hear. “The one that’s unlocked, Pinky,” he repeated, and a trace of anxiety emphasized her name, and she answered him quietly, “Around the back.”
David should have been here by now. It’s almost dark—hours since I spoke to Sephra. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he won’t come at all. Why should he rush out here to me when I’ve been so hideous to him and to everyone else?
Oh, God, I’m so miserable. Strung out on a thousand different pills, no food, my stomach hollow and burning, and all of me trembling, racing.
A sudden, frightening thought: if David was at the office Sephra couldn’t have spoken to him. She wouldn’t have known where to call. Oh, God!
I want David here! No matter what it costs, I must have him. And knowing that that decision is the only right one, I pick up my phone and dial his number.
The phone rings and rings and rings, and then he answers.
“David,” is all I can manage to say.
“Johanna, I just got in. Are you all right? Where are you?”
“Didn’t Sephra tell you?”
“I haven’t spoken to her. Johanna, what’s happening?”
“Oh, David, I’m so sorry for everything. Please forgive me. I love you and I need you. Come and get me, please. . . .”
“It’s all right, darling. Don’t be upset. Everything is going to be OK now, just tell me where you are, and I’ll come right this minute.”
“I’ve been so horrible to you . . . to everyone.” I love him so desperately and I try to tell him, but my tears turn all my words into sobs.
“Johanna, tell me where you are.”
I pull myself together enough to tell him where I am, and, he says he’s leaving immediately.
“My darling,” he says, “I love you so dearly. You are my life. Wait for me.”
“I will, David, I will.”
And I hang up and stagger back to the computer. Now I have the strength to put all my horrors to rest forever.
David is coming. I will be saved.
Avrum, I will finish you off, you and all my demons, once and for all.
The night deepened as a thick cloud passed in front of the moon, and the four frightening black shadows made their way carefully, slowly, along the flagstone footpath that led around the side of the house and followed the twisting curves into the back courtyard.
They were ugly in their evil, the three intruders, butcher knives hanging from their hands. And the fourth, unarmed, but even more lethal in her betrayal.
Pinky stopped in front of the French doors that led to the room where her parents were sleeping. She didn’t speak. She didn’t turn. She simply stood facing the door, her task completed. Now it was their turn.
Avrum moved her to one side. Then he faced the group and spoke, “Swat, you’re over here on my right, Imogene on my left, and Pinky, you’re behind us.” Each moved to her designated spot and waited.
He studied them, these three human beings whom he owned so completely that he controlled their very souls, their love, and their terror. The anticipation of the kill ahead electrified him, and he glared at each of his disciples as if recharging them with his own energy. Then in a harsh whisper he said, “Listen to me. Do not miss one word. This is what we have waited for, our moment of creation. This is my beginning, and if you fail me . . . I am dead forever!”
In terrible agitation, each one began to shake her head, protesting, but with a raised hand he silenced them and continued, “It will be a countdown, starting at ten and going to one. The word after one is what we move on.”
All three stared at him, waiting.
“Ten!” he said; the sound was low but cut from steel. A pause, and then he continued speaking very quickly in a whisper to all. But his eyes fixed on Swat.
“Start mobilizing your bodies. Tense them. Move in close together. I want a solid mass.”
They drew close and he watched them, and when he was satisfied he spoke again.
“Nine!” Again in that urgent whisper, still directing himself to Swat. “Harden your muscles. Tighten the skin around them and aim your bodies forward.
“Eight!”
Now he turned and nailed his eyes on Pinky who reeled slightly at his words. “They’re going to be sleeping. Both of them soundly sleeping in their bed.”
And then to Imogene, “Seven!”
And over to Swat and back to Imogene again, “We’re a sharpened wedge of power and we’re pointed at those doors and we’re going to crash them open and rush in!
“Six!
“And with all our might we’re going to send our bodies flying across the room and dive onto them!
“Five!
“And hold them down and bury their bodies into the bed with our hands and our knees and smother their heads with their pillows and they will be so stunned by the suddenness of our attack that for the first moment they won’t resist.
“Four!
“And in that instant of our advantage,” he said, making each word stand alone, “we shall strike!”
And as he spoke, Swat’s body stiffened, pounding under the restraint, and Imogene’s, too, her normal lethargy transformed into a passion that made her quake with excitement. Only Pinky’s breath came at normal speed. Like an automaton she would respond.
Sweat glazed Avrum’s face to a high shine. His whole body was charged with an energy that fused his muscles and made them swell and strain against the thinness of his T-shirt, and the hardness of his erection pressed his jeans to near bursting. The panting sounds that rushed from his chest forced gusts of air into his whisper, giving it a staccato beat that set the rhythm of their passion and brought Swat and Imogene to the threshold of orgasm.
“Three!”
His whisper had become so hoarse and fast that they had to bend in close.
“Strike!” he said. “Slam the steel into their bodies. . . .” And with his knife he slit the air. “In and out and in and out! In their backs, in their sides, in their heads. Pound at their squirming bodies with all your might, stabbing, driving, slicing into them!
“Two!” he spat and pulled the hand that clenched the knife back behind his shoulder in a strike position.
“One!”
Avrum bent his knee up and drew his powerful leg back, hugging it against his stomach, and as he shot it forward crashing open the doors, he screamed the word, and the word was, “KILL! KILL! KILL!”
I have to stop! I stare at the page, then at my hands still resting on the keyboard. They are trembling. I clasp them together. They are icy. I read the last words I have written, and a small tremor runs through my body with a spasm. Where have I taken Avrum and his avengers and what are they avenging, or is it I myself who is bent on some hellish course? What is my purpose? A sudden but profound fear seizes me, and I shake my head, searching for some new clarity of meaning to my work, and as I do I hear, out beyond the door, a small sound.
David. It has to be David. Thank God. I need someone to talk to. Someone to hold me. I rise from the chair and stagger. The room spins. In the fierce, unbroken concentration of my writing I have drunk too much wine, swallowed too many Dexis, Oxycontin. I inhale deeply, hoping to clear my head, and lurch toward the door. “David,” I call out. My trembling fingers struggle with the latch until I hear the bolt open and step back, ready to collapse into David’s arms.
The door swings open violently. I gaze into the blackness beyond. “David,” I whisper, “is that you?” An outline emerges from the shadow. Then another. I utter a low animal groan as four ghostly and grisly figures stride through the door. Oh, no. Oh, God.
My mind gropes for some explanation. I know I am hallucinating. I have to be. If I close my eyes for a moment, they’ll be gone. But they aren’t. They are still there. Staring at me, their eyes are as fixed and deadly as a cobra’s.
“What do you want?” I say, and I feel half foolish because I know I have to be talking to empty air, but they look so real. . . .
And then they move, the man I call Avrum in the center, Swat and Imogene on either side, and behind them my friend Pinky. I remember the knives and look quickly at their hands, but they’re empty. Some of my terror quiets.
“Johanna.”
Avrum’s voice. I struggle desperately to bring some order to my mind, and then it comes with the answer. He’s escaped from prison. And the reason he’s come here is because of my book and probably because I’m his only link to the establishment, at least the only one who pretends to understand him at all. Logic wins, and my fright begins to give way to a growing excitement. This man, standing not five feet from me, has ruled my life for nearly a year now. I’ve spent hours interviewing him, months methodically researching every detail of his life. I’ve taken him apart and then re-created him again in my book. I’ve given him a part of my own life at a terrible sacrifice, given him a higher reality in my mind and in my fantasies, and now he’s come to me and is now, in this wild moment, fulfilling all the imagined intimacy of those months. I find myself unbelievably tantalized by the thought.
“Johanna, come here.” He speaks softly, yet it has the tone of an order, and I feel the compulsion, the need, to obey.
“Come here,” he repeats, and I move toward him. The others have faded to light shadows lurking on the side somewhere. It is only Avrum now. Avrum and me.
Finally.
As I come closer to him the aroma of sandalwood thickens the air between us, and I feel myself transmigrating to him. His arms are extended in front of him, fingers outstretched, holding me at a distance. Deliberately his eyes move over my body, and the skin under his gaze is atremble and flushed. My body begins to ache with a powerful longing, a hunger for contact with him. I want to press hard against him, lean my thighs against his, feel the length of him touching me. I move into him but he stops me, holding me back with his hands on my shoulders, as his fingers, thinner and longer than I expected, bite into my flesh.
He lets his hands drop from my shoulders and, skimming over the front of my blouse, moves them across to the buttons. Slowly he opens the buttons, and with each touch I feel an exquisite heat deep within my thighs. The last button is opened, and the light play of his fingertips teases my skin as he spreads the blouse apart. I feel the cool air on my nakedness.
I have forced the others out of my vision, but I know they are there, and I feel a flash of embarrassment and try to close my blouse. But Avrum stops me, pushing my hands firmly down to my sides and holding them there. Again he captures me with his eyes, and all else vanishes. He unsnaps my jeans, pulls the zipper down and stops. In that moment I know how much I want him. As he puts his hands flat on the sides of my waist and moves them slowly along my skin and works the jeans over my hips, I pull my blouse off and drop it to the floor. Again for an instant my nakedness overwhelms me, and I have to close my eyes to ease the shame. Can this be me?
Without looking, I can feel the heat from his body and know he’s drawn closer to me. His fingers caress my breasts and lightly squeeze the nipples. Now his hand slides over my stomach and holds the mound below, and I can feel his fingers slipping between the lips. I open my eyes and am caught instantly in the steel of his stare. And I am held with a powerful energy that arrows into my brain, and his fingers are gliding easily in my vagina, over my clitoris, and up and down the insides of my thighs. I reach out for him, but he shakes his head, no. My hips begin to sway and move slowly, grinding into his hand. I hear my gasps change to moans, and the hunger becomes unbearable. Suddenly he takes his hands away from me, and the emptiness disconcerts me.
“Avrum, please don’t stop . . . I want you.”
He unzips his pants and quickly slips them off. Once freed, his erection juts out, hard and straight. I wait for him to take me in his arms, but he makes no move toward me.
“Get down,” he says, pointing to the spot in front of his legs, “get down and suck me.”
The tone of his voice startles me, and I retreat a step.
“Johanna!” This time the voice is warm and caressing. “Take me in your mouth. . . .”
I’m lost. I cannot resist him. I don’t want to resist him. Kneeling, feeling the supplicant and not caring, I move my hands up along the insides of his thighs, my palms sliding over the bulging cords of tendons that line his muscular legs until I reach their roots in the moss of his thick black hair. My hands surround him, caress him, and now with fingers firmly encircling the base of his cock I slide my mouth over the slippery tip and as far down the length of it as I can. The power of this first touch of him creates an uncontrollable need in me, and I bury my face deep into him, and the odors of sandalwood and sperm and sweat fill my nostrils, and his wiry curls bite into my cheeks. I move my mouth up and down, sucking the long, hard silkiness of him and holding him tight between the roof of my mouth and my curled tongue, one hand overflowing with his fullness and the other thrusting deep within myself.
His hips begin to buck and his hands press down hard on my head, forcing me to take more than I can of him. I try to pull back, but his grip is iron. I dig my nails into his thighs, but still he pounds into me and then with one long last thrust releases himself in my throat. I gag, and he pushes me away.
With the aching and the longing still throbbing unsatisfied between my legs, I stand alone in the middle of the room, naked, bathed in sweat, wet with secretions, ready, waiting, hungry to pounce at the first sign of tumescence. It comes quickly, and then he’s stiff again and struts over to me, prodding me backwards against the wall. No words now, only touch and rub and slide, and then he is deep inside me and together our bodies begin to move slowly against each other, out to the end and in again to the beginning. I can feel his taut body, the light spring in his legs, his stomach hitting against mine and hear the sounds of the joining, the slap of our bodies against the wall, all these sensations, separately at first and then beginning to converge and grow and build until it becomes one powerful sweep of terrifying speed that shoots me up in its surge. Far up and finally over to another side.
“Get down on your hands and knees.” His voice cuts into my flight, sudden and cold.
It stuns me.
“Get down!” he shouts, grabbing my shoulder and throwing me to the floor.
I land hard on the wood floor, and a sharp pain shoots through my knees. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Please . . . what have I done?”
“Shut up and crawl over there,” he says, pointing to where the others are standing.
“No,” I say and start to get up, but he kicks me sharply in my side, and I lose my balance and fall back onto the floor.
“I said, crawl!”
I start to move across the floor, creeping on all fours like a baby. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him pointing as he urges me on, angrily demanding that I move more quickly. I’m frightened and I hurry. My nakedness makes me feel childlike, small and powerless, and my terror makes me whimper like a baby being chastised by a stern and angry father. I stop in front of someone’s feet, but I don’t look up. I can’t. I wait on my hands and knees, chilled and trembling.
Suddenly I feel Avrum behind me, and he grabs my waist. I jump, but his grip tightens, and I feel him move up against my raised rump.
“No, no . . . please, don’t . . .” I plead, but he answers by digging his fingers deeper and ramming himself into me, ripping open the tightness and sending bolts of pain through my body. I scream and beg him to stop, but he pounds harder. I try to crawl away, but he grabs my thighs and lifts them up high against his sides. I claw at the floor, losing my balance and smashing down on my chin. Still I try to scramble away, but he holds me tighter. I reach out for the legs in front of me, but whoever it is steps away, and I’m left to submit to his painful assault.
Finally he comes out of me, drops my legs, and I lie there weeping.
Without a word, he walks to his clothes and calmly, unhurriedly, dresses.
While the others are watching him I crawl to my own clothes, but just as I’m about to reach for my jeans, Swat grabs them with the toe of her shoe and sends them flying across the room.
“Please,” I say, “I only wanted to get dressed.”
She glares down at me with fury. I look over to Avrum. “Tell her, please, I only want my clothes.”
But he’s busy going through a knapsack on the floor and doesn’t turn around.
As I start to stand, I’m overcome with a terrible dizziness and then a nausea so overwhelming that I have to sit down again. With my head still spinning, I lean over and reach again for my clothes. Swooping from above me, Swat grabs the whole pile and flings them behind her.
“Make her stop,” I beg Avrum. He’s silent, his back toward me, and then slowly he turns around, and my breath catches in horror. The knives! The knives!
A scream starts in my throat, but I choke it down. My only hope is not to antagonize them, to be silent and not move.
Avrum motions to Swat, and he hands her the huge butcher knife. She accepts it almost ceremoniously and moves back across the room. Then he nods to Imogene, and I watch as he hands her a knife. I half expect it to be the triangular one from my book, but it’s not. Stupid, but I’m relieved. The third knife goes to Pinky who takes it reluctantly, letting it dangle loosely from her fingertips.
Now Avrum buckles the knapsack and slips it on his shoulders. They’re going to leave. Thank God. I don’t care about anything, not where they’re going or what evil they’re planning, I just want them out of here!
All three women wait for his command, but he ignores them and stares only at me, ice in his eyes. Sheer panic freezes me. Agonizing moments pass and the room stops, becomes a still photograph, and then at last Avrum nods to the women and turns to leave. I can’t control a soft moan of relief.
But the women don’t move.
My voice is weak, and I’m drained from the fear and the pain and the shame. I want them out of here.
“You don’t have to worry,” I tell them. “I won’t call the police.”
They don’t move.
“Please, I swear I won’t. Just go.”
Still, they don’t move. I struggle to my feet, holding onto the back of my chair. As I do, I see Avrum stop at the door and tap Swat on the shoulder. She smiles at him, and the evil in it sends a shiver through me. She walks over to me, stopping inches from my face. I know she hates me. She always did, right from the beginning when I interviewed her in prison, but now it’s raging. I brace myself for her fury, for the vicious insults she will heap on me, but she’s silent. The ugliness of her face contorts with hate as the moments pass. Then suddenly I feel a hard punch in my stomach, and I double over. Bitch! She hit me.
My breath comes back quickly, and I’m about to slap her when my eye catches a black flash around my stomach and I look down. It’s the handle of the knife, and for an instant I can’t understand what it’s doing there; then, oh, my God, no!
It’s in my stomach. She’s stabbed me! But it can’t be. All I felt was a punch. There’s no pain, no blood. It’s some kind of trick, a stupid joke. “Get away from me, you stupid fool!” I shout at her. She looks surprised, but I’m furious now.
She reaches down, takes the handle, and pulls hard. I feel something drawing out of me, and the blade comes into view. It’s got blood on it. I look down. There’s a slit in my skin and blood coursing from it.
“Help, Avrum!” I’m holding my wound with one hand and pushing Swat away with the other. I search frantically for some escape, but they’re blocking the doorway. The only other protection in the room is my computer, and I jump behind it.
Imogene starts coming toward me, screaming, “Bitch! Whore!” and Swat falls in step with her, and Avrum pushes Pinky behind them, and they’re all heading my way. I back up against the wall and push the chair in front of me, but Swat flings it out of the way and the two of them fall on me and start slashing me with their knives. I grab their wrists, but I can’t hold on. Swat is too strong, and the knives are too long. I kick and push and punch and ram my knee into Swat’s stomach and she falls back, but Imogene keeps coming, slashing back and forth at my face.
I cover my head with my hands and kick out barefooted. The blows aren’t strong enough to stop her and the knife cuts across my fingers, and then I feel the thump of blows in my breasts and I take my hands away from my face to protect my body. My blood is smearing all of us. I can’t stop her! Help me!
I feel the table behind me and dive under it, clinging to the metal legs. They pull at my feet, but their hands are slippery with blood and my legs slide through. I’m awash in blood, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Nothing hurts me. I don’t know why. My tears blind me. They’re killing me, and I don’t want to die. “David . . . David . . . help me! Daddy, please, Daddy, stop. . .”
One of them gets behind my head and pushes while other hands pull at my feet. Still, I hang on. Then something starts to grind at my fingers. My God, they’re trying to cut them off! I let go in horror and bury my cut and bleeding hands tight against my chest. Now, with no resistance, they drag me out from under the table. For an instant I break loose and scramble to my knees, but someone’s hands still hold my feet and jerk me back hard, and I collapse. Other hands flip me over, and I roll up into a ball to protect myself from their slicing and stabbing.
A numbness starts to creep over me, and it’s hard to tell where the blows are coming from. A heavy exhaustion envelops me, unfolding my arms and legs. I lie there, open and unprotected against their blows, but the weight of them seems to grow lighter. Through the blood I see Pinky’s face and feel relief, safety. My friend Pinky will stop them. Our eyes meet, and I move my lips, “Save me, please save me.”
Tears fill her eyes and she looks away, but hands push her face back, and there’s terrible fright in her eyes. I hear Avrum’s voice from somewhere overhead—only its sound, not the words—and Pinky lifts her hand. She’s holding the long, thin knife above my head. I scream, and she drops it. Something presses into my throat and stays there.
I close my eyes and wait. A door slams, leaving the room silent. Time passes, and I know they’ve gone.
When I open my eyes again, the room is empty. Above me, on the ceiling, a crack like a giant spider leg runs from one corner to the clouded plastic light fixture in the center. The ordinariness of it comforts me. I’m still not in pain, but I’m so weak that it takes a great effort to lift my head, and when I do I see my body oozing blood. The knowledge that I’m dying comes to me calmly, with a touch of disappointment that the ultimate of life’s actions should come in a thought not unlike any other thought.
The calmness is brief and quickly changes to anger, then desperation and then rage. I’ve got to stop them! Erase them from my computer . . . obliterate them . . . rip up their pages . . . kill them as they killed me!
I force myself up high enough to reach out and grab hold of the table leg. My mouth is filled with blood too thick to swallow. It gushes over my lips and runs down my chin. I drag myself up and claw at the paper piling up under the printer. The blood has clogged my eyes but I can feel the paper. I grab fistfuls and twist and turn and rip at them, but there are too many to get to. I reach up and drag the computer down to the floor and start typing. My bloody fingers slide over the keys. I must warn David. . . .
A heavy blood-blackness begins to flow over my mind and ease my body. It rolls in from a great distance, thickly and slowly blackening to tar as it moves nearer, smoothing and soothing the rawness of my terror and blanketing everything until there is only the tiniest dot of me, nothing more than a pinprick, left in the miles and miles of black stillness . . . I am alone . . . only the darkness and me . . . only the darkness and me . . . only the darkness . . .