CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

As Payne slept, a subtle light fell across his body, outlining the line of muscle in his arm where it crossed his chest, of leg where it stretched toward the bottom of the bed. At first the light was silvery and Payne’s body seemed etched in silverpoint, as if it were an anatomy study by Leonardo or Michelangelo come suddenly and gloriously to life. Then the light mutated into something else, assuming a reddish tone that made the blood rise to the surface of Payne’s flesh and suffused him with a glow that was in some unutterable fashion more pornographic than the overt activities he and Cathy had glimpsed on the monitor minutes hours…a lifetime ago.

The monitor watched Payne, watched him sleep. He lay on his side, his knees drawn partway up as it to surround and protect. One hand lay half open near his mouth. It would take little imagination to believe that he was an infant, suckling his own thumb. The monitor patiently watched Payne’s arms and legs as they moved slightly. It watched his eyelids flicker and twitch with the rhythmical movements of REM and deep sleep.

After a while, Payne rolled onto his back. His face was still averted from the light, as if even in sleep he were aware that it was shining down on him. With one movement he flung his arms away from his body, his hands fisted so tightly that his knuckles bled white. His legs stretched until he was nearly cruciform on the bed—a blood-red Christ against a shadow of blood-black shadows.

On the screen, the film flickered back into life. The man knelt there, tumid and frightening and demanding. The woman returned too, and now beneath the blood her face shifted and altered. The cheekbones dropped fractionally, the eyebrows thinned, the lips curved just that much more. The changes were subtle and gradual. Even had he been awake Payne might not have noticed them.

But the changes were there nonetheless, definite and irreversible.

Beneath the blood and the terror and the pain, Cathy Litton stared mutely at the camera, her mouth open in voiceless agony, the transformation completed at the very moment that the woman in the movie choked and screamed and choked again and died.