Margie woke up, her vagina pulsing, the heat of another sex-centered dream flooding her with inconceivable lust. Her side of the bed was perspiration-soaked; even her hair was damp. Jimbo snored the sleep of the innocent and unaware next to her.
This wasn’t sinning. She had no control over her dreams.
She slipped out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and went to the kitchen for a drink of something cool. It was August, and hot as hell. The streetlight shone on parched trees, parched and withered grass. Snow had shown up in every single month some time in Vargas County, and if there were snow outside now, she’d run and jump into it naked. She could use a little ice on her body at the moment. It was three-forty-six a.m. She’d have to get up soon to start the morning shift.
She poured a glass of water and sipped it, standing in the darkened kitchen, in front of the window. These dreams were beginning to interfere with her work, with her life. They were coming almost every night now, and every night she lost another hour or two of sleep. Her concentration was flagging; her energy waning. She had too much to do every day; she couldn’t keep losing energy.
Yet she found herself going to bed early. She liked the sensations, the feelings, the incredible sexiness of them. They had nothing to do with Jimbo; their sex life was satisfactory. He was the only partner Margie had ever had, so she had nothing to compare, but they were happy together, and she really enjoyed the closeness of their intimacy.
But these dreams. They were raw, uninhibited, lose-your-mind kind of lusty things. She was afraid she was being seduced by a demon—what else could introduce her to something so deliciously evil?—and it scared her. She was afraid for herself, her eternal soul, and her family. Because she liked it. God help her, she liked it.
As always, she wanted to snuggle up to Jimbo and have him make the kind of love to her that happened in her dreams, but it wasn’t the same. He was too real, too heavy, his breath too harsh, and while she always enjoyed the closeness of sex with Jimbo, it never sent her into the heights like these dreams.
And it made her feel guilty. Like her secret lover had aroused her and she was just using Jimbo for gratification. She knew he wouldn’t mind being used, but Margie couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever this was, it was evil, and she was playing into its hands, and including her sweet, innocent husband.
She wiped her face with a dampened dishtowel, finished drinking the water, and then went back to bed. Jimbo snored softly on his side facing away from her. He had no idea of her secret dream life. She never wanted him to find out.
She lay awake for a long time before sleep reclaimed her, but when it did, it was deep, dreamless, and satisfying.
~~~
Pamela McCann passed the two-mile mark and smiled to herself. She felt good. Her gait was smooth and easy, the track soft under her Nikes, and the morning fresh and delicious, though it was already warming up to be a hot day. She wore only her running shorts and a sports bra. Her short, naturally red hair flopped with every step.
Everything was good in her life. Everything except two things: Love and money.
She snorted her appreciation of the irony. At least her body was strong and lithe. She felt good, she looked good, and she’d have life knocked if she could only get a handle on her finances and the romance part of it.
Running was a good opportunity for her to clear her mind of all the garbage that accumulated during the day, and it was currently accumulating a lot. When she bought the hundred acres up north with her inheritance, she thought that she had a good investment for her future, as well as enough left over in the bank to work on developing parts of it. She had plans to put about twenty acres into farming ginseng, another twenty into upscale home lots, another twenty into a forested park and the rest she’d leave vacant and wild for the moment. The farming and the homes would keep her busy for a good long while.
But as soon as she signed on the dotted line and put the deed into the safe-deposit box, the stock market took a dive in what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, a generation-long bear market. That left the rest of her money unavailable, as she was unwilling to sell her blue chips for a fraction of what she had paid for them mere months earlier. So she was land-rich and cash poor. And that kind of land required capital to develop as well as maintain. Taxes never went down.
At least she’d had the running track built before the crash. It was gratifying to see everybody use it—running, walking, biking, playing with their dogs. All winter long, while the rest of the countryside was ten feet deep in snow, the track could be seen, as people either packed it down by using it or brought their snow blowers out to keep it visible. It was even busier in the summer, of course. So she’d contributed to the community and that endeared her, as much as possible, considering that she was an outsider.
She rounded the corner, noted the marker and clicked off mile three in her mind. Still feeling good.
Somehow, the money situation would rectify itself, she knew. Money was just one of those fluid things that came and went. She’d had a hand-to-mouth job before her dad died, and now she had money. If she suddenly didn’t have money again, she’d survive. But boy, she sure liked having money, even as briefly as she’d had it. And her soul was already attached to this land. She didn’t even want to develop the home sites because she didn’t want to part with twenty acres, even if she did parcel it out two acres at a time. But, of course she would have to do that, and do it sooner rather than later. Chances are, she’d have to rid herself of the whole twenty in one whack to some other developer, one who wouldn’t take as much care with the development. She hated the thought, but understood the realities of life.
Money. Money was a temporary problem.
The other problem was more permanent—as permanent as a child can be. Pamela had been up to visit Wolver and hadn’t had a period since.
Wolver, who had taken his name from the ferocious wolverine, lived in a cabin deep in the woods with no modern conveniences at all. He had a wood stove that heated his cabin, and an outhouse behind. He used kerosene lamps on the rare occasion when he wanted light at night, and bartered for staples with the animal furs he got from his traps and the meat he hunted. He hunted and fished and lived a solitary life. He’d like it if she came up to live with him; he’d be thrilled to know that they were expecting, but Wolver’s lifestyle was not the life for Pamela, and she knew she couldn’t ask him to come to Vargas County and live respectable. It wasn’t in him. It wasn’t in her to boil diapers on a wood stove, either.
She had decided to pay him another visit as soon as she passed the three-month mark. So many fetuses didn’t make it to that point, and she didn’t see a need to throw two lives into turmoil unless there was reason for it.
Three months was tomorrow, by the gestation calendar she had found on the Internet. But she hadn’t needed the calendar. She’d known immediately when she was pregnant, because the dreams had stopped. She’d had the most incredibly sexy, delicious, slurpy dreams, starring nobody in particular. She’d wake up panting, shaking, vibrating, she was so hotly aroused. Perhaps that’s why she went to see Wolver in the first place. And got herself knocked up.
She had a little morning sickness to confirm her suspicions. Now, it might be her imagination, but she was pretty sure she could see a bulge in her normally athletically taut tummy. It was time to go see Wolver again. Tomorrow.
Mile four.
Pamela slowed to a walk, pulled off her headband and shook out her hair. She walked the next quarter mile to her car, cooling off and rehearsing how the reunion would go.
She knew how it would start. He would be delighted to see her. He would give her a big bear hug, put on a pot of coffee, and somehow they’d be shed of their clothes, the coffee forgotten, within ten minutes. She and Wolver had incredible chemistry.
And then after, as they lay together sated and smiley, cozy and snuggly in his soft warm bed, she’d tell him. He’d grin big and say, “Really?” And then he’d hug her and it would all be so magical, right then, right there. It would, for a moment, seem possible to be a family. But that’s how Wolver lived. In magic land. Outside of any normal reality. So Pamela would brighten his day and then she would ruin it. Because she and the baby couldn’t live in the woods with Wolver, and Wolver couldn’t live in town with her and the baby. They needed to talk about what to do.
She got into the SUV, started it and turned off the radio just as the first raindrops hit the windshield. Good timing. Then she headed home, making a mental checklist of things to pack for her trip up to Wolver’s. She wouldn’t need the condoms.
She got home, took off her wet clothes and looked at her poochy tummy in the mirror. “Ready to meet your daddy?” she asked it. Then she smiled, shook her head at herself for talking to a piece of tissue that was maybe a half inch long, and jumped into the shower. She’d make an appointment to see a doctor first thing next week. She’d ask Julia to recommend one.
~~~
Lexy pushed open the diner door and saw Amanda, her sister, sitting in a corner booth. Lexy waved, then took off her raincoat and hung it on the coat rack. “Okay, okay,” she said as she walked up to Amanda. “What’s the emergency?” She slid into the booth seat opposite, and checked her watch. “I’ve got a shampoo and cut at nine.”
“I’m going back to Ricky,” Amanda said.
“Don’t be silly.” Lexy signaled Margie and turned her coffee mug right side up. When she looked back at Amanda, she saw tears in her sister’s eyes. “Amanda. What’s going on?”
“I can’t stand it anymore,” Amanda said. “I’m just so lonely.”
“Join the club. That doesn’t mean you should go back to that goon.”
“He could change.”
Lexy looked up at the ceiling. “Good god, Mandy. You know he isn’t going to change. One of these days he’ll kill you, not just blacken your eye or break your wrist.”
Amanda fingered the wrist that Lexy knew still bothered her and probably would never again work right. She sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. That’s why I need you, Lex.”
“You haven’t called him or anything stupid?”
Amanda shook her head. “I called you instead.”
“Smart girl. So tell me what’s really going on.”
“It’s these dreams, I think. I can’t stop these dreams. They’re so erotic, and they make me so horny. And that makes me lonely.”
Lexy laughed. “Jeez, must be something in the water here. I’ve been having some pretty wild dreams myself.”
Margie came by with the coffee pot in one hand and a stack of dirty dishes in the other. She seemed to be unaware of herself. “Dreams?” she asked Amanda.
Amanda blushed and looked down at her hands.
Margie sat down at the booth and set the coffee pot and dirty dishes on the table.
“Yuck, Margie.” Lexy said, and pushed somebody’s half-eaten eggs away from her, but Margie ignored her.
“Tell me about the dreams,” Margie said.
“Are you having them too?” Amanda asked.
Margie nodded. “Sex dreams,” she whispered. “Sinful.”
“They’re too good to be sinful,” Lexy said, but only got dirty looks in reply from the two women across from her. “Hey. You prudes can be mad about them, but I like it. I always wake up at the crucial moment, but I have my toys that finish the job.”
“Hush,” Amanda scolded.
Lexy dumped sugar and cream into her coffee and stirred it.
“Then we can’t be the only ones,” Margie said.
Lexy looked at Margie’s face and saw a drowning woman needing a life raft. “I’m sure we’re not the only ones, Margie,” Lexy said. “Maybe it’s the northern lights. Or the change in seasons. I don’t know. They’re pretty powerful, I must admit.”
“Horrible,” Margie said. “Wretched.”
“Well . . . ,” Lexy said.
“Who else, do you think?” Amanda asked.
Lexy looked around the diner. Julia was having breakfast with Dr. Mitch the gorgeous dentist. The concept of having breakfast out with a man wasn’t lost on Lexy. So Julia and Mitch had finally broken the ice and slept together. Julia probably hadn’t been sleeping at all, not with that good-looking guy to keep her entertained.
She looked back at Amanda. Maybe Julia’s dreams had led her to the bed of Dr. Mitch Kardashian. Wouldn’t that just be like a man to figure out how to give women the hots? “Julia,” she said.
Margie stood up, leaving the dishes and coffee pot on the table.
“Hey,” Lexy said.
Margie turned around. Lexy gestured at the mess. Margie swept it all up, and made for the kitchen double time. She came right back out and approached Julia. A moment later, the ladies excused themselves from the good doctor’s company and headed toward the coat rack.
The two women put their heads together and whispered, but Lexy saw Julia nod. Confirmed. How very odd.
She brought her coffee cup up to her lips for a sip, then thought better of it. Four women who all ate at Margie’s diner, all having the same weird dreams. Maybe it was the coffee.
“See?” she said to Amanda.
Julia turned and smiled tentatively at them, then went back to her seat. Margie nodded at Lexy, and a chill ran through her bones.
~~~
Wolver was chopping wood when Pamela pulled up. He was bare chested and wore raggedy jeans. The black T-shirt she bought him last Christmas hung from a nearby tree branch. He smiled at her as she parked, then finished splitting the piece of pine and threw it on top of the sizeable pile he’d been making.
“Shouldda called,” he said. “I’d have dressed.”
“You look dressed,” she said as she walked over and put her hands on his pecs. He was gorgeous, no question.
He kissed her cheek, and wrapped his big, wood-chopping, steamy arms around her. He made her feel small. “I’d have shaved,” he whispered.
“You don’t have a phone,” she said, “or I’d have made a reservation.”
He smelled her hair, and ran his hands around her back. Then he pulled back, and she watched his eyes as they searched her eyes, her face, her clothes. Wolver’s place was where Pamela came to feel appreciated. He put his hands inside her jacket, pulled her to him and locked his lips onto hers in a wonderful welcome-home.
“C’mon in,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the front door. “I’ll put the coffee on.”
She giggled like a little girl. She couldn’t help it.
Pamela and Wolver had made magic the first time they met when he was working for the Department of Natural Resources and she was teaching an environmental politics class at the local community college. She took the students on a field trip to a lake up in the northwoods, and Wolver—his name had been Daniel Wickam then—had drawn the short straw and had to escort them around and answer all their questions.
The minute they laid eyes on each other, the students disappeared and they spent all their time maneuvering to get alone. Finally, he slipped her his phone number, and that started a love affair that kept them each satisfied in their own way.
Wolver found that cabin on a piece of property in the middle of nowhere, and Pamela inherited a fortune, and despite the lifestyle changes, they had found a way to get together usually at least once or twice a month. Occasionally their separations were longer, when things got busy, but the unconventional relationship suited them.
And the sex was fantastic. Pamela had never known someone like him. He delighted in every inch of her. He pinched, probed, licked, sucked, kissed and named each body part, with a playful, worshipful ease. She fell for him, all the way.
This time, it was hard for her to keep from telling him that there was a new body part for him to name. Not yet. Soon. And when it was over, she felt soft and sweet and feminine and loved. As always.
She snuggled down into his side, smelling the warmth of the cabin and its little woodstove, smelling the warmth of Wolver and his bed and she was as contented as a woman could ever be.
“You can’t stay the night,” he said, and that broke the spell. He always wanted her to spend the night. He usually tried to get her to move in and never leave.
“Why?”
“There’s something in the woods,” he said, idly toying with her hair. “I can’t get a fix on it, and probably won’t unless we have a first snow and I can see tracks. But it’s out there, and I don’t know what it is.”
“You don’t know what it is? What could it be?” She turned and looked at him, but his eyes were fixed firmly on the ceiling. “Is it a person?”
“It’s big. I hear it snuffling.”
“Bear,” she said.
He shook his head. “Like no bear I’ve ever seen. Or heard. Or smelled.”
Pamela had to believe him. Wolver was smarter about independent, survival living than anybody. “Are we in danger?”
“I don’t think I am. But I don’t know about you. If this thing is staking out territory, you’re an invader.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“That’s why I need you to leave before dark.”
“Are you hunting it?”
“Not yet. I’m hoping it will move on. I brought all my traps in. I don’t want—I don’t want it in my traps.”
She whined a little sound deep in her throat to let him know how disappointed she was. He turned toward her and gave her a big hug. “I know, sweetie. Me, too. I’d just feel better if I got a fix on this thing.”
“Okay.” She looked out the window and saw long shadows. “That’s soon,” she said. “I never even got the stuff out of my car.”
“Come up again next week. Between now and then, I’ll try to get a handle on it, so you can stay over and we can make juicy-juice all night long.”
“Mmmm,” she said. “That’s what I want to hear.”
“I love you, baby,” he said, kissed her forehead, and then leaped out of bed.
Her moment to tell him about Wolver, Jr., had come and gone. She’d come back to tell him next week.
~~~
When Regina Porter woke from her nap on the sofa, she woke with her hands in her crotch. Head still full of the thrumming, syrupy pounding of her dream, she leaped up and smoothed her dress over her legs. Pearce was at the church, preparing for Sunday. He didn’t know about her dreams. There was no need for him to know. She’d spent the morning making cookies and bundt cakes—all the ladies of the church were contributing baked goods, and Margie was selling them in her diner, so the church could buy new choir robes. Regina loved to bake, but it became exhausting work.
Especially since she hadn’t been sleeping well.
She went to the kitchen and washed her hands, then lost herself in wonderment of the feelings that these dreams had brought out in her. Obnoxiously enough, she didn’t think of Pearce when she woke, she thought of Doc. She’d like to have Doc, big, sweet, open-faced, calm, kind Doc put his hands on her and tease her passions until she flew away like she was doing in these dreams.
He didn’t feature in her dreams, though. She couldn’t quite visualize who or what it was that ignited her imagination so. There was an impression of big, of round, of kind of humpy, but there were no facial features. It wasn’t like her adolescent dreams of movie stars, or Pearce, when he’d been courting. She felt too old, too proper, too clergy-wife to be having lusts like this, and it stole her appetite and made her feel guilty in front of her husband.
No, if Pearce—god forbid—should die, Regina would have no reason to move away from White Pines Junction. She’d make a home for herself here, and as soon as she bought a little cottage for herself with Pearce’s life insurance, she’d march right on over to the tackle shop and gift that precious Doc with one of her best lemon poppyseed bundt cakes.
But in real life, Pearce was expecting his call to a new parish any day, and he sometimes came home early just to check the mail. Pity. He’d just got used to this community. Regina was growing to love this place. She didn’t want to leave it.
She didn’t want to move away from Doc.
Regina blinked him away from her mind, dried her hands on a fresh dishcloth and felt the top of the two bundts she’d taken out of the oven just before her nap. They were cool and ready for a dusting of powdered sugar.
~~~
By the time another week had rolled around, Pamela found herself full of anxiety. She felt as though the father of her unborn child, Wolver, the love of her life, was in danger, and she was powerless to do anything about it. Pamela liked having a little control over the things in her life. Her body, for instance, her finances, her destiny. That thought gave her a little chuckle as she rounded the three-mile mark on her run. Her reproductive system had taken over her body, world conditions had taken over her finances, and her destiny was up to the whims of the gods. She had no power, not really, and she was kidding herself if she thought she did.
Still, she’d like it better if Wolver had a phone.
When she got home from her run, she was surprised to see his Jeep in her driveway. He came into town occasionally, but she usually knew when to expect him. And he never stayed long. He only lived two hours north, but when he gave up town life, he really gave it up. He must be out of something important.
She pulled into the driveway behind him, got out and went into the house. He was at her kitchen table with a small glass of bourbon in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. She eyed the bourbon.
“Hey.” He smelled rangy and looked like it had been a while since he’d slept. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. This was not like Wolver.
“You all right?”
“Better now,” he said, and drank down the bourbon. “I needed that.”
“You need a bath,” she said. “Get out of those clothes and I’ll wash them.”
He nodded, and started unbuttoning his shirt. Pamela knew that when he was ready, he’d say what he came to say. He stood up and shucked his clothes, right there in the kitchen, and walked naked into the bathroom. She scooped them up from the floor, and put them in the washing machine. She’d wait until they’d both showered before turning it on.
But her insides jangled. He hadn’t hugged her or kissed her. He hadn’t seemed particularly happy to see her. Something was troubling him. Something big, and in Pamela’s pregnant female mind, it could only be a problem between them.
“Whatever it is,” she whispered to herself, “I’ll survive it.” She put her hand on her tummy. “We’ll survive it.” She sat on her bed and waited for him to finish in the bathroom. Generally, she’d rip off her clothes and join him for a good giggly, sudsy mutual scrub, but not this time. He needed his space, and she had a feeling she was going to need hers.
He came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and climbed immediately into her bed.
Maybe he’s sick, she thought, as she wrangled her way out of her spandex. She took a fast shower, powdered, perfumed, blew her hair dry, but by the time she got back to the bedroom, Wolver was snoring.
She slipped in next to him, waking him slowly with gentle caresses.
“Mmm,” he said. “Feels good.”
“Tell me,” she said.
He turned onto his back, put his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “I just needed to come to town. I needed to get out of there.”
This wasn’t like Wolver. Pamela just kept rubbing his scalp with the tips of her fingers.
“There’s something out there. There’s either something there or I’m losing my mind. Either way, it ain’t right, it ain’t human, it’s like nothing I’ve ever . . . known before.” He paused. Rubbed his face.
“You saw it?” She tried hard to keep her voice soft, quiet, intimate. He was like a skittish wild animal, and she didn’t want to spook him.
“Sorta. Maybe. I don’t know. God, I don’t know.”
“You’re safe here, babe,” she said. “Take a nap.”
“Yeah . . . ,” he said, and drifted off to sleep.
~~~
“Okay,” Margie said to the women collected in her living room. “We need to make this fast before Jimbo comes home.”
“Jimbo doesn’t know?” Lexy asked.
“No, I told him this was a meeting of the high school booster club.”
She ignored the few snorts and muffled laughs that passed through the assembled.
“I’m at my wits’ end,” she said. “There’s something going on here, and we need to find out what it is, because it isn’t normal, and if it’s wickedness or evil, then we need to take steps to be rid of it.”
“The dreams are harmless,” Natasha said. “They’re good for our sex lives.”
“But we shouldn’t all be having them,” Julia said. “That’s just plain creepy.”
“This isn’t the only creepy thing that goes on here,” Margie said, and, for a moment, everyone thought of Margie’s missing little boy, Micah.
Louise Leppens broke the silence. “Anybody here ever do any dream analysis?”
“Not since the Northern Aire burned down,” Amanda said.
“Are we being poisoned?” Lexy asked. “Are these hallucinations?”
“Are the men having the same dreams?” Louise asked.
Everybody laughed. “If they did,” Lexy said, “we’d all be pregnant.”
“Settle down,” Margie said, clearly disapproving of all the women being pregnant at once. “That was a good question about dream analysis.”
“I think dream analysis,” Kimberly said, “is a view into one’s personal psyche. This seems to be a shared dream. Are we all having the same dream?”
“Good question,” Margie said. “Are any of you dreaming about anybody in particular? Anybody you know?”
“No!” Regina Porter said, a little too quickly, and then she blushed.
“It makes me think a lot about Paulie Timmins,” Lexy said, “but I don’t see his face while I’m dreaming. But there is something. Kind of big and round. Humpy, sort of. It’s not like I’m having sex with it, but I want to. Or something. It’s standing just out of my line of sight.”
There were nods in the audience, and Margie, standing by the kitchen door, leaned against the doorjamb. There was something, kind of big, kind of humpy, sort of.
“What else?” she asked.
“Sometimes I think I wake up just in the nick of time,” Julia said. “When I wake up, I’m afraid that if I slept a moment longer, if I was in that dream for just a second more, that I’d die.”
More nods.
Margie remembered that, too. “Think it’s safe to say all the women in town are having these dreams? What about in the county?”
Nods amid shrugs.
“Sister Ruth?” Lexy asked, and the women tittered with nervous laughter.
“Yes,” Margie said, looking pointedly at Lexy. “I spoke with her today. She’s having them as well.”
“Jeez,” Lexy said. “Now there’s a mental image.”
“Don’t be cruel,” Margie said. “She’s a woman, just like the rest of us.”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do about this,” Julia said. “Just like there’s nothing we seem to be able to do about the other things.”
Margie watched the women in her living room debate the situation. She found comfort in knowing she wasn’t alone, but, by the same token, she worried about the evil of it all. This was something taking control of the dreams of every woman in the county. That was some powerful magic.
It made her want to move away. Take her remaining son and husband and get the hell out of this place. Just walk away from the diner. Just walk away from Sister Ruth. Just walk away from Doc and the sheriff and all these women, and the memories, and the nightmares—
But she knew she never would. She had knowingly put her family at risk before, and not run away from it. The price had been one son. The price of this nocturnal pleasure would be heavy too, she knew, but it had yet to reveal itself.
No, she’d never leave Vargas County. She’d never leave White Pines Junction. She’d never leave the diner, Sister Ruth, her friends . . . she’d never give up those dreams voluntarily. That thought felt like sin. So she was a sinner. Who wasn’t?
“So let’s say it is a force of evil,” Kimberly was saying. “What’s the point?”
Margie didn’t want to listen to what Lexy and the rest had to say about that, so she backed into the kitchen and arranged cookies on a plate. This meeting was a good idea in that it opened the doors to communication, but nothing was going to be decided.
She brought the cookies out and set them on the coffee table.
“It’s progressing,” Natasha said. “It started slow, but now it’s every night, and it’s more intense, and now there’s that . . . that creature on the sidelines. One of these nights it will show its face.”
“Yeah,” Kimberly said. “And I’m afraid that whoever it is, whatever it is, I’m going to recognize it.”
Margie shuddered.
~~~
In the morning, Wolver looked a hundred percent better. Pamela made orange juice, pancakes and bacon, and he ate everything that came off the griddle and drank a whole pot of coffee. “Going to hang around for a while?” she asked from across the table, holding her coffee cup in both hands.
“C’mere,” he said, and scooted his chair back from the table.
She went to him and he pulled her down onto his lap and nuzzled his face in her breasts.
“I’ve got to go back up. It’s like a disturbance in the force.”
They both smiled.
“I’ve got to fix it.”
“Stay a couple of days. There’s nothing that important up there.” She didn’t like the whiny quality of her voice.
“It’s important,” he said.
She nodded and wrapped her arms around his neck. Tell him now, she thought.
He pushed her up off his lap just as she was ready to open her mouth. She scooted around to the chair next to him.
“The thing is,” he started, then rubbed his face. “The thing is, I think I recognize this thing. I’ve seen it out of the corner of my eye, or in my dreams, or my childhood nightmares or on some movie sometime, or something.”
“Tell me,” she said, affection pouring out for him in a volume she never knew she contained.
He looked her straight in the eyes. “I think it’s me,” he said.
~~~
“I don’t mean to be crude,” Dr. Sanborn said, “but it’s like all the womenfolk have gone into heat. I’m dispensing birth control like crazy. Even Audrey has been a little uncharacteristically amorous these days.”
“There’s definitely something strange going on with them,” Doc said. “Even I’ve noticed it. Regina Porter, who hasn’t been in the shop all summer, has been in every day in the past week. Flirting.”
“None of the pills seem to be working, though. I’ve got more pregnancies than I know what to do with. Margie Benson is expecting. Even Kimberly, who swears she hasn’t had sex with a man since they put Cousins in prison. Nine months from now we’re going to have a boom. Good thing Audrey’s past that stage.”
“Jeez,” Doc said. “It’s not like this place needs more kids. What’s the county doing, repopulating itself?”
Hutch Sanborn set his empty beer glass on the table and wiped his mustache with the cocktail napkin. “Speaking of Audrey,” he said.
“Yeah,” Doc said. “Better get on home while it lasts.”
“My thoughts exactly. Good night.”
Doc saw Hutch to the door, and turned on the porch light for him. When the doctor drove away, Doc turned off the light, closed and locked the door, then went back into the kitchen. It was a cold, lonely house. He wondered if there was a way he could capitalize on this breeding energy that was going on in town, but he wasn’t exactly the attractive type, the only place he knew he could go would be the bar, and he didn’t go there, and Regina Porter was the only one attracted to him anyway.
He slumped into the old couch and turned on the television. There was only one channel, and it was fuzzy, but it was better than dwelling on his solitude. Maybe John would be home sometime soon. Someone to talk to on this very lonely night.
He grabbed the bucket of terminal tackle and tools that always sat in his living room next to the coffee table, and his hands started the endless job of making leaders while his eyes tried to make sense of the snowy TV and his mind wandered to soft skin and how nice it used to be when Sadie Katherine was there.
~~~
Pamela fretted over Wolver for a week, and then she decided that worry and stress wasn’t doing the baby any good. She needed to go check on him to make sure he was all right. Besides. It was time he knew about the baby. She didn’t want him to think she was hiding the information from him. When a week had passed, she thought that was sufficient time, it wouldn’t give him the impression that she was too pushy, too needy, too aggressive, so she threw an overnight bag into the car and headed north.
What she found when she got there was alarming. Pamela always knew that there must be something a little bit odd about a man who only wanted to live by himself in a cabin in the woods with no modern conveniences, no neighbors, no social contact, but until she was considering making a family with Wolver, she never really saw him.
He was sitting on his woodchopping stump when she pulled up. He was just sitting there, not drinking coffee, not resting, just sitting, staring into space. Pamela had never seen him motionless before.
“Hey,” she said.
He gave her a wan smile.
“You okay?”
He shook his head no.
“What’s the matter?” She knelt in the wood chips next to him and put a hand on his thigh.
He shook his head. “I feel like I’ve accomplished my purpose.”
“What’s your purpose?”
He shrugged. “No clue.”
“Honey,” she said. “Come inside. I’ll make you some tea.”
It was as if he hadn’t heard her. “I dream all the time about all these women. Having sex with a dozen women a night. Only I’m not myself, I’m some kind of a creature. The creature I see sometimes—” he swept the woods with a hand, and then it fell back into his lap like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“Wolver, you’re starting to scare me.”
“I can’t sleep. When I sleep, I can’t rest. I can’t remember my childhood. My earliest memories are about a year ago, just before I met you.” He looked at her, his face drawn, his eyes haunted. “Why is that, Pamela?”
“I don’t know, babe. I think you ought to come home with me. Maybe too much solitude is catching up with you.”
“I can’t believe that will help. I feel like I’m finished, and I don’t know why.”
“Come home with me. Just leave your stuff. We’ll come back and get it later.”
He didn’t move.
“Wolver? We’re going to have a baby.”
A crease furrowed his brow. He looked down at her kneeling at his feet. “So that’s it,” he said. He nodded.
“Honey?”
He nodded again, then stood up and walked off into the woods.
When two days had come and gone and he still wasn’t back, Pamela tidied up the cabin, took the black T-shirt that still smelled like him, and went home. She worried about her baby, who it was, what it would become, but then she decided that worry wasn’t good for it. She tried not to think about what it might be.
~~~
“It’s gone,” Margie said out loud. She hadn’t realized the nighttime sexual presence was that palpable all day, all the time, until just this second when it quit. The demon had released her.
She took her hands out of the big bowl of salad that she had been tossing, wiped her hands on a clean cloth, threw it over her shoulder, and walked out into the diner.
All the women were looking up, as if the thing that had weighed them all down for months had finally vanished, leaving their heads light, and they automatically looked up. Like vixens sniffing the air.
Soon they all turned and looked at each other, and at her.
She knew if she started laughing, they’d all join in. But strangely enough, she didn’t feel like it.