 
Doll Baby

Copyright 2013 by James Hampton

Smashwords edition

All rights reserved.

DOLL BABY

1

After ten years on the police force Officer Kent Jacoby figured he had seen it all, though he never said so out loud. Fate might interpret his statement as a challenge and try to one-up him, so he kept the thought to himself. Still, in the past decade, he had witnessed enough of human evil and human error to believe that, whatever grisly scene awaited him at the fashionable home of the apparently now-deceased Winston and Eleanor Fleming, he could handle it. And Officer Jacoby—who, with his commanding height, close-cropped dark hair, and chiseled features looked every bit the Hollywood ideal of the job he performed—would be proven correct today, but by a much narrower margin than he might have liked.

An ambulance was en route to the Fleming residence, but Officer Jacoby had been nearby when word came in and would easily beat them there. The couple's housekeeper, a Mrs. Myrtle Sibley, had placed the 9-1-1 call. She had been near hysteria while talking to the dispatcher, but composed enough to remain adamant on at least two points: first, even though she felt sure the Flemings were dead, she could not begin to speculate as to what had killed them; and, secondly, the first responders would need to bring a ladder to, in her words, "get them down."

That phrase had stuck with Officer Jacoby. "Get them down." The dispatcher had probed for more details. Get them down from where? But Myrtle couldn't say. She had been too upset—or too bewildered—to give a proper answer.

***

The Flemings' abode was a handsome Federal-style mansion nestled amid oaks and cherry trees. As Officer Jacoby pulled up to the front entrance he spotted a distraught woman—slim, in her late fifties, grey hair pulled back in a braid—that could only have been Myrtle Sibley sitting on the steps. She leapt to her feet, rushed down to his patrol car to meet him.

"Oh, Officer, thank you for coming," she sobbed. "I didn't know what to do. I just—I can't—I've never seen anything like it."

"Yes, ma'am," Officer Jacoby said. "Where are they?"

"Inside."

She led him into the palatial foyer, and then down a short hallway, at the end of which was a pair of mahogany double-doors; on the other side of those doors, she said, was the mansion's library, where he would find the bodies of the Winston and Eleanor Fleming—but she stopped short of opening them for him.

"They're in there," Myrtle told him. "I can't go in. I can't look at them again."

"I understand. Just wait here." Steeling himself, Officer Jacoby turned the doorknob.

Okay, he thought, let's see what we've got.

Stepping inside the library, he glanced around: oak-paneled walls; elegant furniture; hot sunlight streaming in through a pair of tall windows...but no corpses.

"I don't see anything."

"Look up," Myrtle said from the hall.

Officer Jacoby looked up.

He looked up and thought: It's a joke.

It was a joke, had to be a joke, the vile product of an especially grotesque sense of humor...

Yet his insides, his guts, knew better. His heart fluttered; the juices in his belly turned chill and agitated; his lungs pressed out flat. He backed into the hallway again.

"It's so horrible," he heard Myrtle say from behind him, but her words barely registered. "What's happened to them?"

Officer Jacoby had no idea. But he was a good solid policeman and he kept his bearing as he observed the strange phenomenon overhead. Kept it even though he knew that for as long as he lived he would remember, in perfect detail, the way the bodies of Winston and Eleanor Fleming had looked on that beautiful spring day.

"How do we get them down from there?" Myrtle wailed in despair.

But Officer Jacoby wasn't listening.

Today, he decided.

Today I've finally seen it all.

2

ONE YEAR LATER—

With a sigh, Norm Peters shut down his personal computer.

Before the monitor faded to darkness he took note of the time: 12:53am. He had gotten online at nine o'clock, which meant that tonight he had given over some four hours of his life to feeding an addiction to pornography.

As always, in the aftermath of these marathon sessions, Norm found himself pondering all the other, better things he might have done in that time.

He could have worked out with the weights currently sitting idle in his guest bedroom.

He could have read a book.

He could have watched television, even; nothing on cable—raunchy as it had gotten over the years—would make him feel as befouled as he did right now.

But no; Norm had spent the last four hours as a voyeur. The only difference between him and a Peeping Tom was that the people he had just observed in coitus intended for his hungry eyes to be on them. Indeed, that was how they made their living.

So many bad things could come from a habit like this.

What if one of those websites contained child pornography—even if Norm himself had not accessed it—and he was caught up in a police investigation?

What if one of the adult entertainment companies tracked down his IP address, and sued him for downloading copyrighted material that someone else, illegally, had made available to the public?

What if his computer acquired serious problems, necessitating the presence of a technical consultant who would delve deep into the digital guts of the machine and find the residue of all the naughty websites Norm had visited over the past couple of years?

Shame, embarrassment, the slight but not insignificant possibility of legal jeopardy—all of these things contained in the electric box that sat on Norm's desk. And the feelings of guilt, of anxiety, of generalized disgust with himself, got worse every time. One day Norm hoped they would be strong enough to make him stop altogether; that the pleasure he took from viewing such materials would be overshadowed by the negative emotions that came after. He was not there yet—but he liked to think he was getting closer.

Anyway, it was time, past time really, to retire for the evening. He got up from the desk, trudged toward the bathroom to brush his teeth before going to bed.

Balding, overweight, rosy-cheeked Norman Peters was forty-five years old. He had gotten a divorce a decade ago, with no serious relationships since. The marriage had not produced any children, as Norm was sterile, and while adoption had been considered, the couple's difficult finances kept getting in the way. Aside from devouring online smut, he entertained himself by riding his bicycle, or working in the yard. But that, at this sad point in his existence, was it.

I'm alone, he often thought, and it looks like I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.

Norm had noticed that, whenever he was under stress or feeling lonelier than usual, he was most likely to venture into the XXX-Rated world.

His teeth brushed, and a touch of Rogaine applied to his shiny pate, Norm got into his cold, long-empty bed and switched off the lamp—but at least another hour passed before he slept.

3

Across town, at the same time, someone else's night was just beginning.

She had observed the Magnolia Lounge for the last couple of nights, and was pleased so far with what she saw: a largely male clientele, with most of the guys showing up alone and leaving alone; a well-deserved reputation for roughness, judging by the number of fellows she'd seen tossed out the front door the previous night; and, best of all, well outside the city limits, just a ramshackle place on the edge of some recently cleared timberland. It was perfect.

She had done enough watching now, though.

It was time to harvest.

***

She was really quite lovely—the woman now stepping into the dark, smoke-filled establishment—with her curly, platinum blond hair and voluptuous figure. But in her too-short black skirt and low-cut red blouse she looked a bit like a hooker, which, of course, was exactly what she wanted the men in here to think. She quickly found a seat at the bar next to a burly man somewhere in his early-to-middle fifties with a salt-and-pepper beard and close-set eyes. When he looked at her she gave him a half-smile but said nothing.

"I'll have a Tequila Sunrise," she informed the bartender in her light, breathy, Southern-accented voice.

The gentleman was still looking at her. "How are you doin' tonight, honey?" he asked.

Got him, she thought. "Oh, I'm all right. Lonely, though."

"Really? How can a pretty thing like you be lonely on a Friday night?"

She giggled. This is just way too easy.

"Bad luck, I reckon."

"Bad luck?"

"Yeah. I'm starting to think I'm just the kind of girl that bad luck follows around."

"What kind of bad luck?"

"The kind with men," she answered.

The bearded fellow's eyes shone with interest.

And she thought: You're putting it all together, aren't you, sweetheart? Or at least you believe you're putting it all together. I can almost see inside your head. I'm a damaged woman, you're thinking, a tough but still-vulnerable dame just coming out of a bad relationship and looking to get laid to boost my self-esteem. And you, of course, are all too happy to oblige with the getting laid part, I'll bet.

"Maybe you just haven't found the right man," he suggested, giving her a half-smile of his own.

"There's no such thing as the right man. They're all equally bad," she said, "just in different ways."

"You're sure about that?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"Just pretty sure, huh," he said. "So there's still a chance you could change your mind. Am I right?"

She shrugged. "Maybe so—but it'd take some work."

"Let me buy you a drink."

***

His name turned out to be Hal, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, although the personality of one of her marks was not, never had been, nor ever could be, a factor in her decision to harvest him or not. Her only interest was in the ease of acquisition, and with Hal, thankfully, there was tremendous ease; no sport in it really. He was married, of course. He hadn't come out and told her so, but her extraordinary sense of smell told her that a woman's hands had been on his clothes in the last twenty-four hours; her keen nostrils picked up on traces of lotion and fingernail polish embedded in the fabric, two products she was pretty sure Hal didn't use. Most telling of all was the tan line from his wedding ring.

Removed for safekeeping, no doubt.

In short order they were about fifteen minutes outside of a nearby town on this dark, rural stretch of highway. She had suggested to Hal they get a room at the Good Night Inn, the closest motel, and he had enthusiastically agreed. Only she'd never intended for the two of them to actually reach it. And now, with no other cars visible on the road, she figured it was time to make her move.

"Pull over," she said, shifting in the passenger side, trying to appear uncomfortable.

"Why?"

"I have to pee."

"What? Can't it wait until we get to the motel?"

"No, it can't wait. Pull over, please."

And you'll do as I say because you want to screw me tonight. So pull over, stupid.

Hal, shaking his head, swerved off on the side of the road, brought the vehicle to halt, and threw it into "Park."

"All right," he grumbled, "here we are."

"Thank you, darling." She opened the door, got out, and peered into the woods. Then she looked back at Hal. "It looks so dark in there," she said, standing with her hands on her hips. "Could you get out of the truck and sort of stand guard for me, maybe?"

"I guess so," Hal said, throwing open the driver's side door. "Hey, wait." He leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a small flashlight. "Use this too."

My, but aren't you the gentleman?

She appreciated his chivalry. Hal got out, came around the truck, and handed her the flashlight.

"That's nice of you," she said, switching on the light. "I'll be back in just a second, okay?"

"Sure."

She started into the grand pine forest, leaving Hal to wait, hands in his pockets, beside the idling truck.

How long should I give it? she asked herself, descending into the woods. Maybe thirty seconds, a full minute, what?

She decided it was better to act quickly. She could see the silly man leaning against his truck. He seemed calm, but he might get suspicious—perhaps thinking she had set him up to be robbed or something—and drive away.

He would be right, naturally, although it wasn't his money she was looking to steal.

Yes, I'll do it now, she thought, cutting off the flashlight. He's far enough away that he won't be able to make it back to the driver's seat in time.

She giggled again. She just couldn't help herself. She was having way too much fun tonight.

Hearing her laughter, Hal called into the woods, "What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing," she called back to him as she began to transform. "I was just thinking of a joke."

"You'll have to tell me what it is," he said, scanning among the pines for her.

But she gave him no response. With a soft flutter of her wings she had risen above the trees, and was headed back to him, albeit from a direction he would never have expected.

"You all right in there?" Hal asked of the now-vacant forest. He took another step forward. "I want to hear what that joke is."

He was looking, of course, in the wrong place. She wasn't in front of him anymore. In the time it had taken for him to speak those last words she had floated into position about five feet above him, and was now staring down at him, a broad grin on her face. She switched on the light again and let it shine down on top of his head.

"It's on you, sweetheart," she said.

Hal looked up, and it was as much the whirring of her wings as the sound of her voice that drew his attention.

"I'll be taking a pass on that hotel room tonight," she added. "I hope you don't mind."

Hal's eyes grew wide.

He opened his mouth to scream.

But then—to his credit, she had to admit—Hal found the wherewithal to make a dash for the driver's side of the truck. Most men were simply paralyzed with fear or wonder, which quickly became fear, the moment they saw her in her true form. In that regard, Hal was a cut above the rest.

Even so, it was not enough to save his life.

"Oh, no, you don't," she cried as he lunged for the safety of the truck's cabin.

She dropped the flashlight, swooped down on top of him just as his right hand closed over and around the steering wheel. Though Hal struggled mightily, he could not hold on as she dragged him back out to his doom.

"Come here," she hissed, "you adorable little man."

With these words the harvest commenced, after which Hal fought no more.

The flashlight lay on the shoulder of the road, blasting bright, dumb light into the rustling pines.

4

For fifteen years Norm had been employed in the accounting department of a specialty chemicals plant that, despite chronic financial distress, remained one of the county's largest employers. He didn't like the job, but it was easy work. Unfortunately, he could never be sure how long the work would last. On a few brief occasions in the last decade, the plant had sat idle. Those were scary times for Norm, as they were no doubt for the rest of company's workforce, but sound management was keeping the place afloat. Norm hoped it would stay that way.

He was seated at his desk reviewing accounts receivable when Sadie Newell, the company secretary, poked her head into his office.

Sadie was one of the few people in Norm's life whose mere presence was enough to lift his spirits. Always upbeat, with frizzy blond hair, the thirty-three-year-old mother of two small boys was a joy to be around. Her husband, Dave, was a lucky fellow, and Norm often wished he had found her first—although he was skeptical, frankly, she would have ever gone for a guy like him.

"Hi, Norm," she sang out. "Have you decided?"

"I'm really not comfortable with it, Sadie."

"Norm!" Her tone was exasperated. For several weeks now she had been after him to embrace the world of online dating. She had pointed Norm to the singles website through which she met her husband and urged him to create an online profile there. But Norm was reluctant to do so. Last Friday he had said he would make a final decision over the weekend. Today was Tuesday, the first time they had talked since.

"I know, I know," he said. "I guess I'm just old-fashioned."

Sadie stepped into the office, lowering her voice. "Look, Norm, I wasn't comfortable with it either," she said. "I've told you that. My friends dragged me into it kicking and screaming—but I'm so glad they did, because if they hadn't, I would never have met Dave."

Norm did not respond.

"It's hard enough to meet people in this town," she went on. "Why don't you let the internet do some of the work for you?"

"I just don't know."

***

That night Norm Peters took a seat in front of his computer. He leaned down, turned it on. As he waited for the startup process to complete, he thought, I hate my life.

He was planning to look at some adult entertainment before going to bed. He never needed a reason to do so, of course, but he noticed that he was much more inclined to view pornography when, first, under great stress or, second, feeling sad. Tonight it was the second scenario.

It hurt most when he saw families with young children: a mother, a daddy, two or three little moppets. Because he seldom went out in public except to go to work, Norm encountered few such families. But they could not be avoided completely. On his lunch hour, or on the weekend when he went to the public library to check out a book or two, he would see a perfect little family unit and think: This isn't right. I'm a good man. I can provide for a family. I want to provide for a family. So why hasn't it happened? What am I doing wrong?

He reserved special interest in—and sometimes ire for—the men in the families.

Tell me something, he would say to these guys, at least in his own mind. Do you treat your family well? Are you faithful to your wife? Do you play with those kids? Do you tell them you love them? Are you thankful each night to have them in your life? I hope you are. I hope you know how lucky you are to have all these things I want so desperately. I'm sure you say so, but do you mean it? Do you feel it? I'm not sure that some of you do.

Norm's computer was ready to go. He glanced at the Internet Explorer icon.

Then again, I say I want these things, but what am I doing to get them? If I want them as badly as I say I do, shouldn't I be willing to tolerate a little discomfort, a little potential embarrassment? I mean, one thing is for damn sure. I'm not going to meet anyone porn-surfing every night. At least Sadie's suggestion offers me a chance at happiness.

Norm clicked the icon.

I have a choice. I can go to one of the many porn sites I've bookmarked on this machine and waste another few hours of my life, or I can go to the dating website Sadie told me about and take a chance. Something good might come of it.

Yet his fingers hovered over the keyboard.

But I'm afraid.

He let his hands fall in his lap.

Afraid of what, though? Realistically, what should be scarier to me—the prospect of having a couple of bad dates, or of being alone all my life?

His hands found the keyboard again.

Being alone, he decided, bar none.

He typed the name of the website in the address bar.

And in an instant, there it was: a beautiful lavender screen studded with pictures of happy smiling couples of all races and ages.

Come on, Norm, he told himself. Keep going.

Drawing his breath deep, he clicked on the tab that read, "Create New Account."

5

Paul and Helen Mallard could not have asked for a finer day on which to celebrate the fifth birthday of their daughter, Brittany: lots of sunshine; pleasantly warm; birds singing in the trees. This was Brittany's first true birthday party, in the sense that the spritely towheaded girl had actually played a significant role in planning it; for her two previous parties, Helen had drawn up a few invitations to friends with same-aged or similarly-aged children and invited them over to the house for an afternoon of refreshments. This time, though, Brittany had invited over two dozen children, a number Paul found extraordinary and even a bit daunting, but Helen had assured him that, with all the other mothers present, it would not be difficult to supervise. Plus, tiny stomachs would require only tiny pieces of cake, nothing like having to feed adults.

The location was different too: the site of Brittany's party today was the large public park in a section of town that had only come into being in the great housing boom of the early twenty-first century. The area had been a magnet for young professional couples like Paul and Helen—both of whom were in their early thirties and worked for the county government, with Brittany being the first of their three planned children—and they had quickly befriended many other families of similar size and interests. The housing boom, of course, had eventually become a bust and many such families were deep underwater on their mortgages, but for the most part folks here were in no great hurry to sell out. If you had to be trapped in a particular neighborhood, the consensus view held, this one was a pretty good choice.

The park—which boasted playground equipment, a two-mile track, and a large multi-use athletic field, among other taxpayer-funded amenities—had been carved out of a vast tract of timberland, all pine, once owned by a large paper company that had kindly donated the property. Brittany's celebration was ongoing under a pavilion at the edge of the athletic field.

***

It was picture time. Paul Mallard—thin, blond, bespectacled with his thick glasses and slightly nervous manner—was keen to get some quality photographs taken of Brittany for the family album. Holding his brand-new Nikon camera to his chest with one hand, he motioned to slender, brunette Helen with the other, loudly cleared his throat.

Helen, who had been chatting with the mother of a girl in attendance, glanced over at him. "Now...?" she squeaked. Her face reflected trepidation.

"Just a few," Paul assured her, "not many."

He sympathized with Helen. He knew she didn't like to have her picture taken, and he understood why: she blinked in so many of them, maybe most. He'd once joked with her that if he had a nickel for every photograph of Helen, going all the way back to childhood, with a big smile on her face and her eyes tightly shut, the two of them could retire—but only once, as Helen had failed to see the humor.

Anyway, this was about Brittany, who thankfully had not manifested her mother's aversion to flash bulbs. Paul had the whole thing mapped out: three rounds of pictures, the first of which would be Brittany and Helen standing together, followed by a second of Brittany unwrapping her gifts, and a third of what Paul referred to as "candid shots," in which he would stealthily prowl around the edges of the revelry, snapping shots of Brittany in various stages of delight as she and her friends made first use of all her new gifts.

Helen meekly went over to Brittany, who was at the center of a cluster of little girls, and touched her shoulder. "Darling," she said. "Come with me for a minute. Daddy wants to take some pictures."

"But I don't want to," Brittany whined.

Helen's grip became firmer. "Daddy really wants to get some pictures of you. It won't take long, I promise." Under her breath, she mumbled, "It had better not anyway."

"All right," Brittany grumbled, allowing her mother to lead her away.

"Okay, girls," said an ecstatic Paul. "Let's get you two with the field behind you."

Helen and Brittany arranged themselves in front of the field. Paul looked at them through the lens of the camera. Then he shook his head.

"Too much light," he said. "Come in a little closer, okay?"

The two Mallard ladies did as ordered. "Paul," Helen began, "it doesn't have to be perfect."

"Yes it does," Paul disagreed, a slight edge in his voice. "Just humor me here, okay?"

Helen sighed. She had always thought that she, as the wife and mother, would be the one committed to memorializing these kinds of occasions. But she had nothing on Paul, who embraced the little rituals of home and hearth with an enthusiasm that verged on obsession at times. The man had to photograph everything. Somewhere in the house there were a couple of pictures of Brittany while in potty training, seated primly on her little blue plastic toilet. The pictures contained an appalled Helen in the corner, trying to shoo him out before he could take any more of them.

"Oh, come on," he had complained at the time. "This is a rite of passage! We have to preserve this!"

In those pictures, remarkably enough, Helen's eyes were open—and horrified.

But Helen tolerated this trait in Paul. He had come from a broken home and had lived in the households of two different stepfathers before he was fifteen years old; one of those men was a drunk, while the other was an abusive drunk. He wanted his daughter's childhood to be as perfect as his had been flawed, and Helen loved him for that. But, boy, could he be irritating at times like these.

"All right now," Paul said, holding up the camera. "Say cheese!"

"Toe cheese!" Brittany cried.

Paul snapped a picture, and then glanced down at the image on the camera. Crap! Helen had blinked.

"Helen," he began.

But his wife already knew. "I had my eyes closed, didn't I?"

Paul nodded. "Better take some more."

"Maybe I just shouldn't be in the picture at all," Helen suggested. "Let me take it instead. You come over here and stand with Brittany."

"No, no," Paul said. "We'll just do it again. No problem."

"But I—"

"Okay, then." He brought the camera back up to his face. "Everybody say cheese!"

He snapped several additional pictures in rapid succession. Surely, he thought, the laws of mathematics guaranteed Helen would have her eyes open in at least one of them.

This being done, he once more studied the images on his camera. He was pleased by what he saw.

"You did it, Helen," he announced, looking up. "Congratulations."

Helen clapped her hands together. "I didn't blink this time?"

"In one you did—but for you that's amazing."

"Thanks," his wife said sourly.

"Mama, can I go back to my party now?" Brittany asked.

"Sure, honey. Sorry we kept you so long."

Paul had gotten a total of five pictures, of which four had Helen with her eyes open, and could therefore be used.

Only...what was that in the sky behind them?

The same tiny black dot appeared in each photograph, just over the heads of his wife and daughter. He hadn't noticed anything while he was taking the pictures, but then again, he'd been so preoccupied with Helen's eyes it was probably no surprise.

Paul lowered his camera, scanned the blue sky.

Something was there, all right. The dot hadn't been caused by some flaw in the internal workings of his camera, as he thought at first; it represented a real object, and that object, unidentifiable from this distance, was coming their way, though not quickly. Instead it seemed to be traveling languidly on the gentle summer breeze, like a balloon that had just enough helium to make it buoyant, yet needed air currents to lift it.

Behind Paul the children were chattering and squealing and laughing; however, he could no longer hear them. He knew only the feel of that summer breeze on his cheeks, the odd coldness on the back of his neck, and the drumming of his increasingly anxious heart. Something about the airborne object filled him with dread.

The wind died suddenly; in tandem, the object began to sink onto the field. On its present trajectory, it would land right in the middle.

Paul took a small step forward, not because he wanted to but because he felt he should.

"Paul...?" Helen said from the rear of him. "Are you okay?"

"Keep everyone here, Helen," he whispered, not looking back at her. "I'm going to go see what that is."

"See what...?" But Helen didn't finish her question, for she saw then what Paul was seeing: a strange, misshapen thing slowly descending to the center of the field, maybe fifty yards away, and lingering there.

Paul, screwing up his courage, started toward it in earnest.

"Paul, wait," Helen urged, trying to keep her voice down so the children wouldn't hear. "Don't."

"I'm just going to go check and see what it is," he told her. "Don't worry. It's probably nothing."

Helen may have said something else, but it didn't register with Paul. As he approached the fallen object, which had now come to rest on the ground, he was able to make out a few more features.

It was the approximate shape of a grotesquely overweight human being, with arms and legs. Because it lolled on its side and was turned away from him, Paul could not see a face, but he was pretty sure it had some sort of head, which led him to conclude initially this was a dummy—and a Plus-Sized dummy, at that. It was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans, but the shirt was split down the back; the jeans had ripped apart as well, revealing a pair of tightly-stretched plaid boxer shorts underneath—as if the clothes in which the dummy was dressed had suddenly become too small for it.

But that was absurd, and within ten feet of his quarry Paul thought he had the whole thing figured out anyway. A couple of weird kids, probably teenagers, had made a kind of flying scarecrow just for kicks. They had found some old torn up clothes, stuffed a bunch of helium-filled balloons inside, and maybe found a burlap sack or something to be the head, and then let their bizarre creation fly off to amuse, unnerve, or terrify people in the surrounding area.

Yeah, that's the ticket, thought Paul.

Only, once he was right on top the supposed scarecrow, Paul discovered that its head was no burlap sack. He might have dismissed the dark hair as a wig, but that was real skin on the back of the neck.

Paul's throat went dry.

The wind rose again now: swiftly, violently. A single gust ripped the supposed dummy from the ground, hurled it at Paul. The young father did not have time to turn around, let alone run away, before it collided with him.

The hideousness of the thing itself was not enough to make Paul scream. It was the hideousness of the thing plus his realization that it had once been a living man. Paul fell onto his back, the camera soaring into space, then clack-clack-clacking onto the soft dark earth nearby. He cried out as the monstrosity lingered over him, its ugly and somehow pathetic form framed by the sunlight that had once seemed so lovely, but which now revealed the stuff of nightmare in loving detail. The eyes had sunk back so far into the head they were barely visible anymore; the cheeks, throat, chest, and belly had swollen to an extent far greater than Paul would have thought possible without bursting; and the mouth, no doubt as a consequence of the swelling, had been reduced to a tiny black sliver in the middle of a salt-and-pepper beard, though it was open enough to allow a tiny stream of yellow fluid to dribble out, some of which splashed onto Paul's face. In a blind panic, the young man kicked out at the weightless, lifeless, sightless body, and, so scorned, it spun away from him. Then he scrambled to his feet and raced back to the party, crying out for his wife and daughter and all the parents and children present to leave now, get out of here, only vaguely aware as he ran that he had wet his pants.

Behind him the floating corpse of a man named Hal Farris was once more drawn into the air...

Maybe all this shouldn't have come as a surprise. Paul and Helen Mallard had wanted their daughter to have a memorable birthday party. It seemed the Fates, very graciously, had obliged them.

6

The plate in front of Verne Newman held the crust that remained from a piece of toast and an opened, now-empty cup of jelly. Verne grunted "Thank you" to the young, blond-haired waitress as she refilled his coffee mug.

"You're very welcome," she said, picking up his plate. Then she glanced at Kent Jacoby and asked, "Are you sure you don't want anything, sweetie?"

"No, ma'am," said Kent. "I'm good. Thanks."

The waitress shrugged and walked away.

Verne Newman was not one of Kent's favorite people. Verne had already rubbed him the wrong way this morning by insisting on finishing his breakfast before they got down to business; especially galling, when Kent considered that he was right on time arriving at this large, uncomfortably crowded family restaurant out near the Interstate. In his mid-fifties, slim and dark-haired, Verne always had a bored look in his eyes, as if he had seen perhaps too much of life. He had once been a police officer, like Kent, many years ago, right here in this same Virginia town. But well before Kent joined up Verne had mysteriously resigned. Kent still didn't know why, and the guys old enough to say so definitively had either retired, moved elsewhere, or passed away; rumors abounded, however, of Verne having been involved with shady dealings regarding seized property. Anyway, in the aftermath of his departure from the police force, Verne had become a private investigator—and by all accounts he was a good one. He was also a feared one. He had dug up dirt on local politicians, philandering husbands, unfaithful wives, anybody and everybody on behalf of whoever was quickest to write a check. The same aura of sleaziness had followed him into his new profession, however, and during the time he was still a police officer Kent Jacobs would not even have toyed with the notion of meeting, let alone hiring, this man. But, of course, Kent was not a police officer anymore, and had not been for a while now. He was still in good shape, still possessed the same professional bearing, but his face was unshaved now and there were dark bags under his eyes.

"Can we get started?" he asked Verne.

"Sure," the detective said, picking up a legal-sized envelope that had been sitting on the seat of the chair beside him the entire time. He held it out to Kent. "Here you go."

"This feels pretty thin," Kent said, taking the envelope, "especially for the money I'm paying."

"Yeah, well, there's a good reason why there's not much in it. There wasn't much to find. Miss Burdette seems to have just sprung up out of nowhere."

Kent shook his head as he pulled out the few pieces of paper inside the envelope. "That's not possible."

"Look, I didn't build a successful private investigative agency by being a slacker," Verne said as he watched Kent study the materials. "You know I'm good at what I do. That's why you came to me with this assignment, I'm pretty sure."

"You're right, Verne," Kent said. "It's just that..."

"You'd hoped for more."

Kent nodded. He had no birth record, no biographical information, no visible means of financial support, just a string of addresses.

"I understand. And I honestly wish I had more to give you." Verne leaned back in his seat. "Tell you what, kiddo: I'll take ten percent off my fee just because you're looking so pitiful right now."

"That's awfully generous of you, Verne." Kent continued to pore over the information.

"If you tell me what this chick means to you," Verne said after a moment, "I'll take another five percent off on top of that."

"You're that curious?"

"Can you blame me? Out of the blue, you come into my office one day and want me to put a dossier together on some mystery woman named Dolores Burdette, but you won't tell me why. So throw me a bone here, son. What have you got between you two?"

Kent got to his feet. "Keep the five percent haircut."

"I can always find out on my own, you know," Verne warned him, "in my spare time. It's not like I've got any hobbies."

"Whatever. You know where to send the bill," Kent said, and walked away.

***

Later that night, in the Extended Stay hotel room that had been his home since his wife kicked him out two months ago, Kent showered, changed into a T-shirt and some sweatpants, and lay down on the bed, eyes closed, the television off, with his hands clasped behind his head. The casual observer would have said he was resting. He wasn't. He was hard at work. Whenever faced with a problem or riddle, Kent found he did his best thinking when his body was still and all around him was quiet and dark. Separated now from his wife and three small children, such a state was easily achievable—the one bright spot in what was shaping up to be a horrible period of his life.

Think, asshole, Kent told himself. "Asshole" was his self-given sobriquet these days, the perfect title, he imagined, for someone who had basically ruined his life for the sake of solving one mysterious case. What have you learned?

In his mind he traveled all the way back to the immediate aftermath of the strange, shared demise of Winston and Eleanor Fleming. He had not known them, never heard of them, and was pretty sure that—given the multimillion-dollar fortune Winston had amassed as a Washington, D.C., lawyer—then-Officer Kent Jacoby wasn't the kind of person a pair like the Flemings would be interested in befriending. But from the moment he beheld their bodies he wanted to know how and why they had died, and who was responsible. His interest in the case, in many ways, was rooted in intellectual curiosity.

Deaths meeting certain criteria were of keen interest to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. The Flemings had met with flying colors the requirement of unexplained deaths, in addition to unexpected ones, since both husband and wife had been spotted three nights before at a fashionable Georgetown dinner party, as if there were any other kind of dinner party among their social milieu, an erudite gathering during which they circulated and commiserated with as much verve as ever. They had left the party about ten o'clock. That weekend—on Saturday morning—their housekeeper Myrtle Sibley had arrived to do some extra cleaning on top of her normal duties, as friends of the Flemings from New York City or someplace were flying in that afternoon and would be staying in the mansion's "guest quarters," to borrow Mrs. Fleming's term. Myrtle indicated she had a bad feeling from the moment she unlocked the front door and stepped inside. "The place was so empty," she had said to Officer Jacoby in a tremulous voice.

But it wasn't empty. Winston and Eleanor Fleming were very much present in the library—albeit deceased, and hovering in the air.

Years ago, as a child, Kent Jacoby had read a short story by H.G. Wells entitled "The Truth about Pyecraft." The story's narrator, one Mr. Formalyn, relates the misfortune visited upon a grotesquely fat man named Pyecraft, who along with Formalyn is a member of a London gentlemen's club. In the tale, Pyecraft begs Formalyn to share with him a special recipe of the narrator's great-grandmother, a recipe that will supposedly enable poor Pyecraft to shed the excess pounds of which he is greatly ashamed. The narrator gives in to Pyecraft's request, but there is a wrinkle: the recipe, which is for "Loss of Weight," does indeed reduce weight, but not mass—a distinction lost on both men. Pyecraft, after ingesting the odd dish, retains his tremendous girth, yet is rendered virtually weightless. When Formalyn is summoned via telegram to Pyecraft's Bloomsbury apartment, he finds the rotund fellow scrambling along the ceiling, unable to lower himself to the floor—and, understandably, in great confusion and despair.

Looking up at Winston Fleming, his hideously swollen body bobbing along the library's twelve-foot-high vaulted ceiling, Kent Jacoby immediately thought of Pyecraft, only now he had a Mrs. Pyecraft to join him. And unlike the H.G. Wells story, which was dark-humored in tone, there was nothing funny about the newly airborne Winston and Eleanor Fleming.

Only they did not stay airborne for long...

Even as Kent backed out the room, the bodies had begun to sink, the distension of their soft tissues becoming less pronounced. By the time the paramedics and the first of several other police officers arrived on scene, the Flemings had arrived at the floor, and apparently regained much of their lost weight.

If only I could have photographed them, he had lamented ever since, people would have believed.

Kent had been raised to tell the truth, no matter what the price. He had told the truth that morning, knowing the price to him of doing so would be high. He insisted that the Flemings were suspended in mid-air when he found them. Impossible, maybe, but that was what his eyes had seen, and he wasn't changing or withdrawing a single detail. Myrtle Sibley, he promised, would offer the same account.

But when the time came for Myrtle to give her official statement she said, no, the Flemings had been on the carpet and she didn't know what Officer Jacoby was talking about. She had lied—and Kent, though furious with her, was pretty sure he knew why she'd done it. People would have said she was crazy if she had given them the facts, just as people were now saying Kent was crazy, and nobody wanted that. But the truth was the truth, and Ken stuck to his guns. He didn't—

Stop, stop, stop, Kent thought, shaking his head back and forth on the pillow. You're dwelling on the past. Get back to the present. What have you learned? What are the possibilities, based on what you've found out so far?

If there was anything comical about the whole situation, it was the cause of death given by the authorities. In said authorities' sober and considered view, the Flemings had died of septic shock. As Kent understood their pronouncement, by some means bacteria had invaded the bloodstreams of Winston and Eleanor Fleming, whose immune systems had responded by plunging their bodies into an inflammatory state, a condition that ultimately led to organ failure and death for both—at the same time.

In other words, within the span of seventy-two hours, the Flemings had simultaneously been infected by bacteria, simultaneously developed sepsis, and simultaneously died, with not a single telephone call placed to a doctor, friend, or family member during the time intervening, when their distress would have presumably been most acute. It was almost as ludicrous as the notion of finding the ill-fated pair drifting in the open air of their library.

But Winston Fleming was a prominent man in the capitol as well as in northern Virginia. It wouldn't do at all for his passing to end up as the subject of some unexplained mystery show; Eleanor merely benefited by being his wife. Kent smelled a cover-up, or at least pressure from up top to deal with this thing quickly and quietly, or maybe, just maybe, to give an answer where, for the moment, there really was no answer.

Through previous investigations, he had become acquainted with a pathology technician in the Northern District Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia, which was located in Manassas; it was the same site to which the Flemings had been sent for autopsies. One evening, shortly after the Flemings were cremated, Kent called the guy at home.

"So tell me, Rick," he had said. "What kind of bacteria was it?"

"I don't have that information right now," was Rick's answer.

"It's not in the autopsy report either. Wasn't the virus or bacteria or whatever it was that caused sepsis supposed to be listed too?"

"Look, I really shouldn't be talking about it—especially to you, of all people. Some pretty nasty shit is being said about you right now, Kent. I mean, what's this about you telling people the bodies were floating in the air when you found them?"

But Kent had ignored the provocation. "I hear that the National Institutes of Health has gotten involved."

"Where did you hear that?"

"That's just what I've heard. Listen, numb nuts, answer me this one question and I'll go away—just this one. What kind of bacteria got into the Flemings' bloodstream?"

"It's a form we're unfamiliar with, at least here in these parts. The closest match seems to be Pseudomonas. It's a type of bacteria that gets around pretty well, particularly in hospitals, but it can thrive in a hypoxic, or low oxygen, environment just as easily, so you can actually find it in the dirt or underwater, if you're ever inclined to go looking for it. But it's not a Pseudomonas infection that caused the Flemings to croak. I could tell you how we know that, I guess, but I'd have to go into a bunch of scientific stuff I'm not sure a guy like you would understand."

"Well," Kent had replied, "obviously you don't understand it either or you wouldn't be calling NIH."

"Good one, buddy, I underestimated you. Are we done now?"

"How do you think the Flemings got infected with it, though?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know, or won't tell me?"

"I don't know, Kent. Honestly, I don't. The last time I saw anything remotely like this was an old woman who had an indwelling bladder catheter. Pseudomonas aeruginosa got inside her, she ended up with sepsis, and—well, that was it. She died."

"A catheter."

"Yeah—little tube they poke up through the urethra to the bladder, so urine can drain out."

"I know what a catheter is."

"I'm impressed. Well, look, this has been fun but I've got to go. Don't share what I told you with anybody, especially the NIH thing. I'm serious."

"I won't."

And he hadn't, but somehow word had leaked out anyway that Officer Kent Jacoby was conducting his own personal investigation into the deaths of Winston and Eleanor Fleming. The long and short of it was that, due to Kent's insistence on weightless corpses, serious doubts were raised in the minds of his superiors about his mental fitness to serve as a police officer.

Finally, one day, the department chose to release him from his employment. Not long afterward, as Kent had taken to drinking heavily in the wake of his termination, his wife chose not to retain him either.

Nowadays, when Kent tallied the pluses and minuses of his life, he found he had precious little left to hang onto—not much more, frankly, than solving the mystery of the Flemings' death.

But it was enough.

He would get to the bottom of that mystery and show the world he wasn't crazy. His wife would be sorry she had not believed him, maybe even admit some culpability in his alcoholism, as the bottle had become Kent's way of hiding from the merciless criticism and taunting he had received of late, much of it from her. Then she and the kids would come back and the Jacobys would be a family again and life would go on just as it had before. An official apology from the police department, as well as personal ones from those folks inside and outside of it who'd vociferously lobbied to shove him out the door, would be nice too, and entirely appropriate.

Ken opened his eyes, took the folder off the nightstand, and opened it on his chest.

He had no need to consult the voluminous papers he had compiled over the last year, for he knew each town in which two or three people had died under similarly mysterious circumstances like the back of his hand. The list of addresses for Dolores Burdette matched the locations of these deaths exactly. Whenever this woman moved into a town, perfectly healthy people began to die of multiple organ failure syndrome, at the root of which, invariably, was a mysterious blood infection—a blood infection with an onset so fast and so brutal that those who caught it were dead before they had a chance to seek help.

But how was this infection transmitted? That was Kent Jacoby's question.

One newspaper account offered a tantalizing clue. A fifty-three-year-old bachelor living alone on a Kentucky farm had been found dead in his home. His nephew had discovered him, and because the man was bare-chested, that same nephew was able to note the presence two small puncture wounds on his belly, side by side.

The bite, according to the newspaper, appeared to have come from an unidentified animal...

7

Norm did not consider his bachelorhood—or present bachelorhood, as he liked to think of it, which implied a temporary condition—an excuse to skimp on keeping up his house and surrounding property. The neatness of his white, one-storied wooden home, both inside and outside, along with the carefully groomed shrubbery and perpetually-cut grass of his front lawn, spoke to the pride Norm took in maintaining appearances. Much of that pride he had inherited from his late parents, who'd taught him that if you loved a thing—from your house to your car to a potted plant—you took care of it. Some, though, came from his desire to let his house and yard serve as an advertisement for what a good spouse Norm Peters would make, should any woman ever choose to inspect his living quarters.

See, ladies, he wanted the state of those living quarters to say. I'm not like all those other guys who sit in their recliners watching television while laundry accumulates next to the washing machine and dirty dishes pile up in the sink. I'm neat, attentive to detail, thoughtful, and, if you've noticed my carefully selected furniture and the color of the paint on my walls, possessed of fairly good taste. I'm very much able to take care of a house on my own, and goodness knows there's no reason why I shouldn't be. I've had years of practice.

As of yet, Norm had enjoyed little success in bringing ladies over to see what a fine job he was doing as a happy (well, sort of happy) homemaker, in fact, none at all. Maybe, with his recent stab at finding love online, that would change—but so far, the results had not been encouraging.

In creating his online profile, Norm had scanned and then posted a picture taken of him over ten years ago, when he had more hair and weighed some twenty pounds less. In the photograph he was holding a fishing rod and getting ready to cast a line into the glittering waters of the Savannah River, which was located not far from his home. Norm hoped to come across as a healthy, vigorous man with a keen interest in the outdoors, and had half-convinced himself that he bore a vague resemblance to Daniel Craig back then, even though he really didn't.

Over the last five days, Norm had checked his profile obsessively, but the only private message he'd received in that time was spam from a pornographic website, as if Norm would ever need help finding one of those; otherwise, nothing.

***

It was Friday night and Norm was in his garage, changing the oil on his riding lawnmower. He had earlier finished unpacking the gas-powered leaf blower he'd bought at a discount from Sears on his way home from work this afternoon. Norm relished working in the outdoors. His pride and joy was the goldfish pond at the center of the front yard, a black disc of water eight feet in diameter and three feet deep. He had surrounded the pond with elephant ears to make a home for frogs, the music of which he loved to hear at night, especially after heavy rains. This being a dry winter so far, the pond was quiet; but in the spring and summertime Norm looked forward to an orchestra of frogs and crickets and a slew of other nocturnal performance artists once again taking up residence in the little ecosystem he liked to think he had created. Norm's house was isolated, with deep and unknowable pine barren surrounding it; thanks to some faithful landscaping efforts his two-acre plot just off the highway was like a little garden that bloomed in the forest, sweet and surprising.

I wonder if anybody sent me any messages, Norm thought, rolling the lawnmower into its normal spot. He wiped his hands on a tattered old rag—one of many such rags he kept in a plastic basket at the front of the garage. Norm exercised great care in maintaining adequate distance between such various and sundry things as the fireplace lighter, gasoline can, and, of course, his rag collection.

He re-entered the house from the garage, passing through the laundry room and into the kitchen. His computer was in the living room, and Norm badly wanted to go online to see if he had gotten any nibbles from the opposite sex. But, no, he was sweaty and dirty and needed to get cleaned up. He chose to take a shower first.

Don't be so eager, Norm told himself. You know, deep down, that nobody's sent you anything.

***

Norm had gotten a message. Cleaned up and relaxed after his shower, he'd sat down, switched on the computer, and waited, certain that he would be disappointed. But he was not disappointed.

He had received a communication from a real person!

A woman!

"Hi, Norm," the message read. "It looks to me like you fish. I love to fish too. I read your profile and it looks like we have a lot of the same favorite movies and books. I would like to talk to you maybe over the phone." She then provided the number for a cellular phone. "Give me a call when you have a chance. Thanks—D."

Norm clicked the hyperlink that took him to the sender's profile, and right away was astonished by the beauty of the woman who had contacted him. He was bewildered, actually. Yes, he looked all right in his profile picture, but even taking into account his nonsensical idea that he resembled Daniel Craig he did not think he was in anywhere near the same league as Dolores Burdette of Savannah, Georgia.

Then again, though, Norm had thought his ex-wife was far too attractive for him as well—a notion with which his ex-wife had probably agreed. Women, thankfully for the male half of the species, seemed somewhat less fixated a man's looks than vice-versa. Dolores had obviously liked something about his profile, and he didn't think it was limited just to a mutual interest in the fisherman's craft: maybe it was his professed love of gardening, or his unashamed regard for early Clint Eastwood westerns like A Fistful of Dollars.

Or maybe there was another explanation. The website claimed it used proprietary software to match up people; maybe Norm had shown up on a list of guys who would make good matches for her. Norm had not yet made use of the software and had little idea of how it worked, so this scenario was at least plausible.

Then, of course, there was an additional, more disturbing possibility.

Rubbing his chin as he re-read the message, Norm asked himself: What if she's a head case, a crazy person, even a murderess? What if she's like Harriet Bird in The Natural, only instead of shooting top athletes she goes after guys who like to fish?

To which another voice inside his head replied, Norm, you've been watching too much television. Maybe you're the one who's a head case. Have a little confidence, man. Give her a call. She wouldn't have given you her number if she didn't want to hear from you. Do it.

Norm closed his eyes, sat back in his chair.

Here I am, afraid again.

Over the twenty minutes that followed, Norm must have dialed her number a dozen times, on each occasion terminating the call before the first ring. He felt like such a fool, such a coward, and yet...

I must do this, he told himself. I must.

At last he let her telephone ring. With each ring, he thought of Lily Tomlin as the snide telephone operator on Laugh-In, secretly listening in on the conversation to come and chortling derisively at everything he would say.

Click. "Hello, this is Dolores." The voice was soft, Southern-accented, cheerful.

"Um, hi, I'm calling for Dolores," Norm sputtered.

That would probably be the same Dolores she just said she was, you damn fool. Keep it together now!

"Yes, I'm Dolores. Who is this?"

"Hi, Dolores, I'm Norm. How are you?"

"Norm, Norm...oh, you're Norman Peters—from the website!"

"Yes, ma'am, that's me."

The woman giggled. "Listen to you now, calling me ma'am."

"Sorry, it's just a habit."

"That's all right. You're a Southern gentleman, and I happen to love Southern gentlemen."

Norm was elated. "Oh...? Well, good. I do too. I mean, you know, not like I love them, you know, like where I'd want to go out on a date with one. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm a very open-minded person, it's just, you know, it's not my cup of coffee. Or tea, I mean. But I've got no problem with it whatsoever. With guys going out on dates, I mean. Not with tea. Although I don't have a problem with tea either. Or with people who drink it. I drink tea all the time, actually." Oh, man, Norm thought, I'm really bombing. "But what I'm talking about—you know, what I mean is—a Southern gentleman is the kind of guy I'd like to be with. I mean, be. It's the kind of guy I'd like to be. Or hang out with. You know what I'm saying, right?" And if you do, please tell me, because even I don't know at this point. "It's just the kind of ideal that I respire to. I mean aspire to. You know." Stop talking, Norm! Stop talking right now! You've done enough damage to yourself already.

"I understand exactly what you mean, Norm." Her voice was kind. If she had been confused or put off by his previous monologue, she gave no indication of such.

"So—how are you?" Norm asked again, desperate to salvage the conversation.

"I'm doing just peachy. And you?"

"I'm doing pretty well myself. I'm...so glad you contacted me."

"Well, I put all my information into the compatibility matrix they had—and you came out right at the top of the list."

Norm had guessed correctly. How about that?

"I see," he mumbled.

"So, Norm," the woman began. Then: "Wait a minute. Do you go by Norm or Norman?"

"Either one is fine."

"But what do you prefer?"

"Uh, well, Norm is okay."

"Good. So, anyhow, when do we get to meet?"

"When...? Well, I—"

"Want to get together tonight? It's only eight."

Norm was in a full-blown panic. He wasn't ready to meet Dolores Burdette in person yet; he was barely able to handle this phone call with her. He needed time to prepare himself mentally.

"I was thinking maybe tomorrow night," he offered.

"Oh..." There was disappointment in her voice.

"I hope that's all right."

"Sure, Norm, that'll be fine."

"I just have some things I need to do here around the house."

"I understand. Really, it's no problem at all."

"Would you like to me to pick you up tomorrow, or...?"

"I think I'd rather we just met someplace, since this is the first time and all."

"Sure, sure, that makes perfect sense." She's probably not comfortable getting into a car with a guy she doesn't know. I can't blame her—especially if the guy comes across as weird as I have tonight.

Norm suggested a restaurant on River Street. She agreed. He suggested a time—six-thirty—and she agreed to that as well.

"Well, Norm, if you have things to do tonight, I don't want to keep you. I'll be looking forward to tomorrow night."

"Me, too," Norm said. "I'm really glad we were able to connect this way, Dolores."

"Call me by my nickname, why don't you?"

"What's your nickname?"

"Didn't you read my profile?"

"I thought I had," Norm said, embarrassed. "I must have missed something."

"Later on tonight," she began, "when you have a chance, look at my profile again and you'll see my nickname. Take care now, darling, and see you tomorrow."

She hung up before a flustered Norm could say anything else.

Well, that was a unique experience.

He wasted no time in scrutinizing her online profile again.

So what is it? Dolly, maybe?

In short order he found her nickname—and it wasn't Dolly.

Oh.

I see.

She wanted him to call her "Doll Baby."

8

Kent Jacoby, heading south on Interstate-95 that same Friday evening, had just crossed the border into South Carolina in his decade-old black Chevrolet pickup truck. He needed to find a filling station, quick. He had been so deep in thought that he'd failed to notice how low on gasoline the truck had gotten.

He could not explain it, but somehow he had a sense that his lonely odyssey would end in Savannah, Georgia, the last known address of Dolores Burdette; a sense that, one way or another, it would contain the answers he had sought for months now.

Who are you, Dolores?

Kent knew, at least, who she was reputed to be: the mistress of Winston Fleming. Shortly before his severance from the police department, Kent had received an anonymous tip in the Jacoby family's post office box; the return address was false. "Talk to Dolores Burdette," read the cryptic note. "She was Win's 'friend.'" The letter-writer, whose identity remained unknown to Kent to this day, had provided an address for a little cottage on the outskirts of town. He suspected it was someone from the Flemings' glittering social circle, given that individual's use of the nickname "Win."

But when Kent arrived at the cottage it was empty. Its tenant had vacated the premises the day before the Flemings died. The landlord was irate because she'd left owing him money: her lease was not up for another six months. On top of that, she'd left the place in "awful condition." Kent had asked the landlord to show him.

And "awful," it turned out, was a good word for it, though "weird" would have worked just as well. The occupant had removed all the light bulbs; she had also covered the windows with lengths of black garbage bags to block out the sunlight. The place was wretched with the odor of mildew and decay. Oddly, however, the kitchen was in pristine condition—as if it had never been used. The landlord had rented the place to her fully furnished; no personal effects were left behind.

"Such a pretty girl," the landlord—a Mr. Harlow—had said. "I can't believe she lived like this."

"What did she do for a living?" Ken had asked.

"Good question. She said she got a regular payment from a trust fund set up by her granddaddy. But I never bought that. I don't mean to sound snooty here or anything, but she didn't strike me as the trust-fund type. You know what I'm saying? Personally—and I don't want to be quoted on this—I think she had a sugar daddy."

Kent was certain the landlord's instincts were correct about the woman's living arrangements being funded by a sugar daddy; and equally certain that Winston—"Win" to his chums—was the daddy in question. His gut told him so.

"Did she ever mention where she was from, or talk about any family members or relatives?"

"No," the landlord had replied, "not that I can remember."

"Do you know what interactions she might have had with the neighbors?"

"She may have spoken once or twice with the guy next door. I own that house too. When she first moved in, he wanted me to tell him all about her. He'd been divorced for a couple of years and he was kind of lonely. So I told him I didn't know much about her past and even if I did I wasn't going to share all her personal business with him. Still, I said he ought to go over there and talk to her sometime, just sort of introduce himself and let her know that if she needed anything, he'd be right there—like a good neighbor ought to be."

"Did he do that?"

"I'm not sure if he did or not, frankly."

"I'd like to talk to this man if I could."

"Then you'll need to find a good psychic, because he's dead. Sad thing—he was late on his rent last month, something that had never happened before, and so I called him a few times, left some messages, but never heard anything back. Finally, I decided to come on over and check on him."

"How did he die? Do you know?"

"Well, from what I understand, it was blood poisoning."

***

"But how, though?" Kent Jacoby muttered as he filled his gas tank, jacket drawn high around his throat to keep back the chill of the night air. "How do you do it? Why do you do it?"

Before his dismissal from the police force, he had uncovered no fewer than five cases of ordinary, healthy guys suddenly dying of septic shock within one hundred miles of the residence of Dolores Burdette: one was a hunter found in the middle of some forested land on which he held a lease; one was a middle-aged man living alone in a trailer near the county line; one was a college student on his way home whose car was found abandoned on the highway, his body located about a half-mile farther into the woods; one was a bouncer at a strip club who had disappeared in route from work to his baby mama's house in the early hours of the morning.

And then, most significant to Kent's investigation, there was the trucker. This gent was in his late fifties and had last been seen inside a bar near the Pilot Travel Center at which he had stopped for the night. He had arrived at the bar alone, but had not left it alone; a woman, according to the bartender, had taken a seat near him. The bartender had no idea which one spoke to the other first, but pretty soon the two of them were chatting intimately, and about forty-five minutes later they quit the bar as a couple.

The body of the truck driver was not discovered for three days; when found, it was in the middle of a shopping mall parking lot four miles away. The parking lot was regularly patrolled and had a robust security staff, yet somehow—overnight, apparently—the guy had managed to end up right in the center of it.

As if he had landed there...

And what was this talk about some kind of obscene balloon or something that had floated nearby a little girl's birthday party before the trucker was found? A thing so grotesque it had prompted a call to the police from her father?

Kent wondered if that "balloon" had resembled the trucker.

If it had, in fact, been the trucker.

For once again, under cause of death, it was that old chestnut: septic shock. No mention of any puncture wounds, but the ones the young man in Kentucky had seen were small, not even deep enough to cause severe bleeding, for which reason they'd not been made public. Otherwise, it was a familiar story: somehow the guy had contracted a blood infection, eventually leading to septic shock and organ failure; and rather than seeking medical help he had just wandered into a mall parking lot in the wee hours of the morning and dropped dead.

Kent had only a description of the lovely Miss Burdette from the landlord, who had accepted her as a tenant without any references or credit check because he was underwater on some other real estate projects he had financed and needed to turn the house into an income generator, fast. But his description matched well the bartender's recollection of the woman who had left with the late trucker.

Thereafter, Kent identified several residences of Miss Burdette in the previous two years—these being in Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri—because the landlords of those houses had required her to put the light bill and other utilities in her name; and once again, in each town, there had been a smattering of barely explained deaths, mostly of people, but sometimes of livestock as well. Kent also uncovered a social security number to go with that name; it was assigned to one Dolores Burdette, born in a small town in northern Louisiana, right on the Texas border.

But the social security number raised more questions about this woman than it answered. Both the landlord and the bartender had described Dolores Burdette as being somewhere in her early-to-mid thirties; yet June 5, 1931 was the birthdate given for the Dolores Burdette whose social security number Kent had obtained. So either this woman had taken exceptional care of herself, to the degree she was able to pass for thirty-three at age eighty-one, or she was making use of an identity that didn't belong to her. Kent Jacoby opted for the latter explanation, and his suspicions were bolstered when, through further investigative work, he learned that Dolores Burdette of Louisiana—a former burlesque dancer who had supposedly worked sometimes as a prostitute and who later became the kept woman of a minor New Orleans organized crime figure—had disappeared from her French Quarter apartment in July of 1963. Her boyfriend, the mobster, had been murdered a month earlier, shot to death outside of a nightclub by an unknown assailant, and the popular speculation at the time was that she'd been rubbed out by the same guy, who was working for other criminals, or had fled town because she was about to be killed too. Regardless, that particular Dolores Burdette was never heard from again.

***

Kent was back on the road. After his termination, he no longer had the resources of the police department on which to draw; though he prided himself on his investigative skills, he knew he needed more firepower, and for this reason he had gone to Verne Newman.

You're responsible, he thought. I know you are. And when I find out, I'm going to make you tell me everything. And then I'm going to make you tell everybody else. And people will see, Dolores or whatever your name is. People will see and they'll understand that I was right all along.

He was closing in on her.

And he liked to think that—somehow—she could feel it happening...

9

I do believe, thought Doll Baby, this is the most boring man in the history of the world.

Still, she kept smiling—not because anything Norm Peters said was funny or enlightening, but because he had a round, rubbery face that she thought would look really comical when she moved to harvest him; when he was screaming and blubbering for her to spare his life. Thinking of that face was about all she could do to amuse herself as Norm talked on and on and on...

They were seated in the handsome dining room of a seafood restaurant on River Street. She had arrived first, greeting Norm warmly in the lobby. A friend, she added, had dropped her off, as she knew he'd never believe the way she had really gotten here.

The waitress had just taken their drink orders. Water for him, a Tequila Sunrise for her...

"So I expect the FASB—that's the Financial Accounting Standards Board—to keep things the way they are, at least for now," Norm was saying, "and personally I think that's what they ought to do. If you have a system that's working fairly well, you don't want to make any dramatic changes."

Doll Baby nodded. "It sounds like you really know your job."

I can't wait to drain you of your life essence, Norm, she thought.

"Well, it's essential I stay on top on these things. I owe that to myself and to my employer," Norm explained solemnly. "I also devote time to it outside of working hours. For example, I subscribe to several accounting publications. Now I suppose some of the articles could be a little dry to the layman—or laywoman—but ordinary folks just don't realize, I think, how important this stuff is."

I know I had no idea, Norm, and I wish I didn't still.

Norm chuckled, "I don't suppose corporate bookkeeping makes for the best dinner conversation, though. I get carried away sometimes. I'm sorry about that."

"That's okay, Norm. I like a man who's passionate about his work." —Although it's a little late to be sorry. I just pissed away fifteen minutes listening to you ramble on about best practices in the specialty chemicals business. That's time I can never get back.

"How long have you lived in the Savannah area?" he asked.

"About a year now," she said.

"Why here, may I ask?"

"I just needed a change of scenery. I'd been up in Virginia for a while and I was ready to move on." —Plus, I had just killed a man and his wife.

"You're something of a rolling stone, I take it."

"I suppose so." Actually, Norm—if you're interested—here's what happened. I was doing the guy, whose name was Winston. He was an old horny toad, let me tell you. At first, I was going to harvest him like the others after he picked me up, but when I realized he was loaded I changed my mind; he was actually the one who took my initials and used them to come up with the nickname I like so much. I needed money, see. So I got him to take care of me, all the while going out and seeking other dudes to harvest—worked pretty well, too, until his wife found out about us somehow. She was going to expose Winston for a cheat, which wouldn't have been any big deal except I would have been caught up in the bad publicity. Now I don't mind if people see my face, like here in this restaurant, but if too many of them start to put a name with my face, well, that's trouble. And Win was a high-profile guy. I couldn't handle that kind of exposure. So I decided to head on over to their really pretty house and take care of both of them at the same time. Then I left town.

"So what do you do?" Norm asked.

What do I do? Why, I kill people, Norm. That's what I do.

"I guess you could say I'm fortunate," Doll Baby replied, winking at him. "I haven't needed to find a job."

"Family resources, then," Norm said.

Actually, more like Fleming family resources. Winston paid me a lot of money to keep my mouth shut about our affair. Instead she responded with, "Something like that."

"I see. Well, no need to tell me anything more."

I wasn't about to, dickhead.

Then Norm came at her with another question: "So where are you from, Dolores?"

"Here and there," answered Doll Baby, "everywhere..." She chortled.

She could tell her answer had made him uncomfortable, yet Norm managed a chuckle as well. "That covers a lot of ground, doesn't it?"

For a moment Doll Baby reflected on his words: "A lot of ground..." Inadvertently he had come close to answering his own question, for indeed she came from the ground: deep inside the earth, in fact, from a vast subterranean kingdom the likes of which a human being—especially one that struck her as dull and unimaginative as Norm Peters—could not even begin to fathom.

"I try not to think much about the past," she said.

These foolish surface dwellers thought they knew so much. They knew nothing. What if she told him of the great palaces of turquoise and diamond and jade she had seen in her youth, towering citadels carved from the sides of giant stalagmites rising up in the bellies of caves so massive the spans between their floors and ceilings had to be reckoned in that which human beings, depending on geography, reckoned as miles or kilometers? What if she told him of swollen rivers of magma that flowed into seas of sparkling fire? What if she told him of warm lakes under the earth, and of the blind fish and glowing eels and tentacle-festooned monstrosities that swum their waters? What if she told him of the giant, gray, armor-plated worms that burrowed through the rock? What if she told him of the way her species would swarm around such a worm whenever they found one that was weak or sick or young, to draw out its nutrients, in the process reducing it to a husk? What if she told him of her own kind, fluttering from cavern to cavern in search of prey, burbling locusts ever on the move, ever hungry? What if she told him of the day long ago when she broke apart from her own hive, decided to journey up an old mineshaft to the surface world, and found a world abundant with human prey?

What if, she thought, looking at this stupid man, I told you the truth about me? Would you believe me? No, of course you wouldn't. So I'm just going to sit here and grin.

"I guess I probably shouldn't think much about the past either," Norm confessed.

"Why, Normie? Is it painful to you?"

"It can be. What's your reason, though? Why don't you think about the past?"

"Well, in my case," Doll Baby said, "I'd rather just look to the future. You know what I'm saying? We can't change anything that's happened before. We have to look to what's ahead of us. That's the way I am. I just look straight ahead." —Like to the pleasure I'm going to get from murdering you in a short while.

"I look ahead, too," Norm said, "but it scares me sometimes."

It damn well ought to. Wait 'til I get you alone after dinner!

Instead, though, sensing an opportunity to bolster his confidence—a surefire way to build a romantic connection with any man—she pretended to be shocked. "Scares you? Come on, Normie, what have you got to be scared of—a big, strapping fellow like you?"

Norm blinked. "I don't think anyone's ever described me as big and strapping before."

"I find that hard to believe, with those nice broad shoulders of yours." A flattering reference to the man's physique worked equally well.

"You really think my shoulders are broad?"

"Why, sure I do. Don't you?"

"No. I never really..." He thought of men taller than he, yet the same width. "I guess they are, though, come to think of it. Just slightly, though."

"Oh, it's more than slightly." —Because apparently some of your fat made its way to your shoulders.

A server was coming with a large black platter balanced on his shoulder.

"Look," Norm said inanely, "here comes the food."

No, Norm, honey, Doll Baby thought, her smile deteriorating into a smirk. Here comes your food, sweetheart.

I'm sitting across from mine.

***

Aside from a stop at a Welcome Center for a quick constitutional, Kent Jacoby had driven straight from his hotel room in Virginia to the address given for Dolores Burdette outside of Savannah. Now he sat in his truck as evening deepened into night, waiting.

It was a double-wide in poor condition, set back off a country road. It was isolated too. He'd spotted a few other residences—trailers, an old shotgun house or two—but none were in sight at the moment. The place appeared to be empty for the moment.

Do I do it? Kent asked himself. Do I break in? What do I expect to find if I do?

He had become a police officer to uphold the law. He believed in the law, loved the law. Without laws to govern his behavior, Man would become just another animal. If he undertook the action he was contemplating right now, what would that make him?

He'd had these moments of doubt before—times when he thought, I'm grasping at straws. There's nothing here. I'm pursuing an innocent woman on account of a few newspaper clippings and an anonymous tip and some questions about her past. Maybe I really was just hallucinating.

He gazed up at the double-wide.

He felt his certainty returning.

Whatever I'm looking for, he decided, his hand brushing the gun in the holster on his hip, I'll know it when I find it.

He cranked up the truck, drove it up the road some distance so it would not be in front of the house—just in case anyone passed by—and got out, to walk back and, well, commit the crime of breaking and entering.

"Okay, Dolores," he said, heading toward her place, "let's get better acquainted."

***

After dinner, Norm had asked Doll Baby if she wanted to go for a walk. She didn't, but said yes anyway. What she really wanted was to get in the car with him so she could either kill him on the way to his home or do it once they were already there. Nobody went to River Street in Savannah if they wanted privacy. But she thought she had a pretty good sense of Norm, and he seemed to her a rather skittish man. If she came across as too eager, it might make him nervous and scare him off, which meant she would have endured the misery of a date with the guy for nothing.

As they walked along the Savannah River, blackly shining under the lights of the riverfront, Norm asked, in a shy voice, "Are you having a good time?"

"Oh, sure, Norm," Doll Baby said. "I'm having a wonderful time." In fact, the only thing I can think of that would be more fun than this would be to find a pile of dog shit and watch it turn white in the sun.

"Me, too," he said softly. "You know, it's been awhile since I've been out a date."

"Oh?" I'm amazed you ever went out on a date in the first place.

"My then-wife and I used to come down here a lot."

Doll Baby nodded. Indeed. Tell me more about your ex-wife, Norm. Were you able to blow her up on your own, or did you have to use an air pump? I'm not familiar with such things.

"It was a long time ago, though," Norm said.

Died of boredom, did she? How long did she last before you finally did her in, Norm—a couple of months?

"But I'm okay with it. We probably weren't ready."

There's a word I'm trying to think of to describe this guy. I heard it on TV awhile back, but I'll be doggone if I can remember what it is.

"I was focused on working my way up in the accounting department, putting in a lot of overtime and coming home late," Norm continued. "I was ambitious. What can I say? Now, though, I would do things differently. I would—"

Oh, wait, I remember.

"—strive for a better balance between work and family, because I just think it's so important that we not neglect—"

Putz.

"—our home life, because without a satisfying home life, the other stuff really doesn't matter. At least that's what I think these days. What do you think?"

"Whatever you say, Norm, honey," Doll Baby replied.

"Hey, there's a ghost tour leaving from here in about half-an-hour. Would you like to go on it, maybe?"

Doll Baby shook her head. "No, thanks," she said. I'm fixing to make a ghost out of you, anyway. "I'm just enjoying being out here in the night air, listening to you." I can't believe I just said that. "I love to be here with the river and the buildings and all the people around us." —Every one of whom, I'm sure, would make a terrific meal.

Norm glanced at her and smiled. "You seem to have a real zest for life."

Oh, yes, I've got a zest for life all right. I take it away from people every chance I get.

Then Norm said, "I've really enjoyed our evening together."

Hold on a minute, sucker.

Doll Baby stopped; Norm stopped as well. They faced one another. "What's this, Norm?" she inquired. "You're talking like it's all over."

"Oh, no, that's not the impression I meant to give at all. I'd love to get together again. Maybe tomorrow afternoon we could—"

"I'm talking about tonight, Norm," Doll Baby insisted. "I'm not in any hurry to wrap things up this evening. Are you?"

"Well, no, I just thought..."

"You just thought what, Normie?"

"I guess I just thought that since we only met a few hours ago, you might want to—well, take things a little slowly."

"Why would I want to do that? I've had so much fun with you tonight, why, I just don't want it to end." Then she leaned into him and spoke, in a low voice, the words she'd used to ensnare many a lonely single man. "Let's go to your place."

***

Kent Jacoby had found what he was looking for—well, sort of found it anyway. He just wasn't sure yet what it meant.

Dolores Burdette had applied her same talent for interior decorating to this place. The windows were covered either with garbage bags or fabric; the temperature was cool; the kitchen was clean, almost as if no one had prepared food in it in years.

What's with you, Dolores? Kent thought, studying the place. He had come in through the back door, which was unlocked. Why do you turn your house into a cave?

He walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door; there was no food inside it.

And you seem to eat out all the time.

In the bedroom was a personal computer. A modem was on the floor. It stood out among the home's drab basic furnishings, from which even a television was absent, although maybe lack of funds had forced Dolores to choose between internet access or cable TV, and so she'd gone with the internet. Kent thought about turning it on, but figured it was password-protected. He wore gloves but was still reluctant to touch anything.

He made an exception, though, for a Post-It note on the keyboard.

Peeling the note off, he read it: "Norm P." was written at the top, with a telephone number below.

Maybe this Norm P. is someone I need to talk to, Kent thought, if he's still alive.

He pulled out his cellular phone, dialed Verne Newman. Verne picked up after two rings.

"Verne," he said. "It's me, Kent Jacoby."

"So?"

"I need you to do me a favor."

"What is it?"

"Are you close to a computer? I need you to do a reverse phone number look up. I'm looking for a name and an address." He gave Verne the telephone number.

There was pause on the other end while Verne took down the information. Then the PI asked, "Is this another entry in the Dolores Burdette Chronicles?"

"Maybe," Kent replied. "Can you do it or not?"

"Yeah, but I'll have to bill you."

"Just add back the ten percent."

"I never took it off in the first place. This'll be an additional charge."

"Fine, Verne, just make it happen."

"How soon do you need the information?"

"Yesterday," Kent said.

"I'll call you back in twenty."

"A man's life could be at stake."

"Okay," Verne said, "fifteen, then." He hung up.

10

It had been a long time since a woman—or anybody, actually, male or female—had set foot in Chateau de Norm. But the neatness of the master of the house had paid off. Doll Baby was impressed.

"Doll Baby"—she had encouraged him to call her by her nickname, but he still couldn't do it. He didn't feel he knew her well enough to do so, even if she did, and thus far he had used "Dolores." But by tomorrow morning, if things stayed on track, he expected to have no problem whatsoever calling her that. The two would know each other quite well by then.

She wanted him. Norm, in his kitchen pouring two more shots of Tequila, had no doubt about it. He had not felt so attractive in years, maybe ever. Norm had even gone so far to undo the top two buttons of his dress shirt, so he could show a little more skin—although he had forgotten he was wearing a T-shirt and was really just showing more of that.

Could it be, Norm thought, that I'm not such a dud after all?

They had already gone through the little that remained in one bottle of Tequila; fortunately, Norm had a second one in the home bar he had stocked just in case he ever had any friends over—something that had not taken place since his marriage ended and Norm came to the realization that the several couples he and his former wife had entertained were actually her friends rather than his. The home bar was actually a second, shallow pantry in his kitchen, but Norm had made it nice and was deliriously pleased to have finally put it to use on behalf of someone else.

One thing worried him, though: this girl could really drink. He thought he had noticed the scent of alcohol already coming out through her pores. Maybe he ought to cut her off in a gentle way.

After this last round, of course...

From the living room Doll Baby hollered out, "Hey, Norm, can we listen to some music?"

"Sure," he hollered back. "My CDs are all there on the bottom shelf. I hope you find something you like."

Norm decided to look for a tray instead of trying to carry the bottle plus the two shot glasses. As he rifled through his cabinets, he heard her yell to him again: "Did you say you had kids, Norm? I can't remember."

"No," he said, still searching for a particular black plastic tray he thought would do nicely, "we never did. I wish we had." He remembered her saying she'd had no children and asked: "Do you ever want kids?"

"Shoot, no," was her response, audible above the sound of the plastic CD cases being shuffled about, "they make lousy meals—too small to fill me up."

Rather offbeat sense of humor, Norm mused. At last, in the cabinet next to the oven, he found the tray. He pulled it out.

"Need any help with the CD player?" he called to the living room, wiping down the tray with a paper towel so it would be nice and clean when he brought it in.

"No, babe, I got it."

Norm jumped when the song started. He was embarrassed by how easily he'd been startled and was glad she'd not been there to see him lurch forward in fright. Then again, though, the song she'd chosen wasn't easy listening. It was cool, yes, but Norm had been expecting her to pick a composition a little more romantic than "The Final Countdown" by the Swedish rock band Europe.

"Interesting selection," he muttered, placing the Tequila and the two full shot glasses on the tray. He carried it into the living room where he found that Doll Baby had scattered some of his CDs on the coffee table and was studying them carefully. She did not glance up when Norm entered.

"You seem to like the 1980s, Norm," she said as he placed the tray on the coffee table in front of her. It was difficult to hear her over the song.

"Yeah, I'll go along with that," Norm responded loudly. "I was a teenager in the 1980s."

That was a time in my life when anything seemed possible. I was looking forward to life back then. I saw myself as being rich and successful by now, with a wonderful wife and a house full of kids. Instead I ended up as...as I don't know what. So, yeah, I like the 1980s, because that was when I was still young enough to dream big dreams. The 2000s have been the time when I realized those big dreams might never come true.

But that was too much to tell her, and certainly not the kind of answer that could be shouted over music. Perhaps later, as their relationship deepened—as he just knew it would—he would confess such things to her. And maybe, for a few of those dreams, there was still hope.

Doll Baby sprang to her feet. "Let's dance, Norm." She shimmied out into the middle of the living room.

"I don't know if you can really dance to a song like this," he said. Not that I could dance, or dance well, to any song.

"I can dance to anything," she assured him. "And so can you."

Norm shook his head. "I might just pass on this one."

"Oh, come on, Norm," Doll Baby cried. "Don't be such an old fuddy-duddy."

Norm laughed uncomfortably.

"You just have to lose yourself in the music, you know," she counseled.

Norm had to admit: she was moving pretty good, even if her movements weren't necessarily in sync with the music. It was almost as if her feet weren't touching the carpet.

Wait a minute.

Norm's mouth opened.

Her feet aren't touching the carpet.

"I got to be free, Norm!" announced Doll Baby, now six inches off the living room floor. A whirring sound had filled the room.

Norm stood rooted in place, dumbstruck. "Dolores...?"

It was time for the song's brilliant, fiery guitar solo; as it began, Doll Baby's height decreased. She'd not been tall anyway, no more than five-feet-five, but before Norm's eyes she shrank to four-and-a-half, then four, and then maybe three-and-a-half. No, wait, she wasn't shrinking. Her body mass was simply being redistributed: she was widening, with most of the weight routed to her belly and buttocks. Her blouse, skirt, and belt dropped off, revealing a red leathery garment underneath that vaguely resembled a smock, and something else: a pair of stunted, buzzing wings, one on each shoulder-blade, clear except for a latticework of red veins, and perfectly oval in shape. Her head rounded out dramatically, becoming a lump that retained her human facial features; it then sank down into her chest, with her neck almost disappearing. Her arms too became shorter, stubbier, and her hands bulged out, with the fingers on each going from five to four to three and finally to two giant thumb-like appendages.

"So what do you think, Norm?" she asked. "Am I still hot?"

Her right shoe dropped off as her feet and legs were drawn up close to her body, became vestigial in appearance.

Norm was unable to answer.

"What's the matter, Norm, honey? Cat got your tongue?"

Her left shoe fell off now.

"That's okay," Doll Baby told him. "You can borrow mine."

She opened her mouth, from which sprang two intertwined tendrils—one purple, the other pale green—each about the circumference of a garden hose. The tendrils ended in sharp, transparent hook-like structures, though instead of being pointed at the ends, there had small holes that opened and closed, opened and closed, accompanied by grotesque sucking noises.

"Yah!" cried Norm, and dove to the carpet to avoid them. The hook-ends of the tendrils plunged into the wall behind where he had just been standing—and stuck there.

Norm tried to scramble to his feet, run for the kitchen and the back door, but his knees were so weak that he collapsed on the threshold.

With a jerk of her head, Doll Baby yanked her tendrils out of the wall, withdrew them into her mouth. "Hey, Norm, you weren't supposed to duck like that!"

Norm was successful getting up this time. He hurled himself into the kitchen.

Doll Baby, hovering in the air like some nightmarish hummingbird, followed after. "Get your ass back here!" she ordered.

Too quick, too quick, she's too quick—

There was a cookie sheet on the counter. Norm had used it earlier today, to prepare a lunch of fish sticks and steak fries. He had left it there, forgetting to wash it in his excitement over his Big Date Tonight—which had undergone a marked decline in quality over the last fifteen seconds.

Norm grabbed the cookie sheet.

"What's this, Norm? Are you going to bake something for me?"

Once more the tendrils were ejected from her mouth. They were fired toward his chest, but Norm swatted them away with the cookie sheet. She fired them yet again, aiming for his abdomen, but Norm blocked them a second time.

"Quit doing that!" an annoyed Doll Baby commanded.

"Get away from me," Norm, near-hysterical, screamed at her. "Leave me alone!"

"Can't, babe," she responded. "You still owe me a dance!"

Norm's steak knives were within reach. He saw them—but Doll Baby saw that he saw them. Norm lunged for the knives even as her tendrils shot toward him. For a split-second it was impossible to tell whether Norm would get to his knives or Doll Baby's tendrils would get to him first.

Norm won the race, though.

She tried to hit his arm, but too many years of easy prey had softened her targeting ability. She missed his arm completely, and Norm was able to snatch one of the steak knives. He slashed at her tendrils with it, missed her as well, but Doll Baby was taken by surprise at his ferocity, and retreated a few feet from him, tendrils once more indrawn.

"You put that thing down, Norm," she warned.

But Norm Peters elected not to heed her command. Instead he charged forward with a steak knife for his sword and a cookie sheet for his shield, slashing at her, driving her back, like some knight of legend battling to save a beautiful princess from the clutches of his dragon. Of course, in Norm's case the princess and the dragon had turned out to be the same thing, but why split hairs?

"You're really pissing me off here, Norm," Doll Baby said as he slashed at the air in front of her.

"I don't care!"

"You damn well ought to," Doll Baby snarled, and suddenly zipped into the air above him. With her vile two-fingered hands she grabbed Norm under the arms, lifted and then spun around once in the air and then let go, flinging him nearly the length of the living room. His steak knife and cookie sheet—sword and shield—went soaring off into space. Norm himself went crashing into his computer desk, knocking the monitor off, which pulled the keyboard onto the floor along with it; Norm landed on top of both, the sharp bulk of the monitor under his stunned prone body. He lay dazed and bruised amid the ruined machinery that had long been his gateway to the land of porn.

The music was still playing—a track on his Europe CD that Norm had never heard before—yet he could easily make out Doll Baby's voice above it: "Here I come, Norm! Get ready!"

Norm flipped over onto his back, off of the monitor, adrenalin coursing through his veins. The tendrils snaked forward, but this time, rather than attempting to block them, he grabbed hold of the lengths of cold, pulsing flesh, and was elated to find that, unlike Doll Baby herself, they were flimsy. He could manipulate them.

"Let go of those, Norm!" That was what Doll Baby tried to say. With her tendrils extended, though, it came out "Leth go of thothe, Morm!"

But Norm wasn't letting go of anything. It was his turn to do the flinging, and he took that turn with brio. Years of landscaping work had made him a strong man, if not a particularly agile or athletic one. But there was plenty of power in his grip to hold onto Doll Baby. He yanked down hard on the tendrils, causing Doll Baby to snap forward, simultaneously pulling himself to his feet. Then he pirouetted, and with all the force he could muster, he slung Doll Baby into the wall above his sofa. With a loud slap, she flattened across it like a lump of silly putty a child had thrown to see if it would stick.

Did I knock her out, kill her, what?

As it turned out, none of the above. Before Norm could even turn to run, she pushed herself off the wall, flew toward him again, her tendrils hanging limply from her mouth. Norm screamed, half-fell and half-ran into the half-bathroom just before the living room, for he knew he could not make it to the foyer and front entrance of the house, the only other means he had of escape. He slammed the bathroom door, even as Doll Baby clambered to get inside with him, and then realized, as he held the doorknob firm so she could not open it, that he had trapped himself in the one room in the entire house that did not have a window.

She scraped at the door for a moment longer, and then stopped—but Norm could still hear the whirring of her wings.

Norm's knuckles were white as he held onto the doorknob with both hands. His chest was wracked with pain. In addition to being pursued by this monster, he feared he might be having a heart attack.

"Norm, honey," Doll Baby said through the door, "listen to me." Her voice had become oddly soothing.

"No," Norm whimpered. "Go away. Please, just go away."

"I'm not going anywhere, Norm. I can wait out here all night and all day tomorrow and all night again. How long do you think you can hold that door?"

Norm shook his head. Not long. He knew it.

"Hey, Norm," she said. "Tell me something. Just why are you trying so hard to survive? For what reason, honey? For who? For yourself, maybe? That's the only person, it seems to me, who'd really care whether you lived or died."

Norm did not answer, just kept his death-grip on the door.

"Now I'm sure there are people who like you, Norm. I'm sure there are people who say, 'That Norm Peters—why, he's a pretty nice guy, isn't he?' I'm sure there are people who say that, Norm. I'll bet they're pretty easy to find. But be honest with yourself, Norm. Of all those people, how many have chosen to make you a part of their lives? They know you live alone. They know you don't get out much. They know you don't have any family. But how many of them have invited you to Thanksgiving at their house? How many have asked you come to their New Year's Eve party, or to watch the Super Bowl at their place? Not a whole lot, I'm thinking. And you can't blame them, can you? I mean, think about it. If you were a happy person, with a nice partner to share your life with and a couple of kids and plenty of friends, how much would it really add to your existence to include Norman Peters, expert on financial accounting standards, in your get-togethers? Not much, I'd say. You ought to realize by now, Norm, that people are keeping you right where they want you: at arm's length. They're happy to say hello to you and maybe even chat for a few minutes in the break room, but otherwise they're going to keep you a safe distance away. I think you know all this, deep down. I think you know you've been lying to yourself. It's time to face facts, Norm Peters. It's time for you to hear the truth."

Norm could draw only the shallowest breaths now.

Don't listen. Don't listen.

"Certain things other people have, certain things that other people experience," Doll Baby intoned, "just aren't meant for you. They're not in the cards. I know how much you want them, Norm. I've met lots of guys like you over the years, all of them chasing after dreams they could never catch. I know your dreams, Norm. I knew them the moment I met you. I could tell how much you want to make those dreams real."

She knows nothing. Nothing!

"And you think you've got a chance at making them real because they've been real for other people. But, oh, Norm—just look at yourself. Truly look at your fat, balding, ugly, awkward, boring, non-rich self. You're not a stupid man. You know you'll never have another chance at being married and having a family. You know there's nothing to recommend you."

No, you're wrong. You're wrong. I can have it all. It's still possible. But tears were forming in Norm's eyes.

"It's been this way a long time, Norm, and it's not going to change. In your twenties and early thirties, you watched people the same age as you become fathers and mothers. You heard them talk about what a trial it was to have small children. Now, in your forties, you hear them talk about the difficulties of raising teenagers, or of sending kids through college. These are challenges you desperately want to have, aren't they, Norm? But you don't. Like I say, certain things just aren't meant for you."

And now the tears were running down Norm's cheeks.

"You'll never know what it's like to have a high school aged-son come downstairs in his tuxedo before the senior prom, wearing a little too much aftershave maybe, but so handsome and cheerful, so excited about driving across town to pick up his date tonight, that you just can't help but break out in a smile. You'll never know that, Norm."

You're lying. It can still happen. There's still time.

But Norm felt a sob forming in his chest.

"You'll never have a daughter to walk down the aisle, with her looking so beautiful it makes you want to cry. You'll never be able to make corny remarks about her always being your little girl, even after she's married."

The sob was in his throat now.

"And I promise you this, Norm Peters: there will be no one to share your bed, to share your home, to enjoy romantic dinners with, to take care of you, for you to take care of in return. She's not out there, Norm. You tried to find her but instead you got me. That's a mercy, Norm. I'm here to spare you pain, don't you see that? If you were to survive tonight—which you won't—all you'd have ahead of you would be more days like the ones you've already had, days of just sleeping in an empty bed, living in an empty house, going through the motions of an empty life, until finally, one day, you go to sleep and don't wake up again. That's no life, Norm. You don't want that."

At last, despite Norm's efforts to hold it back, the sob escaped; another quickly followed.

"Norm," Doll Baby said. "Are you crying in there? I've got good hearing, and that's what it sounded like to me. Are you crying?"

She seemed happy over the news—and why not?

"Oh, Norm, don't cry. Let me put an end to your suffering. It won't hurt, I promise. Just open the door so we can stop all this silly running around. Please, Norm? Please?"

Norm's breaths were coming easier now; his chest was still hitching, but at least he had control of himself again.

He had taken in all that Doll Baby had said. He knew what to do now. He was ready.

He twisted the doorknob, slowly opened the door.

"Good boy, Norm," Doll Baby said, starting inside with him. "You made the right—"

Once she was halfway in, Norm slammed the door on her, throwing all his weight against it; Doll Baby squealed in pain and shock.

"Hey!"

Norm then took her by the back of her smock-garment—which he now realized was more akin to a robe—and yanked her all the way into the bathroom. He had the perfect destination in mind for her.

"Norm, stop it!"

She really thinks she can give me an order?

"Norm, I said stop—!"

But that was all she got out before Norm plunged her head into the toilet. Too bad the half-bathroom didn't have a tub; he would have enjoyed giving her the Glenn Close treatment from Fatal Attraction. The commode would have to do, though. And in all honesty, as an alternative, it was certainly satisfying.

How dare you!

He shoved her head deep into the toilet. Her tendrils had been extended, and rose up from the bowl, but they lashed around wildly, blindly. Norm batted them away with one hand, held her head down with the other.

How dare you tell me what's meant for me and what's not!

Doll Baby twisted her fat body, tried to get air. "Let go of me—you bastard—let—"

Only one of us is getting out of here alive tonight!

Her gross hands pushed back against the porcelain but could not get a grip. Norm was elated.

I choose me!

"Norm—"

Me! Me!

Then she kicked him in the stomach with both legs. Apparently they weren't as vestigial as Norm had thought. He fell back, out the door into the living room. Once more, Doll Baby was upon him.

He noted crazily that she was balder than he was. Her blond hair had been a wig; she'd apparently lost it in the toilet.

And, by the look of her, she was madder than hell over the loss.

"I was going to do it quick, Norm," she hissed, "but after my little dip just now I'm going to do it slow—real slow."

Someone rang the doorbell.

Doll Baby looked to the foyer, but Norm didn't. He recognized a foe that had been distracted when he saw one and took full of advantage. His fist rammed the left side of Doll Baby's face and, though still in mid-air, she fell back far enough that Norm had room enough to inflict a second blow: this time with his leather shoe, and this time to her gut. Stunned, she sank to the floor as Norm, simultaneously, got to his feet.

"Run," Norm yelled to the unseen visitor on the front doorstep. "Get the police!"

"What?" The voice outside was a man's, but muffled.

Who the hell would visit me? Norm wondered.

Nevertheless, he attempted to repeat himself. "Get—"

Doll Baby, airborne again, barreled into Norm. "He'll get nothing!" she screeched.

Norm was propelled back into the living room.

The man's voice again: "Mr. Peters? What's going on in there?"

But Mr. Peters had other concerns. He had landed near the fireplace, and better yet, the fireplace poker. He snatched it as Doll Baby zoomed toward him, and delivered a single strike to the side of her body. She careened into the CD player, which amazingly kept playing. Norm, again on his feet, brought the poker down in an attempt to inflict a second strike—and, he hoped, a killing one—but Doll Baby flew away and instead it was the CD player that got killed; sparks of light jumped and popped all around him.

Still, Norm was quick. Once more, he swung for Doll Baby, who once more dodged, though he clipped her wing and she howled in rage.

The front door swung open; only now did Norm realize he had never locked it. A man stepped through...

A man, Norm saw, with a gun.

Doll Baby twirled around to face him. "Hi, sweetheart," she said. "Welcome to the party."

Kent Jacoby could only stare dumbly at her.

Norm, now, to the young man: "Look out! She'll kill you!"

But Kent still wasn't moving, and Norm knew he had to act. He threw himself forward, brought the poker down on the back of Doll Baby's head. It was a blow that would have killed a normal person—but it only made Doll Baby mad.

Turning back to Norm, her eyes ablaze with madness, she growled, "Norm Peters, I have had it with you."

But then a gunshot rang out, followed by the tapping of plaster on the hallway floor. Doll Baby froze, twisted in the air back to Kent Jacoby.

Did he just fire into my ceiling?

With trembling hands Kent was aiming for Doll Baby. Evidently, he had gotten off a warning shot and, yes, he'd fired into Norm's ceiling.

Thanks a lot, dude. Why couldn't you have just shot her?

"Okay," Kent said. "You just...hold it...right there."

Doll Baby's lips pulled back in a smile.

"Shoot her, man," Norm urged. "She's dangerous."

But Kent ignored Norm. "You did it, didn't you?" he said to her.

"Did what, honey?" Doll Baby's tone was playful.

Kent nodded toward Norm. "You got a phone that can record things?"

"Sir, please, you can't—"

"Do you have one or not? I've got one but I don't want to..."

Yeah, you don't want to take your sights off of her, Norm thought. Good idea. But who is this guy? What's he talking about?

"Yeah, I've got a phone like that," Norm said.

"Get it," Kent ordered. "Please."

"Say," Doll Baby whistled to Kent, "you're cute. Where are you from, sugar?"

"What are you?" Kent demanded of her.

"I'm Doll Baby."

"Doll...?"

Norm had found his smartphone on the dining room table where he had left it.

"Got it? Got it? Is it charged?" Kent asked, eyes still fixed on the hovering Doll Baby.

"Yeah, I've got it," Norm said, coming around her side.

Kent was sweating fiercely, shaking all over. And yet a smile was emerging on his face.

"Now that I've introduced myself," Doll Baby said to Kent, "just who are you supposed to be?"

"I'm a guy who found a couple of your victims," said Kent.

"Which ones, may I ask?" Doll Baby responded. "There have been so many." And she laughed.

"Start recording," Kent told Norm. "Please, sir, get everything. This is going to save me."

"Save you from what?" Doll Baby inquired.

"Shut up," Kent barked. "I ask the questions."

Norm, at Kent's request, had begun recording the exchange on his iPhone; with his free hand he held on to the poker.

"I was just asking," replied a chastened Doll Baby.

Kent said, "Did you kill Winston and Eleanor Fleming?"

"What, you're here on account on those cruds? Were they your mom and dad or something?"

"Did you do it?"

"Sure I did it."

"They were floating afterwards, right? Why did they float? How did you make that happen?"

"Oh, that," Doll Baby laughed. "Well, it's the funniest damn thing. See, I got these two little tubes I stick into people. One tube I use to send in stuff to get you human beings all softened up for harvesting. The other I use to draw it out all the minerals from your bodies. And for some reason, after I'm done, it makes y'all float around—at least for a while. Then, all of a sudden, maybe a day or two later, y'all sink back to earth. It's kind of funny, I think."

"These tubes," Kent said to the creature, taking a step toward her. "Where do you keep them?"

"Look out," Norm began to say. "They're in—"

"My mouth," Doll Baby bleated, and suddenly the tendrils had lurched out of her. Likely she was aiming for his chest, but Kent had instinctively raised the gun to fire; this had the effect of blocking her attack but also kicking the gun out of his hand. She did to him the same thing she had done to Norm earlier, grabbing him under the armpits and hurling him across the living room. His body crashed into a bookcase, which then fell over on top of him.

Doll Baby faced Norm again. He dropped his iPhone on the carpet, prepared to take another swing at her with the poker. He owned no firearms. This was the only weapon he had.

"I figured your little buddy could use a nap," Doll Baby said. "High-strung, though, wasn't he?"

"Stay away from me," Norm whispered.

Doll Baby paid no attention to his warning. "Now, where were we, Norm? Oh, yes, I was about to kill you."

She's in the way of my getting to the front door. Can I make it to the kitchen and then out the back? And if I manage to get away, though, what'll she do to this guy on the floor?

Norm was thinking, hard.

No, I'm pretty sure she'll follow me. I've made her work for it tonight. I've hurt her. She's angry. She wants me first.

A plan was coming together in Norm's mind. It was ridiculous, but so was being chased around by a miniature Blue Meanie that wanted to suck the life out of him or something.

Even from here I can smell the alcohol on her. It's coming out of her pores.

His keen analytical mind, so adept at crunching numbers, was hard at work.

And those little wings are so small. They couldn't possibly support her unless...

Norm had made a deduction.

She's porous. The air just passes right through her. And all that Tequila has soaked her through and through...

"Time to die now, Norm," the beast said, advancing on him. "You've put it off long enough."

Norm made a run for it, bounding toward the kitchen. Doll Baby gave chase through the air, nearly catching him, but he knocked her away with the poker. His hand closed around the knob of the door leading into the garage; he yanked it open, dashed through, and slammed it behind him. He heard Doll Baby crash into it, utter some undecipherable curse, and then open it herself.

"There you are," she hooted upon seeing Norm. "Come here, you darling little man."

And dove for him.

But just before she reached him, Doll Baby saw that Norm had discarded his poker for something else, something that was burning, in his right hand. But she lacked the wherewithal to stop before Norm executed his final gambit of the evening—an error that cost her dearly.

For in the seconds it had taken for Doll Baby to catch up with him, Norm had stuffed a clutch of rags into an old beef stew can he had, until a moment ago, used to hold nails. He had applied a few drops of gasoline to the rags, and then, making use of his trusty fireplace lighter, set them ablaze in the can he now held. As she descended on him, he hurled the flaming can at her, and in that instant created the world's largest Flaming Tequila shot. With a mighty whoompf the cloud of alcohol surrounding Doll Baby ignited, engulfing her in flame. Her screams were terrible enough that Norm almost pitied her—despite the things she'd said, despite the things she'd apparently done, despite what she had wanted to do to him—and he took no pride in the act of causing her such agony. But he also knew she had to be stopped.

That was what he'd set out to do, nothing more.

Though lacerated and aching all over, Norm was calm, centered. In perfect command of his faculties he limped over to the control panel for the garage door. Ignoring Doll Baby's pathetic wails, he mashed the button to lift the door. On command, it groaned open behind Doll Baby as she slammed against the walls, ceiling, and floor of the garage—even the top of Norm's car a couple of times—in a mad frenzy, like some crazed glowing bumblebee. The door's slow rise revealed the driveway, followed by the woods across the street, and then, last, a star-filled blue-black night sky.

And now, picking up his new leaf-blower, Norm faced Doll Baby again. He doubted if she could hear him over the sound of her own screaming, let alone understand what he said. Nevertheless, he had two final words he wanted to say to her, and he aimed to get them out while he had the chance. Norman Peters spoke them as much for himself as for her:

"Goodnight, Dolores."

Then, with steady hands, he turned the leaf blower on the creature full blast. Doll Baby, still ablaze and therefore in no shape to resist, was rocketed out of the garage into the open air. Norm's plan had been to close the garage door once she was through it and then secure the house to preclude her from getting back in, as he was unsure if the conflagration—horrific though it was to behold—would prove sufficient to kill the monster; however, it turned out further action on Norm's part was unnecessary.

A screeching Doll Baby, thrown to the limit of the leaf blower's range, spun round and soared high up into the night sky. Then she plunged again, a yellow comet, but instead of heading back toward Norm she went for the goldfish pond.

No, he thought, she's going to douse herself!

She almost made it too—almost.

Doll Baby was less than two feet above the surface of the pond when she burst apart in mid-scream. But burst apart she did—into a million flecks of soggy, greasy ash—before she could reach the frigid water that might have saved her. In the wake of the explosion, fragments of fleshy green matter unrecognizable as having ever belonged to a living organism lay across the top of the pond and all around it, with the lightest pieces still fluttering to earth for a full minute afterward. Doll Baby's final cry echoed deep into the night, and was then extinguished as completely as she.

Norm shut off the blower.

"Well," he sighed, "so much for a second date."

He turned and went back in to see about Kent Jacoby.

***

Norm and Kent stood side by side in front of Norm's goldfish pond. The fish were coming to the surface, tasting the bits of Doll Baby that lay on the skin of the water. To Norm's considerable amusement, they kept spitting the pieces back out.

Kent Jacoby, with whom Norm exchanged a formal introduction while pulling the bookcase off of him, was not badly hurt; he was shaken more than anything else, and a bit ashamed, Norm sensed, that he had not done more, that if anything he had blown a chance to end Doll Baby's reign of terror quickly and cleanly, instead forcing Norman Peters—the man he had come to rescue—to destroy her with items from his garage. His suspicion was borne out when, after several moments of standing silently in the night air before the pond, Kent suddenly said, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? You saved my life."

"Yeah, but I wanted to get her confession first. I didn't realize how dangerous she was. I should have just—"

"Forget it. Honestly. You did good. I did good. That's all that matters."

Kent nodded. There was a short pause, during which they continued to stare down at the pond. Then Kent said, "I wonder what she really was."

Norm shrugged. "No telling. I'm not sure if I even want to know. Say, what're you going to do with that little movie I made?" He had already sent the video to Kent's smartphone.

"I haven't decided," Kent replied. "Maybe I'll just keep it, watch it every now and then to prove to myself I'm not crazy."

"There's an idea."

Another lull in the conversation followed. This time it was Norm who broke the silence. "I probably ought to send an email to that dating website," he said, "let them know their compatibility matrix could use a little work."

Kent glanced at him. "What, right now?"

"No, I need to clean up the house first."

"But you're not going to do that tonight, are you?" Kent asked, incredulous.

"Oh, no," Norm assured him, "just sometime tomorrow—when I feel up to it." He reflected briefly on his computer, now lying broken and strewn across the living room floor.

Farewell, old friend, he thought glumly. Maybe it was for the best, though, that we parted ways.

"Do you want help with the cleanup? I'd be glad to pitch in," Kent said.

"You don't have to," Norm responded. "But it'd sure be nice."

"No problem."

Norm studied Kent for a moment. Then he went back to looking at the pond, just as Kent did.

I get you, Kent Jacoby, he thought. We're members of the same tribe, you and me. We're people who've found ourselves alone in life. We're people who need to talk to other people but we've had trouble, it seems, getting people to talk back to us. It's ironic when you think about it. The lonely may well make up the single largest group of people on Earth. But you and me, Kent, we don't have to be lonely tonight if we don't want to be. Tonight, we've got a choice.

"There's a little all-night diner just down the road," Norm said. "Want to get a cup of coffee?"

"The first round's on me," Kent said. "I've still got about twenty bucks left to my name."

Norm laughed. "Follow me."

They walked down to the side of the road, and then headed in the diner's direction, about a mile-and-a-half away.

"So," Norm began, sucking in the cold air, "are you married, Kent? Do you have children?"

"I have three children," Kent answered. "The marriage—well, we're separated right now. It's not looking too good."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'm divorced, so I know how this sort of thing feels."

"Oh."

"But don't worry," Norm said. "If it happens, just remember what they say: 'Divorced is the new married.'"

"They really say that?"

"No, not really—but I'm hoping to start a trend."

"Good luck with that."

"Thanks. I need all the help I can get." And then, a bit more quietly, Norm added, "Just like everybody else, I guess." And he laughed again.

Norm Peters laughed because he was feeling pretty fine, all things considered. Yes, it had been a rough night, on multiple levels. And, yes, it was dark around him, and, yes, there were places inside of him that felt dark too. But a way existed to cope with darkness, both the kind within and the kind without: you lit a candle.

In the physical darkness, the equivalent of lighting a candle might be as simple a thing as switching on a lamp.

Where mental and emotional darkness was concerned, there were other, less obvious but just as effective means to create light.

Norm Peters, for example, had made a new friend this evening. In so doing, he'd lit a candle, and placed it on a shelf in one of the darker chambers of his heart. There, he hoped its radiance would endure for years to come—but if it lasted only a short time, he would be no less grateful.

For now, at least, that candle was burning bright.

