

HER LONGEST NIGHT

a novel

Book One in the trilogy Her Dawning Night

Erik J. Avalon

Smashwords Edition

Novel text Copyright © 2011 Erik J. Avalon (pen name of M. Erik Strouss)

Add-ons (Afterword and Reader's Guide) Copyright © 2012 Erik J. Avalon

New Cover by Erik J. Avalon (featuring Sebastian)

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The characters and events herein are productions of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This work I hereby dedicate to the following:

Dean Koontz, fount of constant

inspiration; Mrs. Nichols, who tried

to teach this stubbornly bad student;

Mrs. Montgomery, whose class brought

home the basics; and for the man

who gives me daily

reason to live,

Kurt.

"But you're... you're just a girl." – rescued guy

"That's what I keep saying." – Buffy Summers

Disclaimer: The author has taken some geographic liberties.

# 1. Encounters Through Drive-Thru

While it happens, she dreams.

She sees an earth spread out before her

in a way she cannot quite comprehend. Her senses are split

between the direct physical and an indirect,

more intimate psychological plane,

a spectrum of sensations that is akin to the looking glass

of the gods. She sees a world that looks physically

like her own, but it does not feel like her own,

does not seem to move like her own, and is populated

by creatures that cannot possibly be

human in the way she is.

She would wonder why she does not choke

in the cold of space, which she can feel,

but she assumes

quite correctly

that she is in a dream state.

– from a dream

# ONE

Audience in my head, I present to you, once again, the story of my life.

I get up, much too late in the day according to some sources who haven't lived my life and have no right to judge the way I do. I clean the litter boxes and feed this month's reclaims, kittens and older cats I've found, taken in, cleaned up, and worked to habilitate for domestic life with people I've probably yet to meet. I find my name tag, pin it to a clean, striped blue work shirt, politely shoo one of the toms off the black jeans I wore last night (I'm only going back in to work so who cares if I recycle one article of uniform?), begin to slip them on, think to change into new panties, slip into the jeans, snap into a bra two cups smaller than I wish it was, pull the day's work shirt down over my head, tuck it in, and step into the bathroom to inspect my workly appearance before heading for the door. I'm sure I showered and took care of all those pesky little necessities before sleep this morning, so all I need now's a good brush, rinse, a little combing, a little tweezing, a little cat-scratching between this and that, and oh, Marsha, don't forget the hat!

Supposed to pull my hair back into a ridiculous tail before I can don the hat, but I always wait until I'm in the parking lot – two minutes or twenty late, I never care – to take off the baseball-ish cap, fish a scrunch out of the glove box, angrily yank my hair back through it, and then tug the cap back on top of my head. I figure if anyone's annoyed that I'm late, they'll look out at my car and maybe notice my pissy little ritual with the hat and one day stop requiring me to tie my hair back. I don't work with the food, after all, just the screen, the money, and the dishes. But alas, rules are rules and at Our Mindy's, the rules must be followed.

The rules any particular day's manager likes, anyway.

I walk around the rooms of my mobile home, glancing here and there to see if there's anything quickly needing done before I head out, but no, everything's in its right place for now, stored and tucked and shelved and boxed and folded and if the cats knock anything down while I'm gone, yay, something to do first thing in the door later!

Walking through the living room, I pick up a strange little scrap of cloth lying where I woke. I sometimes sleep on the couch, but for the life of me, I can't remember falling asleep last night, or what I was doing just before sleep that landed me on the couch.

And it's not cloth. It crumbles to dust in my fingers, so I dismiss it as weird lint and walk on to the front door, petting and scratching and faux-purring at the many regulars who like to see me out the door. Luckily, only a few in this batch like to play sneak-out-the-door, and all of those must be preoccupied eating or shitting because I see none of them around now.

Just as I'm opening the inner scratched-wood door and reaching for the latch to open the glass outer door, I spy Cheshire sauntering into the living room from the hall. I could swear I didn't see him anywhere back the hall or in the half-walled office space between the living room and the back part of the house, yet from there he comes. Maybe he was in the bedroom, the one room I realize I didn't check, but no, the door there was shut – maybe shut, mostly shut, dark in there and uninteresting and I don't know why but I don't want to think about that room right now – so yeah, he must have been hiding behind the toilet or between shower curtain and liner.

Cheshire I've had the longest, going on a year or more now. He feels like my own among all these mostly friendly little furry strangers, and even though he hardly makes time for me, I feel a connection with him. My little guardian angel, I like to say to people, even though he looks more like a witch's familiar, but then I don't like to judge on appearances. I find myself doing it anyway, from time to time, but then, who can avoid it anymore?

Appearances rule our lives in this country.

I grapple with a desire to shut the door and chase after Cheshire and if I'm lucky enough to catch him in under ten minutes, snuggle with him on the couch watching local TV – who can afford cable or satellite on a fast food income with two or more dozen cats to feed? Not I, I proclaim – but, responsibility wins out in the end and I leave the house.

I'll just have to watch out for him tonight. If he deigned to make an appearance before I left for work, he must be wanting some attention, and tonight he'll get it.

Or not.

Before I know it, I'm behind the wheel, the park is miles behind me, I'm listening to the sounds of the world through my open windows, and a slow grin spreads over my face. I glance in the rearview mirror and it looks like the demented grin of a gypsy in a movie, waiting for a curse to come to pass that she has cast, waiting for the demon to arise and strike down the person foolish enough to cross her in some small way that she's too petty to forgive.

I don't believe in demons, by the way. I believe that if anything strange exists out there in the world beyond our world, it is in fact unknowable, and by trying to name it, we make of ourselves fools no less ignorant and stubbornly hateful than a Nazi or a Klansman.

Even if our otherworldly neighbors exist and look just half as frightful as our studios and more feverishly imaginative writers are wont to make them, they are probably no less terrified of us than we are of them, and expecting attack will only give reason for it to happen.

I laugh off the images evoked by my own reflection and turn off state route 132 onto 125, called Ohio Pike down here and Beechmont Avenue down where I work. I'm making good time today, minimal sluggish-old-fart traffic, no red lights so far – though the bulk of my daily voyage's traffic signals still lie ahead at this point – and I may even be a minute or two early if I can keep up this momentum. No one will know what to think, but probably everyone I pass on my way in will have something small and snide to say.

Oh, the joys of menial labor jobs.

I wouldn't choose anything else in the world for myself right now, though. With the economy so unpredictable and all sorts of jobs becoming obsolete or simply unprofitable to various levels of higher-ups, work in fast food is one of the few things I still see as reliably stable, something I can depend upon to support myself and my rescues.

Sure, the turn-over rate even at my store is pretty high, for while work is hard to find it's still easy to find someone who isn't willing to do any real work, but as long as I show up every day, keep myself presentable, and do the damned job – I mean, come on, how hard is it to do some mess of dishes and take an order for burgers, fries, and drinks – they'll have no reason to do anything but keep giving me the hours they've been giving me.

I simplified there. Way oversimplified the job there. Don't misunderstand me, it can be difficult, just not in ways you'd expect if you've never worked fast food.

Listen to me, being all condescending all of the sudden to the voices in my head that don't speak. Can you believe it?

And now I seem to have experienced another little time jump, whereby I was distracted by a few small thoughts and suddenly miles on the road have passed, and I'm most of the lights further along than I think I should be. I know I just half-spaced, my mind wandering while my body kept driving along the familiar route, just enough of my consciousness still in the car to avoid causing an accident, but I must have been lucky and caught not a single red light, for I think I'd have been more aware of them if I'd had to stop at them.

Ahead, I see that cheerful doting-daughter icon that is the face of Our Mindy's, once just Mindy's, but years after the founder died, the corporation decided to add the attributive adjective as the legal first word in the restaurant's branding and a compulsory part of our greetings.

Some people say that there's more than a passing resemblance between myself and the red-haired, freckled cartoon girl on the sign, but I more liken myself to the foxy visage of Kathy Griffin. Her, I can respect and call a role model, or at least would if I were the type to model myself on anyone other than who I myself wish to be.

Pulling into the lot and my usual space – close to the small building housing the bun freezer and the enclosed dumpsters beside that – I shut off the engine and flip my cap over onto the passenger seat. My hand goes for the glove box, but I spy a scrunch on the floor and decide to use that instead of riffling through old insurance card sheets and receipts and napkins for an only slightly fresher one. I work quickly, not wanting to remain in the car any longer in the summer heat than I absolutely have to. True, it is finally cooling down just below the nineties for the first time in nearly two weeks, and the rain of the previous day and the night before that has helped a little as well, but I much prefer even cooler temps and regret that my life seems to have been destined to stay rooted in a place where I can rely on no favorable weather condition remaining for very long.

I suppose I should mention that I live in Ohio, residing in the town of New Richmond and working in Beechmont, both about a half-hour drive from downtown Cincinnati. I always forget you don't know. You're only the silence in my own skull, but every day you seem new and fresh somehow.

Especially today. How odd.

Hair bound and hat replaced, I climb out, lock and slam the door shut, cross behind a waiting pulled-up customer's vehicle, and enter to see Big Bertie taking an order at the front counter. Bertie is larger than life both physically and in personality, and I hope but know it won't be the case that she's just taken over early instead of standing at the end of her shift. Things are always more entertaining with Big Bertie around, not to mention the fact she can make me laugh while still getting all her own work done and not expecting someone else to finish up what she didn't feel like doing, like almost every other front counterman or -woman.

Spotting me coming in a couple minutes early, against my usual habit, she stops the grumpy impatient orderer for a moment to feign shock at my arrival, then waves me on back toward the employees only door, which I pass through quickly. The door swings back more rapidly than it should, and I step to the left to avoid it hitting me.

"Watch it with that thing," Vespa, the usual day shift back-window woman, barks at me from the stool in front of the money-drop safe as I continue past her with only a half-apologetic glance to mark my acknowledgment of her.

Vespa means well most times, but she lets things get out of hand rather well and then never seems to have the time to clean up her own mess, no matter how long she tries to stick around into my shift and on the clock to get in my way as she tries to clean it up, too late, so late they make her leave before she can get it done and so by letting her stay to start, slow me down cleaning up her messes and getting my own work begun.

Between the grill and fryer stations on the right, situated between the spot where I've paused and where Bertie stands at the front reg station, daytime manager Evangeline is training a poor teen fool to take over the job Mick should be doing today. I was off when it happened, but I read about it in enough co-workers' chirps and Lookbook updates that I feel I was here when Mick walked out without a word, leaving his crew double-short-handed following a legitimate medical call-off.

Evangeline is a latina with night-time soap star good looks and the voice of a hip-hop diva, but she's no interest in the drudging work required to maintain likability amongst the wider masses of the viewing and listening public. So she's chosen to remain in fast food, where, if her job's done right, she only has to be cheerful in small doses with strangers who stand before her for only a few moments and then have to walk away and leave her alone.

I can definitely understand and appreciate her strategy there.

"And this coming in now – on time for once, bless her – is Our Marsha Bradley, beloved voice of the menu board," Evangeline introduces me in a cringe-worthy, syrupy-drivel tone to the new guy, who stands pimply behind large-rimmed specs. "Marsha, meet Gregory."

"Oh, Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!" Gregory adopts a bad imitation of that voice I've grown to dread over the years, picking up rather quickly on the playground interpretation of my name and at the same time making the mistake of making his first words to me be the pet peeve I simply cannot abide in any ongoing fashion. "What's happened to your nose?"

Evangeline almost grins, but the upturned corners of her lips are contrasted by stark worry around her eyes, almost terror, for she's seen me come close to violence before over this issue with people. She cuts her glare from him to me, silently begging for me to move on.

I almost leave it alone, but the kid's nearly tittering with glee at his little funny.

Without my brain realizing it had authorized the use of force, my fist clenches and slams up into Gregory's soft nose, sending him flying back onto his ass on the floor between the fry-and-nugget warming station and the front sandwich station. Evangeline and Bertie both look down at the dazed boy, a hand to his face, eyes crossing in an attempt to look down at his offended feature. Big Bertie cackles, can't help belting out a big hearty laugh, and I love her for it because it makes me laugh and even makes Evangeline merely grin and shake her head, rather than scream at me and order me back to the office for a write-up or worse.

Evangeline bends over to help poor foolish – but perhaps now a little wiser – Gregory get to his feet, and I turn to pass pointedly silent sandwich-maker Rico on my way back to the weird back hallway where I do my work in relative peace, away from the inevitable shiftly drama.

# TWO

There's no such thing as me, my, or I.

At least, that's how we're trained to think when we're on the clock at Our Mindy's.

Remove any singular personal identifiers and, according to Corporate, you remove the tendency to want to blame co-workers for any mistake, and take on a collective accountability for anything and everything that goes right or wrong concerning a customer's order.

Even after the seven years I've worked here, I still find myself slipping from time to time on that spoken branding technique. Thankfully, usually, the average drive-thru customer is too distracted by conversation with passengers or via cell phone, or texting, or smoking, or doing whatever else, so distracted that they hardly notice anything we say besides a price they invariably find too high. I want to commiserate with the less rude among them, but I have nothing to do with the pricing – no one on-site does – and another pet peeve of mine is how so many customers blame us here directly, with their eyes if not their mouths.

And don't get me started on the layout of this building.

The back hallway positions the rear drive-thru window precisely on the corner where customer vehicles turn to get from the menu board at the back to the order hand-out window on the side of the restaurant. No one expects a stop right there at the corner, and so rounding the building, most are a few feet out if they don't simply fly on by. Luckily, the gods gave me a good ear-catching voice, so I can typically get their attention before they get all the way up there to second window and make me run halfway across the store just to collect their money, then go back and forth again to return change or credit card.

Can you imagine the comments this set-up gets me? Like I designed the building and erected it myself, just this morning. Most of the local regular customers are accustomed to this window arrangement, for the building's been here over twenty years, but we're right next to a major highway, and so you might be able to guess that most of the day-to-day customers are not locals, are not regulars, and so every day, every hour, nearly every minute I've got orders, I'm acknowledging again and again the insane design of this place.

Sorry, got myself started there.

Oh good, another order to take!

"Hi, welcome to Our Mindy's!" I croon into the headset, pressing the microphone on and off again to grab up some paper towels to dry my hands off quick as I run-walk back to the touchscreen register menu and on again to ask, "How are you today?", in as sincere a tone as I can muster.

I expect the typical response; a proof of the latest customer's inattention when she or he either just goes on with their order or demands a "second," offering no answer to my often at least partially sincere inquiry as to their current disposition.

Instead, I get, "Fantastic, and how are you?"

"Good enough," I sigh, realizing for no reason at all that I haven't yet posted today's free cat bulletin sheet in my window for customers to see when they stop here to pay for their order. Thankfully, I had it folded into my pocket last night, so I take it out, unfold it, use the tape I keep back at my reg to affix it to the windowpane that doesn't slide open, and ask, "What would you like to try today?"

My cats are special to me, but I can't afford to feed them all forever and still continue to take in new kitteny strays or old toms or worn-out mother cats, so I long ago had to devise a system whereby I could give them away. Working in fast food already, the solution was easy to come up with. Each day, I post a new copy of the free cat bulletin sheet, featuring as many of the current batch in one photo as I can manage, and pull-off tabs with my phone number for any locals who want to contact me later about free adoption. For those just passing through or too impatient to wait for me to get off work, I give them my across-the-cul-de-sac neighbor's number, and Miss Bettsy will show them into my home to pick out a cat or two, or however many they want and are able to take in as pets.

I'm usually a pretty good judge of character, so if the person asking after a cat strikes me as untrustworthy with animals, I simply fudge and claim I forgot to take the sheet down, none of those cats are available anymore, I can't give out the ones I've got because they'd tear you to ribbons or never come out of hiding for you to meet; something nice to get them to forget all about free cats and go get their food and drive away.

Most people that do bother to ask, though, turn out to be exceptional pet owners, and provide good homes for my babies. I don't get to know any of them too personally, but I do have a group on Lookbook that I and Miss Bettsy encourage adopters to join, where we all share pet pics, pet tips, and pet stories.

I rattle my head to get my brains back in the present, fully expecting to have to ask the customer at the speaker to have to repeat the order I've barely heard him making while I've been distracted by my own thoughts, but I look at the screen and find I've entered every item he's asked for, even making a few things into a combo for him that could go together, but which he didn't think to ask for as a meal. Apparently I can now do with the order screen what I've been able to do behind the wheel for years; divide my consciousness into distracted-Marsha and what-must-be-done-Marsha. The thought is a little disturbing, and a choked chuckle escapes me before I realize the headset is still on.

"What's funny?" the customer asks, something like genuine concern coming through in his voice though he doesn't know me and hasn't even seen me yet.

He sounds like none of our regulars, not even the faintest bit familiar to my ears.

I lie, "Oh, one of Our Crew said something that made me laugh," because I know that most likely, everyone else on my crew is now too busy putting his order together to listen to a thing I say at this point that isn't directly related to the order. "We're sorry, did you have anything else you would like to add to your order?"

"No, that will be all, thank you."

I give him his total and ask him to pull around, and when he does, my breath deserts me for a moment. He's gorgeous in a way I almost can't describe, other than to say that Brad Pitt had an impossible love child with Vin Diesel, Denzel Washington had one with Will Smith, and this guy is their grandkid. I don't even know why those names; they probably just came to mind because they're some hot actors I wouldn't mind getting to know a little better. This guy has light cocoa skin, with enough white in him that someone who didn't want to see the African heritage could easily ignore it, but I'm not that type. I revel in diversity.

Usually.

"Miss, I'll be paying with a card. Your establishment does take plastic, does it not?"

It takes me half a moment to process what he's said. To see this level of male beauty and hear something other than half-moronic drivel spill out of his mouth, I almost think I must still be asleep and this has just been the longest vivid dream I've ever had, except I'm deaf in my dreams, so I can't be dreaming. He's real, and I must answer him.

"Yes, we take credit. Let me scan that for you real quick."

I take his card and swipe it, watching the little bar at the top right of the screen do it's flashing thing while the system places the charge and waits for account verification. I expect nothing less than the bar resting on green with the word "Accepted" showing clear, but I still wait, unwilling to let my attraction to this stranger cloud my judgment.

After all, anyone can give you an expired card by mistake, and should he grab his order and drive off before I get a chance to see a "Denied" on my screen, I'd be responsible for covering the amount.

Accepted.

Damn. I realize I was hoping for a "Denied," just so I could ask him for another form of payment and get him to remain at my window a few moments longer.

Almost as if reading my mind, he laughs, "Oh, it's good, miss, and I don't blame you for waiting for verification. Can't be too trusting these days, can we?"

He holds his hand out for the card, a gesture I typically see as demanding and impatient, but from him it seems like a welcoming sign, as if he's inviting me into his vehicle, as if I could just step out through the window and into his lap to accompany him anywhere.

As he takes his card, I notice he's looking over the bulletin sheet. I can tell he's just a passer-through off the highway, and my gut clenches as I think of Miss Bettsy getting to spend more time with him – helping him pick one or more cats to take home, wherever his home may be – than I'll get to spend with him here.

"Miss, I don't have time today to stop and look at your kittenish wares," he speaks, and my heart skip-dances at his use of the word kittenish, "but if you wouldn't mind establishing a more permanent form of communication, just so I can contact you in the future when I'm back this way, about the cats, I can give you my chirpter handle."

I can't tell from his face or movements, but the very slightly awkward way he phrases his sentence makes me think he's feeling as giggity as I am right now. I tear off one of the phone number tabs from the bulletin sheet, turn it over to the blank side, and hand it over to him with one of the pens I keep next to the reg. He jots down his chirpter user name, hands that and pen back with a smile, and moves on to the next window before I realize I never gave him my name or asked for his. I look down at the online handle hoping it's a simple screen name derived from his real name, but no such luck; it's just a few letters and numbers. Specific enough to achieve online contact, but too vague to decipher anything about the man from it.

"Damn," I utter.

"He was hot, wasn't he?" Big Bertie says behind me, shocking me into a quick spin that almost makes me dizzy.

She must have walked back here while I was getting his chirpter handle, but for the life of me I never noticed, and I'd think I'd notice Big Bertie approaching

"What are you still doing here? I thought you'd be halfway home by now."

"Oh, no, the man and the kids wanted a few things they didn't bother to tell me about until I got a text two seconds before I clocked out. Wasn't that nice of them?"

"Extremely."

"Anyway, I wanted to let you know Badger had her kittens last night. I didn't get a chance to tell you earlier, and I never saw you on Lookbook to point you to the new photo album."

"Oh, Bertie, that's great! How many did she pop out?"

"Five or six. You know how shy she can be? Well, she decided to have her babies back behind the big screen, and none of us can get back there or get her to come out, but from what we can see, they all look decent enough so far."

"Healthy?"

"Again, can't get too close to 'em yet, but yeah, all seems well in the world with Badger."

"That's great. Send my love to everyone."

"I will," she says as she turns and begins walking away. "Don't work too hard, babe."

"Wait, photo album? From behind the TV?"

"Oh, one of the kids tried to take some pictures. It's all very vague, but in one or two of them you can see an itty bitty kitty face peeking up. Even out of focus, they're adorable little shits."

"All right," I laugh, watching her turn the corner from the reg hallway to the dish-washing area.

I turn back to my register screen, expecting another car to pull up and ding in my ear any second, but none comes, and then I hear Big Bertie exercising her big mouth up front.

"I am not smitten!" I call up after her, then switch my headset to inside-only mode so my crew can hear me on their sets. "The guy only gave me his chirpter name so we can get in touch if he wants to adopt a cat the next time he's in the area."

"Sure, Marsha," the new guy chimes in, "whatever you say, Marsha, I believe you, Marsha."

It sounds like maybe he wants to keep going with it, trying his luck and proving he didn't learn much earlier, but then I hear a discernable smacking sound from up front and can just picture Bertie slapping the guy upside the head. She knows I can't stand teasing about my name, and even though she'll push my buttons on a lot of things, that she won't touch.

But she seems determined to get in at least one more rub today.

Speaking on what I imagine is the new guy's headset, swiped when she smacked him, Bertie cries, "You are so smitten and you know it, kitten! Smitten is my kitten, smitten half to death."

"Oh, go home and feed the fam some ham," I tease right back, a barb referencing the one food she refuses to bring home because her husband and children will scarf it all down before she's barely gotten a slice. "And bring me the leftovers!"

"Whatever, kid. Don't work too hard."

"You said that."

After that, another car pulls up and business resumes. I glance back through my window and across the parking lot to see Bertie walking out to her car, wave back when she turns to wave at me, return the gesture when she flips me a random bird, and then complete the order in my ear and ask them to come around and take their money and give them their change and do it all again for the next customer, and the next, and someone reminds me it's a concert night so I give up all hope of getting my dishes done at a decent time tonight.

Such is the flow of life.

# THREE

Have I mentioned how much I typically despise concert nights?

We're situated right off the exit from 275, not terribly far north from Riverbend Music Center down on route 52. Whenever there's a big-draw concert there – or a festival or other large public gathering anywhere in the general area three or four exits north or south of us along the highway – we feel the brunt both before and after the event, and sometimes during as well. It at least trebles our business from the norm, and yet on these nights we still operate with a crew scheduled only large enough to handle the ordinary average of customers-per-hour.

Somehow, with a new guy on shift, we are still managing to take names and kick some serious behind with a seemingly endless barrage of both drive-thru and walk-in customers. My initial opinion of Gregory, with his goofy youthful looks and playground huckster attitude, will have to be amended, because although I cannot see him at work to know for sure whether or not he's helping as much as he can, the speed with which orders are coming together and going out the window up there tells me he can't be slouching or getting in the way too much.

And though my clock-out time's starting to look like it'll be closer to two than one tonight, thanks to too few breaks between orders paid and orders coming in, I'm still not finding myself in anything but high spirits. I try to tell myself it has nothing to do with anything but my own part being played in this ongoing, unfilmed, unscripted drama of hunger and demand answered with congeniality and damn-fine-smelling (and tasting) fulfillment in sacks and bags and cups. I try not to let thoughts of that unnamed man cloud my focus, but I find myself glancing again and again at the little scrap with his chirpter handle on it, find myself hoping for a few free moments between orders and a sink-load or two of finished dishes to get on chirpter mobile and see what I can find out about him from his chirpter feed, and find myself wondering if any of them up front are making remarks to each other about Marsha's sad little crush on an out-of-towner.

Oh, who am I trying to kid? It's just y'all and me in here.

Of course I'm crushing on the guy. I don't know if you can exactly see through my eyes, but I'm pretty sure my "spoken" thoughts are coming through to you loud and clear (so to speak), and so I can't deny what I'm feeling.

I'm not saying it isn't foolish. Far from it. How can I let myself feel anything for a guy I'll likely never see again? Sure, I'll be able to follow him on chirpter tonight when I get home – because this unending stream of cars in my line is most likely not gonna allow for me getting on mobile internet tonight – but what will that mean to him? He probably won't remember our short exchange at all, and neither should I. I should put it behind me.

Forget the whole thing.

No cats for him.

Then something unthinkable happens. The world seems to have conspired to make it impossible for me not to remember the handsome stranger, for it is now giving me dire reason to actively seek him out.

The last vehicle in my line right now has just pulled up a few feet past my window, waiting for the customers ahead of them to receive their order. The driver was silent, stern to the point of looking angry or nearly hateful, but he never turned his face or eyes to me for a moment. His passenger – identical to him in every feature and article of clothing except for his expression and demeanor – had placed their order at the speaker, and then reached over his unspeaking, almost unmoving brother to hand me their payment and take their change.

The passenger had seemed nice enough, almost instantly likeable. He was engaging at speaker and window, friendly in the face of his twin's reticence, and though he was a bit twitchy – he seemed from one moment to the next to be uncomfortable, no matter how he minutely contorted his position – he looked like a guy I could get to like hanging out with. He more than made up for his brother's stubborn silence, and I began to see the driver as some sort of very detailed futuristic robot, and nothing more than that.

Then they moved forward, and now I see something in their back seat that is giving me just about the worst chills of my life. Nothing other than maybe their skin color – that smoky shade of brown that makes it hard to tell if maybe they just have a good deep tan, or a biracial couple for parents – would immediately suggest a connection to the handsome stranger from just over an hour ago, and yet there his face is, blown up on a poorly printed target practice sheet. It might not have grasped or held my attention even a twelfth as deeply, but a significant number of holes have been punched through it, some directly orbiting or piercing the center target zone, but most around the eyes, forehead, and throat.

Neither of them struck me as the sharpshooter type, not even the unnervingly silent driver. Yes, I was a bit unnerved by him, but I never would have noticed it if not for spotting the used target portrait, thanks largely to the too-engaging behavior of the twitchy passenger.

They move up a few more inches, showing impatience with how long the order in front of them is taking to be completed.

I can no longer see the target sheet, but I cannot for a second begin to tell myself that I imagined whose face was on it.

With no more orders to take at the moment, I feel my heart thumping in my chest. I imagine I can see it beating roughly against my ribcage, urging me to action though my brain has of yet no clue what that action should be.

And then, two things occur simultaneously.

My left hand grabs up my cell phone, while my right flips open the copy of the Oculatum I keep handy at the back reg. If you're unfamiliar with the Oculatum, that's kinda too bad because I'm not explaining it right now.

My hands switch tasks, the left now holding the Oculatum open to the random page my fingers have found, and the right scrolling down my contact list on my phone.

"Trust not your eye's impression alone," I read softly from the Oculatum as I find the entry for Jakie in my phone.

Really, Oculatum? That's all you have for me in this crucial turning point that I somehow feel might just shape the entire course of my future?

Melodramatic, I know. But really kind of not.

I press the tiny photo of Jakie on my screen, and a connection is made. I press the phone against my ear and wait for him to pick up.

"Hellosies!" Jakie sings from his end, always way too excited to hear from me, as if I were his fag hag and no one else's in the world.

I almost think he's sad and deluded enough to believe that.

"Hey, Jakie, quick favor and you can't tell me you can't do it because I do not even have half the time it would take to come whip your ass for inconveniencing me today. Comprehend?"

"Okay, honey, I've got it! What's the fave?"

From the corner of my eye, I spy their car moving up to the pick-up window. My window of opportunity is closing fast, and though I know this can't come together anywhere near as quickly as I need it to, I still have to try. My gut won't let me not.

"Come in right now and close for me. Throw on your uniform, and don't you dare even bother with eye liner, you know you'll just get bitched out for that sooner or later, just GET here, you hear me? Thanks and I love you bunches, my big sweet faggoty friend. Now move!"

Without giving him a chance to catch his breath to respond in either affirmative or negative fashion, I end the call, put down the cell, and close the Oculatum. The book I always turn to in random moments wherein I find myself needing external guidance seems to be letting me down, but I won't let this thought dishearten me just yet. After all, tonight won't be the first time it's happened if this phrase ends up having some meaning hours from now.

Now for the really fun part. Hope Jenny's not one of the managers that can't stand to work with giant, flamboyant Jakie.

Not that I much care if she is. Give me trouble tonight, Jenny. I just dare ya.

# FOUR

Drawer counted down and register operator changed in the system from myself to the ineluctably, contagiously gleeful Jakie von Schmittensteiner, I thank the gods for this little spell of customer-free minutes and finally allow myself to look out the window and up toward the front end of this side of the parking lot. I see what I hoped for and exhale sharply in bitter relief.

I'd expected them to be gone and all hope for this stupid daring notion of mine to be dashed. Follow them? Follow them, freakishly hoping that they are somehow tracking the handsome stranger up or down the highway, and that they might lead me to him? Oh, I believe they have nothing but nefarious schemes cooked up in their parallel heads, but I also believe that I can stop them. I don't know how, but I can be resourceful.

After receiving their order at the next window, the twins with their disturbing back-seat portrait – I wonder shortly how no one up front noticed or was alarmed by it, and then remember where I am and who I work with, and stop wondering – parked just a few spaces from the corner overshadowed by the giant Our Mindy's sign and promo board.

They are still eating now.

I activate the inside-only function on my headset, address this evening's manager, "Jen Jen, be prepared to love me beyond words," and walk out of the back hall, past the dishwashing station – sinks full of soapy or sanitizer water and dishes in various states of dirty-to-clean – and up to face Jenny at the drive-thru drink station. "I have to duck out."

"You'd best be telling me there's an emergency. You got a cover coming in?"

"Yes and yes."

"And why am I loving you for this?"

"Jakie."

Jenny rolls her eyes but smiles as well, and I can tell she won't terribly mind working with the sole gay man currently featured on our weekly schedule.

"He's a charming git, your Jakie, but Marsha, you do a far better job than he. Is there any way I can talk you out of this?"

"Sorry, Jen Jen," I use her nickname again, displaying a friendly familiarity with her that I typically avoid, "but I can't get out of this myself."

Jenny transferred into our store just a month or two back, part of an exchange program with the Our Mindy's stores in Great Britain. I have nothing against foreigners, even those who are almost indistinguishable from good ole Americans, but something about Jenny gave me the creeps when first we met. I haven't much thought about it since, and can't afford to now.

"All right. I did see your register end report printing. I gather all you need is the key to the twenties box so you can retrieve the rest of your drop money?"

"No need. Haven't had enough twenties to drop in the box, just one or two per hour that I've already dropped in the safe." Wagging a fist clenched around the rest of my reg's cash taken since my shift began, I go on, "And this I can have dropped in two flat."

"Right. Go on with it, then."

She moves on to do something managery and I rush to the drop-safe, punch in my employee number, feed the bills in as rapidly yet carefully as I can to avoid two bills slipping in as one and fucking up my end total, and print my safe end report. I look at the meager sum on the little printed sheet and shake my head. It's got to be the lowest amount I've ever seen at the end of a shift, but there's nothing to be done about it now.

Standing and turning to run back and find Jenny and hand her these scraps, I'm startled to find her standing right there in front of me. She's got my paperwork all stapled together and is holding it out for me, a pen in the other hand. I take it all, scribble down my initials in the appropriate spots, and hand everything back to her with the safe end report.

Everything I need to bring with me is on me. I walk on unstiff legs to the second window register, which mostly serves just as a clock-in, clock-out station unless enough call-offs or no-shows warrant moving the order-taker up to this window. I swipe my time card, mentally note the daily and weekly hours shown on the screen, and turn back to leave.

Thinking of the Oculatum I've left at the back reg, I almost run to retrieve it. I usually go nowhere without a copy, but my personal one is at home.

Following my gut, I leave it here and exit to the dining room, saying no goodbyes to Jenny or Gregory or anyone else working.

My hand raises up to push the glass-paneled door open to exit the building.

I glance over to the left, at the twins' car. The twitchy one downs the last sip of his drink and tosses the cup over the passenger seat to the back-seat floorboard. The driver turns on the engine and the break lights come on. My pulse quickens, but I refuse to rush now.

If they see me running to my car, they'll be onto me instantly.

Pacing myself to seem relaxed and unconcerned with anything but myself, I exit the restaurant and walk to my car. From the corner of my eye, I see they're still there. I slip behind the steering wheel, buckle up, slip my key into the ignition, and start my own engine.

As they back up, I back up.

As they begin to move forward, toward the exit from the lot, I begin to move forward.

Motion in the second window draws my eye, and I spot Gregory throwing me a weirdly friendly wave. He doesn't know me and I'm leaving way early and he should be pissed and flipping me off for abandoning them – I don't know why I'm not more pissed at myself – but instead, he's just waving at me. And I wave back.

I follow the twins out of the lot and sit patiently behind them at a red light. Thankfully no other vehicles cut in behind them before I can get to that position. Out on the highway, should that be their first destination from here, I'll hang back a little more, but I can't afford to do that here on Beechmont Avenue.

The light changes and, sure enough, they flip on their turn signal to indicate they mean to take the northbound onramp just ahead. I do the same.

My pulse steadies. I hadn't realized it was still jumping until it stopped.

So, handsome stranger, you've gone north.

Your stalkers seem to think so, anyway.

I'm coming right after them. Don't know if I can do any good if they've got a decent plan cocked together to see you dead, but I have to try. I don't know why I have to try, but nonetheless, I have to try.

Hope to see you sooner than later.

# 2. THE SHAPE OF THE BEAST

She glances away from the sphere before her

with her dream-physical eyes

and takes in the sight of stars that have never been

so clear, so close, so majestic in their burning,

spinning, everlasting might. And yet, she

senses something wrong in the star-speckled black canvas

before her. At first it is hard to pick out, but yes, there

a few stars are dimming out, and over there

a few more, and now it seems as if the stars

are floating things on various surfaces of oil and water

and other unmixable fluids and on each layer, one

after the next, the stars are being dispersed into the black

sucking void. The stars are crushing out, blinking out,

dying out, and if she looks hard enough

she can actually see it happen to one of them.

The darkness of space seems to have become

a somehow solid thing in that vast ember's region, closing

down around it, crushing its very massive weight, defying

its gravity and unbinding the forces that make it spin

and burn. It shrinks and sputters and does not explode

as dying stars should do. Instead,

it simply ceases to be,

and the hungry dark moves on.

– from a dream

# ONE

Not two minutes up the highway, I'm beginning to regret my impetuousness. I can't afford to be doing this! No matter what mortal danger I may believe this handsome stranger might be in at the hands of the (possibly) gun-toting twins, my first responsibility is to my cats, then myself, then my work-place. I can't just run off anytime I think someone's in trouble, can't let myself shirk what I've taken on to do, can't run off like Batwoman trying to save the day.

And yet, here I am. Miles from work, traveling up 275 to I don't have a damn clue where, and following two strangers in the hopes that I'll be there to foil their plot, should they even be involved in a plot at all against him.

Oh, how I wish I'd gotten his name!

Are you a Chester, buddy?

A Roger?

Phil?

Jimmy?

Walter?

Well, whoever you are, I'm coming.

I'm following – just two sedans and a minivan behind the twins – in what I believe is a very successful subtle tailing operation. If they know I'm following them, then I'm in over my head and I should just turn back and forget the whole thing.

Of course the only window out I give myself would be something I can't possibly know, yet anyway. It's not like I can read their minds, though wouldn't that be nice.

Traffic's moving along at a brisk pace, both sides of the highway just about equally packed but not crammed; no bumper to bumper action, even though I'd expect the southbound lanes to be tighter considering the concert down at Riverbend tonight. Maybe it's not as popular as I'm sure it's proprietors, performers, backers, and publicists would like it to be, or maybe the crowds are already most of them there for the event.

I try to remember who's even playing, and I can't get the faintest clue to rise in my head. Do you know? No, of course you don't. You probably don't even understand the basic concept of a concert. Let me tell you, it's just about pointless in my book, but then that's probably just bitterness speaking on my part, since I've never been to but two shows in my life, and they stank, the both of them.

We're all coming up on the Eastgate exits, and I see the twinsmobile signaling they intend to take route 32 out toward Batavia. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Typically there aren't a lot of reasons for out-of-towners to go that way, unless maybe he's got a room in one of the hotels around Eastgate. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it.

So what are the twins doing heading that way?

Just about now I think I wouldn't terribly mind riding around on that cycle Batwoman has, not to mention donning that awesome red and black get-up so I could have no compunction about rolling up next to the twins, kicking my way through glass into the back seat, tossing that shot-up portrait of the handsome stranger out on the wind, and knocking the boys' heads together before I pull an amazing parking job from the back seat at high speed.

In moments we're off 275 and traveling along 32, heading east through Eastgate and, as I suspected, they aren't making any further turns just yet. We pass the mall, the surviving little shopping centers and fast food joints on the right, the slightly nicer restaurants and vehicle repair places and Meller's supermarket on the left, and move on toward Batavia.

Through a short series of other vehicles making sudden turns left and right out of my way, I quickly end up right on the twins' ass. If I hastily switch lanes now, that'll make me seem more suspicious than if they accidentally notice me in one of their mirrors and by dumb luck see enough of my face to recognize me from Mindy's. Then it hits me; it doesn't matter right now if they identify me, but it does matter later whether or not I can identify them.

For the first time, I really pay attention to what they're driving.

After years working drive-thru, I've trained myself not to bog my memory down with the endless parade of makes and models that swing by my window on an hourly basis, plus I was never much of a car girl anyway, but now I have to fight that self-taught behavior.

Before I try to look any more closely at their tail end to make out the lettering, another idea strikes, and I grin. I don't need to remember any details; my camera phone can do that for me. Just as we all decelerate to stop behind a couple of semis at a red light, I pull out my cell, pull up the camera function screen, and take a couple of shots. That work done, I set the phone down on the passenger seat and look back up to check if either of them has noticed me.

So far, so good. Neither of them seems to have seen me, or my stalkery pic-taking.

I look at our surroundings and realize we're already crossing into Batavia now. Just ahead on the right is a Swiftway station, which means Batavia proper is just a few more minutes and a severe downgrade ahead on 32.

I try to think of anyone I know in or around Batavia. Then the light turns green and we have to move and I curse, as I'm not real great at multi-tasking, usually, but especially while driving.

Anyway, I don't think I still speak to most if any of my old acquaintances around here.

Around a bend and down we go, down a steep curving hill, with Batavia's west half of Main Street – pretty barren by city standards – on the right of the highway, and a few old factories down on the left. I hope stupidly that this isn't their destination, as I'm still on their ass and following them into Batavia's gonna make it just about impossible to keep them from spotting their tail, but of course, they signal their intent to take this exit. Damn it!

Luckily, I know the next exit isn't far, and should lead me to them again rather quickly. Surely they'll be taking West Main down to the bridge, crossing over to East Main, and following them from there should be easy.

Unless they turn right off the exit onto University Lane, double back up that road where it parallels the highway, and disappear up into the area around UC's Clermont campus or the ghetto apartments or the slightly less ghetto apartments or the MRDD place up there.

I don't have time to worry about that now. They've just quit the highway for the exit, I haven't had a signal on, this truck on my ass isn't about to slow down now, and I'm committed to onward motion along 32. Bye-bye, easy tailing job; hello, proof of a wasted trip.

"What the hell am I doing?" I say to no one, as if I'm not already doing a hell of a lot of that in my head.

Traffic carries me back up the other side of this little valley, and Batavia's nigh-downtown disappears behind me on the right as trees close back in around us. Coming up ahead is the 222/132 exit into Batavia, and I quickly turn my signal on; it may be a slim chance, but I'm not passing up my last one of catching up to them again. It was close back at work, me being able to follow them out at all... almost like they were giving me a chance to do so.

That thought almost makes me slam on the breaks and let the truck crash into my rear bumper. I don't. I decelerate into the curve of the exit, and as I drive down to stop at 222 and try to remember which way to turn to get to Main Street, I wonder if they would want me to be following them. And why?

Oh, it doesn't matter now. I left work way too early for this to be nothing.

I remember one way leads up to the jail, so I turn the other way and sigh in relief when I come up relatively quickly on Main Street. I pull up behind an old couple sitting low in a large old Cadillac at a red light, and bite my tongue. Of course this would be my luck. What next; the twins will drive by here after all, while I'm stuck?

Speak of the devil!

"Damn!" I curse, not loudly I think, but the little old lady in the Caddy turns around to give me a weird look, as if she heard me and was offended by me and would throw a Gypsy curse my way if she wasn't such a God-fearing woman these days.

Wow, my imagination sure is running away on that one.

I watch the twins glide slowly through the intersection before me, hoping they'll turn into the ADF on my left and theirs, but no such luck. They continue on and disappear down Main Street. I wait as patiently as I can, almost banging my fist down on the horn after a few minutes until I realize it isn't the old couple holding me here; it's the light holding us all.

As if giving in to my foolish impulse for me, the vehicle behind me does honk.

I don't even turn to check them out. Why bother?

Finally, the light changes and the old couple crosses straight forward and I turn left, and my breath catches in my throat.

No sign of the twins.

The street isn't devoid of cars and trucks and other various vehicles by any means, but I can still see clearly enough up this Main to know that they have vacated the area. I contemplate going up and down every little road of this very grid-like small town "downtown," but realize that would do no good because they could just as easily have exited via the other end, up Old 32 hill toward the hospital and its surrounding fast food restaurants and gas stations, the subdivisions, the high school, the trailer park, the shut-down transmission plant, et cetera.

I turn off Main and make my way back over to ADF, where I park on the side of the building away from the bulk of restless or curious eyes.

"Great," I sigh. "What now?"

# TWO

"The Great What!" I scream out, pounding my palms down on the steering wheel and incidentally sounding the horn.

I've been sitting here next to ADF for I don't know how many minutes. Feels like fifteen at least, and I'm not looking at the dash clock just yet to confirm that it's been longer, which it usually is. Don't ask me why, my sense of time's just always been wonky. But, anyway.

I've been sitting here next to ADF, thinking and not thinking about all the things wrong with this situation.

I get all roused up by a stranger, something I typically pride myself on never having done or let happen; because let me tell you, some real honeys do happen to come through my drive-thru on at least a semi-regular basis, especially during the summer (WOOF at all – well maybe not all – the shirtless boys and men), but they're not typically regulars. They come through and a lot of the girls working for Our Mindy's will swoon and get distracted and start fucking up other customers' orders because they can't keep their shit straight in the libido department or their heads, but not I. Usually. But today? Yeah, I became one of those chicks, and I hated it instantly, but also didn't really mind, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I always have control of my emotions, enough control that I can get the job done and not give the co-woks reason to give me shit about the hot guy who came through five minutes ago, ten minutes ago, an hour ago. And yet what do I let this guy do to me without him seeming to even try? Distract me, enough that they notice, enough that I can let my guard down just enough that they can get under my skin. At all. Which I can't stand.

Is that why I really got out of there in such a hurry? Was I just looking for an excuse?

No. It really was his face on that target practice sheet.

It was.

I don't imagine things like that, and with a face like his, I couldn't possibly be mistaken, even through or around all the bullet holes in that sheet.

Then, there's the problem of the polar opposite twins. Just glitchy enough each in his own way that I'd probably have remembered them, a little at least, but definitely noticed them enough in the now of their order to pay attention to what was in their back seat, something else I don't typically bother doing, ever. I mean, what do I care what the customers are lugging around, as long as it's not my own tanned hide?

But today, I care. And why?

Because the subject of that target sheet just happens to have got my libido going, got my pulse racing, got my heart pitter-pattering enough that I'd have damn sure made time to get on chirpter mobile by now if I'd stayed at work. Oh, if only I'd stayed at work, but I'm sure Jakie's there now, so no going back.

Oh, no one else on shift would mind. Jakie might not even mind the inconvenience, but this favor's cashed in and a favor from Jakie isn't something to be thrown away lightly.

So, I have to stay committed.

What else was I thinking about?

Oh, yeah.

I've fucking lost them.

Which brings us to my high school prom date, short-lived internet stalker, short-term live-in boyfriend, and now long-time Lookbook friend by the name of Gabriel Whiteacre, better known in school and beyond as the Great What.

I pick my phone back up and wonder briefly if I even know where G. W. lives these days, but dismiss the question as moot.

It's his skill I need on my side, not the kid himself.

I scroll down the contact list, scroll back up, scroll down again, and sigh, wondering why I bothered with this. After all, I don't talk to him; he doesn't do phone calls just about ever. It's only on Lookbook that I've maintained any sort of contact with him, so over to their mobile app I send my little touchscreen. I chew on the inside of my cheek as I wait for the Lookbook icon to change to the mobile sign-in screen, then wait some more for the mobile form of the site to appear. Over to the friend-to-friend inbox I go from there, from whence I shoot a short message including my number and the words, "Break your rule. Sort of emergency."

An excruciating ten minutes crawl by. I watch people walk around the sit-down, partially partitioned-off side of ADF with their shakes and malts and cones and chips and candy bars and I realize I'm a little bit hungry but I don't have time to waste in even a short line in THIS place, and just as I'm about to give up the wait-on-the-phone for a while so I can go inside and instead wait on a sweet, smooth, chocolate peanut butter malt, my cell rings.

"What."

"Bleep, that answer is incorrect. You have five seconds to reconsider. Five mippippippi, four mippippippi, three-"

"Asshole, okay. Great What, I need your help."

"Gimme the sitch, Marsh."

It's annoying as hell, but it's the cost of interaction with Gabriel. He can't stand small talk, so he's constantly shifting between pseudo-game-show lingo and obscure franchise dialect from TV shows and movies that sometimes I know, but most I never much bothered to catch. He only responds to at least a half-hearted attempt at the same from those soliciting his attention, so I slip into it myself out of habit, wincing as I do it.

"Person of interest one, G. W., is a handsome stranger who came through my work earlier today. Seemed interested in the mewlers, gave me his chirpter address to achieve future contact on that subject. Have to admit, I probably won't be contacting him for that reason."

"You go, girl."

"Persons of interest two and three, or should I say suspects one and two, are identical twins with disparate dispositions. Were otherwise unnoteworthy aside from the shot-up target sheet in their back-seat with handsome stranger's face all over it."

"Hot damn, hot mama, I think you've brought an actual case to my attention for once. You've got my full attention now, Marsha. What do you need?"

To hear my full first name escape his lips without any sarcasm or derision is enough to make me sigh in relief; he understands the gravity of the situation as quickly as I did.

But still, there's the game to consider. With the What, it's always one game or another.

"You sure I'm not cutting into your play-war time?" I have to show some acknowledgment of his usual habits, but if I show too much false respect for them when he knows how I feel about such activities in general, I'll lose his interest, and any hope of his assistance. Thus, I go on, "Because I can maybe call back in a few hours, after they've caught up to my Handsome Stranger, shot him up or gutted him or whatever, give you a chance to clear out a few thousand level bosses or whoever you're gunning for in the gamelands, and you can just lead me to the bloody mess to clean up after the twins are long gone."

I realize I've named him without even thinking about it. Handsome Stranger. Great.

"So the twins are following hot on H. S.'s trail, you think?" Gabriel says casually, showing he's picked up on my name for the not-quite-hybrid of Pitt, Diesel, Washington, and Smith, but I just grin; it is kind of appropriate, and we've got to call him something.

"I'm afraid so, Great, man. On the up side, they parked to eat their food and I was able to get out of work quick enough to follow them onto the highway."

"Is there a down side I'm about to be blessed with the hearing of?"

"You are a prophet, oh Great What. The down side is I lost them about," I pause, look at the dash clock, and go on, "about half an hour ago, give or take."

"That's not so bad."

"Not so great, either, in games or in life."

"So what do you have for me?"

"I took a pic on my phone of the back of their car."

"Most awesome."

"Want I should send it your way?"

"And cut this blissful vocal connection you and I've established? Unnecessary! You should know better by now, far better, my Marshling. I can pull it up from your phone's file directory without you having to do... a... thing."

"Hardly legal."

"How much of anything I do is legal?"

"And what about my privacy?"

"Oh, what do you have to hide from me. Plans to blow up my house?"

"No, those I keep on my other phone."

"Good. You know I like to be surprised."

As much as he pisses me off, this banter we get into is still amusing, and I need at least a little bit of a laugh if I'm going to get through today.

I can tell it's not going to get any easier. I should just turn back now.

Don't care if I wasted a Jakie favor.

Don't care what does or doesn't become of H. S.

Don't care what might happen to anyone else who stumbles into the path of the twins.

"Okay," Gabriel practically shouts over the line, as if he can tell I've let my mind wander in a direction not advantageous to our current joint endeavor. "Got the image. Not great quality, but not so degraded I can't clean it up. I've already got it processing, should have a viable number to use in... okay, now! Punching it into my latest hacked system... now."

"And what system would this be?"

"Have you heard anything about Doodle's proposed Live Maps service? Not supposed to be up for anything but short trial runs until 2013? Well, guess what."

"No. No way have you hacked that kind of sophisticated! Bravo, my Great brother!"

"Hey now, Marshmallow. Brother is not what you call me."

"You're right. Sorry, oh His Whatfulness. So how long till you have a fix on them?"

"Not long at all. Since there aren't any public users on the system yet, and Doodle isn't opening it up even to their own people for whole chunks of months at a time, and they're not due to run a scheduled trial again until November... yeah, it's pretty much just me on there, and damn, I've got to say even I'm impressed with the speed of this beast! I wish you could be watching this with me! It's incredible."

"You know where they are."

I don't make it a question, because I know how good he is, and that he doesn't say something like that unless he means it. If he says the system works, it works. He's found them. I have a lead. Not only a lead, I realize, but a way to find them wherever they go, assuming they don't switch vehicles. That would imply they somehow anticipate being found in such a manner, and why would they do that? Who could possibly anticipate the bitch at the drive-thru window tracking them up the highway, getting a shot of their tail end, and calling in help from a tech genius like the Great What to catch up to them?

No one, that's who.

I grin almost feverishly.

I glance into the rearview mirror again and, sure enough, there's that gypsy.

Should I feel sorry for them?

"So tell me where to go. I assume you've got my location pinpointed as well, my man."

"You assume correctly, Marsh."

"Then direct me, Great. Send me right up those bastards' asses."

# THREE

If not for the What, I never would have even found this little almost-street, this back road in a bend of 222 going south from Main Street in Batavia. It opens from 222 at such an angle that you'd almost think it's just the entrance lane into the lodge, from the sign at its corner, but now, G. W. tells me it actually cuts down and then across the entire south half of this town, all the way over to Greenbriar Road or something like that, and sure enough, it's turning out to be one long damn little road. The houses and sheds and old silos and other obscure back woods structures grow further and further apart, and finally I reach a straight stretch down which I can see a little offshoot lane on the right. I spy a trickling climber of thin smoke rising over the trees from somewhere down the direction of this lane I'm coming slowly up on, and I clench.

"I told you," Gabriel cuts in again, as if he thinks for one second that he can deter me, "they aren't there anymore. They left only a few minutes ago, and the kooks aren't too far up from the other end of the road you're on now, so just keep on trucking up Elklick and you can catch up to 'em."

"No, I need to know what they were doing there. Yeah, I heard you say you didn't see any vehicles there similar to what I told you H. S. was driving, or what I think he was driving, but I still have to check it out. Besides, if anyone's dead or hurt there, I'll just call emergency services. Maybe even the cops."

"You won't call the fucking cops, Marsh. Act like you know I know you."

"You're right. But still, whatever. I'm stopping," I practically sing out as I turn onto Beaver's Bend Ln. "Besides, you can lead me back to them again if it comes to that."

"Fine," he sighs bitterly, and I can tell he wishes I was as movable as an avatar in a game. "You're looking for house number 1673. I'm not sure why they bothered with four digits, it's only showing like maybe three or four places on that street, hard to tell what's still there and what's not among all the fucking foresty parts."

"Thanks, Great What. I think I have it from here for a bit. If you don't mind, I'll call you back in a few... in a little bit."

"You can't."

"Where will you be, the john?"

"No, I mean, I have an untraceable blocked number and you can't call me 'back,' so just tell me when you want me to call you back, and that can actually happen."

"Fifteen minutes, and if I don't answer, every three minutes until either I answer or you get bored and write me off as wolf chow."

"Done and done," he whispers quickly across the line, and then is gone.

I would wonder if he means he's done with this problem and has decided he doesn't care what becomes of H. S., the twins, or my own fine self, would almost wonder from his tone if he really could have meant it at all, but I know Gabriel Whiteacre far better than he'll admit to himself he ever let anyone get to know him, especially little old me, and I know it's a crock of shit. He's jived and jazzed, pumped and primed, and ready for action, though he won't get to see it live. But then again, if it's out in the open, maybe he will.

He wasn't wrong about the "foresty" part. The trees encroach along both sides of the barely gravel-paved road so close that it's easy to think I'm up someone's driveway instead of traveling along a Lane. The day rides bright, but the sky still clear between those high treetops is so thin it's hard to tell what time of day it might be outside my car.

I roll along at a safe slow pace, mindful of dips in the road's surface, curves gradual and sudden alike in the road's path, and any pedestri... no, who am I kidding, animals. Who am I expecting to see wandering out here on foot, Baby of the Firefly clan?

The smoke I saw earlier troubles me. It should still be ahead, if my sense of direction's serving me well at all today, but I can't make out any hint or trace of it through the foliage.

I never get to use that word. How odd that I would be so pleased with it now.

Foliage.

I'm sure I must be using it wrong, anyway.

"Here we pass the first sign of civilization past," I mutter to the empty passenger seat like a hallucinating former tour guide caught in a repeating loop of her pathetic glory days. "You'll note the tilted mailbox is open, showing postage delivered somewhat recently, and it makes you wonder what mad postman would be gutsy enough to venture into this wild arena. Is there still a house linked in any way to the address this mail's been addressed to? If you were hoping to stop and detour down that maybe-drive to find out, I'm sorry to inform you no such stops are on the agenda. We're almost on it, we're passing – and no, it twists so wildly through those trees that there's no clear view of anything up this driveway – and we're past. Moving on!"

Not until my little monologue cuts off in my throat do I realize how suddenly alone I feel, as if I've stepped into a horror movie right through the screen in the theater, right at the end where all the poor sops have finally been killed off and you're just waiting for the crappy music to trail off into the credits, but no, now I'm here and the credits won't come.

Another mailbox presents itself out of the green and I have to stop on a dime, it's bright address numbers catching my eye and my breath. It's 1673, and now I think I can smell smoke.

It's got to be a trick of the mind. I have to try to convince myself of this just to get myself to reverse the few feet necessary to make the turn into their driveway. I get the physical part done, but I don't believe for a second what I'm trying to sell myself. I do smell smoke.

After half a minute winding through the trees on the property at 1673 Beaver's Bend Ln., I enter the clearing around the house, wide and deep and shaped like an off-angle square. The driveway opens up into a rough gravelly pull-around at the side of the house, and a flat stone hopping path leads around to the front door. The yard round the whole place is littered with beer bottles, stray scraps of junk food trash, and dozens of toys for children of seemingly various ages, save for in two areas: the first is a little garden off toward the back, well tended if yielding somewhat unpromising tomatoes and drooping flowers; the other is a firepit in the far front corner of the plot, around which are a number of overturned folding chairs.

The house is a low ranch-style sided in faded denim blue, roof shingled in lime green, windows trimmed in orangy pink, yellow front door covered by a screen door torn in several places, and the windows are all open to today's very slightly cooler air. Smoke trails up over the house from the far left side and the back, telling me there should still be time to get in and investigate the front rooms without risking my own hide for strangers of any brand.

Short paisley curtains line every window in sight, drifting lazily in and out of the house's screenless frames in the hour's gentle breeze. The still shades of gray and black beyond them elicit a sense of deathly calm. I get the feeling nothing will ever move inside this house again.

Well, except me apparently.

I'm already stepping out of the car before I realize I've shut off the engine. I'm already crossing the round stepping stones before I decide I'm going in the house. I'm already grasping the knob of the yellow door, and don't remember opening the screen door.

For one moment in which the sky shines brighter, the trees stand greener, the toys and discarded bottles glisten like new, and the air doesn't smell of smoke so much as of a richly burnt incense, I almost turn away.

I almost spin on my heels, flee this dread home's yard into the relative safety of my car, pull a donut and tear off down the driveway to get back to the roads. I almost give in to the sensible impulse to not involve myself, and I think this will be the last moment my life is my own.

I almost turn back, but almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

I sigh and open the door and step inside.

# FOUR

I'm sure I will see a lot of horrible things in my life. The moment I stepped outside of work, I anticipated seeing at least a few of them today. The scene that greets me in this house shows me that a few doesn't begin to cover the number, unless I can get a real jump on these bastards.

The diorama of this one room will haunt me for the rest of my life, and though I now know worse is probably lying ahead, this will be the one that sticks because it is the first.

I've never done this before. I'm not a crime scene anybody. I shouldn't have to describe the grisly scene of a multiple homicide. I shouldn't even be here to have to see it at all. Here I am, though, dressed and hair-tied and capped in the finest Our Mindy's uniform attire, standing at the threshold of a family's life turned inside out.

It's the living room. For a small house, it's a decent-sized living room. Big flat screen television along the left wall. Open entry to a short hallway past the TV, leading to I'm guessing the bedrooms and bathroom. A couch hauntingly alike Roseanne's from her sitcom rests along the far wall, under a long painting of cartoon animals frolicking in a paradoxically rainy and sunny woods. End tables as tall as the couch bookend it, featuring lush lamps that look more like spun cloth or slick hard candy than glass or plastic, adorned with oversized shades striped like fat barber poles. The coffee table is comfortably low, something you could maybe set your feet upon without worrying what the hostess might say. Ashtrays and coasters sit around everywhere, but there is a weird orderliness to this chaos; the ashtrays are freshly emptied and washed, save for a single butt each in two of them, and the coasters must be used by all for there are no cup– or can-shaped water rings on any surface. The kitchen off to the right of the house looks bright and cheerful, and the twin recliners at the right side of the living room seem to be an introduction to the theme of the eating and cooking room; the cozy chairs are striped in fanciful reds and blues and greens, nary a dull or depressing shade upon them.

This is a room where the occupants of this house have enjoyed many days and evenings together, alone with each other or with friends and extended family.

They will not do so again.

I notice the family portraits and vacation photos randomly affixed to the walls, covering almost every inch of a wallpaper that must have been hideous to behold. I don't try to make out what it is between the unframed photographs. I see no thumbtacks or tape, so they must have used some temporary adhesive under the photos, unless they intended for this to be a permanent decor move. The faces in the pictures seem aware of everything.

The mother is sitting on the couch, dead center. The father is in the corner chair to the right. A visiting old aunt or grandmother is in the other recliner, laying back and with an arm over her eyes so you'd almost think she slept through the whole ruckus. Five children are strewn across the floor from one end of the room to the other. There are two boys, in their early teens it would appear, and three girls ranging from about ten down to five or six. The boys bookend their sisters, each brother lying across one of the archways out of the living room to hall or kitchen. Maybe they were separately occupied and rushed to help, too late.

There are two distinct forms of carnage here, and I'm not sure which turns my stomach more.

The adults were all shot in their heads where they sat or lay, while the children were cut down in short order on their feet. The blood splatter and other various gore from these fatal wounds adds enough dark color to the scene, but it is not all there is to notice.

I've never seen a gunshot victim, living or dead. I've never smelled or tasted the acrid remainder of gunpowder in the air. I've never been this close to death where it wasn't prettied up and boxed for frail loved ones to witness one last time in respect. I can't believe I'm not about to throw up. I haven't eaten anything, and usually the thought that I haven't eaten a thing is enough to make me realize powerfully that I am hungry and I must eat, but here, that doesn't happen. Thankfully.

I'd hate to be caught raiding the fridge at a murder scene.

But yeah, gunshots aren't all that happened to these people.

They appear to have been mauled.

At first, I can't say which happened first, the bullets or the claws. Some animal thing tore around this room in a frenzy, knocking nothing down but digging deep into the people in the family, and as I follow the course of the claw marks and gashes from body to body, it seems they must have already been dead when this part of the story went down.

I can almost picture some small, frightened baby thing rushing out from the bedrooms, over the children, up over the old woman, onto the father, back over the children, and finally onto the mother's lap, where it was caught.

A family pet? What dog would tear into the flesh of its beloved owners, though? Maybe it was just terrified senseless.

My gut won't quite let me picture a dog. I can't quite tell what I am picturing, it's so vague. It looks in my mind like I'm seeing an underwater dream, just not my own.

I see the twins coming in through the unlocked front door. The family's sitting, watching TV at a low volume so they don't wake the old woman and have to listen to her gripe about the noise. The girls are playing a little game of who-can-bug-Mother-the-most. One boy's out in the kitchen doing dishes. The other's off reading in one of the bedrooms. The family isn't startled at first because people they know never knock before entering, but they begin to panic as one by one they realize they do not know these twins. The mother looks to the father, expecting him to explain the strange men off as old buddies or work pals or something.

Maybe if the father hadn't still been a little hung over from last night's frenzy out at the fire pit, things could have gone differently.

The silent twin steps over, raises his gun hand, and in quick succession shoots dead the father, the old woman, and the three girls. The jovial twin, actually smiling, tips his head and shrugs at the mother as he blows her brains out, as if to suggest he sympathizes with her surprise. He says something to his brother, then as the sons of this murdered family run into the room, each of the twins turns to kill one of them before they can speak a word.

I think there must be more, but I smack my forehead to stop the mental play. I like having a vivid imagination, but I don't like this. I've never been that good at visualizing something I didn't see happen with my own eyes.

I feel as if I've woken from a dream, too vivid for my taste.

I look at the TV again to assure myself it's off, as it was when I entered the house.

The dark screen of the television triggers a continuance of the mental play, and I don't fight it.

I close my eyes to immerse myself in the dreadful daydream.

The twins think for a moment that they are done. The silent one steps over and shuts off the TV so he and his brother can have silence to contemplate their next move. Then, they are actually startled by something. A sound is coming from one of the bedrooms.

Something is screaming, or crying. It sounds like a baby.

I peel my eyes open with an effort, glaring around the room for some detail I've missed.

It's the mother. She's still carrying her new-baby weight.

Before I can wrap my head around this nasty little tidbit of information, time comes back into sharp focus and I notice the smoke's making my eyes sting. I was so busy looking around at all the dead bodies that I failed to notice the smoke pouring in from the hallway, obscuring the ceiling and the topmost photos in the all-round wall collage. Coughing, I turn back to the door and wonder when I stepped three feet into the living room from it.

Something over the wide front window, just above the curtain rod, catches my eye. I almost dismiss it as an incidental image created by angles and colors from various pictures only seeming to form a greater whole, but that's not it; there are words. A message, spelled out in large block letters, written in blood.

"No bacon, window woman," I pronounce the twins' message to me carefully as smoke streams overhead. "Look at photos," I whisper, though on the wall it's the e-mail symbol and not the word itself. "See what's been taken."

They knew I was coming.

# 3. UMBRELLAS BURNING IN THE RAIN

She knows not what happens

to her flesh

during this great vision of distant things

that she takes to be dream and nothing more

than dream – and she may be right – but

in the cocoon, her twisting flesh

around the reformulating face contorts in distress

to mirror her dream expression. The travesty

of star death is not so far beyond her

as to be unhorrifying.

Her dream-face turns slowly

back to the earth below her, and it is

no closer, but the realm of its peoples' minds

seems to be, as if it has expanded outward

to be nearer her. She can tell this

is not the case, though. The people – though she

refuses to acknowledge them as such – of this earth

have come to understand the condition of their universe

as the dreamer has done, and they are reacting as

people are wont to do, no matter their configurations,

physical or otherwise. City-states are falling

into riot, alliances are crumbling under the weight

of petty bickering and bantering

and inability to agree on what to do

about something they can do nothing about,

trade and what passes for economy here

are at a standstill, and the worst bit of all of it

to all of them

is that after all their long proven success – following

the evolutionary leap to what they are now

from a form of humanity more recognizable

to the dreamer – they should find themselves

about to be undone by something

still truly beyond them.

– from a dream

# ONE

Smoke. Random toys in the yard. Bullet wounds. Stains in a shattered home.

I'm not ready to move forward yet, so my mind casts back, back, back into the murky waters of a cleaner time.

I never have encountered carnage in such a form as in the house of the Mortimer clan, but I have been witness to and target of vulgarity and violence. It was only a year or so after high school graduation, and I was still holding onto one of the last vestiges of the life I'd lived in high school, in the form of a daily friendship with the flighty and ridiculously spoiled Muriel Angel de Lagos. Muriel and I had been a mean team in school; two of the hottest bitches on the grounds, and all we did with all her money and the power of our looks was make fools of various degrees out of every girl or boy who crossed our path. Out of school, we didn't know what to do with ourselves without that kind of atmosphere in which to stir trouble, so we became bar-hopping pseudo-sluts. Or at least, I was only playing a slut; not so for Muriel.

In school, we'd played head games with the jocks, the younger teachers, the gamers, the hotter geeks, and even a few fortunate underclassmen – fortunate enough to have been noticed by us, which in our books and some of their deluded heads actually made them very lucky indeed – but always left them with blue balls and nothing more but our derision.

After school, I'd kept to that game as best I could without the safe boundaries of school social structure dynamics to rely on, but Muriel never seemed to grasp that that was missing.

We'd been frequenting this little hole-in-the-wall bar in Anderson township where an off-duty officer named Ned had taken a fancy to Muriel. Ned wasn't much to look at, but he was known and respected around the bar, and so Muriel had played nice to him so she could get free drinks whenever she wanted them. She went home with him once, and she thought that would be the end of it; he got to have his way with her, and she hoped he would be sated.

Far from it.

Ned was insatiable with women, what few he'd had, and none of them had been the type to play games with his head. They'd been simple women, no challenge, no mystery, and so he'd grown bored with them just about the time they'd grown sick of him. With Muriel, though, he wanted more than she was going to give, and it frustrated him.

He would see her in the bar and she no longer acknowledged him. The bartenders and other patrons made the further mistake of thinking it all a grand joke; Ned was finally getting the treatment from a broad that he deserved. No one thought it would provoke him.

Ned wasn't that kind of guy. He'd let it go. They knew he'd let Muriel go.

He didn't let her go.

He waited five weeks, until a night he was on duty when Muriel and I left the bar. We'd gone nights before without a designated driver, but on this night in particular, I stayed sober.

Muriel was plastered, and her high spirits were so contagious that I felt a little bit drunk just from being around her. It was a grand old night, the air so clear and fine through the open windows of the car as I rolled down Beechmont Avenue at three in the morning. I was going the speed limit, two miles under in point of fact, but somehow I wasn't surprised to see police siren lights spring into view in the mirror.

I pulled us into the side lot of a closed-for-the-night little shopping center, and the cop pulled in close behind us, closer than I was comfortable with. Something felt wrong immediately.

As I watched the cop open his door and step out, I saw but didn't really notice another vehicle pull off the main road and into a parking lot on the other side of Beechmont Avenue.

The now approaching officer, identity as of yet unknown, had my attention rapt.

I watched him approach in the driver's mirror and motioned for Muriel to stay quiet, stay calm. She muttered something about flashing him to get out of a ticket, and I wanted to laugh and to slap her at the same time. I had a bad feeling even then, without knowing who it was.

"Officer, is there a problem?" I greeted evenly as he stepped up to the door, but before he'd leaned down for me to see his face.

"Have your passenger step out of the vehicle."

I don't know why I didn't recognize his voice, but at that moment I must not have been thinking at all, to have given in to such an odd request without question.

"Go on, step out," I urged Muriel, and giving me a wicked little wink, she did.

Through the window, I saw her stiffen instantly at the sight of the cop over the top of the car. She didn't say anything, though, just walked to the back of the car to meet him face to face. They leaned in close to one another to speak, and I couldn't even hear murmuring. Then, out of nowhere, the cop slammed the back of his arm across her face, and Muriel was going down.

I was out of the car before I knew I meant to get out, and at the sight of Ned's face, I wanted to scream, but he already had his gun out, and I couldn't make a sound. He leveled the weapon at me, and I shrunk back against the open car door. He stepped toward me and I think I actually squeaked, like a little kitten in fear or impotent, almost adorable fury.

"Turn around," Ned whispered, mouth wide in an ugly grin.

I knew what he wanted, and my horror diluted my senses so much that I saw but didn't fully notice a cell phone being held out from around the corner of the shopping center building next to us.

"You aren't deaf, Marsha Bradley. Do as you're told, now."

He sounded as if he was telling a child to do a chore. I wanted to poke out his eyes.

I turned around and he came up behind me, breath hot on my neck.

The stench of many cigarettes and hot black coffee made my gorge rise.

His hand slid up my side, and my gut clenched.

"No," I begged as much as I could, as much as I'd let myself. "Just fucking don't."

"Now, now, Marsha Bradley, you only get what you have coming to you."

I expected him to say more, and for his hand to do more, and for my mind to snap and I'd wake in a half an hour or so to the bloody corpse of a cop, but none of that happened. Instead, Ned's weight vanished from behind me. I turned and he was on the ground, bent over on his knees with one hand holding him up and the other rubbing the back of his head. I turned my head a little more, and there my savior stood.

"Gabriel God-damned Whiteacre!" I hissed, grinning in spite of what Ned had just been about to do to me. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Officer Ned chimed in, rising quickly to his feet, gun in hand but for the moment pointed at no one. "Interfering with police operations, sir?"

"If the assault of one woman and attempted rape of another are police operations, Officer Ned Flannigan, then I want my tax dollars back."

Ned was visibly taken aback by the use of his full name, as he didn't recognize Gabriel, and I myself only knew Gabriel from high school. Sure, I'd gone to prom with the loser, but that had been the extent of our connection, at least so far as I knew at that point.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Ned tried to proclaim in even tone, but he wobbled a bit on his feet as he took one step toward Gabriel.

Gabriel was decked out in full geek mode, a superhero tee tugged down over a long sleeve sweater, chains at either hip hanging over black jeans two sizes too large for Gabriel's slender frame, and sneakers far too white poking out from underneath the denim legs.

In that moment, I was overcome by the thought he was the most appealing man I'd ever seen, and I wanted to tear every stitch of clothing off of him.

With no fear in his eyes whatsoever, he glared at Ned and sighed, "Do you think I'd actually approach you, when you have a gun, with nothing on my side?" Holding his cell phone up for the cop and for me to see, he went on, "You do know what a camera phone is, don't you? Well, I took a little video of what I just witnessed here, and I've already uploaded said video to a dedicated server where it will sit for about an hour before it goes out to at least seventeen sources, from where it will quickly find its way before the eyes of enough people that your career will be over before you can figure out how to dispose of my body, if you're actually stupid enough to shoot me with that thing there."

Ned looked down at the gun in his hand, and shuddered.

"Fucker," he moaned, putting the gun back in its holster.

"No, you won't get to do that tonight, I reckon," Gabriel sneered. "Now get the fuck out of here, pig, and I might just delete that video. But every second I see your ugly face, is another second I'm stuck here and can't delete it even if I want to."

"Fine, I'm going, I'm going. How do you know my name, though, kid?"

"Because I'm this girl's online guardian angel, and I read on her friend's blog – her friend you so nicely roughed up a minute ago – all about you. You're a joke. Now, run away."

Ned walked back to his cruiser, sparing no glance toward her as he passed where Muriel must have still been lying on the ground between the back of my car and the front of his. Officer Unfriendly got behind the wheel of the cruiser and backed out and left.

I threw my arms around Gabriel and squeezed tight, then backed up a moment to slap him across the face, then pulled him close to me again before he could react to the slap.

"It's gonna be all right, Marsha," he whispered in my ear, his arms feeling stronger around me than I thought he could be.

"Yeah, I figured that," I said, and my eyes wandered across the wall of the shopping center beside us.

Most of the brick surface was covered over by an intricate mural, and I couldn't tell whether it was graffiti or a purchased piece of exterior artwork. Its background was a diminishing view of progressively smaller clusters of crowded people, none of them with clear features. All of them stood not quite on thin air in the image, but on what seemed to be a field of broken bones, an endless assortment of the remains of some unimaginable battlefield.

There were people standing in the foreground, obviously the main subjects of the piece, but their features were as obscured and opaque as the background masses. They wore long uniforms of dark colors, had short cropped hair one and all of various shades of brown, and each and every one of them held up an umbrella to protect them from a slow rain. It was a still image, obviously, and yet the artist had still managed to convey a sense of slowness to the falling drops of rain water.

The artist had also managed to evoke a sense of wonder in the piece, for though rain fell upon them all, the umbrellas were somehow burning. The image of those ordinary pieces of plastic and canvas burning in defiance of the rain was somehow haunting, and powerful.

Or maybe it just seemed so, under the circumstances.

Gabriel pulled back from me and turned to see what had caught my attention, and he nodded in approval. We helped Muriel get up, took her home, and then I took Gabriel home, and for a time after that night, we lived together as lovers.

I still remember, for the briefest of moments, thinking I could smell the smoke of those umbrellas burning in the rain.

Real smoke draws me back to the present from memory, and I cough.

How could I have thought that that was a cleaner time than now?

I'm standing by the car, bent half over facing the road I can't see through the trees. I glance over at the house to see smoke still pouring out the back and just beginning to come out through the front windows and the screen door as well. I was in too panicked a hurry to close the yellow door as I ran out. I see flames crawling their way into the living room from the hallway, picture the bodies of the Mortimer family, and understand.

I didn't live the cleanest or most drama-free existence back then, but at least my life was free of this level of violent behavior. I could walk around completely confident that no one I came across would be anything but wholly kicking and healthy as horses.

Largely marginally demented and occasionally psychotic, but alive.

Now I can't rely on any such thing.

I still hear the imagined cries of that baby from down the hall. I inserted the child into my fantasy recounting of the murders before I consciously picked up on what my subconscious must have realized immediately upon entering the house; they had a baby that was missing from the crime scene. I can still hear it crying for its mother, bawling, and I wonder what the hell the twins could want with a baby that they would kill its family and take it with them.

Except, in my fantasy – my delusional recollection of events I was not witness to – the twins seemed surprised by the sound of the child, as if they hadn't gone there looking for it, as if they hadn't known all the variables to expect when they entered the house.

So many fantastically big, scary questions.

Why had they gone out of their way to kill this family?

Were they really tracking the Handsome Stranger at all?

Why kill everyone in the house, but spare the smallest, most defenseless member?

And why bring a baby along with them, to wherever they were heading?

I could almost write it off as a small sign of some lingering humanity in them, an inability to slay such a defenseless human being, but after seeing the ruthlessness with which they dispatched the other children of the Mortimers, I can't quite stomach that explanation.

And then another, far stranger and personal question occurs to me.

Why am I calling them the Mortimers? I've begun using that name for them without knowing when, or how I connect it to them, or where if anywhere I might have seen it in the house. Perhaps written on one of the pictures? That doesn't seem right, somehow.

My ruminations are cut short when I hear my phone ring.

"Gabriel," I answer curtly, trying to convey that this is no time for the usual games.

"Marsha, how bad," he returns, and I sigh, glad he's caught the hint.

"Umbrellas burning in the rain."

A full minute passes between us without a word, as he wraps his head around the significance of those words and what it means I've decided about my course. He's weighing arguments against it, I'm sure, but then he isn't too fond of cops for his own reasons, so he knows he can't win against my failsafe defense.

"You're sure?" Gabriel tries to ask, though he can't quite hide his uncomfortable certainty that he already knows I am.

"They don't want the cops brought into this, G. W. They've taken a kid. A baby. Killed... they killed an entire family, Gabriel."

"I'm on my way."

"No, you're not. I need you to stay right fucking there where you're at. If I can't find them again, today, tonight, however long it takes, if I can't find them, I know and I think you have a pretty good idea that they're not gonna be found. I don't much like it, but it is what it is."

"It is what it is."

"Yeah."

"So what's our next move, Marsh?"

I have my mouth open to say something, but nothing comes out because I have no idea. My eyes go wide and my stomach sinks. I want to blurt out a plan that makes perfect sense and spells an end to this nightmare in twenty minutes flat, but I've got nothing.

I have no idea what to do next.

# TWO

When you have nothing to do where you're at, figure out somewhere else to go.

That's always been one of my usually unspoken mottos. I don't remember now if it's Oculatum-stolen or not, but it makes sense nonetheless, and it gives me some direction.

I ask G. W. to tell me where the twins headed next, and he tells me to get back out onto Elklick, then the route they took through Batavia. With my next few moves in mind, I tell him to call me back in fifteen again, and set off.

I can do nothing for the Mortimers, and if I stay here any longer, I'll just have way too many questions to answer for the cops or sheriffs who might be part of a first responding squad to a 911 call made by one of the neighbors. I'm a little surprised no one's made the call yet. With the economy the way it is, could they all possibly have jobs around here?

With my car turned around, I take one last look at the smoldering Mortimer house in my mirrors, then speed away.

Coming to the end of Beaver's Bend Lane, I turn right onto Elklick, and my eyes relish the scenery here. Beaver's Bend was oppressive, almost downright claustrophobic, but going along Elklick, the air is open. There are still massive quantities of trees all around across the various properties and between, but here they are more spread out. The land rises to the left of Elklick, giving the sense that this is the edge of a greater valley than it is, and the hills roll off some distance to the right, making me think of herds of sheep and frolicking milk maidens.

After some twists and bends and turns, I come upon the bottom end of Greenbriar Road where it meets Elklick, in an awkward turn that hurts the neck. Greenbriar rises sharply, steeply, and brings me into a part of these woods that reminds me inexplicably of Fern Gully.

I see no vehicles along the road, yet every house I pass is in a fair to excellent state of repair, so I can tell this is hardly an abandoned quarter of the world.

People just seem to keep to themselves around here. It's cute but also terrifying.

No one noticed the Mortimers being cut down, right out here in the middle of Batavia.

Well, not the middle, but near enough in my book.

Is nowhere safe?

I roll along up Greenbriar Road. After some miles, it begins to level out, then opens up to more large yards and hills than trees, a few farms, a water-treatment plant, and eventually a trailer park, nicer than I'm used to seeing one look. I pass by it slowly and see a few small children playing with remote control airplanes, hula hoops, and jump ropes.

Normal life goes on, but I feel removed from it, divorced from the reality of life as I knew it just this afternoon.

Before I pass beyond the view into their park, I see one of the kids call over a small dog, and I can't help thinking about Cheshire and the rest of my cats. I feel homesick in a way I've never experienced, as if I've gone off to war and not only countless miles, but leagues and leagues of sea lie between myself and my home. It feels like I won't ever return there.

I rattle my head as a few more houses on the right past the trailer park roll past my window, and as I round the bend to the right that leads me past a half dozen nice little homes barely sticking out of the trees and to the top terminating point of Greenbriar Road – where it turns sharply to the left to run parallel to the main road of Green Briar Trailer Park (not the nice one I just passed) for fifteen feet before it meets Old S. R. 32 – I try to shake this feeling.

"I will go home again," I affirm softly. "I will."

I might not get there until late tonight, maybe even sometime tomorrow, but I believe there's nothing that can keep me away from home indefinitely.

Except death.

I sit waiting for a few cars to go by so I can turn onto Old 32, and a cute little scenario plays through my head. I see myself rush out before an oncoming pickup truck from the left and getting myself pulverized in my driver's seat. I see my body somehow made presentable and laid to rest in an open casket for a viewing attended exclusively by scores of cats, all the feline creatures that have ever passed through my home, and all the litters of kittens they may have had since passing on to others' care. A moment later, the cat crowd surrounds my grave site, and weirdly enough, they each have a small dish of wet food before them, but none of them eat. They stand watch over the freshly packed earth of my grave, as if waiting for me to rise.

A car honks somewhere nearby and I'm startled out of my reverie. I check my rearview mirror, but no one is behind me. I pull out onto Old 32 going toward the high school, but turn right onto Batavia Pike before the school can come into sight. This road is large and empty, serving only as access to highway 32 and the old transmission plant that's no longer open. I think a few more factories and small businesses might be down the road past the plant, but I have no reason to drive down that way to check. I take the onramp, and in moments I'm flying down 32, approaching the hospital and its surrounding restaurants and office buildings and et cetera, passing the hospital and its surrounding restaurants and office buildings and et cetera, coming up on little downtown Batavia from the other end this time, and passing that.

I realize all I'm doing is driving. It's not a plan, I'll admit, but it's better than standing still.

I can't stand to stand still.

Why hasn't G. W. called back yet?

And how could they have known I was coming after them? Did they see me walk out to my car? Did they see me tailing them onto the highway, or notice me on 275 itself? Or on 32 going toward Batavia? I suppose any of those is possible, even likely if I let myself think realistically. I mean, I don't drive anything invisible; it's not the most noticeable or attractive beast on the road, but my '90 Camry isn't exactly forgettable, either. After all, I blew half a year's tax return getting her painted bright frog green.

Maybe not the smartest thing to do after all. Could Aunt Cord have been right?

Cordelia Bradley had a thing for umbrellas. What do they call it? Yeah, a penchant. She had a real weird penchant for umbrellas. She never left her house without one, never took the same one out two days in a row, never even used the same one twice in a month. Some members of the family rumored that Aunt Cord had a different umbrella for every single day of the year, but I never believed that. I swear I recognized a few of them, once or twice.

I'd thought of her for the first time in years after the night Gabriel came out of nowhere to rescue me from Officer Unfriendly. I'd discovered the next day that G. W. hadn't come out of nowhere, had in fact been following me from the bar, but I forgave him since he hadn't been the one about to rape and possibly murder me. But yeah, before Gabriel and I'd gotten back to my place that night, just as we were driving away from dropping off Muriel safe and sound, I'd thought about that mural and my mind had conjured up a version of it in which Aunt Cord kept popping up in random spots among the faceless throngs, like a dark cross between Where's Waldo and Mary Poppins. In the late daydream, Cordelia Bradley was wearing a black puffy dress, a black veil, black boots, black gloves, and each time she appeared, she was carrying another umbrella, all of various sizes and shapes and designs, but invariably black. I'd never seen her that somberly cloaked in real life, and was deeply disturbed.

Within a month, I was making regular trips up to Blanchester to visit with old Aunt Cord, eldest child of my father's generation and one of the only extended Bradley family members I could stand to see on a regular basis. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed her company, even though all we ever did together was play crossword challenge, gossip over soap characters and soap stars, and discuss the signs of an oncoming storm only Aunt Cord could see.

Cordelia Bradley had been a mildly paranoid schizophrenic. She didn't hear voices or want to hurt anybody, not even herself. She just saw things in the weather that nine hundred times out of a thousand just weren't really there, but she was pleasant enough about it.

The subject brought a weird sense of reliability to my life.

I could count on Aunt Cord's oncoming invisible storm if on nothing else, I used to tell people, right up until the day she died.

She had had one true episode in my presence, though, and it had come on when I told her my plans to have the Camry painted. She'd liked the idea until I showed her the magazine article for the unpronounceable foreign vodka in the bright green bottle and proclaimed that this would be the color of my vehicle by the end of the week. She shrieked, literally shrieked in terror, as if she was seeing the most horrifying sight in the world. I asked her if something in the advertisement had startled or frightened her, but she shook her head and would not speak until the hour's soap opera had finished. Then, she told me I would rue the day I did it if I went through with my plans to paint my car. The words she said to me then hadn't made any sense, but thinking back on them now, I get chills.

"The green will be a beacon to them. Beware the three brothers."

If I believed in prophesy at all, I'd be getting chills.

Why am I getting chills?

There are only the two of them, anyway.

The color of their skin wasn't remarkably different from the Handsome Stranger's. Could the twins and he be related? Could he be their other brother?

Could he be something other than a target?

"No," I say loudly, as if countering the argument of someone other than myself. "No, it can't be that."

And yet, what do I really know, about any of them?

# THREE

"Screw this," I hiss, and grab up my cell.

My thoughts are a dangerous brew when I don't have anyone to occupy my mind with their company, growing rancid and cycling through tangents until I feel I've surpassed my late Aunt Cord on the merry-go-round of paranoid thinking. It isn't healthy to be alone.

Call it a defense mechanism against acknowledging the very real possibility that I have more in common with Aunt Cord than a past fascination with crossword puzzles and soap operas.

Scrolling down my contact list, I try to pick someone both at random and with purpose. I randomly skim names, but have to mentally check several off the list of candidates for various reasons.

Some will be busy with work.

Some will be busy living.

Most will have nothing to do with what they will not entirely incorrectly categorize as vigilante behavior.

A few will be too intrigued for their own good and probably want to draw in others for a grand crusade, and I don't have the patience or tolerance for a gang feat.

After a couple dozen or so glances down at the screen while still watching the road, I notice Muriel's number is still on my contact list and wonder for a moment when the last time might have been that I actually used it. Could this be the right day to call her up?

"Nope."

On up and down the contact list I browse, traveling along Route 32, passing into Eastgate again, turning off 32 onto the access road to Meller's supermarket and its surrounding businesses. On this side of 32, there is much open grass between the vast Meller's and all the other standing structures, as if the guts of another shop metropolis had been thrown up to mirror what stood on the opposite side of 32, but were never filled in with smaller centers and stores and varieties. It has a nice half-empty feel to it, this part of Eastgate, as if the world is still holding back the encroach of merchandise-obsessed humanity here if nowhere else, and even if only partially.

I pull in at Meller's and park, setting my phone aside for a moment so I can think.

Waiting on G. W. to call again will be interminable since I don't have anything else to do to occupy my time. I brought no books, I have no handheld gaming devices, and I'm growing restless with nothing but my thoughts for company.

Oh, why didn't I let Gabriel hook me up with that steering wheel TV he used to bug me about getting?

I pull down the vanity mirror attached to the visor and check out my reflection, as much of it as I can see anyway. I see the cap still on my head and tear it off, tossing it onto the rear floorboard, then yank my hair out of its tail and shake it out. God damn, that feels good.

Catching this action reflected in the vanity glass, something in the toss of my hair and the angle of my shoulders reminds me of Dean Billet, last name pronounced Bill-Ay. Dean is one of my oldest gay friends, but was never the gayest of my gay friends. He has a slender frame and delicate features, but a stern, hard demeanor and takes shit from no one.

To see him walking down the street, one's first impression is that that kid must be as gay as blazes, but to meet him and hear him speak, you'd then think your first impression was totally wrong, this guy could never be the type to take a dick or give a man his. While I've never known the particulars of Dean's role in the bedroom, I do know most certainly that he would only take or follow a man to the bedroom.

For one summer, though, Dean needed some extra cash to fund his artistic endeavors into the comics field, and so he utilized the deceptively feminine slant of his frame to create the alter ego Jean Greyheart. Taking advantage of the cliché about badly disguised men trying to pass for women, Dean played up the huskiness of his voice in his act, exaggerated his masculine walk on high heels, and pretended to fawn pathetically over every man.

He always kept his own hair short, but as Jean Greyheart, he wore a large wig with flowing red hair, and it drove all the fags wild. Well, all those who came to tip, anyway, and those were the men with whom Jean Greyheart was primarily concerned.

Dean hadn't donned the attire or persona of Greyheart for years, ever since that summer's mini-series project came to fruition and shot him and his writer friend into moderate success in the comic book industry. He quit the week nights at the club, quit the weekend appearances at various area bars, and tucked the drag wardrobe safely away.

As far as I know, he still has every skirt, blouse, dress, pair of hose, press-on nail, pair of heels, and even the make-up. I don't really have any use for his make-up, but I sure could use a change of clothes. His style – well, Jean's, I guess I should say – wasn't exactly my taste, but anything's better than running around in this damned uniform the rest of the day.

I do a quick contact list search for Dean and press call.

There is, of course, no answer.

Not even after thirteen rings.

I toss the phone into the passenger seat in overdramatic fashion, and laugh.

I screw up my face and smack myself immediately, feeling wretched for finding anything even remotely humorous today when I've just popped my corpse cherry. I laugh at that thought, and face-palm again. Corpse cherry. How little respect I must have for the dead to reduce the finding of their desiccated home to such a crude little phrase.

And yet.

"Corpse cherry," I giggle, frowning clownishly.

I've gotta be losing it.

Aunt Cord, did I ever ask what color you thought I should have painted my car instead? You warned me against the bright frog green, which I ignored, but did you ever bother making a suggestion as to what might be better? Something to ward off the things I'm finding today?

Suddenly, an image rises in my mind, an image of a splattered human carcass lying across the front of my car, and the blood against the green is vivid and vile.

I can almost see the face of the corpse in my head, can almost see the shape of the clothes, the color of the hair, that body on my actual hood in front of me in the parking lot at Meller's, but the vision is broken by the ringing of my cell.

I grab it up and bark, "Dean?"

"No, Marsha, and not even close."

It isn't Gabriel either, and for the moment I'm drawing a blank.

All I know is that I know that voice.

Then, for three terrible seconds, I think it's one of the twins, and I try to tell myself how preposterous the notion is that they could have my number already.

"It's Jakie, you blonde-wannabe bitch!"

I gasp, and cough out one bark of laughter, and my eyes go wide.

Jakie.

Our Mindy's.

Normal life goes on.

"Oh, hey," I manage to get out, a little too quickly, a little too meekly, so I gather my will and force a more normal, "Hey! What's going on?"

"I was just calling to ask you that. Thanks for the hours, B-T-W, but I am curious. Why did you need to get out of here in such a huffy rush?"

"Oh, Jakie, it's a long story and I'm still in the middle of it, so I'll tell you all about it all tomorrow. All right?"

"All right, darling. You sound like hell. You better get some good sleep tonight."

"I will."

"Don't let the pussies keep you up too late. Or some man."

"I won't."

"Or some man? I don't know why I said that. If it's a man, honey, you better let him keep you up all night long, and into tomorrow, and I'll come over and take him off your hands if he wears you out!"

"Sounds good, Jakie."

He doesn't say another word, though I can tell from his silent breathing that he wants to.

The connection terminates and I set the phone down in my lap.

Umbrellas and cell phones and face-palms, oh my. Rainbows and beers bottles and bullet wounds, oh my. Claw marks and corpses and candy canes, oh my. I've lost my mind and I'm stuck here waiting on a call I'm starting to think won't come and yet when it does come, I'll be mad enough to actually continue this stupid little chase. Oh, my.

# FOUR

Finally, after what seems like forever but couldn't have been any more than fifteen or twenty more minutes, the phone rings in my lap. I'd actually started to drift off, so the vibration of the tiny machine shifts my daydream-slipping-into-dream from a vision of unavoidable human splatterings to a sense of floating in a humongous hot tub. I begin to enjoy the sensation, but realize what the sound means and snap my eyes open and grab up the phone to answer.

"What!" I bark, startling a little gasping mad chuckle out of myself.

"I've got your next destination. It's not far from where you are now, actually. Just over off Old 74, and you're gonna laugh when you hear the street name."

"Give it to me."

I roll my eyes and bite my tongue. Can't believe I just said that to Gabriel. I wait for him to send some caustic barb over the connection to me, but instead all I hear is his breathing and the tap-tap-tap of his fingers on a keyboard.

"Oh, sorry, I'm a little distracted between things. Don't get mad, but I still had chirpter open and spied an article link I had to check out. Anyway, it's Hilltop Lane."

"You're joking," I say, my free hand clenching into a tight ball. "I was just thinking about Dean, even tried to call him. Tell me it's not his place."

"Whoa, I didn't even know your buddy Dean lived there. I just thought you might think it's funny they stopped at a Hilltop Lane when you live in Hilltop Estates. But they stopped at the fourth house on the right, coming off of Old 74. I guess you don't need directions."

"No. Thanks. You know the drill."

"Yes, ma'am."

He's getting a slap tomorrow for that. Should we all survive the night, that is.

"You know what, make it half an hour. I'm gonna stop at Dean's, too, see if he's there. If he is, I'm raiding his old Greyheart collection."

"His what?"

"His old drag clothes. I'm getting sick of running around in my uniform."

"Ah, got ya. Stay safe, Marsh."

He ends the call and I set the phone down beside me.

Dean lives on the corner of Hilltop and Old 74, and the twins just happened to have stopped a few spots down from him. I start the engine, check the hood to make sure no bodies or bloodstains have materialized there, and look into the reflection of my eyes in the rearview mirror. Do I believe it's only a coincidence, their next target being so close to Dean?

I have to admit that anything's possible.

Getting no answer from the former Jean Greyheart doesn't help my nerves, though.

As I pull out of the Meller's lot and make my way into the light late afternoon traffic headed down toward Old S. R. 74, I try to remember the last time I spoke to Dean. I see his updates on Lookbook all the time, but that's not the same. I try to remember when it was I last saw Dean in the flesh, hung out with him, danced with him and his inevitable gaggle of hot guy friends, and I realize why that's so hard a thing to recall.

Ever since his career in comics really started taking off, Dean's become something of a hermit. He still came out on the occasional weekend for the first couple years after his short-lived gig as Jean came to an abrupt, unceremonious end, but over time his plainclothes appearances grew fewer and further between, until he vanished completely.

I stopped going to so many of the gay clubs and bars myself a while back, but from what I hear, neither Dean nor Jean has been so much as seen at any of the old haunts. His art – and more personal vices of the purely fleshly variety – consumed his life, and he was happy to let it.

I think I forgot how sad that made me, losing him that way.

Well, today I'll see him, one way or another.

G. W. did say the fourth house down, but there's nothing saying the twins couldn't have polished off targets in two residences on one street. Hell, maybe killed the neighbors between while they were at it, just for sport.

I wonder if I ever got to know any of Dean's neighbors, but I draw a complete blank. Dean's always been a weirdly private guy, choosing the arenas in which he'll open himself up to anyone at all, and for as long as I've known him, wherever he lived, he kept to himself and rudely ignored anyone who tried to encroach upon that space, that privacy.

So, it'll be no one I know.

Approaching the intersection with Old 74, I steel myself for what I'm about to find, again.

Back on Beaver's Bend, I had no warning, no way of knowing what to expect when I got there. Here, I can be at least semi-prepared, so the emotional impact shouldn't be as rough.

I can almost believe that.

Just be okay, Dean.

Please God let these next dead only be strangers.

# 4. THE THIRD WIFE

Their astral impressions are vaguely representative

of their physical bodies and somewhat of their attire, but

their forms she tries to block out. It is

to no avail. She cannot look away

from their elongated features. She cannot help noticing

their predominantly emaciated physiques. She

cannot stop seeing their large strange eyes; some

are insectile, some feral, some reptilian or aquarian,

and for every animal-kingdom approximation

she can guess for their eyes, the rest of their features

are haunted by traces of that same genus.

Yet their language is hauntingly English to her,

and she cannot tell herself it is a trick

of dreamery; if anything about this vision is real at all,

the language she cannot understand the meaning of

but can catch the shape of

proves it all must be.

– from a dream

# ONE

Am I really this crazy?

Clearly I've come unhinged at some point in my day. Was it doom the moment I got out of bed? Excuse me, out of couch. I still don't remember even laying down there. But was it doom I was waking to no matter what else I chose to do?

No. No, I'm sure I could have avoided all of this by staying at home with the cats. Cats never cause dramatic insanity. Not this epic level of it, anyway.

No matter what the YouView video titles claim.

I'm driving up Old 74 now, getting closer and closer to Dean's block, passing businesses I barely notice. I'm hardly even aware of the other motorists. All I can see is the outline of the shape of another dead body; no details, just the negative space around some androgenous human form, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood.

Will it be gunfire again? Do they have an unwavering modus operandi? It would be hard to get away with that in a more densely residential neighborhood.

Unless they're carrying guns equipped with silencers.

Silence will fall.

I get a chill, and it isn't from the British TV alien that phrase conjures up, though the picture forming in my head from the episodes Jakie's been making me watch don't help.

For a moment, I think of dust on the wind and dying stars, and I can't say why.

I see Hilltop Lane up ahead on my right. I think about continuing on and letting this go. I've got the rest of the night off now; maybe I'll go watch the next episode Jakie burnt onto a disc for me. If it's good enough, I'll text him and tease him with plot hints, since I know he won't watch a single episode of that show – as much as he loves it – alone.

I turn onto Hilltop Lane.

I look up Dean's driveway as I pass his house, and I see only two nondescript sedans parked outside his garage. Dean owns three, each a different primary color, and the red one's missing. He only drives the red one when he's out on a particular vice run.

Good. He's not home. One less thing to worry about.

I pull up to the fourth house on the right. It's just another single floor, upper middle-class, faux brick house, with privacy hedges all around and a swarm of pink flamingoes ringing the edge of the property. It looks so ordinary, so middle-age friendly, that I find myself wanting to believe the Great What got the address wrong. But then, looking up and down the street as I pull into this driveway, I see none of these homes looks like the scene of a murder, massacre, or any sort of crime. It looks as untouchable as the background neighborhood on a sitcom.

On impulse, I try to call Dean again as I shut the engine off.

No answer, and thirteen rings later I end the uncompleted call.

Looking at this house again – fourth on the right, no visible address numbers showing – I notice a detail I missed on the first glance over. The glass outer door is shut, but the hard inner front door is wide open, exposing a dark inner sanctum of vague greens and grays. I don't look harder to try to make out any interior details just yet. The door being open is enough.

I'm definitely at the right place.

I step out of the Camry slowly, rising to my feet and scoping out the neighborhood for any dog walkers, lawn-waterers, mail-grabbers, et cetera, and breath a sigh of mixed relief and dread when I spot no one. No witnesses means not even a slim chance of random aid.

I walk on stiff legs up to the front porch. I climb the single step onto the wooden deck, a hand wringing the wooden post on the left side of the exterior, open threshold. I reach for the handle of the glass door and can just picture the twins approaching this way; casual and nonchalant, as if they have a good reason to be on the property and no ill will.

I wonder if I'm shaking. I really can't tell.

My hand doesn't look like it's shaking, but if my whole body is, would I really be able to tell?

I open the unsmudged transparent door, watching the reflection of the neighborhood shift as the glass panel moves, and step into the home.

I experience a moment of strange vertigo, or some kind of disorientation. For a moment I feel as if I'm on the deck of a ship moving with the waves of the far sea. After the moment passes, I realize the room isn't moving, nor the house.

The walls are blocked from view all around by tall, thin cabinets of delicate metal framework and intricate patterns of geometric shapes in frosted glass. Behind each level of front paneling stand careful arrangements of various collections in glass: blown glass globes; glass cubes of variable size made in the images of regular six-sided dice, children's letter blocks, abstract artsy forms, and plain blocks containing three-dimensional laser-etched portraits; and spread randomly amongst the rest, gorgeously detailed glass figurines.

The furniture is arranged in a nearly closed square, couches on either side, large matching comfy chairs at the ends, and vast end tables at the corners between the chairs and the ends of each couch. It's all pristine white, nary an ass imprint or speck of dust or lint to be seen on any of it. It's a stark contract with the deep red velvet carpeting, which is just as well kept. Everything in this room screams obsession with order and cleanliness.

I could wander for hours around this room just inspecting the figurines, trying to figure out how many of them I can correctly identify, and a few I immediately recognize as old cartoon or black and white movie characters, but I can't take the time to browse these glass sections.

A low-hanging, ornate brass ceiling fan slowly spins above the empty space between the furnishings, but no lights hang from it. The room's illumination comes from bulbs secreted up inside the topmost sections of the collection cabinets, hidden behind four-inch metal panels atop the frosted glass. The light rains down in a multitude of colors, all Easter shades.

The only break in the cabinets besides the front door itself – they even cover the room's windows at the front – are two parallel open hall entryways at the back corners of the room. No light comes from either of them, and no sound.

Looking around the room, I see what caused my vertigo when I came in here. The lights must be programmed to mimic candlelight, because they are flickering randomly dimmer and brighter around the top of the room. The effect tricks the eye into seeing inconstant shifts in distance and focus around the objects around the room, and it almost makes me dizzy.

It's all the glass. The shifting reflections are totatlly fucking with my brain, which would be bad enough just between the variant color bulbs and flat prismatic frosted glass, but everything behind the front paneling also being glass just makes it all worse.

Of course, it could be that my senses are wigging out due more to my discovery on Beaver's Bend than any condition in this unbloodied, unbodied living room.

I hear a cough from somewhere else in the house. The sound is soft, and low like it's been covered but not quite well enough, as behind a shaky hand. I picture arthritic fingers cupped over a thin, wrinkled little mouth that hasn't seen lipstick in more decades than I've been alive, and the smile upon those lips behind those fingers is a terrifying thing.

I reach into my pocket for my cell to make another impotent attempt at a call to Dean which I've come to accept will not be answered, and find I left my phone in the car. Checking all my pockets, I confirm that I also left the keys in the ignition.

"Great," I whisper, and I'm not sure myself if I'm just saying the word, or trying to conjure Gabriel through one part of his preferred title.

For a moment I wonder if anyone in this house is paranoid enough to have put hidden microphones or camera throughout the living room, and if Gabriel somehow has access to the network and will hear me. It's ludicrous... and yet a little not, because he does know the address I'm at, and he would be able to hack into any network at the site.

Still, I'm being ridiculous.

What could G. W. even do if he heard or saw something happen to me so remotely? Call emergency services? Involve the police? I'd surely be dead long before any of them could get to the scene, should anything of that nature be awaiting me here.

Now I'm thinking like a paranoid. Gabriel told me they aren't here, and my own two eyes confirmed that the second I pulled onto the street and saw their car nowhere around.

So what's got me so nervous?

"Why, hello, dear," an old woman greets me, coming into the room while I'm distracted by my thoughts. "Don't fret, I won't call for help or any such nonsense. I know you're not going to hurt me or do anything bad to all my pretty precious things. Come, won't you have a seat?"

She's standing behind the furthest chair, and it's her, the woman barely glimpsed in my flight of fancy just moments ago. Same wrinkled features, same withered hands, same bloodless, somehow pathetically pale lips. She isn't smiling, though.

And she has blood on her hands.

# TWO

For a while, we just sit together in silence, me and she; the stalker-of-the-twins and the third wife.

She made a point of introducing herself that way before I sat down.

"I am the third Mrs. Montgomery Billings, born Bernadette Masterson."

I thought it was an odd way to introduce herself to a stranger who just barged into her house uninvited and without so much as a knock or ring, but what isn't odd today?

Those were the last words she spoke before sitting on the couch across from me, and she never offered me her hand or a drink or anything at all besides her cunningly piercing grayish eyes. There are hints of violet and blue and green in those irises, but the shifting light makes it impossible for me to tell what's really there and what's reflection.

I avert my eyes constantly, but each time I look back at Mrs. Billings, she's still staring me down. Not angrily or with malevolence or even suspicion. It seems something like a cat's curiosity, and I'm not sure if it's the way a cat regards a potential toy, playmate, or prey.

I can see where she's caressed the back of the chair and the edge of the cushions on the couch before she sat down. Her bloody finger and palm prints are clear as day, looking like dark and menacing pools under her living room's lighting, but she doesn't seem to notice.

All she has eyes for is me.

I hate that.

Why aren't I staring back, then? That's usually my response to such weird behavior.

Again... hard to single out any one weird element of this day to react to it in anything resembling my ordinary fashion.

I'm so far out of my element as to feel like I've fallen through a broken mirror and into not only someone else's life, but someone else's skin.

Yet I still feel like me, underneath it all.

Underneath all what!

I have no God damned idea what I'm going on about.

Is this how desperate I am to avoid acknowledging Bernadette's gaze? Or should I call it a glare. I'm not sure, I think a glare would have to have some element of challenge in it, or maybe I have that wrong. She just seems so creepily curious.

"Dear, I would ask what brings you here, but I think I already know."

My eyes go wide and I can't help jerking my head to stare her right in those crow's-feet-encircled eyes.

"You needn't have bothered worrying, everything's just fine and in order."

"Then tell me, whose blood is on your hands, Mrs. Third Wife? Because you don't look like you even have a scratch on you."

"You're right, I am just fine, thank you for noticing," she replies promptly, utterly ignoring my observation about the blood, and the blood itself as well. Then, for just a moment, as my words sink into her head, she holds her hands up before her eyes and whispers, "It's Montgomery's," before returning to her previous, unapologetic yet somehow dignified gawking.

I could have guessed as much.

I roll my eyes and lean back to stare up between the lazily turning blades of the overhead fan at the ceiling. It's smooth and as white as the couches and chairs, and as spotless. I don't know if I've ever seen such a clean living room ceiling.

"Where would you like to begin, dear? Would you like to hear a little bit about my life with Mr. Montgomery Billings? I think it's ever so important you understand the situation he put us in before you make judgments on what's happened."

Us? Is she really grouping herself in with the twins, or does she mean someone else who might live here?

"Say what you'd like to," I say to her without looking down from the ceiling.

"Well, I think I will, thank you," she says in a bit of a huff.

Not that I care what mood she's in. I just want to relax here for a moment, so I'll let her ramble on as long as she likes. I know I shouldn't indulge in the distraction, but for the moment I can't help myself. It's nice just to be sitting on a couch, especially one so comfortable.

"As I said before, I am the third wife of Mr. Montgomery Billings. Not to suggest that he couldn't keep a wife; just the opposite. Old Montgomery was married to his first wife, Beatrice, for over thirty years before she passed. She never respected his delicate condition, but then back then no one understood such things. She was always pushing him to go outside in their yard to tend her garden – why a woman would need a man's help in her garden, I cannot fathom – and to take their dogs for walks around their neighborhood. He loathed it all, but put up with it because he believed he loved her. Oh, he always believed he loved his wives. It was never true, though, not even with me. But I don't need a man's love. Only his support."

She pauses, as if waiting for some predetermined response.

I nod, and she seems to accept it to mean whatever she was waiting to hear.

"The second Mrs. Billings was the complete opposite of Beatrice. Bernice acclimated to Montgomery's condition so completely that by the end of their second year of marital bliss, neither of them left the house for anything. Luckily, the only child of the first marriage, poor little Buster, he would make regular trips to the local grocery for them, so his father and stepmother never went hungry. He didn't know that Bernice was allergic to certain fruit, though, and by the third year of their marital bliss, she herself had forgotten, so after three weeks of Buster surprising her with different varieties of exotic fruits, Bernice had a severe allergic reaction and that was the end of their marital bliss."

Ah. The old man was an agoraphobe.

I finally turn my eyes away from the ceiling and fan, but still am not willing to return Bernadette's stare, so I let my eyes wander over the collections in glass. I don't let myself focus on any particular piece or section, just speed-glance over them all on the right side of the room from the front door, and listen as she rambles on and on.

For a while, I let my eyes go out of focus and just let the sound of her voice take me away from the task I've undertaken.

For a while, I let myself forget that somewhere in this house that Bernadette keeps so pristine is the dead body of her husband.

# THREE

"...in sickness and in health, but I never thought it would come to what it did."

I don't know how long I've been tuning her out, or how much more of a lead I've let the twins get while doing it, but I'm too comfortable to realize I should care right now. It takes me a moment of delayed comprehension hearing to figure out what brought my awareness back to her words, but it's the way she pronounced the word health.

Quickly yet carefully, dividing it into two distinct syllables, with greater emphasis on the "hell" part and a slight accenting of the remainder to hint at some disgust.

I kind of really like that. If I remember to, I'm stealing it for my own vocabulary.

"What did it come to?" I ask, inspired by I don't know what to stare into her eyes hard and fast, so direct and uncompromising that I somehow make her flinch her gaze away from my face, though only for a moment.

She's been talking nonstop for some little bit of time, comfortable in her skin and her home in spite of her husband's blood tainting both, yet now it seems her words have become stuck in her throat, or perhaps in her head. She either can't find the order they should go in, or can't bring herself to even finish the thought to respond to my question. Could it have been so bad between her and her Mr. Billings, even before the twins encroached upon their lives?

"In spite of everything, I never stopped loving that man. His condition was always somewhat of a burden, but I did my best to make him comfortable in his own home. I only brought in people of a certain disposition, you see. Some people are prone to behave as Beatrice, always meddling and attempting to push and push until a person changes to suit their own ideals of how life should be lived. No matter how good their intentions, they do damage to a man in the frame of mind Montgomery found himself stuck in from an early age."

"Can't stand people like that," I chime in helpfully, sympathetically.

She smiles in a way that is meant to appear sweet but only looks strained and utterly false, and continues, "And then there are those more like Bernice. Weak people, copycat people, people whose actions and motivations you cannot trust because they make them up as they go along to suit what they believe you want, without any regard for how debilitating this behavior can be. Montgomery never needed an enabler of that magnitude. He needed a woman strong enough to live her life in the fashion she was accustomed to before meeting him, while still supporting the lifestyle he found himself trapped in long, long before he met her. I was that woman for him, and I would be again given the chance, even knowing what would come."

She pauses to wring her hands in her lap, further smearing his blood across her gnarled fingers, the wrinkled and darkly veined backs of her hands, and her strangely smooth palms.

Her clothes are untouched by blood, so even if I didn't already know that the kill-happy brothers of the gun (I can only imagine at this point their fixation with the dread weapon) had been here, I would still know she wasn't responsible for her husband's untimely expiration.

But I do have to wonder, how and why did she get so much of it on her hands? And why does she seem so fucking oblivious to its presence now?

"It began not so very long ago, really. I suppose that's the horror of it, that Mr. Billings and I were permit to enjoy nearly all of our own brand of marital bliss before the changes could destroy everything. Permit by whom or what? I honestly don't care, dear."

She nods during this last sentence as if I've spoken. I'm not sure which of us is crazier; the third Mrs. Billings rambling on, or me for sticking around to listen to her.

"Anyway, we lived our life together for so long that we believed that we were close to reaching our rightful ending. Side by side, we would meet our deaths with dignity and grace, in an atmosphere and of a disposition of our own choosing. Such was not to be the case after all, unfortunately. He became a monster."

She's visibly struck by the images her own words conjure in her mind, and I don't think she's picturing the events of only a half-hour or so ago.

"Montgomery... he kept trying to go out. He never wanted to go out. He's never in his life wanted to go outside of his comfortably familiar home surroundings. Can you imagine how difficult he was to move from his old home, the house he shared with both his former failure wives, into this home we made together? Far more difficult than he turned out to be worth! But I speak out of bitterness more than absolute truth. You'll forgive me that, won't you, dear?"

For once, she actually waits for me to answer.

"Of course," I whisper, and she smiles that false smile again, but around her eyes I can see a trace of genuine emotion.

I think it's what she mistakes for gratitude.

To me, it seems closer to a species of relief that makes me feel like nothing more than a trained bird calling back the responses its owner wishes.

"You see, I couldn't let him break his own long rules, now, could I? I'll admit, it was quite a challenge – quite a monumental and somewhat invigorating challenge indeed – surmounting the obstacles he became, just to keep in the house when he was now trying his damnedest not to be in it any longer. He never struck me, but he threw some of the most fowl words I have ever had the displeasure of hearing in my life, and those sting quite worse in my opinion."

She looks down at her hands and suddenly seems aware of the blood, though not in a surprised way. She seems more to be sad that she forgot to wash it off, or that it hasn't simply abandoned her flesh of its own accord and by its own devices.

"He became a monster," she whispers, and now I feel as if she's forgotten I'm still here. "What else is a wife to do?"

There's that word again.

Monster.

What in the world is she talking about?

"Really, dear," she says, returning to her normal tone of voice and eying me again coldly, "Peter and Phillip are such very nice boys. You'll see it when you catch up with them. They have an awfully important job to do."

I'm stunned. Literally, stunned. My jaw feels like it hit my knee, my mouth fell open so wide and fast. And it kinda hurt.

She knows the fuckers' names, which means not only were they both in her house, but she spoke with them, probably the same way she's speaking with me now. Why in the hell didn't they cap this bitch?

Normally I giggle profusely when a wiggerism like that spills out – a holdover from my short-lived (thankfully very short-lived) fascination with white rap – but this question actually deserves some serious thought.

Why would they massacre an entire family just to kidnap a baby, then come here and murder a troubled husband only to leave the arguably more troubled wife unscathed?

"They meant me no harm," she says, as if reading my mind. "I could tell that the moment they came knocking at my door. They meant me no harm, and only wished to put poor done Montgomery Billings out of his misery, and mine. Not that I would ever have admit that to him, mind you, but I suppose that isn't very important anymore. Anyway, they came knocking with what I at first mistook to be nothing more than an adorable baby child, and they almost had me fooled with that one. When I asked, though, they admit what the child really was. Had the same monstrous form as Montgomery, and I tell you, it's tricky discerning them for what they truly are, unless you've known them forever. As I have known Mr. Billings."

She takes a deep breath.

"I suppose I really should start calling him the late Mr. Billings. It will take me ever so long to get used to that, don't you think?"

I shrug, and then I face-palm, genuinely startling Bernadette Masterson-Billings. I don't suppose she would call herself that, but it's how I'm going to remember the bitch.

"My word, dear! What would ever possess you to do such a thing? Are you all right?"

I get the feeling she's more concerned with how I might go mad and mess up her pretty pristinely clean house than how I myself am doing or feeling or thinking or being.

"They left the baby with you?" I sigh, making a not-too-difficult intuitive leap.

"Why, yes, dear. We can't expect them to do what they must to the best of their abilities while burdened with a monster child."

"Monster child," I utter hollowly, feeling a little numb.

She takes this to mean I'm agreeing with her, and actually reaches over toward my hand as if she means to take it in her own in some gesture of comradery. Thankfully, she realizes the blood is still there, and pulls her hand back before contact can be made.

I'm finding it really hard to move, to even turn my head away.

She opens her mouth, but closes it again quickly. It seems she's run out of sensible things to say.

She turns a look toward me that's something between that fake smile and the wicked grin I glimpsed in my head before actually meeting her, and in a panic I bolt upright and around the furniture and toward the front door. I look back over my shoulder, expecting her to be standing or at least scowling in my general direction, but no, she's just sitting there regarding the spot on the couch opposite her where I was sitting as if I'm still there.

She looks so alone, so pathetic, so frail and old.

And still somehow dangerous, even if I know she could never harm me.

For months, she was keeping her husband prisoner in their home in spite of what sounds to me like a breakthrough. The man had suffered from agoraphobia for the better part of his entire life, and only in his late years – his final years alongside hers, as she seems to have been seeing it – was he somehow able to beat the impossible odds and muster up a desire to step outside. How did she do it? What did she do to keep him inside?

Did she hobble him?

Did she chain him?

Did she drug him?

Did she starve him so he'd have no strength to resist her?

I turn back to the door and reach for the knob. I could swear my brain passed down the command for my hand to grasp it, to turn it, and to open the door. For a moment, I try to remember how the door even came to be closed. I don't remember shutting it. Did she walk over to close it before we sat down? I can't be sure; maybe it just closed all on its own.

My hand isn't touching the knob, though. My arm is blocking the signal, and sending up a resistance call. It's telling my brain to listen to curiosity, and curiosity is reminding me that not only do I have a morbid desire to see the twins' handiwork here, I also have to be sure that he's dead and not just mutilated and left to suffer.

I can fully believe that Bernadette here is so far gone she probably couldn't tell the difference anymore.

Either that, or she'd probably let him suffer, just for inconveniently disturbing her vision of the way things were supposed to go leading up to the end of their joint life.

But if the twins are any kind of consistent, then Montgomery Billings is as dead as the Mortimers are down Beaver's Bend Lane.

I wonder if anyone else has found them yet? Did the fire engulf the house before anyone could get in to see what happened to them?

"Well, dear, are you going or are you not?"

Her speech, even and genuinely curious, breaks me out of my ruminations over the fate of the Mortimer clan. I don't answer her, but I do mull over what I want to do right now. Will I go or will I stay a little longer? I'm done wasting time with Bernadette; she's so far gone she thinks the twins are doing some kind of good with this killing spree. She even knows they took a baby, but her delusions made her think the child is what she believed her husband was.

Suddenly, decision strikes. I almost feel it hit like lightning. My skin crawls and tingles.

I have to see the body.

I stalk past her and the furniture on one side, the glass cases of glass collections on the other (and ahead, and behind, and across the room to my left), walking on wooden legs toward the right hand hallway. Instinct tells me their bedroom is on this side of the house.

In my mind, I can almost see Peter and Phillip – if those are really their names; I'm tempted to believe she made those up and doesn't even realize she did it – walking ahead of me. They're fast and sure and unrelenting. They got in through the front door, using some gimmick or another to get past the locks without leaving any evidence of lock-picking.

I round the corner into the hall, and it's short, featureless, white and clean but dark. There are no lamps or light fixtures here. No photos or portraits or landscape prints or anything; a stark contrast to the display room behind me. On the right, a closed door I assume to be the bathroom. At the end, the hall rounds off to the left into, yes, this is the bedroom, but it's nothing like the rest of the house, or at least as much of it as I've seen.

They have a large four poster bed, all in some dark wood, once polished and well cared for. A deep closet stands open on the left of the room, stuffed with clothing on hangers, clothing in piles on shelves that rise above the hanger rack, and piles and piles of women's shoes. I see the third wife isn't stuck on only one form of collecting. The walls of the room are covered over with bookshelves that are identical to the cabinets in the living room, except these are devoid of glass. The volumes span from classics to modern fantasy and horror, but I don't see a single trashy romance, and I'm strangely proud of the old woman for avoiding such clichéd trash.

I don't see any make-up or jewelery boxes, so she must keep those things in the bathroom.

I cross over to the side of the bed and look down at the body.

Mr. Billings lies naked on his bed, the covers askew and torn as if by an animal's claws. He lies in a contorted position, but it appears this is how he was sleeping when they found him. He's curled up like a feral creature or cat, and it would almost be cute except for the flab here and there, the excessive tufts of gray hair all over him, and the bullet wound through his skull. Brain matter and blood cover most of what remains of two large, shredded, fancy pillows.

For some reason, I take a close look at his hands, and what I see makes no sense, but disturbs me nonetheless.

At the tips of his fingers, it looks as if his flesh has been cut open with surgical precision and then sealed by some laser technique or something, because there's no sign of stitching or suturing, yet the flesh is closed at the incision sites. Still, I can see grooves in the skin where it was torn, or opened, or whatever happened to it, and on closer inspection I see the sealing is imperfect; the fingerprints no longer align perfectly along those lines.

The same lines are on each of his fingertips, and the tips of his thumbs. For some reason, I think of a cat's retractable claws.

Montgomery Billings, brains splattered, unclothed; no dignity in death for you.

I'm not moved to shed a tear for him, though.

It's time I quit this damned place.

# FOUR

I should have climbed out through the dead man's bedroom window.

"Horrible bitch!"

I try to remember if there even was a window in Montgomery's – I somehow intuit that Bernadette hadn't been sharing a bed with her husband for some time, so yes, it was only his – bedroom, but I somehow... just... can't.

The third wife has completely gone off her gourd.

She dragged both couches over and positioned them one in front of the other in front of the door. I don't know how she did it without making any noise, but it's kind of pointless anyway. Thanks to the cabinets flanking the door within an inch of the frame on either side, there's just enough space to get the door open far enough to squeeze out if I climb over the couches.

The woman herself is now standing atop the chair nearer the door. Her arms are up over her head, as if shielding her from attack. She's facing away from me, and I can see her hands wringing slowly, her knuckles cracking in unfeminine fashion. She's muttering something under her breath; I can just make out the sound of her voice, but there's no shape to her words, no sense or meaning that I can discern. From what I can see of her profile, her expression is cycling from the mad grin from my daydream to a scowl to a weepy frown, then back again.

Part of me wants to just split and get on with what I need to get back to, but another part of me is torn apart with sympathy for this frail old bat. She tried to justify what the twins did with the delusions she'd already had about her husband, and in the process did nothing to help baby Mortimer (might she know the babe's name?) or stop Peter and Phillip getting away.

"Horrible bitch!" Bernadette screams again, kicking her right leg with her left, then her left with her right, then slamming her palms against her cheeks loudly before returning to the twitchy position I found her in.

My gut votes to stay a little longer, but tells me not to interrupt Bernadette's mad soliloquy.

With nothing better to do, and no desire to inspect the rest of this damned little house so near my friend's – Dean, oh Dean, wherefore art thou, Dean – I opt to peruse the collections encased in glass and comprised of objects all blown, chiseled, and cut in glass.

The three-dimensional photo cubes catch my eye. In roughly half of them, randomly placed, are images showing the late man of the house at various stages of his life. He was never really any more handsome in life than he turned out to be in death. I can't stop myself tracing back how many decades he had such long hairs sticking straight out of his ears.

In some of the others, the same eerily grinning portrait of the man's son, Buster. I'm tempted to believe Montgomery simply went through a plump phase, but this man has much more hair on his head than his father ever did. Why only the one picture, though?

The rest of the photo cubes are filled with Montgomery's wives, and I notice a very, very interesting thing. Aside from aging and distinct hairstyle changes from Beatrice (a tall, careful beehive hairdo) to Bernice (a tightly coiled bun) to Bernadette (loose, flowing locks), the three women look remarkably alike. A quick glance might convince a casual onlooker that they were all the same woman. I marvel for a moment at my absolute surety at the identity of each of Montgomery's former wives, and then I do a double-take looking at a random triangle of the three wives in photo cubes, Bernice and Bernadette on one shelf with glass figures between them and Beatrice on the shelf above.

It's more than just a resemblance. They're the same woman.

Three hairdos.

Three typical, individually telling expressions upon the faces stolen from who knows how many different photographs.

Three names.

One face.

I slowly turn to look at Bernadette where she should still be, standing crazy on the chair, and jump back an inch when I find her right there one foot away from me. Her eyes are wide and wild and glued to my face, but there's nothing there. No recognition; only curiosity.

"Do you know who I am?"

She doesn't ask who I am, but she does seem interested in whether or not I can help her solve the perplexing mystery of her own identity.

She smiles, and I'm touched a little at how genuinely sweet it is.

Then I cringe to think of how life must have been for poor Mr. Billings, even before Peter the Piper and Phillip the Mute came a-knocking.

(Again comes knowledge I have no way of possessing. I'm so sure which twin was which, and I even seem to know their nicknames for each other. How the fuck?)

"Is something the matter, dear? You look ever so uncomfortable."

Then she looks over at the glass cabinet in front of us, and she seems awestruck by it, as if it were both the most beautiful and the most impossible thing she has ever seen. I get the feeling she's regressed to a much younger version of herself, possibly before she ever met the late Mr. Billings, and she is now looking upon the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

She talked about Bernice and Beatrice having died. I guess that was just her way of coping with going through a radical change in order to deal with Montgomery's condition. But what is this exactly? MPD? DID? Schizophrenia?

"Yeah," I finally answer, "no, I'm fine. Are you okay, Mrs. Billings?"

I use her married name, unsure which first name she'll respond to, and then I think that maybe she won't recognize the last name either, if she's really regressed to a younger age.

"Mrs.?" She kind of laughs, "Oh, dear, like I'd ever let myself marry that fool up the block. Sissy keeps telling me I can't resist his... charms... forever, but I just don't see it. Now why do you think that would be my name?"

Catching a little of her reflection in a few of the angles in glass before her, she clamps her mouth shut and frowns thoughtfully. I can only imagine what's going through her head.

"I'm not me anymore," she whispers breathlessly. "I could almost swear I was me when I woke up this morning. Now, I couldn't tell you what became of my day up until now, but I could almost swear on the tallest stack of Bibles this side of the water that I was me when I woke up. Almost. God, why only almost?"

She turns her eyes on me, glaring, eyes suddenly accusatory.

"Why only almost? Tell me," she shrieks, reaching out to grab my hands.

I'm just a little too quick for her, dancing back out of her reach.

"Bernadette, why don't you just calm down. Sit down or something."

"Why do you keep calling me by the wrong name! And heavens, where am I! Can you tell me that? I want to know just where the devil I am, and I want to know right this instant!"

"You're in the house you lived in with Montgomery Billings as man and wife."

"That can't be right," she whimpers, spinning to look away from me with more speed than I'd think she could muster. "That's impossible."

I give her a moment.

"You'd think I'd remember settling for such a dunce."

I can't help laughing at that. She notices, and actually turns a relieved grin on me.

"You think it's funny too, dear? Then why do you claim such a preposterous, ludicrous thing?"

"Hey, I don't know you, and I don't know how you came by this life. I only just got here myself."

"Who am I?"

"You were the third Mrs. Billings when I got here. Told me you were born Bernadette Masterson. Didn't say when, but when the hell do we tell a stranger that?"

She actually laughs a little at that. It's not particularly the most healthy or sane sound in the world, but it is a step in the right direction.

"Masterson, huh," she says, more to herself than to me. "I can just imagine. Things really turned out topsy-turvy, didn't they, Margaret?"

I'm not sure if she's talking to herself or to me now. Maybe she's confusing me for someone she used to know. Maybe she's just making up a name for me.

Or maybe Margaret's the name she was really born with. How'm I supposed to know?

Inspiration strikes, and I blurt my first thought before she can say another word.

"Mrs. Billings, the names you gave me for Montgomery's wives were Beatrice, Bernice, and Bernadette. Look at the photo cubes, really look at them, and you'll see they were all you. Now you may not remember all those lives on the surface of you as you are right this second, but give it a moment and consider something for me. Think of Montgomery Billings as you knew him, maybe he'll be a window for you back into those lives. Are you with me?"

After a moment, she closes her eyes, head down, and nods three times.

"Tell me, Mrs. Billings. Of all those B-names, who did you feel strongest as?"

"Bernadette," she replies without hesitation.

I don't know whether to be glad or anxious over that, but it's not really my place to make judgments. All I can do is try to help her as much as I can, as quickly as I can.

"Then be Bernadette. Embrace everything and everyone you've been, but be Bernadette most of all. Can you do that?"

"I don't know."

"You can," I say forcefully, and touch her arm reassuringly.

I feel a charge flow through me and into her, and suddenly she's standing straighter. She seems somehow more alive, and definitely more sure of herself. Without a word, she moves over to tug the couches back from the door. She turns to me and shakes her head, looks from the furniture to me, and laughs.

"Sorry about the blockade, my dear. I don't know what came over me. I do have to thank you, but I also must ask you to leave. I think you can imagine how much work I have ahead of me."

"Ma'am," I speak carefully, "you know their names, don't you?"

"Why, yes, dear. I don't quite know yours, but somehow I don't think that matters as much."

"No, I'm sure it doesn't. But you know who they are. Why'd you let them leave? If you could try to stop me going, you could've tried to stop them. They murdered your husband. Whatever else you thought about him – and I'm not commenting on your marriage here – you loved him enough once to marry him. Why let his killers just leave?"

"They have work to do. I believe I mentioned that."

"Yeah. I guess you did. You're really not reporting it? No cops? Nothing?"

"Nothing."

She opens the door, and there's really nothing else for me to do but go.

I take one last look around the room, and leave the house without sparing her a glance.

The bitch can keep her dead husband and all his things. She can keep the stupid glass collectables, too.

I try not to think about what work lies ahead for her as I get behind the steering wheel.

I try not to think about her options for disposal.

Will she opt for dismemberment? If so, what then? Down the garbage disposal? Stuffed piecemeal into strange trash bins?

Does she have somewhere she could burn him up? Ashes to ashes?

Will she stuff him and keep him around for quiet company?

Fat lot of good trying not to think about it's done me.

Best way to avoid thinking about one thing? Actively think about something else.

I need a fucking change of clothes!

With a task in mind – and only barely a thought of the Handsome Stranger nagging at me – I back out of the driveway at 673 Hilltop Lane and head up to Dean's house.

# 5. THE CALM BREAKS

She finds herself questioning if it is

truly a dream. After all, she cannot recall

going to bed to sleep, nor what she was doing

right before arousing to this dream,

nor what her day was like at home or work

before any of it.

The most telling feature would be

that she can hear anything at all, even if it is

only the faint, psychic chatter-clicking-rumbling

of this strangely alien-but-not population of this

other earth, this impossible earth, this

doomed earth before her. She may not remember

anything distinctly recent from her own life

to ground herself in its reality or timeline,

but she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt

that in all the dreams she has ever had

(and remembered upon waking),

sound was never a sensation that occurred. Maybe

a slight dream-vibration now and again,

mostly in the more pleasant and

embarrassing dreams, but never sound.

And yet,

here in this,

she can perceive sound.

– from a dream

# ONE

Let's shift gears here for a moment, can't we? What am I saying, of course we can! We is just you and me, and you don't exist. Do you? Of course not! Unless I'm somehow projecting into another dimension and you're listening, or watching this, or reading me as some hack writer's desperate attempt at telling an interesting tale. If the last's the case, don't I feel sorry for you, you gypped, gypped fool!

Unless you get off on reading about sick shit like this.

Anyway, shifting gears.

Let me tell you about how I first met Dean Billet.

We were still in school then, Muriel and I, and she'd challenged me to a most intriguing bit of mischief. We'd had our fun with plenty of the boys, and still had many more to mark off our list before we could call it a day – we never got around to that before graduation; no good story there, I'm afraid – but it had just been the straights we'd been targeting. There weren't a lot of gays around to begin with, and most of them were actually not half bad to look at, but we'd kindly left them out of our torments. Until one particularly dull Saturday night.

We were sitting in a booth at Horizon Chili. I was three-quarters through an onion-stuffed three-way, and Muriel had, as usual, barely touched either of her cheese coneys. She'd stopped pretending to even think about taking a bite, had even stopped spinning her fork in the cheese, and her lust-joyful gaze made me turn to find out what had caught her dangerous attentions. The moment I laid eyes on the kid, I knew I was in for some trouble.

"Ms. Angel de Lagos, you have got to be kidding. Or on crack."

"Neither, missy," Muriel answered with a grin as she stood and acted like a ditzy, clumsy fool, spilling her plate and coneys across the floor. Raising her voice, she cried out, "Oh, look what I've done, Marsha!"

She flashed me a quick confidential wink and grin again, then screwed up her face and actually began to cry. Over spilled chili and hot dogs. I wanted to smack the silly bitch, but most of me just wanted to laugh.

And then I saw the boy who had been behind the counter now coming over with a broom and dustpan to clean up her mess, and I wanted to crawl under the table. He was actually damn fine to look at, but everyone knew the kid was gay.

Everyone, supposedly, but the kid himself.

The funny part was, he wasn't one of those flamboyant flamers you'd expect. His voice didn't give him away. He didn't have the swish, or at least not any more of a swish than any ordinary gangly kid physically like him. He kept to himself, and the only reason I could gather why anyone thought he was gay at all was because he'd never been spotted with a girl, anywhere, and no chick in our grade or any other had ever spoke of his approach.

To look at him, you might just think him a loner, or an awkward geek, or a quiet thinker, and no one thing made you think he was gay, but after hearing the rumor, it somehow just seemed to fit him. And not in a terribly unfashionable way.

Not to say he ever had much of a fashion sense, pre-Jean G.

He was down on his knees now, most of the mess in the dustpan, using napkins from a nearby empty table to wipe up the last juices and bits from Muriel's spill. All the while, she's blabbering on about how she's so sorry she's such a klutzy thing, and how it's all really her dear friend Marsha's fault this time, since poor old Marsha couldn't keep looking back over her shoulder at the handsome devil behind the counter, to which he slyly replied what handsome devil, he didn't see anyone behind the counter, to which she replied she meant him, and he, the silly thing, shouldn't play so coy.

I grinned a little bit, enjoying the thrill of the challenge even as I resisted the urge to strangle her.

Just a bit.

Nothing too long; she wouldn't go completely unconscious.

I shook my head and shrugged when he turned a smile on me, telling me in a look that he couldn't tell how I withstood my friend's bullshit. I smiled politely back and went about finishing my meal.

When he stood and walked back over to the counter to help another customer, Muriel sat down in a huff and fumed, looking at me with positively blazing eyes.

I loved it.

"Couldn't play along? Not even a little? Grah! Sometimes I don't know why I drag you along at all."

"Didn't I drive us here?" I remind her, stifling a small cough of a laugh.

"That's not the point, bitch."

I kicked her under the table, really more of a tap, but she jumped like a football player had just sacked her one in the gut. I could see she meant to draw attention to us again, maybe more than just our friend the friendly faggot, but I stared her down until she understood I wasn't gonna have it. She'd had a bit of fun, and now was the time to let it drop.

Not that I really expected she would.

"Sit tight!" Muriel squeaked, mischief in her eyes again as she got up and pranced over to the counter.

I overheard her making another order for two coneys, extra cheese, no onions, no mustard. Then her voice went low. I craned my neck and saw her leaning in confidentially close to the boy on the other side of the counter. He was leaning in too, indulging her on what I expected was a lark.

Maybe he wasn't gay after all? Could he be showing interest, in her or in me?

Not that I'd mind. He wasn't bad looking, after all.

Then I saw him flash me that look again, from across the room as she riffled in her small purse for money to pay for the second order of coneys. How can you put up with this chick, that look said, along with a bit of I feel for ya, mixed with a dash of can we ditch her and hang somewhere else?

A hot pulse ran through me at that prospect, so I dismissed it as my own desire overriding logic and nothing more.

I wanted to see interest there, so I was trying to write it in.

Then Muriel wrote something down on a piece of paper and slid it across the counter to him along with her money. She waved off the change and returned to our table.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

I reached over the table with an open hand, fingers arched like claws, and mock-slapped her upside the head, holding my hand back just at the last half-inch.

"Fine," Muriel sighed, rolling her eyes. "I only gave him your number and said you were the biggest slut in town and you wanted his crotch babies up your twat. That's not so bad, is it?"

I smacked my hands down over my mouth to contain a burst of laughter. I ended up sounding like a mouse squeaking from inside the mouth of a large beast that's trying to swallow it. I knew she was kidding about everything but giving him my number, but she'd played it just right. By making me laugh, she'd avoided me actually giving her a good slap for the rest.

Giving my number to a stranger. True, he did go to school with us and I was reasonably sure he was in our grade, but we hardly knew everyone in that position personally, or even by name. I certainly didn't know this kid by name, and if I'd ever heard it, I couldn't recall now.

"I'm Dean," he said, suddenly standing right there next to our table.

"Well, of course we know that!" Murial crooned, and I kicked her under the table again, harder this time.

She reached down to rub the spot where I'd got her, and the look on her face told me she'd get me back for that. I just waved her look off.

"Nice to meet you, Dean, really. I don't know what my... friend here's been telling you, but you can just hand me back my number right now, if you don't mind. Strange boys in chili restaurants aren't usually my type. Not to say your strange. And not to say you're unattractive. In fact, you're very... nevermind. I'm babbling. Fuck."

"It's all right," he said evenly, smiling, but only in a friendly way.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper with my number on it. He set it down on the table and turned to walk away.

"Wait, Dean."

"Yes, Marsha?"

"Wait, whoa, you know who I am?"

"Well, your friend here did tell me your name, but I already knew it 'cause we had Chem together last year and I remember you punching that one guy in the face for making all those Brady Bunch jokes just before class would start everyday."

"Oh, my God, that's great!" Muriel burst out too loudly, drawing a few stares from around the restaurant.

"Oh. Well, anyway, Dean, here," I said, holding the paper out for him to take back. "Keep this. In case you want to talk about anything or hang out sometime. You know, without my nitwit here in tow."

"Hey! I'm more than just a nitwit."

"I know, Muriel dear. You're Queen Cunt of the Nitwits. Now can the adults have a little conversation here without you interrupting?"

She faced away from us to look out into the parking lot through the glass, and I turned to smile at Dean as he took my number and put it back in his pocket.

Dean and I became really good friends not long after that day. He called almost a month later, claiming he'd lost my number a number of times through the wash, a lie I knew was a lie because he never could have made out the digits after just one wash cycle, but I let the lie alone and let him talk about whatever it was he'd needed a girl to talk to about. Turns out he didn't have any good girlfriends to confide in, even though he was just as gay as everyone who didn't know him at all had supposed since forever and a day ago, so he was glad to turn to me.

We didn't talk every day or every night. We didn't hang out regularly all the time, or regularly for very long when we did make it a regular thing, but we never lost touch with the trust we'd placed in each other for no greater reason than that we could.

I still kind of think it formed that first day, in Horizon Chili, over the mess Muriel had created just trying to set us up for our typical games with a boy's head and, if we in our wicked little way were lucky, his poor beating heart.

Dean was a light out of the darkness for me, a lighthouse leading me out of the murky waters of Muriel's path through life out of high school, and while he alone didn't account for my choosing not to follow Muriel Angel de Lagos into utter slutdom, he was a good factor.

He was always the best friend I didn't feel any obligations to.

When Dean called, I didn't have to worry about a mess.

No drama.

No expectations.

No regrets.

What a great guy, was Dean Billet, once briefly Jean Greyheart.

Was? What the fuck do I mean by was!

Is.

After all, when I first turned onto Hilltop Lane, his red car was gone, which means he wasn't home when the trigger-happy twins Peter and Philip came to pay the Billings a visit.

Five minutes ago, when I pulled into Dean's driveway, the red car was parked between the blue and the yellow. So he's home now. So he's fine. Got to be fine.

So why can't I get out of my bright green fucking car and go confirm that with my own two shellshocked eyes? Why do I keep seeing him as dead and drained of all intelligence and possibilities of a future as Montgomery Billings?

I'll tell you why.

Because I tried to call him the moment I saw the red car was back.

Because I've tried to call him seven times at least while I've been sitting here thinking about the day we met again.

And though his car's here for me and the world to see – hell, I expect G. W. can see it's there now, if he's looking here and not got bored with this whole mess and gone back to one of his fucking bloody games – he still isn't answering my calls.

Why didn't I just let this drop when I could?

If Dean is dead, I'd rather not be the one to have to find the body.

# TWO

I'm standing at Dean's front door, sheer curtained windows flanking, stretching seven feet out in either direction on the house before brick pushes its way out three feet further to meet the yard on both ends of the uncovered front porch.

I'm standing there with my hand curled into a friendly little knocking fist, fist just inches from the solid oak of the door, door shut and thus a sign that the twins have not been here. They did leave doors open at both Mortimer and Billings residences, didn't they?

Still, no answer from Dean on the phone.

No reason to think they'd stop here.

No reason to think they wouldn't double back while I was distracted with the mad wife of Montgomery Billings, either.

Still.

Damn, it's way too still. None of the curtains is disturbed by the slightest breeze of motion from within, and nothing I can see inside hints at movement or human presence.

My fist clenches a little tighter and I knock.

No answer.

I knock again, more insistently.

Still nothing.

I almost knock again, until I notice the sides of a large bookcase showing at the edges of the windows to either side of the door, and remember suddenly that Dean doesn't use the front door. Never has. I'm not sure now if I was ever sure why. Damn it.

My legs take me around to the back door, and my breath stops short in my throat when I see it's been left wide open. The screen door's been missing since one of Dean's crazy exes tore it off in a drunken hissy fit, and the bright pink door standing open still has the dents in it from a couple boyfriends after that. Dean's never been too smart about men.

It's a wonder he's still clean.

I step past the pink door and into the dark laundry room. I see several pairs of black shoes, masculine things of various styles, and wonder how long it's been since Dean's seen let alone thought about his high heels and pumps and flats and fur slippers and flip-flops.

I walk further into the house, finding the kitchen immaculately clean. Since Dean doesn't cook, this comes as no surprise. I open the cabinet under the sink, and sure enough, both of his small cans are full to bursting with carry-out, drive-thru, and delivery trash.

A calendar hangs on his fridge, surrounded by magnets for grocery stores, pizza places, and other various little businesses. Today's date is double circled, and something about the date itself nags at me, but I have more important things to worry about than that.

I walk out into the vast shared living and dining room space, at least it was intended for those functions, but Dean has turned it into a large secondary office. Here he has numerous bookshelves arranged at odd angles, each overflowing with comics and novels and reference books and odd scientific theory tomes and alternative religious texts. A number of laptops and computer terminals stand on small desks and TV trays and one or two are even simply sitting on the floor. A few of them show open text documents or illustration software programs, but most are covered over with a simple black screensaver showing a blinking white line of text.

It's today's date again, and again I get this nagging feeling that I'm forgetting something vital, something important, something potentially more significant to me than anything else.

And again I push the feeling down into the pit of my stomach.

I walk over into the small hallway giving access to Dean's bathroom, bedroom, and his private, primary office. The office door is shut, which is the only way I've ever seen it; no one, and I mean absolutely no one, gets to go into that room, not even his collaborators or lovers.

I walk past the shut bathroom door, hearing nothing and dismissing it offhand.

I begin to reach for the bedroom doorknob when the bathroom door opens behind me, and I let out a small squeaky shriek, wheeling around to find Dean standing there, dripping, nude, his hand holding a towel over his crotch.

I throw my arms around him and squeeze tight, burying my face in his warm, wet, very much alive shoulder.

"Marsha? What's going on?"

"You weren't answering your fucking phone!" I yell at him, pushing back away to give him an angry look, but my scowl cracks back into a grin at how alive he is.

Getting to see him sans clothing isn't exactly a downer to my mood, either.

"When did you try to call? I knew I left my cell somewhere," he sighs, turning and walking out into the living room. "I just dunno if it's at Ruben's or Michael's."

Watching his ass and legs move as he walks, I follow him out of the hallway.

He picks up a handset of his house phone and dials.

I face-palm, realizing I never thought to try his landline.

"Well?"

"Oh. I tried calling a bunch of times, within the last half-hour or so."

"Ah. Then it'd have to be at Ruben's."

He cancels the half-punched in number and begins again, and I turn away to give him a bit of privacy for a moment.

I spin on my heels and smack the handset out of his hand, and he gives me this half-startled, quarter-pissed, quarter-amused look for it.

"Marsha, okay, you've got my attention," Dean says, wrapping the towel around his waist so he doesn't have to hold it up anymore.

I try not to let the bulge in front distract me.

Too much.

"Dean, my man," I begin slowly, falling into one of the random wooden chairs he has scattered across the large non-private office, "I am having one hell of a day."

"Tell me about it," he says with a smile and a wink, pulling over another chair and facing it backwards to me as he sits on it, legs splayed.

"Not sure where to begin." Looking down at my uniform, I go on, "Yes, actually, I do. I need some mother-fucking clothes, man. Anything."

"You sure about that?" Dean replies with a smirk on his face, slowly getting back up, careful not to let the towel drop too far down below his scarce happy trail.

"Anything," I groan, falling into a dry mockery of his playful tone and giving him such a forced grin that he actually backs up a step involuntarily and grimaces.

"Marsha, how bad is it? What's going on?"

"Clothes first, Jean Greyheart-that-was. Then we can have story time."

"I can't believe you remember all that."

"I can't believe you'd think for a second that I, of all people, could ever forget!" I decry, flashing him a genuine smile through the layers of my emotional sludge.

We head for his bedroom and I think, insipidly and not for the first time but for the first time in a long time, that I could have had him, once upon a time. I really probably maybe conceivably could have. No, really. Gay or not. Don't they all test the waters once?

Or maybe that's just straight chicks with some lesbian acquaintance one drunken night after graduation, in the back seat of some spacious old car she never paid attention to the make or model of, except it had the smoothest leather seats she'd ever found herself nude upon.

But anyway... could've had him. Once upon a time.

# THREE

"Under absolutely no circumstances could you have had me."

As I've been raiding his closet, riffling through piles and boxes and bags and things on hangers for something to wear – allowing myself time I don't have to search for some small measure of presentability that I don't really care about just about any day of an ordinary week, which this most assuredly isn't so maybe that's kinda the point – I've been filling Dean in on just about every wretched or bewildering or juicy detail of the day I've had since I had to give the new kid a whack to begin his instruction on how much shit Marsha Bradley won't take.

Having caught him up to where I left y'all, he gave me the comeback I was pretty much expecting. I would smile, but recanting the tale's left me feeling drained.

I've never been shy with Dean about my attraction to him, just as he's never been shy or even nice about the fact that he could never find me attractive, and he doesn't go terribly out of his way to let me know it's only 'cause I'm a girl and he's a gay, no, he lets me infer that much for myself. Nay, he expects me to get that for myself, and I have to admire him for that.

I wouldn't love him – as a friend, I must clarify – half as much if he was one of those fags who goes around apologizing to every cunty bitch who wants to give him grief for not being into her, for not lusting after her, for not turning for her, for not abandoning himself so she doesn't have to feel like shit just because she can't get him. Which is just white trash stupid bullshit.

I throw my hands in the air and plop face first onto his bed, screaming an unintelligible series of noises into the sleek silk sheets. I roll over and stare at the ceiling as Dean, still wearing nothing but the towel around his waist, steps over to the closet and quickly begins pulling out an outfit. He tosses it all onto the bed next to me: a dark blue strapless tank top, a pale green cotton tee to go under the tank top, a black-and-gray striped miniskirt, navy blue leggings, a bright-green-and-gray checkered leatherette belt, and black cowgirl boots.

I sit up and he smiles sideways at me, eying me to double-check his assessment of my sizes. Nodding in satisfaction, he slams the closet shut and plops down on his ass on the bed, the clothes he's picked out for me laying between us like a deflated lifesize doll with invisible limbs and head.

"You've really got yourself mixed up in some kinda mess, hon."

"Yeah. Myself and Gabe. You think I should walk away from this?"

He glances away for a minute, looking like he's weighing over the options for advice to give me. I can hear him telling me to call the cops and let them clean up the twins' mess, but then I realize he knows me far too well to make a suggestion like that. But then what?

He's up and back in the closet before I realize he stood up or dropped the towel on the floor. I want to be distracted by his nudity – I'm finding it kinda difficult not to be – but I get up next to him and stare down the side of his face to let him know I know what he's thinking now and I won't be cool with him trying it.

"You don't get a choice, Mars. Not a choice or a say or a vote. You're not backing down from this hunt, and I'm not letting you take one step closer to Peter and Paul on your own."

"Peter and Phillip."

"Whatever."

"You know I can't let you come with me."

"In what way could you let or not let me? I'm coming."

"How many times have you said that today?"

"More times than you get to in a year."

"Hey! My dry spell hasn't been quite that long."

"Doesn't matter today much, does it?"

"No, you're right."

"And?"

"And you're right," I sigh, turning and stepping over to the bed to strip out of my uniform. "I can't do this alone anymore. I don't want to. Sure G. W.'s helping, but it's not the same."

"Damn right it's not the same. For one thing, he wouldn't have anything for you to wear, and if you told him you were sick of running around chasing bad guys in your Mindy's uniform, he'd just tell you to do it in your bra and panties, or naked."

I cough out a dry, strained, humorless laugh.

"Hon," he whispers, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I'm standing here stripped to my bra and panties, holding the leggings and frozen in anti-thought. His touch brings me back to what I was about to think a moment ago. Once I put on these clothes, we'll be just about ready to get the hell out of here. Dean doesn't seem like he had anything else important to do today – two tricks in one day, yeah, I'm sure he wasn't planning on getting any work done until tomorrow, or midnight tonight at the earliest if his habits are even remotely the same as I remember – so he won't be holding me up once he's dressed.

Glancing over my shoulder, I see he already is. The quick bastard.

"You can do this," he says, gracing me with an embrace from behind, fleeting yet sweet.

"Course I can," I return, elbowing him a little too harshly so he'll back away. I know it's a minor overreaction, but I indulge my overwrought emotions because I know he'll barely even notice, or if noticed, he won't mind. "The question becomes, Ms. Greyheart-that-was, can you keep up? Or are you gonna slow me down so much that half the great state of Ohio falls before the malefic intent of these twins?"

I shiver at the small joke, and wonder just how ambitious these killers might turn out to be if left unchecked indefinitely.

"There'll be no slowing down from this soldier, ma'am," he retorts in an over-the-top soldier voice that almost gets me to crack up.

Almost.

As we walk out through the hallway, past the bathroom and his never-open private office, and into the larger office that nearly any other person in the world would have utilized for the dining and living room spaces it was intended for – I in the get-up Dean cocked together for me with hardly any effort, he in tight black denim shorts and a gray tee with electric-blue-trimmed gray-green sneakers – I can't help hearing the old theme from Buffy in my head.

We're only short a few good Scoobs.

"So what's our first move?"

I hear Dean's question, and I want to answer. I want to tell him that we're going out to my car, jumping in our respective seats, and tearing off for parts unknown till G. W. points us in the general direction of those fiends so we can bring down some righteous justice on their most deserving asses. I want to say all of this and more, but my eyes have caught sight of the text running across one of Dean's laptop screens in screen saver mode, and I can't speak.

It's today's date, and suddenly I remember what's so fucking important about it.

Twenty-seven days ago was my last period.

My cycle runs like clockwork.

Every twenty-seven days.

Been that way since the summer after I turned eleven.

I should have woken up uncomfortable. I should have been pissed I forgot my pads before I went to work. I should have noticed long, long before this moment that I forgot them. I should have been running to a store or bumming one off someone before I abandoned my co-workers for this mad chase. I shouldn't have been distressed only by the things going on outside my pants. I should be very much more emotionally schizoid than I've been.

Considering everything I've witnessed today, that's scary as fuck.

I thought I'd seen the worst thing of my life the moment I walked into the Mortimer's dying room, but what I'm seeing now – the utter lack of any signs of my menstrual cycle running today – just might one-up it.

"I'm knocked up," I whisper, falling on my ass in the middle of the floor and feeling kinda numbly stupid for it since I'm only about two inches from a chair.

"Okay, what the fuck?" Dean says in a rush, kneeling at my side and stark shocked concern written all over his face. "Did I just hear you straight?"

"I am straight. That's what got me into this predicament. And yeah, you heard me 'straight,' Dean. I'm prego, with child, burdened with impending motherhood."

"But, how do you know that? Like, out of nowhere?"

"I guess I forgot to do the math when I got up before work today. Twenty-seven days, Dean. Twenty-seven days, and today, nothing."

"Oh, shit. But couldn't that just mean nothing? I mean, I know tons of ladies who go late a day or so and it's nothing. Couldn't you have just... I dunno, missed?"

"I've never been late, not like this, not a day in my fucking life."

"I know, but... well damn. Just. Damn."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

We sit there wasting time, when I don't want to waste any more time, for about half a minute.

I remember my mission, though. I remember what I've set out to do, what I sacrificed the rest of a day's wages for, and I punch Dean in the arm and jump to my feet and grab his hand to pull him along as I run-walk to the back of the house.

"Hey!"

"That's for letting me distract myself with something unimportant."

"Unimportant!" Dean huffs half-jokingly, tugging his hand back out of my grip. "You thinking you're pregnant now out of the blue, that's kind of severely, severely what I'd call... important! Do you know who the father is? I'm not calling you a slut, just saying..."

"Unimportant compared to what the P-brothers are up to, yes," I begin a tirade, refusing to turn around and face him. "I feel like a slut after the night I had two weeks ago. Yes, I have a good idea who. I think I have a good idea who. I can't believe I let it happen to the point that I have to consider this'd be who, but there it is. And we're not sitting around here."

Without looking back, I grab his hand again and tug him out of the house. He only offers a very little petulant resistance on the way.

The moment we step near the corner of the house, I hear a sound I didn't realize I heard before, but now remember hearing but dismissing as I heard it as I was entering the house earlier. When I came back here and found Dean's door open, I thought I heard the sound of someone's phone ringing, but I knew it couldn't be mine because it was a ringtone I don't have on my phone. It was, and is right now, a dance remix of the Buffy theme music.

No fucking wonder that was in my head.

"Since when are you a disco queen?" Dean puts to me, stopping me at the corner so he can make me look at him as he puts on a bit of a clownish grin.

"Not my ringtone. Must be coming from one of your neighbors."

Thinking of his neighbors, I find the will to drive myself to speed again, and spin to run to my car, where I find the fucked-with Buffy theme is indeed coming from inside my vehicle. In fact, I can see my phone vibrating along with the tune.

"What the hell?" I say, opening the door cautiously as Dean comes up beside me.

"Thought you said–"

"Fuck what I said," I whisper in strange awe as I lift the phone up to look at the screen.

The display shows an incoming call.

Unknown caller.

"G. W., give me the news," I answer.

"Marsha Jane Doe Bradley, what the fucking God-damned monkey-shit-throwing hell!"

"Christ," I hiss, pulling the phone away from my ear for a second. "What's with the screaming, Great One?"

"Great What," he corrects automatically, "and what's wrong is I've been trying you for almost an hour. What the fuck happened to you? I thought maybe they set some kind of trap for ya in the Billings house, but then I saw you go up to I'm guessing Dean's?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, and now you've gone and given them such a fantastic flying lead that... well, you're not gonna believe what they've been up to while you've been preoccupied."

"Let me guess," I say with some actual hope, "they got into a fight with a semi and the semi knocked them cold out?"

I know the second I get the words out that the hope's foolish.

"Oh, there actually was a semi overturned on the highway, down close to the Beechmont exit as a matter of fact, and yeah that's causing all kinds of fucking problems and ruckus and drawing attention from authorities and beyond, but that's not the best or the worst of it."

Fuck.

"Fuck, G. W., just spit it out already. Wait, no, why was this messed-up version of Buffy's theme song playing on my cell phone?"

"Theme music. There're no words. I put it there on your cell phone when I couldn't raise you. And shut the fuck up, I'm trying to tell you something here."

"All right!"

"All right?" Dean asks, a little lost.

I wave him off, and he wanders over to the passenger side door but doesn't get in or even open it just yet.

I listen patiently as G. W. clears his throat, sips something, tap-tap-taps away at his keyboard(s), clicks this, clicks that, clears his throat again, and then sighs.

"This is big, Marsh. Bigger than we thought."

"I don't like how this is sounding, my What man."

"You shouldn't. I shouldn't like the looks of it, but I can't help it, just a little. I am a gamer after all. The best of us usually talk shit up and down the block about how they'd love to do half this carnagey damage to people in the real world – usually specific individuals of a disposition we don't like, or assholes who've done 'em wrong – but this is not talk."

"What have they done? Shot up the tires on a school bus?"

"No, but the way they're going, I'd say anything's possible for what they could do next. They went right from Hilltop Lane to that truck stop off the highway up there before Milford. You know, with the diner and the seedy little motel? The one that makes the motel at the Beechmont exit look like a church?"

"Yeah..."

"They went there – and keep in mind this semi just crashed down the highway, what impeccably lucky timing for them – and they started shooting people up."

"Fucking hell. Fucking hell, Gabriel! God fuck it... I can't believe I let this happen."

I drop the phone and sit heavily on my heels, knees up against my chest, shaking like a leaf in a cold fucking wind. Dean's at my side so quick I could think he never left it. He's got the phone up and is saying something to G. W., but it's like I've gone deaf, because I can't hear a word he's saying.

I let it happen.

I could've caught up to them by now, maybe, probably. Should have done, anyway.

Then I could've stopped it.

I wonder how many people have died? How many are bleeding out?

"No," I mutter, wiping at my eyes and gently pushing Dean's comforting arm away. "No, this isn't gonna do."

"You okay, hon?"

"As okay as I'm gonna get."

"So what's not gonna do?"

"This. Me, wasting time blaming myself and... and let's go."

He hands the phone back to me, into which I quickly say, "Thanks, I know where to go. Keep an eye on them and one on me. When you see my car pull out from the rest stop, then and only fucking then do I want you to try my cell again. This is too big, and I can't believe they'd do something like this and keep the kid with them through it."

"You think they found the baby a fucking nanny?" Gabriel shouts across the line, swallowing a chuckle he should know I'm not even in the mood to hear a hint of.

"I'm thinking either they dropped the kid with whoever they didn't feel like gunning down, or tossed it somewhere on the highway – that one seems somehow unlikely – or killed it and dropped it on a pile of bodies so it'd look like just another random victim."

"Oh, shit, yeah. Cover up a specific crime with a larger one that seems patternless."

"Almost brilliant."

"Yeah. Okay, Marsha. Go."

The call ends.

The cell phone goes in my pocket.

Dean runs to get in the passenger seat.

He's fastening his belt as I sit in my seat and reach for my belt.

Little Mortimer baby, I'm coming.

Amendment: we're coming.

God, it feels good not to be doing this alone now.

So, so blasphemously good.

# 6. AFTERSHOCKS AT THE STOP

A sort of sound, anyway.

It is the sound of the earth's peoples

refusing to cope with the fact

of their demise

from deepest space,

beyond space,

beyond all time and reason. So,

she ponders, even after evolving beyond

what they were, they still

retained their basic human stubbornness.

She almost thinks it good for them,

but instead it sickens her.

– from a dream

# ONE

It's scary but at the same time strangely soothing to be on the highway right now. Normally at this time of day, all the lanes would be semi-packed, but today, due to the semi-incited wreck, there's virtually no traffic up this stretch of 275 heading north, while the southbound lanes are gridlocked. I feel detached from their stalledness.

With Dean at my side, incessantly yammering on about this side project and that failed graphic novel and this ongoing series he loathes being so popular because he himself considers it some of his poorest work, I still feel somehow alone in this, on this mostly deserted half of highway, with these images of corpses and flying bullets dancing in my head.

The Mortimer family I still can't completely fathom. Were their killers after the child all along, or were they genuinely so surprised by its presence and overcome by an atypical sympathy for the helpless being that they felt compelled to rescue it from the ruination they brought down upon its family?

Still, there was a cleanliness to the carnage. As someone once said in a movie I hate to love, the killers kept the color inside the lines.

At the Billings house, death also came quick, and they had no cruelty to spare for Mrs. Billings other than the sheer unkindness of leaving her there with the twin burdens of her husband's corpse and her own broken mind.

The one factor I had come to rely upon across these first two crimes was a single-minded aversion to outside, uncontrollable witnesses. With this unexpected shooting spree G. W. has sent me on toward, all my theories about the twins' agenda have become suspect.

Have I even formed fully thought-out theories? I can't remember now.

Maybe Dean would know, as I did tell him everything before we left his house, but he's stuck in comic-writer-geek-ramble mode and I don't feel like jarring him out of it just yet to remind him why he's accompanying me up the highway this evening.

Much sooner than I hoped to see it, the exit ramp into the rest stop comes into view. There's only access on the northbound side of the highway, which makes it an easier target for crazy gun-toters than I'm sure its builders intended or could have conceived. Coming off the highway, I have to stop the car because the way has been blocked by orange cones.

"You sure this is right?" Dean mutters, chewing on a knuckle and eying the cones suspiciously. "Maybe the place is closed down for maintenance."

"No," I say, affirming my absolute belief that there's no possible way those cones are there for any legitimate purpose. "Those cones have been lying in a ditch over there for a year and a half. If this was blocked off for work, there'd be a sign. No, it's just enough to keep distracted people from nosing around, people with nothing more than a casual reason to want to stop here. It's not enough to keep me out. Mind helping?"

Without a word, we get out and quickly toss the cones to either side of the access road. As I throw the last one off into the grass, my eyes lock with the curious gaze of a small child standing up against the back window of a gray car speeding by. The vehicle's speedy progression up the northbound fast lane is contrasted sharply against the backdrop of the lines of nearly parked cars and trucks and vans and more than a few buses across the southbound lanes. Somehow this one child is the only individual my attention's drawn to from all the drivers and other occupants of the mass of vehicles peppering the panorama before me.

The kid should be in a booster seat or at least a seatbelt, but that's hardly my problem right now. I'm just thankful that family wasn't here when the twins happened through.

Thinking this charitable thought makes me realize I'm forgetting – albeit briefly – about the people who were in the twins' sights just about moments ago. Minutes? Not an hour, surely. Hardly over a half-hour, I'd think. I hope.

Fuck, they better not have any more of a lead than that.

We get back into the car, but I don't shift it out of park just yet.

"What're you waiting for," Dean says without inflection, as if he knows already why I'm stalling and is just asking because this is all some B-movie flick and it's in the script.

"You don't wanna see this either, do ya?"

"Not on your life."

"Then why did you get back in?"

"Because I'm not letting you do this on your own. Gotta stick by my girl's side."

"Aw, I'm your girl now? What will all your butt buddy boys think?"

"Jealous is what, I'd gather. Sure, none of us'd hit that in a million years – sorry hon, but you know it's true – but they'd still rather have you as the best accessory a gay man could wish for than see you standing next to me."

For a second I can't decide whether to take that as a compliment or as a sign that Dean's really not even here.

How could he snap before he's even seen his first dead body?

Kind of an assumption there, though, I have to admit. I can't remember specifically if I've ever heard or paid attention to Dean ever talking about seeing a corpse, in a casket or any other venue. I'd think something like that would stick in the head, though. Wouldn't it?

"Let's move, Mars. We can't give 'em all day."

Maybe I'm the one who's not here.

I shift into drive and creep forward into the bend where the lane exiting the highway joins the lane giving access back onto 275. Behind me, there are no comforting sounds of sirens belonging to ambulance, fire engine, or even a cop car. Strange to think of any of those sounds being comforting, but at this moment they would be, for they would mean I could just drive on by and let the proper authorities sort this particular mess out, without me.

Behind me, only the muted sounds of a mostly dead-stopped highway, interrupted here and there by the fleeting rush of one or no more than a handful of northbound vehicles at a time. Ahead of me, a silence both calming and nerve-wracking, for it tells a tale of nothing gone wrong here at this place at all, but also slyly hints at a devastating lack of motion due to other explanations entirely.

Could every single person here be dead? Or did the boys only have one target, and through some other means than the gun keep the bulk and the lot of their witnesses here from leaving the scene or calling down aid?

I can see them being capable of the latter, but the former sits more firmly in my gut as the likeliest of all possibilities I might discover here.

Dean reaches over to grasp my hand, and the stop's main parking lot comes into view.

# TWO

Jeremy Brookthorne was hardly a saint, but in his own mind, he wasn't much of a sinner, either. Sure he cursed when someone crossed him, or when the mail came late, or when snow came early, or even once or twice when the Bungles gave the impression that this would, hallelujah, finally be a winning season, but on a daily basis, he didn't consider that to be much of a sin. Not like those commit nigh hourly by tax-evading rich folk up in their skyscrapers looking down on poor mostly-honest folk like Jeremy and his brothers and their wives.

Jeremy kissed his wife before he left for work each morning, he responded to the texts his sons sent him occasionally from school or home or their jobs as best he could manage, and he daily mourned the daughter they had that just wouldn't survive, poor blasted little soul.

He went to work six days a week at Jenny's Stay-In, the little motel behind the trucker's restrooms at the rest stop off of 275 just south of his home in Milford. Coming to work each day was a task in and of itself, for he had to leave early enough to be sure no southbound traffic to Eastgate would slow him down, nor the northbound traffic on his way back up from Eastgate to the stop itself. He also cursed the man who'd thunk to put the damned thing there.

Not that he believed his curses would have any power to afflict those who'd wronged him, or who he at least saw as having wronged him, but they made him feel better nonetheless, and in the end that was all that really mattered to Jeremy Brookthorne.

Anything that made him feel better must be a thing come down from God the almighty maker himself.

On this particular Monday, Jeremy hadn't found very many things to thank God the almighty maker for, but he hadn't stumbled across too many things to curse about yet either, so he counted it as his favorite kind of day: a mostly-good. Mostly-good days weren't as dime-a-dozen as mostly-good men, so they were precious things, not to be squandered.

Standing back by the dumpster behind the Stay-In, Jeremy found himself with nothing to do. Not one to waste time on the job, especially on a mostly-good day, he'd inspected every single thing around the motel there was to inspect, had helped Roberta – the weekday evening room check girl – empty the trash from all the rooms, and had compacted the refuse in the dumpster as far down as he could get it, leaving himself not a hell of a lot for the remainder of his work day. He couldn't stand the thought of making money for doing nothing, but he liked the idea of going home early and getting a smaller amount on his next paycheck even less.

Just as he was about to go check with Jackson to see if there was anything the motel manager could think of that Jeremy himself might have overlooked to do or repair or replace, a badly rusted maroon sedan pulled around the corner of the building and parked just a couple yards away from the dumpster. For no reason he could comprehend, Jeremy pressed himself up against the side of the dumpster to keep out of sight, and peered around its edge.

He watched the driver and front passenger get out of the vehicle, and whistled quietly to see they were identical twins, something he hadn't had the privilege of seeing since he was a little kid. The passenger was holding a baby, but someone in the back seat opened their door to take the strangely unsobbing child, unburdening this twin so he could pull out a gun and fit a silencer onto the firing end of it. The driver already had his weapon ready in hand.

The passenger met the driver behind their car and they conferred silently there, then turned and both locked eyes with Jeremy simultaneously. The look in their eyes was like the way a cat's eyes catch you when light's shining at your back and they're in shadow; demon lights like headlights but with the antithesis to souls behind those wild glinting sparks.

Jeremy wanted to run right off, but he felt trapped by those mirrored glaring gazes.

Then they took a step toward him, moving in unison just like two cats from the same litter, and he shrunk back half a step from the corner of the dumpster, briefly losing sight of the approaching menacing presences. He couldn't quite believe they were mere men.

One of them stepped around the corner of the dumpster and aimed for Jeremy's chest. He felt his heart thudding there, rolled his eyes up to see the sky, and prepared to kiss the world goodbye. Nothing, however, happened just then. He counted to ten, then to fifteen, and still nothing. When finally he allowed himself to lower his gaze, still he saw only one twin, the passenger or the driver he could not tell, and in that moment the gun fired.

The shooter's aim had lowered, so it was only a gut shot.

Jeremy found himself simultaneously thanking and cursing God for that one.

"Let me live, when it's gonna hurt like this?" Jeremy begged of a being he wholeheartedly believed in but at this moment didn't very much like.

He was lying on the ground, his face against the pavement next to the dumpster, with no memory of losing his balance, falling through the air, or colliding with the ground.

The shooter was gone.

He could just see a bit of their car's back bumper around the edge of the dumpster, but that was no help. He fumbled in his pants pocket, trying not to put any pressure on his abdomen but still wincing and wheezing with the effort it took just to move at all.

Finally he managed to pluck out his cell phone, but the thing was dead. He thumbed the on button a number of times, but got no response from the device's screen. He knew he'd had the damned thing on its charger all night, so this didn't make any sense.

Overcome by a sudden rising wave of nausea, Jeremy dropped the phone and rolled over into the grass so his vomit would spew somewhere he wouldn't have to worry about cleaning it up later. Not that he'd be cleaning anything else up today, but still.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Still the urge to spew felt intense.

After an interminable span of moments, each which felt painfully new and yet also like only an excruciating copy of the last, his gorge subsided and he felt like he could sit up. He tried to do so, but his arms refused to do the pushing his brain was telling them to do.

He bit down on his tongue, hard, and felt his hands clench into tight balls.

"Yes," he hissed slowly, arms propelling him halfway to his feet before he slammed back down hard on the edge of the paving.

Moving carefully, becoming desperately aware of the blood dripping from him as he moved, Jeremy climbed to his full height, unsteady and wobbling like a drunkard.

"I'd give my right eye, my stinking excuse for a wife, and three of my grown sons for a stiff one on the rocks right about now," he said conversationally to the indifferent dumpster.

He leaned against it for a moment, making sure of his balance. Cautiously, he took his hand away from the hot dirty metal – it had been collecting the day's heat well – and took an experimental step forward. He didn't stumble, so he took another step. And another.

Soon, he was walking – more like shuffling, if he thought about it more honestly – along behind the motel, making for the far corner of the L-shaped building. He glanced at the windows he passed, but he knew none of their curtains would be open. No one cared for the back view.

Jeremy hadn't heard any gunfire – he marveled at that, thinking he must've been special to have gotten shot until he remembered the silencer he saw one of them fitting onto his gun – but now he heard the beginnings of many discordant, wailing screams.

Panic had come a-storming to the stop.

He stopped in mid-shuffling step to double over as best he could in his current condition and let out a few mad, painful barking chuckles.

"Panic at the stop," he wheezed, straightening his back. "Sounds like one of Rory's punky little bands he wishes he was good enough to play in. Ooh."

He moaned with the effort it took just to speak, yet regret none of it.

Even if no one was around to hear it, Jeremy Brookthorne would be damned if he wasn't going to speak his last words in as clear a voice as he could muster.

"Damned skippy," he affirmed in the closest thing to his normal tone and register as he would ever achieve again.

He stumbled around the corner of the motel, fought a wave of vertigo to stay on his feet, made it five or six steps without tripping over his own feet, and then thrust a hand out toward the brick wall to his right in an attempt to stay upright. His hand was a full foot away from the bricks, and he fell forward onto his face in the grass. He tasted dry grass and coughed up blood.

More screams. More wounded, or dead for all Jeremy knew.

"No more," he groaned, rising on unreliable, wobbly elbows and knees. His voice broke with the strain, but he rambled, "No. By God as my witness I will not let it go on so help me God please help me God I can't go on but I must go on so please God help me to stand."

Stand he did, and for a moment he looked as if nothing had happened to him, aside from getting some blood on his clothes from perhaps some rather large and improperly wrapped cuts of meat. Then, the hole in him ground its silent cry into him again, and he clutched at himself around the gut, careful not to apply too much pressure, just enough to feel like he was holding himself together. He almost felt as if he were holding his guts in his hands.

He walked forward, passing the backs of the truckers' restroom buildings on his left and the unwindowed brick back wall of this side of the motel on his right. There might have been people mulling or running or standing shocked or lying in heaps of broken bodies between the bathroom buildings, but he never would have noticed; all his attention lie ahead.

One of the twins had just stepped into view. The bastard leveled his firearm in the direction of someone around the corner of the second-to-last building on Jeremy's left, where he could not see, and there was no report, but Jeremy could see the shooter's arm move with the kickback of a bullet's release from its chamber.

A sound of choked gurgling, faint and almost mistakable for something heard over a radio station or off a television channel, came to Jeremy's ears.

His vision blurred, doubled, trebled, then resolved back into nearly ordinary focus. He couldn't be sure if he'd seen the other twin follow the one who'd just fired, or if one of the bastard's might still be waiting around the motel's corner on his right.

He struggled with what to do next.

Should he turn back and grab up his cell phone and try it again? Sure, he thought he'd tried to turn the thing on, but in his current state he couldn't be blamed for mistaking one of the volume buttons for the power button. It was feasible.

But if he could think to call 911, anyone carrying a mobile phone could do the same, and it was hardly likely that every single person staying in the motel, utilizing the stop's facilities to relieve themselves or simply to change, and enjoying a meal over at Jenny's diner had come to this place on this day without their phones. The thought was ludicrous.

And yet, shouldn't he hear sirens by now? He couldn't be sure how much, if any, time he'd lost since taking the bullet, but he knew time wasn't flowing quite so smoothly since he'd been shot. There'd been more than enough time for at least one man to have the wits about him to use his or his wife's cell phone to call the police, and at least one state trooper should have been close enough to respond to the call almost immediately.

It was a wonder if a trooper or cop wasn't already in the diner when the bodies started to fall.

Jeremy shambled onward, braving the unknown around the corners to either side. He lurched to the right, but found no one. Spinning around and nearly losing his balance but catching himself at the last moment before he would fall, he found the same the other way.

Whatever they were up to, these despicable twins were about it elsewhere.

"Praise Jesus," he wheezed, taking a step toward the restrooms.

Another step, and the world seemed to spin underneath him. Ignoring the sensation, he pressed on, soon passing between two of the buildings containing the public-use bathrooms, shower stalls, and changing areas.

His vision started playing tricks on him again then. Cars and trucks melded together into strange mangled metal shapes with paling swirls of colors that made Jeremy again want to vomit, but he wouldn't stop moving or let the feeling overpower him.

He thought he saw bodies everywhere he looked, but he wouldn't trust his eyes. He scanned the large parking lot with spaces for trucks of various sizes on Jeremy's side and two rows of spots for vehicles of more ordinary sizes across the way, scanned for one of two particular shapes, and found it near the far left corner of the lot.

One of the twins was standing, waiting, unmoving, unguarded, and uncarrying. Jeremy didn't care if the bastard's gun was on him or tossed away or still in his hand and Jeremy just couldn't see it due to his fucked-up vision thanks to the bullet wound fucking with his internal systems; he rushed as fast as he could on screaming legs toward the malevolent man.

He made it to the end of the parking lot, but had misjudged his direction and wound up in front of the access road, several feet or yards – he couldn't judge distance too accurately at the moment – from his target. His target, meanwhile, was aiming for his chest, gun in hand.

Jeremy shuddered and began to tip forward, began to fall, praying he would strike the ground and appear dead before the other man could fire, so the shooter would assume the earlier bullet had finally done its work and killed the maintenance man.

The shooter fired again.

Jeremy felt a hot pressure explode through him, but could not tell exactly where on his person the new bullet had struck.

He hit the ground but could not feel the impact.

This worried him to no end, but he felt almost no fear.

He was in God's hands now.

He moved his head as much as he could, and saw the dirty maroon car pull up. The twin who'd pulled it around, a goofy grin on his face, got out and ran over to the passenger side. It was then that Jeremy noticed something wrong with the guy's face, and also realized that they both looked shorter now than they had behind the motel. Was such a thing possible?

"No," Jeremy groaned as the other twin, the one who'd just shot him, crossed in front of the maroon car and walked over to him.

This one, serious and terrifying, his face refusing to reveal any emotion or human quality of any kind, looked very little like what Jeremy could remember of the features he'd spied around the corner of the dumpster. Yet he knew they were the same men.

"Tell yourself we're wearing masks," the twin said to him softly, as if responding to Jeremy's very thoughts.

Jeremy tried to say something else, he himself wasn't sure what, but only a choked cough came out.

"Now, a message for her," the shooter whispered, leaning in close to Jeremy's ear. "Follow alone."

With that, the man stood to his full height and before Jeremy's stupefied eyes seemed to grow even taller. His facial features swam a little on his face, and he looked as he did behind the motel again. Jeremy tried to tell himself he'd never looked any different, that his senses had simply deserted him or his brain was just having trouble making sense of what he saw.

The serious one joined his brother in the maroon car, shut the driver's side door – which made a sound shutting that to Jeremy's ears rang like finality – and they sped away.

Jeremy tried to make sense of his killer's last words to him.

A message for her? Could he have been talking about Jeremy's wife?

"Follow alone."

That didn't seem to fit. After all, Patrice wouldn't be doing any sort of following unless Jeremy went home and let her out of the attic, and that looked very unlikely under the current state of things.

He tried to roll over.

Pain wracked through his whole frame.

He rolled over anyway, just in time to see a bright green car pull into view around the corner from the highway access road.

The driver looked like she could be a woman.

Jeremy wanted to laugh at that thought; "she" looked like a woman.

That desire to release mirth was the last thing he felt as he slipped from the waking world into a momentary dream state in which his caged wife was waiting to torment him, and then further down into the impenetrable depths of death.

# THREE

I lock eyes with a man lying on the pavement just past the end of the access road, where it joins the parking lot. Dean only just put his hand on mine, and we only just came around this bend, but it feels like much more time than that's just passed for me.

Except it wasn't for me; it was for him. The man on the pavement.

The man who dies as I'm looking at him through my windshield as I'm slamming down on the breaks and skidding to a stop just inches from his still warm but very much dead body.

"Marsha!" Dean cries out, his arms now up in a defensive posture. "What the hell?"

"I..." I try, but can't think how to explain it to him.

What did I just experience?

One second, I'm driving and ready to face the aftermath of the traveling twins of the gun.

The next, I'm mentally reliving the last moments of the life of somebody named Jeremy Brookthorne, the man lying dead in front of my car.

It's got to be some kind of trick my mind's playing on me. Like when I imagined what happened to the Mortimer family in their living room. It was very vivid, I'll give ya that, but I think I've been pushed just far enough to begin having lucid daydream hallucinations, or whatever you want to call 'em. Except this was too vivid to be that, wasn't it?

What about the bit at the end, when he was thinking about his caged wife?

Why would I make up something like that? I'm not a writer. I'm not that creative, and it's not like I need to make the lives of these victims more colorful for entertainment value.

So, Patrice Brookthorne, does this mean you're on my to-do list now?

I rattle my head and bite my lower lip and face-palm, all to Dean's disgust.

"Marsha," he hisses, "we don't have time for this. Have your breakdown later. Shouldn't we be checking on this guy you almost pancaked?"

"He's already dead. Didn't you see the blood on him, Dean? The twins shot him."

"Oh."

He lowers his hands to his lap and stares forward, and I glare into my steering wheel.

I try to think how to say it to Dean.

I think I just had a psychic experience wherein I saw everything that happened to that man lying dead on the ground there, Dean, everything from the moment he saw the twins pull up behind the motel here to the moment one of them shot him, again. Sure, you'll believe me.

Actually, knowing Dean, he might very well fucking want to, and I don't think I need that right now.

"Shit," I sigh, waving off a questioning look from my friend in the passenger seat.

For the sake of my sanity, I need to just convince myself this was nothing more than one more step toward snapped, mentally speaking.

Not that that makes any real sense, mind you, but then you already know I'm pretty cracked. Have been all of the day. After all, you're me. I'm you. I'm talking to myself. Well, thinking to myself, anyway. Is that the same thing as talking to myself?

Out of nowhere, Dean punches the glove box in front of him and it flies open, napkins and receipts and various little stuffed-in bits of trash falling out around his legs.

"Okay, okay," I spit out, putting the car into reverse to back up a bit before pulling around the body of Jeremy Brookthorne.

I park in a space on the left, not far enough away from the first body we've seen here, but far enough away from the rest of the rest stop to feel removed from it enough that we don't have to get out, just yet.

I don't try to kid myself that I don't know the dead man's name.

Whatever caused it, I saw what I saw.

How doesn't matter just now.

One thing does, though. They left a message for me with the motel maintenance man. They didn't mention me by name or even by the nickname they left for me in blood on Beaver's Bend, but it was clearly for me all the same, which means they somehow knew how I would receive it. They knew I'd hear it in a vision, or whatever, and they knew I'd understand.

They don't want Dean going with me when I leave this place.

They want me following them alone.

# FOUR

Indecision isn't typically my thing.

Boy, I tell ya, I've really let these fuckers mess with my head.

"Come on," I say to Dean, throwing my door open and stepping out.

I can't tell Dean why now, but I have to see the motel first. We both see gunshot victims from one end of this large lot to the other – between cars and trucks, in front of the bathrooms, in empty spaces, and in front of the diner at the far end of the left side from where I parked – but no fatalities lie in sight other than Brookthorne. These are all distractions, nothing worse than a winged arm here or a shot calf there; nothing permanently debilitating, because none of them are the point of this attack. They're just filler victims.

I run down to the third building of rest– and changing rooms, Dean close at my heel, and turn to go between the third and last of these dull gray concrete buildings, unimaginative as most if not all rest stop structures must be. At my feet lies a body.

Dean doesn't see her and nearly trips over the corpse, but I grab him by the shoulder and hold him back, keeping him on his feet.

"God damn," he hisses, sounding gayer than usual, but who can blame him.

"Yeah," I say calmly, stepping carefully to the left of her and sparing the body not a second glance.

She was young. She wore a silver engagement band on her finger. She was dressed for colder weather than we've been having, so I take it one of the semi-trucks parked here was hers to drive. She had her hair tied into pink-and-green dye-striped pigtails, and I want to cut the scrunchies out of her hair before her body can be photographed and carted away.

I leave it, though. I didn't even know her, so maybe she wouldn't be embarrassed to be caught dead with her hair done up like that.

When I look back over my shoulder at Dean, he's leaning down, reaching for her hair.

"Dude, don't."

He raises his eyes to me, stands erect, shakes his head and steps around to the body's right.

We pass the spot where one of the twins stood when Jeremy saw him take the shot that killed the young woman lying now behind us. I keep walking, hoping Dean didn't catch the shiver that ran through me just now, and I wonder how Jeremy didn't see this corpse.

We round the corner of the motel, and right away my eye's drawn to the second room from this end. The door stands open, and for a moment my head swims.

I see the twins standing like traveling salesmen or Jehovah's witnesses at the door, one of them knocking politely. I see a plump, balding man answer, shocked at the sight of these men and their guns, but unable to slam his door shut quick enough to keep them out.

Passing his open room without moving toward it, I see a fat leg sticking out past the end of the bed.

"Mars."

"We keep moving."

"Whatever you say, hon."

The motel folds to the left, and we follow the sidewalk around this bend, crossing a number of shut doors. A few of the curtains are held back by skittish fingers, revealing terrified eyes on faces that disappear from view the moment we come into their view. There is another open door on the right just ahead, and the passenger side door is open on the car parked in front of it. Another young woman has fallen dead over the open car door.

"What's the damn point of all this for them?" Dean wonders aloud.

I'm not sure if he's addressing me or not. As we walk between the open car and the open room, I'm not sure I care who he's talking to anymore. I see something inside the car that catches my attention and I stop like I've run into a soft-padded but still impassable wall.

A paper grocery bag stands stuffed in the passenger seat of the dead girl's car. Sticking out at the top, a pregnancy test kit.

The date swims back up through the layers of my consciousness, screaming to remind me what it could mean that I'm experiencing the first late period of my adult life.

Dean says something, but I'm not listening.

I take a step off the sidewalk, a step toward the dead woman, a step toward that test kit.

"Oh thank God," somebody says from ahead, near the end of the motel. From the corner of my eye, I see what looks like the motel's maid coming toward Dean, and she says again, "Thank God!"

"I'm Dean," he offers stupidly, as if introductions are really necessary at a time like this.

I'm inching around the open car door, careful not to accidentally touch the young woman who was wearing nothing but a towel when she came out to get that test strip. Luckily for her, the towel's remained exactly where she folded it around herself, even after the bullet passed through it and into her pliant flesh.

"Roberta Bigglesby," the maid answers him, and her voice is so much sickening saccharine sweetness, even warbling as it is with distress. "I work here at the Stay-In. I can't believe it. I thought I was the last one. Well, besides anyone who didn't open their room door, but then they aren't any damn use, are they? Oh my, I'm sorry! I don't normally swear."

"It's all right, hon. What happened here? What did you see?"

I'm reaching into the car, hand shaking a little bit.

"They came out of nowhere. One minute, me and Jackson – he's the manager here, best boss I ever had, too, I can't believe he's dead – yeah, me and Jackson are just sitting in the office having a good old time talking about what trash we've seen come and go from this place, and then there's a knock at the check-in door. We thought it was strange anyone would bother knocking, you know, because why would anyone think it was locked?"

I look over, and Dean's nodding, one hand gripping her shoulder reassuringly.

My hand is grasping the pregnancy test box, but I can't quite get it out of the paper bag. Nothing holds it there; my hand just doesn't want to obey my command to rise.

"When he opened the door, I was behind the desk but I saw it happen. They shot him, but by God, Jackson Flox would not go down! That man's never struck me as the fighting type, so you can imagine how surprised I was. Not unpleasantly, though. I always thought he could have been more handsome if he just cleaned himself up a little more, but seeing him fight back like that... but oh, would you listen to me! Ridiculous to entertain such thoughts after the man's dead, isn't it?"

Dean nods, and I can just imagine the look on his face trying to appear sympathetic but unable to hide a minute trace of annoyance with this chick.

"He fought back like I've never seen any man fight back. He looked like an animal, even snarled, or something that didn't sound like a sound any human could make. They shot him two times, three, the fourth missed and I nearly got hit, but by then I was ducked behind the desk. I was still peaking over the top, though. But Jackson was fighting like an animal to get the gun from one of them. He couldn't, though. And then he didn't look like Jackson, just for a moment, just before the one he wasn't on shot him through the face. He looked... different. I can't really describe it any way other than to say he looked like... like a monster. Inhuman."

Dean gives her another trying-to-sympathize-with-a-fool nod.

I'm holding the test box to my chest when she says this last, but I drop it to the ground, my hands relaxing as a wave of stupefaction washes over me.

Another witness describing a victim of the twins as having become a monster.

Bernadette's account made it sound like she'd come to see her husband as something of a monster long before Peter and Philip ever happened upon her door.

Here, Roberta Bigglesby is claiming their arrival was the catalyst for the transformation she saw in her boss, however brief.

Could there be something bigger going on here than a mere murder spree?

"Have you tried calling the cops?"

"Well, duh! My cell's dead, though. I tried Jackson's, but it's the same thing. I know it seems mad, but I think the shooters did something to the cell service before they got here. I mean, if my phone and Jackson's phones are out – and I'll have you know I charge my cell phone so often it never runs out of juice, thank you very much – and no one else in this whole place has called the cops yet? The cops would be here by now if anyone'd bothered to call them! So yeah, I couldn't decide if everyone else is dead here, or if the cells are just out."

"Have you tried the landline?"

Roberta's jaw drops open, and without a word she turns and runs back down to the motel's check-in office.

Dean turns to give me a look of relief that he doesn't have to deal with that nitwit one moment longer, and then he gasps when he sees where I'm standing.

"What?" I say, grabbing up the pregnancy test box and walking back over to the sidewalk, this time not caring when I graze the car door and cause the towel-clad dead woman to shift a bit on it.

"Marsha, seriously? Stealing from a dead woman?"

"Hey, the box was bought for a reason. It might as well fulfill its purpose."

With that, and before Roberta Bigglesby can return to yammer on at either of us, I tug Dean along behind me and rush-walk back the way we came.

I feel desperate to take this test, as if everything rides on its results.

Not like it wouldn't normally, any other day of my life, but this day it seems different.

This day, I feel different, and not just because I've been dragged into the twins' wake.

If I'm pregnant, at least that's a change I can understand.

# FIVE

Dean's life was always a simpler proposition before a Marsha Bradley came into it. He'd lived through several permutations of his existence, and to date in his personal looping timeline, none of them had gone on much further than his mid-to-late twenties, but in all of them, if Marsha Bradley became his friend, things became more interesting by far.

And she signaled a quickening of his oncoming death day.

Not that he ever much minded. With Ms. Bradley at his side, his death days always came on with more of a sense of fun than tragedy or terror or simple futile waste.

He acknowledged to himself and the one shrink he'd briefly trusted in his late teens that perhaps his inconstant state of déjà vu and seeming ability to predict certain sporting event outcomes and other such usually unpredictable things might simply be signs of some deep psychosis, or an inner genius trying to shine out, but he rather more liked the idea that he was caught on an epic quest to search out his own perfect life. Doomed in whatever might have been his own original timeline – he'd lived through so many of them now, if he weren't merely mad, that it was nearly impossible to recall which of them was the first – he was now doomed in another way; never to remain fixed in that state of peace that full and final death bespoke.

Or perhaps he'd earned this as a form of hell. Not that it was a hell he minded, especially since he had a very interesting Marsha Bradley to call his friend here.

However, this timeline had brought him into contact with many things he was not accustomed to.

Firstly and most personally important was a series of seemingly random contacts that over the years evolved into artistic partnerships that produced a comics writing career he'd only dreamt of across several dozen lifetime cycles, but never dreamt would come to anything in actuality. Here, finally, his dreams were become reality, and that alone was already boggling.

Now, this with Marsha, the Handsome Stranger whom caught her eye, and the twins whose potential targeting of said Stranger inspired her to begin this, her own little quest.

It was all very exciting, and seemed to finally explain to Dean why in this lifetime, for a time, he and Marsha had grown something very akin to distant. There'd been no disdain or intention for it on either of their parts; it simply seemed to come about of its own volition, this strange distance, and now it had been undone in a single day by fate.

Or design, but whose? Dean wondered about that.

Was this to be, finally, the death day he'd believed might never come in this, what he had come to hope and then to believe and then quietly to know was his final timeline?

Following close behind her, Dean wondered if Marsha had any idea how many times and in how many different ways she had come into his life. Was she silently going through the same fate? He'd never considered it before, somehow, but today made her a very likely candidate if anyone in his life on any version of the earth could be.

Perhaps she was who he was meant to find.

Not a love, nor lover.

Not a fulfillment of personal ambition.

Not an event to be avoided or initiated.

Simply her.

"No," he said involuntarily, and stopped.

Marsha had been dragging him on by the hand, but her momentum carried her on two steps before she realized she'd lost grasp of him. She turned, eyes querulous at the delay.

Raking a hand through his hair, he grinned brightly and sighed, "Nevermind. Onward!"

"Damn right, onward," she huffed, and Dean had to stifle a laugh as she took his hand and rushed him on to the bathrooms.

The smile on his face died when they had to again step around the victim lying between the gray buildings.

At the sidewalk edging the stop's large main parking lot, Marsha stood caught between her latest impulse and the job of following through with her earlier one. She could either go into one of the bathroom stalls and use the test strip, or stuff it away for a more appropriate time and walk across the lot to the diner, where it seemed the patrons were already engaging in talks to try to decide what to do next to deal with the aftermath of the gunfire.

Marsha barely spared the diner a second glance before she tugged Dean over toward the last of the four concrete block buildings. She threw open the door and disappeared into a stall without even checking to see if anyone else was in the place.

The door led into a short hall that split on the left into the main bathroom facilities and on the right to the shower stalls and changing rooms. Satisfying himself that no one was on the right side of the structure, Dean returned to the left and his breath caught in his throat when he saw the long mirror over the grubby counter and soap-scummy sinks.

A message had been written there in large block letters, a message that would have chilled Marsha instantly and made her forget the box in her hand had she taken the time to see it before rushing to the nearest toilet.

For a few moments, it only baffled Dean. He puzzled over it, studied it closely to try to determine if it was actually blood as it appeared to be, and then something in his head clicked.

"Window woman," he gasped, eyes wide, backing up against a stall door.

"What, Dean?" Marsha called out of the stall in a rushed squawk, making the two words sound like one.

"No... nothing, Mars," Dean replied weakly, but he knew she wouldn't buy that.

Could he get rid of it before she came out of the stall?

Did he even have a right to?

"Wait," she said in her I'm-not-angry-but-I-might-strangle-you-anyway voice. "You said window woman. Why the hell did you just say that, Dean! What's out there!"

"Nothing, Marsha!" Dean answered in too high a pitch, realizing he had been trying to avoid hearing the sound of her urinating over the strip, but now he heard nothing but silence and wished desperately to hear that flowing gush begin again so he could have time to think before she was done and out of the stall and, too late, he saw her open the stall door and step out.

Her eyes darted back and forth between the test strip in her hand and the message on the mirror. Her head was shaking, and he couldn't tell which one of the two things was distressing her more.

"How long?" He tried dumbly to distract her from the mirror, grabbing her shoulders and turning her to face him as he nearly shouted, "How long till you know the results?"

"God, Dean, let fucking go of me."

He didn't like the sound of her voice then, and he released her before she could pull away. Her eyes were down, and all the strength he usually associated with her had drained out of her voice. Slowly, delicately, she turned to inspect those words on the mirror. Setting the test strip down on the counter, she reached up to trace the letters of the last word.

"Window woman, already told you," Dean spoke the message aloud, stepping up behind Marsha and placing his hands carefully on her shoulders. "Follow alone. That's what they want, Mars, you know that, right? It doesn't mean you have to give it to them. You don't have to."

"Don't I?"

"No."

"But they have that kid."

"And since when are you a superhero?"

"Never said I was anything that camp."

"Then why are you acting like the weight of the world is on your shoulders? I get why you haven't called the cops up to this point, but this is getting too big, Marsha. Way too big, and you need to accept that you can't handle it on your own. You need help."

"I've got you. And Gabriel."

"Yes, and look what it's gotten you so far. You think I like saying this? I actually can't believe I'm saying it at all. You know me! This is the shit I've always wanted to live for, but I got too busy playing around in make-believe worlds to think the real world, our world, would be half as exciting. Or half as terrifying. Right now, you know what I see? Nothing exciting here."

"Dean, shut up."

"And why should I do that?"

"Because."

"Try harder than that, please."

"Please, Dean," she let out in a choked whisper, and only then did he see the edge of tears around her eyes. "Let me think for a minute, okay?"

"I'm just saying," he said in a hushed tone, raising his hands from her shoulders with an expression showing he was relenting, for the moment and the moment only, but he was not caving to anyone just yet.

She reached to touch the glass again.

Her hand wavered in mid-reach, and her eyes darted toward the test strip.

"Damn."

"Not yet?"

"Still."

He wasn't sure what she meant by that, but suddenly he didn't like how her hand was shaking as she held it mere millimeters from the reflecting glass.

"Marsha, leave it alone."

"Leave what alone?"

"Just... don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't touch the mirror again."

"Dean Billet, you aren't making a lick of sense right now, boy."

"Then turn around and slap some sense into me. Just don't do it."

"What is there to do? It's just a mirror, silly homosexual man."

With that, she touched the glass, and a window opened there.

Look away, a voice spoke softly into Dean's mind, familiar and yet distinctly not the sound of his own thinking. This is not for you, and she can never know you were aware of it.

Before he heeded the words, though, he caught a glimpse of what the mirror now showed instead of the reflection it should have shown. It was a window, all right, through space and Dean had an idea through time as well, for the woman standing on the other side was much, much older, but still very much obviously Marsha Bradley.

The older Ms. Bradley – Dean had an impression this woman had never been married or if she had, had never taken a man's last name – stood as a perfect reflection of her younger self in posture, attire, even in the hair, but her face showed her age, and her background was a shifting, burning pool of vague scenes to light the mind ablaze and terrify the soul.

"What's happening?" Present-Marsha put to the mirror, and Dean knew in a glaring flash that he was not hallucinating; Marsha was really looking into her future.

Connected with, maybe, came that voice again, but not looking directly. Can't have that.

"No spoilers," Dean whispered, either so low that Marsha couldn't hear, or she was just too wrapped up in the wonder and mystery of what she was seeing to pay attention to him.

"You're at the beginning," Future-Marsha said, eyes knowing and sad.

"The beginning of what?"

"Of everything we really are. Of everything we become, had to become, must become."

"I don't get you."

"You will."

"What if I don't want to?"

"It's a little late for that kind of choice. Never really had a choice in it, as a matter of fucking fact."

"So you're me."

"I'm you."

"And someday, I'll be you."

"Sure."

"And why this? Why did you open this window?"

"Because I always did. Because you accidentally initiated cross-temporal contact when you first touched the mirror. I've carried a piece of it with me for so long now, but it wasn't... right yet. Wasn't at the right point yet. Now it's there, and here we are. I've had it encased so I couldn't accidentally touch it and muck the timeline up. But when I felt your presence, lightly, I knew it was time to take it out. Then, our simultaneous touch from opposite ends of the timeline opened the window. We did it together."

"I still don't understand. How the fuck is this possible?"

"Knowledge, or information if you rather, and awareness come easy. Understanding it all is the real work of it, and it will be work."

"What are you even talking about! I'm seeing into the future, my future, and all I can do is ramble on at myself? What's to stop me thinking this is all just another hallucination?"

"Another?" Dean coughed, unnoticed by Present-Marsha.

Shushaby, Future-Marsha crooned in his head, and Dean put a hand over his mouth to keep from yelping in shock at the slow realization of to whom that voice-in-his-head belonged.

"You know better than that. Lying to yourself about what you've experienced doesn't change anything. Believe me," Future-Marsha sighed, then paused, breaking from her perfect mirroring of Present-Marsha's posture and shattering the unsettling effect that stance had had, making the mirror truly seem like more of a window now. Crossing her arms and raising one hand to her mouth, she carefully went on, "Now, don't rush me. These are your last words. It's hard enough to remember it clear enough now that I remember it all at all... hard enough to remember it clear enough to get it right. Oh, but yeah, I don't have to remember it anymore. Ha."

Dean worried about the state of Future-Marsha's sanity, and had to wonder how far along that road Present-Marsha already was.

Like he was anyone to judge, though.

"Last words?" Present-Marsha zeroed in on, now crossing her arms and raising a hand to her mouth. "So the last face I have to look forward to before I die, is my own? That's hella depressing."

"There's something important you need to keep in mind. Even though you won't specifically remember this exchange. Sorry, you won't. Can't be helped."

"You're going to make me forget? Why?"

"Something makes us forget. I'm trying to decide what it must've been. I've almost got it."

"And this important message you have to bequeath?"

"Do you know what psychometry is yet?"

"I've read The Witching Hour, so yeah."

"Okay. It's all just becoming very unclear at this point. I'm starting to feel... stretched."

"Just get on with it, Future-Me."

"All right, then, you impatient bitch. Psychometry is the most reliable of the psychic forms. An object is the only true and utterly objective witness."

"No irony there," Present-Marsha says, rolling her eyes.

Ignoring her younger self, Future-Marsha continues, "It cannot be swayed. Its memory does not degrade naturally, and cannot be altered, for it has no chemically-based or organically-bound mind to muck about with. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah, I guess I do. Trust things over people, is that the general gist?"

"Sadly, I suppose it is. Now, Dean."

"What?" Dean coughed, having forgotten for a moment that Future-Marsha was even aware of him being there.

Present-Marsha slowly turned to look at him, then turned back to the mirror-become-window.

Knock me out. Well, her, but you know what I mean. Don't argue, either. Just do it.

With nary a thought as to why he should listen to the instruction of what was clearly somehow a shared delusion between himself and his friend Ms. Bradley, Dean listened to said instruction, grabbed Present-Marsha by the hair, and slammed her head against a stall door before she could register what was going on. Letting her go, he watched with disgust as she slid to the floor and flopped over on her side, eyes glazed over with unconsciousness.

Future-Marsha shuddered with remembered pain.

Dean looked over to the mirror that should clearly be a mirror again, but was not.

"Even if I believed your little spiel about psychic touch mirrored through time opening a window across time, wouldn't it make sense that it'd close once this Marsha's out cold?"

"Should have done, yes," Future-Marsha said, only a touch uncertainly.

"Then why am I seeing you? Hearing you? And why are you talking to me?"

"Because I can. I miss you, Dean Billet. You can have no idea how much, but I do."

"So I'm dead."

"Not necessarily."

"Ah."

"You said it yourself just a moment ago, Dean. No spoilers."

"So what message do you have to give me?"

"None I'm aware of. Just indulge an old friend on her dying day, would you, my Dean?"

Her words chilled him.

Her dying day.

If she knew about his, could she be coerced to tell him about it?

Might this be the way to prevent it?

"I thought..." Future-Marsha began, suddenly looking away, her profile etched in regret for things Dean somehow knew were beyond her control, yet she could never stop feeling responsible for. Understanding that feeling all too well, he let her go on without interruption, "I thought when I could actively access the first dream that it meant I was meant to change it, stop it from happening to our world like it happened to theirs."

Another shiver shrieked up his spine.

"We're so small, Dean. All of us. Even you. And this thing, it's vast and sweeping and stretched almost randomly across forever. It's just way too fucking big."

In the blazing swirls of Future-Marsha's intentionally too-vague-to-make-anything-out background, darkness began to creep in at the edges. First it was a slow darkening of the shifting shades already there, and then it became an all-consuming utter blackness, hungry to devour every other shade and shape in sight. Future-Marsha seemed unaware of it.

Dean wanted to warn her about it

He wanted to reach out and pull her through the window, though he knew he was only seeing a representation of her, thus her salvation was impossible for him to achieve.

The falling darkness swallowed Future-Marsha like a guillotine blade slicing down or a dark curtain slamming shut on the closing scene of a play, and then it was just a mirror again.

Dean looked at the pregnancy test strip on the counter, but not closely enough to tell what it's result was. He looked over at Marsha sprawled across the floor, where she could have fallen after being knocked out by him as he remembered, or she just as easily could have fainted in a panic over what the pregnancy test would say.

Not that panic was really her thing, but this entire day had thrown her for several loops, and she could hardly be expected to behave strictly according to her norm.

Dean leaned back against the counter below the mirror that was nothing more than a mirror and which he was already beginning to convince himself had never been anything other than a mere mirror, for to believe anything else was simply mad.

Just like believing this was only the latest in a long line of his own lives that he had lived through was a maddeningly insane notion.

As insane as believing in monsters under the bed or ghosts in the closet.

And Dean Billet was nothing if not sane.

So he hoped, and so he pressed himself to hold onto.

What Marsha – Present-Marsha, or perhaps the only Marsha he had seen in this bathroom at all – remembered when she regained consciousness would be the real tell.

Dean couldn't decide which possibility he wanted more to be true.

"Come on, Mars, wake up. Wake up so I don't have to decide for myself."

Unfortunately for Dean's peace of mind, Marsha was going to be slow to wake. Not terribly slow, but slow enough to eat away at his nerves, make him wish he hadn't quit carrying a flask, make him wish he'd taken up smoking in this lifetime, make him wish senselessly that Marsha's mysterious twins would return and put him out of his misery before she woke.

No such luck, Dean heard, Future-Marsha's voice frail and sounding like a breeze coming from the far end of a long tunnel, and then he felt the window close completely.

"Godspeed, Ms. Bradley-Yet-to-Be. Godspeed."

# SIX

Alarmed to find myself on the floor, I sit up so fast my neck hurts. I look around, and calm down a bit when I find Dean sitting on the counter between two of the hand-washing sinks. He gives me a strange smile, a nod, and then hops down and walks over, offering a hand to help me get up. I wave his hand off and stand up without any help.

Raising my eyes, I see the message is still on the mirror, and I didn't just imagine it there. I suppose the shock of seeing it, coupled with the stress put upon my nerves by the test strip – the very fact that I'd even need to consider using one could've been enough – made me faint, but I don't remember fainting. I guess nobody ever really does.

"You all right, Ms. Bradley?"

"Why yes I'm not, Ms. Billet."

"I peaked."

"See anything you like?"

"Not on you, so I checked out this fine looking little test strip. I didn't get too close to it, though. Girl pee isn't really my thing."

"But guy pee is?"

"That's an entirely different conversation, and I'll thank you very much for never bringing it up again. I think you'll like what you see."

"No," I gasp, eyes wide with hope and lips parting involuntarily upward at the corners.

Then I realize if it's negative, there goes my easy explanation for some of the things I've been experiencing during this not-so-little trek outside my comfort zones.

"No is right," Dean says, clapping me on the shoulder.

I walk over to where the strip lies on the counter, and sure enough, it tells me that no, I haven't been anything so simple as knocked up. So what the fuck is happening to me?

"Mars, shouldn't this be good news? Such good news that it raises your spirits and gives you renewed vigor in your hunt for the red blood of these August killers?"

"I wish it was, and I wish it did, but to tell you the truth, I was almost beginning to hope for some loser's baby. That might be better than the alternative."

I can see out of the corner of my eye that he wants to press me for an explanation, but something holds him back from it. For once, I'm glad he doesn't want the full scoop, and I don't really care what his reason is for respecting my choice not to elucidate.

Then, we both hear footsteps outside.

Thinking the same thing, Dean and I both grab wads of paper towels out of the wall-mounted dispensers over the trash cans, hold them under streams of water, and quickly scrub at the message that only looked like blood, but now seems to have been written in ketchup.

Seriously, Peter and Phillip? Ketchup?

How many packets did you get when you came through Our Mindy's?

The sound of footsteps stops, and we hear the unmistakable sound of chatter over a police band portable radio. Looking at each other and then back to the rushed mirror-cleaning job, we silently decide the best thing to do, and rush out of the building.

"Oh, thank God!" Dean greets the mildly surprised officer in his best nelly pitch. "I thought we'd never be able to come out!"

"Officer, have you caught the fuckers?" I pose to the young guy, obviously fresh out of the academy, swallowing my distaste in his choice of profession.

"Ma'am, sir, please calm down and if you wouldn't mind, we want everyone who is able to gather over in the diner."

"You didn't answer my question," I fume, really getting angry.

"Ma'am, if you and your ga... you and your enthusiastic friend here would just move on into the diner, I promise you both, you'll be safe, and all your questions will be dealt with in due time."

Rolling my eyes, I brush past him and start across the parking lot.

Dean makes time for one remark before he joins me.

"I know what you were going to call me, officer, and I don't mind. You can come get my number later if you want. I swear I won't embarrass you in front of all your hetero buddies."

"I, I'm, I'm not..."

Not sticking around to give the cop a chance to defend his sexuality, Dean comes up beside me, a little grin brightening his face as the day draws ever closer to twilight.

The clouds are starting to grow darker in the deep distance under the sky, and I worry that every minute we waste stuck here will be the minute we lose their trail.

Then I remember that G. W. can find them anywhere they go, and my nerves and muscles relax a bit.

Perhaps, though, I shouldn't allow myself the luxury of going along with what the cop tells me to do just so he doesn't become suspicious of what I'm really doing here. Not that I'm doing anything illicit or particularly gravely illegal – so I tell myself and you and anyone who watches the Lifetime version of my story starring some no-name blonde bimbo with a bad red dye-job – but I still don't want to waste time trying to explain how I'm not connected with the shooters, I'm just following their trail of bodies like bread crumbs through the forest.

Yeah, I'm sure that'll go over real well.

"So, any plan for how we're getting out of here?"

"Out of here?" I repeat, turning a mocking eye on my friend Dean. "Now why in the world would I want us to do that? Don't you just want to stay here, forever!"

He slaps me on the arm and covers a laugh with his hand.

The scene is too somber to let anyone see either of us expressing too much mirth.

We step up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the lot, and approach the diner. A waitress is standing to the side of the entrance, puffing away obnoxiously on a cigarette. To my surprise, Dean bums a smoke off the mid-thirties, freckled woman. I want to say I've only seen him smoke when he's been smashed drinking, but I'm not sure he's even smoked then.

"Dean?" I whisper as she lights his cigarette.

"I'll be all right," he hushes me quietly before turning a thankful smile on the waitress.

"Did you all see the creeps? I hears there was two of 'em, but I's only seen the one that walked across the lot here. He didn't see me 'cause I was just coming out of the bathroom over there when he walked out from between 'em, those ugly gray shoeboxes. I had to use those 'cause our bathroom over here's been out a order for a month. Can you believe it?"

We nod, Dean smoking, and I almost consider asking for one myself.

"Yeah, no word on when's they's gonna decide to fix that, and I'll be damned if hell won't freeze over before it's done. But anyway, I seen this guy walking out onto the parking lot with a gun, and he doesn't see me, but I see him. He's standing between those two big semis over there, where I guess he figures no one can see him, but I still could. He got shorter, like he took off some big old 1970's style boots or something, but I didn't see him wearing any big boots to begin with. And then something happened to his face. It changed. I mean, yeah, I could only see his side, his, what do you call it? Yeah, his profile. But still, you can tell when a man's face ain't what it was but a moment ago, right? Well, his face changed, like he weren't human."

I can tell she wants to go on, but another waitress – this one favoring an arm that looks like it was grazed by a bullet, but she's barely bleeding – knocks on one of the windows from inside to get this one's attention.

"Sorry, but I better be getting back inside. Wasn't supposed to step out, but after all this, I needed me a good smoke. Right?"

Dean nods. I say nothing and stare evenly right through this bitch.

I can't say why I don't like her.

"Anyway... I don't want to be here, though. I know they want us to stay, but they haven't taken out the bodies yet. Poor little Jezzie Marlene and the cook got shot right through their faces. Madness, I tell ya, the world's coming to madness and no good end in sight."

With that, thankfully, she slips into the diner.

Dean takes another drag off the cigarette she gave him.

"Okay, mind's changed. I can't walk in there, Dean. I'll never get out of here soon enough if I step one foot inside this diner. We've got to get out of here somehow."

Finishing the cigarette and crushing it out calmly under his foot, Dean shakes his head.

"Not we. Just you, Ms. Bradley."

"What're you talking about? I'm not leaving you here now! You just joined me."

"If memory serves, you weren't looking for a hunting partner when you came to my house. You were looking for a change of clothes."

"And to check up on you. They did kill a man just a few houses down from your place. I had to make sure you weren't dead or anything."

"Yeah, well, the 'or anything' isn't really something you can control. If I come with you, though, we might both end up dead. Somehow I think you'll take better care of yourself if you don't have to worry about my sorry ass tagging along behind you."

"Dean, don't do this. Don't make me go on on my own."

"You set out to do this, Marsha, and you didn't need anyone's help to decide that. You can't expect me to tag along with you just because you're scared."

My jaw drops open and I want to punch him in the face.

Somehow I feel he has it coming.

Before I can do anything, though, Dean's running across the parking lot, waving his arms to get the cop's attention. He's drawing the cop over to meet him between the semi-trucks where the hillbilly waitress claimed one of the twins magically shape-changed his face.

I bet he put on a mask and she just missed it.

The height thing, now... that reminds me of what I saw through Jeremy Brookthorne's eyes, or from his memory, or from something. He thought the twins' appearance changed, too.

Of course, that was all in my head. Had to be. Right?

My time is now, I realize with a start. Dean has the young cop distracted where the pig can't see my car, and the other cop – an older, seasoned veteran of the force – is inside still dealing with a few panicky patrons of the diner.

If I don't move now, more cops will show up, and one of them will think to barricade the ways in and out of this place.

My feet start moving, carrying me closer and closer to my beautiful green escape.

I hear someone shout after me.

I keep moving.

I hear an older voice coming around the door of the diner, and before I can make out if the old cop's trying to get his partner's attention or mine, I break out in a full run. I reach the car, skid around the front bumper, nearly fall but catch myself at the last instant, and rush to get in. I fasten my belt before I think to look for my keys. Luckily, I never took them out of the ignition and no thieves happened by to see if they were there.

I don't look back to see if Dean is looking after me or not. I can imagine both or at least one of the cops are running to try to stop me, but I'm not giving them the chance.

I'm back on the highway in the blink of an eye – very much unlike how I felt when I quit it for the stop not that long ago – and the loneliness hits me like a shove into a witch's oven in a fairy tale. My body doesn't expect it, hell my mind didn't really have time to cope with Dean's choice either, but I still feel like a fool for letting it get to me like this.

He's right. I started this on my own.

I can't expect anyone to ride along with me now.

# 7. NEAR-MISSES

The massive human inability to grasp

what should be obvious

and continue to bicker in the face of odds

that should inspire cooperation instead of dissention,

it makes her wish this was a quality

she could classify as alien and not have to return

to the fact of in her own world upon waking. Should

she wake. If she ever wakes again.

She spins again to face that oncoming non-storm,

wondering quickly and briefly

if it spells her own dissolution

as unavoidably as it does for this earth.

She gasps to see that it is several galactic clusters

nearer to her position. She turns instinctively

back to face the earth, even

if it is not her own. If it should be the last thing

she should ever see, she will choose it

over the more alien, dying universe

outside it.

– from a dream

# ONE

From the tone of his voice, I can tell two things are going on in Gabriel Whiteacre's head: first, he's letting himself become more and more directly distracted by whatever games he's always playing all the time, through everything; second, that he's only letting that happen because it's the only way he can play along with what I'm asking him to do.

Namely, involve himself in a vigilante trail and search operation.

At first, he may have been fully thrilled to be doing something so utterly under the radar and beyond the norm for life as any of us have known it. But as the day has worn on into evening and night's grown closer and closer, the reality of the situation has sunk in.

As much of it as he'll let himself face, anyway.

And I'm damn thankful he's able to split his distractions so effectively into direct (his games) and indirect (following the twins via Doodle's prototype Live Maps service)

I drop the phone, call just ended, destination set in mind.

I try to shake the feeling that I could see the exact expression on Gabe's face, and every minute shift in it as he spoke each word carefully crafted to simultaneously convey all relevant information while insinuating that the pursuit of said info was wasting his precious gaming time.

Then, I'm struck by a little touch of wonder at a similarity I've never really thought about between these two very different men who've helped me along this journey so far.

Their lives are nearly consumed by a hobby that from the outside looks very much like an addiction, and yet it is the quality in their personalities that lends to those hobbies that made them both able and willing to assist me in just the ways I've needed.

With Dean, his interest in comic books and their mythologies stems from a desire to experience the fantastic in a mundane universe, and I gave him opportunity – however brief – to fulfill that desire in a more practical way. True, he's not privy to the truly fantastic part of what I'm going through today, but he got close enough for my comfort.

With G. W., I've given him just another game in which to play a part. I've made myself an avatar he can feel he is moving across a game world board, and in a very real way, I sort of am. His guidance leads me ever onward toward the twins, but my slow progression through each crime scene must be frustrating Gabe, who is probably anticipating the (hopefully) inevitable confrontation between myself and the twins much more than I am.

And yet, I kind of am looking forward to it.

I imagine I'll catch up to them when they finally happen upon someone equipped to fight back. I don't imagine they'll actually be so unprepared as to walk in on someone loaded down with guns, but you never know, they might get surprised another way.

Maybe some kid like out of that zany early 90's movie about the boy whose parents forgot him when they flew away for Christmas vacation. Some kid just waiting to play mean tricks on any intruder, but with a far more sadistic sense of humor. Instead of paint buckets, it'll be large glass dishes waiting to swing down on ropes over the staircase. Instead of water or some other harmless liquid hanging in a bucket over a door, hydrochloric acid. Instead of remote control cars, maybe a remote control plane with long knives taped securely to its wings.

I smile picturing these things, but something deep down tells me hoping for it would be beyond foolish.

My phone beeps, and the screen shows me the first directing message. G. W. wrote a small program to track my car's progress and send each step of the latest relevant directions to my phone in the form of a text message, like GPS but supposedly more accurate.

The first message tells me that I'm taking the next exit on the right.

As I look up from my cell phone to the road, I see someone standing in my lane just about three compact car lengths ahead of me, and I'm going the full highway speed limit of 65. I slam on the brakes, but know I won't complete a full stop in time, so I swerve over into the breakdown lane.

I glare into my mirrors at the bastard, wondering where the hell he came from. I could swear there wasn't a body in sight – standing or lying – either in the road or on the side of the road, or up the grassy rolling hills beyond the breakdown lane for that matter.

I wasn't looking at my phone screen for that long. Was I?

No. I would've wrecked.

I don't care what other crazy shit's going on today, I know my own driving, and I know I wasn't distracted for that long.

As I watch him in my mirrors, the guy steps calmly out of the path of traffic that doesn't begin to slow down like I did, takes a moment to honk up a good-sized chunk of phlegm and project it into the grass, and starts walking up toward my passenger side.

I should drive off right now.

Any sane person would. Hell, so would I, on any other day of my life.

Today, I sit and semi-patiently wait for him to approach.

Without knocking on window or door, without glancing down through the glass, and without asking if he can get in or if I'm willing to give him a ride, he gets in. He's wearing clean-ish clothes: faded but still decently black denim jeans, a flannel hoody open over a grubby tan wife-beater, a basic black skullcap, and thick yellow-green gauge earrings. No shoes or socks, which makes me inanely wonder why I never put a no-shoes, no-service sticker on the side of my car. I wouldn't actually mind if he had no shirt on, because his body looks decent under the layers of clothing, but he could do with a bag over his pasty white, hawk-nosed face.

"I'm Larry Innings," he introduces, actually reaching a hand over for me to shake.

I look at him like the crazy person he obviously is, and yet when I look down, my hand is in his. I shook his hand. Why the fuck did I just do that?

"Don't feel stupid, and please don't get mad, either. I don't know who you are and I'm not gonna claim like I do, but I wanna ride with you."

"Where to?"

"To wherever Peter and Philip are headed."

My eyes widen a bit, but I'm not as surprised as maybe I feel I oughtta be.

I saw it through Jeremy Brookthorne's wife-caging little eyes; the twins had somebody in the backseat to whom they entrusted the little baby they took from the house on Beaver's Bend, somebody who watched the baby behind the motel while they set out on their little massacre.

I wonder, did he know what they were doing?

How could he not? Wasn't he right there when they put the silencers on their guns, right before one of them fired their first shot into Mr. Brookthorne?

"I swear, I didn't know what I was letting them make me accomplice to until it was too late," he says all in one breath, looking too flushed for having only rushed out that one sentence. He looks strained, and I feel a little sympathy for him as he adds, "Sorry I just got in like that. I'm kinda impulsive like that. I dunno if you know what that's like, but I usually love it."

Usually. I'm sure.

And, little ole me? Know what it's like to do something impulsive that you end up regretting bigger than any ugly coyote morning you ever had to live through? Naw.

"Oh, I know what that's like, all right. And you're all right. Guess they picked you up somewhere out of Eastgate?"

"Yeah. Said right off to be watchful for a bright green car. I dunno why, but I thought of something colored like the radio station mascot right off, and damned if your car isn't that exactly. Did you buy it like this?"

"No. Special job, ate up most of my tax refund one year. So, what happened?"

"You mean, how did I escape onto the side of the road?"

"Pretty much."

"Well, once I figured out that I was riding along with the bad guys of the day's tale, I realized whoever was driving that green car they were so worried about had to be the good guy, or, sorry, good gal, and sure enough, here you are."

"They just pulled over and let you out?"

"Yeah, no, I kinda had to tuck and roll. Or thought I'd have to. They had to slow down at one point because an almost-wreck had a couple rednecks screaming at each other across the lanes, slowing down traffic for a minute. I ducked out then, ran for some nearby bushes, expecting them to finally fire on me or something, but no. They just went on."

"Good."

"I'm sorry now, though."

"About?"

"Sorry I didn't get that baby away from them. Sorry I didn't do anything to them when I still had the chance. You may or may not ever catch up to them, and I'm sorry, but their lead's just a little too good. I'm not sure how long you've been following them or how you've kept up at all, but I think your luck there's gonna run out sooner than later. Just a feeling I've got."

"Well, don't you trust that feeling, Larry Innings. You just hitched a ride with them?"

"Beg pardon?"

"I mean, did you have anywhere in particular you were trying to get to, before you realized that you'd been picked up by murderous psychopaths?"

I say it, but it doesn't ring true in my head or off my tongue. He seems to buy it, though.

I sure wish I could just write them off as a couple of crazies.

"Oh, no. No, no no no, never. I never want to know where I'm going till I get there. Keeps things fresh and interesting."

"Ah. I'm guessing that means you don't have a home to get back to, then."

"Oh, I do, but my neighbors are real good about watching out for my stuff, taking care of my dogs and my birds, and keeping my ex-girlfriend out of my house. I just like to spend most of my time... on the lamb, I guess you could say. Something like that. I can pay for gas."

"Welcome aboard, Larry," I say with a wink and a grin, shifting back into drive and creeping along the breakdown lane until a good opening comes along.

I look over and see that traffic still hasn't really picked up going northbound, so I swerve over and face-palm for creeping along at all.

"You haven't told me your name yet."

I wink at him again, barely looking away from the road to do it.

I think I'll let him live in suspense on who I am. For the time being, anyway.

Let's keep things fresh and interesting for him, shall we?

# TWO

"If we had a daughter, would you terribly mind the name Vera?"

"What? That's kind of beyond random."

"Sure. But would you?"

I almost miss the exit, but swerve over just before the point where the paving becomes divided by grass. I pound a fist down on my hitchhiker's knee, hard as I can while driving – which I've been told is hard enough – and he throws his hands up.

"All right, all right, I'll drop it! You don't have to get all physical, ma dame."

From that point on, Larry finds it very easy to keep his mouth shut. I'm not familiar with much of anything north of Eastgate, so I'm as thankful as a mother telling the bus to move alongside Ty Pennington that I have G. W.'s little program sending texts.

Well, almost.

Following the screen's directions, I feel like I'm more a passenger than a driver. The road, trees, bushes, vehicles, and assorted pedestrians – some alone, some partnered, some with kids, some with pets – blur by in a rush that I'm sure is accelerated more by the rising thumping of my heart than by any pressure I apply to the pedal.

The truck stop was, horribly, much easier to face than I'd feared it would be. At least there, it was a public space and a public crime; nothing personal about much I saw there.

Now I'm headed back to residential territory.

Now I'm heading toward another person or family's little safe world, except it's not safe anymore. It's been visited by them. Nothing there will be the same. Anyone left will be broken down into bits and pieces of what they were, who they were, before the twins came.

Of course, I could just be projecting my own insecurities and inability to cope onto these people I haven't even encountered yet. Maybe they cope with a crisis winningly.

Maybe – fingers crossed (figuratively, of course, since I'm driving) – the twins will get the address wrong and wander into the den of a small gang of crack dealers or prostitutes with an overprotective pimp or a Klan meeting in progress.

Not that I'm a fan of the Klan, but when faced with the alternative of Peter and Phillip continuing their bloodthirsty journey... hey, any obstacle to them is gold in my eyes.

But of course, I'd know it already if they were stopped up anywhere.

G. W. would have told me they were still there.

So, I'm on aftermath patrol.

Again, or still?

"So how'd you get mixed up in this?"

How does the Doctor deal with this? Why, after nine... no wait, he said a higher number on the beach, what was it, I know this. Oh yeah. Why, after eleven hundred years, didn't he just create a standard FAQ statement to show new companions on that psychic paper?

Maybe he did and we just never saw it on screen. That would explain a few things about Amy in her early episodes.

"It's not really a long story. I saw a guy come through my drive-thru. I liked the look of him, he liked the look of my cats and wanted to maybe adopt one the next time he came through town. He gave me his chirpter handle to keep in touch. A little while later, our bad boys came through and I saw something in their backseat that freaked me out. It was a blown-up picture of the earlier guy that they'd been using for target practice."

"So you followed them. But you lost me somewhere. Drive-thru? With cats?"

"I work at Our Mindy's."

"Oh. Oh! Up next to where they tore down the old Honkers?"

"Yeah."

"I knew you looked familiar! I've been through there a few times. You're the cat giveaway girl. Good on you. Every creature deserves a good home."

"Thank you! Do you have any?"

"Just three dogs and seven birds."

"Oh, yeah, guess you mentioned 'em. Sorry."

"No big deal."

"Guess it's not."

Awkward silence follows, but not really. Awkward, I mean. I feel a little uncomfortably comfortable around this guy. It should be creepy, or have me worried, but I just accept it.

An ally against the twins. And an expendable one, at that.

He smiles at me as we turn onto the street of Peter and Phillip's last stop, and I want to reach over and smack him, but I just squeeze my hands tighter around the wheel and give him a strained, squinty-eyed grin. He rolls his eyes, coughs, and glances out the window at the houses we pass.

It's a street of houses built up on little hills, their driveways cut into the ground and leading up to or in some cases down to basement level garages. The streetlamps look like they've been kept in good repair, but only when night falls would you be able to tell whether this neighborhood's really in as good a financial shape as the people living here might want you to believe; way I figure it, most of those streetlights probably went dark years ago and won't brighten these sidewalks again for generations.

"Do you think those work?" Larry says softly, looking speculatively at the streetlamps lined up two or three before each well-tended property.

If today's events weren't encouraging a heightened sense of paranoid apprehension, I'd think his ability to unknowingly guess at what I'm thinking was cute.

In the reality I'm living in now, though, I look at him as he's looking away with more than a little fear in my eyes. He was riding with them, after all. I can't know for sure if he's been honest about his origins or intentions.

I face-palm.

"What do you do that to yourself for?"

He's eying me with a little more concern than I'm comfortable receiving from a stranger, and the disgust realizing that makes me show on my face makes him show a little unconscious hurt on his, and that makes me feel a sickening combination of guilt and annoyance.

"I'm being a little too worrywart, is all. Don't fret on it or anything."

"Fret," he squeezes out, lips tight to hold in laughter that makes me want to smack him across the face before grabbing him by the back of the neck and shoving my tongue down his throat and my free hand down his pants.

Whoa. Did I really just think that?

Although, a little fun after this crap with the twins is resolved wouldn't be the most terrible thing in the world.

May have to keep this boy around for a night. Or two.

I see the destination house numbers printed roughly on the edge of the driveway I'm passing a little too quickly on my left, and slam on the breaks. I wince and look around, but don't see any walkers or window-peepers alerted to my uninvited presence.

As I back up and turn into the drive, I spot a neighborhood watch sticker on an electric pole and wonder what that means to people nowadays. It used to mean keeping a lookout for anyone unknown, but now I suppose, in an area like what this looks like – and I realize this is a shallow assumption as I'm making it, but I doubt I'm wrong – they only keep an eye out for anyone that isn't white enough, or not trying enough to show their white-likeness.

Since I'm white as sin and Larry makes even me look like an octoroon, I don't think anyone who does happen to notice us arriving here will think twice about it.

"Oh, the so-and-sos have visitors, Maud," the husband will say to his nosy wife as she turns away from the drapes. "Just keep a lookout for any them towel-heads, will you?"

I rattle my head and stop just short of the garage door.

"So you've done this bit before?"

"Yeah."

"I kinda did. I mean, not into anybody's house, obviously. But I got this weird feeling when I was playing with that kid, watching him while they were doing whatever they were doing which I didn't know what they were doing yet but... I got this feeling. You know?"

"I can imagine," I sigh, shutting the engine off.

"Then the one pulls us around and I start seeing these bodies. On the ground. Hanging over car doors. Everywhere I look, and I know it's not a coincidence. But they don't try to make up any story to cover up what they've done. They wouldn't deny or confirm it, but I knew. I don't know why, but I know that they did it. They killed all those people there, like it was nothing."

"For them, I'm sure it was."

"Why do you think they're doing it?"

"I have no idea. But I don't honestly think they are crazy. They've got a purpose."

I say it and regret the saying of it to him, like I'm afraid he's in this fragile shell I shouldn't break or I might break him, but he seems to take my meaning well enough.

"Yeah. They seem like the type. Purposeful. More purposeful than I'll ever be."

"Oh, I'm sure there's a purpose for you," I say without knowing why I'm saying it, but somehow it just seems and sounds right.

And he jerks away from me in the car, looking a bit scared of me now.

Of me, or of the words coming out of my mouth.

I don't have time to puzzle out which it is.

"You coming?" I say, stepping out and shutting my door and walking up the painted concrete steps without waiting for a response.

The steps lead up to a cracked cement walkway lined with piles of black fake rock discs stacked in round pyramids ascending from around seven inches across to three. Ground-staked solar yard lights stand behind each stack.

"You sure this is the right place?" Larry says behind me.

I step up to the brown door and knock, then look to my right and can't help pressing the orange-lit doorbell button as well.

"G. W. hasn't steered me wrong so far."

"Who?"

I turn to say something to him. Something distracting or snarky or ridiculous or profound or simply a little nugget of truth, but before I can make up my mind what it's going to be, the door unlocks behind me.

Larry's eyes shift from my face to it.

The door opens behind me, and I resist the urge to run.

# THREE

"Hi!" I hear a kid greet us, and spin slowly to look in the little tyke's eyes.

"Hi," Larry returns, offering the kid his hand to shake.

"I don't shake hands with strangers, mister. You two, come on in!"

The little boy looks to be about five or six, with thin limbs and thick bright blond hair that hangs down to about the middle of his neck. He turns and runs up the stairs to the main floor of his family's split-level house, shorts and the sleeves of a tee that are both too big for him swinging around his legs and arms as he goes up.

"Won't shake hands with strangers, but invites us in?" Larry whispers, stepping over the threshold like he expects a trap to go off. "Strange kid."

"Aren't they all," I comment, stepping in behind him and carefully shutting the door.

"Well. Yeah, I guess."

"No guessing about it," I say, going up the steps two at a time and ignoring the family photos hanging on the wall to my right.

My hand slides up the banister on the left, and my eyes dart down but I can't make out anything beyond the bottom of the lower stairs.

At the top of the upper stairs, the facing wall leads into a dark hallway on the left, and directly on the right is the living room, a lace-curtain-covered archway leading presumably into a kitchen behind this dismally lit chamber. The hall wall has nothing on it but shadow-cuts of the family's profiles, stacked from a foot above the floor up toward the ceiling, visually chronicling the aging of each member over the years.

Only one shadow profile stands alone, nothing above or beneath it, and it is the only one with its glass front dusted. It is a dignified female face, refined features and a hint of immense generosity of spirit evident in what can be made out of her expression.

I decide this family has already experienced a loss, and not a recent one, so maybe this here today won't hit them half as bad, especially if they've been caught in a perpetual game of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In a tacky old brown leather recliner sits the father. He isn't far out of his forties, but he looks haggard and worn down, so I place him as the husband of the not-recently deceased, and father to the three children I see here. The kids don't really seem all that shaken up, really not disturbed at all, so either today's victim here wasn't their sibling, or it was an older sibling so demented in his or her torments of them that they're glad to be rid of the nuisance.

"Grandma's dead!" The kid who let us in says it so fast and high I almost miss the meaning of the words until he says it again, "Grandma's dead!"

"I'm sorry for your loss," Larry says stiffly to the father in the recliner, who averts his eyes from us and sighs.

"We're not," the oldest kid, a girl who looks like she's eighteen so I figure she's probably only sixteen, says with a disturbingly unaffected smile on her face. "Nobody'll miss that bat."

"Willow, fucking shut up," the other kid, a twelve-year-old in large glasses commands, and his big sister listens to him, but flips him the bird before she claps her mouth shut on whatever else she was about to say. "Sorry about them," the older boy offers us, looking apologetic on behalf of his siblings, "they're obviously in shock."

"Grandma's dead!"

"Jonas, cram it," Willow advises, "before Wallace decides to lock you in there with the body."

Little Jonas thinks this over for a moment, shakes his head, and picks up a storybook from the underside shelf of a coffee table.

"My mother-in-law won't be missed, though," the father finally speaks, but still won't look directly at me or my hitch-hiker companion. "Misery, daughter of Grace, would have been the only soul on this whole wide earth to care a tick whether or not Mother Grace Kindly's heart went on beating. I'm George Wallflower, by the way, if you were wondering."

"What man has much of any love for his mother-in-law, though, right?" Larry says, sitting on the arm of the couch closest to George's recliner. "I mean, right?"

"Yeah, whatever. My son let you in, I don't know why, but I guess I don't really mind. Strangers came to kill the old woman, I don't see why more strangers can't come to clean up the mess. You aren't in the neighborhood, so don't try to say you are. Unless you're relatives. But no, Mother Grace would have known if anyone was staying with anyone around here. So who are you and what the bloody fuck are you doing here?"

"Geez, man, in front of your kids?" Larry says, then shuts up when George finally looks at him.

There's almost enough menacing challenge in those eyes to shut me up if he'd looked at me.

He isn't looking at me, though.

"Mr. Wallflower, we're not here to clean up anything. I've been following these killers for a little while now and I'm just here to look for any clues that might help me catch up to them a little faster."

"I'd say you're pretty hot on their trail tonight. They left not even fifteen minutes ago."

"Maybe we should go ahead and go," Larry suggests, standing and taking one step around the coffee table.

"I've only been following them for a few hours today," I correct the assumption I think George Wallflower's made, "and I want more than that short a gap on my side when I confront these bastards. They've killed a lot of people today, and I don't want to become one of them."

"Today?" George whispers, eying a corner of the ceiling with disbelief in his face. "Just today?" Glaring at me – but not with enough force to make me flinch – he yells, "How can you be sure it's only today!"

"I'm actually pretty sure it's not been. I'm just saying, that's as long as I've been on them. You need to calm down, especially if you don't give a damn they just murdered your dead wife's mother."

He looks shocked that I'm aware of his widowerhood, but he swallows it quick.

"Very observant, Miss..."

"Don't bother," Larry chimes in, falling back on the arm of the couch and reaching over to slap George on the shoulder. "She won't tell you her name."

"Who I am isn't important," I say, deciding that maybe my name shouldn't come up again today. "But what I'm doing is. So, where did they kill her? In her bedroom?"

"Yes."

"And which room will that be, down the hallway?"

"It's the last door on the left. I... I left it open. I couldn't bare to go shut it yet, and I've been keeping the kids in here so they won't have to see. They might not have liked their grandmother too much..."

"I loved Mother Grace," Wallace cuts in, giving his older and younger siblings looks combining anger at their feelings and pride in his own.

"But I still don't want them to see her like that."

"We understand," Larry says, standing up again.

I wave him back, telling him with my eyes that he is not to follow me out of this room.

He falls back on his ass again, slumped as much as he can be where he's chosen to sit, which just seems stupid to me considering none of the kids are on the couch. He pouts for a second, then winks at me and turns toward George, saying something I ignore.

I make my way into the hallway.

Let Larry distract the next of kin.

I've got a body to see.

# FOUR

The only light in the room is from a single bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. There's no fixture, and no switch on the wall; just a low-wattage bulb screwed into a socket in the ceiling, with a thin chain hanging down two feet.

Being a corner room, albeit at the back of the house, this bedroom has windows on both exterior walls, but large blackout curtains cover them completely. The curtains are the velvet red of church pews, and add to the highly religious tone of the rest of the room.

Crucifixes hang every three feet on the walls. The furniture is basic dark wood, from bedposts to wardrobe to dressers to nightstands, and religious tracts, pamphlets, and texts are piled or fanned out on all of it.

The former possessor of all these Godly things – the woman who apparently preferred her family to call her Mother Grace even though she wasn't mother to anyone in this house anymore – lies serenely under the covers, arms crossed, face up.

This one, they shot in the heart, just above the place where her arms lie.

Why did they give this one a more dignified exit?

What was different about this woman?

Well, from Montgomery Billings, a difference would be clothing, obviously.

After everything I just witnessed at the truck stop, though, I thought the boys had moved on past any kind of subtlety or even the remotest flicker of kindness.

Here, though, I see a repeat of the strange grace they showed in sparing Bernadette.

And, can't forget, this time they left four witnesses.

I wonder if they brought the baby in here, or left it in the car? Or if they're even still lugging the Mortimer kid around?

"Whoa," I hear from the doorway behind me, and realize with a start that I'd slowly been advancing on the bed without knowing it.

I turn, and of course it's Larry. Why would he listen to me about staying out there?

Well, it might've helped if I'd verbalized that instruction.

Damn it.

"Pop your corpse cherry?"

"No. I mean, yes. I mean, sure, why not."

"Good. Now get the fuck back out there."

"But–"

"No buts about it," I cut him off, pressing a finger hard against his lips. "I'm your ride, and if you want to keep riding me, you'd best remember that for all intents and purposes, I'm the boss. You got me?"

"Riding you?" Larry squeaks out from behind my finger, halfway between speech and laughter.

"Riding with me," I correct myself too late, taking my hand back and crossing both arms over my chest in a purposeful mimicry of the corpse behind me. Seeing from his expression that this isn't lost on my new friend Mr. Innings, I sigh, "So, do you get me?"

"Yeah, I get ya," he sighs back with a smile and what I hope is a sarcastically lecherous wink.

He goes back out, and I close the door behind him.

I roll on the balls of my feet, leaning back against the bedroom wall and staring up into the ceiling. I stand like that for about twenty seconds before I realize I hear sounds of movement and breathing in the room with me.

When I look back down to the bed, the dead body of Mother Grace Kindly is gone. The bed is made just as neatly, but now the woman is sitting on the edge of it, very much alive, and very much completely oblivious to my presence in her room.

Except my presence and hers aren't intersecting in time the way my senses tell me they are. I'm perceiving her sitting there, eyes closed, hands hovering below her face in the prayer position, but I know that she is still lying there in a pool of her own blood. She may have been granted more kindness in her execution than the twins' other victims, but she is still dead.

And this? This is another vision.

I can't deny it anymore.

I can't even begin to convince myself I'm going crazy.

I touched the wall, and I'm experiencing a vision of things that transpired in this room at some point in the past. Not terribly long ago, since she's wearing in this way-too-vivid vision exactly the same loose bun in her hair, fifties-style glasses on her face, and Sunday marm dress, checkerboard-patterned in large patches of pastel green and yellow.

I can even smell her perfume, powdery and unmistakably old-ladylike.

That smell might be the reality and not the vision, but somehow I think it's at least amplified by my immersion in this moment out of time.

Her mouth is moving, but I can't hear anything. Then I concentrate, like focusing your eyes to try to see something in the distance, and suddenly I can hear her perfectly clear, so clear that I'm a little worried the other people in this house will hear and wonder.

"Lord, preserve the dear soul of my daughter, your sweet Misery, close to your breast, and grant her the peace to know her family is not destroyed by her absence, but made stronger for it. Not that she is not missed, but I am positive you can better convey to her the meaning I intend. Lord, watch over my besotted son-in-law. Help George to understand that it was never his fault, or in his power to change what you ordained to be your Misery's fate. Please accept my humble gratitude that your Misery found such a good, sweet, and worthwhile man to stand by her side truly through thick and thin, for without George at her side, I fully believe my dear daughter might have fallen astray when faced with her inevitable illness. And please help George to accept my ways, though they may seem harsh and unforgiving to the individual paying only casual attention, as you know that I know no other way to live and act."

She pauses (paused?), and I think this was a perfectly useless excuse for a vision. I haven't learnt anything through it, the twins aren't in it, and prayer's never particularly interested me. I don't have anything against a person venting their frustrations to a God-being, but the part where they expect their problems to magically be taken care of by some higher power, that just pisses me off. If God's just a scapegoat for you not doing anything, your belief is a waste.

I think about trying to tune this out, and almost turn to the door.

"Lord," she begins again, stopping me from moving, and there's a pain in her voice now that wasn't there before. "Please, please deliver me from these changes. Send your angels down to purge this demon from me. If you see fit, Lord, please take this cup from me."

In an instant, the woman sitting, praying to her God is gone, and the dead woman is under the covers again, unmoved, undisturbed, and unflinchingly real in her deadness.

I know menopause is nothing any woman looks forward to, but I'm having trouble believing that's all she was talking about at the end there. She sounded only a little scared, but her face was giving away a level of horror and disgust that a woman shouldn't feel just about the natural changes her body will go through in her later years. Especially a God-fearing woman.

My cell rings, and I jump.

I really don't remember picking it up in the car and shoving it into my pocket. Must've done it before Larry got in, after almost running him over.

It doesn't say unknown caller, so it can't be G. W., but it isn't showing any name off my contacts list, so it can't be anyone I know, either.

Except, someone I know is currently without his cell.

"Hey, Dean," I answer, relieved to be speaking to a familiar person in the midst of this house of strangers. "How goes it at the stop? Have you gotten a ride out of there yet? Are they even letting anyone leave yet?"

"It goes fine, and I'm fine too, thanks for not asking. Before you get all defensive, you know I'm just fucking with you. No ride yet, but it doesn't matter because no one's being let out till they get everyone's statements and contact info. It's a real mess over here."

"I bet."

"That's not really why I'm calling. I realized something that you should know."

"Go on."

"Mars, hon, the twins had to've set off an EMP as soon as they got here, because literally every cell phone and electronic device within and right around the motel and the diner shorted out at exactly the same moment. These are some seriously not-amateur bad guys you're dealing with. Be careful, and watch your back. You better keep an eye on that so-called hitch-hiker, too. G. W. told me you picked somebody up off the side of the road."

"Of course he did. Look, you guys can save your worry. Larry fucking Innings isn't anything to worry about. Yes, that's his name and if you want to pass it on to G. W. – should you hear from him again, and honestly I'm a little impressed he bothered to contact you where you're currently stuck at – then you do that and tell him he can run a background check. I'm not overly concerned."

"Maybe you should be."

"Maybe I should. But I've got a few bit more important things to worry about, don't ya think?"

"Whatever. I have to get off here. I'm still getting suspicious eyes from half the cops for being the friend of the chick who drove off in such a hurry. Don't worry about that, though. Too many witnesses for anyone to confuse you for being one of the perps. Later."

He hangs up before I can say another word, and part of me's glad. If I talk to him too long, I'll be way too tempted to turn the Camry around and head south down 275 instead of further north. I won't dump Larry anywhere; no, I'll keep him around after I pick Dean back up, though how I'd do that without getting held up by the growing number of authorities currently holding him up, I couldn't tell ya. So no, it's a good thing that whole train of thought's been averted, ain't it!

I hadn't even considered that possibility when I sped off, that I would be linked with the killers just by the very fact that I was in such a hurry to get away, but it's good to know there won't be any APB out for me.

Okay. Vision's over. Call's ended. I've nothing else to keep me in this room.

Wherever you are, Mother Grace, I hope you're at peace, despite the muted violence of how you were forced to quit this world.

Now it's time I face your family one more time, collect my so-called hitch-hiker, and get back on the trail.

# FIVE

Returning to the Wallflowers' hallway, I'm struck by a simple thing.

Dean's warning isn't something I can write off as him just trying to be an overprotective friend.

The twins warned me to follow them alone. They wanted so badly for me to heed the message that they left it twice.

Why then did they let the hitch-hiker slip from their grasp so easily?

Leaning against the wall next to Mother Grace's open door, the dimmish light she died by falling out of it and cutting a clear if fade-edged rectangle into the dark hall, I stare up into the ceiling and wonder if I'm being a fool taking Larry Innings along with me.

Is he the bait of some trap I can't yet see the shape of?

I swing to pull shut Mother Grace's door, catch one final glimpse of her lying under the covers – was her face turned toward the doorway before? I don't usually believe in ghosts or ghostly things, but I tell you, with the day I'm having, I think I'm coming close to a place where I can't maintain my cool-without-trying skepticism – and return out to the living room.

The Wallflower children are sitting on the couch all in a row, but their father and Larry are nowhere in sight. Correction: from the corner of my eye, I see them at the bottom of the stairs. Larry is standing by the door. George sits on the bottom step, arms propped up on his knees, hands raked back through his hair. I gather they moved down there to talk about things that George didn't want his kids to hear, but now they're saying nothing.

Larry looks up at me, and he looks ready to leave.

"All right," I mouth, barely any sound coming out of my throat.

I wave a silent goodbye to the kids, who seem to have lost all interest in their visitors, and descend the stairs slowly, carefully making my way around George. He seems so wrapped up in whatever he just got off his chest that he can't even feel me pass him.

"She blamed me for everything," he sighs, looking up from behind his arms and jumping to his feet in surprise that I'm standing here now.

"You don't mean Mother Grace, do you?"

"I, Miss, I was just... yes. That woman blamed me for everything, from Misery's illness to the very fact that she could die."

"Let's go," Larry tries, but I'm not ready yet.

I have to do something here.

I just have to be careful how I word this.

"I'm sure she didn't blame you. She was probably grateful that her daughter found such a wonderful husband and father to share her life with, and that includes her final years. Maybe Mother Grace was hard on you and the kids, but have you considered that maybe she just didn't know any other way? She was old. Old people usually are set in their ways. But that doesn't mean she didn't appreciate you for the good man you are."

"That cements it, then," George whispers, looking at the corner, his eyes refusing to turn to either Larry or me. "I'll tell the police I was wanting to kill her. Not that I ever would have really done, you see, but that's my own cowardice. I'll just have to cock up a story that explains the missing gun. I'm sure I can come up with something reasonably satisfying for the report."

"You can't be serious," Larry says, raising his hand to slap George in the back of the head, but holding back at the last second.

"No, you are, aren't you?" I say, grabbing his jaw and making George Wallflower look me in the eyes. "What is that gonna do to your kids? Who's gonna take care of them?"

"Don't worry about the children. There's a friend of their mother's who used to watch them when I was at Misery's deathside, waiting for the end to come."

He moves between us, pulls the door open, and shoves Larry out. Me, he simply guides me with a hand on the small of my back, insistent but not really forceful. I follow his physical instruction out of pity more than anything else.

"Anyway, I thank you. We all thank you for your concern. But you really must be getting on, Ms. Bradley."

He shuts the door just as I swing round to confront him, but of course all I see is closed door and I can't bring myself to knock or reach for the knob or the doorbell button again. All I can do is stand there and wonder how the hell he knew my name. Did the twins tell him?

Do the twins know who I am somehow?

They didn't when they stopped at the Billings house.

Larry couldn't have told him.

I turn to say something to Larry, but he's halfway down the stairs to the driveway, so I guess he didn't hear George Wallflower's last words to me.

This is just great. Peter and Phillip kill again, and they're going to get away with it again. They were seen at the truck stop, but it seems they were wearing masks, so that'll make it harder for the cops to pin anything on them.

I'm guessing no one noticed their vehicle coming into the stop, and after the chaos of the gunfire, who would've been paying attention to it leaving again? Jeremy Brookthorne would've been the perfect witness, but of course they shut him up in the most final way.

And now here, the son-in-law will take the rap. Out of guilt.

Because I told him Mother Grace didn't blame him for her daughter's death.

Great help I am.

Down the stairs and into my car I go, Larry already buckled into the passenger seat. I start the engine and fasten my safety belt, but I don't put it in reverse yet.

"I'm Marsha," I say, feeling numb, but glad to be telling him my name. "Marsha Bradley."

"Heh," he coughs, swallowing a joke I'm sure he can't help thinking, but to his credit, he isn't telling it. "Nice to meet you, Marsha Bradley. I didn't expect you'd be giving up your name this soon."

"Well, now you have it."

"No, I mean, I wanted you to keep it from me a while longer. I was gonna set it up to be a key to a secret."

"What secret would that be?"

"What old George boy in there told me. But since you did just tell me your name, I guess I have to spill, too."

"Well?"

"He really was going to kill her."

I stare over at Larry, wanting to decry this, but knowing at the same time that he isn't making it up.

"He says he had a hole dug out in the woods somewhere, near a trail he knows she takes walks down sometimes."

"A hole in the ground? Why does that sound familiar?"

"He says he got the idea from the movie about the little girl who's murdered in the 70's and whose ghost watches over her family and her killer."

"Oh. Oh, shit. That man was going to murder his mother-in-law?"

"Yes. He said he could only take so much. No wonder he's so quick to take the blame now. If the twins hadn't come along, he said he only had another week or two of procrastination left in him, tops, before he flipped and dragged Mother Grace down that hole and slit her throat and left her there. He would've just closed the hole up and left her body in the ground."

"Damn."

"Yeah. So in a way, the twins saved him. At least from the really-killing-her part. Maybe the kids will talk him out of the taking-the-blame part."

"I don't think so. I don't think he'll listen to anything anyone has to say on the matter."

"With that much guilt stewing for five years, I guess not."

"Five years?"

"How long his wife's been dead."

"Okay. Okay, we've done all we could here."

"I'd say we didn't really do anything here."

"Exactly," I sigh, neck craned so I can look over my shoulder as I back out of the driveway. "Get used to that feeling right now if you're planning on sticking with me. This road will make you feel all kinds of useless."

# 8. GREAT AND POWERFUL IS THE WHAT

Now she finds herself drawn in viewing

to the forms of a specific little caucus

of these post-human beings, standing

in a circle. They are unnoticed and undisturbed

by seemingly anyone else in their wide, open,

psychically interconnected world. They stand

facing into their circle, backs to the walls

of whatever place they are in; she cannot see it

at all. Their backs are also turned

on the rest of their world, she can see. They have turned

against the foolish behavior of their kind,

have embraced the Armageddon,

and are about to act.

They are nine in number, each hooded and robed

so she cannot make out their specific

identifying features. She curses them for the obscurity,

though she does not know why

it should matter. Was she not just fearing

that she will perish with this world? How

will being able to identify any member

of this group matter if such is the case?

"It will not be," she hears herself mutter,

caught in such wonder and inexplicable exhaustion

and sadness and terror and rage

that she forgets she does not hear

or speak in dreams.

– from a dream

# ONE

We don't make it to the highway before Larry makes me wanna hit him again.

"Make it quick," I warn, but he's already out the door and halfway to the gas station's side-of-the-building bathroom.

I shake my head and wait for him to feel stupid when he realizes he forgot to go in for the key, but then I see him fish something out of a pocket and work it in the simple lock. In ten seconds, he's got the door open and he's in.

"Skilled bastard."

The remixed Buffy theme plays right on cue.

"You don't think that can impress me at this point, Great What, do ya?"

"Your being impressed or not being impressed doesn't really concern me at this point in our relationship, Marsh."

"What have you got," I hiss, gripping the phone tightly.

"Are you sure you want to know? You might just assume I'm trying to impress this silly redhead girl I know. You might know her. Driving this killer green car, currently with a stranger in tow? Although why anyone would think that I would care to impress her, is beyond me."

"Oh, cut through the bullshit already, G. W. Spill."

"If I spill my highly caffeinated beverage, all my systems will most definitely be screwed."

"Grah!" I scream, then wince. "Sorry, I shouldn't be acting like that."

"You're damned right you shouldn't. Some gratitude wouldn't kill you."

"Thank you."

"Wow, that was easy. While we're at it, maybe a–"

"If you know what's good with you, you'll stop while you're ahead."

"Fair enough."

"Please?"

"Okay. While I've had your bad boys tracked automatically and haven't really had to pay too terribly much attention to that process – reminder beeps are ever so fucking useful – I've been keeping myself intermittently busy solving another mystery."

"H. S."

He gives me a moment to let it sink in. I've become so wrapped up in the horrible things the twins are doing that I've barely spared a thought on the man for whose sake I began this whole mad journey up the highway in the first place.

"Well, this Handsome Stranger of yours sure is trying to be hard to find. Would be, too, if not for my facial reconstruction and recognition software, not to mention my not-too-ungenius private friend list cracking software."

"Which you only use for good," I interject in a dry tone, hinting at only half-hearted belief.

"But of course! I'm using it to help you, aren't I?"

"Oh, well that's no proof of goodness there."

I stick my tongue out at the rearview mirror, picturing his face as he pauses again on the line, and I imagine him rolling his eyes, his hands raking over his face and back through his hair.

"Anyway," he continues, trying badly to mask a hint of his irritation with me, "if you go back a few hundred chirps in his chirpter feed, there's a link to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend's photo update on Lookbook. This Handsome Stranger's chirpter profile pic is only a quarter of his face, but that was enough to find him on an extended private connections search on Lookbook. I've got him for you, Marsha. Do you want to hear his name?"

I want to reach through the phone, grab him by the throat, and scream in his face that of fucking course I want to hear his name! But, I don't have time to piss him off and then deal with a pissed off Gabriel and try to get him back into a mood that keeps him useful to me.

"Yes," I choke out, eyes shut.

"Walker MacWellhan."

"Walker MacWellhan," I repeat, shaping the words carefully in my mouth, picturing myself speaking that name softly in the night, telling it to all my friends, updating my relationship status on Lookbook to connect my profile to his, and imagining what we might name our kids.

"Snap out of baby-making dreamland, Marsh."

"Okay," I say, slapping myself across the face hard enough I know Gabriel heard it over the phone. "I'm back."

"Good. Shit."

"Walker," I say again, trying to sound less wistful even though I know I'm not pulling it off very well. "So that's who Peter and Phillip are after."

"Peter and who?"

"The twins, dummy."

"Wait, whoa, what! What what what, you heard their names somewhere and you haven't told me about it?" G. W. shouts down the line.

"Yeah. Bernadette Masterson-Billings told me. I didn't mention that?"

"No, you most definitely did not. That is some probably majorly useful information, Miss Marsha Bradley. Shame on you for withholding. Now I regret telling you Handsome's name."

"No, thank you for that. Not that it's gonna do me any practical good at the moment, but thanks all the same."

"You're welcome. I would ask if you're gonna be more forthcoming with me from this point on, but... I've been thinking about that."

"Me being more forthcoming?"

"There being a from this point on."

My eyes snap open. I see Larry coming out of the bathroom, but he doesn't come over this way yet. He's lighting a smoke.

"Gabriel, don't tell me you're thinking what I think you're thinking."

"My Marsha Bradley, I think you may have figured me out."

"You are not abandoning me now, you fucker!"

"Abandoning you? I'm not even there with you in this, Bradley. I never left my house."

"Yeah. When do you ever?"

"Not a smart move, Bradley."

I can tell he almost hung up just then, but he's still holding on.

Good.

Maybe I can figure out what bug's up his butt.

"Why?"

"Marsha, do you really have to ask? I play enough games as it is. This was fun for a while, but... real people are really dying, and you just want me to let you go on chasing after these guys like some storybook hero, and not get the cops involved? Because one almost raped you, you can't let any of them in on this, what you know? What we know?"

I can't hear any more of this crap right now.

I hang up before he can start sowing some real seeds of doubt in my head.

As if I don't have enough as it is.

Larry crushes out his cigarette, walks over, and gets in, flashing me a totally useless grin. When I just roll my eyes and lean my head back on the headrest, he reaches over to my leg and squeezes lightly. He doesn't keep his hand there, showing he knows I want my boundaries respected, but also showing he'll approach the border when he likes.

"So what's up? Next destination come down from your Great Wizard friend?"

"Great What," I say, then laugh. "No, no destination."

"Oh? Did your bad guys fall on some hard luck and now you're off the hook?"

"Oh, don't I wish. No, it's more like I've just experienced a good end-of-season Buffy plot twist."

"No more help from your friend, then."

"It would appear so."

"So how do we find them from here?"

Good question.

# TWO

Leave it to Gabriel fucking Olivandor Whiteacre to leave me high and dry.

I shouldn't be surprised at all.

I.

I'm starving.

Sure, I haven't eaten anything all day, but.

Ow.

Fuck!

"Fuck," I blurt out in something between a hiss and a whistle, not sure myself how I'm managing to make the sound of the word sensible in such a way.

"What is it?" Larry intones, split between sarcastic disinterest and a hint of concern at the look on my face.

I clench my hands around the steering wheel at ten and two, but we're not going anywhere. We're still in the parking lot of the gas station where I stopped so Larry could take a leak, smoke, whatever. Where I've been let down by my go-to guy for bread crumbs so I can keep following the path of the twins. Where I've been reminded that I'm hungry.

I hunger.

I starve.

I feel like I haven't eaten in, this can't be right, months?

I look at my limbs, and they look well-enough nourished.

I'm not diminished in any way that would physically indicate starvation.

But.

I'm starving!

I slip out of the car, or try. The belt holds me in the car, and I fall back in the seat rather clumsily. Larry stifles a chuckle, then reaches over and undoes my belt for me.

I think about slapping his hand away, or awkwardly thanking him, but I just get out of the car, not even bothering to slam the door shut behind me as I positively race over to the convenience store.

I push on the door. It doesn't budge. I pull, and of course it opens so very easily that way.

Face-palm as I enter, and I head straight for the snack food section.

I grab a bag of every flavor of chips I can stand. Honey barbeque. Chipotle ranch. Sour cream and onion. Cheddar and bacon. Corn chips. Potato chips. Some kind of vegetable chips that I might never otherwise try, but right now the colors of them look delicious.

My arms are full, but I manage to go down the candy aisle and slide one bar each of as many brands as I can grab into the staggering pile I carry.

Smells of food being kept warm on a roller grill reach my nose, and I catch sight of the donut case out of the corner of my eye, but a single thought about the price of all of this crap breaches my stomach's sudden control of me, and I decide to stop with what I've got.

I carefully place my hoard on the counter before the station clerk and she pops a gum bubble, unimpressed. I expect some remark about a party or how I don't look pregnant but this sure looks like a prego chick's grocery list here, but nope, she just rings it all in, one thing at a time, dropping each item into a sack she had propped open before I reached the counter.

She only has to open one more sack to accommodate my take, and then my total's tallied and I can pay. I swipe my pay card, sign on the little screen, wait for payment confirmation, and then take my bags out of the store.

Larry is standing outside the doors, smoking, looking a little twitchy.

"What's your problem?" I shoot at him, too harsh and regretting it instantly, but too overwhelmed by hunger to care much as I make my way toward the car.

"What's my problem? How about you tell me what yours is, Marsha Bradley."

"I haven't a clue what you mean. Can you get the back door for me? Driver's side, passenger side, I don't care, just pick one."

He goes around to my side, and I have to smile a little at that.

He even bows a little as he lets me pass him to toss the bags onto the back seat.

I'm instantly digging in one. Those cheddar and bacon chips and some mint chocolates sound so good together right now.

Now I'm laughing at myself, thinking I must be pregnant after all.

But the test!

Test be damned. The woman who bought it was dead. Maybe it was only meant by the universe to give a correct answer to her, and failing the chance to do that, it could only give a negative response to anyone else foolish enough to piss on it.

It isn't pregnancy, though. Somehow, now, I can feel that.

It is some other change.

Some... shift.

A shift in the way I think? Not completely, but definitely in the way I feel things, in the way I experience things in the world around me, and in the way I react to situations that shouldn't normally phase me, or at least not make me run out on my job.

Why did I do that again?

"Who cares," I say to no one, and though Larry is standing close in earshot, he must know I'm not talking to him because he says nothing in response.

I shove past him, get behind the wheel, and tear into the chips, pausing every other half-handful to swallow a bite or two of chocolate. I finish the candy and chips in short order, toss the trash in the back, and reach blindly into one of the paper bags for more.

Larry gets back in the passenger seat, eying my arm reaching into the back, and something in his face makes me stop in mid-retrieval.

"Do you stress eat a lot? Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't really have a body that would make me think you do. Unless you're a binge-and-purger. I suppose I could see you doing that, but no, that doesn't seem right, either. What is it?"

"Stress eating," I gasp, grinning and throwing my arms around this relative stranger and pulling him into the kind of hug I normally reserve for friends like Dean.

"I guess you thought it was something else?"

"I was worried earlier that I might be pregnant."

"Oh. But now you aren't?"

"Took a test. At the rest stop, there was one... lying out. I swiped it, took it, and it said I'm not knocked up. Kind of lucky."

"I guess. Any idea who the father would've been if the test has said different?"

"Does that matter!" I scream, still smiling. "Oh, what am I yelling at you for. I'm still... fucking... famished."

I grab up another bag of chips, tear it open, and scarf down half the bag before I pause for breath again.

"Okay," I say slowly. "I can admit, this does seem strange."

"Strange? You bought enough snacks for a football team. Or an orgy. And you really mean to eat it all yourself, don't you?"

"Well... not all at once. I don't think."

"Yeah, you don't think, all right."

"What's that supposed to mean? How can you even make an observation like that! You don't even know me."

"Okay, you've got me there. Sometimes I just make up observations to see how people react to them, and to see if randomly they might be true. Sorry. I'd say won't happen again, but honestly, I can't promise that."

"Fair enough. Whatever. God, this is the weirdest fucking day."

"You're telling me."

"Larry, you don't even know the half of it."

"I would if you'd tell me."

"Maybe after it's all over. Or after I can accept that it's over, if that time's now and no, I'm not prepared to say it's over now, here, with nothing more to show for cutting out on work than a hitch-hiker I'd ride for a week straight if I could count on my job still being there after."

I look over at him and he just looks away and whistles, a little grin at the corners of his mouth. At least he's not laughing. At least he's not making some crude remark I'd have to slap or punch him for. At least he may be worth a week or so of fun, once things crazy down a bit.

I finish the bag in my lap more methodically, inspecting each chip as if I'm going to reject any of them going into my mouth, and Larry goes into a spiel about random movies so he doesn't have to respond to any part of what I've just said to him.

My eyes close.

I bring up two more bags of chips after I finish and discard the one in my lap.

My mind wanders as Larry speaks, my ears barely registering the words he forms.

I begin to see a shimmering pale green thing in the darkness behind my closed eyelids. It isn't a shape, so much as a field of motion. It flows like a stream, but it isn't water. It isn't anything more than pure movement, as if I'm looking at kinetic energy itself.

And then I hear Larry say something about the film Donnie Darko.

He's talking about the Halloween party the older Darko siblings throw when the rest of the family's out of town, but my mind snaps right to another part of the movie. A theme running through the movie. Donnie can see what people will do through destiny projectiles.

I can't really remember exactly how he put it in the movie, but the precise wording means shit.

He could see what people, including himself, were going to do, or more accurately, where they were going to go.

Right now, I snap my eyes open, and I can see where the twins have gone.

That pale green shimmer of motion, that stream hovering in the air, is still there, fainter now my eyes are open, but still fucking there. It shows me that they pulled in here at the gas station, pumped some gas into their car, one of them went inside to pay, and then they went back onto the highway.

Looking more carefully, I can see it's two distinct trails, but mostly so close they could be mistaken for one, except for those brief moments when the twins got out of the car and stepped away from each other.

Don't ask me how I know it's them. It just is, and I just know. Feel, anyway, and really, right now, as the sun's going down over the trees and night is closing in around me, feeling and knowing are becoming one and the same thing.

Larry's opening his door and I can see he's about to step out again, but I start the engine and throw the Camry into drive and move an inch without warning him, getting a startled yet silent glare out of him. He slams the door shut and tries to laugh it off, being startled.

I throw the chip bags in the back, my hunger for the moment forgotten and not caring about the mess I'm probably making all over the back of my car.

It's not like I've ever been the fastidious vehicle maintenance and interior cleanliness freak, anyway.

I head out onto the highway, merging into the northbound traffic slowly building back up, and smile fleetingly into the rearview mirror.

See if I need you now, Great fucking What.

Now, or ever again.

# THREE

Three seconds up the highway, and whaddaya know, that crappy Buffy remix rings out again.

I contemplate not answering.

"Whoa," Larry moans, giving me a reproachful look. "Who's bad idea was that remix? That's one tune that never needed fucking around with."

"Wasn't my idea to put it on here," I sigh, raising the phone to my ear as I accept the call. "This had better be good, Mister What-the-Fuck."

"Look, I'm sorry, I know that was uncalled for," Gabriel says in a rush.

"Apology accepted. Go on."

"And you didn't let me finish my train of thought. I only said I was thinking it, didn't say I'd arrived at any conclusions or decisions, did I?"

"I suppose you didn't. So... I guess I'm sorry I hung up on you."

"Okay, Marsh, thanks. I needed to hear that."

Wow. He's really on my side in this. He isn't wanting to back out.

Damn, and I was so ready to toss Larry out, too, and just go this alone.

Wasn't I?

"Now, are you ready for the bad news?"

My eyes go wide. I should've known this would come with a price.

And I have a sinking sensation it's going to make all of this seem even more pointless, somehow.

I begin to slow down.

Larry watches the scenery along the highway, pretending not to listen in.

"Shoot."

"Walker MacWellhan is connected with your twins, Marsha."

"No," I cough, slamming on the brakes involuntarily, causing the vehicle behind me to slam on theirs and skid to within inches of my back bumper and honk, thrice in angry succession.

As traffic coming from the south starts to swerve to avoid me, I swerve over into the breakdown lane.

"Just listen. It may not be as bad as you're thinking right now. Although, it could just as easily be much, much worse. Sorry, that didn't really help, did it?"

"Not really," I croak, and now Larry isn't pretending.

He's looking right at me, showing he'll wait patiently for the call to end for me to catch him up on all the puzzle pieces he's still missing about what he's overhearing.

"I've had my system following the twins. What did you say their names are?"

"Peter and Phillip."

"Yeah, the P-brains. Anyway, I've got their car tracked, but I never got around to finding your Handsome Stranger's vehicle to track that. Turns out, I never would've needed to. He's been leading the twins on since he came through your drive-thru. Every place they've been, he was there first. He didn't go in to any of them, but he stopped there long enough to – this part I'm guessing, but I'm sorry, it just seems logical – identify the targets."

"How do you know any of this if you haven't been tracking him?"

"Because Walker's been posting his locations to allcorners. He had it set to private, friendly contacts only, but you know that's nothing for me to get around. Care to guess who his two private, friendly contacts happen to be? These two and only these two and no one else?"

"Peter. Phillip."

"Ding ding ding! You win the prize!"

"Is the prize a bullet to the brain?"

"Hey, don't beat yourself up. There's no way you could've known they were connected."

But wasn't there?

Didn't I wonder, just for a moment?

There wasn't anything to go on besides the color of their skin, though, and I hate to do, say, or even think anything remotely racist.

"Wait. How can you be sure his two contacts are our two killers?"

"Marsha. Really? Who else would care where he's been going? And the timing matches up perfectly. Within ten to fifteen, usually no more than twenty minutes of Walker MacWellhan posting his latest location on allcorners, death and mayhem have followed."

"Any pertinent information on our boys from their profiles?"

"Nada. Walker seems like a public enough individual, online anyway, but his allcorners buddies have obscure no-word user names, just letters and numbers. Empty profiles. Same on the e-mail addresses they used for set-up."

"Damn."

"Damn is right. I'm not really sure what to make of it all. From what I can gather about this Walker fellow from chirpter and Lookbook and so on, he's nothing more or less than an ordinary member of society. Tax-payer. Voter. Recycles."

"And leads killers on in his wake."

"You make it sound so real, dear Marsh of mine."

"Because it is. You said you'd realized that. Now you sound like you want to backtrack on that stance, sink back into your usual fantasy realm where this stuff isn't happening."

"Wouldn't you if you could?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

"No. So yeah, but I know it's really happening out there, Marsha. And I'm sorry you have to go through it alone."

"I've got Larry."

"Larry? Who's Larry? Wait, nevermind. The hitch-hiker. Last name? I can't remember if you told me his name before now."

"Innings."

"Okay. I'll let you know if anything interesting comes up on him, or if there's nothing to be found at all, because that's somewhat more interesting, if you catch my drift."

"Got ya."

"Your next destination's programmed in. It'll be guiding you via text, like before."

"Okay. Thanks. Later."

I end the call and set the phone down between my legs.

"That was pretty good," Larry says, "rushing out onto the highway to show him you weren't gonna wait around for him to decide he wanted to help."

"Oh," I say.

It's not a bad assumption. Did I tell Larry how Gabriel's been tracking me and the twins, though?

Whatever. If he's gonna be riding with me, I should get him caught up.

No holding back.

I hate trusting new people.

"Look, Larry, before I hit the road again, there are a few things I think you should know."

"Back story time? Really?"

"Just... the story so far," I say, shifting into drive and inching forward, watching for a good break in traffic. "What I've seen since I left work today."

"Okay. I'm all ears. Fill me in so I won't fall to the gun."

Oh, Larry, why'd you go and say something dumb like that and make me want to kick you out on the side of the road again?

Those sound eerily like famous last words to me.

# 9. FIRST HOUSE ON EDGECLIFF

The circle of nine step in closer

all to each other, and a crackling ripple

of electric current passes amongst them all,

creating a momentary flash-wall binding them

visually if not quite physically.

At this moment, she can almost feel

something, some tingling in her own flesh,

as if the transfiguration in her waking flesh

is transferring sensation to her dreaming body,

but the feeling passes quickly

and she disregards it as psychic residue

from some quarter of this earth.

Focusing in on the nine again, she sees them

reach out and clasp hands all around the circle,

this time with no crackling ripple of energy. In fact,

all motion and energy in their entire world

seems to stop. The minds of the people freeze

in mid-speech and mid-motion, and then

begin to fade. The dreamer's eyes go wide

and she fears she understands,

but does not yet.

– from a dream

# ONE

"So. You started tailing Phillip and Peter because you thought this Handsome Stranger was in danger from them."

"Yes," I say, turning right off the highway.

"And they left a trail of bread crumbs for you to follow them, to make sure you didn't involve the police – though you wouldn't do that anyway, but I guess they couldn't know that – and to make it easier to leave your friend behind at the truck stop."

"More or less, yeah."

"And on the same day," Larry says, and I can't tell if the awe in his voice is genuine or just very dry sarcasm, "you manifest psychic tendencies."

"Pretty much."

"How connected do you think that is?"

"Could be all of this is, what do you call it, a catalyst?"

"Yeah, catalyst would be the word."

"Yes," I sigh softly, taking a left quickly, hurrying to get out of the way of oncoming lights I somehow didn't notice a moment ago. "They catalyzed me."

"Shit, watch it with those moves, Marsha Bradley," Larry chastises too seriously, wagging a finger at me. "I've been in too many near-misses because people don't watch the road enough."

"Hey now, you hitched of your own free will, and you didn't really even give me a choice about picking you up, so bite me if you think I'm gonna drive any differently than usual just to make you more comfortable or less fidgety."

"All right," Larry hisses between his teeth as his lips stretch into a wide grin. Throwing his hands up, palms to me, he repeats more enthusiastically, "All right!"

We roll along down a long stretch of wide road, farmland on both sides. The houses we pass are either drab and in poor repair, or incongruously well-kept and gaily colored while the land around has been let run to ruin.

Finally, just as I'm beginning to suspect a bug in Gabriel's system has let me run on much further than I should've done, a text alerts me that the road on my right is my next turn. I barely have time to slow to make the turn and maintain control.

Larry keeps his mouth shut, but I can see his fingers tense up around his knees.

There are hardly any street lights out in this part of the world, and things are getting murky quick outside the beams of my headlights.

It's looking like it'll be a clear night though, so at least the weather won't be a problem.

Another text comes through, telling me to look for Edgecliff Road on the left, and house number 737 about three tenths of a mile down it. The road I'm on now is just winding enough that I almost don't see Edgecliff before I pass it, and then once I turn onto it, I stop short.

The first house on the right of Edgecliff is not the destination Gabriel's system has identified for me, and so I have no reason to believe the twins stopped here or that I have any business at this address, yet the name on the mailbox has grabbed me and won't let me go.

It says Brookthorne.

I filled Larry here in on all the broad strokes of my evening, but I left out one little part that seemed small, but really rather isn't.

Jeremy Brookthorne was murdered last at the truck stop, though he was also the first man that Peter or Phillip shot there. Jeremy was their victim, but arriving on the scene and reliving his last experiences, I learned that Jeremy had a victim of his own.

At home, locked away up in the attic.

His wife, Patrice, is still trapped there now.

Could this be the place? It wouldn't be the first time the twins coincidentally passed by a place that's connected to me, though the degrees of separation between myself and Patrice Brookthorne are strange and tenuous.

I'm coming to believe in coincidences less and less as this night goes on.

"Do you know someone here?" Larry asks doubtfully.

"No. But I think I saw her husband die. The man whose body I almost ran over when I got to the truck stop, the last one they killed before they left?"

"Oh, yeah. The motel janitor."

"Something like that, yeah. When I had that vision of what happened to him, I also picked up on his last thoughts, and he was thinking about his wife."

"That's sweet."

"His wife, who he locked up in his attic at some point, wherever they live."

"Not so sweet. Shit. And you think that might be here?"

"Brookthorne isn't exactly a common last name, is it?"

"Guess not. Pull into the damn drive, then."

I do, and my heart's racing.

How long ago did he cage her up there? Did he literally put her in a cage in the attic, or did he just consider the attic to be her cage?

How many sick and twisted individuals am I going to have to clean up after tonight?

I turn off my lights, kill the engine, and pocket my keys as I step out into the night air. I can hear crickets and tree frogs, and for a moment I can smell autumn coming on, though it's much too early in the year for that. I think.

"I can't wait for fall," Larry's saying as he walks around behind the Camry.

I guess he's more comfortable coming up on these places behind me, letting me lead him on so that I take the initial blame for intrusion should anyone be there to greet us.

That's probably too uncharitable a thought. Oh, well.

It's a fat white farm house, two storeys and a pitched-roof attic tall. The siding along the sides and over the porch is grimy, though the lower half of the front has been scrubbed to a pristine state that jars too much with the rest of the outside. Overgrown bushes ring the house, trimmed only along the corners of the porch, which itself is tidy but looks like it could tumble down at any moment. Mail sits in a pile to one side of the steps, showing that the mail carrier isn't willing to brave that porch to reach the mailbox to the left of the screened door.

I find myself rising up those creaky wooden steps before I can think to check for another way in, whether it be by a back door or an open window, but my weight doesn't cause them to collapse. The porch also supports me, a couple of the boards bowing but not breaking as I pass over them.

Larry isn't far behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I smirk seeing him carefully testing every other board with the heel of his shoe before he steps on it.

I don't expect the door to be unlocked here, and holding the screen door open with my left hand, my right hand finds the lock is indeed engaged.

Closing my eyes tight, I concentrate on the images I involuntarily picked up on from Jeremy, from the time right before he died. He was imagining hell as a place where his wife was already waiting for him, though I got the sense he didn't really expect her to be there, which tells me he believed she was still alive. Nay, knew she was still alive. That gives me some hope.

Fixing his last thoughts in my mind, I try to shift my focus to other things he might have known, such as the location of a spare key kept anywhere around the porch. With his doorknob in one hand and the edge of his screen door in the other, I should be able to call it up.

In a flash, I see many hands passing over the top edge of the door's outside frame. I reach up there and run my fingertips along from one end of it to the other, but find no key.

Then, I see a glinting flicker of sunlight reflected off a tiny falling object. It's the spare key, tumbling down to the porch when the door was clumsily slammed by someone, where it laid unnoticed and trodden over and kicked this way and that for days before it finally slid off the end of the porch and into the bush on the left corner of the porch, as viewed from the street.

I race past Larry, who grabs for the screen door to hold it open. I catch a glimpse of his grinning face, like he knows what I just did and he's actually geeking out over witnessing it.

What. A. Freak.

Like I wouldn't enjoy a good freak session with him.

God damn, Marsha, not the time for this!

I stab my hand into the bush and close my fist around the key without having to blindly seek around much longer than a second or two. I pull it out and run back to the door, Larry holding the screened metal outer door open for me and taking a half-bow, still grinning.

I turn the key in the lock and tense up, waiting for the sound of panicked footfalls.

No sound arises in the house whatsoever.

The front door opens on a hallway that bisects the house, stretching all the way down to what looks like a mud room at the back. On either side right past the door, wide stairways lead up to small landings, and then on up to the second floor. Twin coat racks and magazine stands stand on each landing, with a darkly shaded lamp on each stand. The lamps are on, and they are the only light to be seen throughout the place. Darkness coats everything else.

Larry steps past me and begins to go down the ground floor hallway, looking back and forth among the shut doors, I guess trying to decide where best to start snooping. I slap him across the back of the head and start up the right-hand stairs, unsurprised to find him close behind when I make the turn on the landing.

The lamp light off the landing casts a dismal illumination down this upper hallway, barely reflected off the ceiling. Doors here are all uniformly closed, like below, but where downstairs there is a door across from every door, here an uncovered window faces each shut room.

I'm a little tempted to try one of the three doors to choose from here, but I know what I seek in this house is behind none of them.

At the end of this side hall, a catercorner hallway at the back of the house joins both sides of the second storey, meeting in the middle at a steep, claustrophobic stairwell that cuts into the house in a clumsy way that shows the builder almost forgot to put it here. Ridiculous railings hang on both sides, making me have to turn a little sideways as I go up.

"Do we really want to be doing this?"

"Yes."

"I just mean, this isn't a scene the twins have been to, so there's really no justification for you going up these stairs, even under the guise of half-baked vigilantism you've been operating under since you walked out on work."

"I didn't walk out. I got someone to come fill in so they wouldn't be screwed."

"Still."

"Whatever. Shut up."

I realize we've been whispering, and I'm really not sure why. Is Larry afraid of startling a woman who's probably already on the edge of hysterical tension? Am I?

I reach the top of the stairs. It's a cramped little space, the steps continuing on to a point where you can't stand unless you've got the attic drop-down door open. I see the lock holding that hatch closed and curse myself for not checking the rooms below, then realize that I'm still holding the spare key from the front porch.

Squeezing it in my hand, I discover a secret about it.

Jeremy had the lock on the attic door specially made so it matched the front door lock, so the same key could be used to operate both. I guess he didn't trust himself to keep track of too many keys.

How lucky for me.

I set the key into the lock, swallow a mouthful of air, and turn the key.

# TWO

Three weeks ago, the Brookthorne family assembled for the final time.

Chesterfield, youngest of Patrice and Jeremy's sons, was expecting his first child with his pretty young minister's wife Clarice. Clarice had grown up the daughter of her church's former minister, whom had passed the torch all too happily to Chesterfield Brookthorne only seven months prior, right after his daughter had married the boy. They were a storybook couple, perfectly happy perfectly all of the time, and it made Patrice a little sick.

Combing her hair before the bedroom mirror Jeremy had only begrudgingly allowed her to have put in two summers ago, Patrice looked at her face and winced, as she always did when she paid too much attention to her reflection.

She had grown up spoiled by the trappings of a well-to-do family, and all the fantasies of pretty princesshood that lifestyle can inspire in a little girl's heart. She had been too sheltered and naive growing up to realize she would never naturally achieve the beauty of which she dreamt. Her parents had always quietly assumed she would simply correct her physical flaws through plastic surgery after her eighteenth birthday, but it was never to come to pass.

Her family's moderate wealth was embezzled by a trusted family friend who'd talked them into letting him handle their finances. Patrice's mother commit suicide, leaving a note confessing she'd had an affair with the embezzler, and her father never recovered.

He drank himself into a stupor nightly, and by the time Patrice was old enough to get out on her own and make a life for herself, she really had no other choice than to settle for whatever man she could wrap around her finger and keep.

The problem with the man she ended up with was that he would no longer tolerate being her knight-in-shining-armor stand-in after they were married.

He moved them into the house where they would conceive and raise all their children, minus the one and only little girl Patrice would produce, who couldn't survive her first month on the earth because she had come far too early.

Patrice cursed the looks she had failed to inherit from her classically beautiful mother, whom had unfortunately also been classically frail and unable to fend off the advances of any man smart enough to make his moves when the husband was out of the house.

Still, she did her best each day to make herself presentable, and tried to bury deep inside her mind the envy she felt over her daughter-in-law's effortless prettiness. She found nothing particularly distasteful or unwanted in this emotion itself, but she knew it would be disadvantageous to allow it to color her disposition around the members of her family.

"Are you finished prettying yourself up yet, Mrs. Brookthorne?" Jeremy butted into her train of thought rudely from around the bedroom door.

"Almost, Jeremy," she replied, flashing him a winning smile that almost transformed her handsome face into something near to beautiful.

At least, it would have done for a proper husband, she reminded herself.

Jeremy merely rolled his eyes and disappeared back into the hallway, crassly calling back to her, "The kids will be here in an hour, and you're still messing around with your face like it's going to do any damned good, or like anyone's going to fucking notice. You haven't started in the kitchen, so I think you'd best get downstairs as quick as your little can can move."

"You don't notice anything," she whispered after him, cringing as if she thought he could hear her and would return to strike her, then settling back into a comfortable position in the chair and silently chastising herself for showing fear even when no one could see it but the mirror.

Staring herself down in the mirror, she commanded dignity and poise.

She would not be undone by such a low thing.

When the guests began to arrive, coming in a steady stream two vehicles at a time as if the whole thing had been choreographed, Jeremy and Patrice were in fine form as the happy grandparents-to-be, not a trace of resentment or disparity evident between them.

Most of the guests were women friends of Clarice from the congregation she'd finagled her then-boyfriend into attending, chatty smiling faces that Patrice could patronize effortlessly into thinking she adored, though she bothered remembering none of their names.

The first guest of note to arrive was a surprise, both to Patrice and to her husband.

Though he was the second-youngest among his siblings, Rory had always behaved as if he thought he was the baby of the family. He expected all the greater accomplishments to be achieved by his brothers, so he never set the bar high for himself.

This had seemed like a cute trait to his mother, but Jeremy Brookthorne had never been amused. He had pushed and pushed and pushed what he saw to be his weakest son, and in the end, all the pushing made Rory want nothing at all to do with his family.

He dropped out of high school as soon as he was able, shacked up with some friends three counties over, and joined a failed attempt at a post-punk band.

He had eventually reestablished communications with his brothers and Patrice, but had refused to speak to or visit with his father since the day he moved out.

And now, here he was, first of the Brookthorne boys to arrive, and he was actually giving his old man a hug.

It almost would have brought a tear to Patrice's eye, if she'd been more of a sentimental woman.

She was a little shocked to see a tear or two slide down Jeremy's cheek.

"How've you been, pops?" Rory said as he broke from hugging his father and moved toward Patrice to wrap his arms around her. "And you, Mom?"

"We've been doing just fine out here, son," Jeremy said, turned away to dry his eyes on a shirt sleeve. "You should come out more often."

With that, Rory moved deeper into the house, and the grandparents-to-be continued to greet the evening's guests, pointing them into the study to the left past the stairs if they had any coats or other items of which they wished to unburden themselves.

Everything proceeded smoothly from guests' arrivals – including Stanley appearing with the latest in a long line of girlfriends his mother never found worthy enough of him, or any of her sons, and the inevitable realization that Wesley would be late getting in from the airport, so they'd best just get on with things without him – to the unwrapping of gifts.

Just as they were bringing out the cake and other treats – including special recipe desserts Clarice had asked her mother-in-law to prepare for her diabetic friends – Wesley finally came knocking, and Jeremy left the gathering to admit the son they were quietly most proud of.

Wesley Brookthorne had been obviously bright from toddlerhood, had aced all his tests throughout elementary and middle school, and had finished high school in only a year and a half. He'd gone on to medical school, where he was now working on the skills to become a neurosurgeon, or perhaps it was heart surgeon; Patrice could never keep track.

When she heard Jeremy cough loudly the moment after he'd opened the door, she knew something was wrong.

When he returned into the dining room – from which they'd removed the table and usual chairs to make room for two dozen folding chairs to accommodate this party's attendees – followed by Wesley and another young man, Patrice saw what that cough had been about.

Though they were prouder by far of Wesley than their other boys, Patrice and Jeremy had always debated whether they should or should not be concerned by the fact that their second oldest had never shown the slightest interest in a girl.

Patrice had long ago accepted the conclusion that this meant Wesley was gay, and she professed that she was fine with it.

Jeremy wanted desperately to believe that Wesley had been intensely obsessed with his studies, which would of course leave their gifted son no time for a social life, and would not entertain any other possibilities.

Now there was no possibility for denial left to the father-in-law of the expectant mother for whom this shower was being thrown.

Patrice was pleasantly surprised how well she already liked Wesley's young man, though no one else in the room seemed terribly pleased by his presence.

A silence fell over the party as everyone took in the sight of the now-outed Brookthorne boy and his paramour, then uncomfortably looked away and refused to look back at either of the well-dressed, well-groomed, and very well-behaved young men.

The only thing that gave them away as a couple was the fact they were holding hands.

Patrice had to smile at this tactic. It didn't scream we're here, we're queer, get used to it, but it did make clear they weren't going to hide their affection for each other from anyone.

Patrice was suddenly doubly proud of her future-doctor son.

When she saw that Jeremy could see this on her face, she suddenly feared what his reaction would be, later, after their sons and their partners and all the guests were gone.

No one caught the flicker of fear that showed across her face, briefly, like the almost undetectable disturbance upon the surface of a lake caused by a small fish surfacing for only a moment and then disappearing again into the murky depths.

Even Jeremy missed it, but his missing of it on her face did not mean he wasn't aware of the fear she felt inside.

Her fear, or her total acceptance of the lifestyle their most gifted son had chosen, or at least which most everyone at the shower would say he had chosen. Patrice was not herself so sure of the matter. All she knew was that she loved her son, and she wanted him to be happy.

She wanted all her sons to be happy, and their partners, be their women or men.

She never did get a chance to catch the name of Wesley's young man, for she was always surrounded by chatty smiling womenfolk, and Wesley and his handsome friend made their exit before she could fully disentangle herself from the clucking hens.

During the clean-up after the last guest had departed, Jeremy retreated to the study, leaving her to do the dishes and return the folding chairs to the cellar and do all the other cleaning chores by herself, in peace.

The very moment she was done with everything but the returning of the dining room table and chairs to their proper places, Jeremy was in the kitchen doorway, softly beating the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. He was eyeing her with no expression.

"Jeremy, you can't still be mad about that, can you?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Mrs. Brookthorne."

"I mean, Wesley showing up with his... man friend."

"You mean his male lover."

"Call it whatever you'd like, Jeremy. He has a right to his own life."

"And a right to bring it into this home we built for him and his brothers? A right to rub it in all our faces, when we're trying to celebrate the life his younger brother and his wife are bringing into the world? I thought we raised our boys to be a little more traditional than that."

"We weren't exactly Sunday morning parents, Jeremy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jeremy crowed, advancing slowly.

"I just mean that we never really did try to raise our boys with any kind of religious upbringing, Jeremy. We didn't go to Church all that regular. You can't blame me for how he's turned out. You can't be mad at me for loving him as he is!"

Patrice realized too late that her voice had risen to a shrill shriek, something not only that she despised in other women's speech and her own, but which she knew full well would drive Jeremy to the breaking point.

Being as angry as he already was at the very fact his gay son chose tonight of all nights to flout his lifestyle and his lover before the family and all their guests, his wife's behavior in response to that was nothing short of inflammatory to the man's ever-short temper.

Most of the next hour, thankfully, was a complete blank to Patrice afterward.

The next thing she could remember was waking in the attic and finding that Jeremy had locked the hatch.

He would bring food up to her while she slept, and there was a toilet and sink up there, so she was not kept too cruelly without necessities, but there were no furnishings, no blankets, and no change of clothes. There were two towels, and one hanging bar on which to leave one to dry. There was one bar of soap. That was all.

He would not converse with her. He would not answer her demanding bangs upon the floor or the hatch. The one and only time she woke in time to catch sight of him shutting the hatch after bringing her daily meal – yes, he only fed her once a day, what a great guy was that Jeremy Brookthorne – she only managed to get one sentence out of him before he went downstairs again, leaving her alone.

"You tried to leave me after the baby shower, Mrs. Brookthorne, so you really gave me no other choice."

She didn't know at the time that those would be the last words she ever heard her husband speak.

# THREE

I unlock the attic hatch, and this flood of images, sensations, and thoughts comes into my head, cascading across my mind's eye and into my consciousness like electric current.

I wonder for a split-second if we'll find Patrice Brookthorne alive or dead.

I don't have to wonder very long.

There's a double-bulb socket hanging from the center of the central beam in the roof, and the stark blasting light it casts reveals Patrice is alive, but in terrible shape. She's gaunt, her features stretched over her skull as she turns her eyes on us and opens her mouth in a giant O. I can tell she isn't sure whether to be relieved or concerned.

We are strangers to her, after all.

Strangers bearing bad news.

Although, considering...

"What's happened to my Jeremy!" Patrice wails, attempting to rush toward us, but tripping over a loose floor beam and landing roughly on her hands and knees.

She wears the same floral-patterned dress she had on at the baby shower, dirty and spotted here and there with blood and other, less easily identifiable stains.

I try to ignore the smell coming off her as I approach, hands up to show I mean no harm.

The bruising up and down her arms and on her face has almost healed, but though the purple blotches around her eyes have faded nearly completely to match the rest of her skin, her sockets still seem sunken, as if she's been living up in this attic for years rather than weeks.

"How do you figure anything's happened to your husband at all?" Larry asks as he steps up into the attic behind me.

"I'm not stupid," she huffs, painfully getting back on her feet. "Firstly, you're here when he's the one who locked me away. Jeremy would not relinquish his key – or the very fact that I was up in this place – unless something had happened to him. Secondly, you know he is my husband though all I said at first was his first name. You know more than simple burglars would be able to glean from our possessions, so I further gather that you're not burglars. Who are you? I don't see uniforms, so I can confidently assume you aren't officers of any kind."

"You're not wrong there," I sigh, wishing for a chair.

"Dear, where are my manners?" Patrice chuckles, looking madly into a corner. "Here I am, lady of the house, and I haven't offered either of you a seat. Would you like a seat? Downstairs, of course. Be a dear, young man, and help me down the steps. I believe my strength's utterly deserted me."

She steps past me, and I'm thankful she doesn't turn those crazy eyes on me as she makes her way to Larry's side.

He goes down the narrow, steep stairs first, backwards so he can reach up and make sure the very frail Mrs. Brookthorne doesn't tip forward or fall back on what's left of her ass.

I follow the two of them, leaving the attic light on, and the hatch open behind me.

Once we all reach the ground floor, Patrice's footing becomes more sure, and she waves off Larry's attempts to further assist her. She leads us back to the dining room, where Jeremy did eventually get around to replacing the furniture after the shower, although it's clear he isn't much concerned with keeping the house clean in the absence of his wife.

Well, absence of her in any part of the house outside her prison cell, the attic.

Dirty dishes are set at every place around the table, all remains of meals Jeremy ate alone, and which he left here to rot. It's a wonder bugs haven't established a colony on this table, and I can tell that Patrice is marveling at this same fact.

"I'm sorry for my husband's mess, but these are the chairs I've been dreaming about sitting in for weeks. Indulge a widow in her hour of grief."

"So you know?"

"I know enough. Something's happened to my Jeremy, and that's all I need to know to tell me I'm a young widow. Young by my standards, at any rate. Would either of you like something to drink? I'm not sure what he's been keeping around the house, but I can check."

Larry and I both politely decline.

"Would you be so kind as to get me a glass of water then, young man?"

Larry exits the room before Patrice has a chance to tell him where the kitchen might be, but I'm sure he'll find it without too much trouble.

She finally takes a seat at the table, and I sit in the chair beside her.

"Was it a violent death?" Patrice whispers, eyeing me with something horrible in her eyes.

It isn't fear, but a mixture of glee and hopeful expectation.

I can't really blame her for the question, or the hope.

"Yes, actually. He was shot, twice. He wasn't the only one killed, but..."

"None of that concerns me, does it."

It isn't a question, so I don't respond.

"My husband was a good man, but he was never a smart man," she sighs as Larry returns and hands her a glass full to the brim with dusty-looking water.

Patrice doesn't seem to mind, and she downs half the glass in one go.

"Thank you," she wheezes between coughs, smiling.

"No problem. I'm Larry, by the way."

"You should follow your lady friend's example here, Larry. You should have kept your name to yourself. I don't know your connection to my husband's death, but I suspect it isn't anything easily explainable to the authorities. You should be thankful I have a wretched memory for faces and clothing. I'll probably even forget you told me your name."

"I guess we'd appreciate that, ma'am," I say stupidly, then look away and laugh at myself.

"Of course, now that I think about it," Mrs. Brookthorne muses, crazy-eyeing the corner of the ceiling, "I myself might be more than passingly interested in the connection. Care to explain yourselves, my dear strangers?"

"It's a long story," Larry offers, and I turn in time to see him giving a hopeful half-smile and shrug.

He hopes she'll take the platitude and let the rest lie.

She won't.

"I suppose it must be, but I've got nothing but time now. The body isn't here, so I and this house won't be entangled in any of the mess surrounding what comes after a gruesome death. Was it murder or an accident? Wait, I suppose that part's been answered, more or less. But was it intentional murder, my husband a specific target, or was he just a casualty of something bigger than he could ever hope to be involved with? Please tell me it's the latter."

She's grinning so wide now, a wicked glee filling her eyes, and I can't bare to return her crazy stare for more than a few seconds.

"I suppose I always secretly wished for Jeremy to die in such a way that his place in the world would be made painfully, nerve-crushingly clear to him. Was this the case?"

I see Larry's avoiding her eyes as well.

"Well, are either of you going to answer me, or is my directness too much of an affront to your delicate sensitivities?"

She's practically screaming now, but her voice is so weak it cracks on every other word.

I realize with a start that I've been treating her like she doesn't belong to the Peter and Phillip Killed My Loved One Club just because the death of her husband didn't occur in her home, in her presence, or during a home invasion, but she does belong.

Her husband – as despicable as he may have turned out to be in the month before his death, if not long, long before then – was a victim of the twins, and Patrice deserves as much respect, sympathy, and understanding as I gave anyone before her.

Yet, something does feel different here.

She isn't talking about him being a monster, for one thing. Sure, his behavior in locking her away against her will, and being physically abusive just before doing that, point to him being a monstrous man and a terrible husband, but there's been no indication – from her directly, or from the vision I got before freeing her – that he was degenerating in any other way.

Degenerating? Is that what I think was happening to their earlier victims?

Doesn't ring true. Doesn't sound quite right.

She smacks me, and the sting brings me back to her dining room.

"Young woman, is this the respect you show the lady of every house you visit?"

"Bitch, keep your hands to yourself," I hiss, standing and throwing her a look of such disgust and contempt that she recoils.

I hate myself for it, yet strangely feel proud at the same time of the reaction I produce in her.

"Sorry for that," I say, "but really, you didn't invite me into your home. I happened to watch your husband die, though I didn't see the shot that killed him. I know, more or less, who his killers are, and I'm on their trail, and yes, it is much, much bigger than Jeremy Brookthorne or you, Patrice, or any of your sons or even your daughter you never got to raise..."

She winces and then glares at me, her face twisted up in suspicious rage, with just a dash of genuine curiosity.

"So yes, when I came across your house, I decided to come in here and let you out. It doesn't matter how I knew Jeremy locked you away in here. It doesn't matter how I know anything about you or your family. You don't matter, because I have things to do."

With that, I motion for Larry to follow, and I go out into the hall.

I walk slowly down the length of the house, giving Patrice time to catch her breath and catch up with us if she should so please.

"He thought I had a stuck-up sounding name," I hear her say from the dining room, and I can't tell if she's just talking to herself now, or trying to get our attention to return to her, so we'll return to her.

It isn't until we're coming down off the porch that she follows us out. I turn back after I step down off the rickety porch steps. She's standing in the doorway, holding open the inner and outer doors and looking after us longingly. That look makes me shudder.

Larry steps past me and continues on to the car, either ignoring her or unaware she's there watching after us.

"He never did know how to get the mail out of the box," she sighs, looking down at the pile of junk mail, bills, and flyers on the ground next to me. Raising her eyes to my face, sanity making a brief and I'd chance to say rare appearance in her eyes, she says, "I'm sorry."

"All's forgiven," I reply without being sure why I'm wording it like that, but it doesn't matter, because I do need to get going.

Correction: we need to get going.

I guess it's going to take me a while to get used to the fact I have a sidekick now.

Wonder if Larry would mind me calling him that.

Looking at him buckling himself into the passenger seat as I walk up to the car, I imagine not only that he wouldn't mind, but he'd probably want to make a joke out of it. Pick superhero names out for each other either from some old comic, or just make them up whole cloth.

I shudder again, and I haven't the faintest clue why.

I just get in the car, fasten my belt – dunno why we're bothering with belts since we're just going further down this same damn road we're on now – turn the key in the ignition, smile to hear the engine rev as I apply just the tiniest bit of gas, shift it from park to reverse, back onto the road without really noticing how Patrice is staring after us like she still expects more...

I slam down on the brake, eyes glued to the road, unwilling to look back at her.

"Something wrong?" Larry intones in a joke-haunting tone. "Leave something behind?"

"Maybe, and no," I whisper, then face-palm. "It's nothing."

"All righty then."

I call up the last text my phone received to remind myself of the house number we're looking for, show it to Larry so he knows what to look out for in case I miss it, and spare the Brookthorne property not another glance as I speed away.

# 10. ANOTHER HOUSE ON EDGECLIFF

As the astral forms of the circle of nine become clearer

by comparison to the slow degradation

of the psychic images of their post-humankind,

the dreamer tries to focus her attention in

on the planet below the way she impulsively zeroed in

on one single dying star

not a few moments ago. At first, she cannot quite

get the trick of it to work, but once she remembers again

this is a dream, she stops trying with the eyes

and simply wills the picture of the surface of this earth

to zoom in. As if it is a vast computer screen, this happens,

and she instantly wishes it had not.

Clouds of devastation are rising

and swallowing the earth below. Whole vehicles,

buildings, blocks, cities, and even larger areas

are swarmed not by any thing but by a weird

breaking-down of their essential physicality. There

is no fire, and yet all the swiftly swooping view

shows her seems to be falling to ash. Yet

from these ash piles, some of the microscopic debris

is rising, rising, flying up into the sky on winds

that cannot be anything natural.

It is the nine, and they are collecting

the ground bones and flesh of their kind. She cannot

explain how they are doing it, whether by magick

or mechanism, but she understands that the method

does not matter half as much as the act itself.

– from a dream

# ONE

On that first night, nothing else she had the misfortune to encounter before or after would make Marsha Bradley regret leaving work that day more than what she found waiting for her inside 737 Edgecliff Road.

Though she knew it wouldn't be far from Patrice Brookthorne's residence to her next destination, her foot pounded down on that gas pedal and she gave the road all she had. By the time Larry indicated the mailbox Marsha had already spotted, she had no choice but to drive the brake pedal all the way to the floor, causing the Camry's brakes to screech in protest.

With the smell of burnt rubber in the air, Ms. Bradley turned into the driveway at 737, a three-storey thin structure with no ornate traces or intricate designs, just a basic brick front and boring off-white siding. The home's front door was the most interesting feature, catching the eye with a green that perfectly matched the shade of Marsha's car.

The windows were all covered with heavy vertical blinds, closed and hinting at black-out curtains beyond them since no trace of light showed from behind any of the windows, but Marsha and Larry both had the feeling that (more than one) someone was home.

Fat trees extended out from the woods behind the property to cut the house off from hills and fields on either side, shading the yard and effectively fencing it in against potentially nosy neighbors' eyes, though there were no houses for at least a city block on either side.

The feeling of being cut off from all outside view made Larry want to stay in the car, but Marsha stepped right out and started for the house. Eyes darting here and there among all those ominously dark windows, Larry got out, shut the car door softly, and followed her.

"Looks like a house you'd tell a dumb blonde to avoid in a scary movie," Larry whispered, leaning in close to Marsha's ear, "doesn't it?"

"I don't see any dumb blondes, do you?" Marsha put to him without turning her head, and suddenly Larry wanted to turn and go back to the road, try to walk out to the main road, except now he wasn't even sure if Edgecliff had or hadn't been off a main road.

He didn't know this redheaded chick any more than he'd known the twin men he'd hitched a ride from before her, and he wasn't sure anymore why he'd thought he could put trust in her when her prey had proven unworthy of continuing his never-ending journey alongside.

All she did was follow after them, checking in on their victims like a slayer checking the graves of a vampire's victims for the signs of a recent evacuation from beneath the ground. Sure, vampires weren't real, but then he hadn't believed in psychics either, before.

Psychometrists? Was that what someone like Marsha could more accurately be called? He pondered the question as he watched her raise a fist to the door.

Marsha paused before knocking, unsure how to proceed.

Gabriel's program had tracked the twins to this house, and she had no reason to suspect that now of all times it had led her astray, but finding this door shut disquieted her. Sure, the door at Mother Grace's last home had been shut, but her family had been there.

Rattling her head, Marsha chided herself for thinking an open door was part of any pattern. She could trace this faulty thinking back to the fact the door had been open at the smoldering house the Mortimer family had been cut down in, but of course no one had been left there alive to close it again after the twins had left.

Bernadette Masterson-Billings had been in no state to worry about her front door.

Twin realizations struck her: first, that her hand was still hovering three inches from the green door, so she knocked; second, that she had been unconsciously desperate for a pattern to emerge from the chaos she was finding in Peter and Phillip's wake, and lacking one beyond the uninteresting method of execution they employed, she had tried to invent one.

Just as she heard someone work the locks in the door, Marsha's hunger tried to resurface, demanding she return to the car to retrieve at least two varieties of snacks so that she could stuff her face and sate the starving beast in her gut. She would not move from where she stood, though, and so she swallowed the angry hunger and put on a close approximation of a disarming smile. She was unaware of the quiet menace in her face, but when the door opened, the man standing there saw it, and was simultaneously worried and intrigued.

He said nothing for a moment. Marsha and Larry exchanged a silent glance before returning their eyes to the young man that opened the door to them.

Most of his head was shaved, except for a wild tangle of hair that swept back the center of his scalp. It didn't look like hair product had been used, but neither Larry nor Marsha could think how else he would be able to get it to keep from falling down the sides of his head.

He was wearing tight black jeans that were torn around the cuffs, trailing strands of dark denim over the heavy gray boots he wore. He had no shirt on, but most of his upper body was covered in swirling tattooed designs of obscure meaning and exotic origin. It took a moment for Marsha to realize they weren't new patches of ink badly attempting to cover old pieces, but rather an intricate and very deliberate single piece, a nightmarish mural on flesh.

"Can I help you people with anything?"

"In a way," Larry said.

"Someone here was killed," Marsha said, and for a moment mohawk-and-tattoos-man was taken aback, unable to hide the shock that rose at her words.

Not shock at the suggestion or its implication, but at the fact that she knew.

Larry didn't like that reaction.

Marsha was suspicious, but too distracted between fighting her hunger and her suddenly awakened libido.

Mohawk-and-tattoos-man had a damn fine body underneath all that black and red ink, and his muscles and nipples and bone structure were only accentuated by it.

"You're right," he finally said to them, cracking a broken smile to reveal the kind of teeth you might expect from a Brit if you believed the dental stereotypes. "A couple of guys came in with guns just a little bit ago, said they didn't have business with the rest of us, just one roommate in particular. Come on in."

He stepped to one side and waved them past him, and hesitantly, Larry followed Marsha inside.

# TWO

The ground floor was a single long room, terminating in a spiral staircase on the left leading exclusively upstairs and a ridiculously out-of-place fireman's pole on the right serving as the only visible access to the basement. Black-out curtains did indeed cover all the windows at the front and along the sides of the chamber, which made up for in depth and height what it lacked in width. The walls were a kaleidoscope of splattered colors which shone in eery iridescence under the black light bulbs screwed into every ceiling fixture and every lamp set upon the tall end tables placed randomly against the walls.

"I'm Max Wallace Piller, if I didn't say that already," mohawk-and-tattoos man told them as he flung himself back into a black recliner and picked out a book from a stack sitting on the floor next to his seat.

Marsha stared at the large tiles of the floor and the complete absence of rugs or any other sort of carpeting set off alarm bells in her gut, momentarily quieting the din in her head as hunger demanded sustenance, any sustenance, immediate sustenance. The white floor and mismatched black furniture was pleasing to the eye overall, but too clean.

The contrast revealed a cleanliness which Marsha didn't associate with the kind of guy this Max here seemed to be, nor the roommate sitting on a sofa across the room from him.

"That's Jazzy," Max tossed to them without looking up from his book, which he leafed through but didn't appear to actually be reading.

"Jasper Pillar," Max's roommate more formally introduced himself, walking up to them both but only addressing and looking at Larry, to whom he offered his hand. As Larry shook it, Jasper smiled oddly and said, "Pleased to make your acquaintance. You're here about Milo?"

"Is that who they shot here?" Marsha blurted before she could think of any better way to broach the subject.

"Why yes, actually. Interesting that not only would you know someone was killed here, but that someone who doesn't live here did the deed, and how it was done."

Jasper Pillar coughed, stepped back from them without turning around, and continued moving backwards in this fashion, as if he didn't trust them at his back. He sat back down on the couch where he'd been when they came in, but now he stared at them openly.

It disquieted them both, making further conversation hard to start.

The non-residents stood there a full thirty seconds like that, exchanging glances of skeptical suspicion and concern. They looked over to Max, but he was no help as he endlessly flipped back and forth through the pages of a book that first Larry and then Marsha noticed he was holding upside down. They tried to avoid looking at Jazzy altogether as he refused to look away from them. Jasper had a look in his eyes that was something akin to a lion's gaze at a gazelle across the tundra.

Finally Marsha could stand the awkward silence no more, so broke it with a question she suspected was stupid, since she could see no familial resemblance between the roommates.

"So you're both Pillers? Brothers or cousins, or it is just a coincidence?"

"Actually, I can understand your mistake, people make it all the time," Jasper answered as Max continued to ignore them all, "but my last name is Pillar, like a column."

"Oh," Marsha said, reluctantly looking back at Jasper for a moment.

"And Max Wallace over there is a Piller, with an e, not an a."

"Okay," Larry said, stepping closer to Marsha and nudging her arm to get her attention.

She looked at him, and he pointed her gaze toward the spiral stairs, where she turned in time to see a tall, gaunt but somehow still powerful looking young woman coming down to meet them. She was dressed like a dominatrix, all restricting leather and useless chains, and she carried a long, vicious whip over one shoulder.

She wore a smile that made Jasper's hungry gaze look utterly harmless.

"Welcome to our humble abode," she greeted, motioning for her boys to stand, and both non-residents instantly and simultaneously understood that Jasper and Max were indeed this woman's boys. "I'm Bella. Care to tell me why you've come? We didn't invite anyone."

Jasper looked at her and tried to cover a laugh with a terrible fake cough.

Rolling her eyes, Bella elaborated simply, "Today."

"One of your roommates was killed today," Marsha took command of the conversation, stepping toward Bella without fear, which made Max and Jasper visibly uncomfortable as their eyes darted from Marsha to Bella to the floor between their feet. "Within the hour, I'd say."

"Yes, he was."

"I'm following his killers. You seem smart, so I guess you've probably figured he wasn't their first, and today, he's just the latest in a line of targets these guys have been eliminating coldly, methodically."

"I admire them that," Bella said, her smile widening.

"I'm sure you would," Larry broke in, earning him a look of such utter contempt and disbelief from the dominatrix that he stepped back out of Marsha's side field of vision.

Marsha saw that Bella only considered women worthy of consideration, and while she almost admired this trait, she warned herself not to admire the woman exhibiting it here.

Something was seriously wrong in this house.

"Are you trying to join them or stop them?" Bella put to Marsha, suddenly walking toward the pair who didn't belong in this house, whip now held out between her clenched fists and trailing down between her rapid-fire moving legs.

"Stop them, of course," Larry said, looking at Marsha and wondering why she wasn't saying anything else, or trying to get the hell out of this madhouse.

Marsha stood her ground, wondering a little herself why she wasn't turning to run.

She wouldn't show fear, though.

She wouldn't retreat.

And then she and Larry realized together that while Bella had held their attention rapt, Max Wallace and Jasper had moved around behind them, and in the moment Bella's whip cracked out to slash across Larry's calves, bringing him to his knees, the male residents of the house flung their arms around their intruders, Max holding Larry and Jasper, Marsha.

They were too surprised to struggle.

"Whatever your business with those beautiful twins – the only men I've had the fortune to encounter who've proved themselves worthy of complete autonomy – it's finished now. You could tell me your names, but I'm sure I don't care. You won't be getting tombstones."

"Who gets who?" Max Wallace asked from behind his quarry as he allowed Larry to get to his feet, but would not release him.

"Who do you think," Bella returned without turning, simply striding slowly across the room toward the spiral stairs, letting the whole whip drag out behind her.

"Damn it all," Max sighed.

When Larry glanced over at Jasper holding Marsha, Jasper's eyes were alight with dreadful glee and anticipation, and Larry understood at least part of what the bespectacled man intended. He struggled to break free, but found Max Wallace's grip too tight.

"Marsha, you can't let them do this," Larry whispered ludicrously to her, then bit his tongue and laughed at the thought he could say anything their captors wouldn't be able to hear.

"What do you expect her to do?" Jasper said, making Marsha walk toward the spiral staircase as Bella's legs disappeared over the top and into the second storey.

"Sprout wings and fly you kids off away out of danger?" Max Wallace whispered into Larry's ear with a lick, making Larry recoil, as much as he could while still bound by those strong inked arms. "Not very fucking likely. You're ours now, bitch."

# THREE

Jasper led Marsha on up to the third floor, where Bella disappeared before them, leaving Larry alone for the time being on the second floor with Max Wallace.

The inked man released Larry and fished a cigarette out of a squished pack from his back pocket. Larry looked toward the stairs going down, but Max only chuckled around his cigarette and wagged the lighter at him.

A very thin hallway ran up the side of the house from the stairs, leading to doors placed at such lengths from each other that Larry could only guess the first two would open into bedrooms and the last, a cramped bathroom at the front of the house.

There was a trash can across from the first bedroom door, the kind you'd expect to find outside a shopping mall, round with small push doors and a large ashtray set into the lid. Max Wallace leaned against this, tapping his ashes onto the floor in defiance of the house rule the trash can implied.

"Bella likes a clean place, but she likes me so she doesn't bitch too much," he explained, as if Larry cared or was someone to whom he felt a need to explain things. "Want one?"

"Thank you, no," Larry answered awkwardly, fidgeting though he tried to maintain some measure of composure.

He'd never been a prisoner before.

Not like this, anyway.

Max Wallace smoked, occasionally eyeing Larry up and down like he was measuring him up for something, and just as he was smashing the butt out in the trash can ashtray lid, Jasper returned from the top floor, jabbing Larry in the side to get him to move forward.

"Second door," Jasper ordered, continuing to poke and jab at Larry the whole way down the hall.

"You sure are pokey today, aren't you, Jazzy," Max Wallace said from behind them. "I figured you'd be fine for weeks after the festivities we had over the weekend."

"I'm always pokey. You should know that better than anyone, Mister Piller."

"Excuse me very much then, Mister Pillar."

Larry wanted to spin around, grab them by the ears, and bash their heads together so he could rush upstairs, rescue Marsha, and get them the hell out of this house. He didn't, though.

He couldn't be sure these were the only occupants they would have to worry about, and he didn't want to do anything stupid that would diminish what small chance of escape they might have now. If they had any now, he had to remind himself.

Max Wallace's bedroom was all black furniture and black lights, like downstairs, but here the floor, walls, and ceiling were equally obsidianesque. Chains hung from the ceiling over the bed, straps dangled from its sides, and now Larry tried to fight to get away.

He punched Jasper in the gut, surprising the glasses off the freak's face, but Max Wallace returned the blow his roommate currently could not, knocking Larry back against a tall black-stained oak dresser. Jasper regained his feet quickly after grabbing up his glasses.

Larry was not so quick to recover. He slid down onto his ass, his back against the corner of the dresser, his legs spread eagle on the floor.

"I'd say you're going to suffer worse for that, but, really, it was going to be bad no matter what," Jasper hissed and giggled and spat the words out as he lurched his way across the short space to where Larry sat, dazed and in pain and surprisingly only mildly terrified.

The next few minutes spun by in a dizzying whirlwind of motion and Larry could never quite reconstruct it completely. They got his clothes off, every article and stitch. They got him up onto the bed, face up, legs held up in the air by two of the leather restraint collars hanging from the ceiling. Their clothes had vanished at some point as well, and they stood on either side, looking down at him and saying nothing, doing nothing, for several minutes.

"What about your God damned roommate!" Larry finally shouted when his senses fully returned to him, and this outburst actually surprised some reaction out of the standing men.

"I shared a floor with that gimp for two years and was never even sure what his name was," Max Wallace said, spitting into his hand and rubbing the saliva onto his penis.

"Do you have any clue how many people go missing?" Jasper said in a helpful tone, like he was a librarian giving advice on how to use the Dewey decimal system or something.

And suddenly Larry understood everything, or enough at least.

These people didn't care about their roommate being killed because they were serial killers themselves. But then, why didn't they care about losing one of their own?

"Wait, wait, wait," he moaned as Max Wallace began to climb onto the bed, only to back down onto his feet when Jasper leapt up into the space between Larry's spread legs.

"Shut it or we'll cut out your tongue," Jasper hissed, all helpful pretense gone from his voice.

"I'd say you don't have to do this, but I guess you kinda do," Larry sighed, closing his eyes as Jasper got himself ready for the act.

"What the fuck you mean by that?" Max Wallace yelled down at him, leaning in close so Larry could feel the tattooed man's breath hot on his face.

"He's implying we're whipped," Jasper chuckled, digging his fingers into Larry's thighs.

"Guess we'll be showing them who's whipped, won't we, Mister Pillar."

"That we will, Mister Piller. That we will."

# FOUR

Marsha had been alone with the dominant presence in the house for only a few minutes since Jasper helped his Mistress affix her to the wall. Thick metal clamps were closed over her wrists and ankles, binding her tightly in an uncomfortable X. Her clothes had been left on her, but she could see fabric sheers on the floor near her right foot, so she could guess she might be forcibly exposed at any moment.

Except her captor was in no shape to do anything with those sheers, or a tool of any kind.

The moment the young fool in glasses disappeared out of the room and noisily back down the hall and stairs, Bella knelt at a corner dresser and fished around in the contents of the bottom drawer until she pulled out the drug paraphernalia she sought. Marsha could not see what Bella had, or what else the drawer had held, but she could tell it was nothing good.

In practically no time, Bella was turning away from the smooth top surface of the corner dresser with a huge shit-eating grin on her face, the kind of smile Marsha would more associate with a homeless man on a rare bender than on a woman who liked to dominate men, women, and anybody else unfortunate enough to cross her path.

Bella staggered halfway across the room toward bound Marsha, then turned toward the bed and collapsed across its corner, her face buried in the neatly folded covers, her arms splayed out like she was trying to dive into a body of water.

Marsha rolled her eyes, thought about taking this opportunity to struggle out of her bonds, and gave up straight away.

She wasn't the type to damage herself just in attempts to break free.

Thinking about the scenes she'd seen in obscure horror movies she could no longer name, scenes where an already damaged and savaged person had wriggled and yanked to get their already bloody limbs out of binding devices that seemed impossible to break free from, Marsha's burgeoning psychometric sense brought forth imagery far more disturbing.

Not really any more visceral or gory, but disturbing more so due to the fact that it had really happened; in this room, in this house, and at the hands of the people she and Larry had met and been captured by here.

At first, it was a jumble of random sensations on top of each other, overlapping through all her senses and making her feel shortly like a messy stack of bloody dismembered limbs all folding together to form a horrific monster non-body remembering all the ways its disparate pieces had come to be disembodied parts. Then, slowly, one image rose to the surface.

It was another young woman bound here on the wall where Marsha was now caught. On her wrist, Marsha could see a spider tattoo, and she could hear the girl's thought that it was ironic all her tattoos were various arachnids when now she was the fly caught in the web.

This other girl had also considered those scenes from those nameless horrid horror flicks, dismissing the tactic as brutal and utterly impractical.

What was the good of escaping if you could not escape intact?

This other girl had been named Molly, and beyond that, Marsha could discern nothing of much use.

All else that remained of the girl was the horrors she'd suffered, first at the hands and bodies of Jasper and Max Wallace, and then finally at the whip, hands, and blades of Bella.

Except, there was one more interesting tidbit buried in this vision.

Molly had been lured over to this house by an online ad. It had promised kinky sex with two men and one woman, leather-bound but completely respectful of one's safety words and one's personal limitations.

The most exciting part for Molly had been the number one rule in their profile.

Don't tell anyone where you're going.

"So that's how you're doing it," Marsha whispered, eyes shut and caught in the fabric of Molly's last moments, cascading out of order through her mind.

"How who's doing what?" Bella said back to her, mere inches away, shocking Marsha back to reality so hard she flailed in the metal clamps, pinching her ankles and wrists painfully.

"How you're keeping hold of your power," Marsha said triumphantly, spitting in Bella's face. "You're a weak bitch, you know that? You have to have a man bind me. You have to have me held in metal bonds just to have any sort of power over me at all. You may be able to twist men around your little finger, but women, what do you have over us? The men under your power. That's all. Let me out of these bonds, and what power do you have left?"

She stopped there, smiling with challenge in her eyes, daring Bella to release her.

And Bella, high as she was, couldn't see past that challenge.

Smiling back her own warning, Bella retrieved the key to the shackles from the low stand by the door onto which Jasper had dropped it on his way out. She unlocked the clamps and stepped back so that Marsha could step free and stretch. She then picked up her whip from the bed, only to drop it obediently when Marsha shook her head.

"Now why did you do that, Mistress Dominatrix? Do you concede power here?"

"Fuck no," Bella stammered pathetically, confused by her own actions.

Yet she still didn't retrieve the whip a second time.

Marsha was glad for this, but not sure what else she could do here to ensure she and Larry could make a clean getaway.

Then, she slipped, ever so briefly, back into the vision of Molly.

She saw Molly's spider tattoos, large and small, mostly just black outlines filled in with more black, but some with the red hourglasses that marked black widows.

With these ink shapes dancing in her head, Marsha shut her eyes – unmindful of the danger lurking behind the drug-induced cloud in Bella's head – and called out silently for the spirit of Molly to come forth onto this plane, into this house, into this room.

She called Molly up from her non-grave – she had an idea no victim of these freaks ever saw a grave, but was disposed of through other means – and Molly's ghost answered.

The furniture gave the stereotypical little unassisted series of jumps and shakes that paranormal thrillers always uses to induce chills and screams in an audience, but no cold came. Instead, an intense heat built in the room, centered around Bella, and it seemed to bring her out of her fog.

"What the fuck, bitch," she screamed, not sure if she was addressing Marsha or someone else, though she knew no one else was in the room with them.

Yet, now, someone else was there.

Disembodied, but still there.

"This is just one of your old conquests coming back to pay a visit, Bella. Let me walk out of here right now, or I'll see how many more of them I can conjure up, without even trying."

"You're full of shit, you stupid bitch."

Bella grabbed up the whip and raised it in preparation to strike.

The whip wrapped itself around Bella's throat and tightened, moving like a snake through the air, knocking the wind out of the dominatrix and sending her to her knees, choking.

"Have fun," Marsha whispered, looking away and rushing for the door.

She suddenly didn't feel very safe in the presence of this enraged spirit, whose target was at the moment only Bella, but in confusion it could lash out at anyone nearby.

Marsha wouldn't put herself in its path, if she could avoid it.

She couldn't avoid putting herself in the path of the very physically dangerous animals that called themselves Jasper and Max Wallace, though.

She would not leave Larry to their devices.

As she came out into the hall, she heard screams from the lower storey that made her fear she was all kinds of too late, again.

# FIVE

Stepping off the spiral staircase and onto the second floor, Marsha realized with a pleasant start that the voice screaming out did not belong to her new friend Larry Innings, but rather sounded more like the gangly freak in specs.

"Good on you, Mister Innings," she whispered as she approached the second door, back to the wall.

"You mother fucker!" Max Wallace bellowed, but Marsha thought she detected a faint trace of amusement buried in the anger of that voice.

"Not your mother," she heard Larry answer, his voice not attempting to mask amusement, but rather straining to cover any audible sign of pain.

A loud thwack came to her through the door, and she could stand idly by no longer.

She threw open the door and stopped, unabashedly gawking at what she beheld.

Larry was on the bed, nude and bound, his legs held in the air, and though she could see pain in his posture and features, she could see something else written on his face as well: triumph. They had meant to rape him, and he had made the first to try it suffer for it.

Jasper was bent over on the floor, facing away from Marsha, his hands over his crotch, and he would not stop howling. She wanted to go over and kick him like a dog to make him shut up.

Max Wallace, however, was standing unharmed, unamused now, eyes all fury searching for a worthy target.

Marsha fit the bill, and he lunged for her.

In that one moment, with the last known danger remaining in the house flying at her – all ink and sweat and unbridled animal rage mixed with sexual frustration – instinct took over and Marsha raised a hand palm-out toward Max Wallace. Her fingers seemed to spread open slowly, like motion in a dream, while the rapist was still moving at top speed.

The moment he came within an inch of Marsha's open hand, Max Wallace stopped as if he'd hit a brick wall and could go no further, just as suddenly but without the weird facial and bodily impressions to imply he'd hit an invisible wall.

Marsha saw this and knew she hadn't generated a force-field, which was ludicrous but the first possibility to spring into her mind. Instead, she had done something else.

She had created a field upon contact with which Max Wallace was forced to face something much worse than a brick wall.

In the upstairs chamber of Mistress Bella, Marsha had conjured up the ghost of one of these freaks' victims to assist in her getaway, but here, she had called up something more potent and devastating.

The residual fear, suffering, self-blame, loathing, and other associated emotions that every victim of these people had felt before their lonely and horrific deaths had seeped into the fabric of the house. Marsha had tapped into this emotional soup and given it a vent through which to pour into reality, and that vent was Max Wallace.

He fell first to his knees, then over onto his side, his hands clawing at his face as he experienced a hell most just. Marsha watched as his fingers dug at his eye sockets, but once one thumb crushed out one eye, she had to look away.

She wondered at his silence in the throes of the emotion storm, but shrugged it off quickly when she saw again that Larry was bound so uncomfortably on the bed.

"Yeah, me now, please?" Larry coughed, and she could tell he wished he could close his legs, so she made an effort not to look between them as she approached the side of the bed.

She untied him easily enough, glad they hadn't locked him in place as they'd locked her to the wall upstairs; she didn't want to waste any more time searching for a key.

As he gathered his clothes off the floor and dressed, she stood in the doorway, ignoring the pathetic mewling moans coming out of Jasper and wishing Max Wallace would make some kind of a noise, anything so that she could be sure of his suffering.

She usually hated enjoying the suffering of others and made herself stop doing that so that she could consider herself a better person than that, but on this night, inside the house at 737 Edgecliff Road, she wanted nothing more than to revel in their anguish.

She wished she had the time to bind them up in their own torture devices.

"Let's go," Larry said, shoving rudely past her and rushing down to the stairs, which he dropped down three or four at a time.

She shook her head and bit her tongue to keep from yelling at him.

"Not going to let that bother me," she told herself, sparing one last glance for Jasper but not daring to look over at Max Wallace for fear of how he might have further maimed himself.

She went over to the spiral stairs and looked up to where they terminated in the third storey, waited, then smiled when her ears caught the muffled sound of Bella weeping.

Going down the stairs, Marsha felt as fulfilled as if she had finally caught up to the twins, taken both their guns, handed one to Larry, and the two of them had as coldly gunned down Peter and Phillip as the twins had dispatched any of their victims.

She stopped herself there, physically on the stairs and mentally on the train of thought she'd been entertaining.

They hadn't caught up to the twins yet, they still didn't know what it was all about, and while they had done some good here in paying these bastards back on behalf of the people who'd died here and couldn't exact revenge for themselves, it somehow wasn't enough.

She didn't feel a right to this sense of fulfillment.

She wanted to do more.

But what more could she do here? The victims of Bella and her boys were long gone, disposed of through...

Then, it clicked in her head.

How were they getting rid of the bodies here, exactly?

There was no kitchen.

There was no attic.

That only left the basement, for which she'd only seen one access in the house; that ridiculous fireman's pole.

She glanced over at it between the bars of the spiral railing, and saw that Larry had thought about it as well. He was standing near the lip of the square hole around the pole, looking down into the depths below.

"Marsha, you might want to come see this."

"What's down there?"

"I'm guessing they don't do much cleaning down there."

She came up next to Larry and looked down, and if she'd had a Spidey-sense, she had a feeling it would be tingling right about now. There was old dried blood on the floor in drag marks coming away from where the pole met the basement tiles, which matched the flooring on the first floor and in the upper storey hallways.

"So there's someone else here."

"Looks that way," Larry said.

She moved to touch his arm reassuringly as his eyes remained glued to what they could see of the below-ground floor, but thought better of it and instead punched his shoulder. She hoped he would laugh and maybe punch her back a bit, but he didn't react at all.

Then, hell came down the stairs.

She couldn't be sure later how neither of them had heard the danger coming down for them.

Max Wallace burst out of seemingly nowhere, shoving Marsha hard toward the open space in the floor. She spun as she began to fall, so she was able to see that he still had one of his eyes, but his face was twisted in pain and fury and barely looked human anymore.

As her back slammed into the pole and her entire frame thrummed with the impact, she saw Max Wallace turning slowly toward Larry, as if he'd not considered Marsha's hitch-hiker a viable threat and so hadn't really seen him there. Larry had some piece of black furniture raised in his hands, but Marsha couldn't make out what it was.

She was falling, and Larry had no time to reach out to grab her hands, and the basement swallowed her whole.

# SIX

I manage to grab the pole in mid-fall, but the landing's still pretty rough.

The impact travels up through my whole body, making my upper and bottom teeth slam together dangerously fast. Thankfully my damn tongue wasn't in the way.

It takes me a minute to steady myself before I can look around.

I want to look up, call up to Larry to see how he's faring against mohawk-and-tattoos man, but I can't ignore my immediate surroundings. Anything could be down here.

As my vision clears, I see the occupant of the house's underground chamber, and I feel like throwing up. It's a kid with Down's syndrome, maybe between twelve and sixteen years old. They've got it wearing a hospital gown, and its hair is so long and unkempt I can't make out if it's a boy or a girl. It looks at me with suspicion in its eyes; clearly it hasn't had a visitor in a long, long time. A living visitor, anyway, as the drag marks in blood tell me.

"Rodent not hungry," it says, shying away from me towards the far wall. "Rodent won't do it. Rodent only eats and cleans up after self. Rodent won't do other thing."

Rodent just told me all I need to know. There's a door under the spot where the spiral staircase rises in the upper floors, and I kneel over in front of it as my gorge rises. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out, and suddenly my hunger's rising instead of my gorge, demanding food, any food, immediate mounds of food.

I beat it back down into my gut, compose myself as best I can, and stand to face the poor unfortunate prisoner they've been keeping down here for God alone knows how long.

"I'm Marsha," I say, trying to sound as nice and harmless as possible.

"I am Rodent," it says, smiling its crooked, fowl smile.

It's truly harmless. It doesn't know what to do anymore with a living person for company.

The furnace is in one far corner, a toilet and little sink in the other. A low table sits in the middle of the room, covered in blood and bits of gore. A trash can like those upstairs is against the right wall, while the left has a little kitchenette set-up.

A stovetop and oven, with one pot and one pan hanging on the wall above the stove.

A small stack of transparent plastic drawers contains knives and various other utensils.

Rodent is sitting at the one chair in the basement now, and thrums its fingers across the surface of the table.

I turn to the door, but look over my shoulder at Rodent.

"Rodent can't ever go out. Rodent's door always locked. Rodent sorry, nice girl."

"That's all right," I sigh, knowing it was too good to be true. "Not your fault."

"That's wrong!" Rodent screams, pounding its fists on the bloody tabletop. "Everything is Rodent's fault! Everything! All the time! Rodent know this. Why you lie to Rodent, nice girl?"

"I'm sorry," I choke out, a little fearful now, my hand reaching behind me blindly for the doorknob. "I was confused."

"Rodent is confused, all time. You smart, nice girl. You should not lie to Rodent. Cap pinches?"

"Got you."

"What?"

"Okay."

"Okay!"

It smiles again, and I can't help thinking about the kind of meat those nasty crooked teeth have been gnawing on.

If things had gone only a fraction differently upstairs, it would have been my meat and Larry's that Rodent would have to choke down, sooner or later.

A terrible question occurs to me, and I don't want to ask it, but I have to.

"So, do you cook for them upstairs?"

"Rodent, cook for them?"

It cocks its head to one side, then cackles profusely, pounding its fists up and down the edge of the table.

"That a good joke, nice girl! No, Rodent only cook for Rodent."

"Oh. Okay."

I realize my hand found the knob, even though I know it has to be locked.

Except, the doorknob is telling me something different.

Max Wallace likes to tempt fate, it tells me. Max Wallace believes so profoundly in the obedience of their little pet corpse-eater down here that he doesn't believe they need ever keep this basement door to the outside locked. And so, he generally comes down here and unlocks it, only making sure to lock it again when he knows Bella's going down to empty the trash.

The knob turns.

Behind me, the door cracks open.

I did it all as quietly as I could, but Rodent still heard it. It's looking at me with shock, disbelief, and just a pinch of awe in its face.

"Rodent's door not locked?"

It can't believe what it's saying, let alone what it's seeing.

I step to one side and fling the door all the way open.

Without a word, it rushes out past me. I barely move in time to see it sprint over the top step and into the backyard. By the time I get to the top of the stairs myself, Rodent is nowhere to be seen. All I see are the four vehicles that logic dictates belong to the three living and one deceased resident of the above-ground levels of this house, all parked in the grass.

I can't guess how they happened to acquire this particular housemate, and I'm sure I don't want to know. I can't help trying to figure out some resemblance between it and the three I've seen, but no features seem to match in my head.

I haven't seen Milo's corpse yet, though.

Here, I might just skip viewing the body the twins have left behind them.

I just need to get back in the house before Larry gets himself killed.

# SEVEN

Marsha returned to the front of the house, having quickly given up wondering to where Rodent might have run. She was reaching for the front door, that green door so random and yet so suggestively meaningful in the fact that its color and shade exactly matched the Camry. She was about to go back into the house when her own horn blatted, and she swallowed a scream.

She rounded on her headlights coming on, flipped Larry off even though she couldn't see him to be sure it was him, but she knew all the same that it was. Covering her eyes against the glare, she ran over to the car, smacked the hood, and rested her ass there, showing she didn't mean to leave this place just yet.

The headlights went off.

The engine went off.

Larry, lighting a smoke, stepped back out into the warm night and looked at her over the driver's side door.

"Can't believe you left the keys in the ignition."

"Did I now?"

"Must've done. Why aren't you ready to get the hell out of dodge yet?"

"If I was ready for that, we'd be heading back to my place to snog, kid. Instead, I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing. I have a body I need to see."

"And why is that?"

"I don't know, either, but it's as good a system as any. You have any better ideas?"

"Sure. Don't go back into the house with the three psycho killers. How's that fetch ya?"

"I like it, kid, I really do, but I can't avoid it. There might be something waiting for me with this one."

"Something like what?" Larry asked, blowing smoke out over their heads.

She thought that was a good question.

She couldn't really say what she expected, but she had a feeling nonetheless that with one of their victims, the twins might leave some clue as to how she might more quickly catch up to them. Maybe she'd find a hint as to what she could do once she had caught up to them.

She shook her head, considered bumming a smoke off of Larry, and laughed.

"No thank you very much," she murmured, pushing off from the car and starting up toward the house again.

Larry knelt to crush out his cigarette, pondered saving the butt in a pocket or behind his ear, and decided it would be best to deposit the little piece of DNA evidence in the ashtray in Marsha's car. This done, he shut the car door quietly and hurried to catch up to Marsha.

Inside, Max Wallace was laid out unconscious where Larry had left him.

Marsha looked for the piece of furniture Larry had used to waylay the naked, inked rapist, but nothing looked out of place. She clucked softly to herself at this trait, the putting back of an object in its right place, in a strange house where he had been bound and sodomized.

Larry was turning out to be a very surprising individual indeed.

She would definitely have to keep him around.

Marsha skipped a random path up to the stairs just so she could step purposefully over the prone body of one-eyed Max Wallace, sending digging little thoughts down into him to churn up the emotion storm she'd cast upon him upstairs. As she went up the stairs, she stole a glance over to his face to watch it twist in torment, and covered this with a wink to Larry.

She wasn't sure why she cared, but she didn't want him to suspect what she'd done.

Up onto the second storey they went, where they heard low sounds of weeping from Max Wallace's room as they approached the door to Milo's.

Spinning to face Larry, Marsha put him on the spot even though she thought she could guess the answer.

With a nod to the bedroom door further down the hall, she asked, "What did you do in there?"

"Well," Larry stammered, caught a little off guard, but gathering himself quickly to answer without letting his voice waver. "It was just this move I saw in a snuff film once. Don't judge. Anyway, this chick, the victim of the piece, got away from one of her tormentors by letting him get his dick all the way... I mean deep, deep into her, then she twists her hips real quick, and... snap." He paused, closing his eyes and smiling as he savored the memory of how he'd bested them before finishing, "Worked like a charm."

"But..."

"Yeah."

"You had to let him all the way into you. That must've been hard. Wait, I'm sorry, I..."

"It's cool. Yeah, I did, but it wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. I'm not gay or anything, but to you I'll admit that, yeah, I've kinda always been curious. Between you and me, if they hadn't been being such jackasses about everything, I woulda let 'em keep going. But anyway..."

He nodded toward the door behind Marsha, and she spun back to open it.

# EIGHT

Rodent exploded into her freedom.

She had once known her name and could still hum the tune to the song her mother had taught her to help her remember special details like her name, her address, and her phone number, but the words to the song had scattered away from her long ago.

Humming that special little tune, real low so no one could hear it, she had crouched behind one of her keepers' cars when the nice girl came up out of the basement after her. The nice girl had seemed sweet and good enough, and had opened the door for Rodent to escape, but Rodent had learned not to trust anyone more than once.

Once the nice girl was gone around the side of the house, Rodent stood triumphant, the biggest smile she had worn in many years stretching her face. She breathed the night air in deep, and wanted to scream out her joy, but clapped both hands over her mouth instead.

The nice girl might have only been a lucky escapee of Rodent's keepers; she had no way of knowing that her abductors had been effectively neutralized. She feared they would swoop down on her any moment, so she fled into the woods behind the house.

She was giggling with every step she took further away from them, even though she had no idea where she was going, if anywhere. She didn't really care, though.

Any place would be better than that horrible basement.

She had never liked what they made her do down there, but starvation had broken her first strike against their plans, and fear of direct torture had kept her eating the poor, poor people foolish enough to fall under Bella's schemes.

Yes, Rodent remembered Bella's name, very well she did, even if her own true name had long ago gotten away from her.

Sometimes Bella would stand over the hole around the pole and whisper it to the other housemates upstairs, and then they would write it down on scraps of paper. They would shred these pieces of paper into tiny flapping ribbons, which then descended around the pole and collected in small heaps over days.

Rodent ignored these teases until the mess bugged her, and then she just threw it all in the trash.

"Rodent can't read," she told a tree as she passed it, thinking back on those and other little games the upstairs people had liked to play.

She ran on and on until her lungs began to burn and her legs throbbed, and then she finally let herself stop to lean against a tree. After a minute, she sat down on the ground, resting her back against the hard bark of the trunk.

Her eyes wandered over the darkling scene of the forest around her, and she was unafraid of the darkness. She even forgot to be afraid of the mean people in that house, just as long ago she had forgotten that one of them had once been nice to her.

The name she had forgotten was Miranda Dorsen, and her big sister had been Bella.

She tried to think about what she should do next, but nothing came to her. She wondered why she hadn't dreamed about this moment, and a tear came to her eye.

Freedom had seemed impossible for so long, that to be free now, she kept having to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't asleep and caught in a pretty dream.

The nice girl had been so pretty, with such wild red hair. Rodent wished she had red hair like that.

"Rodent will find the nice girl!"

She jumped to her feet and prepared to run back to the house, determined to throw her arms around the nice girl the moment she found her, but two things stopped her.

First, she forgot which way she had come to get to this spot where she now stood.

Second, she remembered who else might be at that house, and so gave up her plan to return there.

Perhaps she would run into the nice girl again, somewhere else.

Somewhere safer.

Frustrated, exhausted, alone, and slowly realizing she was a little bit hungry, Rodent leaned back against the tree again, but stayed on her feet. She didn't know why, but she wanted to be standing in case she spotted something she wanted to follow.

Looking up at the sky, a tiny flitting shape between branches high above her caught her eye.

"Whoa," she moaned, slowly pushing herself off from the tree.

She moved to keep the flying shape in sight, even though it was hard to follow with the sky so dark behind it. Something about it intrigued Rodent, called to her on an animal level that no one – Down's syndrome or not – could have denied.

She ran left and right and back again to keep the silhouette in sight, until finally it seemed to hover in one spot, and she got a slightly better look at it. Its wings were massive, and beat the air slowly to keep it aloft above the trees. Its body looked stunningly familiar.

"Baby," rodent crooned up to the far-off flying shape, hoping it could hear her.

For a moment, the airborn infant turned its face down upon her and smiled, but from the ground, she could not see its expression.

Rodent had witnessed something miraculous, a sign of the coming change in her world, and the image would stay with her for the rest of her life.

Her long, very long and strange life.

# NINE

Milo's room was unlike any other part of the house. The floor was covered in a thick brown carpeting. The walls were papered with comic strips overlapping to make it seem like one vast story was told around the room.

Milo himself was sprawled across his bed, which was nothing more than an unsheeted pillow-top mattress on the floor. It seemed the twins had caught him in the middle of changing to go out, because he had one pile of clothes on the floor next to the mattress, a shirt and pants laid out beside his body on the mattress, and he was wearing nothing but boxers and socks.

He was lying face down, which was a mercy because they'd shot him through the back of the head. Marsha supposed there wasn't much left of his face. Larry stared at the pattern of the blood splatter and wondered which chunks of gore in it had been which parts of the poor sap's face before tonight.

"So these fuckers just let the P-brains waltz in and do this? Why wouldn't they care?"

"Because Milo here wasn't involved in what they were doing, Larry. Look around you. This room is nothing like their rooms. He likely didn't know and didn't care what they were doing in their rooms, and they didn't care what he did, either, as long as he wasn't getting in their way. And tonight, Bella was too impressed by the twins to care she was losing a paying roomie."

"Ah. Rent supplement."

"Bingo."

"Damn. What a shitty way to go, surrounded by no one who cared, no one who'd even bother notifying your next of kin."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I'm sure they were planning to just toss him down to Rodent."

"Down to what? Who?"

"The girl they were keeping downstairs. They were forcing her to survive by cannibalism."

"Can we kill them please?"

"Not in my job description, Larry."

"You can just look the other way while I do it."

"Mister Innings," Marsha sighed, facing him and grabbing the sides of his face so he couldn't look away from her, "do you really want to go down that road? We may be, according to popular opinion, doing something that can be construed as aiding and abetting these bastards by not just handing this chase over to the cops. With me so far?"

Larry nodded.

"You know my angle on that. I know it's stupid, I know I'm being paranoid and that the vast majority of police officers are beyond trustworthy, but I just really don't care. They give me the wiggins. And they'd botch this no matter what."

"Because they want you."

"That's right. They want me following them, they want no police involvement, and they still have that God damn kid to keep me in line if I should even think about changing my mind."

"Are you? Thinking about it?"

"I'm thinking more about how much I'm going to scarf down when we get back out to the car, is what I'm thinking about. No, I'm not giving this up. Kid or no kid, I'm going to catch up to them, and I don't care how long it takes."

"Was there a point here?"

"Yeah, fucker," she said, releasing his head so she could slap his cheek, lightly. "We may be doing this one kind of illegal thing, but don't take that to mean we have a license to disregard the law entirely. Would that we could, but I'm not a vigilante."

"Or a superhero?"

"Do you see a cape or some stupid fucking mask on my face?"

"I don't think a cape dangling off your face would look very fetching."

She smacked him across the face again, harder, and turned away, avoiding looking down at the body as she spun.

The room was so bare – aside from carpet and mattress and comic-strip wallpapering – that Marsha was tempted to open Milo's closet to see what else she could ascertain about him from its contents, but decided against it. She would let him keep some measure of privacy.

"You know what I meant."

"And you, Window Woman, should know I'm mostly kidding. That is what they called you, though, isn't it? Kind of a superhero-ish nickname if I ever heard one."

"Doesn't matter what they call me," Marsha said, not sure herself if she believed what she was saying, but she couldn't dwell on those obscure possibilities.

She had to try something, while she was still here, while she still could.

She leaned down, still looking away from the body, and wrapped her hand around the half-naked dead man's ankle.

She took in a smear of random cross-sensory information. She learned that he had worked as a messenger, a courier, and yearned to pen an original, ongoing comic strip series, but had a severe lack of original ideas with which to spin one out. She also learnt that his closet was filled with notebooks upon notebooks of old drawings, some cartoonish and some in a more realistic style, but he had given up the art long ago, choosing to wait until inspiration brought home the concept that would make him a comic-strip creating star.

What she failed to learn, however, was anything of even remote relevance to the case of Peter and Phillip. She released the corpse ankle and got back up to her feet, shaking her head. Larry put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off and moved to leave the room.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing that helps," she sighed, stepping over the threshold.

She expected a surprise strike from one of Rodent's keepers, but none of the murderous fiends was there.

Larry was also cautious as he exited the shot boy's room, looking both ways down the hallway before stepping fully out of the bedroom.

They heard nothing from upstairs or the other second floor bedroom, so they hurried to the stairs and down to the ground floor, where they weren't terribly surprised to find Max Wallace gone. There was blood on the floor where he'd fallen, but no body.

"Damn," Larry hissed, flattening himself against the wall and peering up the spiral staircase.

"Shut up," Marsha said, laughing loudly at him. "Let's just get out of here."

She walked down the length of the lowest above-ground floor, threw the front door open, and marched out into the night without looking around to see if anyone was waiting to spring out at her. She was opening the driver's door and getting into her seat before Larry was even halfway out of the house. He approached the car cautiously.

"He's not in here," Marsha yelled at him through the windshield, rolling her eyes when he peered into the back seat anyway before getting in beside her. "Dumbass."

"More like careful ass, thank you very much. I don't want any tagalongs."

"You mean besides you?"

He ignored this remark and fastened his belt.

Marsha's was already on, and Larry glanced fleetingly around in all directions as she started the engine and backed out of the driveway.

"Isn't the way off this fucking road the other way?" Larry posed querulously.

"Yes."

"Then why are we going further down their street? Do you want them to box us in?"

"Guess that's a chance I have to take."

"What if I don't want to? And why the hell are you going this way!"

"You're stuck with my choices tonight, Larry my man, and I don't like it either, really, but this is the way we have to go." Holding up her cell phone, she went on, "The twins' next stop was this way. Last house on Edgecliff, the directions say. No way around it."

"We can't stop for ice cream first?"

"That's random."

"Isn't everything?"

# 11. LAST HOUSE ON EDGECLIFF

They have demolished their own kind

before the larger Armageddon could arrive,

and while she can almost appreciate the sentiment

behind such an atrocity, she does not grasp

why they would do this next thing. Is it

to some form of memorial? Are they foolish

enough to think they can construct anything

to survive in the face of the hungry dark

when stars cannot?

Returning her focus to the more purely

ethereal side of her vision, with the planet below

returned to its merely vast and semi-distant

background representation – and trying not

to notice that she can now see stars dimming out

from the corners of her eyes – the dreamer watches

the circle of nine as the cloud of post-humanity's dust

comes into the place where they are.

– from a dream

# ONE

Edgecliff continued for miles past the house at 737, winding this way and that over low hills and into thicker and thicker stands of trees until they were driving down a little lane through the dark forest, which became the driveway of the last house past a point marked not in road surface but only the standing of a small mailbox to the right of the road.

There was no house number, only reflective lettering spelling out a family name that made Marsha stop the car short and back up just so she could double-check it.

"I'll be damned," she said, grinning. "Tardisians. That has got to be on purpose."

"What?" Larry blurted, looking from the mailbox to the girl driving and back to the mailbox again. "Because their name has Tardis in it? It doesn't have to be Who-related. Could just be a coincidence."

"There's a beast on the endangered species list if I ever knew one," Marsha uttered softly as she advanced again, slowly passing under the intersecting tree limbs.

They rounded one final slow curve, and the trees parted to reveal a yard lit just barely by ambient globes resting atop tall blue poles set around the yard. The light poles were a clue, but the house was a revelation; the name was no accident, and the people it belonged to must have legally changed it in honor of the British sci-fi show they obviously adored.

The house was Tardis blue, and while its shape was not a larger-scale reproduction of a police telephone box, its front door was a perfect copy of the entrance to the Final Time Lord's magnificent time-traveling machine. Marsha gasped at the detail work on that door, and as she pulled her car up in the paved ring in front of the house, her eyes kept looking for empty space around that door, expecting it to be a real life Tardis and not just a door into a house.

Larry was out and lighting a smoke as soon as Marsha killed the engine.

"Those things'll kill you," Marsha called over to him distractedly, unable to take her eyes off the front door as she stepped out of her green car.

"Tonight, I'm hoping so."

Marsha pounded on the hood as she walked past it, her eyes glaring at Larry over the car, and though he wanted to deny her anger by ignoring it, ignoring her, he could not look away. He could see in her eyes what she thought about that suggestion.

"Okay, not funny, I get it. Now are we going inside?"

"Where do you think I'm going, asshole, the moon?"

She stepped up to the door and, with episodes recently watched with Jakie in mind, was tempted to snap her fingers. She almost face-palmed at that thought, but balled her hand into a fist and rapped her knuckles on the door instead.

She realized suddenly that she had forgotten to eat anything when she left the last house. Her hunger had seemed so strong there, briefly, but then it had gone, as if it were a separate, conscious part of her respecting that events necessitated a delay on eating.

The thought of it almost resurrected that feeling of starvation again, as if memory were the keys to opening the door into a hungry void inside her that could never be filled, but then the door into the Tardisians' house opened, and her hunger subsided again for a little while.

Larry and Marsha heard the wailing cry of an infant and wondered at once how they hadn't heard the faintest hint of that sound before the door opened.

A child of about four years of age stood there, thumb in his mouth, eyes wet. He held the blue door's inner handle like it was the hand of a parent, and his streaming eyes begged for comfort, even from the strangers he had come to admit into his family's home.

"Little guy," Larry said in a soft paternal tone, kneeling to look the kid in the face, "are you all right?"

The kid shook his head, but smiled a little that these visitors were nice.

Marsha walked past the boys and into the foyer of the house, large and a bit dizzying with its massive dangling chandelier and wide gilded staircase leading to a landing that hovered in the center of this massive chamber and led left and right into opposing upper hallways.

She hadn't quite expected a reproduction of any Tardis interior, but she hadn't been prepared for this extravagance, either. Every wall had bookshelves built into it, so the whole house looked like a great library out of some big-budget movie, and thin but sturdy wheeled ladders stood along each wall. It looked warm and inviting in shades of amber and green.

The foyer let into the other ground floor rooms though archways carved to display what Larry took to be mythical beasts and heroes, but Marsha recognized at least some of them as companions and enemies of the Doctor. She couldn't help smiling at the detail.

Marsha ignored the rest of the first floor and the temptation to explore its bound-to-be-stunning rooms. She took the first step, then looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes.

Larry was holding the thumb-sucker's hand. The sight was sweet, and would have made just about any other woman swoon a bit with feminine affection for boy and man, but Marsha had no intention of producing anyone's brood of offspring, so she turned back to the stairs.

She would not let herself be affected.

Larry smirked, seeing her resolve against giving in to any mothering instinct.

"Is lady not like you?"

The kid spoke around his thumb, so Larry couldn't understand him for a second, but once comprehension dawned, he assured, "Oh, she likes me, she just doesn't want me to know it. Or maybe she doesn't want herself to know it. It's been... a busy day."

"Busy day," the kid repeated, shaking his head with an oddly adult wistfulness and melancholy on his face.

Larry tugged the boy along gently toward the stairs, but the kid yanked his hand back and shook his head.

"Not coming up with us? What's up there?"

"Sibbings," the boy said, stark terror across his face making Larry reconsider following Marsha himself. "Bad thing happen. Biggest brother not home to stop it. Stay here?"

"Sorry, kiddo," Larry sighed, looking up at Marsha as she reached the top of the stairs and stood in indecision on which hallway to try first. "Can't help it. I'm stuck with whatever direction she leads me in. Shut that door though, would you?"

He didn't wait to see if the boy would do as told. Larry bounded up the stairs and tapped Marsha's right shoulder as he stepped up on her left side. She looked right into his face and he shrugged at her annoyed expression.

"Let's try the left one first, okay?"

"As good as any, I guess," she said.

The boy watched them from his place by the open front door, and they disappeared into the left-hand hallway. Mickie, now made by the gun the second youngest of the Tardisian clan, never saw the body approaching the house behind him, never saw the shadow crossing the threshold, and was never aware of danger until the hand fell over his mouth.

# TWO

Marsha and Larry didn't get much further than three steps into the hallway on the left side of the Tardisian's divided second floor when they were stopped by a set of ten-year-old twin girls stepping out of the bedrooms to either side. They moved like mirror images of each other, wore the same frilly yellow dresses, and the only detail that told Marsha and Larry that these girls weren't a trick on the eye was their hair: on the left, long; on the right, boyishly short.

"I'm Susan," said the one with long hair.

"Ace," the tomboy introduced herself curtly, folding her arms over her flat chest and eyeing Larry suspiciously while ignoring Marsha completely.

"Larry and Marsha," Marsha said, folding her arms and regarding the little tomboy with big-sisterly contempt until Ace looked away from Larry and nodded to acknowledge her.

"You aren't police, are you?" Susan asked, eyes brightened by hope.

"No," Larry said, looking over their heads and further down the hallway.

"All the same, you're here about our baby sister," Ace said all in a rush, face reddened by what Marsha thought might be shame or impotent rage.

Larry heard the word baby and his knees almost buckled underneath him. He reached a long arm out to steady himself against the wall, and Susan stepped toward him, concern on her little face. Seeing this, Ace rolled her eyes, and Larry and Marsha glanced over to each other, each swallowing a little laugh inside a cough.

Then they remembered why they were in this house.

"Yes," Marsha said, and the nigh-identical girls stepped closer to each other.

"We're nobody official," Larry explained, "but we're following the... people that came into your home tonight. We hope to catch up to them within the night."

Marsha eyed him sidelong, and he winked at her conspiratorially.

"They didn't come this way," Susan said, standing on her tiptoes to peer between the intruding adults and down the opposite hallway.

"Sarah Jane doesn't want us to call the cops yet," Ace said to Marsha, now ignoring Larry. "I guess if you guys are giving 'em the chase, the cops'd be kinda redundant, huh?"

"Something like that," Marsha said, unable to conceal a grin at the kid's words.

"This one doesn't like the cops involved either," Larry leaned down to whisper between the girls before standing back up to wink at each of them. "I think these assholes would be better off if the cops were coming for them instead of her."

Susan giggled straight away, hands to her mouth, and Ace even let out a few chuckles that seemed almost entirely genuine.

Then they had one of those horrible moments when it came back to them what had just transpired within their house, and they wrapped their arms around themselves.

"Let's go," Marsha said to Larry, nodding over her shoulder toward the other side of the house, and he was eager to follow her.

He wasn't thrilled with what they were about to see, but he didn't know what he could do for these girls, and he didn't think Marsha would give him enough time in this house to properly figure it out.

They walked out onto the brass-railed landing. At the stairs, Marsha looked down and saw that the front door was now closed. She didn't think about where the little boy who'd let them in might have gone. Larry assumed the kid was hiding in a downstairs room.

Neither of them had thus far considered where the parents might be, but in a flash both of them stopped, caught by the fear that this was now a house full of orphans. Yet, if Mister and Missus Tardisian had been dispatched along with their baby, wouldn't their twin girls have mentioned something about it?

A teenaged girl appeared at the open end of the hall before them, and neither Larry nor Marsha could be certain if she'd come out of one of its rooms or materialized out of thin air. She had blonde hair, like all her siblings they'd seen so far, and it was pulled back in a loose ponytail that she had tossed over one shoulder. She was chewing on loose strands of hair distractedly, which undermined the threatening stance she held to show the intruders she was unafraid.

"And who exactly are you folks?"

Her awkward tone might have made them laugh, but Larry was starting to wonder about that kid downstairs, and Marsha was too busy trying to decide how best to ask this girl if her parents were alive or dead when she already knew one of her sisters had been killed.

The hair-chewer recognized something in the look on Marsha's face, and brushed the loose hair from her own face.

"I'm Sarah Jane, and no, those pricks didn't kill our parents. Dad died a while ago, and Mom cut out on us after little Martha was born. In effect, we are orphans. In case you were puzzling over how to broach the subject."

"I'm sorry," Larry said, taking one step toward Sarah Jane, but the girl gave him a warning glance that froze him in place.

"And I know your names. I heard you talking to Susan and Ace, but names don't tell me what you're doing in our house. Are you here to clean up after the gunmen?"

"Hell no," Marsha spat, unable to contain her rage at that suggestion.

Sarah Jane cowered back a bit from Marsha's anger, but regained her composure quickly enough to stop Larry moving toward her again with just a look.

"Good. I get the impression neither of you are fond of our earlier intruders, which I like, but there are still too many blanks. Why are you here? How did you even know to come here?"

"Long story," Marsha said, and walked up to within inches of the teenaged Tardisian so she could put her hands on the blonde girl's shoulders. "We're friends, is all you really need to know. With the obsession I'm sure your folks had before... well, everything that happened – and that's none of our business so we won't pry on that front – I think you can appreciate us wanting to keep some mystery about us while we're here. Okay?"

"Fair enough," Sarah Jane replied.

It looked like she wanted to smile, but she held her face expressionless, unwilling even to shed a single tear.

"Are you the oldest?" Larry asked.

"In the house presently," Sarah Jane said, attempting a monotone but unable to mask a slight warbling in her voice, the only hint of the emotional turmoil she was desperate to conceal. "Our older brother John Smith is at work. He doesn't know what's happened. Yet."

Her words made her eyes moisten, so she looked away from the unhostile intruders, smiling at the wonderful fact they had no guns in their possession. None that she could see, anyway, she had to remind herself. The first two had seemed harmless at first, too.

For all of fifteen seconds.

"This way," she said to the young adults, turning and leading them down to the last bedroom on the right.

They all heard the baby still crying in the room across the hall, and Sarah Jane peeked in there to check on her seven-year-old sister Leela as the only brunette in the family tried to comfort baby Martha through the bars of the baby's crib.

Marsha and Larry let themselves into the tainted room of the house, where violence had torn a new wound into this family that would never heal.

It was the typical cheery pink baby girl's room, with cute little dressers and a cute little changing table and a cute little crib in the center of the room, mandatory mobile spinning horribly above the tiny corpse.

Marsha saw that little Rose – whose name was printed in large letters on the door – had been small for her age, but had to be about two if the other baby was younger.

All Larry could see was the pillow over the baby's face, the hole in the pillow, and the red mess that crept out around the edges of that pillow.

Luckily he found the room's cute little trash can so he didn't have to hurl on the floor.

Marsha rushed to the doorway, clutching the frame at both sides to steady herself. When she raised her eyes, she saw that Sarah Jane was standing in a similar position over the threshold of the other baby's room, finally letting loose her tears.

Marsha pulled the eldest Tardisian present in the house into an awkward embrace, whispering comforting little platitudes and feeling like shit for not somehow knowing on sight that the twins were worthy of gruesome death.

Her brain tried to count the number of people she could have saved if only she'd killed Peter and Phillip at her drive-thru window. She knew the thought was ludicrous, for she'd had no method or opportunity to do such a thing at her job site.

She heard Larry retching again, and her stomach twisted.

She was torn between an intense desire to upchuck everything she'd eaten since the gas station and an equally powerful urge to run out to the Camry and gorge on more.

Sarah Jane stepped back, and Marsha collapsed.

# THREE

When she came to, the first thing she saw were the chips.

Larry had carried her downstairs and set her on a soft chaise longue. Since all the downstairs walls were bookshelves, Marsha would have had a hard time telling in which room specifically she had been deposited, but she didn't care to investigate.

She was possessed by her hunger, and it gave her tunnel vision.

She saw three bags of snacks, including two varieties of chips and one off-brand snack mix, and within a minute she'd torn into all of them.

It took her three minutes to realize she wasn't alone in the room.

It took another three minutes for her to care enough to acknowledge them.

Larry stood by the archway, fidgeting with his hands. Marsha clucked softly in amusement, taking his physical nervousness to mean this family didn't permit smoking in their house, and he was respecting that rule even though these children were parentless.

It was a wonder the house was kept in such fine shape. With all the kids Marsha had seen – and she suspected there were still more yet to make an appearance – she would expect toys and dirty dishes and other various messes to be left out in every room, but the Tardisian house looked to be as spotless and orderly as its Master or Mistress ever wanted it to be.

"Thanks," she said to Larry across the room, which she now noticed to be an office, though the furnishings and decor were far too neutral for her to tell whose it had been.

"Figured you could use a bite," he explained, looking more than a little bemused as he regarded the now half-empty snack bags, "or three dozen."

"Stuff it."

"Don't tempt me," he snickered.

Marsha reddened a bit, but looked away before Larry could tell if it was out of anger or embarrassment.

He didn't think he would mind either.

Marsha rose to her feet slowly, then bent to pick up the junk food.

"Where is everyone?"

"Sarah Jane's checking on all her brothers and sisters. She asked me if you or I thought it would be a good idea to call the cops in before her big bro gets home from work."

Alarm tore Marsha's eyes wide open.

"You know what," she said too quickly, inflection stripped from her voice. "I think I don't care if they do or don't call in some pigs. But either way, we need to get out of here. Now."

Eyes popping as he stretched the word to emphasize his uneasiness, Larry said, "Okay."

When they turned to leave the room, their way was blocked by yet another child, this one a little taller than Susan and Ace, but Marsha could tell he was younger than his twin sisters by at least a year. He wore large round-rim glasses, and his shock of blond hair fell down over them and around his ears in untidy locks.

"You two aren't cops," the child said simply, arms crossed and feet planted a foot apart to show he meant to keep them here at least a little while longer. "Detectives, maybe?"

"Aren't they the same thing?" Larry said, smiling at the boy to try to get a smile out of him.

This Tardisian wasn't buying it.

"Nothing like that," Marsha cut in quick, elbowing Larry to make him step back behind her. "We're just concerned citizens with a lead that we really can't let the cops find out about. You get me?"

"Not really, but you seem good-natured enough to me." Holding a hand out to Marsha, he went on, "I'm Brigadier. I'd hate the name, but my namesake's one of the better recurring Who characters."

"I'm sure," Marsha said, shaking his hand briefly.

"You don't know who he is?" Brigadier practically shouted, shock stretching his features, but as another thought occurred to him, he shook his head and smiled. "You don't know Who."

"No, actually, a friend's been getting me into it. More of the recent stuff, though."

"Oh," Brigadier said, and then asked Larry, "What about you?"

"I'm not much of a TV follower," Larry replied, walking over to peruse a shelf of book spines.

"Anyway, to the heart of it," Brigadier said, coughing into a small fist to get Larry and Marsha both to pay attention to him. "I believe our bad guys had a prisoner. Were you aware of this?"

"A baby," Marsha said.

"I hitched a ride from the guys earlier. They had me watch the baby in the car before I realized what they were up to. They were worried about this one here," he nodded to Marsha, "so when I saw her coming up the highway after I got the hell out of their car, I knew I'd fix my karma up right if I got to tag along with her."

"And you picked him up, off the side of the road?" Brigadier asked her.

"He didn't really give me any choice."

"Well, anyway. Their prisoner escaped."

Larry's jaw dropped. Marsha had been glaring at him a bit, remembering the asinine way in which he'd hitched a ride with her, but she turned her head slowly back to Brigadier Tardisian at the suggestion that the Mortimer baby had somehow escaped.

"I know, it sounds ludicrous, but I saw it with my own eyes. Through a front window. They went back out to their car after they killed my little sister. Rose. They opened one of the car doors, and the baby flew out."

"I know babies can crawl a little fast sometimes," Larry interjected, "but flew? Come on."

"No, I mean literally, flew," Brigadier rebutted, and then let the notion sink in for them.

Marsha believed it first.

"This night's not going to get any less strange," she said aside to Larry, then addressed Brigadier with, "And you're sure it was a baby? Not a bird or a bat or something? Anything else? Absolutely a baby, flying?"

"A baby with big-ass wings," Brigadier blurted, exposing some of the excitement a boy of his age can't help but feel when he's witnessed something extraordinary. "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself. God, I never thought I'd say something so clichéd. It is true, though."

"Oh, I believe you," Marsha sighed. "You, Larry?"

Swallowing hard, Larry replied in a croak, "No reason not to at this point. Right?"

"Right."

"Right."

They all stood there for a while, unsure where to go from here.

Larry wanted to smack Marsha upside the head and remind her they needed to be going before the body count grew too much more exponentially. After all, considering the truck stop, the twins Peter and Phillip might resort to any means to raise their body count.

Marsha was weirdly embarrassed to be holding three open bags of snacks suddenly, and moved them behind her back, as if removing them from Larry's and Brigadier's sight would make the boys forget they'd witnessed her behaving like a pig.

She didn't consider that thinking about a silly bit of embarrassment over food was a good way to distract herself from the concerns Larry was already worrying over.

Brigadier just wanted these people to get out of his house, though he knew that soon after they were gone, real authorities would show up who would actually know what to do in this situation. He wondered if he would mention this pair of self-styled good Samaritans to the police once the people with badges and guns got here in their siren-studded cars.

He decided it would be best for everyone if he went around the house and made sure all his sisters and brothers understood that Larry and Marsha were never there, if anyone were to ask.

Smiling, he felt a little more grown up with this plan in his head.

# 12. ESCAPING EDGECLIFF

The shrouded bodies of the nine burst,

and while still retaining some incorporeal

semblance of individual standing, they

are no longer even what vestige of humanity

they once had been. They stand as swirling vortexes

of air, fire, lightning, water, and dust, and

the inpouring cloud of humanity's remains

flows into them, dividing and being absorbed.

In what seems to take only moments, the process is

complete, the post-human dust cloud is gone – a quick

scan of the physical earth below confirms for the dreamer

that none of it remains anywhere in the atmosphere,

sadly and yet somehow also not – and the tourbillion forms

of the nine stand spinning in place.

– from a dream

# ONE

The clues were finally coming together.

When she'd had her first vision – which she disregarded offhand as imagination getting the better of her – she had seen signs that the Mortimer baby was something other than human and had written them off as signs of an animal in the house after the killings.

When she came into the home of new widow Bernadette Masterson-Billings, she had taken the old woman's odd comments about her husband to be nothing more than mere parts of her many delusions and quirks.

Now she knew better on both counts, and more besides.

There had been other small signs and hints along the way. Due to the larger carnage she'd witnessed at the truck stop, it was impossible to tell if this wild little theory could be the motive behind all the slayings commit by the identical biracial twins. The revelation that the baby they'd taken had taken flight to escape them brought it all together for Marsha.

People were being changed by something – made more, less, or just other than human – and the twins were onto it. Marsha had to correct her thinking: it wasn't only the twins, but the Handsome Stranger as well; Walker MacWellhan, whom she had at first taken to be their primary target.

Walker was somehow identifying the people undergoing this mutation (or whatever it might actually be) and sending on this information to his trailing, murderous cohorts.

Now she cursed herself for three murders she never had the foresight to commit.

"Don't beat yourself up," Larry broke into her thoughts as they passed the Tardisians' mailbox on their way out from the broken family's property.

"Can't help it," she sighed, biting her lip. "I know there's no way I could've known. I know that. But maybe I should have! I mean, I handed them change back. I think."

"Yeah, but this whole psychometric thing is still new to you. It was probably triggered by what you saw in that first house, that whole splattered family. Wing-baby's family."

"We're not calling it that."

"I am, until you come up with something more appropriate. Nothing too cutesy, though."

"Oh, sure, take away my only option," Marsha tried to joke as the trees began opening up to reveal houses coming closer and closer to the road as they shot up through its curves.

Larry was a little queasy over the high number the speedometer arm was hovering around, but he understood why Marsha was crushing down the gas pedal so hard. He wanted to get off this street and away from all the nut jobs on it as fast as possible, too.

The road widened a bit, the trees began to back off from the road's edge, the properties opened up to suggest friendlier and friendlier inhabitants, and then the tires exploded as the Camry tore over a spike strip Marsha had assumed was no more than a long shadow.

She slammed on the brakes, but the damage was done.

The car skidded over ten more feet, Marsha's arms vibrating painfully with the steering wheel, before she managed to get the vehicle to stop. She looked over at Larry, and he was almost as shaken as she was, but otherwise seemed all right. She raised her hands to her disbelieving face, unsure if she would find flesh or some ectoplasmic stuff instead.

They hadn't crashed; skin touching skin quieted her fears that they'd died anyway somehow.

She shut the engine off and reached for the door, but Larry stopped her with a cough. With his eyes alone, he motioned for her to look to her left and consider their surroundings before she did something so foolish as vacate the relative safety of her car.

She knew before she saw the numbers on the mailbox out of the corner of her eye as she turned her head ever so slightly away from Larry to look down the road ahead.

They were in front of the house at 737.

They had returned to within Bella's grasp, and now they had no way to get away.

"Well, this should be fun," she sighed, banging her forehead down on the steering wheel and accidentally setting off the horn with one clutching thumb.

"Are you trying to draw attention?" Larry whisper-hissed, eyes bugging out and darting in all directions.

"I think if they laid down a spike strip, they're probably lying in wait and aren't gonna miss the fact that we're back, Innings. Shit, where's your head?"

"Attached, where I want it to remain."

They each stepped out of the car on their respective sides, and suddenly the night seemed cloying to Marsha, like something thick, alive, and hungrier than she'd recently become. It starved like a cold black hole, and yet was sickly patient enough to only steal sips here and there of the thing it craved, which was...

She wasn't sure about that, but she knew it was nothing good.

The feeling passed quickly.

Just before it went completely and her attention returned to the events of the night around her, Marsha felt something close to the feeling you get when someone's watching you, but she didn't turn her head to look for eyes because it didn't feel physical. It was as if some entity or cluster of beings without form was looking at her soul, and the flesh didn't matter.

Then, her eyes were drawn by movement to her left. Larry was coming around behind the car, but he wasn't what had drawn her attention. Max Wallace was coming up quietly behind him, and Larry looked like he had no idea anyone was there.

Before Marsha could open her mouth, Larry dropped and performed a spin-kick that caught both her and Max Wallace off guard. The inked man with the mohawk fell back on his ass hard, and the air exploded out of him in an angry bellow. Marsha laughed, but Larry was serious as he stood over the murdering rapist, arms crossed, unmoving.

"We have more important things to deal with," Larry spoke down to the man on the ground, who raised a trembling half-closed fist to his empty left socket.

"Like what, praying to your gods while we... while we end your pitiful little existences?"

"Don't fuck with me tonight," Larry spoke, stepping closer and leaning down to within grabbing distance of Max Wallace's face. "Where's your little buddy? Has he recovered yet? I suppose not, considering what I did to him, and that was while I was still bound."

"So?"

"Care to imagine what I'm capable of with my hands and legs free?"

Max Wallace dragged himself back quickly away from Larry, who raised his back and turned away from the rapist like there was nothing there of any concern on the ground.

Marsha clapped three times as Max Wallace climbed to his staggering feet and ran for his house. Larry grinned a bit as he leaned against the Camry, looking as if a great weight had just been lifted from his shoulders.

"I wasn't prepared going in," he explained, "because I thought they were just more victims' friends or family, but now I know what they are, I won't be surprised again."

"How did you know he was there, Innings? He didn't make a sound."

"No, but I saw your eyes move. Your face told me all I needed to know. So I kicked, and luckily he was in striking distance. It just sort of worked out. Don't think I'm all ninja now."

"Oh, I'd never think that," Marsha said, then slumped against the open car door.

"What?"

"What do we do now, Larry?"

"We could ask them for help."

He nodded forward, and Marsha turned to see a pair of bright headlights coming down the road. It was a truck, a big one, and as it got closer, Marsha saw that it was a tow truck.

"No fucking way," she hissed through a thin smile.

"Mayhap our luck is turning," Larry said, stepping up past her and waving the truck down.

The tow truck pulled up to within three feet of the Camry, and the driver stepped out. He was tall, lanky, with a shaved head and almost as many tattoos as Max Wallace showing around his sweat-stained wife beater. His face conveyed friendliness and neighborly concern, though, so Marsha smiled at him, and Larry stuck a hand out in greeting.

Something seemed familiar about him, but she knew she'd never met him in her life, so Marsha dismissed the feeling.

"Heard some ruckus from down the road, thought I'd come check it out. I don't live around here, so I dunno if you're neighbors of my mom or just some people up to no good, but I'm sure you could use a hand anyway. I see all your tires blown. What happened?"

"Some damn fool threw out a spike strip," Larry said before Marsha could think of any other excuse, and as she realized an excuse would be stupid anyway because the spikes were still visible in the road, Larry went on, "and it was probably just some bored kid playing a prank that was meant for someone else. Kids will be kids, right?"

The truck's driver peered down the road and clucked in disbelief when he saw the spikes in the road. He ran down to one end of the strip and picked it up, dragging it over to the rear of his truck bed and winding it around something back there.

Returning to the front of Marsha's Camry, he said, "Sorry, but I couldn't leave that out across the road like that. Someone could come flying up any moment, just like you did. Are you both okay?"

Larry nodded, and Marsha simply said, "Yes."

"Well, that's good. My mom's place is just up the road, if you wouldn't mind me pulling you just up there for now till we can sort this out. And don't worry, no charge. Kids, you say you think it was?"

"Something like that," Marsha said through a forced, pleasant grin.

She and Larry got back into the Camry as the stranger turned his truck around in the driveway at 737, then positioned it so he could move the green car up onto the towing platform. Within minutes, he was tugging them along up Edgecliff Road.

As they rolled along, Marsha thought about where she could possibly know this guy from, and then out of nowhere, the knowledge hit. She had never met this man, but she had seen him very recently. She hadn't seen him from afar, she hadn't bumped into him in a crowded place, but she had seen him.

He had been in the vision she experienced just before entering the Brookthorne attic.

He was one of Patrice and Jeremy's sons.

# TWO

She wasn't sure why it should do so, but the knowledge of the tow truck driver's identity threw her into a panic.

"Spidey-sense tingling?" Larry said, tapping the side of her head.

"What, what?" Marsha blurted, exhaling sharply.

"I guess it is. What's up?"

"This guy in the tow truck. I don't think him coming along is such a fine and dandy coincidence."

"You already said you don't believe in coincidences tonight."

"Yeah, but this one really, really stinks."

"Who is he?"

"A Brookthorne boy."

"You mean one of the kids of the woman we let out of that attic? Why would that be a problem for us? I'd think he'd want to thank us, if she even got around to admitting to him that that's what his old man did to her."

"Unless he already knew."

"Knew?"

"Yeah. Jeremy Brookthorne was his father, after all, and if his father could do that to his mother..."

"You think the apple might not've fallen far from the tree."

"Precisely damn fucking right," Marsha said, biting down on the last word to make it sound more like a duck's quack than any part of the English language.

Larry barked a dry coughing hack of a laugh, contemplating exactly what they might be in for if the man in the tow truck was more like his father than his mother.

Emitting a more natural laugh, he clapped Marsha on the shoulder and said, "We're getting ourselves worked up over nothing. We're not Mulder and Skully now, are we, expecting conspiracies coming down around us at every turn?"

"Wasn't Skully a skeptic?"

"Not by the end, I don't think."

"Whatever. I'm not being that paranoid. I mean, look at what we've come across so far. Maybe a little more paranoia would actually be healthy, you know?"

"Maybe. But not for our mental health."

"Screw mental health. That's what they make the good pills for."

"If you can get the scripts for them, sure."

"Oh, I have my ways."

"Sure."

They remained silent for the rest of the trip; all seventy-two seconds of it.

The Brookthorne boy pulled his truck as far into his parents' driveway as he could get it, leaving the Camry sticking out into Edgecliff by about three feet, but there was still plenty of clearance for any vehicle to get around it and go down the road without problem.

Marsha and Larry, without a word between them, leapt out of the Camry before the tow truck's driver could get out and move to go in the house. Larry lit a smoke and walked up to the driver's side of the truck just as the man behind the wheel was opening his door.

"Want one?" Larry offered, trying to act natural but not succeeding very well.

His hands were trembling just the slightest bit, and for him, that was way too much.

"No, thanks anyway, man," the Brookthorne said as he stepped out and slammed the door shut. "Trying to quit. Let's see the extent of the damage to your girl's car."

"Oh, I'm not his girl," Marsha laughed, and Larry shot her a hurt look at the tone of her voice, which she ignored. "And the damage is pretty bad. All four tires, shot."

"I see," the Brookthorne agreed, walking along the Camry to the back and then back to the front. "I'm Rory, by the way. Your names?"

"Larry."

"Marsha Bradley," she gave her full name minus the middle, hoping he would take the easy bait and make a stupid joke.

He either didn't catch the opportunity, didn't care to make such an obvious joke, or held women in too high a regard to offend one by making fun of her name.

For once, Marsha was a little pissed someone didn't make the joke, and the anger rising on her face got his attention.

"Look, Miss Bradley, you don't need to get mad over this. I can fix you guys up real quick, as long as your tires are fifteens. I just happen to have a set in the back."

He went up to his truck, opened his door back up, and folded his seat forward to reach behind it. He took four tires out and stacked them next to the Camry. Kneeling by the front driver's side tire, he clucked in satisfaction when his fingers located the numbers on it.

"Yep, you're in luck."

"Yeah, aren't I just a lucky girl tonight," she whispered.

Rory heard her and gave her a funny look, but shrugged off her odd words and got to work taking the first tire off.

"This won't take me but ten, fifteen minutes tops. If you wanna knock on the front door and let my mom know what's up, she'll let you hang in the house if you want."

"We're good out here," Larry answered for them both, and pulled Marsha over to the other side of the car, out of easy earshot of Rory.

"What?"

"He doesn't know yet," Larry hissed in her ear, "or he wouldn't be helping out strangers. He'd be in that house, either consoling her or putting her back in her place."

Marsha almost let slip another query, but his meaning snapped clear in her head and her teeth slammed shut on the tip of her tongue.

"Fuck," she blurted too loudly.

She looked down the road then, and another obscenity would have escaped her lips if her tongue hadn't still been sore.

"Marsha?"

"Make sure he stays busy doing the tires. I won't be long. Do not let him look down the road."

"Okay. What's up?"

"Just..." she trailed off, shutting him up with a finger across his lips as she passed him and walked out onto the road.

He looked past her as she went, saw what was coming up the street that had drawn Marsha's attention, and he bit down on his own tongue to keep from exclaiming.

Bella was walking up Edgecliff, her whip trailing out beside her.

"Where's your girl, I mean your friend, going off to?" Rory asked as he began to work on the lug nuts on the back tire.

"Oh, it's nothing. Our friend. The one we came to see," Larry lied, feeling immensely retarded as he let it slip out of his mouth. "She was really crashing after a break-up, so Marsha wanted to check on her. Damn frail chick should be asleep. I think Marsha thinks she's sleepwalking up the road, so she's gonna go see if she needs help back."

"Okay, whatever."

"So this is your mom's house?" Larry inquired, smiling at Rory's glance to hide his fear.

"Yeah. She called and was lucky I was near my phone. I'm only in the area at all 'cause I had to drop off a customer's car. She sounded a little panicky on the phone. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I was just pulling around the corner when I heard y'all running over them spikes."

"So you haven't had a chance to check in with your old moms yet, huh."

"Nope."

Larry sighed in short-lived relief, then remembered the trouble coming up the road and wondered if he should follow after his redheaded driver.

"Don't worry about the tires, by the way."

"What?"

"They were spares someone gave me for a job I did that I wasn't gonna charge for, so y'all can have 'em for nothing. Call it my good deed for the day."

"Oh. Thanks. I'm sure Marsha will appreciate it."

"Enough to give me her number?"

"What?"

"Thought you said you two aren't going together."

"We're not."

"I'm not stepping on your turf, am I, man?"

"No. No, it's cool, man. Just don't tell her you're giving her the tires free. Say you need her number to get in touch about payment for the tires another time."

"Smart. Thanks, Larry."

"No problem, Broo..." Larry trailed off, quickly amending, "bro."

Rory went about working on the tires, and Larry leaned out to peer down the road without making himself too visible to anyone who might be looking back. Marsha was standing a few houses down, her back to him, and he couldn't really see too much of Bella past her.

Marsha seemed to be talking to the bitch.

Larry wanted to scream.

# THREE

"She put me in her fucking clothes."

I don't know what I was expecting to hear come out of Bella's mouth when I saw her walking up Edgecliff toward us, but it sure wasn't this.

I'm looking at this woman, and she's standing in Bella's leather, Bella's chains, even carrying Bella's whip, but her expression isn't anything I'd expect to see on the dominatrix's face. She's afraid, bewildered, and looking to me for explanation or at least sympathy.

What use would Bella have for sympathy?

Aside from using it as a tool to gain enough trust to get close enough to stick the knife into a target's back, that is...

As she approaches, I put up my hands to ward off further advancement. Surprisingly, she just nods and stops where she's standing. Her fingers twist nervously around each other, and I notice one leather sleeve has been tugged free of the clamp affixing it to her glove and rolled up to expose the naked skin of her forearm.

"How did they do it?" she's asking me, and suddenly I'm aware of an odd sensation around the edges of my senses.

I see Bella, but I see someone decidedly unBella standing there as well.

I hear the small sounds her chains make as she moves, and the soft sigh of her whip running over the pavement as it moves unnoticed by her as her hands move. She's holding it like it isn't even there, and I'm not sure why or how she hasn't dropped it yet.

I smell her, unpleasant under all that leather, and yet I smell something else too, a mixture of a fragrance I smelled once in a department store... and what is unmistakably the smell of death. It isn't the stench of a decomposing corpse so much as the scent of a human soul ripped free of its flesh-and-bone bindings and let loose upon the earth. It's like flowers and insect wings and cinnamon and burning wood and old tears and other things I can't name.

This unBella presence is bleeding around the edges of Bella, and my heart knows what it is now, before she says another word to confirm it for my head.

Molly's possessed her.

"I can't find my tattoos," Molly-in-Bella moans. "Why would they put me in her leather getup? And why would they take off my tattoos?"

"I don't know," I manage to squeak out, a little horrified by the consequences of my use of this strange power awakening within me.

"How did they do it!" Molly-in-Bella shouts, not angry with me but venting at me because I'm the only one here. Dropping the whip and lunging forward to grab me by the shoulders, she screams again, "How did they do it!"

The moment she touches me, I see how it all went down.

When I left Bella in her room, she was at the mercy of the vengeful specter of one of her own victims; a fitting punishment if I've ever seen one. After a while, that angry ghost became aware of what she was doing to her killer, and when something close to the personality she'd possessed in life reasserted itself in her disembodied mind, she was mollified by her violence against another human being. To Molly, it didn't matter that the human being in question was the bitch that killed her. In life, Molly had abhorred all violence and anger.

She released Bella and meant to leave, but found herself unable to completely withdraw from the house where she'd been killed.

When she turned her eyeless gaze back upon her killer-turned-victim, she found that Bella had enlisted the now one-eyed Max Wallace in killing their cohort Jasper, who fell without much fight to their knives. They dragged his body down the stairs together, Bella cursing the bloody mess they were making the whole way down. They dragged him over to the hole surrounding the fireman's pole, dropped him down, and stood waiting a moment.

When no sound of movement came to them from below, Bella stormed out and around the house and down the outside steps to find the basement door wide open. Max Wallace only came so far as the top of those steps, then bolted before Bella could turn to see him there.

Bella ran up the steps, meaning to find Max Wallace and kill him as they had killed Jasper together. Molly saw the ugliness in Bella's heart, the sheer revulsion at how weak and useless all men inevitably proved to be to her, and was moved to try to fix this broken woman.

I'm stunned. This ghost experienced the worst torment of her life at the hands and will of Bella Dorsen, then had been killed and made an earthbound spirit by the dominatrix bitch, and yet still found it within her spectral heart to feel pity for Bella.

Molly had pooled herself, pulling together all stray tendrils of her bodiless being, and poured her essence into Bella in a flooding rush of emotions, experiences, decisions, likes, dislikes, and predispositions, meaning only to meet mind-to-mind with Bella.

Instead, she ejected Bella's soul from her body, and took possession of it.

Molly-in-Bella has no idea what she did, and somehow the shock of the event blocked her recent memories, so she doesn't even know she's dead now.

"I'm sorry," she gasps, pulling back from me and wrapping her arms tight around the thin body she now occupies.

Her eyes widen, and I see she's finding her new bodily accommodations more difficult to believe as being her own flesh with each passing moment.

"How long was I in that place?" she whispers, looking down at her abdomen. "I would've killed for this body a year ago. Why does it feel so wrong now?"

Her eyes return to my face, and she's picked up on something else, too.

"And my voice," she states slowly, enunciating each word carefully, tasting something different about her mouth as she speaks. "My tongue. My teeth. Nothing feels the same."

"Nothing is," I say, and glance over my shoulder to see Larry staring uncomfortably down the road at us. I wave to him that everything's all right and he should look away, then turn back to Molly-in-Bella and say, "After what you went through in 737, how could anything ever be the same again?"

"It's more than what rape should do to a person. I'm not just dressed like her."

I run through half a dozen platitudes in my head, but none of them seems adequate.

"I sound like her now. I'm in her costume, I was dragging along her fucking whip, and I have no tattoos. I'm Bella, aren't I? Did I have a fucking nervous breakdown and now I just think I'm one of my victims? Is that what this is? Is that what I am?"

"No no," I blurt, shaking my head.

"You must be right. I know too much about Molly's life. What happened, then? What happened to her? I mean. To me. What happened to me."

Understanding dawns on her face, and she sinks to the ground. She doesn't fall so much as collapses sideways, catching herself roughly on her hands and then rolling so she's lying on her back, facing the sky, a hand at her throat.

I check to make sure Larry isn't still watching or coming this way, and nod to myself when I see he's disappeared from view, probably watching Rory Brookthorne removing or replacing a tire. Hopefully he's not pestering the guy too much.

I kneel beside Molly-in-Bella and resist the urge to join both my hands to her own at her neck and strangle the bitch, but remember that it isn't really Bella I'm looking at now.

All my body's senses tell me that it is, but my other senses tell otherwise.

I should be torn about what to believe. I almost want to be, because everything these other senses mean... well, I can't be sure what it all means yet, except a possible advantage against the twins when I catch up to them. I'm not sure how; it's not like I can call up any ghosts because wherever we'll be in that confrontation, it won't be the home of any of their victims I've seen so far. It won't be anyone's home, as a matter of fact. Where it will be is...

"Did you know her?" Molly-in-Bella puts to me suddenly, breaking my train of thought completely. "Bella?"

I try to recapture where my mind was going, but it's too late.

"No."

"Why do you look familiar to her, then? Did she try to kill you, too?" Suddenly sure she has struck truth, she springs up so she's sitting eye-to-eye with me and gasps, "How did you get away from them? Did you kill her? No, no she can't be dead or I wouldn't be here..."

Torn between confusion and frustration at the slow realization she's missing chunks of memory and time, Molly-in-Bella clutches more tightly at her throat, and for a second, out of the corner of my eye, I see a flicker of a spider tattoo on her wrist. It's gone when I look directly at it, and I take it as a sign that she's becoming more deeply rooted in her new body.

Good. Bella doesn't deserve to live; let someone else have the rest of her life.

"Molly, you're in Bella's body, and I'm partially to blame for that, so I'm sorry and you're welcome," I let out all in one breath, and she turns shocked eyes on me that quickly well up with tears of understanding and gratitude.

"You're an angel," she sighs, hugging me loosely.

I pat her back awkwardly as she dries her eyes on my shoulder.

"Hardly."

"No, you are," she says, pushing back from me and then jumping to her feet and offering me a hand to help me get to mine. I let her help me up, and she goes on, "I don't mean like in the Biblical sense, but still. You know. You're as close as anyone in this world's gonna be."

"I disagree, but as long as you're okay, I'm okay with whatever you want to think of me."

"Oh, I'm hardly okay over here," she laughs, stripping the leather gloves off and throwing them into a nearby yard in disgust. "I died. I don't remember it too clearly, and maybe I never will again, and maybe that's not such a bad thing, but I still know it's true. I died, and now I'm stuck with this cunt's body, and I don't even know if her identity's worth salvaging."

"No harm in checking it out," I say, looking back down the road in the direction of 737. "I'd keep an eye out for Max Wallace, though. He tossed out a spike strip that's slowed us down, and that's out of the way but he might have some other nasty trick lying around."

"Thanks, but I think I can manage against a one-eyed git like him," she says, showing she may have more access to Bella's memories than she wants to admit to me or to herself.

"Good luck. I hope you can build a happy life for yourself."

"I'll sure as hell try. And good luck with whatever you're doing tonight. I get the feeling you're going to need a lot more than luck, but that's really all I can wish for you."

"Thanks," I whisper as she turns and heads back down Edgecliff, out of my life probably forever and onto a road I can't even begin to imagine the course of, or destination.

Rattling my head, I head back up to the Brookthorne driveway, hoping we can get the hell out of dodge before that old bat Rory calls a mother catches wind of our return.

She might be happy to see us again, even if it is a little soon.

She may, just as easily, have taken a turn for the worse in her thinking, and decided she wants to blame us for the news we brought to her when we set her free.

And I don't know if the Brookthornes keep any guns in that damned house.

# FOUR

Marsha returned to Larry's side just as Rory was tightening the last lug nut on the last of the spare tires he was putting on her car. She admired Rory's body as he moved, and she laughed internally to see Larry kind of checking the guy out, too.

"Like what you see there?" she put to Larry, then walked up behind Rory before Larry could think of anything to say, either in defense or simply response.

"All done," Rory said, bumping into Marsha's leg as he got to his feet. "Sorry."

"No worries," she said, smiling. "Thanks. So how much do I owe you?"

"Here," he said, fishing his cell phone out of a pocket and holding it out to her. "Just program your number in and I'll get a hold of you some other time to discuss... reimbursement."

He let that last word linger between them for a few seconds, then turned and began to walk toward the house when she took the phone.

"Reimbursement?" Larry whispered into Marsha's ear, chuckling.

She elbowed him, programmed her number into Rory's contact list, put the phone into key lock mode out of habit, almost slipped it in her pocket out of habit, and then remembered that she did not want Rory knocking on his mother's front door.

She opened her mouth to say something to distract him, but he'd already knocked, the door was already opening, and Mrs. Brookthorne was there.

She'd cleaned herself up a bit, but still wore the same dress.

The two said a few words to each other over the threshold, and then Patrice stepped outside to join her son on the porch.

"Hello again," she greeted Marsha and Larry as she came down the steps, Rory at her side.

"You know these people?" Rory asked his mother, beginning to show a little worry over the way she looked.

"They're the ones who let me out."

"Let you out of where?"

"The attic."

Rory's jaw dropped, and he actually reached a finger up to push his mouth shut.

"Dad didn't."

"Oh, yes he did," Larry interjected.

"He did," Patrice said simply.

"I'll kill him."

"According to these fine young people here," Patrice said jovially, smiling at each person around her in turn, "someone's already taken care of that for you, Rory, which is just fine by me. I don't want blood on any of my son's hands, unless of course it's absolutely unavoidable."

"Dad's dead?"

"Long story," Marsha sighed, and hoped she wouldn't have to stand here and tell it.

She handed Rory his phone, which he took with stiff fingers and dropped three times before he could manage to get it back into his pocket.

"I think you and your friend should go now, dear," Patrice addressed to Marsha, wrapping an arm around her son's slumped shoulders and tugging him along beside her back toward the house. From over her shoulder, she concluded, "It was nice to meet the both of you. Stop by any time you're in the neighborhood and I'll make sandwiches on toast. Thank you for any concern you may be feeling, but we can manage just fine on our own. Best of luck."

"Wait..." Larry began, but a look from Marsha shut him up.

Luckily Rory had already disconnected Marsha's car from the mechanisms on his towing platform. She got in, waited for Larry to climb in on the other side, they buckled their belts, she started the engine, and they reversed onto the ground and back onto the road.

Within seconds, they were turning off of Edgecliff Road, never to return there again.

Together, anyway.

# 13. MORNING AFTER CAFE

"Why?" The dreamer moans, knowing

they will not hear her, knowing they cannot

acknowledge her, knowing this is only a dream

and she should not let it affect her so,

and yet she cannot help crying out, "What

have you done this for! With so much fucking power

at your disposal, why didn't you just wake them up

to how kiddish they were being so they could

at least have died together, understanding! Why'd

you have to take away so much of their choice?"

In a ring just outside the circle of nine

final post-humans of this earth, nine wormholes

spontaneously open for them. Through those

she's in a position to see through, the dreamer spies

what can only be described as further other earths

beyond this one she has been made witness to. In a flash,

she begins to guess what they are doing,

but distraction interrupts her train of thought.

One of the nine has heard her.

– from a dream

# ONE

Sitting at the counter while Marsha was in the bathroom, Larry looked back over the events that connected the moment they left Edgecliff Road to the moment in which he currently found himself. He couldn't decide how he felt about any of it, especially the sex.

It had started innocently enough, with their hands touching almost by accident.

Marsha had been pleased with the promptness of new directions once they got close to the highway again, but had grown quickly sullen over the fact that the convenience effectively cut her off from any personal interaction with her old friend. G. W. had delineated all tasks involved in helping her to automated programs, and this was alienating to Marsha.

She felt cut off, abandoned, and alone. She rambled on about these things for a little while before she realized she could be alienating Larry in doing so, but he told her that he didn't mind. He was used to being ignored and easily forgotten; the life of a chronic hitch-hiker anesthetized one to such low regard from the people who gave rides.

Marsha wanted to convey that she didn't mean to treat him that way, so she reached over to pound his knee in mock-violent affection, but instead grazed his hand as it hovered in mid-air. Looking back on that moment, Larry couldn't remember what the hell he'd been about to do, whether smack her hand away playfully or pinch her cheek or fish out a cigarette to stuff behind his ear for their next stop. Whatever it had been, her reaction to their touch wiped his mind of all momentary intent.

Her eyes shot from the road to his face, her arm stiffened, and she slammed on the breaks. Luckily there were no vehicles immediately behind them, but Larry turned in his seat and saw headlights coming up quick maybe about a quarter-mile back.

"Marsha, get moving."

"Right," she rasped distractedly, pressing the gas pedal down far too slowly for Larry's comfort.

The vehicle he'd glimpsed swerved around them into the other lane, honking all the way, and Larry imagined he could see the driver flipping them the bird.

He knew what her reaction meant; he just didn't know exactly what she had seen.

He decided as she took the next exit that broaching the subject was a task best left for later on in the night, or possibly tomorrow. He just hoped that she would leave it alone, whatever dark corner of his heart she'd stumbled across.

Her immediate silence gave him hope that it had only been a small thing.

She hadn't kicked him out of the car, so it couldn't have been too bad.

They made a series of turns that Larry ignored out of habit, realizing too late that if anything should happen to Marsha on one of these stops, he'd be stuck without much clue where he was or how to get back to the highway. He shrugged this worry off and face-palmed for considering it something worth worrying over for even an instant. After all, he reminded himself, nearly all the life he let himself have was on the road, destination unknown.

Marsha had guided the Camry around a sharp back-road bend and into a long down-sloping driveway that cut into and bisected the properties of two houses on hills. The place G. W.'s texting program had brought them to was low, shaded by trees and the homes in front of it, with no exterior lighting to detract from the almost complete pitch blackness that seemed to join the yard with the woods behind like a dark body of standing water.

Larry didn't like wading into this darkness; he felt exposed, even though they were downhill from any potentially nosy neighbors. After Marsha shut off the car and they got out, he found himself constantly looking up at the backs of the two houses visible from the dismal micro valley in which they now stood, but there was no sign of spying eyes.

She shushed him before he could even think to form a question to put to her, and he followed her in silence to the front door, which they found had been forced open.

As they walked into the dark house, Marsha pulled a pocket flashlight out and shone its beam into each room they entered and passed, until they finally came upon the bedroom and the home's sole occupant, nude and dead on her rather large bed.

The sheets around her body were wet, and a trail of water droplets led them to the master bathroom, where the tub had recently been drained.

"Sick fucks," Larry whispered reverentially.

Marsha brushed past him, and he watched her from the bathroom doorway as she stepped close to the bed and knelt to inspect the dead woman's hands. She clucked softly to herself, but did not explain what she was looking for to Larry, and he didn't care to ask.

After a few minutes standing silent over the latest found victim, Marsha rushed past Larry again to get to the bathroom mirror. She leaned in close to the looking glass, training the flashlight beam on the reflection of her face. Larry didn't know if she was checking for anything specific and mundane, or just staring into her own eyes to see if she recognized herself anymore after everything she'd seen tonight.

Larry wondered if he would still know himself by morning, if he stayed with her.

"Not if," he muttered unintentionally aloud, clamping a hand over his mouth, but if she heard him, Marsha showed no sign.

Finally, just as Larry was about to dart out of the house to light that smoke he'd forgotten behind his ear, Marsha turned to him and smiled, invitingly. As Larry stared in mild confusion at her, she stripped quickly out of all her clothes. She stood there nude before him, and beckoned him come closer with her arms. He wanted to resist, or at least to make her tell him why here and now before he made a move, but he just stripped his shirt off and came to her.

"Never done it with a dead body in the other room," he said as he slipped into her, both of them lying on the cold tiled floor.

She shushed him with a finger to his lips, then plunged her tongue into his mouth and he said not another word until she was done with him.

She finished before he was even close, and pushed him rudely off her without a word. Larry wanted to say something about that, but embarrassment quickly overtook any anger he felt. She'd used him, and now that she was done, she had no regard for his unfulfilled need or feelings on the matter. She dressed as quickly as she'd stripped, and walked out.

Larry sat there on the dead woman's bathroom floor for about thirty seconds, mouth open in disbelief. He'd thought he had been picking up on little hints of her attraction to him throughout their trip, but he'd never thought Marsha would be the type to do this to him.

Something told him she normally wasn't anything like this.

Sitting in the busy just-off-the-highway diner not even twenty minutes later, still waiting on Marsha to come out of the only working restroom in the place, Larry still felt dirty, but also still found it difficult to fully blame Marsha for the offense.

He could sense the change in her, would have sensed it even if left ignorant of the psychic abilities surfacing within her.

Something was different in Marsha from everyone else, something that could be dangerous or miraculous or just a fluke of random evolutionary nature.

Putting his clothes on slowly in the dead bachelorette's house, Larry had decided he didn't like it one bit, whatever this thing was that made Marsha different. If it made her do things like have sex without feeling, then it was too alien for Larry to trust.

Coming out of the house, Larry had found Marsha was already in the car with the engine running. She had not turned on the headlights, though, so he leaned against the passenger door and lit a smoke. He needed one worse now than if he hadn't smoked in a week.

She waited patiently for him, but he finished the cigarette within half a minute anyway. It made him light-headed to smoke so rapidly, but he didn't mind it so much tonight; it made it easier to ignore the fact that they weren't talking about what they'd just done.

They didn't say another word until they arrived at the diner just off the exit ramp from their next stop off of 275 going north.

Not a word passed between them, even when Marsha had stopped along the side of the highway, reached into the back, brought forward the remaining bags of junk food one at a time, and emptied them at a pace that would have made more sense if she'd been thrice her size.

Sitting at the counter, now Larry couldn't be sure if a text had directed Marsha to take this particular exit, or if she'd just veered off the highway because she could no longer delay a pit stop.

Whatever the reason, he hoped she wouldn't take forever in there; he wanted desperately to take a whore's bath, and stare himself down in the diner's bound-to-be-dingy mirror to solidify his resolve not to let it happen again.

No matter how much he'd enjoyed laying with her, he would not be used again.

Larry Innings would be no one's toy.

# TWO

I can't believe what I've done.

Yeah, he wasn't exactly the worst decision I've ever made, or the worst lay I've had – far from it, as a matter of fact, even if I did cut him off mid-act – but my timing couldn't have been more creepy. To him, I'm sure, but mostly to myself.

What the fuck was I thinking, getting down and dirty in the house of one of their fucking victims? How much of our DNA is in that crime scene now because I got horny?

Except, I didn't really feel horny. Not in my usual way, at least.

I felt more... feral. Except that's not quite right either.

I felt like a cat in heat. I felt like I was trying to justify my earlier fear of pregnancy by taking Larry's seed. If orgasm hadn't woken one small shard of my self-control and given me a chance to break our physical contact before it could happen, that would have happened.

Staring into the mirror, I try to remember who I am. I know my name; that knowledge hasn't escaped me. Nor my place of work. Nor the number of cats currently taking residence in my trailer. Nor the names of everyone on shift when I called in Jakie to take my place.

Ah, to be home again, or hell, even back at Our Mindy's. I'd take a triple shift with a nonstop stream of the rudest, most self-centered, self-righteous asshole customers any day over this shit.

Except I like Larry, so I guess he's a check in the pro column.

A check in the con column? That would be how I feel like I'm losing touch with who I'm supposed to be, who I've fashioned myself into, and who I present myself to be on a daily basis. I can't remember if those were actually three separate faces I wore intentionally, or if they're just roles I slipped into over the years without knowing it.

Wow. I'm not even making sense to myself right now.

Can you believe what I'm doing?

Not the thinking at myself part; you must be over that shit by now.

No.

I'm talking about all of this.

Chasing down killers.

Falling for the smooth façade of a guy only to find out he was not much more than bait.

Picking up their stray trash and taking him along like he's my fucking sidekick or something.

Screwing said not-really sidekick like I'm Batman and he's Robin.

Maybe not in the comics or movies, but in how many fanboys' fantasies?

Maybe I haven't lost touch with myself at all. Maybe it's good that I'm afraid I have. Maybe that means I'm still sane through all of this, still somehow holding onto some minute shred of human sanity among all the crap I'm witnessing tonight.

Or maybe I am losing it.

Or maybe it's already gone, whatever it is to begin with.

I suddenly get this real paranoid feeling, like someone's hiding in the stall and listening to me thinking over by the sink, but when I look under the dividing walls, I see that no one's there. How would they hear what I'm thinking anyway?

Although, if I'm believing that I'm some kind of psychic now, doesn't that mean there are others out there? Somewhere?

I check the stall again, this time opening the door.

Of course, there's no one there. I did lock the bathroom door when I came in here, after all, like I always do, without fail, no matter where I'm at or what else is going on.

Including a murder spree, apparently.

Yay. I am still me.

Now the question becomes, can I face Larry after what I've done?

# THREE

When Marsha came out, Larry waited until she sat down beside him to dart to the restroom before anyone else could mosey over. He knocked his stool over in getting up, and was in such a hurry to get past his driving friend without a word or nod that he left it there. She bent from her seat to lift it up, casting an annoyed eye at Larry's back.

He only took about five minutes in the bathroom, and in that time Marsha managed to order half of everything on the diner's menu. As the counter didn't offer nearly enough space for that micro feast, Marsha had moved to a booth that had been recently vacated, and she was wiping the tabletop off with a few napkins when Larry joined her there.

"Still hungry?" Larry said roughly, rubbing his hands together and glancing dartingly outside, contemplating another smoke.

He hated going through smokes as rapidly as he was doing tonight.

He decided he would avoid redheads in the future.

"Yeah," she replied simply, then added, "Got enough to share. Feel free to dig into whatever you like. I'll finish the rest."

"I'm sure."

Awkward silence dropped on them like bricks, and every minute the waitress didn't come felt like a minute spent deep, deep underwater.

Marsha marveled at the fact Larry was sitting inside instead of leaping out through the glass to smoke a cigarette. She could tell he needed one badly, and couldn't blame him for that even if she didn't agree with the habit in and of itself. She cursed herself for adding to the stress that must be making his nicotine cravings shoot through the roof.

"Look..." she began slowly, not sure what she was going to say next, but hoping it would be good.

Her sentence just barely begun was cut short, as was her's and Larry's thinking, by a man's shout as he stepped into the diner.

"Hands to the sky! This is a stick up," he bellowed, and every eye in the place raced to him, but then most of the customers just shook their heads and looked away.

Larry and Marsha stared intently at the old hippie as he sauntered up to the counter, both of them ready to move if they had to, but waiting to see what would happen next. The man wore a brightly colored poncho over loose brown khakis, and his unwashed hair trailed down halfway to his ass. The women behind the counter just laughed and waved him away.

As one of them moved to speak to the kook, the last few people still looking at the panic-stirring old man gave a collective sigh of relief and returned to their meals and conversations.

Larry looked at Marsha, Marsha looked at Larry, and together they laughed.

The food came then, and they both quickly dug in to the dishes that were most appetizing to their eyes, working their way down to the less presentable but still palatable fare. In all, it took them about fifteen minutes to finish off everything on their plates.

Bellies full – Larry's more so than Marsha's, in spite of all she'd consumed – they paid their check and stepped outside, but not before telling their waitress to hold their table because they meant to return inside for dessert.

Marsha stood two feet from Larry as he lit a smoke. He offered her one with a grin on his face, and she laughed.

"No, you ass."

"I know."

"Then why'd you try to give me one?"

"Just to see that smile."

"Look, Innings, I'm sorry," she said, taking one step toward him.

"Don't worry about it," he said between puffs, smiling and shrugging to show he wasn't worried about what had happened between them complicating things. "Shit happens. We move on. So I take it we don't know where the twins went next?"

"Actually, this was their next stop," Marsha revealed, and laughed again when Larry almost dropped his cigarette.

"Where's the fucking body, then?"

"That's what I'm wondering. I checked the closed bathroom to see if maybe that was a blind they set up somehow to keep anyone from finding the kill too soon, but no, it's just a busted john and a backed-up urinal. Unless they're hiding the body in the kitchen..."

"Somehow I doubt that."

"Never know."

Larry crushed out his cigarette and they went inside behind a giggling gaggle of puff punk girls that walked toward the table he and Marsha had recently vacated, but their waitress stood in the teenagers' way and just shook her head, looking over their heads to wave Marsha and Larry back to their seats. The girls eyed them with venom, but they just smiled back.

"Decide what you're having for dessert?" Bella, their waitress, asked.

Larry did a double-take on her name tag and wondered how he could have missed that before. Marsha kicked him under the table, but lightly, sticking her tongue out at him when he shot her a quick glare.

"Bring us a pie. Any kind'll do for me. You have a preference, Larry?"

"Banana cream," Larry coughed, kicking Marsha back, only a little less gently than she had done. "Or, no, wait... coconut chocolate cream. And can you put cherries on top?"

"How many?"

"As many as you can fit on it."

"I'll have that out to y'all in a jiffy."

The waitress shuffled off, pouring coffee in empty glasses as she passed other tables on her way up to the counter.

"Do you wish you had G. W. with you instead of me?" Larry asked out of nowhere, surprising a little hiccough out of Marsha.

Swallowing some water, she answered slowly, "No. He's good on the tech end, but he wouldn't be much use otherwise. When he's away from his toys too long, he gets all whiney and distracting and needy like a five year old in a library who'd rather be in a toy store. He wouldn't be too supportive about... this other stuff," she finished, flipping a hand in the air.

"And by other stuff, I take it you mean," Larry said, then leaned over the table to whisper, "the psychic stuff? Psychometry?"

"Yeah, whatever you want to call it," she said, not lowering her voice. "Gabriel's very rooted in mathematical practicalities, but he won't bore you to death explaining any of it. Really, he just won't waste his own sweet time trying."

"So you think he'd be skeptical."

"Beyond."

The pie arrived, along with knife, forks, and two small plates.

"Be anything else for you fine young folks tonight?" Bella the waitress asked them, check booklet and pen in hand.

"No, thanks," Larry and Marsha said in unison, and cigarette-stained fingers laid the bill down on their table.

The waitress walked away, Marsha cut the pie into six large pieces, Larry took a piece, and Marsha used her fork to lift her own. Larry lifted a bite toward his mouth, but Marsha's free hand shot across the table to stop him.

"What is it? See something? Did they hide some spit under the cherries?"

"No. More like someone mixed rat poison into the pie fillings."

Larry dropped his fork.

# FOUR

Loretta, one of tonight's cooks, knew something was wrong the moment she saw Bella come in with the first stack of her homemade pies. They smelled exactly as scrumptious as ever, and once their boxes were opened, they would look just as appetizing, but Bella could tell that Loretta sensed something might be wrong with them. The cook regarded the waitress with suspicion that was, for once, not at all without merit.

The young cook had always been jealous of Bella's pies, and tried to blame any reported instance of food poisoning on the sweet slices. Nothing had ever come of it, for everyone knew Bella's pies were beyond reproach; the idea of one of them making someone sick was laughable.

Still, Loretta tried to carve out a niche in the diner's menu for her cupcakes, which weren't quite God-awful, but were only really serviceable as dessert items one out of every four or five. The inconsistency ruined the experience of even those rare cupcakes Loretta managed to produce that were truly good, even close to delicious.

To make up for her inconsistency, Loretta tried to ruin the reputation of Bella's pies, to failure at every turn.

Still, somehow the two women managed to present a friendly façade whenever they were around each other in the workplace. Their co-workers admired them for it.

"Bad batch of pies today, Bella?"

"Not at all, Loretta. Good batch of cupcakes today?"

"So-so," the cook whispered back, refusing to meet Bella's eyes as the waitress took the stack of pies into the walk-in cooler.

Bella had brought in the rest of her final masterpieces without interruption, and smiled in triumph as she placed the last one on a shelf.

She had gotten them in, poisoned one and all, and besides a momentary feeling that Loretta didn't have the guts to voice, no one was any the wiser.

Tonight, Bella would finally deliver the poison she knew no one said they believed was in her pies, but which she also knew they all secretly believed was in the pies. They hid their true feelings from her, she was sure, just as everyone always had.

No one could be trusted.

Well, tonight, she would show them.

Tonight, hell would be paid.

It didn't quite matter to Bella that she had no way of really choosing her victims; whoever ordered a pie, would receive the sinister gift secreted inside it. Still, the thought made her very happy. She didn't know why others' suffering should make her fill with glee, but she knew nonetheless that it would.

Then the strangest thing happened. Not one pie sold, all day.

She checked the signage behind the counter and even outside, but there were no specials on other dessert items to distract customers from the pies. For no singular reason, no one whom came in seemed to be in the mood for a pie. It was inexplicable.

The first one to actually sell went to a set of twins who'd come in maybe twenty minutes or so before the redhead and her pale male friend arrived. The twins ordered nothing but a pie, but refused to eat any of it on the spot. They ordered it boxed, paid, and left with it.

Then, the hungriest bitch Bella had ever seen without a baby bun on the front of her arrived, and something told her this would be the first victim she'd been craving. Well, a suitable substitute, since she knew nothing short of imprisonment or the threat of a gun could get that damned stuck-up Loretta to eat even a crumb of pie crust if it was made by Bella.

Now she stood by the counter, pretending to listen to the hippie whose name no one had ever bothered to catch, but whom everyone feigned friendliness toward because it seemed to amuse most of the clientele. What she was really doing was waiting for that first bite.

The redhead stopped her friend from shoveling the first bite of his slice into his mouth, and then she slowly turned her head and locked eyes with Bella.

"No," Bella gasped, dropping the pot of coffee she'd been carrying around to refill the empty cups of these ungrateful, needy, self-centered jerks she had to serve day in and day out.

She knew it would come out of her pay, but she wanted to hear the glass shatter, wanted to see the shocked looks they would get on their faces when their insipid talking was interrupted.

No shattering came.

Bella looked down, and the hippie had reached out to catch the coffee pot, a shit-eating grin on his face that she wanted to smack off him, and she almost did. At the last moment, she moved her hand to pat him on the shoulder, forcing a falsely grateful smile.

When she looked back to the table where sat the couple of young people who should be her first victims, no one was sitting there. Then, she turned back to the hippie, who was handing the pot over the counter to Loretta, and who should be standing behind him but the redheaded girl and the pale boy.

"We should talk," the girl said, and though she was keeping her hands to herself, Bella felt some form of grip take hold of her. "Step outside with us?"

The young couple turned and walked out of the diner in quick order, darting around tables and mulling eaters coming from or going to the restroom line. Bella stood there a moment, ignoring Loretta trying to get her attention, and then she followed them out.

She walked outside though she meant to stay in. In the diner, she felt safe. Against all odds, this just-off-the-highway joint had never experienced a robbery, and despite her contempt for everyone she had to interact with on the job, nowhere else in the world felt nearly half as safe a place to her as here.

At her crummy apartment, she knew all her neighbors were waiting for an excuse to get her evicted.

Growing up, she'd known that all her family members were waiting for the next excuse to ridicule her.

Here, she felt she had the upper hand somehow, even though she'd never bothered exercising that power before this day. Now, it had finally come within her grasp, through the poison and the pies. Her pride and joy would be the ruination of so many lives.

Except, the plan was coming to nothing, and she couldn't explain why.

Stepping outside into the cold, reproachful gaze of that redheaded girl, Bella felt a little sick, and began to understand that the universe was against her as well.

All the forces of the cosmos had conspired to put off the fulfillment of her plan, and now here was its end, in the eyes of these people who should be the first ones ingesting the poison.

Bella folded her arms across her chest as the redhead stared her down and the pale boy smoked, and waited for one of them to speak.

# FIVE

Marsha opened her mouth to speak, but something wonderfully unexpected stopped her words short in her throat. From out of one of the bushes fronting the diner, a half-grown Siamese stray darted over to Bella's leg, rubbed its head against the waitress, and mewled up pleadingly to her. A surprised smile broke across Bella's face as she looked down.

"A moment, please," she said in a more honestly sweet tone than her voice had been in while taking Marsha's order, "and then we can deal with each other."

The waitress ran into the diner. Marsha and Larry watched her go back to the kitchen, unworried that she was trying to escape. Within seconds she was coming outside again, a saucer of milk carried carefully so as not to spill any of the creamy white liquid.

Bella stepped outside and the cat was climbing up her legs before she could get two steps past the door.

"Down, precious little thing, down!" Bella laughed, and Larry laughed with her.

Marsha shot him a little shake of her head, but couldn't help smiling a little herself.

Bella set the saucer down for the Siamese cat, and then refolded her arms.

Regarding the young people she assumed were a couple, she said, "You wanted to talk. May I ask what about?"

"About the poison in today's pies," Marsha said without hesitation, verbally knocking the wind out of the would-be murderess.

Bella's courage had been ignited by the sight of the cat, a connection Marsha could appreciate and admire, but what that courage gave the waitress the strength to do was not a thing she could abide. Now Bella knew without a doubt that her plan had been seen through, and her courage was suddenly deserting her.

"I... I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do," Larry spoke up. "My friend here has a gift for unraveling people's best kept secrets. Don't think you can fool her."

"How the hell did you find out?" Bella hissed, the venom in her voice underscoring the blooming hatred making her face a truly ugly thing to behold.

"That's not important," Marsha said, shrugging off any threat implied by the older woman and taking an unfrightened step toward the waitress.

The cat looked up from its milk, hissing at Bella. The waitress looked down at the creature with true shock on her face, and for the first time she felt ashamed.

"You like cats, I see," Marsha said, gently turning Bella's face to look back at her, "and that buys you some mercy and maybe even a smidge of understanding."

Though the contact was brief, touching the older woman's chin brought home some of the reasoning behind the poisoning of the pies, and Marsha's strategy formed in an instant.

"You're paranoid," Marsha sighed, turning her back on Bella and taking a few steps past Larry, who followed her with his eyes but without any understanding of what she was doing.

He trusted her enough to do it without his interrupting her, though.

"People can't be trusted," Bella said, unfolding her arms and stuffing her hands into the pockets of her uniform apron.

"You don't have to trust them," Marsha said, rounding on the waitress with gleaming eyes, digging into the older woman's consciousness with all her will. "All you have to do is understand that they are people with desires, fears, and faults, just like you."

Something clicked in the waitress' head, and she faltered in her stance, staggering back a step from the truth in Marsha's words and face.

"Just like me," Bella whispered, turning and hurrying back into the diner and back to the kitchen.

Larry took a step toward the diner, but Marsha stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Let her go," she said to him, tugging him in the direction of her parked car.

"What about the poison?"

"She's getting rid of the pies. She'll tell them we complained about ours, so she just wants to throw out the whole batch because she can't abide the thought of anyone else having to suffer through one bite of a bad pie. She'll be embarrassed, but she realizes now that that's better than being imprisoned."

"And our check?"

"She'll figure out covering it for us is part of her penance," Marsha said, smiling though Larry was behind her and could not see her face.

"I still don't see why the twins stopped here."

"I think I do, although I don't see the full logic behind it yet, either," Marsha said as they got into the green Camry. "I suppose we'll be finding out soon enough."

# 14. TWO AND A HALF WOMEN

One of the nine has formed a minute

vestige of a rudimentary face – a single eye

and a lipless, tongueless, toothless mouth – merely

a vehicle to convey some small form of expression,

and it is focused on her. It seems to be

attempting a look of sympathy, of great sadness,

and of having accepted inevitability.

"So none of you think you had a choice either, in this?"

The almost-face rises and falls almost imperceptibly

on the vortex, and then turns quickly toward

its bearer's wormhole, and then vanishes,

leaving the vortex utterly inhuman again.

– from a dream

# ONE

"I can't believe you'd do this to me in my own house!"

The setting: one of many moderately-sized mansions in an exclusive gated community somewhere north of Cincinnati.

"Carly, you have to believe me, it's not what it looks like!"

"Mrs. Stallion, trust me, it is what it looked like. And your husband led me to believe you were okay with it."

"Rosemary, shut up!"

The players: Carly Carver-Minks-Stevens-Stallion, the lady of the house; Carly's third husband, soft-core porn producer Geraldo Stallion; Rosemary Theta, a would-be porn starlette. Carly is fully dressed in a sequined gown, having just returned home from a charity event. Geraldo is half dressed, with the top half of the suit he wore to the same event intact, but his shoes and pants missing. Rosemary is wearing nothing but one of Carly's silk robes.

"I should have known why you were so eager to leave early. Ulcer firing up, my right breast. Is she the first whore you've diddled in my home, or are you this thorough with all your potential stars?"

"Now listen here, I thought this became our home the day I married you, Carly Carver-Stallion," Geraldo spat at her.

"I think you left a few last names out there, Mr. Stallion," Rosemary chimed in, grinning and flipping her long raven hair over a shoulder.

"As of this moment, it's all mine again, buddy," Carly said coldly, all emotion drained from her face except for the faintest hint of a smile around the corners of her mouth.

"I... you can't be serious."

"Oh, she looks serious to me, Mr. Stallion," Rosemary said to him.

When he turned to look at the woman with whom he'd commit infidelity, she tossed him the pants he'd discarded on the stairs earlier. He caught them nimbly, but was slow in moving to the door. He was still pants-less when he managed to fumble the door open and step outside, never to enter that house again.

"Another one bites the dust!" Rosemary shouted, leaping across the space between the stairs where she'd been standing and the entryway footstool next to Carly.

The two women embraced and cackled wildly, forgetting momentarily that they were not the only souls left in the large house.

The light came on in the little hallway under the stairs, the hallway that led to the guest rooms Carly had once had not much use for aside from as a place for the occasional friend or social acquaintance to crash. Now, though, two members of her family lived there.

The younger, Carly's twelve-year-old nephew Jackie, walked out of the hallway in his pajama bottoms, bird chest exposed and hair mussed by sleep.

"Aunt Carly, why are you hugging the cunt? I thought you said she was a cunt because she ruined your last marriage. Did she come back for New Uncle Geraldo?"

Carly and Rosemary looked at each other with wide eyes, struggling to contain more laughter.

Then, the other house resident stepped in the front door, dolled up in a borrowed gown of Carly's that she wasn't quite equipped to completely fill out. At the sight of Helen Carver, Rosemary could no longer refrain; she cackled more wildly than before.

"What is so damned funny?" Helen asked in a huffy sort of fury. "And why was Geraldo getting in his car without his pants on? And, Jackie, what are you still doing up? It's a school night."

"Aunt Carly and the cunt were laughing about something. I'm very confused right now."

"Well, kiddo," Carly broke in, taking the boy by the shoulder and leading him toward the front parlor where she entertained smaller groups of friends, "I think you're old enough now to hear the true story of how your Aunt Carly got to be so... successful."

"I thought you were good at picking lottery numbers," Jackie said, looking up at her as his mother and Rosemary followed them into the parlor.

"Oh, your Auntie is good at picking something," a woman no one expected to be there said from her seat across the room. Sipping her tall straight-up drink, Jackie's grandmother went on, "It's just not numbers for the lottery. Hello, my darling girls, are you happy to see your mother again?"

"Mother!" Helen crowed, shoving between Rosemary and Carly to step into the middle of the room and confront Helena Carver, whom none of them had seen in over a year. "We've been worried sick about you around here. You run off with your latest dancing dick and, what, suddenly your family isn't worth the tiniest little sign that you're all right?"

"I was happy, my dear!" Helena shouted, tipping back her glass and downing the rest of its contents in one go. "Does anything else matter?"

"Family matters," Jackie chimed in helpfully, to which Rosemary responded with another burst of maddening cackles.

When everyone in the room turned an annoyed eye on her, Rosemary shrugged and dropped into a love seat in the corner, near the piano.

"Anyway, as I was trying to say to our dear Jackie here," Carly said, shutting everyone else in the room up with a finger waving around the room, then kneeling before the kid, "it's past time you found out what I really do to acquire my vast wealth."

"And it's not the lottery," Jackie said, wrists crossed behind his back.

"Quick kid you've got here, Helen my dear," Helena chirped as she poured herself another drink.

"Shut up, Mother," Helen sighed, dropping onto the stool at the piano and shooting Rosemary a nasty look, to which Rosemary only responded with a wink and a half-muffled giggle.

"I'm a soft-core black widow," Carly confessed, pride across her face.

"So you do soft-core porn, like what New Uncle Geraldo makes?"

"No, kiddo," Carly laughed, preempting Rosemary's imminent interjection with a forceful wave. "It means I marry men and take all their money, but I do it without killing them like a traditional black widow would do."

Carly and Helen both turned to look at their mother, who just shrugged and sipped her drink.

"How do you do that?" Jackie asked, face brightened by honest curiosity.

"Well, see, when I told you I thought Rosemary over there is a cunt, I was still acting the part of the bitter, betrayed wife, but really she's a good friend of mine. Do you understand?"

"Oh," Jackie moaned, turning slowly to look at Rosemary. Darting his eyes back to his aunt, he cried gaily, "It's a set-up! She acts like a slut, and then you can say he cheated!"

"Very good. Do you know what a pre-nup is?"

"He's a child in the reality television age," Helena cut in, voice starting to slur with drink. "Of course he's heard of a bloody pre-nup."

"Did this one take you to London or something, Mother?" Helen gasped, torn between contempt and jealousy.

Rosemary laughed and rolled her eyes when she got another dose of the evil eye from her friend's live-in sister.

"We can't all have perfect fairy-tale married lives, can we, my darlings? Oh, I forgot! Nobody in this family even wants that!"

"Mother, shut up," Carly and Helen said in unison, both of them looking at Jackie and refusing to look at Helena.

"Why should I do that? Your son here already knows his happy life growing up with two mommies didn't work out. How are your therapy sessions going, by the way, Jackie?"

"My shrink doctor says I'm making good progress," Jackie said with an embarrassed shrug, looking over at Rosemary to see if she was judging him.

Rosemary merely offered him a nod of understanding, and smiled in commiseration.

"Yeah, I'll just bet," Helena whispered into her glass before taking a controlled sip.

"Anyway," Carly said after a loud cough to regain control of the group conversation, "in the pre-nuptial agreements I make my husbands sign, I always include an infidelity clause. The men I marry are fool enough to agree to it, while still being pig enough to fall into Rosemary's trap."

"It was just too easy with this one, Carly," Rosemary laughed, walking across the room to grab the bottle up from its place on the end table next to Helena. She took a long swig of the dark liquor, replaced the bottle on the table, tipped a thankful nod down to Helena, and added, "Could you maybe make the next one more challenging? I mean, come on... a porn producer?"

"He's only works in soft-core stuff," Carly hissed defensively. "I thought he'd have a little more restraint, maybe make us wait at least a month before anything useful happened."

"Maybe I'm just that good," Rosemary preened.

"Or just that much of a slut," Helen spat. "Carly, I really don't want my son exposed to this side of your lifestyle. Maybe it's time we finally moved out. Find a place of our own."

"Ha!" Helena and Rosemary crowed at the same time, high-fiving ridiculously thereafter.

Carly face-palmed to hide her disbelieving grin from Jackie.

"What?" Helen shouted, jumping to her feet. "I can get us our own place. Or, at least a small place for myself, where Jackie can still visit me on weekends after he moves back in with his other mother and... and..."

"His father," Helena said drunken-helpfully, laughing as she got the words out. "That is what Alvin is, technically, isn't he?"

"He was my sperm donor," Jackie said to Rosemary.

"Oh, I know all about that," Rosemary said back with a wink.

Jackie blushed, feeling like his biggest dark secret was exposed, and Rosemary reached out to pat his shoulder in apology. Helen smacked Rosemary's hand away from the boy.

"Ouch," Rosemary pouted, slumping back down in the love seat.

"Keep your hands off my kid, sister," Helen hissed.

"I'm not your sister, dyke," Rosemary hissed back, sticking her tongue out and grinning goofishly to show she didn't really mean to offend with the slur.

"Am I the only true lady in this house?" Helena moaned, folding one arm over the top of her head while the other held her glass to her lips. "I mean, aside from you, little Jackie."

"I'm a boy, Grandma."

"I've told you about using that vile little word, Jackie," Helena said, lowering her arms and leveling a warning glare on her grandson. "And I suppose you're right, for the time being at least. I suppose you won't have the surgery until you're at least twenty."

"My son is not having a sex change!" Helen shouted. "Unless you want to, Jackie."

"No," Jackie huffed, walking over to a wall to hide his face from everyone.

"Then he'll just be a very happy bottom boy, whatever," Helena said, waving her free hand expansively. "A true lady waits for her man to die before she takes all his worldly worth. Remember that, my little Jackie. Whether you remain a male or choose to become as close to a lady as you possibly could, you must wait for the man to die, as your Grandmommy has always done. She can't help it if every man she's married has happened to have an early expiration date."

"I'm not gay," Jackie said to Rosemary, hoping that if no one in his family would believe him, maybe this outsider could give the possibility of him being heterosexual a chance.

Before Rosemary could answer to affirm or deny Jackie's desperate claim, and before anyone else in the room could utter a sound, the sound of the front door slamming open came to them all, and all eyes moved to the entryway. A pair of strangers appeared, both wielding guns. Jackie yelled out and leapt to push his mother to the ground. Rosemary ran to very clumsily bring Carly to the floor with her. Helena's eyes popped.

She said evenly, almost soberly, "Do I know you boys?"

Without a word, the twins shot Helena, one taking her heart and the other, her head.

Peter and Phillip walked out of the mansion to the rising crescendo of terrified voices, never looking back.

# TWO

"I am not cleaning that up."

Rosemary and the daughters and grandson of the just-deceased Helena Carver all turned to look at the newcomer, entering the parlor from the basement, indicating someone who had a key to the lower-level entrance. They all sighed a little in relief to see it was only Albert, the robust cleaning person Carly had employed through all her marriages and affairs.

"So which one of you bitches finally did her in?" Albert said, marveling at the mess Helena's murder had made across the chair she sat in, the table beside her, and the wall behind her. "And did you have to do it in front of fairy-head?"

"Hey!" Jackie cried out weakly, used to the assumption but not yet resigned to accepting it. "I am not a fairy."

"Yet," Albert said.

"Hey now," Rosemary butt in on the kid's behalf, stepping into the space between Albert and Jackie. "There's every chance he could turn out to be a straight man when he grows up."

"Thanks," Helen croaked, though she wasn't too sure herself about the chances of that.

"And I'll have you know," Carly spoke up, speech slurring with drink, the bottle her mother had been pouring from in her hand, "it was none of us that did the old bitch in. I was just trying to educate my future niece–"

"Aunt Carly!" Jackie shrieked, then turned bright red and clapped his hands over his mouth when he heard the high pitch of his own voice.

"As I was saying, I was just trying to educate little Jackie here in the art of building one's wealth through the weakness of men. No offense."

"None taken, you drunken whore," Albert said with a deep smile on his wide face.

"Some guys bust in and shot Grandma to death," Jackie whispered, eyes on the old bag's corpse.

He couldn't take his eyes off the way the blood had spread over her clothing.

"Well, I guess we know what that means," Albert said, and shuffled out of the room.

"What does it mean?" Rosemary chimed in, looking curiously from one Carver sister to the other.

"Oh, Albert thinks Mom's involved in some kind of mob trouble," Helen explained.

"Through one of her dead husbands," Carly added with a thick belch.

"I see," Rosemary said, shaking her head and regarding the dead woman with a mixture of sympathy and mild contempt.

"Cops called!" Albert called from another room in the mansion.

Rosemary laughed when Carly jumped up and looked around with owlish eyes.

"They're coming for Mom, you drunken whore," Helen sighed, pulling Carly down beside her on the couch.

Two new strangers appeared in the main entryway. Jackie, now sitting on the bench by the piano, was the first to see them, but said nothing at first because they looked so totally harmless. They were in their mid-to-late twenties; a redhead girl in blues, grays, greens, and blacks, and a pale, barefoot guy in flannel and black. Jackie gawked at his gauge earrings.

Rosemary noticed them next, and stepped protectively between the newcomers and the kid. Jackie barely knew her, but was glad for his aunt's friend's bravery, even though he perceived no threat from either of the new strangers.

Noticing Rosemary's stance, Helen and Carly turned to look over the back of the couch, and both stood quickly, though Carly stumbled a bit and dropped her liquor bottle. It smashed, but there was practically no liquid left in it, so the mess was largely dry glass.

Carly laughed. Helen scowled at her sister, gave the new strangers an apologetic smile on behalf of the lady of the house, and then adopted a furious look on her face that made her look more gassy then ominous.

"What the hell are you people doing here?"

"Maybe they're nosy neighbors," Rosemary offered.

"Nobody I've ever seen around here," Carly said, hiccoughing every other word.

Carly passed out on the couch, smiling blissfully as she fell.

"We're... hell, it's a long story," the redheaded young woman said. "Suffice it to say the old axiom 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' applies here. I'm Marsha. This is Larry."

"So you're enemies of the murderous scum we've just seen here?" Rosemary said, stepping closer to Marsha and Larry with a disturbing awe stretching her features.

Larry stepped back a little behind Marsha.

"Something like that," Marsha said, elbowing Larry to make him step forward again. "Is this the only victim they left here?"

She pointed across the room to dead Helena, Rosemary glanced quickly in that direction and then nodded to Larry and to Marsha, and Helen fainted over her passed-out sister.

Jackie ran over to check his mother's pulse, then sighed heavily when he found she was still alive.

"Kiddo, don't worry about your old moms," Rosemary said, suddenly standing beside him. "She'll be just fine."

"Thanks."

Marsha walked across the room and knelt over Helena's body, but Larry stayed where he was, unnerved by something in this house he couldn't name. It was a familiarity he could not explain, and he wrote it off as random déjà vu and nothing more.

"The police will be here shortly," Rosemary informed them, and Marsha stiffened visibly.

"How long ago were they here?" Larry asked, wringing his hands, anger tightening his jaw.

He needed another cigarette already, and the craving was not making him happy.

"Maybe ten, fifteen minutes ago?" Rosemary answered, sounding not terribly sure.

"Probably less than that," Jackie offered, smiling crookedly over his shoulder at Marsha.

"All right, thanks," Larry said as Marsha made her way back over to him.

"If you don't mind, we were never here," Marsha said without turning back to look at Rosemary and Jackie, and then she went out into the hall going toward the front door.

Larry shrugged, returned a wave when Jackie waved at him, accepted an awkward hug from Rosemary, and then hurried to catch up with Marsha as she left the mansion.

"Strange people," Rosemary said, tilting her head at an odd angle as she looked down at Jackie.

"Aren't we all," he sighed, kicking his mother's shoe gently as she began to stir on the couch.

"Where are they!" Helen shouted, jumping up and rounding on Rosemary and her son.

"They who?" Rosemary said with a shrug and a wink.

"Enemies of our enemies," Jackie said with his own little shrug. "They're gone, Mom."

"Good. So who's going to help me drag Tipsy Carly here upstairs?"

Jackie threw up his hands and stepped away, while Rosemary shoved Helen gently out of the way and lifted Carly up off the couch with almost no effort.

"Oh, please," Rosemary laughed when Helen tried to help her. "This sister of yours weighs practically nothing. You just stay down here and wait for the oinksters. I'll take care of Mrs. Carver-Minks-Stevens-Stallion."

"Oinksters?" Helen moaned in confusion, rubbing her head.

"I think she means the cops, Mom. At least I hope that's what she means."

"It is," Rosemary called back from the hallway as she began to go up the stairs.

Some escaping gas burst from dead Helena's mouth behind them, and Jackie and Helen screamed in unison and clutched at each other.

"Maybe I am gonna be gay," Jackie whispered, afraid to look at his grandmother's corpse.

"I won't care if you are," Helen said. "Some mothers love their children no matter what."

She turned to look down at her dead mother then, holding her son's face hidden against her chest.

"Some mothers really do."

# THREE

Albert Morrissey watched through the open front door until the green Camry left the driveway fronting the mansion, then returned to the kitchen and dialed 9-1-1. He made the call he'd claimed to have already made, and then gently replaced the old wall phone in its cradle so as not to make a sound that might alert anyone in the house to his little deceit.

He carefully made his way down into the basement, closing the door at the top of the steps softly, slowly, darting his eyes around it once before it shut completely to make sure no one was there to witness where he had gone.

He felt his way around in the dark, having learnt every inch of this lower level long ago and leaving the lights off so no one might see the light through a basement window and become suspicious. Within moments, Albert found what he was looking for.

The mansion's original owner had designed the place to include a secret wine cellar he intended to never tell his wife about. As the story went, she never knew it was there in her husband's lifetime, but after he passed away, she happened to be in the basement during a power outage, discovered the entrance to the deeper cellar by accident – mistaking it for a way upstairs – and fell down its steps to break both her legs. No one discovered her for three weeks, by which time she had died of starvation and blood loss.

Albert liked this story, even if he suspected it had been romanticized or embellished to add extra horror.

What he liked most about the wine cellar was that the house's current owner, Carly Carver, had absolutely no clue whatsoever that it was there. She never went into the basement herself, and her witless sister and even more moronic nephew never suspected when they did that anything at all was hidden behind the giant empty bookcase that was set against an otherwise empty white brick wall.

Albert had come down here first before going upstairs to discover Helena's murder, and he hoped the ridiculous story those women had concocted about strangers bursting in to kill the old bag would not hold up two seconds once the police arrived.

He would have to admit under oath that on numerous occasions, he might have enjoyed pulling the trigger himself with that bitch in the crosshairs, but he'd far more enjoy seeing one of her daughters fry for the crime.

Now, before the police did come into this house, Albert had to make sure the thing he'd secreted away earlier was still secure and would not be able to make any noise to attract attention to itself.

He'd just come from Edgecliff Road, a place he'd gone once months ago after online talks with a kinky slut who believed him to be a twenty-three year old gymnast. Albert had reveled in the expressions on the faces he'd seen through the doorway at 737 before the moronic residents there slammed their green door in his face.

Remembering that, he laughed at the matching shade he'd seen on the Camry tonight.

After leaving their driveway, Albert had accidentally gone the wrong way, ending up outside the large blue house at the very end of their road. Something about the structure struck him as interesting, so he decided to return. He found an abandoned house some ways up the road from the place, and began to stalk the residents of the blue house as they slept.

As their property was the very last on the street, they felt safe leaving just about all their windows open all of the time. It was easy for Albert to spy on the family within, sitting in the woods with a good pair of binoculars. He would park his car at the abandoned house and watch from those woods for hours on end, taking notes and making up names for the kids in the blue house. He enjoyed the fact they were parentless, but also envied them their orphanhood.

Finally, in the chaos he witnessed tonight, he had seen an opportunity and seized it without any thought whatsoever.

Strapped into a wooden chair and gagged, little Mickie Tardisian saw Albert come into the dimly lit wine cellar and cried.

"Oh, don't worry, little fellow," Albert crooned, stroking the boy's hair. "You've got nothing to worry about from me." Putting out the light and returning to the stairs that led up to the basement, he added softly, "Nothing tonight, anyway."

# 15. THE GROUNDS

The nine move outward from their circle,

pass through the wormholes and disappear

from their dying universe forever,

and the little wormholes close

all as one.

The dreamer sighs,

thinking this is a sign that she is to die

alone here, the only human witness

to a post-humanity's earth being destroyed,

but she is spared that fate. Her dreaming mind

carries her away from this place

to other visions; less haunting, less ethereal,

and more rooted in her own faults

and frailties and suppositions on life

than anything else or alien.

I doubt she even lets herself recall these visions

as a dream on waking.

– from a dream

# ONE

I let myself lose it a while ago just to feel a little bit more normal, but hearing how close behind them we've come, I flip the little mental switch I imagine is there controlling this particular feature of my mutation, or whatever you want to call it. Now I can see those pale green shimmers of motion in the air, one for each of the three of them.

The density of each tells me which man left which trail. The faintest is Walker, ahead of the twins, but it's only barely less there than Peter and Phillip's lingering tendrils, which means just one thing in my book: he's slowing down so they can catch up with him somewhere.

And the three of them might just be slowing down altogether so I'll finally catch up with the lot of 'em.

They warned me to follow them alone. I obeyed at first, leaving one of my best friends stranded at the truck stop, but I'm sure he found a ride with somebody, whether to his place or theirs. Although, thinking about it, maybe he just got a ride home, since he did get two doses of rutting in today, so he should have it all out of his system. On second or third thought, really, who am I kidding? He probably organized an orgy of shell-shocked witnesses.

Now, though, the twins'll see that I haven't been alone since then.

I glance over at Larry, but he's distracted by any passing scenery he can lock his eyes onto. Ever since we left the bachelorette's house – Marjorie Kissinger, I think I gleaned her name to be, but I don't think I mentioned that to him – Larry has barely looked at me.

I know now that he's in no way a part of whatever nefarious plans they may have cooked up, thanks to what we did.

I look back at those dance-swirling particle-less streams of... I'm not sure what to call what they are. What they show me is where my current targets have gone, the course their bodies sailed through this, our space-time continuum. Our universe. Our world.

But is that something I'm doing, being able to see this, or is it a trail they intentionally left behind for me?

If I can be changing into something other than human, and their targets tonight have predominantly been of the same mutating persuasion, then is it outside the realm of possibility that the killers themselves could be like us? No, that doesn't make sense.

If their story was the same – human one day, becoming something different the next – then they wouldn't go around killing people just like them. Would they?

I've got to stop thinking about this. It'll drive me madder than I already am.

Anyway, we'll all find out the truth soon enough.

Me, Larry, and you, special happy voices in my head.

Yes, damn you, you're happy because I tell you that you are.

Deal with it.

My cell buzzes and I pick it up. It's a text from Gabriel's program; so sweet, so succinct, and so impersonal, just like I always wanted. It tells me to take the exit onto 75 heading north.

Something must have delayed the text coming through, because if I'd waited for this direction, I would've missed the exit. Thankfully, following the pale green indicator streams, I knew to take the exit and leave 275 behind.

Another text comes through immediately, and I see that my next destination tonight – somehow it feels like the last one somehow, but that feels both wrong and right, and I'm not sure how to rectify those discordant feelings – is a campground.

I seem to be missing a few directions between these two back-to-back messages, and after I set the cell down between my legs, sure enough, three or four more texts come in one after another.

I consider calling the Great What to ask him if anything's screwing with his programs or his hardware, but then I remember that I can't. He has to call me.

It kinda ticks me off that he hasn't been checking in with me directly, but I suppose to his mind, being able to check my progress on a screen is just as good.

If I survive the night, he can hear all about my various escapades in person.

Maybe he'll be waiting for me when I get home.

Or, just maybe, he'll direct me to his current location. After, that is, I've finally dealt with the twins.

And Walker MacWellhan.

Walker, my Handsome Stranger, Mac-fucking-Wellhan.

What the hell was I thinking when I left work, anyway? Did I expect to stop his would-be killers – this before I yet suspected how really dastardly and inhuman they are – and he would fall head over heels for me in the process? Did I think he'd come back to my place for coffee, kittens, and sex? Did I think we'd build a happy home surrounded by my cats?

I realize how little thought I've spared for them, my sweet little scoundrels, and then I laugh to think how pissed off I'm gonna be when I get home and find they've been tearing the place up. Although, why would I think they'd do more damage tonight than on any other work night? If I'd stayed at Our Mindy's, my shift wouldn't even be over yet by now.

My mind's eye flashes to the bedroom door I left shut, because I never opened it before I left the house today. Why exactly did I sleep on the couch again? Did I ever figure that out?

After everything else this night's presented me with, I think the mystery of why Marsha crashed in the living room rates kinda low on the list of important things begging consideration. It's not like that has anything to do with anything, especially this whole mess.

I take the exit and bring up the list of incoming messages. Sitting at the light, waiting for it to change, I scroll through the list of incoming texts and try to decide in which order they should be read. They all came in out of order, yet the time they were sent seems accurate in each message, so I piece together the instructions on where I'm going just before I get the green light and have to move before the line of cars behind me starts blatting horns.

We turn right, passing a gas station, a motel, a couple of fast food joints, and a dive bar by the odd name of Empty Bottles.

# TWO

Christopher Lee Hendrikson would remember this day for the rest of his life. He always hoped for a day like that, full of intrigue and adventure – or at least drama more meaningful and memorable than what he had to listen to on lunch breaks at the factory – but he was always disappointed. Today, though, on the anniversary of graduation, it felt different.

Fifteen years ago, Christopher's high school class was gathering on this date for their graduation ceremony, and for the first time in a decade, the senior class at Lorelei Hills had a full one hundred percent graduation rate, with no student having less than a two point seven grade point average. The class wasn't huge by any means, but it wasn't the tiniest either, yet everyone knew everyone else graduating, and they were all at least passingly friendly.

So when one of their fold didn't show up that day for graduation, everyone was concerned, and no one took the absence lightly. They went through the motions of celebration and exaltation and commencement, but their accomplishment and joy were tarnished by the feeling that something had gone horribly wrong, and the next morning, they learned it had.

The night before graduation, senior class nominee for most likely to succeed in the field of children's literature, the recently tragically orphaned Jessica Fletcher-Meyer, had come home in the middle of a burglary. The pair of seedy career criminals added rape and murder to their repertoire, leaving more than enough evidence to get themselves a speedy conviction.

In memory of Jessica, her graduating class began an annual get-together at her favorite spot, a campground her father had used to take her to semi-annually as a child.

In all the fifteen years since Jessica's murder had tainted what should have been one of the most carefree times in Christopher's life, he'd never missed one of these gatherings, even though he hadn't really cared much for Fletcher-Meyer herself.

He'd thought in the months between her parents' accident and graduation day that she liked milking her tragedy just a trifle too much.

In the beginning, he had felt guilty over those feelings, and had wanted to pay his respects to her alongside his classmates as a sort of penance for his uncharitable thoughts in the last months Jessica had been alive.

Over time, it became a cleansing ritual for them all, and less and less about the late Jessica.

Sitting at a corner table in Empty Bottles, the little dive bar just off the exit you had to take to get to the park around the campground, Christopher couldn't remember hearing Jessica's name mentioned once in the last three years.

He thought that must be a crying shame.

Still, the past was the past, he reminded himself as he downed his third drink, his absolute limit if he intended to drive himself anywhere that was away from the bar.

"The past is the past," he muttered into his empty bottle, smiling as he recited the little rhyme some chick who'd stopped coming long ago made up during the first or second little morbid reunion they'd had, "the dead stay dead. What's gone is the past, let's not lie in dread. The past is the past, we'll remember the dead. Let go of the past, and look forward instead."

Someone clapped him on the shoulder, and he dropped his bottle. Christopher winced, expecting it to shatter, but it landed square on its base on the table and stayed put.

"Lucky day, huh?"

Christopher turned and grinned to see it was only someone from his class, someone else who hadn't missed one of their class's annual reunions, but whose name currently escaped him. Come to think of it, Christopher thought he'd never been able to remember this guy's name.

"Les," the guy offered with his hand, which Christopher shook enthusiastically. "Les Greefield. Don't feel bad about forgetting my name. Everyone always does. Even my wife!"

Les laughed at his own joke uproariously, and Christopher suspected there was no wife of whom Les could actually speak, aside from maybe one he'd invented in a fantasy.

"You ever get around to getting married?" Les posed, sitting opposite Christopher at the tiny round table.

Christopher pondered lying to that question, but instead revealed more of the truth than he usually shared with anyone.

"Came pretty close six months ago, actually. Then she went and killed herself. Turns out she was just desperate for someone to leave her inherited fortune to so no one else in her family would get it, so she settled on me, left me everything, and offed herself. Real nice of her, wasn't it? Make me think I've found something good, and it just ends up being a payday."

Christopher suddenly longed for that fourth drink the way he had longed for one more long kiss the day he found his beautiful Sophie hanging over their stairs. He would not get up for it, though. He had to drive. Sure, Les was here now and maybe he could get a free ride with Les, but then he would have to depend on a ride from this creep later on, and that might complicate matters in annoying and unforeseeable ways.

"Wow," was all that Les could manage to say, and Christopher was glad.

Silence was bliss.

He checked his watch, inspiring Les to do the same, and they both stood up too quickly. Les was unaffected, but Christopher's face flushed and he had to stand still for a moment before he could let himself propel his body toward the establishment's front exit.

They were running late, just a little, and that was enough.

Anyone who was more than half an hour late was shit out of luck, for the group always had the entire campground reserved for this date, and they always locked the entrance gates at a certain time, whether everyone had arrived or not. No one cared how long your trip had been; if you intended on being with the group that year, you damn well made sure you showed up on time. That's how it had gone from the beginning, though no one knew who'd made the rule.

Christopher suspected it had been meant as a symbol of the security Jessica had lost in the events surrounding her horrific demise, back when anyone even spared a thought for her.

Anymore, it was just an excuse for more and more people to refuse to come back the next year.

The Lorelei Hills graduating class of 1996 had numbered a hundred and thirty-seven students, one hundred and thirty-six after what happened to Fletcher-Meyer. Random and ordinary deaths had claimed another twenty-nine over the years, and more than double that had simply stopped coming.

Christopher and Les both wondered – at the same moment and with the same ignorance of the other thinking the same thing as they exited Empty Bottles – if anyone remembered Jessica's face anymore, her dream unfulfilled, or her gruesome death.

The two men knew they would never forget.

# THREE

Christopher and Les made it just before Wynona Wagner locked the last open gate into the campsite. They were the last to arrive, and found that just over two dozen of their classmates had made it this year.

When the men with the guns arrived at that gate some hours later, everyone from the graduating class of 1996 – everyone that bothered to come, anyway – was well on their way to stoned, plastered, or otherwise preoccupied. They had no clue danger was so near.

Her hunt nearing its first end, Marsha Bradley's green Camry pulled up. Larry got out and walked up to the gate to find the chain used to lock it had been broken. It was a thick chain, heavy metal, so Larry assumed a pair of lock cutters had been used.

From her place inside the car, Marsha saw Larry holding the broken chain. She knew what he must be thinking, but wasn't quite so sure an earthly tool was the cause.

"So this is it," Larry said as he got back into the car.

"What?" Marsha asked, slowly passing through the gate she assumed the twins had forced open, but then a brief vision of truth made her slam on the brakes.

Walker had arrived first, waited for Peter and Phillip, and together they'd broken the lock and chain. They'd stood in a semi-circle by the shut gate, concentrated on the metal objects before them, and then a small soundless explosion had simply blown the gate open.

"Are you ready for this?" Larry asked, chancing to put a hand on Marsha's thigh.

She chose to accept the meant-to-convey-concern gesture rather than smacking his hand away as she might've done on any other day of her life as she had known it before. She looked at him, smiled, and wanted to pull him over for a kiss, but resisted the urge.

"If you mean, am I ready to finally confront these murdering assholes, then the answer would have to be... I'm not sure I'll ever be really ready. They drew me out away from work with bait they somehow knew I couldn't resist. I am definitely ready to knock some skulls together for being played like that. But am I ready to deal with insidious serial killers who seem to be tracking down and slaughtering people who are changing?"

She paused, took a deep breath, pressed down gently on the accelerator to get the Camry moving again, and smacked the side of her fist down on Larry's knee.

"Ow."

"Oh, stuff it, I barely hit you. Yes. Whether I'm ready or not, and whether you're ready or not, we are going to face them."

Rounding a corner that took them out of sight of the world beyond the thick trees surrounding this road into the state park, a sound reached their ears that made their muscles tense up, their nerves fray, their eyes bulge, and their jaws tighten painfully.

Marsha sped up, but the sound of gunfire only increased. There were two guns going off, which meant the twins were firing, but there was no crossfire. The rising number of shots they could hear being fired implied a large party of targets, and the absence of return fire indicated that none of them were armed.

They passed a lane on the right, then Marsha quickly reversed when she realized the shots were coming from that direction. She sped down the lane, which twisted left and then right before depositing them into a parking lot on the edge of madness.

There were vehicles from one end of the poorly-paved rectangular lot to the other, and beyond the trucks, cars, motorcycles, SUVs, and minivans, tents stood in rough concentric circles around a central patch of concrete littered with metal benches and picnic tables.

Marsha parked in the empty space next to the twins' badly rusted maroon sedan. She killed the engine and jumped out, stuffing her flashlight in a pocket though she didn't need it yet.

Small scattered fires lit the scene, standing in little mobile firepits, a couple of blazing metallic trash cans, and a moderately safely-placed bonfire on the far right, just outside the outer ring of tents and just barely distant enough from the trees.

Marsha approached the outer circle of tents, and sensed more than saw Larry following close at her side.

There were bodies everywhere here; on the ground, laying halfway out of open tents, slumped in lawn chairs and across benches and tables, and more still falling.

Marsha hadn't seen Handsome Stranger's car, but then she hadn't really remembered what it looked like to recognize it, but she recognized him standing on the far side of the clearing, watching as his partners advanced toward him.

They moved slowly through the tents on the far side, gunning down anyone who approached as well as those who tried to flee them. They weren't killing indiscriminately, though; plenty of people who'd been in their way were still standing unharmed.

What caught Marsha's attention and made her stop as Larry moved on a few more steps was the state of the poor souls trying to fight back. There were some brave souls trying to defend their friends or family – no vision had yet revealed any personal stories of these people to Marsha – who looked completely ordinary and only suffered minor flesh wounds, but the ones getting shot dead so mercilessly looked far less human in their last moments.

The light wasn't excellent, but Marsha saw disfigured faces; not scarred, just somehow misshapen, as if they were transitioning to some other form. Their fingertips had split and burst open to reveal long claws of bone, and Marsha nodded clinically to see that. On some of the bodies they passed, the shirts were torn in long gashes along the shoulder blades.

One woman unfurled half-formed wings and took flight after suffering a shoulder wound, but only got about ten feet into the air before a bullet exploded the back of her head.

"Stop!" Marsha shouted where she stood, and Larry – who'd kept going and was now most of the way across the concrete square – turned back to look at her.

The twins kept moving toward Walker, felling a few more before lowering their gun arms.

Marsha ran up to and then past Larry, who moved to keep up with her as she raced to catch up to the twins.

"You fucking heard me, you God-damned cowardly child-killing assholes!"

This got their attention.

Peter and Phillip turned as one to face the woman who'd been chasing them . They raised their guns and fired. Marsha was running toward them and had no time to stop, almost no time to avoid the bullets flying through the air. She wouldn't have been able to dodge them, except the moment the twins' trigger fingers tightened and began the process to send the bullets to fly, her instincts took over and forced her to dive for the ground.

One bullet slammed into one of the metal benches on the concrete patch.

The other shot right through Larry, hitting and passing through his gut on the right side.

Larry Innings fell back without a sound, too stunned to speak or scream.

One of the unshot women belonging to the nebulous group who'd reserved the campgrounds tonight screamed for him though he was a stranger.

Marsha rolled to stare Larry in the face, and he made an effort to wink at her. Her heart broke as his expression broke, pain wracking through him.

She jumped to her feet to holler something at the gunmen, but Peter, Phillip, and Walker were nowhere to be seen.

"Miss," someone said behind her, and she turned to see a man kneeling beside Larry.

"Yeah, he's a friend of mine. I'm Marsha, he's Larry. It's a long story but I've been following these assholes most of the night. I'm sorry I couldn't stop them."

"You aren't a cop," the man said, waving off her guilt and actually smiling up at her. "I'm Christopher. Wish I could say it was nice to meet you, but under the circumstances..."

"Ditto."

Marsha stared back at the spot where she'd last seen Walker standing, near the trees, and tried to concentrate to call up those pale green tendrils. For a moment, she got nothing.

"In all the chaos, I forgot to go grab my cell out of my car," Christopher said, getting up slowly. "Maybe I should do that now."

"No," Marsha said, shaking her head at him. "It won't do any good. If they're following the same plan I saw them use earlier tonight at a truck stop, you won't be able to call out. No one here will. Let's just say they dropped an E.M.P. charge nearby."

"Ah," Christopher sighed, then punched his left hand with his right fist. "So are we going after these creeps? Maybe since they ran, it means they're out of bullets."

"I wouldn't be so sure. Yes, I'm going after them, but I'm reasonably sure they don't want to shoot me."

"Didn't they just try to?"

"I think they knew I could dodge their bullets. Long story again."

"I can't let you go after them alone. I don't know you, but that doesn't matter."

"Christopher, I'm sure you have people to check on and look after here. Look after my friend Larry here too, would you? Gather up as many as you can that will make it, and get them the hell out of here as fast as you can. Do you know where the nearest hospital is?"

Christopher nodded.

Larry moaned, and Marsha bent to look in his face.

"Don't argue with me on this one, Innings. I know you want to be with me at the end of this, but fate's decided otherwise."

"Don't," was all Larry could manage to get out, and then he passed out.

Marsha stood and looked away from him, stomach cramping.

"You okay, miss?"

"I told you," Marsha said roughly, willing her body to let pass all urges that would just waste time at this point, "it's Marsha. I'm fine. Now get."

Marsha walked out into the trees, the pale green streams of what she supposed could be residual kinetic energy guiding her in the direction her adversaries walked.

Larry stirred, just for a moment as Christopher lifted him off the ground, and watched Marsha go. He would never see her with his own two eyes again.

# FOUR

Oh, good. You're coming around. I can cut the present tense shit... or maybe I won't. Well, I mean, cutting back and forth between present tense first person and past tense omniscient third person or whatever creative writing thing it's supposed to be.

I'm you and you're Marsha Bradley. Obviously, if you're hearing this bit interjected, you're coherent enough that I, I mean you in the past, think you're ready to know what's going on.

Well, I don't know what's going on. Yet. This is all precautionary, in case of head trauma and you forget how this all began. At some point after the events you're reliving now, you learned how to record a specific series of thoughts, and how to set it to be triggered by your own touch, but only under certain circumstances.

I've set this blurb to be revealed when you reach a certain... comprehension point again, after some event caused confusion or amnesia. What that traumatic event is, you'll have to work out. It happened to you; it hasn't happened to me yet.

Just a warning. I'm just getting a handle on this associative clairvoyance trip, so there could be bits mixed in I'm not aware of right now; things maybe you'll see that I missed. I hope you're able to follow all of it. Hell, might be you can make more sense of it than I did.

So, yeah, where were we?

I was walking into the woods. Not original, I know, but hell, people have been doing unoriginal things since the dawn of time as we know it. I was walking into the woods, and I didn't even know why the hell I was doing it. The twins didn't have the Mortimer kid with them anymore, so I didn't have to worry about saving any helpless little child.

What the hell was I doing?

I was facing the demons, is what I was doing. Not literal demons; I've never believed in that garbage. But then, maybe it's not garbage after all. I keep forgetting to be more open-minded. Hard habit to break, or get into, or whatever.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I had the scent of them, but it wasn't a smell. It was those pale green shimmers in the air, trails wisping like smoke, like the smoke trails of dark fairies alighting through the air between the trees. I followed this way and that, darkness all around, until I went down a hill and there they were, surrounded by this... luminescence. I could see no obvious or even indirect source for this light, but there it was all around them.

I saw then what I should have realized much sooner, like maybe the instant Peter and Phillip pulled up to my window to pay for their order. All three men were dressed alike. Dark brown leather that was almost black; something like the coat of a chocolate lab.

Peter and Phillip were standing with their guns trained on my chest, and it was like I could see laser lines cutting through the air linking the barrels of their weapons to my nipples. I shuddered, trying to shake the sensation of connection.

Peter was smiling and winked, then wagged his weapon like it was a toy and this whole scene naught more than a game.

Phillip rolled his eyes and elbowed his brother with his free arm, his gun arm never straying a millimeter, his aim never faltering.

Walker was taller than the twins, standing behind them, but seeing them all together there, somehow they felt like a family.

"Walker MacWellhan," I said, not sure how else to begin.

Peter laughed.

I wanted to punch him in the face and jam his gun down his throat.

Phillip looked over with this expression lowering his eye brows that made me think he wanted to slap the grinning fool, too.

Walker put his hands on the twins' shoulders, and they parted to let him through, their gun arms lowering to their sides.

"Yes, that's who I am," Walker said, and he was as gorgeous as I remembered.

Even knowing what he was a part of, my body wanted to swoon. I wanted to drop all the rest of this and throw him to the forest floor and shoot his brothers dead so they couldn't watch. I wanted to ride him all night long and into the morning and when did I decide or discover they were his brothers?

I felt this popping in my head, and swayed a bit on my feet.

Walker caught me by the wrists before I could fall, and I looked into his eyes.

"Yes," he said, "Peter and Phillip are my brothers. They're not twins. Here, let me show you."

He stepped aside so I could see the other two men, and waved a hand toward them. In an instant, I saw something like Jeremy Brookthorne did, and realized there were no masks involved in the truck stop massacre.

The twins metamorphosed before my eyes. They grew to Walker's height. Their frames filled out a bit more, so that their bodies matched his. The features of their faces shifted subtly, and suddenly there were three Walker MacWellhans standing before me instead of one.

Walker was still holding one of my wrists, but I fell on my ass anyway, almost bringing him down on top of me. I could tell which one was Peter now because he laughed, and Phillip gave himself away by looking sterner and more pissily annoyed.

I could tell he wanted me dead and out of the picture. I stuck my tongue out at him ridiculously, feeling safe somehow with Walker there next to me.

I couldn't explain it. Even now, I kind of can't get my head around it.

I had no reason to, but something told me to trust in him right then and there, in spite of everything these bastards had done throughout the night.

Walker had led his brothers on their road of gun-wielding butchery, and now here I was, damn fool of a girl, deciding to feel safe in his arms.

My eyes popped, and I realized his arms were around me. He was rocking me, like some damn fool kid, and I shoved him violently away so I could jump to my feet.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Only what your body was telling me you wanted, or needed. Whichever makes you feel better."

"What would make me feel better is if your brothers the twins would hand me their guns so I could shoot you all dead. How's that strike you?"

"We're triplets," Phillip sighed, slipping his gun into a holster under his jacket.

"I think she can see that, now," Peter said to Phillip, and then he turned back to me. "And that strikes me as the worst possible idea."

"There are things you don't know," Walker said, and my eyes were drawn back to him against my will.

"I have some idea."

"I'm sure," Walker said, waving a hand and causing Peter and Phillip to revert to the forms they'd had when first I caught up with them, when first they arrived at the stop, and when first I'd seen them through my drive-thru. "But perhaps not as much as you may think."

"You're killing people who haven't done anything to you, and leaving alone some people who maybe you should have shot dead."

"She's kinda got a point with that one, brothers," Peter said, shrugging to Phillip's scowl.

"Killing isn't all we do," Walker said.

Peter added, "It's not what we're about."

"It's just a part of our mission," Phillip said, "not the whole of it."

"You're beginning to understand a little of why we're doing what we're doing," Walker whispered in my ear, suddenly standing so near I could feel his breath on my neck.

He was holding something tiny before my face, balled up in his fist.

"Now it's time you were shown why it's necessary."

He opened his hand, and it was like an explosion against my mind. This tiny box was sitting in the palm of his hand, and it glowed like the air around us, but brighter, warmer, tighter. I couldn't take my eyes off it. I didn't want to. I wanted to know what it held.

Slowly, he pushed it against my forehead.

My eyes closed, and the message node took me into its secret space.

It told me what it was as it showed me the message it held. It was a remnant of some alien technology brought to earth by the father of these men, a being known on my world only as Tall Walk. For reasons the node did not explain, Tall Walk was not there to raise his sons, so he left this for them. The message had been broken and degraded, but it was powerful.

Images flashed through my head. I saw something like a spoor cloud, but dense and humongous and spreading across the entirety of the globe in a flash like lightning. It sank into the fabric of our reality from wherever it came from, and then disappeared into us. It disappeared into soil, crops, structures, bodies of water, and into our selves.

It was an invasion most insidious for its invisibility.

The source was unknown.

The effects, questionable and debatable.

What was known was that the spoor, in enough concentration, could change people.

I saw a distorted being that looked just barely like it was trying to pass for human. All specific detail eluded me. It reached for me, trying to speak English, but brokenly.

Only one word came through utterly clear.

"Destroy."

"Yes, Marsha Bradley," Walker said, taking the node from my face as my eyelids slid up and slipping the object into an interior pocket of his jacket. "That is the core sentiment."

"They were innocent people," I muttered, my voice failing me.

All the people I'd been trying not to mourn by swallowing that essential emotion up in an easier one, anger, swam up to the surface of my thoughts. Walker was picking them out for Peter and Phillip to cut down, but really, what other choice did they have?

"No," I yelped, face-palming. I smiled at Walker as he stepped back from me, and repeated in a more confrontational tone, "They were innocent people."

"You're right," he replied, hands up a little defensively. "They are innocent persons."

"Do you agree with the adage that a person can be smart, but people are generally stupid?" Peter asked, daring to step toward me even as I shot fiery eyes at him.

I had to admit, "Mob mentality principle. Sure. What the fuck's that got to do with anything?"

"We're working to prevent a mob," Phillip said, looking impatient to be done with this place, and probably with me as well.

"If enough people complete the change," Walker said, drawing my eyes to him, and damn him, my anger softened to look at him, "there's a chance they could activate all the spoor that are currently dormant throughout the rest of the world. Chaos, on a global scale. That's what we're trying to prevent, and I think any cost is worth it to protect the human world."

"That doesn't even make sense," I said, but I didn't fully believe my own words.

"Come with us," Walker offered, taking my hands in his, and I cursed myself for not pulling away from him. "Let us show you. It isn't exactly cake piece for us, either."

"A piece of cake," Peter corrected under a cough.

Phillip laughed for once, dryly.

"Sure," I said, rolling my eyes, pulling my hands away from Walker, and taking a step back in the direction of the camp site they'd just rampaged across. Without looking back at the triplets, I asked them, "How do you plan on getting yourselves out of here? Is there a space ship hovering nearby?"

"We're only half," one of them said, and the distaste in what that meant – that they were half-human and not all-alien – made me assume it had been Phillip who spoke.

"Okay, so no space ships, I'm guessing that means. How do you propose getting back to your cars?" I started walking forward out of the thickness of their ethereal glow, actually feeling it roll off my body like something almost physical, and went on, "And going on this mad mission past this point? Someone's got to have left by now, and they all saw your faces."

"That's a small obstacle, if they were to remember."

That stopped me cold, but I wouldn't turn back.

"We are like you, in a way," Walker said, stepping around me and into my line of sight. "We left seeds amongst them. Once they've left the zone in which their cellular phones and other devices fail to function, their minds will experience something like an elastic snapping, and all details about us will vanish from their heads. They won't even remember you were here."

"And Larry?"

"Your friend the hitch-hiker will be unaffected, but I think he's wise enough to keep his mouth shut."

Walker turned from me and began walking then, into the trees and quickly out of sight.

I realized the illumination they'd been conjuring was gone, but by what little light filtered down from the night sky through the canopy of trees, I could still see Peter and Phillip passing me on either side. Neither of them turned an eye toward me.

I stood in brief indecision with no idea why I was bothering to stay on that spot, so I started moving just so I wouldn't get lost out there.

I followed the brothers MacWellhan out of the woods, and no one else living was left there. The dead were still lying where they'd fallen. Obviously, since I'm not recounting a tale of vampires or zombies, the dead were still lying dead, but all the living – wounded or not – had gotten the hell out of dodge, just as I'd suggested to Christopher they should do.

Larry was with them. He would be safe. I smiled.

"I'll come with you," I called to Walker from the concrete patch as he reached the sidewalk in front of the remaining vehicles.

I looked at the empty spaces and knew that almost all of the cars, trucks, et cetera still parked here belonged to the dead, but pushed that thought away.

These men, these strangers to me, believed they had grounds to shoot dead every person they'd killed so far, and full reason and license to go on doing so for as long as they were able to do so.

At the moment, I had no way whatsoever to stop them, or even to try to stop them without just giving them a reason to kill me.

Standing on opposite sides of their rusted sedan, Peter and Phillip exchanged a glance and a nod before getting in, as if sharing confirmation of some secret hunch. I had little clue then it was all about me.

Walker waved me over to his off-white car, and I walked in that direction as he got into his driver's seat. I wondered briefly and probably not for the first time why he chose to inspire me to follow them in the first place.

Was it because of the change I was going through?

Did they think I'd prove somehow useful to their endeavors?

Was there some connection between me and the people they'd been targeting?

No, that couldn't be it. If I fit the profile those other people did, being changed by that otherworldly spoor, then I'd be dead already.

Wouldn't I?

I shook my head to shoo away this distracting train of thought, and got in with Walker.

Nothing else to do for it.

For better or for worse, I was accompanying them from this point onward.

He backed up as I fastened my belt.

I watched the twins back up in their car – thinking of them as the twins would prove to be a very hard thought-habit to break – and my breath stopped when I spotted the Camry.

"Shit," I hissed, and Walker stopped his car moving, honking lightly to halt his brothers for the moment.

"Your car? Are you worried about leaving it here?"

"Just a little."

"Let's solve that little problem."

He snapped his fingers, and the Camry's engine started up in an instant. The tail lights came on, and my car rolled back a few inches before stopping again. Peter and Phillip resumed moving, Walker and I followed, and my car came on behind us. I turned in my seat, but there was no ghostly driver in my driver's seat back there. It was just moving all on its own.

"Is that smart?" I asked Walker meekly, truly frightened of that man for the first time.

"No one will notice it's driverless, if that's what you're worried about. You've seen Doctor Who. Think of it as a perception filter. Most drivers don't pay attention to other drivers anyway, just other vehicles. Those few who might usually look, will be directed not to."

"Another... seed?"

"Yes."

I slumped in my seat a bit and shut my eyes, wishing with all my girlish might that I had never gone on this mad journey. I wished instead that I'd gone straight home when I left work. I wished I were home right at that precise instant, surrounded by my cats.

Even if I had to be on my knees cleaning all of their litter boxes, it would be better than facing this unknown I was stupidly throwing myself into with the MacWellhans.

Who knew what they really intended for me, in the end?

Thinking of my cats, my mind flashed back to my house. I could see my bedroom door, still just barely cracked open. I could see Cheshire nosing his way finally into my room, looking for me though he knew I hadn't come in the front door. Maybe his little kitty brain was desperate to believe I'd climbed in through a bedroom window, something I'd never do, but maybe cats imagine the impossible from us. Maybe the next time I touched him I'd know.

I saw Cheshire going into my room, and the light from the hallway light I leave on for them bathed my bedroom in an eerie luminescence as it reflected off the falling, tattered remains of a vast cocoon over my bed. First Cheshire approached this strange thing, and then other cats and kittens flew into the room, sensing something new and incredible.

As they nosed around, the cocoon's remains began to crumble.

My eyes snapped open, and I laughed a little too hysterically.

"What did you see?" Walker asked, eyes never leaving the road or the back end of the twins' sedan.

"My house. Almost as if I..." I stopped myself, sensing danger in the words I almost uttered though I had no idea what they might have been going to be. "Nothing," I said, smiling and laughing and even reaching over to slam my palm on Walker's knee. "Nothing at all!"

"Don't dismiss the things you see. I imagine you already know you shouldn't."

"Oh, this I can say... is just my imagination running away with itself."

"All right then."

He said nothing else for a while, and I let him keep his silence.

We followed Peter and Phillip back onto the highway, where all of us went further north while my driverless green Camry went south, presumably toward 275 and, eventually, home.

I gave up my wish to be going with it.

You are Marsha Bradley, and this is the story of how, once upon a time, you were just a girl who worked for Our Mindy's. You called in a favor so you could do what you thought would be a good deed; intervene to save a Handsome Stranger from some apparently deranged stalkers, or ex-friends, or bookies, or whatever.

This is the story of how Marsha Bradley lost her ignorance of the alien in her own world.

This is how her life changed, and her longest night wasn't even halfway over yet.

## ###

# Afterword

This is a work of strange fiction, I'm sure. It has been a long journey for our Marsha up to this point, and her night is still far from over.

It's been a strange journey for me as well. Her Longest Night is far from the first story I have worked on. In fact, it was the most unlikely candidate for what it became in the end; my first finished novel.

A combination of things led to its inception. First, there was Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas, the only Odd book I've read so far. I've read lots of Koontz's books over the years, and while his particular formula for story intrigues me, it has also kind of put me off.

I tend not to like popular things, but Dean Koontz is undoubtedly a success because he knows how to write popular fiction.

He has a simple formula: introduce person, or group of people, generally living somewhere in California; very quickly introduce action around or near that person or group of people, action that drives them away from what they know into an unknown environment, or unknown corners of the world they thought they understood; lead the reader to follow.

A lot of the stories I have begun in my life have followed a similar pattern, with the setting usually being Ohio because that is where I have always lived, and is the setting I feel I can most convincingly portray. I also usually begin with a male lead who has some of my qualities and/or elements of my life (home, job, types of friends at the time).

With this project, I turned that formula on its head. I gave this character a home like mine, a job like mine, but I made her a woman, and that detail has made the telling of this story very interesting to me.

Another major element in the creation of this specific novel is the job I had at the start of this writing, which I still hold to this day. I work in a fast food drive-thru, and it tests me daily.

Anyone who works in the service industry will understand what I say next.

The general public shows you some of their most honest, indifferent, inattentive, rude, and sometimes downright ugly faces when they are ordering at a fast food restaurant, and for a few seconds, you see how quickly people can forget you are a person, too.

The problem with this observation is, of course, that I can also forget they are people with lives, problems, and drama I know usually nothing about (and I prefer to keep it that way). They are hungry, and hunger can turn us human beings into quite different animals than we might be in any other social situation, where we are well-fed and more composed.

Through the passages of this novel, I try to explore the lives of people I have never met, who do not exist, but they could exist. They could live next door, up the street, seven towns over, and they might just come through my drive-thru tomorrow night.

People live, breathe, work, rut, make mistakes, and eventually, they will die.

Here, I just make those deaths more violent, sudden, unexpected, connected, and I hope thought-provoking.

No one's death is meaningless.

Everyone matters to someone, at some point in time, even if they forget.

No death should be written off as insignificant.

And no victim should be forgotten as just another statistic.

People matter. Every person, big or small, old or young, American by birth or by choice, gay or straight or any other variation thereof... we all matter, all the time.

Marsha Bradley will become a champion of this belief I hold.

I invite you to follow her on the journey to that day.

But, will she survive that long, unbroken? Only time and the next two books can tell...

# Reader's Group Discussion Guide

Her Longest Night is fiction, but perhaps still worthy of discussion. Its themes, I hope, speak to issues beyond Marsha's life and the suspense of her chase after the brothers. I offer here discussion topics for groups, as well as questions for both personal and group contemplation.

1. At the opening of each chapter of this novel, there is a short italicized text taken "from a dream." Whose dream do you believe this might be? Do the symbols presented in the scenes of the dream mean anything within the context of this book? Does the dream fit into this novel in any way, or does it detract from the flow of the story proper?

2. In section five of Chapter Six, Aftershocks at the Stop, we learn that Dean believes he has lived his life before, numerous times, in alternate timelines to the story we read here. Do you think this is a real event within the world of the story, or a delusion within Dean's own mind? Either way, what do you think might be the significance of its inclusion here in a story that is centered almost exclusively on Marsha Bradley?

3. At the beginning of the book, Marsha seems confident and believes she knows exactly how to handle any situation she will encounter (i.e. her reaction to the new hire at work making fun of her name immediately upon meeting her). How do you think her demeanor has changed by the end, when she chooses to go with the brothers? Has she lost all confidence in herself at this point, or does this choice imply something else?

4. Marsha holds a deep resentment of uniformed officials due to one encounter with a would-be rapist who happened to be a police officer. Do you think this attitude is entirely unwise, or is her caution concerning cop involvement somehow empowering to her as a woman? She confronts things that should frighten her, instead of running away or leaving it to someone else to deal with. She also confronts these things head-on, usually alone and without immediate back-up. Does this imply an underlying death wish, or is she simply too concerned with how she can help others to worry about how she might be endangering herself?

5. We meet many victims of the brothers MacWellhan in the virtual pages of this ebook, but through her burgeoning psychometric talent, Marsha discovers a victim of someone else. Patricia was locked away in the attic of the house she shared with her husband, Jeremy Brookthorne, and when he died, he doomed her to die up there. If Marsha had not happened across their home, Patricia might never have been found in time, by her sons or any neighbor. What do you make of Patricia's state of mind upon being released from her prison? What kind of relationship did she have with her husband before he made her a captive in their home? Do you think they could have ever resolved their marriage, if Jeremy had not been shot and killed? It may seem horrible to consider, but there are many talk shows on television showing us over and over that most people will stick with a spouse they should know is bad for them. Does Patricia seem like she would have chosen to leave Jeremy, given the chance?

6. Marsha knows nothing about the Handsome Stranger at the beginning of the book. She is not a detective or a superhero, yet she abandons nearly everything she knows rather quickly in order to pursue two strangers who seem – she makes this assumption on the most tenuous evidence – to be hunting down a third. Why do you think she does this? What lines does she construct to explain this action to herself? Was she seeking any excuse to escape her possibly humdrum existence, or might these circumstances have lured anyone away from that drive-thru window, had Marsha not been working this night?

7. Some have said Her Longest Night takes a while to really get going. Did the slow start put you off the novel, making it difficult to get engaged with the characters or their world, or did it help ground the novel in a fictional reality you could almost believe in?

8. Were you disappointed when Marsha had to leave Larry behind? When she let Dean stay behind at the truck stop? Were either of these men really any help to her in the quest to catch up to the killers, or simply a distraction from loneliness?

9. What do you make of the title Her Longest Night?

10. Marsha crosses paths with a lot of people in the first installment of Her Dawning Night. Some are dead, some are alive; some seem sane enough, while others are clearly more than a little demented; some of them turn out to be very surprising. Were you able to identify with anyone you read about in the book? If so, did you find this character to be someone you liked, or did they make choices or behave in a way you cannot agree with?

11. When Marsha first meets Larry Innings, she is leery of trusting him. At what point do her doubts fall away? What happens that makes her really start trusting him, and trusting that he is not in fact an agent of the brothers? What does this say about her personality? Does she trust too easily, or does her trust come at too high a price?

12. Should Marsha have spent more time with any of the living victims she encountered? What do you think the book's message is about victims?

13. How did you feel at the end of the book?

About the author

Erik J. Avalon is the pen name of M. Erik Strouss. Her Longest Night is his first completed novel. He lives in a small town outside Cincinnati, Ohio with his partner, a small number of cats, and a black Lab mix named Nestle.

Connect to Erik

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ejavalon

Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/Erik.J.Avalon

Facebook Timeline: http://www.facebook.com/e.j.avalon

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ejavalon

Blog: http://erikrants.blogspot.com

Marsha Bradley returns in INTO THE NIGHT UNYIELDING...

Marsha has entered the horrific world between the life she's known – a life on the edge of society, where she must maintain a happy smiling façade to serve the general public and thus witness a large chunk of how human society treats its own – and the precipice of a dangerous new frontier. The alien has invaded her world, and now she rides with those whom would defend humanity against it. In Book Two of the trilogy Her Dawning Night, follow Marsha as she learns more about the MacWellhan brothers, their mission, their legacy, and eventually discovers it's down to her to decide what to do about them.

Coming soon...
