In the rearview he glimpsed something tiny and red. Tail-lights? He made a quick three-point turn and drove out to the first clearing. Half a mile off, twin glowing red dots moved slowly through the trees, then intensified, then disappeared.

  Glen cut the headlights. He pulled off slow, feeling for the ruts in the access road, and stopped before the first turn. Flashlight in one hand and shotgun in the other, he got out and ventured into the black woods. Was someone talking? He heard a noise, perhaps laughter, floating up, deflected by the trees. It sounded like a girl. Parkers, he thought. More parkers. But he remained watchful, just in case, for sight of a single-beam light, the poacher’s mark of trade. He’d been shot at more than once. “Here the deer shoot back!” was his favorite line, and then he’d always pump a few rounds into the air. That generally sent them packing.

  More words issued up, verifying the gender. A girl said, “Well, come on. We haven’t got all night.”

  Great, Glen thought. He’d give them a scare.

  Past the first turn, he saw a car parked in the road. He leaned low, walking lightly, and soon details of the vehicle grew more precise. It was a big Lincoln, silver or light gray, and it was new. He inched right up to the passenger side and listened.

  “That feels good,” the girl said. “I like that.”

  Hope you like this, too, he thought. He aimed his flashlight at the open passenger window and turned it on.

  Both of the people in the car were girls. They both screamed.

  Glen couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  The girl on the driver’s side withdrew her hand from the other girl’s pants. One was blonde, the other brunette. Frantic, the blonde pulled her shirttail down over her open jeans.

  He stared a moment more. He blinked steadily, daring this scene to be a mirage that might disappear between blinks.

  The two girls stopped screaming. Glen could tell by the looks on their faces that they weren’t exactly happy to see him.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” the blonde said.

  “Oh, shut up,” the brunette said back to her.

  Frowning, the blonde dared to look up at Glen. “Well, you’ve scared the shit out of us,” she said. “What happens now?”

  From the driver’s side, the brunette leaned over, her lips sealed in a similar, defiant smirk. She wore a black T-shirt with the white letters DISCHORD RECORDS centered breast level. “Are you gonna arrest us, or what?” she inquired of him.

  Neither of them could’ve been more than eighteen.

  “What the hell is this?” he was eventually able to say.

  “We’re parking,” said the blonde.

  “You’re both girls!”

  “Clever of you to notice,” said the brunette.

  Glen shined the light in back. “Girls don’t go parking without guys. Where are the guys?”

  “We’re not into guys,” the brunette answered. This she stated quite solidly. There was no shame, no embarrassment.

  “We’re into each other,” the blonde said.

  No, no, come on. I can’t be expected to believe this. I just…can’t…believe—

  “Why are you staring at us like that?” the blonde asked. “It’s not polite to stare.”

  The brunette: “Yeah, what’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen two girls make it before?”

  “No,” he said. “This is Maryland, not California.”

  “We’re gay. We admit it.”

  Glen squinted at them. He was thrown over. “How can you not admit it? I just saw you take your hand out of that girl’s pants!”

  “That’s no reason to treat us like criminals!” the brunette shouted back. Her voice echoed through the forest. “We haven’t done anything wrong, so instead of staring at us like we’re a pair of midgets, why don’t you give us a break? If our parents find out about this, they’d make us go see shrinks.”

  Finally, the shock began to rise. “How did you get in here?” he demanded. “Are you the people who’ve been cutting my chains?”

  The blonde’s frown drew to a grimace. “We didn’t cut any damn chains.”

  “We used one of those back roads on the town line,” the brunette added. “We didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he said. “Look, what you do with each other is your business, but when you do it here, it becomes my business. This is private property, and there’re signs posted all over the place, and did you ever stop to think that maybe the guy who owns this land doesn’t want you two coming out here to feel each other up? How would you like it if I parked my car in your yard and dorked my girlfriend there?”

  “You don’t have to insult us,” the brunette snapped back. “It’s not against the law to be gay, you know.”

  “Fine, I realize that. Just go be gay somewhere else.”

  Excitement sparkled in the blonde’s eyes. “You mean you’re not going to squeal on us? You’re not going to report us?”

  “No, I’m not going to report you. Just leave. Go out the way you came.”

  “You mean that?” prodded the brunette. “You won’t tell our parents?”

  “I won’t even tell your parents. Go away now. Beat it. Scram. Be like a hockey player and get the puck out of here.”

  Seconds later, they were gone, the roar of their engine immense in the night. Glen made a small note of the incident in his daily log, then glanced up in time to see their taillights fade.

  This was a first in his career. Crunching back through the woods to the truck, he could still scarcely believe it had even happened. Two girls, he thought. The new age has dawned before my very eyes. Wait’ll Kurt hears about this.

  Vague light shifted in the trees. Overhead, the moon glared through a rive in the clouds. Glen marched on, stepping high instinctively to avoid unseen branches and stumps. Too many times this forest’s bag of tricks had landed him on his face.

  He promptly tripped and fell. He landed on his face.

  Stupid clod. He’d dropped the shotgun and flashlight, failing, though, to break his fall. But what had he tripped on? Fallen branches? A rotten log? When he moved to get back up, his hand pressed against something slimy and stiff.

  “Jesus.”

  There was an odor, faint but awful. His hand was wet. “What the hell is this?” he said, for the second time that night.

  He found the flashlight, and pointed it, and—

  — | — | —

  PART TWO

  In your love is my death;

  feel my dead heart beat stronger.

  This goes on forever,

  but I can wait longer.

  It kills me when he touches you,

  every whisper, every kiss.

  But your years are my seconds,

  and your misery—my bliss.

  —from “Three” by RODERICK BYERS

  You’ll never know where,

  and you’ll never know when.

  “Murder,” it whispers.

  “The mirror. “ Again.

  You’ll never know how,

  and you’ll never know who.

  It’s coming, though, and it’s coming for you.

  —from “Double” by L. EDWARD S.

  they are neither man nor woman,

  they are neither brute nor human;

  they are ghouls.

  —E. A. POE

  — | — | —

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  Kurt looked up and frowned. He was reading in the den, the floorlamp glowing softly behind his chair. In his lap he held a book entitled The Red Confession, but its pages were all blank.

  At once the house fell silent again, though he was certain he’d heard a heavy, loud thunking sound only a moment ago. Perhaps he had imagined it.

  He looked around the room, on edge, as if suspicious of something. A thin but very icy draft nagged at the back of his neck; when he turned, it seemed to follow him. And what was wrong with the furniture? It all seemed slightly out of place, as though someone had moved each piece an inch or two. The curtains hung open to reveal a window full of blackness. When he looked down, he noticed thick black-red carpet on the floor, but he could’ve sworn it had always been brown. Next, he put away The Red Confession, only to be left to gaze speechlessly at the bookshelves. His books were gone, replaced by titles he’d never seen. The King in Yellow, The Lair of the White Worm, The Book of Dead Names. Just what kind of books were these? There weren’t even authors listed on the spines, except for one on the end, / Have Seen the Inside, by the Duke of Clarence, whoever he was. Someone had taken the old books out, and switched them with these.

  He sensed it was very late. Soon he became aware of a soft, rapid ticking sound. The clock? he thought. But it was much too fast and erratic to be a clock of any kind. Likewise, the corner which had always been occupied by Uncle Roy’s grandfather clock was now curiously vacant. Someone had taken the clock also. He would have to ask Melissa what had happened to the books and the clock and the carpet.

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  There it was again; he hadn’t imagined it after all.

  Someone was at the door.

  He walked across the room with alarming effort. He felt sluggish, dragged, as if all his pockets had been filled with lead shot. Then he realized he was dressed in his police uniform, and about the same time he knew something was wrong. Too much strangeness had piled up at once. He couldn’t figure it. The books, the carpet, the clock, and now himself in uniform at some wan hour when only the other day he’d been suspended from work.

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  But the strangest part was that he felt extremely averse to answering the door. He couldn’t explain it. He just didn’t want to do it.

  He stuck his head into the foyer, refusing to even look at the front door. What did he sense waiting for him behind it? “Melissa, be a sport and get the door for me, will you? I’m…busy.”

  He waited, but she made no reply.

  And again—

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  It was much louder this time, driven by insistence; Kurt actually felt the frame of the house vibrate. He pictured Conan pounding on the door with a giant wooden mallet.

  “Melissa!” He paused, waited. “Melissa! Get the door!”

  “Get it yourself!” her small, pointed voice shot back. Hostility gave a crack to the words.

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  “Come on, Melissa,” he pleaded. “Someone’s at the door, and I don’t feel like getting it.”

  From deep in the house, Melissa’s voice unwound as an enraged squeal: “Go fuck yourself! Lazy do-nothing son of a bitch! FUCK yourself!”

  Kurt’s face darkened. Melissa had been brought up liberally, he knew and understood, but now her precocity had slipped too far. It was fine for him to swear, he was an adult. He would not, however, tolerate language like that from a twelve-year-old.

  THUNK, THUNK, THUNK

  “No one’s home!” he spat at the door. To hell with whoever was knocking. Kurt crossed the foyer, the TV room, then marched purposefully into the long hall. It was hot, a dense wet ensliming sensation; the darkness seemed to bleed out of the walls and drip. He breathed the dark, he could feel it fill his chest. But he paid no attention to the incompatibilities he’d observed since finding himself in the den.

  He pushed open Melissa’s bedroom door.

  Moonlight flooded the room; it was dark, yet he could see everything in the cool, phosphoric glow. The room had been emptied out, save for a bed which he noticed only through the corner of his eye. The floor and walls were stripped. Dust lay stoutly, in clumps, along the baseboards. Opposite him, a single bare window framed the moon.

  Kurt’s eyelids felt sewn open.

  Melissa sat cross-legged on the floor, in a limp, white nightdress. An ashtray clogged with butts rested beside her knee. She seemed very thin. A cigarette tilted out of her mouth, its tip glowing orange like a fox’s eye. She hadn’t even noticed that he’d entered, but instead seemed fixed on something across the room.

  “Melissa, what’s going on?” He stood off balance in the doorway, paralyzed. “What happened to your things? Where’s your furniture? How come your posters aren’t on the wall?”

  “Get out!” she shouted, but it sounded more like an animal’s bark. She still had not bothered to look his way. “Little goodie-two-shoes runt. Faggot. Pussy… Get out. Go find a clam hole to fuck.”

  Kurt reeled in his own furor, blood thumping at his temples. “How’d you like to chow down on a box of Tide? Sounds to me like your mouth needs a good cleaning.”

  She laughed, cackled at him. “Put your cock in a rat trap, faggot. And trip it with your balls, if you got any.”

  “That’s telling him, baby,” a third voice oozed. “Ask him to take it out. Let’s see how big it is.”

  Kurt’s senses sank—he recognized the third voice at once. Of its own volition, his head turned slowly toward the other side of the room.

  “Not you,” he heard his own voice rattle. “Anyone but you.”

  Joanne Sulley was sitting on the edge of a coverless bed. All she wore was a moth-eaten black satin blouse open down the front. It revealed nearly all of her. Like Melissa, she seemed much thinner than usual, as though she’d not eaten in weeks. Her hipbones jutted, and he could see the slats of her ribs. Shadows pooled in her body’s hollows. She looked like a whore from the death camp joy divisions.

  He tried to sound infuriated, but the sight of her like this made his voice quaver. “What the goddamned hell are you doing? What are you doing in my house?”

  Joanne leaned her upper body back on her arms. “Melissa invited me,” she said, and parted her legs obscenely wide. “She’s my friend. We both like each other a lot. Isn’t that right, baby?”

  “Uh huh,” Melissa said.

  Kurt squeezed his eyes closed till his entire head throbbed. This can’t be happening, he thought. It’s impossible, none of this can be real. It must be a—

  “Well, what did you think?” Joanne said. She flexed her cadaverous calves, black-nailed toes pointing to the wall. She spread her legs wide. “This is all a dream.”

  He blinked. His mouth went dry from being open so long.

  Joanne smiled like a waxen mask, her face little more than a skull thinly covered by sheet-white flesh. “Watch, Kurt,” she said. “Watch this,” and from nowhere she produced a foot-long vibrator. It hummed softly and glimmered in the moonlight; it looked like a bullet. She inserted it into herself, let her head loll and her jaw sag. Kurt stared as the humming object disappeared further. Her hips shifted, her legs tensed to cords. She pushed it in some more and moaned.

  “Stop!” he yelled.

  “Doesn’t turn you on?” the stripper said. “Maybe this will then.” She took the vibrator out, and jammed it into her mouth. Her lips stretched blue and thin against the girth of the shining, white cylinder. Soon its pressure at the back of her throat caused her eyes to swell forward in their sockets, as if they might eject altogether.

  “Stop it!” he shouted. “Please, stop it! You’re crazy to do this in front of a little girl! You’re crazy!”

  Suddenly the vibrator was gone. He supposed she had swallowed it.

  “How can I be crazy, Kurt?” Joanne said. “It’s your dream.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “and since it’s my dream, I guess that means I can do anything I want. It wouldn’t matter because it wouldn’t be real. Why, I could even—”

  “Kill me?” Joanne finished. “You don’t want to kill me, Kurt. You want to fuck me.”

  A heavy tingling, like a rash, crawled over his face. He seethed. He hated this girl—not that he could kill her, even in a dream. But, still, the thoughts which filled his mind turned utterly black.

  Joanne was drooling now, profusely. Saliva glazed her chin like glycerin. “Come on, admit it. You want to fuck me, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No!”

  She bent forward, her ribs moving beneath her skin. She breathed expansively as she fondled her own tiny, emaciated breasts. He noticed a fierce glimmer between her legs. It revolted him. Then, with both hands, she cupped the lean, grooved pubis and rubbed it desperately.

  Dream or not, this would have to cease. It was time for a little wagon fixing—he hoped she wouldn’t mind being thrown out the window.

  But when he lurched forward, nothing happened. He felt instantly encased in cement, with only a hole left for his face to peer through. He couldn’t move. He could only look as the nausea pulsed up his throat.

  He heard lewd, slick sounds, like clicking.

  “Come on, Kurt,” Joanne whined, and her tongue traced her upper lip. The tongue was black. “Let’s give our little friend here a lesson in biology.”

  Melissa’s cheeks drew in to black pits when she sucked her cigarette; the tip burned furiously for a second, increasing the orange tint on her tiny, starving face. Then she said, “Fuck her, Kurt. Fuck her.”

  “Shut up!” he shouted.

  “Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her! I wanna watch!”

  Joanne’s grin seemed on the verge of splitting her face. She slithered off the bed and began to crawl toward Melissa.

  “Stop! No, please!” he bellowed. “I’m begging you to stop!”

  Joanne continued to grovel forward, the insides of her thighs slick with shine. She had something in her hand. “Forget him, honey,” she said to the girl. “Let’s do like we did before. Remember what we did before?”

  “Uh huh,” Melissa answered.

  “You liked that, didn’t you?”