Some kind of attack. Stroke. Heart attack. Her stomach constricted at the thought. She bit her lip, bending over him, trying to keep calm.

  “Harry?” He was breathing, anyway; she could see tiny flecks of sawdust jumping with each breath, just under his nostrils. She studied him for a moment, looking for signs of some kind of attack. His face was florid—but it always was. He’d been that way since he’d started his second tour in the navy as a chief bosun’s mate, years before. She studied his thick, large-pored nose and saw no blood. There was no blood on his heavy brown mustache.

  She shook him, said in his ear, “Harry? You okay?” He didn’t react. She ran her fingers through his thinning brown-gray hair, wondering if she should call an ambulance. She felt a slight breeze on her cheek and looked up.

  The breeze was coming through a broken pane in a small, precisely square window. The sawdusty spiderwebs around the frame trembled in the slight air flow from a round break in the glass. Looked like the sort of hole a baseball made. But there was no baseball on the floor. Some hooligan had heaved a rock, then. Some roughneck from the campsite. She returned to Harry.

  “He’s just fallen asleep,” she told herself.

  But he never took naps in the daytime. And then she noticed the blister on the back of his neck. Like a bee sting swelling. Funny place to get a blister. Something bit him. Black widow, maybe? She shook him more vigorously. “Harry? Harry!”

  She stopped breathing, until he stirred and sleepily raised his head. “Whuh? Whuh?” he said.

  She laughed in relief. “You were just asleep!” She reached out to brush the fine sawdust from his cheek.

  He slapped her hand away. Suddenly he was completely awake. He was sitting rigidly on the bench, staring at her, smiling in a way that was new to her. Had he slapped her hand playfully? She reached for him again. “You act like a kid, sometimes, Harry.”

  This time he shoved her away, straight-arming her in the left shoulder so she staggered backward.

  She gaped at him. Twenty-seven years of marriage and he’d never laid a hand on her before. “Boy, you sure woke up grumpy,” she murmured. “You okay, Harry?”

  “Okay? How can a failure be okay?” he asked, his voice smooth. She’d never heard a tone like that from him.

  “What failure is that, Harry?”

  “A failure is never okay, Suze. Because it’s always there eating at him, somewhere in his mind, telling him, You’re a failure. You could have been something and you’re a foreman at a lumber mill.”

  “You don’t think that’s something? Foreman? That’s a high position there, Harry.”

  “I could have been an NCO. An officer. But you talked me out of it. You talked me into leaving the navy. Another four years and I would’ve been an NCO for sure. I could have—”

  “Christ, Harry, that was years ago! You never mentioned being mad about it before! I wouldn’t have minded so much, only you were gone half the time at sea. But if I’d known how much you wanted to be—”

  “Oh you knew. You knew. You knew. You knew.”

  “Harry, stop talking like that.”

  “You knew. You knew. You knew. You knew. You—”

  “Harry—”

  “—knew.”

  “Harry.”

  Something rebellious in Harry, something that was deeply loyal to Suze, struggled, and broke through the membrane of emotional distance. It was like waking up, though you were already awake; a second level of waking. A vision had helped him break out—a picture of Suze, but Suze in miniature, in his head, shaking him awake again the way she’d wakened his outer self in the workshop. And so, briefly, the old Harry woke and took control—but with an effort that almost split him in two—and looked around. He was in his workshop. He’d had a dream about a flying thing breaking the window and then he’d dreamed he’d gotten mad at Suze about something, and then he dreamed he’d taken her in his hands—

  He couldn’t remember what happened after that. Until he saw it.

  Suze’s severed head, staring up at him from the workbench. And he had the bloody-edged saw still gripped in his right hand. Harry screamed, until the other part of him took control again.

  And then he smiled.

  “Look, you don’t know the local cops,” Lois was saying. “They’re dorks. Well, there’s Albright, one of the deputies. He’s okay. But that Lancer; he was a senior when I was a freshman at school. God, he’s such a yokel. He’s so proud of his gun and his badge. Just to show you what kind of dork he is, I heard he’s a Klansman.”

  “You’ve got KKK around here?” Perry asked.

  “Sure. This part of Oregon’s a hotbed of it. Anyway, Dawson’s deputies are the nervous type. If they see Wendy come at them with something sharp, they’ll probably start shooting.”

  “Maybe. I’m wondering about Rofocale, too. He acted like he was going to call the cops. But he didn’t. So why did he want to know where Wendy went?” They sat on the back porch, on the cot, leaning against the rear wall of the house. They needed a porch swing, Perry thought.

  “Yeah,” Lois was saying, “Rofocale’s a—well, when he came to our school to talk to my psych class at the community college—the teacher was high on him then—I thought when I first saw him he was, like, twisted.”

  Perry smiled. “You think he’s a mad scientist?”

  “No, not a mad scientist—a mad salesman. The guy is a salesman type, through and through. A manipulator. He lets people think he’s a medical doctor, but he’s just a Ph.D. And he always swings the talk back to himself. He’s a megalomaniac. It isn’t real obvious but it’s there. It’s the real him.” The back door opened with a squeaking that Perry found pleasantly homey, and Aunt June came to sit beside them.

  “Well,” she said, not looking at them, “I know, Perry, you will be really deeply disappointed to learn I have to go somewhere and leave you alone with your beautiful young friend. Sheriff Dawson wants me to help him look for Wendy. The poor guy has his hands full. He seems to think the certified ‘psychiatric authority’ will be able to second-guess her, figure out where she’s gone. I doubt it, but I’ll have a look at his maps and give it a shot. Nice meeting you, Lois.” She stood. “I’m going to walk over and see Dawson.”

  “Thanks for helping to find Wendy,” Lois said. “I guess I should help too, but the whole thing shook me up so much—”

  “I understand, sure. No, it’s best you take it easy. See you guys later.” She went into the kitchen, and they heard her walk out the front door. The sheriff’s office was only a quarter mile away.

  “Your aunt’s pretty nice.”

  “Yeah. But sometimes she’s just a touch megalomaniacal herself. I think it’s second nature for doctors.” Perry wondered why he felt so nervous about putting his arm around Lois. They’d been nearly as intimate as two people can get, but somehow, now, he felt it would be an intrusion to so much as take her hand. So he was startled when, as soon as it was clear that Aunt June was gone, she turned and slid her arms around him, pressing him against the wall with a long, slow kiss.

  Then she put her head against his chest, snuggled into his arms, murmuring, “I needed that. After Wendy tried to kill me, I need to feel like someone likes me for real. I mean, I thought she was my best friend, and we were devoted to each other. And she changed just like that. I can understand her getting mad and yelling. But it made me feel for a minute that there was nothing real anymore, nothing you could depend on. No one you could trust.”

  “Hey. Trust me.”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Yeah? I can?” She made a face that was a comic exaggeration of doubtfulness. “Nah. You’re a Ramblin’ Man, right? Just passin’ through, ma’am. Like to stay and work your ranch for you but I gotta have the wind at my back.”

  He laughed. “Hey gimme a break.”

  “I’m serious; you’re gonna go back to San Diego.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said, deciding then and there.

  She sat up and looked directly in his eyes. “You mean it?”

  “I won’t go back unless you come too.”

  “I can’t. I got to go to Portland State.”

  “I wouldn’t mind living in Portland. I’ve got some friends who offered me a gig in their band there if I ever—” He shrugged. “What the hell.”

  “Well, then, where is it?” She looked around, even peering under the cot, “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “The goddamn champagne, cheapskate!”

  “Oh! Uh, beer.”

  “Well that’s what I mean. That’s what we use around here for champagne: Miller, the Champagne of Bottled Beer.”

  “You’re getting Olympia, the Pisswater of Bottled Beer.”

  Perry went to get the beer. “Listen,” he said, coming back and handing her a can, “I think Wendy’s probably peaked on whatever drug it was by now. She’s probably saying to herself, ‘A parking lot outside a trailer camp! How’d I get to a parking lot for a trailer camp?’ And asking directions to get back home.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was suddenly distant. She stared at her shoes, tapping them together like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. “Yeah. You got a radio? Sometimes in the evening there’s an FM station in Bend that plays some old stuff. Sixties.”

  Perry got a portable radio out of his baggage, and they sorted through various country music stations and ranchers’ weather reports until they found an FM deejay playing The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.”

  There’s a killer on the road

  His brain is squirming like a toad.

  But Perry and Lois weren’t listening to the lyrics. They stretched out on the cot. The radio rocked from the floor beneath. The first crickets of the evening began to chirrup. And they managed to forget the toad, the gray and unnamed thing they both sensed squirming in the shadows outside their small, frail pool of light.

  Perry walked through the kitchen to the living room, tugging his jeans up over his hips as he went. He buttoned them, then reached for the phone, annoyed with its loud jangling. “Hello. Yes. Oh, Aunt June? Did you—”

  “No.” Aunt June sounded far away. A bad connection. “We didn’t find her yet. Listen, I’m going to be back late, I just wanted to tell you don’t stay up late yourself tonight; first thing in the morning we’ve got a long drive over to Fallen Pine Creek.”

  “What’s at Fallen Pine Creek?”

  “Rofocale’s Center for Renewed Selfhood. We’re going to ‘observe,’ Unless Wendy turns up and I’m busy with her.”

  Perry sighed. “Okay.”

  “So tell her to get dressed and go home so you can get some rest.”

  “Hey for God’s sake.”

  Aunt June laughed and hung up.

  It wasn’t an attic, really. It was just a crawl space.

  Crawl space, Rofocale thought, as, flashlight in hand, he climbed onto the little aluminum stepladder and pushed the door in the ceiling aside. The paint was smudged from his fingerprints, from many times before. Crawl space. You crawl through this space. You crawl. Like a bug. You must crawl. For the Lord of Dark Corners.

  Hatred and resentment swirled together and curdled in him. But he went on with it, because he knew what would happen if he didn’t.

  The trapdoor fell back onto the fiberglass insulation with a soft crunch. He thrust his head up into the shadows and felt the sweat begin to trickle down his ribs; he felt the hot flashes, the pins and needles in his hands. The flashlight growing slippery in his grip.

  He spread his elbows onto the frame of the crawl hole and pulled himself up, grunting. And as always it felt as if the darkness were a solid thing, something damp and furry that gave when you pushed up into it—but gave reluctantly.

  He found a cross-rafter and gripped it with his free hand, pulled himself up onto the planks running between the big cotton-candyish swatches of insulation.

  He was in darkness. Dust scraped at his sinuses, and he felt a pressure on his ears as if he were diving deep underwater.

  He fumbled at the flashlight, and flicked it on.

  Why have you brought that electrical light in here?

  Its voice was soft, gentle—but repugnant. Like the breath of a diseased infant. It was a sound with halitosis. It came from the far end of the crawl space, in the darkest place under the roof peak. It was always the same. It’s equanimity frightened him. The psychopathic sweetness of its voice. The alien tilt of its peculiar, archaic phrasing. Electrical light, it had said.

  “I can’t bear it without a light, not anymore,” Rofocale said. Knowing he was whining, unable to keep from it. Not sure if he were speaking his native tongue or English. “Just to have a little light with me. Not to point it at anything. I almost screamed last time. If I scream, it could scare away the patients. We need them.”

  You are wheedling. You attempt to negotiate.

  “Forgive me. I must.”

  Then keep it pointed downward. Now approach me.

  Rofocale’s mouth went dry. Carefully keeping the light down, he crawled toward the Lord of Dark Corners. The planks were raw; he felt splinters work their way into his knees, the meat of his palms.

  It hurts. Its voice was smiling.

  “Yes,” Rofocale said. Hoarsely.

  In the flashlight’s glow he could see the rafters angling up to meet overhead. As always he thought of ribs, the painting he’d seen of Jonah in the belly of the whale. But it was a much worse place than the belly of a whale. He imagined things dropping down his collar, crawling up his sleeves. Small black things that were much worse than spiders and bugs. Perhaps he wasn’t imagining them. The Lord of Dark Corners could make them come true.

  He reached the end of the plank and stared down into the comforting glow of the flashlight, trying to put off the moment.

  Look up at me.

  Heart hammering, panting, Rofocale made himself look up.

  There was only darkness up there. But it was a coalesced darkness, as if this was a place where shadows became liquid; as if the attic darkness was draining into that corner. He felt himself pulled; a lamprey had latched on to his eyesight and was sucking it. He felt an internal plunge, a fall into absolute zero. The Lord of Dark Corners crumbled the graven image of his self-worth, his sense of justified being. The attic was his own skull: he had crawled into his own skull and found, inside, a pocket of living darkness nesting in the corner like a web satchel of spider eggs on a dusty ceiling.

  Why did you allow the breeder to escape?

  Rofocale’s lips seemed fused. He pulled them apart with a painful rasp as he spoke. “I didn’t know how to do the extraction properly. I’m trying but… it’s working in…” He didn’t want to say working in the dark. “It’s experimental, it’s working blind. If you would let the others break out, the others who were changed… if you’d let them go, Lord…”

  No. Once they have emerged I cannot control them. When they are inside I can influence them. I can spread the gospel. But their emergence is a turning inward to their own appetites and away from mine. No. I will make more such with the breeder, from our Wendy, once you have her. Wendy, our little whiner who is just the same sort of little girl our sweet little Rofocale is.

  “I’m not a—”

  Oh yes.

  “Don’t!”

  Why not? It is what I do. And you wanted me. You sought me. You were looking for the part of the mind that connects with the big world. The big world had many corners in it, and the corners are dark, and did you think you could enter the corners without calling on the Lord? Did you not call out my name?

  “It wasn’t like that! It was an experiment to see if there was a subconscious significance to those names.” Rofocale babbled, his voice breaking. “Some kind of subverbal significance.”

  And that is why you killed the little animals?

  “That was to trigger the release of atavistic imagery, another link to the subconscious, you see, uh, you see. Don’t. Don’t.”

  But the Lord already had. Rofocale was a little boy, and his father was dressing him in his mother’s lingerie, and he was reaching under the silk with his greased thumb and saying, “Bad little girl. Bad little girl.”

  Downstairs, the patients heard the screaming and the bumping, and Rofocale’s voice, dim and far away, shouting, “I promise I promise, take it away, I promise!”

  It didn’t frighten the center’s patients away. It made them feel better to hear it. They assumed he was taking some of his own therapy.

  There was a white van belonging to the center parked out front of the condo, next to a dusty truck; behind the truck was a yellow VW New Beetle convertible with its top down, and Rofocale’s silver Mercedes. Aunt June parked the rented Toyota in the gravel margin behind the Mercedes.

  It was a two-unit condo, and Rofocale had bought both units. They were harmless looking and a pale blue, the outer walls rimmed near the ground with red dust; the ground around the center was red clay, tufted with fiddlehead ferns and white-blossomed trilliums. The center’s condo was the end building of eight other nearly identical condos in the development along Fallen Pine Creek, a good one hundred feet apart from the others; the only difference between Rofocale’s and the other condos was the color: the others were a burnt sienna chosen to blend with the clay and to look rustic. Rofocale had repainted his blue.

  The place was symmetrically split, the right half the mirror image of the left. THE CENTER FOR RENEWED SELFHOOD sign hung over the right-hand porch. Perry and Aunt June went up to that door.

  It was a fresh, central Oregon morning. The creek rushed and gurgled behind the buildings; the unhurried breeze, aromatic of pines and creek life, nudged the tree trunks so they murmured and squeaked. The pines and Douglas firs gave a stained glass tint of soft green to the shafts of sunlight streaming through their branches. “The hell with Rofocale,” Aunt June said wistfully, pausing on the porch to look around, “let’s stay out here.”