Undaunted, she repeated the invocation.
Again.
Again.
And again. . .
And suddenly, in the kiln of her embittered soul, Eve felt a door scrape open, and beyond it, the hot, moist chamber from which she had birthed her infant son. She rose off her haunches to her knees, which were spread on the uprooted sod, and tossed back her head ecstatically. Her hands clutched her shift and jerked it up over her hips, and a carnal whine built inside of her. Her still-bloody fingers clutched her thighs, stroking them, sending shivers to the base of her spine. Her mouth yawned open like a valve on an overstoked boiler.
"Come," she moaned in the withering moonlight. "Come back inside of me. Let me deliver you again. . ."
Now the earth beneath her seemed afire, its heat spreading upward, up through her thighs to her center, where that door stood open in welcome. When it reached her core, it blazed unencumbered, gunning the engine of her fury.
"Come," she panted, a tremor surging through her. "Oh, yes, come."
Breathless, she recited the invocation once again.
And this time, when she pressed her ear to the earth, she thought she could hear scratching. . .
Nails scratching avidly against wood.
Chapter 12
May 11
Karen opened her eyes to the unmistakable thunk of an axe splitting wood.
Sheened in sweat, she was already up on her elbows, her breath like scalding liquid in her lungs. The sheets, tugged and knotted, clung damply to her skin. The room around her swirled for a long moment, as if submerged in churning water, then it began to clear and solidify.
She had been sleeping fitfully—then suddenly she had found herself in a steep, narrow stairwell, moving in utter silence, the only light that of a candle held by herself, but below her sight line.
Sight. . .
Thinking back on it now, in the cool light of her bedroom, Karen realized that sight had been the only sense operative in the dream. There had been no other sensations, no smells, no sounds, no feelings. . . except those inside of her: premonitions of death, of descent into a crypt, of cruel justice, about to be faced.
At the foot of the staircase, she'd begun moving with processional slowness through the flickering shadows of some dark and unwelcoming cavern, approaching. . . a door. A crude, wood-plank door, shiny with dampness. Then her hand, tentative and indistinct in the darkness, had reached out and closed on the latch. . .
Swung the door open. . .
And there in the depths of a casket-sized space stood the donor, eyeholes gaping, black teeth grinning, the wound in his chest pouting emptily—
"Jesus," Karen said aloud, shuddering to the depths of her marrow. She got out of bed, almost launched out, as if the mattress still connected her to the terrors of her dream. She'd been warned about nightmares, but had never imagined they could be so intense. Bad enough she should spend half of her waking life thinking about the donor, but to have him invading her sleep—
Outside the window the axe fell again, a log splitting like matchwood under its force.
Danny, Karen thought with a familiar inward cringing. It occurred to her only now that he hadn't been around since before her hospitalization. Normally, hardly a day went by that he didn't find some excuse to drop by. She wondered now if he'd been away somewhere. She hadn't thought about him in weeks—not since, in a narcotic delirium, she'd imagined he'd visited her hospital room in the middle of the night and touched her face.
Out of life-long habit, Karen fingered her wristwatch. 8:02 a.m. After playing in front of the mirror, she had collapsed into bed around five—which meant that, discounting her nap of the previous afternoon, she'd slept only three short hours—but there was no way she was getting back into that bed, not with the dream so fresh.
Besides, there were things to see.
This thought helped her shrug off the fatigue—and dull the jagged edges of the dream.
So many things to see. . .
Danny, she thought as the axe fell again. Danny, whose playpen she had shared while their mothers marked time over a cribbage board. Danny, who as a child had been her almost constant companion, always falling over himself to help her, always protecting. Danny, who had ceased his mental maturation around the age of fourteen, and whose unflagging attentions over the years had become almost pathetic.
Danny was outside doing one of his many unwanted favors. . . although, Karen admitted to herself now, she had never made much of an effort to discourage him. To be honest, many times she'd been glad of his company. Not for any particular quality he possessed, but for the simple fact that he was a fellow human being, and willing to listen.
Unlike her father, upon whom she had long ago vowed to depend as little as possible—she had, after all, reached the downside of her twenties—Danny was always around. Sometimes it seemed that all Karen had to do was think about needing or wanting something and there he would be, like some faithful old mutt. Perhaps the toughest, most nerve-wearing part of being blind was the absolute dependence on others for mobility. She knew her way around her own house, both inside and out. She could walk unassisted to her father's place in ten minutes through the fields, twice that by the road. But what if her father was busy or away and she needed something in town? What if she ran out of tampons during one of her unpredictably heavy periods? Or what if she just wanted a goddamn ice cream cone? Should blindness mean ignoring your whims?
At such times, Danny almost invariably appeared. And if he didn't, some shady part of Karen's mind knew that all she had to do was wander out onto the porch and look idle and before long Danny Dolan would arrive, reeking of cowshit and shuffling his feet. There was seldom much to talk about with Danny, though he was an excellent listener, and over the past few years Karen had begun feeling a vague but growing unease in his presence. But he had a car, and in spite of its drafty interior, it ran. It got them places. And if that was being selfish, then she was guilty. Danny, for one, had never seemed to mind.
While she dressed, numerous thoughts warred for Karen's attention. One moment she pondered the dream, awed at having finally had one with images, while at the same time disturbed by its horrific content. At crosscurrents to this was the irrepressible excitement of at last being able to see; the dizzying feeling of having won a hugely extravagant lottery after a lifetime of poverty; the stunning realization that there was a whole world out there, a colossal, breathtaking planet suddenly hers for the taking.
But at the bottom of it all, grumbling and brooding, was Danny, each stroke of his axe outside her window fueling an almost morbid curiosity.
Donning her glare-killing glasses, Karen crossed to the window and peeked past the edge of the curtains.
He was hunched over the chopping block with his back to her, and Karen was struck at once by how big he was. She had known from her father's uneasy descriptions that Danny was big, but from here he seemed bigger than anyone needed to be.
The axe bluffed violently downward, splitting a log before wedging deeply in the hardwood chopping-block underneath.
Karen stepped back and wrapped herself in her arms, feeling for the first time fearful of Danny.
Another log split, and Karen jumped at the sound.
You're being an idiot, Lockhart, she told herself as she pulled on a sweater. How else do you chop wood if you don't hit it hard?
She stepped back to the window and cautiously removed the glasses, testing her eyes against the brilliance of the day. They watered a little, then adjusted. The sky was dull, putty-colored, ideal for her sensitive vision.
Everything around her as she left her bedroom became a curiosity, to be studied, turned over, held up to the light and admired, and as a consequence the trip downstairs took some time. Her mind kept running out of control, her attention skipping off helter-skelter, like that of a small child.
But when she reached the bottom landing she remembered what it was she had wanted to do, and she hurried out to the sum
mer kitchen at the back of the house.
She wanted to see Danny Dolan up close.
"Hi, Danny."
Danny started and spun sharply around, the axe following through like a warrior's weapon. His broad, shield-like face, at first twisted in surprise, softened into a shy and downcast gawk when he saw her. He held that half-turned posture as if hewn in stone.
"I startled you," Karen said apologetically, and thought, My God, he's ugly, feeling herself flinch at the sight of him.
His face had been ravaged by acne, its flat plains coarse as bark, and now a ripe red crop of the stuff infected his nose and shelflike forehead. The skin covering the left side of his neck was horrible, thrown into thick, overlapping ridges that crawled out of sight beneath his frayed-denim collar. Karen remembered he'd been burned as a kid, and shuddered. His mouth didn't quite close over long yellow teeth, and the tangle of dirty black hair on his head seemed to slide with a life of its own. Sweat stained the underarms of his patched coveralls in salt-rimmed crescents.
"Sorry about that," Karen said, praying he hadn't caught her reaction and yet certain he had. She held out the glasses, which she'd kept in her hand. "Aren't these a sight?" she said, wishing now that she'd stayed inside. "I'm supposed to keep them on all the time. . ." She grinned edgily. "But I cheat."
The ache in her temples was already building.
Danny dropped the axe and turned, giving no indication of having heard what she'd said. He glanced up at the cloud cover.
"Cold weather's not over yet," he said, his, voice quiet, too small for the size of him. "Thought you could use some more stove-lengths."
Karen nodded her agreement and thanked him.
A novice at the game but picking it up by instinct, she attempted to judge Danny's thoughts from the confusion of expressions crossing his face. His dark eyes, narrowed now to slits, never stopped shifting, and his flexing brow suggested physical pain before each phrase that he spoke.
"You can see?" he said, dropping his gaze to her crotch and keeping it there.
"Yes," Karen replied, realizing that for the first time in her life she was being made to feel self-conscious. She laced her fingers in front of her, obscuring his view.
His eyes shifted up to hers. "They're blue now."
She nodded.
"Used to be brown. Like mine."
Now he was looking at her breasts through her sweater—at least, that was how it felt to Karen, as if he could see right through the fabric with his dirty gaze.
Chalk up a single point for blindness, she thought, taking a short step backward, She'd never felt like this before—naked, pawed without being touched—and didn't care to any longer. She angled her body away.
"Thanks again for chopping the wood, Danny, but you really don't need to. Dad'll do it. . . and maybe I'll take a crack at it myself once I'm seeing a little better."
She started off toward the woodlot behind the house, aware of that creepy sensation of his eyes on her again.
"Where you goin'?" Danny asked. There was a hint of force in his voice that Karen didn't like.
"For a walk," she told him without turning around. "In the woods."
He took a step toward her. "Maybe I ought to come along—"
"I'll be fine," Karen cut in firmly, overmatching his force. "Really."
She left on the sound of the axe splitting wood.
The woodlot began fifty yards back of the house and ran for a solid mile in three directions. Owned by the county, it was bordered by the highway to the south, the shallow Carp River to the west, and one of Albert Lockhart's fields to the north. Populated mostly by firs, predominantly cedar, the lot became quite dense toward its center, where a cool, babbling stream divided it in a string-straight line.
Karen stopped in a clearing and sat on a stump, awed at the variety of colors and life forms around her. It seemed unbelievable to her, a wonder to at long last behold. . . and yet, because of the lingering fever of the dream, she was unable to wholly enjoy it.
It had been so horrible. So. . . real.
And as she'd awakened, she realized now, hadn't she been reaching out to that dead, eyeless face? To caress it?
A crow swooped down and lit on an overhead branch, jarring her free of her morbid frettings with a cool dash of wonder. Karen had heard this old campaigner numberless times before, cawing his complaints to some distant fellow, but had never imagined his dark magnificence. Now, incredibly, here he was, just one of a troop of thousands she had yet to encounter.
And here she was, bummed out by her first real dream.
Still, the whole concept of dreaming intrigued her. Before last night, her dreams—if they could fairly be considered as such—had always been a sort of sensory recap of daytime events, a sleepy mulling over of feelings, textures, impressions. Cass used to tell her about dreams, explaining that most times they were sort of foggy and muddled, real things and real people mingling freely with the fantastical. Both Burkowitz and Smith had warned Karen that strange psychological phenomena might occur following the transplants. . . perhaps this dream had been the first of them.
And with that, she dismissed the issue completely.
It was late afternoon before Karen started back. By then her head ached miserably, and her eyes were as scratchy as stones. She had spent the hours examining everything she could find—every bug, every leaf, every unfurling flower. Most of the things she'd encountered she'd been able to identify using her other senses. Her father had invested hours with her as a child, feeding that insatiable hunger, and had taught her to distinguish things by their odor, taste, texture, or sound. It had been a fulfilling day, but she would pay for it in pain.
Now Karen paused, still hidden at the edge of the bush before the house, a new concern overcoming her.
She listened for the sound of the axe. . .
But the air was silent, save for the chattering of birds. Resuming her pace, she sighed with relief. She found it difficult to reconcile her gut reaction on seeing Danny with the benign, almost helpless image she had nurtured throughout most of her life. But the way his eyes had eaten into her, like the troll's eyes in the stories her mother had read to her as a child. Had he been looking at her like that all these years? Maybe that explained the vague unease she'd been feeling for the past few years in his presence.
And she wondered again if she had only imagined Danny's late-night presence in her hospital room.
Stove-lengths, a good cord of them, stood in a neat stack beneath the summer kitchen window. The axe was buried to the butt in the chopping block, and before Karen went inside she tried to pull it out. Grinning, she thought of Excalibur.
But she couldn't budge it an inch.
Danny's eyes drew down to ugly slits as he worked at the pump behind the barn. At the cast-iron cauldron in front of him, the half-dozen cattle his mother kept for milking vied clumsily for position.
Simpleton, he thought bitterly, the word repeating itself in his mind like a mantra. That's what his mother called him, and that's what most of the farm folk figured he was.
But he wasn't such a simpleton that he'd mistaken the look on Karen's face. The sight of him had sickened her, that had been plain enough to see.
Damn those eyes, he thought poisonously.
Behind him on the pumphouse floor the pup he'd named after Karen whined for its mother. Danny stopped pumping and glared at it menacingly. Fear darkened its newly opened eyes.
"Shut up!" he roared at it, his words doubling back unheeded from the wall of the barn. "She don't want you, you skinny runt. And she don't want me. . ." Tears bleared his eyes; he scrubbed them away and resumed pumping.
Its thirst slaked, the first of the cattle swung away.
Danny pumped furiously, water overflowing the cauldron edges in curving sheets. If she saw him she'd, reject him—that had been his constant fear since he'd listened in on her late-night conversation with the doctor almost two months ago.
And now it had happened.
And God had given him Karen, to cherish, to protect. . .
Two more cows sauntered off, whiskered chins dripping, and Danny yearned for bygone days. Days when he'd walk through the fields with his girl Karen, looking as much as he liked at her smooth brown face, feeling her small hand cool in his, listening in wonder to her headful of ideas. Why had all of that changed?
Those eyes. . .
When the last of the cows had drunk its fill, Danny took the puppy by the scruff of its neck and thrust it into the brimming cauldron. The water lay cold against his skin, cold it had leached from the depths of the well. The puppy wriggled like a fish on a hook, tiny bubbles escaping its mouth and tickling up Danny's forearm.
It didn't take long. Not long at all.
When it was done, Danny drew the tiny corpse out and dropped it into a muddy hoofprint.
Slowly, the mud swallowed it.
Chapter 13
Detective Shine felt giddy as he descended the porch steps at 444 Copper Street. The day, though warm for this early in spring, was overcast. The lawn bordering the frost-heaved walkway was already sporting a new cloak of green, and buds dotted a nearby birch tree in healthy profusion. The house itself was a cozy little two-story, neatly tucked away at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac.
But at this moment it all seemed subtly wrong to Detective Shine. Somehow the scene was a construct, a clever arrangement of props designed to impart an air of normalcy to a household riddled with madness.
Fifteen minutes before, Shine had been guiding his all-black sedan out of the lot at the downtown station. Next to him, his partner had been nervously fingering a coin. Both men were longtime veterans of the force, but both had agreed that the task ahead of them was the ugliest either had ever been faced with.
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