Tell the story.
Meet me… He was going to meet me at the playground after midnight. He was standing by the basketball goal. Why is this so difficult? I walked up behind him. He turned. He was smiling. As usual. Before I could question him about Wheele, he kissed me. Didn't say a word, just kissed me. And fired point-blank into my gut. Knocked… knocked me down. He ran away, didn't look back. Smart boy, knew better than to hang around. There was a flechette lodged in my belly. Tranquilizer of some kind…
Hands. Hands all over me. Set me up. Little shit. Set me up. But he didn't tell them the truth. Not the whole truth. The pain and rage made it so hard to keep control, the Other emerged. Men were screaming. Blood in me and on me. Someone chanting "Antichrist" like a mantra. And then… then…
Aw, don't tell me you're not going to finish this exciting episode.
Can't. Nothing but static, white noise, hurts when I try to remember…
What a wimp! You're real good at slam-dunking bad-ass bikers into trash cans, but come the first aversion barrier and you're whining like a goddamn baby!
What are you blathering about?
Look, bright girl, you've been running the same damn autobiographical saga every sleep for the past six months and you never get past the first barrier. Never. I've let you slide because… well, because it suited me. But it's time for you to finish the story, Sonja.
No.
You don't have much to say about it.
No. You're lying. There's nothing there. You can't fool me into looking…
Whatever you say, luv.
The barrier is gone and white-hot static fills my head and I try to yell and tell it to stop, but the noiseless noise fills my mouth and nostrils. I'm drowning in emptiness.
Something clicks inside my skull. I feel as if a searchlight has been trained on my brain. Something's in there. Something big and powerful and mean. Fingers of laser light probe the contours of my frontal lobes. I can't move. I can't think. I can't breathe. The intruder isn't a nimble sneak thief like Chaz, but a vandal intent on ransacking everything, unmindful of the damage. My memory is ruptured and the past spills out, filling my head with a thousand simultaneous emotions. I imagine synapses burning, fuses blowing. The creature in my head hits bottom, but that's not good enough for it. It worries at the capstone separating my mind from that of the Other's. I can feel it tugging inside my skull, like pliers on a bad tooth. Then all hell breaks loose.
I can't! I can't! Don't make me, please, don't make me.
Don't make you do what?
Look. Don't make me. Can't make me. She won't let me.
Who won't let you?
She won't!
What are you so scared of? What could possibly frighten you so badly you'd rather go mad than look at it? What is it, Sonja?
Shut up! Shut up! I won't look. I refuse to listen to you.
Who erected that barrier, Sonja? Was it Wheele? No, Catherine Wheele is expert at knocking down walls, but I doubt if she knows the first thing about building them. No, Sonja, I think you know who built that wall. It was Denise, wasn't it?
Denise is dead.
Is she? Why won't you look?
Liar. Liar. Liar.
What is Denise afraid of? Finish the story, Sonja. What is Denise afraid of?
You.
Me?
She's afraid you're not what Ghilardi thought you were. That he was wrong. That you're not a demon from hell. That there's no Other and no Sonja Blue, only Denise.
Now, was that so bad? The last time you wimped out and went nuts rather than consider that possibility. And look where it got you! You and your humanity hang-up! You provided Wheele with a loaded pistol and invited her to fire it point-blank!
Is it true?
Hmmmm?
Is it true that you and I aren't real? That we're just parts of Denise Thorne's imagination?
You got me. Even if I did know, would you believe me if I told you?
But if it is true, then I don't exist. Neither do you. Doesn't that bother you?
Maybe. We're still here, aren't we?
But…
Time to wake up.
Claude bent over the motionless body on the futon. He'd found her earlier that afternoon, fully dressed, right down to her ubiquitous sunglasses. At first she didn't seem to be breathing and her pulse was abnormally slow. Was she asleep or languishing in a coma?
He'd spent the rest of the day crouched beside the pallet, watching his captor for signs of life. He'd dozed off once or twice, only to be awakened by vivid images of a man being beaten to death with a cane and a moldering, sharp-toothed thing wearing tinted glasses. He tried reading the old, leather-bound book in order to pass the time, but the text was indecipherable and half the pages were covered with baroque geometric patterns. The only other book in the loft was a slender volume in German, so Claude leafed through The Lost Heiress, staring at the photos of Denise Thorne.
The funny thing was—at least Claude thought it was funny—that he could have escaped. But he'd decided not to. There was too much he didn't know, and like it or not, Sonja Blue was the only way he'd ever find any of the answers.
The shadows in the loft had lengthened into early evening when the muscles in her arms, legs, and face began to contract and relax. He was reminded of the dead frog he'd hooked up to a dry-cell battery back in high-school biology class.
Her abdomen hitched sharply as her lungs shifted back into gear. The fingers of her hands, folded flat over her rib cage, stretched themselves backward, the joints crackling like dry leaves.
"Are you all right? I thought you were sick or something."
The first thing she thought as she surfaced was, I'm going to kill that bitch. But what she said was, "Yeah. I feel fine."
* * *
THE REAL WORLD
* * *
Chapter Eight
« ^ »
Catherine Wheele stood at the bedroom window and watched the night arrive. She wore the peach-colored negligee from the day before, her wig resting atop a Styrofoam skull on the night table. She fingered a strand of her real hair as she sipped her highball.
She remembered the day Zeb informed her that the wives of prophets and power brokers didn't have hair the color of mice. The wig had been Zeb's idea, like so many other things. He claimed the congregation wouldn't sit still for a dye job, but a wig… Hell, their mamas wore wigs. And he'd been right. As always.
Well, almost always…
She watched her ghost image in the window. Without her wig and makeup she looked a lot like her mother. The thought made her scowl; that made the resemblance all the more telling. Now she looked exactly like her mother.
She didn't like thinking about her family. Whenever she let her mind wander back to North Carolina, it triggered the things lurking at the corners of her eyes.
The flickering shadows had been there as far back as she cared to remember. But now… now they seemed to have mass and substance and definite shapes and sizes and recognizable features. She wondered about her sanity; maybe she was going mad. What worried her was the possibility she wasn't losing her mind.
A sodden groan emerged from the heart-shaped bed dominating her boudoir. She glanced at a pile of bedclothes the color of cotton-candy. The shadows capering at the edges of her vision turned into mist.
Wexler. She'd almost forgotten about him.
The bedclothes stirred fitfully, then were still. She snorted derisively as she finished her drink. Wexler! What a disappointment. How could she have deluded herself into thinking he was worthy as a consort?
Oh, he was adequate enough between the sheets. But he lacked Zeb's savvy and Ezra's selfless devotion. She needed those a hell of a lot more than she needed his spurting member. How could she have been so blind as to trust him with something as delicate and potentially dangerous as the Blue woman? Ezra would have seen through Wexler's media-celeb glamour within seconds. But Ezra was dead by the time she'd been forced to coopt Wexler and his s
anitarium into her plans. He'd been killed—murdered!—by the same abomination Wexler, the damned fool, allowed to escape. She projected a splinter of anger at the bed, smiling as Wexler whimpered like a drowsy child.
She returned her attention to the nightfall outside her window. The photosensitive burglar lights, set flush in the ground and nesting in the branches of the trees, switched on one by one as the shadows lengthened.
She watched her employees, dressed in their identical dark suits and narrow ties, as they patrolled the perimeters of the estate. Most of them were her own elite guards, the ones Ezra had dubbed "Wheelers." They were loyal to her, and she'd made sure their devotion contained the proper synthesis of religious awe and pit-bull savagery. They'd gladly lie, cheat, steal, or murder for her—and often did.
Ezra hadn't approved of her method of conditioning the Wheelers. Poor old-fashioned, possessive Ezra.
"If it wasn't necessary when Zebulon was alive, why is it so damned important now?"
"A lot of things weren't necessary when Zeb was alive. Paying them isn't enough, Ezra. I want to make damned sure no one turns Judas and gives state's evidence. Is that clear, Ezra? It's to protect the ministry!"
He didn't really believe what she'd told him, but he never forbade it. Would she have stopped if he'd really put his foot down? No. Although she'd loved Ezra, he'd never been capable of inspiring in her fear like Zeb.
One of the guards patrolling the garden terrace below halted, having spotted her in the window. Who—or what—was he associating her with? She tried to place the Wheeler and his pet obsession. So many of them were fixated on their mothers… Ah, yes, Dennings. His heart's desire had been Sophia Loren, circa 1962. She moved away from the window. Dennings shivered as if seized by a sudden chill, then continued on his rounds.
Spurring unquestioning loyalty among her Wheelers was absurdly simple. All it involved was tapping into the right fantasy and constructing the proper illusion. She called her personal form of conditioning "heart's desire." And the best time for brainwashing was during sex.
She enjoyed the looks on their faces as they humped famous movie stars, heads of state, or professional athletes, although nothing could compare to the horrified pleasure-guilt of those who found themselves erupting inside their mothers.
The Oedipal desire was, by far, the most common, although there could be nasty backlashes if not handled carefully. Like the boy who'd put his thumbs in his eyes. That had been most unfortunate. But most of her "recruits" were men of questionable moral fiber to begin with, and being a motherfucker was nothing new to them.
Her Wheelers served her without question or qualm, eager for a replay of their ultimate fantasy. While she had no intention of ever permitting an encore, she encouraged the belief that repeat performances were possible. Her punishments, however, proved to be far more frequent.
She moved to her combination wet bar and vanity table, pouring herself another Wild Turkey from the commemorative Elvis decanter. A larger-than-life oil portrait of her late husband grinned down at her from over the bar.
She'd come into the world squalling white trash, the daughter of Jeremiah and Hannah Skaggs and the third of eight children. She wasn't Catherine back then. Her mama had named her Kathy-Mae, and she was just another snot-nosed, scabby-kneed, malnourished yard ape destined to grow up hard and ignorant in the Carolina hills.
Jeremiah Skaggs worked at the sawmill, when he could get the work. Papa liked to get a belly full of liquor and Jesus, and when he was like that, he wasn't very careful.
"God looks after His children," he used to say. God must have been looking the other way when Papa lost his left pinkie, then the first joint on his right pointer. The sawmill boss refused to hire him again after he buzzed his left ring finger up to the second knuckle. Papa accused him of being a communist devil-worshiper.
Mama took in laundry. Catherine could not remember her mother smiling or laughing. Mama's voice, when she bothered to speak, was a nasal whine, like the droning of a giant mosquito. She was ten years younger than Papa, although you couldn't tell it by looking at her. Both her parents seemed ancient, their faces seamed and pitted by years of deprivation. They looked like the apple dolls Granny Teasdale sold to the Yankee tourists during the summer.
Her childhood consisted of dirt, hunger, backbreaking labor, and fear. Violence, in the form of her father's drunken tirades, was a daily occurrence—like breakfast and dinner, only far more reliable.
She didn't have much to do with her siblings, but she thought it was because she was her mother's first girl child, and the only one she'd named herself. Papa had been on a bender when she'd delivered. He'd been scandalized when he found out she hadn't picked a biblical name.
She never played games with her brothers and sisters, preferring the company of an imaginary friend called Sally. When she was involved in her make-believe games, pretending she was rich and living in a big house with running water and electricity, she was the closest she ever came to experiencing childhood.
When Papa found out she was holding conversations with an invisible friend, he hit the ceiling and her as well. She was possessed and needed the devil beat out of her or she'd be sentenced to eternal damnation. Papa took her to a backwoods preacher called Deacon Jonas so she could be saved proper.
Deacon Jonas was a big fat man with white hair and a lumpy red nose the size of a potato. He listened to Papa describe her relationship with Sally, nodding and grunting and looking at Kathy-Mae with watery eyes. He told Papa that he wanted to pray over her and that Papa would have to wait outside until it was done.
After Papa had left, Deacon Jonas opened his pants and showed Kathy-Mae his thing. Even though she was only six, Kathy-Mae had already seen several of them and was not particularly scared or impressed by the deacon's. The deacon buttoned himself back up, then said the Lord's Prayer.
Sally stopped coming to visit her, and after a while, Kathy-Mae forgot about her imaginary friend. There was too much work to be done for her to waste time on such foolishness. She helped her mother take care of the house and look after the little ones, who tended to blur into an amorphous, nameless face with dull eyes and an upper lip caked with dirt and dried snot.
Her life in the Skaggs household had never been great, but things started to get really bad after she turned twelve. When she'd started her monthlies, she noticed Mama looking at her funny. Papa was doing it too, but in a different way. He looked at her the same way Deacon Jonas had when he'd prayed over her, only not so timid.
Sometimes he'd come home liquored up and Mama would meet him on the porch and they'd get to arguing and then he'd use his fists. He'd be too exhausted after he finished beating her to do more than sleep it off, so Mama'd get in bed with Kathy-Mae. They both knew it wouldn't be long before Papa got what he wanted, but it was a ritual Mama felt obliged to perform.
Maybe that's why she confessed. Perhaps she thought it would take the edge off what was to follow.
Mama told Papa that he wasn't Kathy-Mae's real father.
Thirteen years ago, when Mama was young and only had two children, a stranger came to the house. Papa was working at the sawmill and Mama was in the dooryard, scrubbing clothes in the big washtub, when the stranger walked up from nowhere and asked for a drink of water. He didn't look like anyone in particular, just another raggedy man wandering the countryside, looking for a handout. But his eyes… The next thing Mama knew she had her skirts up and the raggedy man was humping her on the front porch in broad daylight. She couldn't remember if she'd agreed to it or not. In fact, she couldn't remember if the stranger was short or tall, fat or thin, dark or fair. It didn't take him very long, even by Papa's standards, and as soon as he'd finished, he was gone. Not even a "thankee kindly, ma'am." Mama passed it off as a particularly vivid dream… until she saw her newborn daughter. Kathy-Mae had her daddy's eyes.
Papa repaid Mama for cuckolding him with two black eyes and a busted lip before turning his attention to Kathy-Mae. Kathy-Ma
e tried to run, which only made him madder. The sight of blood geysering from her nose excited Papa to something more than physical abuse. He dragged her out to the toolshed behind the house and raped her on the rough plank floor until her buttocks were full of splinters. He left her huddled atop a pile of old burlap sacks, her eyes swollen and crotch bleeding. He informed her, through the locked door, that he didn't want her "polluting" his real children and that he meant to keep her in the toolshed for the rest of her life. Or until he got tired of her.
At first she couldn't think. Her brain was a lump of cold, insensate clay. She hoped it would stay like that forever, but knew it was too good to last. Although ravenously hungry, she managed to cry herself to sleep.
She had a strange dream that night.
She dreamed Sally came back to visit her. She couldn't see Sally very clearly, but she could hear her voice inside her head.
"Do you want out of here? I can take you away from the pain and the bad things. If you agree to that, it's a bargain. I'll always be here and you'll never be able to leave me. Do you want that?"
"Yes."
Sally rushed forward, her arms open to embrace Kathy-Mae, and for one brief moment she could see Sally clearly. She tried to cry out, to renege on her bargain, but it was too late. Sally's arms closed about her shoulders and she seemed to sink into her, like a snowflake melting on her tongue, then Sally was gone. Or was she?
She dreamed she could see inside the house, even though she was locked in the shed. She saw Mama and Papa sleeping side by side in the old wrought-iron bed. Mama had the littlest one in the bed with her, cradled in the warm hollow between her right arm and breast. Somehow, she knew it was Sally who was showing her these things. Kathy-Mae dreamed Sally told her Mama to get out of bed. Mama got out of bed. Then she dreamed Sally told Mama to go to the kitchen and fetch the butcher knife. It was a big, ugly, and very sharp piece of cutlery.
Sally told Mama to slit Papa's throat. Since he was full of squeeze and exhausted by his earlier activities, it was pretty easy. The blood escaping his throat formed a sodden halo around his head.
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