Stella piped up, dry humor in her gravelly voice. “Kill me.”
“Not just kill, Stella, send you to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”
3
Then/1980
Deadrats smelled the fire as it leapt house-to-house, and as cars exploded in driveways, and knew it was good, it was a hell of day, a fine night for setting the whole goddamn planet on fire. The Majestic Diner lit up red and yellow in the night, with Roman candles shooting out of its roof as the fire grew. It was so incredifuckingbeautiful, man, it was like the Big O...it was like, well, the fucking Fourth of July! He’d driven the Mustang from Alison’s house, setting a few fires of his own, shooting off a bottle rocket here and there, tossing a pipe bomb he’d made for just such an occasion as this. When he arrived at the Garden of Eden, his last mission before going back out to be with Wendy, the gates to the driveway were open wide.
The old lady was standing there in her nightgown, her tits sagging like two sandbags, her face drooping. She was fucking watering her rosebushes, for Christ’s sakes! What a loony. All around her, the bees—those damned bees she kept like watchdogs to keep kids out. He had been in there once, in her basement, he and Campusky when they were both little squirts, and that was when he’d seen the thing in the basement
the thing with wings, and leathery skin, scales along its stomach—
It came to him now, like lightning across his face: it had been Wendy, little girl Wendy, chained in the basement of that beekeeping bitch’s house!
“I know you mean to kill me,” Stella Swan said. “Someone stole the athame. I suppose it was you.” The bees flew about, but were subdued by the smoke that drifted across the garden wall from the street. The woman stood there, her hands working at the snippers, not in a move toward defending herself, but against the roses, cutting each bud.
As if waiting for him to come to her.
Daring him.
“No shit,” Deadrats said, grinning. “I’m gonna eat your soul, bitch. Yep, that’s just what I’m gonna do. After I torture you awhile.”
The broad continued snipping at roses, and sprinkling the water from her tin can across the ones that had not yet bloomed. She turned her back to him. “All I ask is you do it quickly.”
“No last requests, sweetheart,” Deadrats snarled.
“You know, I have never understood why she can’t do this herself. Is she scared of me?”
“Look, Beekeeper, she’s a fucking god, she’s not gonna be scared of some hag like you. She owns this place, she owns it and everything in it, bitch, so don’t think you can—”
“My, my,” Stella said, turning to face him again. “You’re quite a talker. I think you should kill me so I don’t have to listen to you jabber anymore.”
“Oh, shit, that’s it, you cunt.” Deadrats pointed the knife blade at her. “You know what this is? Huh, dead woman? Do ya?”
He noticed, in her hand, a drop of blood.
A small perfect rose, its thorn imbedded in the skin of her palm. No small amount of fear crossed the woman’s face, and even in the semidarkness, she could not hide the trembling of her chin. “I know about that blade, because it was given to me. It is an instrument for the surgery of the soul. It was forged in the fires of Hell, and its power is immense. I have only known of its use twice. Once, on my brother, Rudy. I pricked his skin with it, and watched him burn. Previous to that, a woman was killed with it. It is a knife of return, according to its inscription. The name on it is the name of the demon that is the driving force behind my daughter’s life. I know what it means to be stabbed with it.”
Deadrats shambled over to her, holding the knife at heart-level. He reached out and boldly touched the old woman’s right breast through the thin material of her nightgown. “Been a long time since a guy’s done that, huh?”
Then he got what he wanted out of her: absolute fear. Her face wrinkled up completely, and he hoped she would start crying. He was sick of all this shock and delayed-reaction bullshit he’d been getting from people. She looked like a lamb about to be slaughtered, and he was certain she would begin bleating any moment. “She calls you her reservoir,” he said. “But now she don’t need you no more. What you got she can do without.”
“What is it I’ve got?” Stella whimpered, her head hanging down.
“Fuck if I know,” Deadrats muttered, and found that in the excitement and expectation of a truly primo kill he was getting hard. Savor the moment, Deadrats, it don’t get much better than this. “Maybe we can open you up and find out what you got before I kill you. Little open-heart surgery.” He stroked his lingers down her breast, to the place just above her heart. He felt the delicious beating, the racing, the blood-pumping terror. He scratched his fingernails through the nightgown and felt the shivering warmth of her skin.
And then he dropped the knife.
“What the fuck are you doing to me, you goddamn—” Deadrats growled, feeling a sucking wind, like a cyclone, pulling at him, and then the sound of metal scraping metal, of a door opening, a refrigerator door opening and closing, and he felt himself being shoved— and observed the sensations in his mind as a cage door was closed on him somewhere in the braincave in his head.
It was like being born, that’s the only way he could describe it, like being born into a whole other world, as if breaking through the womb; the liquid that kept Deadrats going, now dry.
Charlie Urquart could not stop screaming when he came to, with the fire growing all around him and the old lady holding him tight, the old lady whom he thought he had just killed, but who was, instead, making sure that he didn’t die.
4
Now
Charlie finished his story. “So she healed me. Or at least, that part called Deadrats. I still lost my ability to sleep or to distinguish between hallucination and reality—there was always Deadrats just lingering, or maybe it was Wendy, herself, I don’t know. And then, to make a long story short, I went mad. For many years. I guess my mind couldn’t deal with the kinds of things this body had done. I knew I was still infected, too, never completely healed. And in Manhattan, just a week ago, I got another visit from Deadrats and was sure I’d murdered someone. I didn’t. But it was, you know, just like old times. You know what I mean, don’t you, Peter? Turning.” Charlie’s lopsided grin disappeared. “Yeah, for a second I thought your skin would drop off. I’m willing to bet we’ve all turned just a little, in our own ways. She’s given me a run for my money for quite a while now.”
Diego Correa, who had been fairly silent, added, “I’ve seen demonic possession among the Yanimatees on the Amazon, and it is similar. Yet, the Lamia’s possession can reach across time and space and touch you. It’s like telepathy.”
Peter shivered, looking into the fire. “But it’s stronger up here. I’ve felt it before, but I thought I was crazy. After a while it’s like none of this ever happened. But here, it’s happening, just like with Sloan. These are her stomping grounds. It’s just like Wendy said, when she called...” Peter’s thoughts raced ahead of his words, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming need to begin panting.
“And you did the one thing that I thought would stop her.”
“Yep,” Charlie said, glancing at Peter. “All of us did. Alison, me, Pete, and Than.”
Nessie glanced one to the other. “And what was that?”
“We ate her heart,” Peter said.
5
Charlie laughed. “Shit, you said it so straight, Peter. Christ, I’ve never even said it out loud. But we did, we ate her fuckin’ heart. Oh, Christ.” He began weeping and laughing at the same time.
“Why in heaven’s name did you do something like that?” Nessie asked as if they had just said they ate a pie that was cooling on a windowsill.
Peter looked at Charlie and felt a chill go through him.
“Than said it was the only way. Charlie wanted to send her to Hell with the knife, but Than said that wouldn’t do it. He told us we had to eat her heart.”
“And how,” Diego asked, “did you get it from her?”
“That was the easy part,” Charlie said. “By dawn she was just a girl again. She was easy to hold down. The night gave her strength. At dawn, she was just a girl. Christ, Peter, tell me we didn’t really do it.”
Peter glanced around the group, feeling as if the darkest secret of his life were about to be revealed. “Oh yeah, we did.”
“But,” Diego asked, “how did any of you get her heart?”
Peter said, “She slept in the cave. It was dawn. I guess even the Devil sleeps after a big night. Than told us dawn was her weakest moment. She was asleep. That’s all. I doubt now that she really slept. But I wanted to do anything I could...anything to stop her. She looked just like a sleeping girl.”
“And beautiful,” Charlie added, wiping his eyes, “don’t forget that.”
“She was.” Peter nodded. “She didn’t look like a demon. And Than, he said that we had to cut out her heart, it was best done with our hands. I couldn’t do it.”
Charlie shrugged, apparently reconciled with the memory. “I could. Me and Campusky, both of us. Her flesh was soft. It was like she was a vampire or something, because I used this rock to dig into her, but when I did, there wasn’t any blood or anything. And she opened her eyes.”
“That’s right, she opened her eyes, and Than shrieked and you made a grab, right into where you cut—”
“Knew right where it was—I spent half my childhood looking at the pictures in Gray’s Anatomy, just so I’d know where people’s soft spots were—” Charlie rubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to clean himself of the memory. “I ate the biggest part, but everybody had to share. Than, Alison, me, and then...”
“And me. I had to eat it, too. We all agreed. We promised we’d never talk about it. When Alison lost her memory, I promised myself never to tell her what she’d been part of,” Peter said.
“You really ate a human heart?” Nessie asked. When both men nodded, she shivered. Then she had to ask: “It taste like chicken?”
6
The silence grew intense. Peter closed his eyes. Wished the world away. Tried not to see with his mind’s eye that moment in his life when a demon had been within him, when he had dug with some fury into a sleeping girl’s breast and had watched Wendy’s eyes open wide in terror as he brought the bloody beating heart from her, and had passed it around—Alison, Charlie, Than, and himself.
And each had partaken of the communion.
The sacrament of the sacred heart.
7
Nessie Wilcox said, “I didn’t believe Stella here when she told me her stories, but now that we’re all here together, well, I guess you can count me in as a convert.” Even though she looked ancient, she seemed spry and fit, plopping down on a chunk of wall. Her Scottie hopped up onto her lap.
“All these years,” Charlie said, “I’ve been running, hoping I’d never bump into any of you. Ever.”
Stella nodded, sadly.
Peter fumbled with thoughts that he couldn’t put into words. What was he forgetting? Why did it feel like in that last flickering, something had eaten away part of his brain, something had done sloppy surgery on part of his memory?
“Diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain,” Nessie said. “You folks are here by God’s graces so you can get in and do your business and you’re going to sit here and jabber until kingdom come. My father used to say you got to eat fear for breakfast.”
“Must you be so energetic, Nessie?” Stella asked.
The other woman nodded. “You got it, Stella, you gave me the healing and now you expect me to take it like an old mule ready for the glue factory?’’
“We’re all in the funny farm.” Charlie grinned. “It almost feels better to know it’s not just me, that I’m not the only one. I knew it a little back then because I knew I wasn’t clever enough to make it all up.” He laughed, and then noticed the others were staring at him. “Sorry, but it’s such a goddamn relief. I thought I’d come here and I’d end up wandering in some waking dream for the rest of my days and the birds would get my carcass and the sun would bleach my bones. I guess I shouldn’t rule that out. Really. I got as far away from this town as I could, well, maybe not to Australia, but to Manhattan, and that’s as foreign a country as you can imagine. And even there, she got me. It’s just funny. You healed me, Stella, but Wendy kept part of me here, always here, with her.” He snorted a laugh, shaking his head.
“See?” Nessie said. “Charlie here’s eatin’ his fear. It’s okay to laugh while you eat. So if Stella healed you, Charlie, what kind of disease did you have?”
Charlie shrugged. “Something in my brain that I couldn’t control. Anger. Hatred. Maybe a little bit of a human monster that most people can keep under lock and key. But Wendy had the key, and she let it out. Living with what I did...” He turned his face away from them for a moment, and when he turned back, it was tense with determination. “If I lived in the past I’d’ve strung myself up by now. Even tried a few times. But I knew if I did, I would be damned. One thing Wendy did for me was she made me a believer in the afterlife, and eternal damnation seems to be just around the corner sometimes. So I keep hoping for, you know, some way to redeem myself. Maybe there’s no way. Jesus, it’s cold.” He took a few steps away from the small fire until Peter couldn’t see his face anymore, just a silhouette.
Stella’s voice was warm and soft when she spoke, turning back to Charlie, her hand out to bring him back to the fire. “It wasn’t you, Charlie, it was a demon mind. And all my healing did was make you strong to fight it. And you did. Once and for all.”
Charlie looked off to the hills of No Man’s Land. All darkness, with that aura of moonlight sketching the outlines of vegetation and boulders and slopes. “Wish I could say that was true, but don’t believe it is. I fought it, and maybe, with your help, put it away, but it’s always been there in me.”
“No, it’s gone, Charlie,” Stella said, her eyes bright in the firelight. “It’s gone.”
From the dark silhouette of Charlie Urquart came a whimper. “You. You did this to them, you.”
8
Charlie Urquart pointed to Wendy, who stood there, leaning against the wall of the Garden of Eden. “You,” he said.
The firelight sputtered multiple shadows about her. She turned from the work with which she’d been occupied; as she faced him, he saw first the slick swatch of flesh between her teeth, which she gulped back. Then he saw what she held in her hand.
“She can’t heal you now,” Wendy said after she swallowed.
In her hand she was clutching long, silver-white hairs that tangled as they descended to the scalp; the woman’s eyes had been sewn shut, her lips had been nailed together, and Charlie recognized Stella even with these alterations. “Give me what is mine, that’s all I ask, Charlie, give me what you took from me.”
Wendy plucked one of the nails from Stella’s lips, and then another, and another, ripping the edge of Stella’s mouth. The mouth sagged open, and Stella moaned, “Charlie, stop, what are you—”
“No!” he cried, clapping his hands over his ears. “I know what you’re doing!”
There, in Wendy’s hand, a red rose, blooming, and then, not a rose, but a beating human heart, and then not a heart, but a swarm of red ants.
Even covering his ears, he heard Stella crying out, “It’s all right, we’re here, we’re with you, we can—”
He felt invisible hands raking at his back, at his arms; looking down, he was covered with large red ants, swarming across his shoes, crawling in an undulating army up his pants legs, up his crotch, up his stomach, across his chest The more he plucked at them, the tighter they latched on to him until they’d made steel bridges of their bodies, and they were a part of him. The Stella- face in Wendy’s fist said, “PETER, HELP ME, HURTS, WEAK.” Charlie began shuddering as the ants began biting him from his feet to his neck. “Get them off me!” He managed to flick several off hi
m, and those that fell down on the ground began rising up in a crawling heap; the more he scraped off him, the more the pile of red motion grew, until the ants in the heap before him began crackling and sputtering; climbing one on top of the other they rose up and fell, rose and fell in cresting waves of red; and then it was no longer a heap of ants, but a fire spouting out of the earth; Wendy dropped the head into the middle of the fire, and Stella screamed, “Charlie!” just as the flesh on her face began blistering and splitting, bubbling liquid running from between the fire cracks, and Charlie reached into the ant fire to bring the head out, but the fire crawled from her head up his fingers, his hand, his arm, his shoulder, and he could see each flame-burst ant scampering up toward his face.
9
Diego socked Charlie Urquart in the jaw, and Charlie stepped clumsily back a few paces, weaving, almost falling, but Diego went to him and kept him from sprawling out in the dirt. Instinctively, Charlie pushed the old man back, and twisted on his ankle, falling down on his rear; the world seemed to vibrate as he touched earth; he bit down on his tongue hard; he saw a flash of light and then he knew where he was. The ruins of the great house, like the shell of a bombed-out cathedral. The others there with him. Not Wendy holding Stella’s head, but Stella with her body and head attached the way they should be. Christ, the waking dream is stronger here. In New York I had a chance to see through it, but here, it seems more real than this.
“You could’ve killed yourself,” Diego said. He bent over and grabbed Charlie’s right arm, holding it in front of his face.
Charlie looked down at his own hand and barely recognized it. It was red-blistered, and skin bubbles had erupted around his knuckles.
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